Use torches instead of expanding street lighting to rural areas, urges government climate adviser

The suggestion was one among many criticisms by Climate Change Committee chair Lord Deben of local authority and government’s combined failures to tackle the environmental crisis, writes Harry Cockburn

Artificial lighting has been blamed for Europe’s ‘insect apocalypse' (Getty)

Britain’s local councils must re-evaluate their responsibilities and try to see everything they do through a lens of dealing with the worsening climate crisis, one of the government’s leading environment advisers has said.

For example, local authorities should not approve relatively large housing developments for smaller villages, or put street lights into rural areas where people could use torches, said Lord Deben, the chairman of the Climate Change Committee, which is an independent advisory body.

Light pollution in rural areas has been named as a key reason for the sharp decline in insects across Europe in recent decades, with fears the “insect apocalypse” could result in a catastrophic collapse of ecosystems across the natural world.