The flamboyant head of Ryanair, Michael O'Leary, responded furiously yesterday to criticism from the government that his company was refusing to take climate change seriously.

In a typically robust response, Mr O'Leary took on the man who had spoken out against him, the environment minister, Ian Pearson.

Overnight Mr Pearson's comments in the Guardian raised his profile and put him at the forefront of the debate over climate change.

Yesterday it was the turn of the Ryanair boss to grab the limelight, attacking Mr Pearson as a "foolish, ill-informed" politician who "hasn't a clue what he's talking about".

Mr O'Leary recalled the words of Denis Healey, who described a mauling by the then Conservative Opposition politician Geoffrey Howe, as "like being savaged by a dead sheep".

Mr O'Leary said it was time Mr Pearson and "other equally foolish politicians actually tackled the real cause of climate change, which is road transport and power generation".

He described Ryanair as Europe's greenest airline. "Mr Pearson is a minister of a government which has, like Scrooge, this Christmas doubled the air passenger tax on tickets from £5 to £10, grabbing another £1bn in taxes without doing anything whatsoever to invest this money in the environment," he said.

"Like most politicians, minister Pearson talks a lot but does little. Unlike politicians, Ryanair has spent over $10bn (£5.1bn) to become Europe's greenest and cleanest airline, a fact recently recognised by the Dutch consumer organisation."

Mr Pearson's comments came in an interview with the Guardian. He told the paper: "When it comes to climate change, Ryanair are not just the unacceptable face of capitalism, they are the irresponsible face of capitalism.

"O'Leary just seems to take pride in refusing to recognise that climate change is a genuine problem."

The minister said that he viewed the airlines' predicted growth in carbon emissions as such a threat to the government's plans to cut emissions by 60% by 2050 that he wanted the EU to go further - and faster - to include airline emissions in its carbon trading scheme.

He also criticised British Airways, saying they were "only just playing ball".

Willie Walsh, chief executive for BA, also refuted the minister's claims.

In a letter in today's Guardian he said: "The evidence shows we've been playing hardball. For seven years we have led the industry by lobbying for aviation to be included in an emissions trading scheme and for four years we have actively traded carbon emissions - the only airline in the world to do so - in the minister's own department's scheme.

"Last year, we reported a massive 18% reduction in our contribution to the UK's CO2 inventory."

Mr Walsh added that the Treasury had doubled air passenger duty last month without any guarantee that any of the money would be spent on environmental projects. "I wrote to the chancellor of the exchequer last month calling on him to use proceeds from air passenger duty to reduce aviation's climate change impact by investing in renewable energy projects. I have yet to hear back from him," he said.

The row has brought Mr Pearson, MP for Dudley South, to the fore of a political topic of the moment - the environment.

Mr Pearson entered the Commons in December 1994, in the first byelection after Tony Blair was elected leader of the Labour party. After Labour came to power, he became a parliamentary private secretary and then a whip.

He became a minister in the Northern Ireland Office in November, 2002, and subsequently held ministerial posts at the Foreign Office and Department of Trade and Industry before becoming minister of state for climate change and environment last May.