The ungreen

Here is a list of so-called green initiatives that I will not get involved in.

1) Carbon credits

The business as usual mentality. Carry on as before and dump your problems elsewhere. The west continues to over-consume and over-pollute whilst preventing poorer nations from developing. Poorer nations are duped into thinking they can make easy money by taking the developed world's pollution in cash whilst their own populace live in the stone age. We know what happens in the developing world, the dictators get rich and their people starve.

2) Carbon offsetting

Use carbon now, pay later. Jump on an aeroplane or into a 4-litre Range Rover but don't forget to plant a tree. All carbon offsetting does is dump your problem on someone else's shoulders. Be more responsible and emit less carbon yourself. Don't expect others to do it for you. The world has more than enough of "I will if you will" people going nowhere fast.

3) Bio-fuels

Unlike bio-mass, bio-fuels need food grade farmland because bio-fuels are food. Bio-fuels gobble up yet more land from the other species we share this planet with. Bio-fuels are foodstuffs that create competition for food between the food and fuel processors. This competition forces up the price of food. Higher food prices deny the poor of their daily sustenance.

4) Green gadgets

You've seen those websites, the ones in pastel shades and have green in their title. Pushing gadgets that permit you to continue living your unsustainable lifestyle whilst saving the planet at the same time. Lumps of plastic junk that fall apart after minimal use and end up in a landfill.

5) The Severn Barrage

A plan to restrain the high-tide and let it out gradually through turbines to generate electricity. A megalomaniac's idea that will damage wetlands and ecosystems along hundreds of miles of coastline. There are far better ways of using the tide.