Coronavirus probably isn’t helping but I’ve found myself preoccupied by two particularly poignant warnings about climate change – both in the new LETI (London Energy Transformation Initiative) climate emergency design guide.

Firstly, writing in the foreword, Pooran Desai (chief executive of oneplanet.com and co-founder of Bioregional) asserts that unless we change course drastically, leading scientists believe that the world will only be able to support 0.5 to 1 billion people, within the lifetime of people alive today. Secondly, (from the UN Global Status Report 2017), that over the next 40 years the world is expected to build 230,000sq m of new construction – adding the equivalent of Paris to the planet every single week.

I should have known about both, but I didn’t. I did know that world population is approaching eight billion but I had no idea that the rise from one billion to the current figure of 7.8 billion has happened in just over 200 years (world population hit one billion in 1800) or that as recently as 1960, (only 60 years ago) it was still only three billion.

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