If the government does listen to him, those who like to exercise outside may face being taxed for breathing out more carbon dioxide than the rest of the population.

The government is announcing today how it plans on tackling climate change through an emissions trading scheme.

Who else would see new taxes if Monckton has his way? Bakers "because the holes in bread are made by carbon dioxide from baking powder".

A super tax on champagne? That one would help even the classes, by making the rich poor and the poor would stay poor.

Monckton said the government was at last making real "the dream of every tyrant – to tax the very air that we breathe".

"From now on, every time you exhale you will be paying through the nose for it, literally as well as metaphorically," he said.

Monckton knows his ideas are silly. He thinks the government ideas are just as silly.

"None of these suggestions is as silly as the carbon trading which the government proposes," he said.