Owen Paterson has laid out his claim to lead a new sort of environmentalism he likes to call ‘ecomodernsim’. Writing in the Telegraph and speaking at an event hosted by his think tank UK2020 this morning, Paterson described ecomodermism as the antidote to the alarmist scaremongering of the big green lobby:

“The key idea behind Ecomodernism is that the more technology human beings adopt, the more they can decouple from dependence on the natural environment and live lives that are prosperous but green. The great Green Blob that dominates the public and NGO sector, whose reactionary tendencies I referred to when I left office as Environment Secretary last year, still refuses to recognise this.”

Paterson, who has long positioned himself as the green blob’s arch-nemesis, was dropped as environment secretary last year following his handling of the summer floods and the badger cull. He has been on the warpath to return himself to the environmental front line ever since. Will ecomodernism catch on?