[‘Marriage à-la-Mode: The Marriage Contract’, with deep apologies to William Hogarth (1697 - 1764). Don’t do it love. It’s yet another bankrupt idea from our latter-day Earl Squanderfields] 

Precisely as John Vidal, writing in The Guardian [‘Billions wasted on UN climate programme’, The Guardian, May 26], reports that “billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions”, the bonkers bunch of MPs who comprise ‘The Environmental Audit Committee’ issue a report saying that “the government should go ahead with a system of personal ‘carbon credits’ to meet emissions targets” [‘MPs back personal carbon credits’, BBC Online Politics News, May 26].

The Government for once, however, is not fooled, especially when faced with an angry electorate furious over the rising costs of food, fuel, and finance. It has already shelved such a proposal following a preliminary study.

Nevertheless, I was still delighted to hear the Environment Minister, Hilary Benn, gently pouring cold water on their madness:

“... Mr Benn said there were problems with the plan: ‘It’s got potential but, in essence, it’s ahead of its time, the cost of implementing it would be quite high, and there are a lot of practical problems to overcome.’

Mr Benn said that the report found the cost of introducing the scheme would be between £700 million and £2 billion, and would cost £1bn - £2bn a year to run.

There would also be difficulties in deciding how to set the rations, taking into account a person’s age, location and health.”

In other words, it isn’t going to happen - thank goodness.

Dangerous Madness

But we mustn’t let these bonkers MPs - these latter-day Earl Squanderfields - off the hook.

This is yet another mad, mad scheme for a massive and unworkable bureaucracy; for interfering in, and controlling, all our lives; for rank inefficiency; for computer failures; for personal data loss; for corruption and black-marketeering; and, for wrecking the UK economy (after all, no other country is going to be stupid enough to follow suit. Only our British MPs are bonkers enough to contemplate actually carrying out such daftness).

Moreover, the very ideas that such a plan would lead to cuts in carbon emissions, and have a predictable effect on climate, are equally bonkers. As Vidal reports with respect to carbon credits, never mind individual carbon trading:

“A working paper from two senior Stanford University academics examined more than 3,000 projects applying for or already granted up to $10 bn of credits from the UN’s CDM [Clean Development Mechanism] funds over the next four years, and concluded that the majority should not be considered for assistance. ‘They would be built anyway,’ says David Victor, law professor at the Californian university. ‘It looks like between one and two thirds of all the total CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts.’”

Just so. These MPs are indulging in little more than self-indulgent, intellectual masturbation, though the word “intellectual” may be too kind.

I think it is time we established a mechanism for capturing their hot air and burying it beneath the River Thames, although I worry about the stuff-and-nonsense (SF2N4) leaking out again every now and again.

It is time to put a CAP on MPs trading dangerous, daft ideas in the name of ‘global warming’.

Coffee first, of course.