THIS week saw the release of ‘Making Peace with Nature’, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report calling for global ambition to “tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies”.

It follows the release of HM Treasury’s own major Dasgupta Review, ‘The Economics of Biodiversity’.

Both these reports make it clear that the old ways – ie the obsession with ‘growth at any cost’, the failure in development plans to account for ecological resources and the destruction of our shared environment – is no longer acceptable (nor survivable).

Important as these reports are, however, they only make more forcefully plain something that has been known for a long time.

Politicians at both a national and local level realised some time ago that they needed to talk about the environment – our air, our waters, wildlife – as if they were actually interested in protecting it.

Many clearly are, but the balance sheet still shows us deeply in the red.

CONOR NIALL O’LUBY

Throop Road, Bournemouth