Despite the fairly obvious political positioning involved, the recent speech by Environment Secretary Michael Gove offered a compelling and wide-ranging survey of all the things being done and all the things that might be done by government to arrest a decline in nature and get to grips with climate change.  The ‘might’ is important as following through on the commitments made in an aptly sweltering greenhouse in Kew Gardens will depend on new Prime Minister Boris Johnson picking up the baton and making the Environment Bill the centre-piece of the next Queen’s Speech.

If we don our optimism goggles and accept Gove’s assurance that Boris Johnson is a dyed-in-the-wool deep green Tory, then the next few months will see an avalanche of legislation, regulation and initiatives on air pollution, water quality, species loss, land management, packaging and tree planting.  All of it, were it to happen, is good stuff - driven by an increasingly alarming set of statistics about how nature-depleted the UK has become and how urgent the need for action if we’re going to limit damaging climate impacts.