Totalitarianism denied.

There are plentiful solutions. Energy prices should rise to make renewables profitable – but credits would have to go to half the population who couldn't afford to heat their homes. Personal carbon trading was briefly promoted by David Miliband when in charge of environment, until slapped down by Chancellor Brown. That would be fair and transparent, giving every citizen a carbon quota to spend as they choose on heating, flying or driving.

The well-off could buy unused carbon quota from the half of the population that never flies, so money passes from richer to poorer. The price would rise every year, as the quota shrank to limit emissions. Sensible, fair and redistributive, it would be easy to implement with plastic cards for energy and transport bills, compared with wartime rationing of everything all done on paper. But it would require a gigantic collective will to action and a will to redistribute to make it happen. No country as unequal as the UK, let alone the US, can have a collective will when citizens' interests are diametrically opposed to one another. Inequality between and within nations may be the death of us.