'Breathing tax' to tackle climate change

Joggers, cyclists and swimmers, watch out. Your carbon dioxide emissions could be taxed next. The Government will today announce how it will tackle climate change through an emissions trading scheme.

Yesterday, British peer, media commentator and climate change expert Viscount Monckton of Brenchley pitched in with some advice for the Government.

He recommends: A tax on jogging, cycling and swimming "because sportsmen breathe out more carbon dioxide than the rest of us".

A bread levy "because the holes in bread are made by carbon dioxide from baking powder". A fizzy drinks volumetric charge, calculated by counting the size and quantity of carbon dioxide bubbles emitted when the can is opened. A Champagne "super tax", levied at five times the fizzy drinks charge "because tax is all about making the rich poor without making the poor rich".

Monckton said the Government was at last making real "the dream of every tyrant – to tax the very air that we breathe". "From now on, every time you exhale you will be paying through the nose for it, literally as well as metaphorically," he said. The planned cap-and-trade policy was "silly" and exploited "needless public alarm about global warming".

"None of these suggestions is as silly as the carbon trading which the Government proposes," he said.