It's an important subject, and one that certainly is not going to go away without interventions of the kind detailed in the report.

The problem for us as individuals or businesses, and for our political leaders, is in getting across the need for collective responsibility. And not just on a national scale.

Global greenhouse gas emissions create an even bigger headache – and one for which we've yet to hear a cure for from President-elect Obama.

Also absent this week in the committee's current view on the part aircraft emissions play. Airlines, and some airports, cried foul after last week's announcements from the Chancellor and the Treasury. They believe their businesses and their passengers are facing punitive taxation. Is that to bolster Whitehall coffers or tackle aircraft emissions? Depends who you listen to.

But while China continues to open polluting power stations, factories and steelworks at the rate it is, anything we do amounts to little.

And businesses have new priorities in the current economic climate – priorities that have less to do with the earth's climate.

* MATT JOHNSON is chairman of Mando Group