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Good morning. Some years ago I worked in Manchester and I had an office which looked out towards the Pennines. There they were everyday: green, grey, shrouded in mist or white with snow. They reminded me of the psalm: ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help’. They told me that beyond the computer screen there was another world, a wilder world, just a few miles away – and not always benign – think today of the devastating floods in South Yorkshire. On a calm day, though, the beauty of nature seems beyond price. Which is why it is perhaps counter -intuitive that a group of economists from Queensland have recently come up with a figure to represent what the great outdoor spaces mean for our mental and physical health. Its nearly five trillion pounds. The point of this calculation was to show that nature has a real value. The Queensland economists believe that until the cost of nature is calculated we will go on exploiting it. Giving nature a monetary value could press us to work harder on climate control. When I read about this, the romantic in me felt rather sad. I don’t want the value of those hills to be calculated in monetary terms. I want them to stay innocent of the way we normally value things. Run out into the country and you’ll be restored to your real self. But then I wondered whether it is just that sense of being alienated from our real selves which is the problem. We haven’t only exploited our environment, we have, I think, harmed our souls by making a split between our mental and physical worlds. This is reflected in a built environment which often excludes nature. Our heads are divided from our heart, our thoughts from our feelings, my real self from the person toiling at the screen. Putting a price on nature could be a way of breaking down this division. It would make rational sense of medical advice to get out more, to exercise and be refreshed by contact with greenness. And it could work the other way round. Supposing we started thinking of buildings, cars, factories and hospitals in terms of their beauty and soulfulness. Supposing we saw civic architecture not as utility but as spirituality. Think of those office blocks with creepers softening their edges, or of coating buildings with algae which would eat city pollution. In medieval times scholars spoke of the two books by which God communicates with the world; the book of scripture and the book of nature. Fewer people know the scriptures these days, but it does not seem unreasonable to me that God might continue to communicate through nature. Through the fires and floods warning us of the perils of climate change, to the hills on our horizon from whence cometh our help.