By Daniel Forman - 19th April 2006
David Cameron is embarking on a three-day trip to the Arctic Circle in order to study the effects of climate change at first hand.
Accompanied by a team from the international environmental campaign group WWF and a BBC film crew, the Conservative leader was flying to Spitzbergen in Norway on Wednesday.
From there he was travelling to Svalbard near the North Pole, described as the "ground zero" of global warming.
The group will also look at local municipal projects aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
Ahead of the trip, Cameron told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that his commitment to the environment was genuine and in keeping with Tory traditions.
"I think that some of the green lobby and a lot of the media tend to look at environment and climate change as 'look you have got a binary choice, you can either have economic growth or you can have a sustainable environment'," he said.
"And the truth is we have got to have both. We have got to have green growth."
But one unnamed shadow minister is said to have attacked the visit as "barmy" and a "gimmick", coming in the middle of the local election campaign.
And in the Commons on Wednesday the prime minister again attacked the Conservative refusal to support the climate change levy tax on carbon emissions.
Tony Blair said it was "completely inconsistent" to claim concern for the environment and oppose the policy.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd