CLIMATE change became a point of contention inside the Green Party yesterday as members argued at this year’s conference on whether to prioritise the issue.

The Greens’ only MP Caroline Lucas set global warming front and centre in her address to conference, saying that protecting her sons from climate change was what got her “out of bed in the morning.”

But a heated debate erupted after her speech over whether combatting climate change should be the party’s flagship policy or just part of its principles.

Taking the stage at the Bournemouth International Centre, Ms Lucas said: “We are under no illusions: for more than 20 years, governments have been meeting at global conferences to talk endlessly about the crisis, yet greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise.

“Genuine responses to climate change threaten their power and wealth, threaten free-market ideology and threaten the structures and subsidies that support and underwrite them.”

Referring to her party’s involvement in the mass demonstrations planned for the Paris climate talks this November, she added: “It will send a message, loud and clear, as we do from our own conference here today, that the era of fossil fuels must end.”

Yet her members felt that a motion suggesting “the public should be left in no doubt that when they vote Green they are voting on climate change” was divisive.

Many stood with the 49 per cent of Green supporters who believed the party didn’t focus enough on climate change during this year’s general election campaign.

The debate ended with members deciding not to vote on the motion altogether to prevent a rift.

Speaking to the Star Ms Lucas emphasised the benefits of having a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party.

“Hearing someone so senior in Labour now supporting positions we’ve been taking for decades is very good,” she explained.

But, for the Brighton Pavillion MP, it is exactly on climate change that her party can make a difference with “an approach to the environment crisis that isn’t just one more item on a list of priorities but it’s a whole lens, a whole framework through which to see all policies.”