Have you got a carbon footprint in a green, size six?

There is an element of Emperor's new clothes about the econistas who seem to want to organise our lives from birth to environmentally-friendly, low carbon death.

No one will convince me that the eco-towns are anything but a blatant attempt to allow large scale urban development and sprawl in green belt but stick eco on it and people are convinced that they must be saving the planet.

Latest eco wheeze is to turn grassland into bio-fuel, the grassland that is not being covered in eco-towns of course. The bio-fuel industry is making the South Sea bubble look like normal business practice. All it has managed to achieve so far is the continuing destruction of rain and tropical forest on a huge scale and massive hikes in food prices as crops are grown for fuel instead of food. At a stroke food prices have been linked to oil prices.

That brings all the associated and devastating increases in poverty and starvation to the third world as well as endless price increases for the rest of us and all this is to produce a fuel which is costing more in carbon than it is saving. It takes enough food to feed a man for a year to produce just one tank of fuel for a 4x4 apparently. Eco and economics seems to be a few MPG apart on that one.

We now have TV programmes telling us how much carbon was used in their production with people presumably paid for working it out - I tell you it is becoming an industry. Why we should want to know I have no idea. Do they think people will watch Lewis rather than Foyle's War because it uses less carbon?

The problem is that if you stick eco, green, carbon neutral, environmentally friendly or any other buzz word into any hare brained scheme, pointless research or money-making scam you are feted as a prophet. I was one of those who advocated not using the oceans, rivers and wilderness as a dustbin years ago when it was the domain of individuals with beards and shirts knitted from navel fluff and have always believed we needed a viable alternative to oil but sensible argument has long gone out of the window shouted down by global warming theories which change on a daily basis to fit the weather and the latest research grant.

Next time anyone spouts on about your carbon footprint and global warming remember that it was their size tens that destroyed an area of Amazonian rain forest the same size as Cornwall in the last six months of last year and put up the price of your pint, loaf, baked beans and most other things you eat and they still can't tell you what the weather will be like next week.