Boil one cup at a time with Breville's fancy new kettle. As if that's going to stop us all from dying.

Tea. Good God, where would we be without tea? It's a helping hand to ease us into the morning, a loyal companion to perk us up throughout the day and a loving embrace to welcome us back at night. Homelier than coffee, healthier than hot chocolate, 12 times more pleasant than Bovril, tea is without question the greatest of the hot brown drinks. So why must they make us feel so guilty about it?

It started out with Fair Trade. We westerners have been exploiting far away countries for centuries, gleefully siphoning off their natural resources and condemning their people to poverty without a care in the world. What we took from them, we paid back in pennies, railroads and racism. It was win-win.

Then fair trade came along and started telling us to feel bad about it all. So our shoes were made by a two-year-old Guatemalan orphan with no arms, legs or head. What of it? Young Ndugu happens to be an excellent craftsman. And if our tealeaves were picked from the bush by a lady who can't afford to feed her children, we say good on her. She's a grafter, and we can taste that work ethic in every cup.

People might say that view is ignorant and short-sighted. Well, if taking no notice of the suffering of people on the other side of the world is "ignorance", if staring at our £2 t-shirt and thinking nothing beyond "that's a cheap t-shirt" is short-sighted, then hey, guilty as charged. As a matter of fact, we've never even been to Africa. Who's to say it actually exists?

So, that's western capitalism defended. But there's a new threat to our beloved cuppa, in the form of the global warming lobby. These eco-minded crackheads argue that the gases given off by man's feverish consumption of energy are playing havoc with the world's climate. They witter on about driving less, turning the TV off properly, not having an open fridge in every room to keep your house cool in the summer, and, worst of all, being careful when boiling the kettle. Heating water to 100ºC takes a lot of energy, they claim, so every time you drink a cup of tea, you're effectively killing a leopard. Or an emu. Or whatever it is that lives in the Arctic.

We didn't go to Bible class every Sunday in order to grow up and start listening to science, which is why we screen out most of this left wing waffle by wearing eye patches and earplugs. But we also like to be seen to be doing our bit. That's why we only ever buy fair trade batteries, where we can find them, and it's also why we use the new Breville Hot Cup to brew our tea.

Unlike a standard kettle, this ingenious device boils, and then dispenses, a single cup of water at the touch of a button. Hey presto, no more wasted energy, and no more guilt surrounding your tea. Not to mention hot chocolate (if you're fat) coffee (if you're foreign) and Bovril (if you're mental).