SEX! (no that was just for Google hits. I meant boring old Carbon Footprint, actually)

Look Eco-Fascists. If your income is higher than mine, you're warming the globe faster than I am, OK?

See, I hopped over to Spain for 3 nights. All told it probably cost about £750 for two, give or take. So somewhere along the line, I've made a direct, albeit infinitesimal, equivalent contribution towards the employment of dozens of airport, airline, hotel, restaurant, bar and retail workers all of whom are burning up the world's resources at a similar rate to me. Then there are my indirect payments towards energy, raw materials, manufacturing and maintenance costs of the facilities I've used all of which, in the end, come down to paying the wages of those providing the service. If I'd spent twice as much, the 'damage' to the environment would have been doubled. Forget offsetting the fuel cost with a donation to a sustainable mangrove swamp in Malawi, only if I hadn't gone at all (and composted the money instead of spending it elsewhere), could I have stayed carbon neutral.

It's not about energy efficiency - it's about the volume of consumption itself.

Just as Western nations consume more resources per head than those in the Third World, so too do affluent people in the UK compared with the worse off - blindingly obvious, yes, but not something any politician is willing to remind us of. Because to do so would make people question just what life is supposed to be going to be like in a few years time when (haha) the Government's carbon reduction targets have been met.

I can't see much happening without a struggle. The reaction to the very modest increase in interest rates recently has shown how petulant the public has become when its addiction to spending is threatened. The neat little spectacle of the Government trying to prop up grossly inflated house prices through lowering the cost of borrowing, whilst at the same time trying to mollify first time buyers being priced out of the same market, is nothing compared to what's going to happen once the wealthy start to realise there's going to be nothing to spend their hard-earned on.

Biofuels have already started to backfire. Renewables are a joke. 'Green' taxes are a fraud - they are simply recycled into equally environmentally-damaging government spending. Same goes for people cutting down on the electricity bill and splashing the savings on live prawns flown in from Bangladesh. If there was, or is ever going to be, a serious attempt to limit carbon emissions it could only be done, obviously, by restricting the amount of overall consumption. Rationing, in effect. But people will never put up with that without a fight - even now, the Democratic Party hopefuls, the heirs to Al Gore, are promising cheaper petrol if elected. How they'll buck the market, I have no clue.. but I do know that cheaper = more.

History isn't on the side of those who believe that rich nations will yield wealth easily to poorer ones. Or that successful people gladly see their incomes shared among low-achievers. Or indeed that the human animal takes an 'after you Claude' attitude to sharing scarce resources. We've pretty much evolved through a system of competing hierarchies based on a fairly grudging acceptance of 'place' by those furthest down the pecking order. In a sense, those at the bottom have been able to mobilise and demand more in recent times, but I can't see the same degree of tolerance extending to them if things get tougher. If there's to be a scramble, it will get chaotic and every-man-for-himself. Possibly, even, as low-down, dirty and desperate as the scrum at the Ryanair check in. Shudder.