Lexus: The hybrid debate blog

The reason I drive a hybrid car is simple: to avoid London's congestion charge. I simply couldn't stand paying the fucking thing. It drove me nuts. The idea that I could help fight climate change didn't come into it. I've been taxed into helping. And this, of course, it what any form of taxation should do. It should lead to behavioural change.

Technologies such as hybrids cannot, on their own, turn us into a nation of beneficent activists. We go along with things when we understand clearly that they're in our interests, and when the behavioural changes they require have a minimal impact on our lives. For example, the government is getting rid of 150W lightbulbs next year, 60W bulbs in 2011 and so on. Few of us are going to complain about the shift to low-energy alternatives. But nor would we budge voluntarily. These things have to filter through society gradually.

Take organic food, for example. The middle classes say "We want that," so the supermarkets say "We've got to supply that," so poorer people start to find organic food more affordable, and so on. It's an economic motor: sentiment first, understanding second, from understanding comes a business. That's how we move along. But it has to be plausible. Most people won't decide overnight that roof cladding, attic lining and double glazing have suddenly become sexy. People need to be incentivised to move, incrementally, in the right direction.

I'm dead against health-and-safety fascism. It's an intolerable infringement, in my view. If I don't like smoking in a pub, I can leave. But there's no denying it has changed people's behaviour, and probably the health of those around them. The downside is that a lot of people have gone out of business - in Ireland, for example, many rural pubs have been forced to close. By the same token, any government intervention aimed at helping to mitigate climate change has to strike the right balance.

Governments can mandate social behavioural change. It happens all the time. But I don't approve of them interfering in the way people choose to live their lives. Instead, they have to encourage and educate people to make the right choices, and provide them with a clear and easy path to a new lifestyle. They should leave any radical change to society itself, which has always been a far better modifier of personal behaviour.