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What do sunshine, seaweed and soil have in common? The answer is that none of them need to be shipped through the Strait of Hormuz.
And that might just be the silver lining to the economic maelstrom that has spiralled out of the Middle East and onto our forecourts and supermarket shelves. It has exposed our desperate dependence on oil and gas, not just to fuel our cars but to feed ourselves, too, thanks to our reliance on synthetic fertilisers.
It’s an addiction thrown into stark relief when the supply chain gets squeezed, as it did this spring. But it’s also one that is fuelling the climate emergency. For decades, environmentalists have been crying out for a shift to greener technologies as a way of breaking this addiction. But they’ve struggled to make headway, not least because, despite ample evidence to the contrary, climate change still isn’t seen in most corridors of power, let alone most households, as an immediate threat – of the sort you need to address before the next election, or the next big family purchase.
