The Independent has bewailed the fact that so many UK voters think that environmental concern is merely an excuse to raise taxes and (shock!) that climate change is totally natural: the findings make depressing reading for green campaigners. 

If they are thus depressed, good.

Take my boiler at home, a fine example to the durability of machines built in the Middle Ages. It still goes. But it is not efficient. It will cost thousands of pounds to replace it to today’s exacting technical standards.

What positive incentive does the government give me to change it? None. It piles on energy taxes to force the price of oil even higher. And it brings in ever-more complex ‘regs’, forcing up the cost and bureaucracy of the work needed to make these improvements.

So if I replace this boiler at a huge cost, I might start to find my lower energy bills finally repaying my investment 7.5 years down the road instead of 8 years.

Why not reduce to zero VAT on all home improvements which can be certified as making a non-trivial energy saving, with random spot checks to check that the works have been done as declared?

Oh, and zero-rate bicycles too. Make all mopeds used to get people to work tax-deductible.

Impossible!

Too many people would cheat. It would be impossible to administer. Government revenue would decline! It would distort the market. We would need EU partners to agree.

Blah blah.

All no doubt partly if not wholly true. But such changes would sharply cut energy waste, by offering quite different incentive sets to millions of people who would rise to the challenge in new creative ways.

A few would cheat a lot, others not so much, most to a negligible degree if at all. But the strategic job of generating a massive response to make meaningful cuts in energy use and carbon emissions would get done.

If this whole climate change business is really Really Serious, it demands sacrifices by governments as well as citizens.

A loss of one-size-fits-all tight bossy control. A new form of partnership with citizens. A new honest focus on Outcomes, not Processes.

Since government offers no such partnership, many voters including this one conclude (reasonably) that the issue is in fact Not Serious.

The British government as currently constituted quite fails to grasp this and instead bores on, trying incompetently to bully people into submission.

No thanks. Go away.