In Oliver Cromwell's famous words, we plead that your officials consider, in the bowels of Christ, that they may be mistaken. No doubt in good faith, Britain led the world into legislating on the narrative of catastrophic climate emergency during its apogee years of 2005-09 and on the flawed principles of top-down timetables, targets and trading that crashed at Copenhagen last December. If you haven't, you should listen to Der Spiegel's secret tape of the heads of state failing. (It was Nicolas Sarkozy calling the Chinese hypocrites that really did it.) So would it not be a splendid early tonic for the Con-Lib coalition if Britain could find the courage to admit error, correct that error and become one of those countries that lead the way out of the wreckage, rather than go on head-banging? 

That is why, having described the Crash of 2009 in bare detail, The Hartwell Paper does not dwell on the errors of the past about which I and many of my colleagues warned before and while they were being committed. Humbly but firmly, we stand on our track record of successful analysis and hope that you find that reassuring as we invite you now to accept other startling propositions which run counter to the conventional wisdom. Our main business is with the opportunities of the future. 

Our case is that it is now plain on the face of the facts that it is not possible to have a "climate policy" that has emissions reductions as the all-encompassing goal. However, there are many other reasons why the decarbonisation of the global economy is highly desirable. Therefore, the paper advocates a radical reframing — an inverting — of approach: accepting that decarbonisation will only be achieved successfully as a benefit contingent upon other goals which are politically attractive and relentlessly pragmatic. The paper explains how the global economy can be moved away from its dependence on fossil fuels in harmony with economic recovery and with public approval, whereas the conventional wisdom bangs its head against both. The paper sets out access, sustainability and resilience goals. It also makes the case for vigorous and early action on non-CO₂ climate-forcing agents such as black carbon and tropospheric ozone. Why direct policy to the hardest 45 per cent of human forcing agents when we could start with the easier 55 per cent? It then argues for rebuilding of public trust via successful improvements in energy efficiency and new energy technology innovation in decarbonised energy supply funded by a low hypothecated (dedicated) carbon tax. We know that Treasuries hate hypothecation because it affronts their powers. That's why we like it. In its February Budget, the Indian government blazed a trail which you too could follow. By the way, for the avoidance of misunderstanding, we have found it necessary to emphasise that ours is a tax explicitly not intended to alter behaviour: just to raise money without consumers feeling it. 

Unless fractured public trust is rebuilt after "Climategate" and Copenhagen, nothing can be done. Current policies fail because they are back to front, politically and technologically. They also misinterpret the core message that scientific research on climate issues gives to policymakers, which is part of the message of "Climategate" and to which I'll return below.