We shouldn't be all that surprised that the Head of Natural England thinks that we should, of course, be using natural methods to be dealing with problems such as climate change, coastal erosion and all the rest:
Protecting and working with nature makes economic sense and can be done now. Continuing to rely on undeveloped technologies as a safety net for climate change would be a disaster.
And as the statement stands itself I'm not sure I would argue all that much. But what is inherent in there is given that the necessary or required technologies are as yet undeveloped, therefore we must use only natural methods. Which is of course nonsense.
If we don't have tried and trusted technologies to do something that we wish to do then we'd better get on with developing them and then testing them so that we can trust them. This is after all how civilisation has advanced, someone spots a problem or a desire and then creates some technology to solve or satisfy it.
As an example that Ms. Phillips would probably agree with, we do not yet have a properly developed and economic method of turning the abundant sunlight we get into the electricty that we desire. Which is exactly why there are tens of thousands of people around the world working on developing, testing and thus allowing us to trust a system that would do just that. Solar PV at cheaper than coal, the thing we are promised is now only a few short years away.
So with any other such problem. If we've not developed the required technology as yet, better get on and do so really, rather than just throw up our hands and say that nature must take over.
