The age of Big Brother is upon thanks to climate change. Yesterday, I did a blog entry looking at how the Dutch government plans to introduce a road tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Significantly, every car will be equipped with a GPS device to track the distance and how much the driver pays. Shades of Big Brother there but then, this is designed to deal with a crisis that could destroy life as we know it.

Another Big Brother solution has emerged in Britain where the head of the Environment Agency says everyone should be given an annual carbon ration card. Swipe the card when you buy fuel, airline tickets and electricity, and you will be sent a statement each month telling you how much carbon you're using. And if you go over the limit and your carbon account hits zero, you'll have to pay get more credits.

It's definitely Orwellian although proponents of these schemes would say desperate times require desperate solutions. It does make you wonder though what that would do for the cash economy, with say people paying for their fuel and paying their electricity and gas bills with the folding stuff.

More importantly, we need to watch to see whether the scheme will be adopted, and whether other governments will go down the same track.