It’s technology, not hair shirt deprivation, that will allow us to have our environmental cake and eat it

Who doesn’t want to save the world? Who doesn’t want to pass on a cleaner planet to our children and grandchildren? Who doesn’t want Sir David Attenborough to applaud them, as the veteran presenter recently hailed the crowds at plastic-free Glastonbury?

The answer is: nobody. This is the conundrum that today’s ever more activist climate campaigners must face. They have won. Like Michael Gove cringing before Greta Thunberg and banning plastic coffee twizzlers, we all feel guilty. We all agree: let’s not screw up the environment. But it’s how we do it that will determine whether we succeed or fail.

Yesterday’s news from Iceland (the supermarket, not the country) is salutary. It had pledged to ditch…