The government's new carbon plan has some really useful elements to it and should be commended.

The only pity is that it was not published a decade or more ago and if only one could have some faith the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has the political clout to drive its programme through.

The firm dates by which certain tasks must be achieved, the corralling into the "green" fold of different departments and specific actions such as the setting of a carbon price are all to be welcomed enthusiastically.

But we are running up an escalator backwards – not only in our attempts to beat manmade climate change but also to beat the impact of an oil economy dependent on the turbulent Middle East.

Sky-high oil prices currently have at least concentrated a few ministerial minds on the wisdom of being at the beck and call of eccentric, autocratic and ultimately unstable regimes such as Libya.

Many in the Treasury and elsewhere around Whitehall can put their heads in the (Middle East) sands when it comes to the imperative of introducing a low-carbon economy on the grounds that it might cost too much.

But those same politicians and mandarins are presumably all filling their large cars up with petrol every day and noticing they are paying almost twice as much for the privilege as they were 12 months ago.

Let's hope on this occasion the penny drops and the message from the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, that actions to increase energy security and beat off global warming are related, gets through.

But you have to worry that less than six months ago the DECC was fighting to avoid being eradicated, folded up into an arm of a Treasury that is embedded in the business-as-usual way of doing things.

Oil always did have the capacity to make governments sit up, but it's time ministers put as much effort into fighting the low-carbon corner. We will perhaps never know if the invasion of Iraq was definitively a war for oil, but today BP and other western firms have access to huge oilfields there that they were previously barred from.

Tony Blair also helped bring Muammar Gaddafi in from the political cold in 2003, largely to ensure BP and Shell got access to the largest proven reserves in Africa.

It is no surprise that BP was dubbed Blair Petroleum because it always enjoyed strong government support. When the group ran into a problem in the late 90s in Sidanco in Russia it could rely on a stiff letter from the prime minister to Vladimir Putin to sort it all out.

Equally, when BP got knocked about by Washington over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last spring, it could rely on a quiet word from David Cameron to Barack Obama that the political attacks risked driving BP out of business.

And when the oil company unveiled its grand recovery strategy – a share swap and Arctic exploration deal with Rosneft of Russia – there was Huhne on hand to oversee the signing ceremony.

Could you imagine fledgling, homegrown low-carbon companies such as Solar Century getting such high-level political support and encouragement if one of its deals went wrong?

BP and other homegrown oil companies are deemed "strategic assets", although no one would admit it and no one would highlight the fact that in some, most of the shareholders and profits come from outside the UK.

But if these corporations really are part of Britain's industrial fabric then it is time to press them into "greener" action, too: encourage BP to rebuild its UK carbon capture and storage interests it gave up on and reconsider the closure of its renewable energy London headquarters.

Why are all the wind turbine manufacturers who are setting up plants here from Spain, Germany and the US? Why did Shell bail out of London Array, which will be the world's biggest offshore wind farm, and leave it to be financed by Denmark, Germany and even Abu Dhabi – a home of oil?

A hundred years ago, Winston Churchill was made first sea lord and achieved a successful mission to switch the navy from coal-fired ships to oil. What better role model for David Cameron to decisively move transport and the economy from oil to lower-carbon fuels such as liquefied natural gas, nuclear, hydrogen and wind?