Martin has campaigned tirelessly at local and national level for tougher action to stop climate change – and for smart planning for the inevitable effects of climate change too.  He continues to use his new role as chair of the Lib Dem parliamentary committee on transport to champion one of the most important shifts we need to make to a low-carbon lifestyle.  He campaigned hard for climate change to be prominent in the Lib Dem election manifesto and is delighted that the new coalition programme for government includes an ambitious programme of green measures, including a green deal to vastly increase energy efficiency in existing hosuing, strong support for renewable energy and a commitment to a so-called 'floor price for carbon' that will help to drive investment in low carbon technology.

From 2006 until 2010 he was his party’s shadow environment minister, part of the front bench team that pulled off a series of remarkable victories on the Energy and Climate Change Acts in 2008, initially backed only by campaigners outside Parliament and by handfuls of rebels from the other parties:

• The Climate Change Bill was amended to increase the reduction target for UK emissions by 2050 from 60% to the 80% all serious scientific opinion believed was necessary. The amendment was tabled by Martin and his colleague Steve Webb MP and eventually adopted by then Labour Secretary of State Ed Miliband.
• The bill was also amended to include aviation and shipping and also to include not just CO2 but all greenhouse gases
• The Energy Bill was amended to make provision for a guaranteed tariff payable to any household or local generator feeding renewable energy into the national grid. This is now being introduced by the new coalition government.
  

Martin has served on two select committees in the last parliament, first the Communities & Local Government Committee and then the influential Environmental Audit Committee. This gave him to chance to challenge the government over a whole series of environmental issues including many that affect Cheltenham directly:

• On both select committees he challenged the environmental cost of government house-building targets. In 2008 the Environmental Audit Committee called for the suspension of Regional Spatial Strategies because of the unnecessary risk they posed to the countryside and Martin strongly supports the new coalition government policy of abolishing them.
  
• He has called for higher standards of energy efficiency and reduction in energy use, as well as championing huge expansion of renewable energy at international, national, community and household level. He has opposed allowing new coal-fired power at Kingsnorth in Kent without any meaningful commitment to carbon capture that would offset its damage to the environment
• He has called for eventual zero emissions targets for new cars and constraints on aviation and welcomes the new government's ban on new runways at Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick airports
• He has supported plans for a green tax switch to tax pollution more alongside tax cuts for those on lower incomes to make sure we don't just end up with so-called green tax grabs mainly aimed at raising more money for the Treasury
• He has championed local firms like Cheltenham’s five green stars - Commercial, Brightsource, Think Lighting, Plexus and Heath Avery. who have put environmental thinking at the heart of their businesses and supported local environmental initiatives like Vision21 and the One Tonners