Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested radical action is needed to combat climate change but campaigners have known that for a long time. The Argus's award-winning environmental reporter SARAH LEWIS examines the threat to the Sussex coastline and asks when all the talk will turn into action.

The news Gordon Brown is considering radical new targets for carbon emissions will come as excellent news to the thousands who have been campaigning for a strong and meaningful climate change Bill.

However, while the headlines may look good for a couple of days, there is a cavernous divide between pretty green talk and real action.

A quick glance at some of the Government's latest decisions reveals an extraordinary lack of joined-up thinking and a gross disregard for the urgent needs of both people and planet.

Does expanding Heathrow airport suggest a Government keen to look after our environment? What about centralising accident and emergency and maternity wards, forcing people to travel further for these basic services? Or a lottery education system where children can easily end up at a school miles from their home?

Mr Brown has announced he will ask an independent committee whether the Government should aim for an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, instead of the current target of 60 per cent. While this may sound like a step forward, sadly it smacks not of the brave leadership we so desperately need but of yet more dithering and time wasting.

As Brenda Pollack from South East Friends of the Earth said: "They don't need any more evidence. The Met Office set up a committee to look at this under Tony Blair. There have been three committees to look at the Bill since it was set up in March 2007 and all of those have heard evidence from scientific and independent groups and they all say 80 per cent is needed to avoid dangerous warming.

"So his commitment to looking at it, which will probably mean not answering the question until late next year, is too late. He needs to make the decision now and have some guts."

We have been warned that within the next 70 years, the sea level could rise by up to 69cm. Even if we do make these major changes, we are still guaranteed to suffer the ill effects of our polluting ways.

There is an estimated 25 to 30- year lag between the time greenhouses gases are released and them reaching their full heating potential.

The 0.8C rise we have seen so far is the result of pollution from the end of the Seventies.

Without these cuts, Dr Alister Scott, of the Sussex Energy Group, warns higher waters and stronger storms could breach our sea defences, the potential results of which have been all too well demonstrated in New Orleans.

Yet despite this, we are consistently thwarted in our attempts to act in a more sustainable way. The Government-led planning system wants to take account of sustainability in its developments, to encourage people to work near where they live. But all our amenities are being moved further away from us. Post offices are being closed and giant out-of-town supermarkets are encouraged.

Lewes Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said that since 1997 the price of travelling by train had gone up six per cent above inflation and the cost of a bus ticket by 13 per cent. On the other hand, the cost of travelling by car had dropped by ten per cent.

In among these increasingly fragmented communities, the South East is expected to accommodate 32,000 new homes a year until 2026. This is based not on what our land and resources can cope with but on what the Government perceives the demand to be.

All this comes down to two issues - housing and transport.

Together they account for almost 50 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the UK.

We need new homes and we need efficient transport systems but we need them to work with the environment and with the people in it to help reach those new targets, not move us further away from them.

We can put in all the energy saving light bulbs we want and turn our thermostats down any number of degrees but if the fundamental infrastructure of the country relies on forcing houses on to flood plains, building huge roads and creating fractured towns and villages, we stand no chance of even denting the enormous challenge we face.

Gordon Brown said Britain is at the forefront in setting challenging targets for reducing carbon emissions - but the question still remains, when will we stop setting targets, and actually take action?

What should be done to reduce carbon emissions?