Mr Brownlee was talking about increasing the amount of housing simply by ensuring that a few of the adverse impacts on the environment were dealt with and then just going ahead. This fails to recognise the severity of the nature crisis, and I would recommend to Mr Brownlee and others to take a look at the major report which the British Treasury released earlier this month. It's a landmark report, The Economics of Biodiversity, by Cambridge University economist Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta. It's a 600-page review report which needs to be as influential as Nicholas Stern's 2006 report on the economics of climate change, because in that report Professor Dasgupta presents a whole new economic framework which is grounded in ecology and which provides a basis for humans to live sustainably. 