Matthew Sinclair: The three elements of good climate policy

Matthew Sinclair is Director of The TaxPayers' Alliance.

I think Roger Scruton is absolutely right both in his book – Green Philosophy – and his article for this website about the motive that can cause people to protect their environment: it is oikophilia; love of the common home that we share with those dead and those who have yet to be born. You can see that motive at work when beautiful creatures, landscapes and buildings are threatened. No commandment from a politician or bureaucrat is needed to encourage people to rally to their defence.

Unfortunately, oikophilia has its limits. It works well when the environmental good at stake is something you can see, hear, taste or touch. It motivates what Peter Huber called – in his book Hard Green – hard greens, not soft greens who are more concerned about concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and similarly intangible problems. No one feels in their bones that an extra tonne of carbon dioxide in the air is an attack on the integrity of their home. They need to be told that it is even there.