I went to the vote of the Industry committee last night. I was expecting a drawn out, confusing meeting but it flew by in such a rush that some of us felt like we were at an auction.

It was a strange feeling, knowing that important decisions that affect our lives are being made here by our own EU representatives. Did you know that they tend to vote as block, with the leader signalling which way to vote by a raised or downturned thumb? At one point I felt like I was Daniel in the Lions den, though I wasn’t sure whether all the compromises and amendments meant that I was being thrown to the lions or spared.

Compromise is the key word – the vote turned out to be a bad compromise, trading off urgent action for a longer term target when what is required is both.

As it stands it’s hard to know whether the agreed climate targets will ever be met, given the combination of weak penalties and gigantic loopholes that just got a huge thumbs up from supporters of the car industry.

If the industry committee gets its way, the target will be postponed until 2015, but at least they have added another target of 95g/km for 2020.

This morning environmentalists are beginning a series of meetings with MEP who will vote in the last of the committee stages, when environment committee sums up the other committees opinions and takes its vote. Let’s hope we can get them do the right thing.