YESTERDAY, the European Union pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

Last night, the petition on the Downing Street website closed after 1.7 million people called upon the Government to scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy''.

And today we report on the interesting plans for Middleton-in- Teesdale to become the first village in the country to be powered only by renewable energy.

The reaction in Middleton is instructive. People we spoke to were interested, even excited, by the prospects but they were concerned that they would have to foot a very large bill and get very little financially in return.

The more extreme elements of the Green lobby will condemn this attitude as selfish and shortsighted, but it is a very human reaction. We come very briefly to this planet, and most of us cannot afford to be saddled with huge costs for turbines and solar panels.

The trick, therefore, is for the Government to take the lead. It has to make it so expensive for us to use fossil fuels that we seek out the alternatives, and when we find those alternatives they must be cheap enough to be plausible.

This is why the road pricing petition - which contained much erroneous information' - is too simplistic to be taken seriously.

Of course, there is not a car driver who wants to pay more tax so it is a wonder that only 1.7 million people have signed the petition.

But the petition does not ask what people think of the alternatives to road pricing. The alternatives are either more roads driven across our once green and pleasant land, or more gasbelching congestion and global warming.

The petition does not mention that a sophisticated road-pricing scheme would mean that rural users pay less than those in cities or on motorways where there are genuine alternatives to the car.

What the petition does show, backed up by the Middleton-in- Teesdale soundings, is that if a politician is brave enough to introduce effective environmental taxes, he will quickly become exceedingly unpopular.

And most politicians would rather see the EU emissions targets missed by a country mile and the planet brought to boiling point than risk losing their position of power.