Conifers or carparks? A truly tough choice to make…

A thought-piece on the 2025 Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

This is a reminder. A reminder that if you have any view that stands in opposition to unlimited progress, growth and development, you are, in the eyes of our smug, detached, concrete-worshiping government, a NIMBY. 

All so-called NIMBYs may as well lie down in a line and wait for the bulldozers to roll over them for all that legislators view them as actual residents of this country (who in many cases voted for the very MPs that disparage them in the halls of Westminster) with entitlement to a view on how the future development of said country is planned out and executed.

NIMBY of course stands for Not In My Back Yard, a term that has the power to reduce genuine concern about the effects of development on one’s community and its surrounding environment, to laughable evocations of rich elderly grandmothers shaking their wrinkled fists from the windows of their detached countryside mansions at the first whiff of a wind turbine or hospital. This effect was exemplified when co-leader of the Greens, Adrian Ramsay, was laughed at on the benches of Parliament and called “NIMBY in Chief” for offering legitimate opposition to the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill which is becoming increasingly unpopular with nature lovers across the country. 

His concerns were, predictably, not taken on board.

The mistake Ramsay made was not owning the title or doubling down. He could have crowned himself Lord Luddite and flooded the Commons with a plague of bats and newts (sworn enemies of the establishment). He did not do this. It was a mistake.

NIMBY is a term that has been very effectively weaponised by the establishment as a panacea-like slap-down of any argument that might hinder the machinations of the wrecking ball of progress. The modern NIMBY needs a rebrand, as far more potent concerns about society, environment and development snowball into a greater sentiment that edges towards a form of neo-luddism. This feeling stretches beyond just our own “backyards” and to the whole country.

Many folks I speak to don’t want to see the destruction of ancient woodland, chalk streams or peat marshes anywhere. I propose that in the face of being labelled an NIMBY, the environmentalist should adopt the term NOMBI instead, Not On My Bloody Island. The flagrant butchery of our dwindling wild places should not be acceptable anywhere on our shores.

To be clear, myself and others who oppose the bill do not oppose home building and the setting up of new communities (note the word communities, which insinuates a functioning social system within the bounds of one’s living environment). I for one would like to be able to afford my own house, but not at the expense of more unchecked environmental destruction. I do not wish for myself and my future neighbours to live in sterile coffins punctuated by the occasional post-it-note-sized square of grass and sad-looking tree.

What popular environmental sentiment does oppose is the fact that the planning bill allows developers to run rampant with habitat that is already steeply on the decline and cannot be replaced by simply throwing money into the rewilding of another area. In exchange for the bill, we (the people) receive cheap, characterless new-build estates and soul-sucking shopping centres. The soul that yearns for a more back-to-nature existence will feel the rising doubt that this is truly possible to escape such a thing in our developing world. Buy a cheap plot of remote land one year, find a new town on your doorstep two years later. Properties and villages with any amount of remaining green space will eventually skyrocket in price (some already have, just look at the Cotswolds), leaving the majority of young buyers in suburban purgatory for the majority of their lives.

Our politicians appear to hold the view that humans are infinitely interchangeable economic units that can be uprooted and crammed into oppressive and endlessly expanding urban spaces, they also believe the same applies for our ecosystems. What does it matter if one large, ancient oak falls here? We can plant six pines somewhere else, think of the carbon-offsetting, think of the growth!

Herein lies the problem. Our political establishment doesn’t understand nature as a whole and they don’t see themselves as part of it. I doubt many of them could identify more than two species of tree. As a result, everything green is reduced to its core economic value. We hear of “low quality” green belt, what does this mean exactly? According to Labour, it means “grey and ugly areas of the green belt”, an intriguing foray into aesthetics for a government that takes little heed of natural beauty otherwise. 

Some of the lowest quality scrubland I have encountered is prime for foraging, sporting fantastic biodiversity and a large range of wild flowers. It serves as an unmanaged haven for our native pollinators and the ecosystems they support. To the political class however, everything must be reduced to numbers, metrics and thus valued economically. Environmental issues are metricised beyond belief, with a great myopic focus on carbon emissions without holistically considering the environment as an intertwined web of forces and organisms.

Even if a developer planted ten softwood pines to soak up more carbon per square foot than an ancient oak, we have already lost something that is irreplaceable. The oak alone will be home to thousands of insects, birds and bats that support an ecosystem. A single crab apple tree for example can support 90 species of insects. Under the soil, mycelial networks that have lain undisturbed for centuries also help the soil to thrive. All of these are lost when ancient woodland is destroyed and cannot be replaced when a new “manufactured” woodland is created (often without care as to which species are planted there in favour of fast growing and easily manageable species.

