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He's no fool, Sir Nick. This gives the lie to the claims that environmentalism is the continuation of anti-capitalism - there is clearly room for capitalists at the fair-trade, organic, global warming beano.

Just shouting about hypocrisy gets nothing done, and doesn't change anything. But how does this happen? Why isn't Stern embarrassed about this? Why don't we see an equivalent to Exxonsecrets.org, showing the monied interests buzzing around the global warming issue? Why is it that this kind of barefaced conflict of interests is largely overlooked, while people like James Hansen call for oil company executives to face trials for 'high crimes against nature and humanity', allegedly for distorting the public perception of climate change for profit?

What this shows is that 'the ethics of climate change' allow for financial and political interests to be overlooked for the 'greater good'. The fact that Stern has been instrumental in creating the idea of mitigation serving that greater good must, by the very standards demanded by the environmental movement, surely raise questions about his profiting from it. Yet don't expect outrage, because, as we have seen before, the ethics of climate change only apply one way. To challenge Sir Nicholas's apparent profiting from his report would be to undermine the very foundations of so many environmentalists' arguments. For example, one of our favourites, Sir Bob May, former president of the Royal Society, in his review of the Stern Report and George Monbiot's Heat, cites Stern as an authority on 'the facts' which we are expected to 'respect'.