Nature Is A Language–Can't You Read?

Clive Aslet applauds a radical blueprint for rescuing the British countryside

DIETER HELM, an Oxford economist, has taken a good, hard look at the state of our natural environment and the result could be one of the most important books of the decade. Imagine, he writes, what the countryside could look like in 2050. A place of hay meadows and birdsong, of butterflies and clear, biodiverse rivers, with towns and cities that could also have been greened, the air purer, health better.

If we simply carry on as we’re doing, the consequences will be dire. We face a world devoid of many of the creatures and experiences we love. We can’t, perhaps, do much on a global scale, but we can ensure that these islands aren’t hopelessly impoverished. Salvation lies not in the trendy, flawed romanticism of the rewilding movement, nor in organic agriculture, but in better economics.

We need to price natural capital, protect public goods and pursue the ‘polluter pays’ principle. Natural capital is everything in the great interconnected web of Nature, much of which (air and water quality, plant diversity, number of birds and the time spent watching them) is ‘every bit as measurable as the time saved by HS2 or Crossrail’. It needs to be priced into the cost of industrial activity and development.