We do hope that Tony Juniper has the right end of this stick
There are two logical possibilities here, two opinions that Tony Juniper might be holding:
Tories making Britain greener than before Industrial Revolution, says Natural England boss
Tony Juniper,
More specifically:
The high water mark for the UK’s biodiversity and natural landscapes was before the Industrial Revolution, when forests covered much of the UK and air pollution was low.
And, well,
The plans could see areas that have been ignored for decades turned into new protected areas, reversing the decline of biodiversity and habitats for the first time since the Industrial Revolution.
“Before” is a long period of time. The high point of - to take one example here - Britain’s forests was about 5,000 BC. After the glacial period and the subsequent tree colonisation and before the arrival of the Neolithic farmers with their copper axes. Given the peering into the past being done here that’s a rough estimate of course.
One possible interpretation of what Juniper is saying is that it was the Industrial Revolution which damaged Britain’s environment and so we must clean it up. The other possible interpretation is that it was not having an Industrial Revolution which damaged Britain’s habitat and it was the arrival of of that enabled us to clean it up.
Given earlier interactions between ourselves and Mr. Juniper on the subject of economics and the environment we’re not hopeful that he’s got this the right way around. It’s precisely and exactly the move from wood to coal, from extensive low input to high input industrial farming, from human and animal labour to artificial energy sources, from reliance on the bounties of nature to manufactured inputs, that has enabled, even allowed, the clean up of the British environment.
The Industrial Revolution is not something to be cleaned up after, it is that process of cleaning up itself.
We really do hope that the boss of Natural England has this the right way around. But we just can’t bring ourselves to believe that Tony Juniper does know of the environmental Kuznets Curve, let alone that he grasps the implications of it. Which is a bit of a problem with having him doing that job on behalf of the rest of us really.