In every family, there is one person who can settle all arguments, as authoritative as Google. At Christmas, when a heated discussion is getting bogged down, they will look up from a newspaper, from watching TV or making the dinner, and settle the matter with one piece of common sense.

Watching David Attenborough address the UN-convened climate change summit on Monday felt a little like that. Few people are as welcome or trusted in our living rooms as the British naturalist, following a lifetime of ground-breaking, wondrous nature documentaries.

When we talk of climate change, it’s mostly bickering about whose fault it is, and how much is manmade. Attenborough cut through all that. “The greatest threat to humanity for thousands of years” is how he described it, capable of “the extinction of much of the natural world”.

The challenge for Irish farming is to present our position without sounding defensive. That can be a difficult exercise, although Joe Healy did a pretty good job of it on Primetime on Tuesday evening. It’s clear that our land bank holds much of the key to mitigating and adapting to our changed climate. While advocating for farming to flourish in those places, like Ireland, where the carbon footprint is lowest, we must at the same time take every possible step to minimise emissions and maximise carbon capture on our farms.

Eccentric

Contrast this with the increasingly eccentric offerings from sections of the vegan movement. PETA has written to the town of Wool, in Dorset in England asking to change their name to “Vegan wool” They got short shrift, with the town council pointing out the name derives from the Norse word for water.

PETA also wants to get rid of phrases such as “killing two birds with one stone” and “taking the bull by the horns”, replacing them with “taking the flower by the thorns” and “feeding two birds with one scone” (made with a soy drink, rather than buttermilk, I’m assuming). “Bringing home the bacon” would become “bringing home the bagel”.

It could be dismissed as laughable, but there is a creeping campaign to denote the farming of animals as unacceptable. Engaging with extreme vegan viewpoints only gives them credibility, but the highest welfare standards must always pertain in livestock farming.