Rewilding efforts are a separate story to this as they often work on depleted land that is already in need of rejuvenation). Often, such replacement woodlands are little more than glorified dog-parks, with manicured footpaths, trimmed hedgerows and signs all about the place; they have been taken, moulded into the ecological version of fast-food (pasteurised, unchallenging, easy to digest without thought) and regurgitated to the public. They are no longer wild spaces.

In Paul Kingsnorth’s book, Real England: The Battle Against the Bland, Paul raises the question of hyper-capitalism and over-development. To ensure that the arbitrary GDP line goes up, all life must be assimilated into a technocratic hellscape, all barriers must be broken down, all cultural identity erased, all land and people must be fed into an industrial wood-chipper to form a homogenous paste so they can consume the same products that make the GDP line go up more and more.

This means the propagation of soulless clone-towns, those seas of bland and poorly constructed new-builds that spread like a blight across the landscape, and of course the awful gargantuan shopping centres that follow suit. Suddenly a charming small village finds itself in the middle of a new town, the nature gone, the sense of community lost. The woodlands and ecosystems will never return. This is fine in the eyes of our political class, the line keeps going up, why wouldn’t you want a Frankie and Benny’s 10 minutes from your house? You need to keep spending your salary so we can collect more tax! 

Both sides of the political spectrum have sold voters out in favour of the new State Religion, which appears to be consumerism, with technocracy emerging as its demiurge. I extend this ideology to something I call Carparkification: the reduction of an entire nation to a homogenous grey slate without beauty or soul because “growth” demands it. It is the concrete shadow of enshitification, which is usually a concept confined to the digital realm, but is slowly and surely physically manifesting itself to terrorise material reality. 

What is the long-term plan, regarding what feels like inevitable total Carparkification, to house our ever expanding population? Do we just keep spreading into the green belt until there is none left? This lack-of-plan reveals a part-truth, that human dignity and quality of life do not truly matter to those in power, as long as they can keep increasing their wealth and control. The only thing that will hamper this trajectory is if conditions become so oppressive that workers become less efficient and are hampered in their ability to consume products and pay tax.

Amongst problems like land banking, rampant landlordism and investment funds buying up houses to rent back to families for all eternity, it is no wonder that new homes need to be built. Our politicians are too corrupt or too lazy to address these other two issues. Our dead high streets of course offer no alternative sources of accommodation and neither do brown-field sites, as those would require more thoughtful planning and cleanup before they can be rendered liveable.

This disregard was expected under the sclerotic 14 year rule of the Conservatives, however with a Labour comeback on the horizon, a feeling of hope was in the air (please note that I dislike both parties equally). Perhaps this new regime could fulfill their pledge to restore Britain to its green and pleasant glory, after all, their own manifesto stated that “Britain is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world”. This of course, was a swindle to win the environmental vote. Starmertron 2000 swiftly met with the likes of Blackrock, an extremely large and predatory investment fund, presumably signed a deal in blood (if he has any) and the rest is history.

We saw a fire-sale of the land under the new farm inheritance tax, which will allow investment funds to start scooping up swathes of the countryside at discount price once farmer families are forced to sell up due to economic pressures. We risk entering a new age of feudal serfdom, where most of the land beneath our feet is rented and cannot be owned by the individual, family or community. Meanwhile, those investment funds will also pave over the farms (a beacon of biodiversity versus a newbuild estate) and build houses that we can rent from them so the GDP line and shareholdings can increase. They may even perform some tokenistic environmentalism and bulldoze a forest to put some solar panels in its place, think of the carbon credits!

The new Planning and Infrastructure Bill is just an extension of this rot. No doubt that investment funds and property developers have a vested interest in lobbying the legislation through so they can eviscerate the remaining old and wild parts of the land. It is in their best interest to do so. Service to the techno-industrial state requires that people are rootless. Interacting with nature reminds us of our roots and of a way of life that could be less about consumption and more about living in closer harmony with something greater and more fulfilling. 

The new-build, in its soulessness, only appeals to most first-time buyers out of economic necessity, rather than any real desire to live in one. One thinks of the Architecture scene from Jorodowsky’s The Holy Mountain, where Lut the Industrialist plans a development built of convenient and comfortable coffins for residents of a new city. The new-build represents spiritual death, the sterile familial sepulchre filled with material goods; the gleaming white Audi on the drive, the plastic lawn, the 70 inch plasma TV on the wall. Outside there is tarmac, no buzzing of insects, no bird-song, save gulls and pigeons that scavenge from bins. There is no space for real nature in new-build sites because they are designed to be cheap. Any “weeds” that push their way through the astro-turf lawns will be hit with a killing blow of glyphosate spray in due time.

Sadiq Kahn unveils a new range of affordable housing destined for greenbelt just outside of the M25

May I remind you, if you oppose any of what I have detailed above, you are a NIMBY and your opinion is invalid. 

Please remain silent as your country is divvied up and sold to the highest bidder.

