The first victims of climate change are to be found in Western politics. David Cameron, leader of a right of centre party, said the British must bear with a green air miles allowance. Youth, chubby good looks and being a nice guy are no excuse for a post-Thatcher Tory calling for state monitoring of individual behaviour.

Sensible politicians now need to keep their heads above the rising tide of intrusive activism. And on that count India’s politicians, it seems, deserve nothing but praise. Last Friday, the prime minister-chaired Climate Council met for the first time. Sobriety pervaded the deliberations in Delhi. There were no fulminations against conspicuous or ostentatious carbon-emitting individual activities.

When yet another global climate change conference is held, under UN auspices, and when the George Bush-proposed meeting of the world’s 10 biggest polluting nations takes place, India will take to the negotiating table the same apparent sensibleness: Yes, global warming is a problem but, no, as a poor country with low per capita emissions we can’t be expected to agree to any emissions reduction protocol.

Almost all domestic rebuttals of this official position have come from the activist green/radical left, which has argued that the refusal to join an emissions protocol is part of the establishment’s growth mania. Yesterday Narmada, today Nandigram and tomorrow nature will wash away the establishment’s India dream. But there’s also a mainstream, pro-growth argument against the official line. This says the establishment, more than being shortsighted, is selling the country short.

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