Great Carbon Emitting Competiton

Who won?

In the centre-left corner, heavyweight Gordon Brown flicks aside his trainer, David Miliband (for it is he) to stake his place in the middle of the middle...

In the centre-right corner, middle-to-middling-weight David Cameron comes on wearing out-size gloves ...

Boof! Whack! Thwack! Kapow!

Labour to insulate homes - Tories to tax airlines ... that was actually the headline on the Daily Mail online edition, for about five minutes, until a panic-struck call from Tory Central Office got it changed to - 'I'm greener than you! Brown and Cameron go head-to-head over climate change'.

But they couldn't bump the Telegraph, which stuck with - 'Tory 'tax on homes abroad' will hit 400,000' ...

A clear victory to the New Labour spin machine. But which will be champion. It is not as easy as it looks.

Brown can be seen as taking a soft option. The idea of setting legally binding carbon emission limits sounds good, but it is really pretty vague. Insulating homes and pushing long-life light-bulbs sounds worthy but dull and they are ideas that have already been recycled several times.

Cameron, by contrast, is hitting hard - super-discount flights, second homes, tax-free aviation fuels ... .

The trouble is that a huge proportion of carbon emissions come from energy wasted in homes and only a tiny amount comes from aviation. Brown sounds dull and repetitive, but he is confronting the real problem. Cameron sounds tough and ready, but chances are he is shooting at his own voters for very little effect.

Personally, I think aviation fuel should be taxed if for no other reason than to reflect the true cost of flying. Towns and cities bidding for air traffic through offering subsidies does not much bother me - it is a reasonable economic decision as the air routes bring in business well beyond the cost of the subsidy. The airlines deserve a commission on that business.

But what we really need to remember is that all this is largely by the bye. As Michael O'Leary at Ryanair likes to remind us, the real cost of air travel to the passenger is negative. The airline should properly pay you to fly with them, recouping the cost of the flight and making a profit through in-flight advertising and on-board casinos.

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