It’s been two years, near as dammit, since I started this column and I've chalked up over a hundred of ’em in that time, so this seems an appropriate point to come to a close. I’ve got a book to write and a deadline pressing and one’s not getting done and the other’s looming ever nearer.

All the same, I’m sad about stopping this column because I’ve absolutely loved doing it and it’s kept me motivated through some difficult periods, both as a writer and personally. Having to come up with 800 words every week is a great discipline. It’s therapeutic, too. You probably know more about my life than my family does.

Look on the bright side, though: there will be no more prattling on about Strictly Come Dancing, trombone playing or worm charming. Or, indeed, the husband, who wanted to have the last word but can’t, ha ha, because he’s stranded in London at the time of writing due to the floods.

The book I’m writing is based on my experiences of trying to live a greener lifestyle, something I’ve charted regularly in this column. I’ve been working my way through a list of 100 ‘eco-challenges’, most of which I’ve managed or at least attempted, and I’m getting to the tail-enders now.  Number 85 states, ‘Lobby my MP about action on climate change’ so last Friday I went to interview York MP Hugh Bayley.

I cycled to the Labour Party office on Holgate Road in the rain, risking life and limb (I’m still terrified in traffic and dismount rather than turn right but I’m wobbling less now) with the bike stuck in third gear. I guess if you’re going to make a point about the need to take personal responsibility for the environment, arriving sweaty and disheveled with smudged mascara and helmet hair shows you’re trying.

Hugh Bayley, who, it transpires, was in a broadcasting consortium that made environmental films for Channel 4 back in the early 80s, said he was with me on that score (the personal responsibility thing; though as a cyclist I suppose he gets helmet hair, too).

I asked him if he thought people – including politicians – were aware of how little time we have to take action before it’s too late. ‘I honestly don’t think Parliament and the public have recognized just how critically important climate change is,’ he said. ‘We only have 10years to make radical changes or face catastrophe.’

This was before the torrential rain that created havoc throughout the Midlands and South Yorkshire and closer to home in Pickering and Pocklington, which, according to BBC weatherman Paul Hudson, is a harbinger of the kind of extreme weather events we’re likely to experience in the future. It wasn’t good news. If those in power still don’t get it, what hope is there?

Hugh Bayley was keen to give the Government credit for securing the go-ahead with the Kyoto treaty and to promote Tony Blair as being a key influence on George Bush’s belated environmental U-turn, but I was more interested in future progress than politicking.

What about China, I asked. I mean, frankly I’m too depressed to even pick up the Independent now that the Chinese are building two power stations a week. Those headlines about their carbon emissions make my efforts feel completely futile.

‘There is nothing anybody in the world can do to stop China going through its industrial revolution. The only way to stop it having global consequences is to provide clean coal technology. Finger pointing isn’t going to achieve anything,’ he said.

As to my gloom at the ‘Earth in imminent peril’ headlines he said, ‘I’m not sure that scaring the pants off people is the wrong thing to do, providing you can convince them there is something they can do.’ He was flattering about my list – ‘it’s a wonderful prompt for action’ – so I asked him which of the things on it he currently does.

It turns out that he does not compost his kitchen waste, does not have a green energy supplier (tsk, tsk) and didn’t know that York has an organic supermarket, though he does have low-energy lightbulbs and good home insulation. He takes credit for persuading the House of Commons to use recycled paper but flies extensively as part of his work in international development.

A mixed report, like most of us, I suspect, but at least he’s in a position to wield power on policy making. I promised to revisit him with a compost bin. I might take him some worms, too. I charmed them myself, you know.

In the words of someone else who has also just stepped down from their post, ‘I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That’s it. The end.’

Does this come in green? by Kate Lock is published by Hodder in May 2008