Personal carbon allowance will damage the environment

According to the Telegraph, Lord Smith of Finsbury, head of the Environment Agency, will recommend that everyone in the UK be given a personal carbon allowance, and penalised if they go beyond it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/carbon/6527970/Everyone-in-Britain-could-be-given-a-personal-carbon-allowance.html

Global warming is a problem that we must deal with, and scientists and engineers are making good progress both in understanding more of the science and figuring out mechanism to deal with it. The science is far from complete, but we know that although CO2 is a cause of warming, it is by no means the only one, and many scientists think it is far more appropriate to tackle other warming agents such as methane first, and making early impacts at much lower costs.

If we can't develop technology fixes to the problem, and consequently have to use solutions that depend on everyone changing their lifestyles, we need to ensure social cooperation. This requires that such changes be party-politically neutral. Solutions such as personal carbon allowances provide fuel to accusations that some green policy is just thinly veiled socialism, and are guaranteed to alienate those people who believe that personal effort should be rewarded by expectations of higher social status or comfort. We use the tax system to redistribute wealth, but we still accept that even after some distribution, people who earn more should be able to buy more, at least once they rise above dependence on welfare. We do not expect everyone to have the same cash allowance to live on, or insist they all live in the same sized houses, or eat the same amount of food, so why give everyone the same carbon allowance? It makes no sense except as a means of social levelling.

If we were to impose a personal carbon allowance that covers flying and other transport use, many people such as business executives would not be able to make their contribution to the economy without suffering personal hardship. Business will suffer, the economy will suffer and we will be less able to afford to look after the environment. So such a policy will damage the environment, not benefit it as it pretends to do.

We need to protect our environment, so we need good science, and we need to develop good technology based on that science. We will also need social cooperation right across every part of society. We must therefore reject environmental policy that favours one social group over another. Whatever we think of making society more socialist or capitalist, we should pursue those goals independently of protecting our environment or we will all suffer.