Huge financial institutions are crashing around our ears, the credit crunch has become more of a credit crescendo and just in case we weren't depressed enough, there's talk of rationing.

Yes it's back to the good old wartime days with meat and milk becoming rare commodities, treats to be enjoyed on just the odd occasion a week.

The rationing proposals have nothing to do with the current financial meltdown but they're not going to do much to lift our doom-laden spirits, that's for sure.

In fact, won't they simply just make us all a whole lot more miserable?

But the hard facts, according to the Food Climate Network, are that milk and meat will have to be rationed if the planet is to be saved.

Sounds dramatic but they reckon it's true. If the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, we should be limiting ourselves to a quarter of a pint of milk a day and only four small portions of meat a week.

Cattle, sheep and pig farming produces around 8 per cent of Britian's greenhouse gas emissions – most of it in the form of methane, from belching livestock, or nitrous oxide from soil used to grow feed.

And if these emissions are to remain stable, we need to cut our meat and milk consumption by a quarter.

What's next? The return of powdered egg?

Will there be special announcements on the radio telling us how to make a tasty Spam fritter or knock up a Woolton Pie (all potato basically and little else)?

And once tea is consumed, will we all be encouraged to sit round one bar of the electric fire, reading by the flickering flame of one solitary candle and making sure not one chink of lights escapes through the window.

Scientific teams like the Food Climate Network do a very valuable job, it goes without saying.

But there are times when really I think they should just keep their depressing and demoralising findings to themselves.

What we need now is a bit of joy and jollity to lift us during these dark and despondent times.

I'm all for saving the planet but can substituting Sunday's leg of lamb for a nut roast really stop the hole in the ozone layer from getting any bigger?

Okay, I know, this is a selfish, "me, me, me" attitude to take but the thought of having to sacrifice my bacon sandwich makes me feel very grumpy.

And – like many others I suspect – I am fed up of being fed an almost daily diet of what I should and should not do, what I should and should not eat.

I am warning other well-meaning food climate people now; don't even think about telling us that chocolate and sweets should be rationed in order to bring greenhouse gases under control.

Because, quite frankly, a planet without Pomfret Cakes or a slab of Cadbury's Dairy Milk is not worth saving anyway.