I too like to have the windows open as much as possible – but on a cold windy wet winter’s day I’ll be glad to be able to ‘batten down the hatches’. We also have abundant supplies of firewood surrounding us. We’ll be installing a small wood burning stove for winter hot water and ‘for the soul’. But I’m keen to burn as little wood as possible. OK, burning wood ‘warms you twice’ but I really do have better things to do than felling, chopping, storing and burning any more wood than I have to. And if I think that now – then I know I’ll think it when I’m 70! We’ll be managing our woodlands for food products, wildlife and timber. Any surplus firewood will, I’m sure, be useful to someone in the nearby village. I’d rather sell or barter this wood than send it up my own chimney simply because I didn’t make an effort to build carefully.

Our home will have considerably more embodied energy than Simon’s – but I’m hopeful it’ll last 300 years and be occupied by several generations. Thus sharing the initial ‘costs’.

I agree that people shouldn’t be forced into expensive building codes. But I don’t agree that rural housing shouldn’t be built to as high an insulation standard as possible. Governments should subsidise the insulation thus making it affordable to all. We’ll all benefit then as there will be more wood to go round. Wasting energy is after all – wasting energy!

This brings up the basic problem with building codes: they are “one size fits all” solutions. Here on a rural farm on an island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, we are located within the Capital Regional District, and are subject to the same building regulations as the capital city of BC, a city of some 100,000 people!

So I think Monbiot and Rob each have it half-right: the real patter we need to capture here is that such things must be locally appropriate, rather than imposed from afar.