Jay Elwes
How unusual that the “environment” minister Michael Gove doesn’t oversee climate change policy. Once upon a time there was a Department for Energy and Climate Change, but several Whitehall re-orderings later, the climate brief landed in the department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which, you will notice, doesn’t have the words “climate change” in its title. That’s led to a situation in which “environment” is the preserve of one department, and “climate” that of another, as if Britain’s environment were somehow insulated from the rest of the world. Which, of course, it isn’t.
And so Michael Gove’s ban on the international ivory trade is as welcome as his theorising on the importance of “natural capital” is diverting. The UK ban on microbeads is, of course, important—the pollution of our seas by minuscule pieces of plastic is an appalling act of degradation. The ban follows similar legislation in the US and Canada.