The environmental group, which last year stopped the deep-sea disposal of the Brent Spar oil platform by direct action at sea and a consumer-led boycott of Shell products, said government's and industry's response to global warming was feeble.

Instead of tax breaks for oil companies to find more fossil fuels, government should be backing a massive solar energy programme in Britain, it said. Solar power, which is getting substantial government backing in Germany and Japan, should be competitive within ten years, according to the energy firms, which include BP Solar.

The attack on exploration comes amid claims that the build-up of pollution in the atmosphere will not be stopped only by cutting emissions of the principal pollutants.

Chris Rose, deputy executive of Greenpeace, said that some sections of the oil industry were begimling to question their exploration business. Earlier this week Heinz Rothermund, managing director of Shell UK Exploration and Production, speaking at Strathclyde University, echoed the environmental group's concerns about the threat to the planet from finding more oil. "How far is it sensible to explore for and develop new hydrocarbon reserves, given that the atmosphere may not be able to cope with the greenhouse gases that will emanate from the utilisation of hydrocarbon reserves discovered already?" he said.

Campaigners are calling on the Prime Minister to shelve new licences for exploration in the western Atlantic, where the first new well is expected to come on stream next year. Lord Peter Melchett, executive director of Greenpeace and a former junior Labour minister, said that Shell had said it was up to government to "draw a line in the sand".

"We agree. Our line is at what the oil industry calls the Atlantic Frontier a project to create a massive new oil field in the Atlantic north and west of Britain," Lord Melchett said. "It is here, we believe, that the Government should draw a line in the sand and say no new oil. We already have more than enough to create a huge problem."

Risking the wrath of its competitors, British Petroleum has become the first major oil company to acknowledge the scientific consensus on car fumes as a factor behind global warming. John Browne, BP's chief executive, said: "If we are all to take responsibility for the future of our planet, then it falls to us to begin to take precautionary action now."