Climate Change: We need more trees, not less

Farmers held a hate-march on Parliament today, complete with MAGA hats, gun-nut signs, and gendered insults. While supposedly about a grab-bag of issues - including, weirdly, mental health - it was clear that the protest was about one thing, and one thing only: climate change. And specifically, forestry "destroying" rural communities. They want the latter to stop, with land-use restrictions to prevent sales for forestry.

Think about that for a moment. If at any other time a Labour government proposed preventing farmers selling their land to the highest bidder or putting it to the most profitable use, these rednecks would be screaming "communism!" Now they're demanding it, to protect their unsustainable, unprofitable way of life.

But the blunt fact is that these conversions happen because they are a more profitable use for the land than existing uses. Now that carbon costs are internalised in the non-agricultural economy, the market has shifted, and these farmers are on the short end. And the best thing that can happen, both economically and for emissions, is for them to be planted out.

Cows emit greenhouse gases. Trees absorb them. Any tree, anywhere, is better than a cow. So the faster this transition in rural land use happens, the better, for us, and for the planet. It is that simple.