This article: Merkel: no chance of Kyoto-style agreement at Copenhagen is dispiriting enough, but then you look at the comments, 6 out of 7 of which (at time of posting) are climate change deniers. And the other one is a snidely amusing mark about how Brits are dirty. How have we got to this stage given that scientists have overwheleming shown that man made climate change is a fact?

I blame relativism and journalists. Relativism is our intellectually cretinous modern idea that every idea or opinion is equally valid. That sort of thinking may be all well and good if you’re discussing books, history or other unverifiable stuff – but science doesn’t work like that. Thories are verifgiably proved with evidence or they are not. Scientists with different “opinions” are either right or wrong.

Journalists contribute by writing pieces which “balance” different sides of the story, quoting both sides, with the presumption that the true answer lies halfway between. So all the deniers have to do is to manufacture doubt to have won. Which is where we are now. All very disappointing.

I know I’m banging on about this, but really, what is the point of that Tesco game? What point are Tesco trying to make?

“Please don’t buy the non-green products that we are selling?” OR

“We are green because we have made a green-themed game (even though we’re not going to tell you how)”

Or did they just have a green budget that needed spending?

This seems to me a classic example of greenwash – “Let’s spend some money on giving ourselves a green image, but let’s not actually do anything serious. Only the real greens will see through it – everyone else will just soak it up and feel somehow virtuous about using us, and that’s all we really need.” How depressingly cynical.

Just seen a blog post for Tesco’s new Greener Living website on Greenfamilia featuring their Greener Trolley Dash game.

Apparently, it’s very easy to be a environmentally-friendly shopper – just spend your money in Tesco.

Amusingly the game revolves around catching some “good” products like hemp bags and energy saving lightbulbs (which Tesco will sell) while avoiding “bad” products like bananas and pineapples (which Tesco also sell, but that’s your problem not theirs).

Still, you can win a washing machine. Woo!

More on the No Impact Project. One of the FAQs reads “What if some of the activities are impossible for me to do?”

The answer? “If a challenge is truly impossible, don’t sweat it.”

Oh that’s good. Climate Change is probably quite an easy problem to solve too. If going green is too much trouble, then it’s fine not to bother.

The No Impact Project will no doubt argue that every little helps, and that people shouldn’t be put off being green by making it too hard to do. But could this be counterproductive? Is this the right message to be giving out, namely “if it’s too hard just don’t bother?” Isn’t it the sort of thing that makes people feel OK about taking flights because they did some recycling last week? Because if that’s what the public thinks then I don’t think we’ve got any chance of getting where we need to be. We might have a good chance of getting part of the way there, but the science tells us that that isn’t enough.

Shock Horror! The No Impact Project wants to experiment on us all! Although it’s a touchy feely experiment where you try and see if your life gets better if you live greener.

They’ve created a 7 step programme to help you do it, so it’s like getting yourself off addictive substances, except in this case it’s addictive dull things like processed food and electrcity as opposed to addictive fun things.

I’m going to go through the programme, but I have to say I feel pretty ambivalent about it. Energy efficiency is all very well, I don’t think it changes anything, and can even be counterproductive. If we greens reduce demand for energy it reduces energy prices, thereby making it cheaper for browns to use that energy – so we’re effectively encouraging the browns to use more. I feel really strongly that any meaningful changes has to come from effective government action. We really can’t get anywhere at all unless change happens on a national level – action by a small group of enthusiasts only (we will always be a small group) won’t get us as far as we need to get.

Having said that the first step to any change is admitting you’ve got a problem, so I should probably take some personal responsibility…

Offsetting schemes can be such rubbish, can’t they? A lot of them are based on planting trees, which just seems silly to me. OK the tree soaks up some carbon, but then it dies, rots, and the carbon gets released again – so if you offset by planting trees, all you are doing is deferring the problem 70 years or so into the future – which is pretty mean of you. Planting trees is probably better than nothing, but not emitting the carbon in the first place is even better than that.

Am I right on this? I think I must be wrong as that was George Bush’s objection to the Kyoto Protocol, so there must be something wrong with it?!

Other offsetting schemes provide money to get people to do things they would have done anyway. One of Pure’s schemes which Barclaycard are paying for is to provide some hydro-electric power in China. Should we be encouraging that? For a start, do China really need any more energy? And more important, is this actually going to stop China burning the equivalent amount of coal, or will they just do that anyway in addition? I rather suspect the latter.

Surely you’d be better off spending the money in a developed nation where growth has already been achieved, and you can be pretty sure that you are substituting the green power for the dirty power, rather than just giving a developing nation some more capacity? More development is the enemy after all.