George Monbiot addressed what he sees as a growing attempt to reduce political decisions of all kinds to a narrow, financial cost-benefit analysis.

He discussed the threat that he thinks this poses to democracy, considering such issues as privatisation and commodification, payments for ecosystem services, biodiversity offsets and claims by some government departments to have identified ‘the true value’ of nature and of time.

He also explored the worrying ways by which core human values get shifted in the framing of political discourse.