"Noble Peasanthood", Climate change and Western Protectionism

Ross Clark writes about the protectionism built into the climate change business:

Increasingly the politics appear to be shifting the burden of cutting carbon emissions on to the world’s poor: they must be kept in a state of noble peasanthood so that we can carry on living pretty much as before. The attitude of the West can be summed up by Tony Blair’s remark when ‘offsetting’ the carbon emissions from his holiday last January to Florida: ‘It’s just not practical’ to ask people to give up their foreign holidays. Indeed not: far more practical that we assuage our environmental guilt by making the developing world give up their chance to aspire to our standard of living.