In his sermon in the Sunday Star-Times of 18 March, the Reverend Rod Oram tells us that to deal with climate change “we have to devise vast new intellectual frameworks full of new concepts and tools. Those in turn require a lot of goodwill, effort and compromise – in the best sense of the word – by all players.”

Where does one start with this? Perhaps by asking how many senses of the word “compromise” there are. What is the worst sense? What is the, or even a, middling sense? Does the Rev Rod make sense?

Then he lists “five fundamental, strategic imperatives” to deal with the problem. First, he writes, “we need more trees. They absorb and store carbon dioxide, the biggest greenhouse gas.” Except it isn’t. Water vapour is.

I fear that if we need vast new intellectual frameworks, we shall have to look elsewhere.