In normal times, an environmentalist’s reflections on the last year would be pretty positive. I do not want to get carried away.

The scale of the environmental challenges we face is vast and the government, as governments do, spends much of its time making things worse. But 2018 was a much better year in the UK than, say, 2015, when David Cameron aimed to “get rid of the green crap”, or 2016-17, when Theresa May’s climate change sceptic adviser, Nick Timothy (at that time sporting a Rasputin beard) was at the height of his influence. Read more