Budget dismissed as pale shade of green

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - The government billed it as the greenest budget ever, but Chancellor Alistair Darling failed to deliver on most counts, climate campaigners said.

Darling announced an attack on plastic bags, plans to penalise the most polluting cars and reward the greenest through changes in car tax, tinkered with taxes on new green homes and said a climate levy on business would continue.

"We need to do more and we need to do it now," Darling said presenting his first budget on Wednesday. "There will be catastrophic economic and social consequences if we fail to act.

But he delayed a planned rise in duty on road fuel, backed further airport expansion -- aviation is the fastest growing source of climate changing carbon emissions -- and simply announced a fresh consultation on boosting renewable energy.

"Darling's safe pair of hands have dropped the ball on climate change," said Greenpeace director John Sauven.

WWF's chief climate campaigner Keith Allott said: "This budget contains some small potentially welcome tinkering but no big vision and no sense that this will do anything to put Britain onto a low-carbon trajectory."

Friends of the Earth chief Tony Juniper was equally scathing.

"This was billed as the greenest budget ever. But we didn't get anything like what is necessary to tackle what is the greatest challenge the world faces," he said.