Alex Singleton of the Globalisation Institute is a sensible chap and resides very much on the side of the angels. Unfortunately in his article at the Graun today he gets it spectacularly wrong.
His thesis for the day is that green taxes won't work, and so we should introduce compulsory carbon offsetting.
We should scrap green taxes on flying and replace them with compulsory carbon offsetting. Like a tax, offsetting would add to the price of a journey. The difference would be that the money would go to actually improve the environment.
And he's quite definite about the kind of offsetting schemes he want to see.
It is certainly true that some carbon offsetting schemes are dubious. One involves discouraging the use of labour-saving diesel water pumps in developing countries and getting people to use back-breaking pedal-pumps, which were banned in British prisons a century ago. We should not allow some ill-conceived options to put us off more worthwhile schemes, such as planting trees.
Which is where he has got it wrong.
Anthropogenic global warming is alleged to be happening because carbon, which was formerly locked away in the form of oil, coal and gas, has been released into the atmosphere. Growing trees is going to have little or no effect on the situation, because trees have a finite life cycle and when they die they just release carbon back into the atmosphere.
As Britain's great chronicler of trees and woodland, Oliver Rackham, has said of carbon offsetting:
Telling people to plant more trees is like telling them to drink more water to keep down rising sea levels.