When pushed, they also agree that some loss of countryside is unavoidable: suburbanisation is happening because more people are, at heart, suburbanites.

ECONOMIST: Housing

And although obliging a few hundred coal plants to scrub themselves clean may well be useful, many other green issues such as biodiversity, resource depletion, smog and suburbanisation result from countless free actions by firms or individuals, and so are less open to correction from the state.

ECONOMIST: Green plus red-tape makes brown