The day after the feast of St Nicholas, I arrived in the Netherlands for a series of faith and science talks. My hosts had put me up in a marvellously trendy hotel. My bedroom featured an exercise machine and a bathtub (no artificial wall between bed and bath!); two televisions (one for the bed, one for the bath); and a coffee machine so complicated I had to look up the instructions on the internet. If only it had had a drawer to store my clothes, or a rack for my wet towel.

This proliferation of useless toys brought to mind last month’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences conference in the Vatican on science and sustainability. We heard the latest word on rising carbon dioxide levels from a series of Nobel laureates, and the need for immediate and strong government action to address this increasingly alarming problem.

The final day was centred on the hope that genetically modified foods might improve the health of poor nations while limiting greenhouse gases … a hope being suppressed by strong government action.