What is the real agenda behind the proponents of an ETS, a tax on thin air which will do nothing to alter the climate for better or for worse? They have successfully recruited large numbers of useful fools who have been brainwashed into believing they can ‘save the planet’ by doing petty things such as this claim at the bottom of an invoice received recently from a supplier: ‘We’re Green. We have saved a total of 0.5143 trees since January 2005 by using paperless invoicing for 4287 invoices’.

It would have taken less effort to simply plant a tree, for all the good even that would have done in the vastness of things. And what is a tree? What is 0.5143 of a tree? How much carbon dioxide does it contain? Questions, questions. This is the sort of Garbage In – Garbage Out that we can expect if any form of an ETS is introduced. How many lawyers, accountants and regulators will waste their lives measuring, auditing, accounting for and policing thin air? And to how many decimal places? And how are we going to feed them all while the producers of real wealth sink in a tidal wave of paperwork even if the forms are paperless.

Prosperity is the key to eliminating real pollution (particulate matter, rubbish, sulphates etc) on a global scale. An ETS will introduce a new pest into this country more destructive to our prosperity than the rabbit, and our ability to deal with natural climate change will be greatly diminished if our politicians continue down this yellow brick road, at the end of which they will find only smoke and mirrors.

John McRobert