Urgent need to reevaluate our priorities - A new damning report on nature

In a month’s time, the result of the referendum on the Eighth Amendment will be known. Irrespective of how we vote, great energy will have been expended. Social division — our secularism-versus-religion culture war — will have been sharpened in a dangerous, polarising way.

Battle lines will settle into the immovability of the two steps forward, one step backward trench warfare that epitomised the western front during World War I. The process will show democracy at its best and at its worst. It will show social campaigning at its most passionate and most cynical. The issues are fundamental, but they are not the only issues that can be so described — even if the Eighth is fought over, by both sides, with a unique and one-eyed passion.