Prepare for the un-rewilding of Britain

THERE are days when I get the distinct impression a class of six-year olds could make a better job of running the country than the bunch who are currently trying to.

In fact this theory was reinforced only a few days ago. My chainsaw is currently out of action and I needed a few logs to keep the chill off so I went down to the local supplier to buy a few.

There were a couple of blokes there and we got talking about the environmentalists’ crusade against log burners – and indeed the whole concept of using wood as an energy source – and the way the decree has now gone out that wood for fuel has to be kiln-dried.

There was a six-year-old boy there who was listening to the conversation and who then spoke up. What was the sense, he asked, of kiln-drying wood? Because you had to cut down one lot of trees to burn and another lot to dry them. So you were actually cutting down twice the number of trees to achieve the same result.

That boy will go far. Because he obviously has a large reserve of that commodity which is totally absent in the minds of most ministers – common sense.

And the more you hold ministerial decisions up to the light, the more it becomes apparent there are holes in them as big as the ones in gruyere cheese where the common sense element ought to be.

At the weekend I was tempted to reach for the remote when a discusany sion started about climate change. Now this is a topic I am well acquainted with. I accept climate change is happening. I accept we have to do whatever we can to mitigate its effects. Indeed in my own small way I will do whatever I can as an individual to contribute to the necessary collective effort. But in the end there’s only so much I can do and on that basis I don’t think I need more lectures about what’s coming down the road.

But on this occasion I didn’t press the button because the speaker seemed to be making sense so I listened. It wasn’t a particularly reassuring experience because the modelling suggests that unless we can slow down temperature rise between now and mid-century (fat chance, I would have thought) then large parts of the globe that currently produce food will be unable to do so. Not surprisingly the effects will appear earliest and be most severe in the hotter parts of the world which will increase pressure on more temperate zones to produce more.

In case you hadn’t realised, the UK is classed as being in a temperate zone. Yet the Government’s current response to the growing and very real threat of climate catastrophe is to take land out of production so it can be rewilded – the equivalent of fighting a fire by throwing petrol on it.

Only one thing is certain; when we reach the point where all the wonderful overseas food trade deals this Government has allegedly struck start unravelling because our suppliers won’t have enough to export, you won’t be able to hear yourself think for the noise of chainsaws urgently un-rewilding Britain.

But then, it’s always said that politicians can’t think beyond the next election so perhaps it’s no surprise that so many knee-jerk, short-term and essentially stupid policies continue to roll out from Defra.

In the end there’s only so much I can do ... I don’t think I need any more lectures about what’s coming down the road