Growth and environmentalism are perfectly compatible

I’m an environmentalist and I say ‘build, build, build’!

Let’s build gigawatts galore of Great British renewable energy and clean up our emissions. Let’s put a Bazal-jet booster behind sewerage infrastructure and clean up the filth in our rivers. When we build homes, let’s get with the times and invest in green infrastructure, our natural defences against flood, fire and crop failure. Even better, why not let beavers build some of it for us?

Like the majority of the UK’s nature charities, I totally reject the Chancellor’s caricature of nature-lovers as stubborn ‘blockers’ in her confected conflict between nature and development.

In her speech today, Rachel Reeves once again scapegoated bats for delays in development. The Prime Minister and Chancellor have repeated this exhausted refrain enough times over the last few weeks to make ‘chiroptera’ an early contender for OED word of the year. But can No. 10 and No. 11 really believe what they are saying?

Protected sites and species rules do require developers to avoid and minimise harm and, where damage happens, to compensate for a development’s impacts on nature.