Thanks, that was much needed!

Sir, our problems on planet earth are just too serious to allow us from not spelling out some uncomfortable truths. In this respect, with your ‘Carbon markets create a muddle”, April 26, and the investigations that preceded it, and hopefully those that will follow, you are performing a tremendous service to all of us who believe that the climate change threat is for real and therefore require that the actions to combat it should also be for real.

The current carbon market where we sell indulgences for some fairly undefined sins, and use the proceeds for even less defined good deeds, after paying some intermediaries a commission, will just not cut it; much less so if we leave it in the hands of blind believers or of a hypocritical environmental clergy.

PS. Fast forward a decade: What if the indulgences revenues are democraticaly shared by all? Carbon dividends?

Should we let the market really work the migration flows?

Sir, I subscribe almost entirely to Martin Wolf’s “Why immigration policy must be a compromise”, December 22, and the almost is there as I find it hard to understand how his view “that work permits should be auctioned” to the best bidder is related to a “compromise”. Will the one offering the most for the work permit be the best worker or is he just the one needing or capable of paying the most for a shelter?

If Wolf really believes that the market mechanism should be used to optimize migration flows then anyone wanting to move out of his country should also have the right to sell his “place” in the market. We could thereby create some real incentives for people to sell an expensive UK residence right and buying themselves a dirt-cheap Tanzania one, with view of making a huge capital gain when this last poor country gets developed.

In the debate on immigration we must never forget that no matter how much we take shelter behind reinforced borders, at the end of the day, we are all still living, ever more cramped, on the very small planet earth.