THE PROBLEM ISN’T THAT WE DIE, IT’S THAT WE LIVE IN TIME.

with flavours unknown to nature, already gave us Jacked Ranch Dipped Hot Wings Doritos that, Mark Schatzker notes in The Dorito Effect, have 34 ingredients. And it gave us an obesity crisis. How likely is it that food that tastes, smells, and otherwise behaves even less like what it is will make us healthy and happy next time?

I would also note that the tone of ideacity is, unsurprisingly, strongly environmentalist. Yet these projects are so stunningly unnatural that one presenter concluded cheerfully with “It’s Brave New World”, possibly unaware that Huxley’s novel was an agonized cry of warning and protest. But I’m not here to cast a pall of gloom over such visions. I’m here to cast a pall of gloom over the UN on Friday.

So for now I’m a weatherman, whose main job is not to complain that wind blows dust into your eyes. It’s to say there’s wind coming, or a gale or even a hurricane. And the experts gathered here already convinced me a radical future is blowing in hard. And fast.