After the failure of the UN's COP6 conference in The Hague, Lewisham MP Joan Ruddock launched an e-campaign on Thursday, harnessing the power of the world-wide-web to change the minds of the United States congress.

The campaign, T:5:20, targets America as the country that with five per cent of the world's population produces 20 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases. Supporting the cross party campaign are, Labour MPs, David Chaytor, Jeremy Corbyn, Joan Walley, Tony Colman, Gareth Thomas and Alan Simpson . For the Lib Dems, Tom Brake and Andrew Stunnell lend their support with Conservative MP Peter Bottomley and Simon Thomas MP from Plaid Cymru also set to back the campaign.

In an interview with ePolitix.com Joan Ruddock said: "In the UK climate change is something in which ordinary MPs are very much engaged and their constituents are familiar with... we have given our support by and large across party lines to successive governments on climate change. But we understand that in the US this is not something that is gaining a lot of attention at the level of members of the Senate or the House of Representatives. People in the US are much less likely to be involved or engaged and as we know public opinion in the United States has not been pressing for the political agenda of climate change... we're saying - we in this country have made our commitment to reducing greenhouse gases, now make yours."

Highlighting the importance of the internet for the campaign, the campaigning MP appealed to people to put the campaign on their websites and to "find out if their MP has a web site, that would be a useful exercise in itself", adding: "They can certainly access this campaign through my web site where they can join the campaign and will receive details about how to send an email to members of the US Congress."

"I would like this to become an e-campaign and so my hope is that as many people as possible will access it through the net and will be e-mailing and making the whole campaign run by itself... Electronic campaigning is a very useful communication tool and there is no way it would have been possible to launch a campaign of this nature, which is aimed at the United States, without doing it on the internet."