When we look at this very important issue of global warming – is it happening, how much it is happening, if it is happening how much it is happening, what the consequences may be, what is the sensible thing to do about it – this is no longer talked of in rational terms. It is a belief. They say do you believe in global warming? It's like a new religion. The idea of looking at it rationally seems to have gone by the board, and indeed people who disagree with the conventional wisdom, with the orthodoxy – both of what is the orthodox explanation of what is happening and what is the orthodox explanation of what we should do about it, [i.e] cutting back drastically on carbon dioxide emissions – anybody who says, hey wait a moment, let's have a look at it, let's take stock. How certain can we be? What are the consequences of this? They are regarded as religious believers treat heretics, and they are unspeakable, they're called deniers, which is a very loaded term. So I do think, because this is a very important issue, because anything we do about it is going to have huge economic consequences, we really do need to approach the subject coolly and calmly and rationally.

It's a global issue, so there has to be a global agreement, and the Chinese Government and the Indian Government, to take the two most important, the two biggest of the fast-growing developing countries, they have, very sensibly I think, made it absolutely clear that they're not going to be part of an agreement which requires them to cut back in a mandatory way on their carbon dioxide emissions. The reason that they're not going to do it is because it would damage their economic development very considerably, and they say their first priority is to get their millions and millions and millions of people who are still dirt poor out of poverty. So they want the fastest possible rate of economic growth, of economic development, and that means using the cheapest form of energy that is available to power that growth, and the cheapest form of energy by far carbon-based energy. So they're not prepared to take the economic hit, if you like, to damage their countries' economy and the growth that they could otherwise expect. But it's the same for us. I mean it would damage our economy in exactly the same way. Maybe we can afford it. But I see no point in doing it.

It means first of all that you won't get the global cutback in emissions which is said to be necessary. I don't believe it is, but you won't get it. But it's actually even more than that, you may not get any cutback in emissions at all. What is likely to happen is more and more of those industries that use a lot of energy will decamp to China and India, or else they will decline in Europe and their opposite numbers in China and India, because they've got much cheaper energy, will get a bigger and bigger share of the market. So that in fact the emissions will still be coming but they'll be coming from China and India instead of coming from Europe.

Businesses I do think should have a concern for the environment, just as they have a concern for the people who work for them; they don't just treat them or shouldn't treat them just as automata. But this particular issue, the issue of global warming, that is not a matter I think where businesses have anything sensible to contribute. It may well be and it is the case at the moment that Government is giving out huge subsidies for various things, whether it's biofuels, so there may well be business opportunities for businessmen to pocket the subsidies and make money from them. And if the Government is so foolish as to give these subsidies then I'm not going to complain about businesses taking advantage of that. But of course they need to be aware that I think the time will come before long, particularly when the world economy anyhow is going through a more difficult time, that governments may start reining back on the subsidies they're prepared to give.

I think this is an issue which governments have got to get to grips with, it's not really an issue for businessmen. It's an issue for governments, having listened to the scientists and having realised that there are very different views between scientists, [to] decide what is the sensible way to approach this. And the sensible way to approach it is to wait and see if the world is going to get warmer and if there are going to be damaging impacts, net damaging impacts. Because of course, there are some damaging impacts but there are all sorts of beneficial impacts that you don't normally hear about, from a warming planet. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change for example which reported last year suggested that the sort of mean, most likely, increase in temperature over the next hundred years is an increase of about three degrees centigrade. And they say that an increase of about three degrees centigrade would actually be beneficial to world food output. So there are all sorts of plusses as well as minuses.

If you think that there are serious minuses then the thing to do is the thing that mankind had always done in history and indeed does across the globe. We adapt to it. And that's what we'll have to do. We will have to adapt to it. And we're perfectly capable of doing that, the only sort of people who might have difficulty in adapting to it are the very very poorest of the poor countries, and we can help them adapt as a major part of our overseas aid programme, should that be required. But at the moment the jury is out.