"Emission trading, indeed any concerted measures against global warming, imply a world economic system, an extension of the same globalisation that is being blamed for spreading hydrocarbon civilisation. Such a system does not run itself, as we learned in the 1930s. Central banks are quietly asserting independence from their governments and drawing nearer to each other, as the only way of keeping the world economy more or less functioning. In a similar way, a notional set of independent climatic authorities might meet, out of the media spotlight, and try to decide what to do about global warming. Such bodies could hardly include practising politicians and, as the atomic bomb showed, scientists have no more ethical competence than the rest of us. The unplumbed depths over which the advocates of Kyoto so naively skated call for some radically new philosophy, but philosopher-kings grate on democratic sensitivities. Setting interest rates, which central banks can do, is relatively easy; the climatologist-kings, on the other hand, have no legal basis for imposing wordwide energy restrictions. Nevertheless, the much misrepresented Adam Smith, far from defending a conscienceless capitalism, thought that given enough time, our behaviour towards each other could gradually improve, citing the decline, though not yet the disappearance, of slavery and infanticide, both accepted without a qualm by the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. If global warming has any solution, it can only come from the sense of human solidarity and the individual self-respect that Smith hoped might temper the short-sighted greed of purely commercial society. Coupled, as of now, with the name of George W. Bush." [snip]