The myth of self-denial

It’s a cheap joke, but it cheers me up. When Starbucks started that habit of asking your name and writing it on your cup, I began giving my name as ‘Chantelle’, ‘Monique’, ‘Desirée’ or ‘Pixie’. Then, when I’d collected four or five of these empty cups, I would leave them all lying around in the car to stop my wife getting too complacent.

In the same way, I always use a false name when I book an executive car. It amuses me to see a black Mercedes S-Class parked somewhere prominent with a big white card in the passenger window with ‘Monbiot’ written on it.

But I remain open-minded about the climate change debate: for it seems to me perfectly possible that doom-saying scientists and James Delingpole both have a point. The scientists may be right in warning that anthropogenic carbon emissions are having an irreversible and unpredictable effect on the weather. But Mr Delingpole may also be right in attributing questionable motives to hair-shirters who insist we travel everywhere by bike.

On any subject involving consumption, academics and journalists have dubious motives. For they often belong to that rare class of people who are rich in social status yet relatively poor in material status. As a tenured professor or a columnist on a newspaper, you enjoy a superabundance of social capital. You have respect, influence and a degree of fame, and spend your time with adoring people hanging on your every word. But your car is probably a bit crap. Hence it is in your interests to denigrate and devalue the very status currency in which you are poor, since by doing so you increase the value of the currency in which you are super-rich.