I have noted several times recently in these columns that Mark Carney’s mandate letter to his cabinet a year ago does not identify the environment as one of the ­government’s seven priorities; indeed, the word ­‘environment’ is not even mentioned. Now we can begin to see the consequences of this very deliberate ­omission.

Let’s start with climate change, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized for some years as “the single biggest health threat facing ­humanity.” More recently, in May, the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health, convened by the European Regional Director for the WHO, called ­climate change “a catastrophic threat to human health, security and social stability” and called on the WHO “to formally declare climate change as a public health emergency of international concern.”

That puts climate change in the same threat ­category as COVID, Ebola, and other infectious ­disease ­outbreaks that the WHO has declared public health emergencies. In fact, I would argue that it is a greater threat than any of these; as Carney himself said back in 2019, in his role as the UN special envoy for........

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