Think before you do your bit

We all like to do our bit in a good cause. The local primary school needs a new swimming pool, so people chip in a few quid here and there until the requisite amount has been found. As Remembrance Day looms lapels are adorned by little red poppies for which a little bit of loose change was dropped into a collecting tin. An earthquake demolishes the homes of little brown people, so we phone the number on the screen and use our flexible friend to add to the relief effort.

These might all seem like examples of doing our bit by pooling lots of small donations to produce a sufficient sum to help with a problem, probably because they are examples of exactly that, but they are each different things. In each there is an identified current problem which requires money and the solution is to have the little people reach into their pockets, but the difference is in both the scale of each activity and the extent to which the money given will be used for the stated purpose.

The school project is entirely local. It could be advertised further afield but is unlikely to reap much reward because few living in other towns and villages will feel any obligation to contribute. Unless old Iris the bookkeeper is having one of her creative moments, all the money raised will be used to provide a new pool, there will be no administrative costs.

Poppy day is organised by the Royal British Legion which is noted for having very low overheads because it relies substantially on voluntary assistance. It does have employees because it is such a large organisation that it could not operate effectively without some permanent staff. Necessarily this means that not all money donated goes to the care of ex-servicemen and women.

Providing food and shelter for trembling brown people is an international activity because the sums required are substantial and the organisations who get involved know they can tap into goodwill around the world. However, by their very nature, such organisations have large overheads. Some engage in widespread political lobbying and campaigning that eats into the value of donations they receive. And when it comes to delivering aid the results are variable, in part because of the need to pay bribes to national and local officials in order to be able to get any help through at all in some countries.

When we are doing our bit in these three examples, our bit delivers less bang per buck the further removed the beneficiary is from us physically and the larger and more corporate the body to whom we give our money. Yet in each case we give because we are satisfied that enough of our cash will get through to make a difference. Debatable though that might be in some specific instances of international disaster relief, failings are not widely advertised and the anguish of the next natural disaster always seems great enough to persuade many people to donate.

More than that, in each case it is absolutely true that whatever does get through makes a difference. The school might not raise enough for a pool in one year but it gets there eventually. Whatever is raised by the sale of poppies and the plea to help earthquake victims goes through the system and produces a result.

To my mind that is what "doing our bit" is all about. Our individual bit might be very small but it is pooled with other bits and even if the total remains modest it still achieves something because it causes something to happen.

Imagine what the reaction would be if the Royal British Legion promoted its Poppy appeal along the following lines: "Unless we raise £100million we cannot do anything. Once we raise £100million we can provide nursing care for one injured soldier for one day. Every further £1million will allow us to provide nursing care for one soldier for one day. We can only get to £100million if rich and poor alike give 20% of their income." Nobody would give a penny because the whole exercise would be futile. Giving £10 would not be "doing our bit" because it would achieve nothing other than making the donors poorer by £10.

True though it is that they will never get to £100million unless they start by raising £1 and then add to it, no good works will be possible unless everyone joins in and makes a substantial contribution and that will never happen because the cost of the of contribution required (on the hypothesis I gave) is out of all proportion to the benefit delivered.

I write, of course, not about the Poppy appeal (or indeed about swimming pools or quaking brown people) but about cutting emissions of carbon dioxide. On my last excursion I tried to explain why I consider it utterly futile for the UK to make any sacrifice at the bidding of the CO2 fetishists, but some were not persuaded. My resident Warmist, Mr Andrew, fought bravely and suggested that the little players such as the UK should do the decent thing and then seek to persuade (perhaps he meant shame) China and India into following suit.

It will never happen. The very reason they are industrialising is so that they can enjoy some of the physical comforts we have taken for granted for generations. We can only meet our absurd "emissions targets" by making those very comforts more expensive, thereby hitting the poorest members of our society hardest. To suggest that an industrialising country might slow or halt that process because we have made electricity and gas very expensive for our population and have chosen to get a small fraction of our electricity from windmills is pure fancy.

They can only reduce their emissions by reversing the process of industrialisation. Even the direst predictions of what might happen in China and India as a result of man-made global warming are insignificant compared to the benefits they will reap from industrialisation. They are not going to stop nationwide industrialisation because it might (on the worst-case prognostications of NASA's computer games) have a damaging effect on very small parts of their countries. Still less are they going to do so in order to prevent even more of the Netherlands being below sea level than is currently the case (particularly after the dirty Dutch performance in the World Cup final).

It's not like passing round a collection plate in the knowledge that some good will be done no matter how small the donations. The Warmists present an all-or-nothing case. Reduce CO2 emissions below a certain figure and the world is saved, fail to reduce them below that figure and the world is doomed. Anything short of the magic number is of no consequence. When reaching the magic number requires poor countries to remain poor despite them having set out on a path to riches it is obvious what chance there is of that happening.

None of this is about whether the Warmists' so-called science is accurate, nor does it question the validity of the absurd and Apocalyptic pronouncements about the consequences of not making Saint Al of Gore even richer than he is now. I am assuming for present purposes that all that nonsense can be accepted at face value. The proposed cure can never happen.

It is, I believe, obvious and unanswerable that nothing the UK does can make any difference. Nor can the USA and India between them make a difference for so long as China do not also play. China and India can achieve nothing without the US on board. The US and China can do nothing without India. And lurking in the background are Russia, Brazil, Mexico and a clutch of African countries who see what India in particular has achieved and, at long last, have realised they can do the same. None of them can be shamed into playing the de-industrialising game. There is not enough money to bribe them into playing. It simply cannot happen.

Somebody needs to point this out to our new Secretary of State for Energy Shortages and Climate Change Claptrap.