Hilton's carbon ratings: The latest insanity to guilt-trip ordinary people, blasts Bev Turner

Imagine realising, as the waiter pours your sparkling water, that the attractive person across the table would forever suck in their teeth if you return from the supermarket with sausages made from juicy, sizzling pig instead of mung bean.

The Hilton Hotel may think it is saving the planet, but, instead it is saving YOU from a joyless existence with a spouse who will be forever turning the thermostat down by two degrees to save the planet; tutting when you order the cheeseburger (5.4kg of carbon) instead of the plant burger (0.6kg) and asking why you aren’t taking the bus when there’s two foot of snow outside.

WATCH NOW: Bev Turner hits out at Hilton insanity

This trend towards the persistent guilt-tripping of ordinary people going about our ordinary business is not without its consequences.

Of course, we would all love to live in a cleaner country in which our homes generate most of the power we need to be warm and fed. We need our rivers and seas to be clean so that wildlife flourishes – but also so that we may take a reviving outdoor swim on a sunny day.

The relentless metastasizing of pressure to make decisions based on an imagined effect on the ‘collective’ rather than the simple and necessary pursuit of joy is damaging.

We currently have 2.6 million people off work sick. In a recent survey more than half of 16-24 year-old workers say that they have taken time off due to mental health problems including depression, stress and anxiety.

Is it any wonder?! Corporations are weaponising the simple act of eating, which should be a joyful and nourishing experience instead of a political decision to save the planet.

Some will argue that, carbon ratings, like calories on menus, are simply a means of allowing informed choice. But it completely lacks authenticity and truth.

The Hilton Hotel might have decided that adding bacon to your burger will increase your carbon consumption by 0.7kg but such an equation would be so incredibly complex that the number is rendered utterly meaningless. 0.7kg according to who?

Does that include the farmer’s means of rearing the animal? The means of slaughter? Whether the bacon was delivered in a hybrid-electric van or a diesel truck? And what of that hybrid-electric vehicle?

How much carbon was used in the creation of its battery and the charging of that van? Perhaps it was delivered on a day that the driver couldn’t find a charger and had to top it up at the pump?

This system is utter madness and manipulates the customer into believing they are a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person based on the most convoluted, inexact science imaginable – and we live in an age typified by unimaginably bad science.

It would be easy to shrug this off as a fleeting trend created by Hilton Hotels to satisfy their corporate ESG (Environmental and Social Governance) requirements.

But this won’t end with whether you swap your fish and chips (1.1kg ) for a chicken and tarragon pie (0.8kg) .

Uber Eats are adding carbon ratings to their app.

Big businesses are already springing up to trade carbon credits – a process already proving very profitable for the Saudis who are ‘helping’ small African countries and – ostensibly the planet – by offsetting their enormous private jet use through buying up lots of lovely African forest.

You can mentally opt out of this madness or you can get used to the idea of perpetually calibrating your impact on the planet.

Emma Banks, vice president of food and beverage strategy for Hilton, said: "Carbon labelling is an easy way to empower guests to make more informed choices, and we’re delighted to see they’re already embracing these insights."

I don’t know about you, but I want a restaurant to cook me a delicious well-priced meal served efficiently and politely without casting a moral judgement on whether I want to play their greenwashing game – I don’t and I won’t.

‘Carbon Credit’ guilt will not be confined to your food.

It is coming to ruin your holiday plans (“Sorry, sir, no more flights for you as you have used up your annual carbon allowance”); your choice of home heating (“Yes, Sir, I know the Air-Source Heat Pump costs five times as much as a gas-boiler but your carbon credit score is very low”).

The super-wealthy will not suffer. They will simply compromise through retreating to their Sussex country home instead of their Monaco villa. The privileged will always find a way around these restrictive directives. This is not the politics of envy. It’s the identification of a lifestyle differential between ‘them and us.’

Eventually, you may simply surrender – brow-beaten by the pressures of modern life, ostracised for eating steak, outcast for driving a diesel, sitting in a room lit by a single lightbulb eating baked beans out of a tin. But at least you won’t have married that miserable date from 2023.