The government’s problem with lowering the blood alcohol drink-driving level is teeny weeny and short-term compared with what it can expect once ministers introduce a carbon tax. This isn’t news to them. Organisations such as Ibec haven’t quite taken to the streets with dustbin lids in protest at the prospect of such a tax, but that’s only because wheelie-bin lids don’t make a satisfactory noise and are difficult to detach from the bin.

But Ibec is up in arms, because a carbon tax will add to the costs of its members in manufacturing. The measure is in the new Programme for Government, courtesy of the Green party, and, on the face of it, is a good thing. Just as Fine Gael’s James Reilly wants to make us a second Netherlands in health terms, when it comes to carbon emissions the Greens would like to turn us into a second Denmark.

In the early 1970s, Denmark had a problem with energy use. Never mind emissions or that bad end-product stuff. The problem was that the Danes bought almost all of their oil from the Middle East and, when the Arabs came over all sniffy and brought in an embargo, Denmark had no energy at all.

Now, you might say that what we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history — but that applies only to Ireland. The Danes are fast learners. They didn’t like their lights going out or their every move being facilitated or prevented by the Arabs. So they took a linked series of clever steps: big investment in energy efficiency, big investment in ways to get energy from the sea and from waste, and a carbon tax.

It has to be admitted that around the same time the Danes got lucky with North Sea oil, but the Lord helps those who help themselves. The important thing is that now, if the Middle East runs out of oil or decides to make a political point by sticking a stopper in its supply, Denmark is sitting pretty. It gets no oil at all from that part of the world and cannot be threatened by Middle Eastern actions.

The quiet pride in doing the right thing that characterises the Danes was reinforced by taking action that couldn’t have been fun at the time but has delivered a precious freedom to a small nation. Their carbon tax served as a stimulus to reduce energy consumption and create other, more sustainable sources than oil. In the interim, the memory of the Middle East embargo has faded so much that it no longer seems a real and present threat, although Thomas L Friedman, an American environment and economics writer, maintains that for small and big nations alike the big question is: “Are we going to hit another oil crisis?”

After America’s announcement that its recession ended in the third quarter of this year, that question has become more relevant. The slowdown in economies worldwide has tended to distract us from the reality that when China and India rev up to full roaring power, the demand for increasingly scarce oil will move from challenging to frightening.

“If current trends hold, China will go from importing 7m barrels of oil today to 14m by 2012,” says Friedman, pointing out that for the world to accommodate that increase it would have to find another Saudi Arabia. “But if we do nothing, several things will likely result. First, gasoline prices will continue to trend higher and higher. Second, we will be strengthening the very worst political systems in the world — like Sudan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. And third, the environment will be damaged more and more. Already, the newspaper headlines in China every day are about energy shortages, blackouts and brownouts. US officials estimate that 24 out of China’s 31 provinces are now experiencing power shortages.”

Of course, Ireland will have an interconnector, bringing nuclear-powered energy to this island, thereby creating — at least in the short term — a classically Irish solution to an Irish problem. We get to avoid having a nuclear reactor while frying our eggs with electricity generated by someone else’s. But importing energy does not address two key issues. The first is that we have boundless capacity to generate sustainable natural energy ourselves and it’s an outrage that we’re not already exporting wind and wave energy. The second is that our emissions are way too high and, sooner or later, the EU is going to fine us for them.

We are addicted to oil and notoriously resistant to change when it comes to energy use. When we ran into an earlier threat of an EU fine, for being slow to embrace the use of unleaded petrol, it took a bribe to shift us in the right direction. The government of the day dropped the price of unleaded below the price of leaded in a budget, and within months the pattern of consumption had radically changed. People did the right thing and saved themselves money in the process. Sweet deal.

A carbon tax, no matter how it’s applied, is going to be a much sourer deal. Instead of bribing us into good behaviour, it’s punishing us into it. Challenged about this, John Gormley, the environment minister, says simply that we’re 20 years behind on carbon tax. The Finns introduced such a tax nearly two decades ago, closely followed by Sweden and Norway and, in due course, by Britain, New Zealand and other countries.

The Green party leader maintains, as does the Programme for Government, that those most at risk of fuel poverty will be protected and that the revenues generated from the tax will help retrofit more than 1.2m houses that leak energy like a sieve leaks water, thereby providing jobs for Breakfast Roll Man.

The problem is that when Gormley says, virtuously, that he’s trying to change behaviour with a carbon tax, he doesn’t seem to get how offensive a proposition that is to people who don’t see their behaviour — driving — as toxic.

Smoking damages the smoker and those in the vicinity and it also creates huge healthcare costs for any state. We accepted this decades ago and, therefore, have no problem with the government taxing smoking. In fact, the only factor limiting the level of tax on cigarettes is the idea that people would retreat to the black market and government would lose revenue and regulatory power.

The problem with a carbon tax is the abstract nature of the damage. We don’t see a direct link between our use of carbon and the dire effects of climate change. In that abstraction lies the lack of acceptance. At least smokers have a cough.

terry.prone@sunday-times.ie

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