Carbon Offsetting

Macclesfield Borough Council has successfully intervened to prevent the expansion of Manchester airport onto green belt land. It's one of several attempts by local authorities and pressure groups to impose mob rule on the will of the people by mistaking mere public opinion for the hard, shining will of democracy. It is also a symptom of growing but illusory concern that the Government's plans to permit Britain's seventy-odd airports to do more or less as they please in the name of profit might not be altogether compatible with our vague-to-nonexistent commitments on keeping the planet habitable.

Meanwhile, the Guardian's environment correspondent has fun with burping sheep. Burping sheep, belching cows and other potential luminaries of the Parliamentary Labour Party are thought by somebody or other to be responsible for "up to a quarter" of anthropogenic methane emissions, and methane is "a more potent global warming gas than carbon dioxide", so the Government has started a research programme to investigate the possibilities of improving the creatures' diet.

Doubtless such innovative and decisive measures are the reason why the Government, in its Planning White Paper, can afford to "streamline" projects such as power stations and airports by removing mere public opinion from the process.