I have faith in George Monbiot’s sincerity, whoever’s paying him

The other day George Monbiot of the Guardian had me round for the weekend at his country seat in Machynlleth, Wales. You’ll never guess what we had for dinner after a fine afternoon’s sport shooting the red kite which infest that region like a verminous plague. First, we had leatherback turtle soup; then a delicious tranche of foie gras à la Nigella; then a superb escalope of cruel-reared veal in a wild okapi reduction on a bed of endangered tropical hardwood; then finally, the pièce de résistance, candied polar bear cub paws marinaded in Château d’Yquem. Afterwards, the world’s third most famous Old Stoic (after Perry Worsthorne and his seducer the late George Melly) proposed a toast: ‘To the eco-bollocks that makes me my fortune!’

No, no, really, I jest. Granted, the world of eco-propaganda can be awfully lucrative, what with all the money sloshing around from advocacy groups like Greenpeace and from big oil companies like Shell trying to ‘greenwash’ their image by giving handouts to the Guardian environment pages.