Please lie down and align your head with the tread of the oncoming bulldozer to ensure a swift departure. 

The most interesting thing about this is that outside of neo-conservative/neo-liberal fighting in mainstream politics, it seems all manner of normal people who would usually sit on opposite ends of the left-wing, right-wing spectrum feel the exact same way about this issue. We are being sold out and voters are sick of it. So why do our politicians not listen? 

Who could resist such a tasty deal?

The Case for Nature

Recently the heads of 30-something nature charities came out with an open letter to Westminster and articulated the facts far better than I ever could in this rather opinionated essay. The new planning bill is a licence to kill nature. 

In response, our wonderful MPs have smirked their way through opposition to the matter, blaming newt tunnels, bat houses and more as cartoonish examples of legislation that have hampered our Lord and God: Growth. They have given no thought to the facts presented, the unpopularity of the bill or the impact it will have on the environment and the wellbeing of people and communities. Their own voters do not want this.

On the subject of wellbeing (not that it matters to our ruling class unless it affects productivity of workers or the gradient of the GDP line), it is now common knowledge that time spent in nature has been correlated directly with an increase in wellbeing. Forest Bathing (or as our ancestors called it, daily existence) has been shown to have a reductive effect on stress. Vitamin D exposure, fresh air, exercise and spending time away from screens is all fantastic for our constitution. So why make nature out to be the demonic blocker of progress? Presumably because interaction with nature can’t be taxed and commodified, and as I pointed out in my short news piece on wild camping, the government has no incentive to protect it. Instead, Starmertron 2000 elected to solve the youth mental health crisis by showing Netflix propaganda reels to depressed teenagers in schools. Sit those poor children around a campfire and watch their outlook on life change for the better!

I see a far more positive future if we motivate more children to get foraging, bushcrafting, rock climbing etc. and understanding the land they live in. Not only would the mental health benefits be vast, but we would also create a new generation of Stewards for the Land, who may go on to care for it better than our current establishment does.

I need not go into depth about the other cases for nature. The necessity of pollination to produce our food and maintain the global food web does not need to be stated. Anyone who refutes the necessity of maintaining insect populations is either a complete moron or a wilful participant in a death-cult.

Regardless of these arguments as to the use of nature, it should also be said that nature has an intrinsic right to exist, it was, it is and it will be a part of us. It is a force that truly defies total description or categorisation. It should be completely acceptable to allow something to exist for the sake of itself rather than having to define what we can extract and exploit from it.

Where does this leave us?

The facts are simple. People did not vote for this, people voted for greater environmental protection, people are not being listened to. The full displeasure of the public must be voiced.

Write to your MP and remind them that they work for us. The bill as it stands should not be passed.

There is an alarming political trend emerging in which a party gains power, then does whatever it likes for the next four years without fear of reproach, no matter the public opposition to their policy. Writing to MPs is sometimes a futile pressure release valve, a constituent can dump their frustrations into a letter and send it away. The action is complete and it feels like something has been accomplished, even if the MP in question does not respond or action the ask. 

I have written to my MP about the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, but I do not see this as the end of my part in opposing this bill and the future destruction of our countryside. The bill is a symptom of a much wider sickness that threatens to eat through our country like a gangrenous sore. Our governments cannot be trusted with stewardship of the land, or to truly represent their voters, who may wish for a new path to a future that doesn’t involve a further descent into a consumption-driven technocracy. 

I believe that individuals, charities and other private organisations need to focus and unite their efforts to preserve the land. We need to become strong and proud NOMBIs, or maybe even NOMFIs (Not On My F*ckn Island). Rewilding, guerilla gardening, conservation and more can all be achieved without government backing, if folks can be proactive and organised about it.

Welcoming nature into our sterile streets would be an enormous benefit to all. Imagine every city built as a vertical garden, the walkways paved with myceliated wood chips, communal fruit-trees and vegetable patches in public parks. A similar model could be replicated on a small scale in towns (of course green belt would still have to be preserved), but in this partially utopian vision, we allow a refuge for plants and animals quite literally within our walls, enabling them to thrive even in urban environments. Housing developers need to be forced into this, and we need the minds of our greatest architects and ecologists to drive the design of these places.

This kind of planning would need a forward-thinking, visionary and almost revolutionary government and therefore will not be achieved while Labour and the Tories fight in perpetuity to be the worst side of the same battered and rusty coin.

Education is truly our biggest hurdle. Gaining youth involvement is crucial, making nature fun and immersive for the next generation will hopefully set us up for a greener future. Teaching them about coexisting with native plants and wildlife will help a great deal, both for their holistic health and also that of the land. An army of Land Stewards awaits, only if we can inspire them to take real action to care for our world. Meanwhile, we must also keep pressure on the political class to tell them that something must change, before we transform our island into an unrecognisable monstrosity.

The NIMBY is dead, long live the NOMBI.