Pale Green

The greenest government ever has provided yet another eloquent demonstration of how much it cares about all that husky-hugging nonsense. Over the next few years we can expect increasingly severe and unpredictable effects, including floods, droughts, heatwaves, storms and, if the likes of Cuadrilla continue to get their way, earthquakes, explosions and mass water poisonings. None of these little inconveniences is likely to interfere with the Osborne economic miracle or the profits of the Bullingdon Club's oily little chums; so the Chancellor has refused to adopt any environmental targets beyond 2020, when it will all be someone else's problem.

The response of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has also been more or less what one would expect: it has cut by eighty-four per cent the team of officials charged with working out how to cope with climate change. As usual, the slashing and burning is purely a matter of restructuring: a Defra spokesbeing droned out the standard communiqué that the cuts have taken place because Defra has overfulfilled its three-year plan and embedded the team's expertise in every aspect of its being. Hence, another and larger team will be necessary to dig Defra out of whatever hole it has got itself into by 2017; fortunately, this will be after the next general election and therefore quite possibly the fault of the next Labour administration.