By the time you read this the General Election - when most, if not all, parties said they would cut the national deficit - will be finished.

What intrigues me is how we got into this situation in the first place, because I am old enough to remember that early mechanism of borrowing: 'hire purchase'.

I am also old enough to remember driving home from work listening to the monthly BBC report on the 'balance of payments'. Forty years ago it was always in deficit. I wonder why the BBC stopped broadcasting this information: was it because the Government stopped issuing it?

Of course the deficit of 40 years ago accumulated to become today’s deficit - and the inheritance of our children and their children. If ever there was a warning about borrowing it is the nick name we gave to Hire Purchase: 'the never never'; because 'Never Never Land' was a fictional place, in one on-line definition, 'an unreal place'.

But isn’t it the case that it is not possible for all countries to have a balance of payments surplus because if one country is in surplus then another must be in deficit? The danger it seems to me is who 'owns' and can call in our debt: who we are indebted to. Scary!

Anyway, the aspiration to live within our means also relates to the idea of sustainability - another word we occasionally heard during the General Election. Sustainability requires us to maintain and sometimes enhance the capital which we have inherited. The point I wish to make is that capitalism is not the antithesis of environmentalism, rather environmentalism is about how we manage nature’s capital. The problem is how to define and quantify nature’s capital for decision making by the new government and businesses.

For example, it has recently been proposed that lynx should be 're-introduced' into parts of Britain, including perhaps our area. Of course lynx were once part of Lakeland habitats but so were wolf, wild boar and brown bear, all of which could be reintroduced if we wished.

Alternatively, if we want to recreate past ecosystems we should chop down every sycamore tree as they were only imported 400 years ago or we could go back to the ecology just before the Romans got here - get rid of pheasants, Chestnut and Beech trees and those pesky foreigners, the rabbits.

And if we go back 5,000 years there would be no sheep, wheat or barley: they are foreign imports, by farmers, from Europe and, ultimately, from the area of modern Turkey and Iraq.

On the other hand there is an urgent need to invest in the capital of habitats. Take, for example, the arguments, reported in the Gazette some years ago, about whether to replace the Rusland Beeches with 'native' lime trees. Some claimed beech trees are not native to our area, others pointed out beech woods had only appeared in southern England just before the Romans invaded and that they (Beech trees) would have spread to Cumbria by now had the 'fragmentation of habitats', caused primarily by farming and urban sprawl, not prevented that.

This example makes two points. Firstly, the natural world/ecosystems change through time. Secondly, scientists have alerted us to the fact that trees will not be able to adjust to climate change by 'moving north' to equivalent conditions they now enjoy because habitats are too fragmented.

In short, we need to invest in the capital of connectivity of habitats and biodiversity, rather than in the re-introduction of lynx.

Whenever I walk in Levens Park I marvel at the idea that the people who conceived of and planted the avenue of trees knew that they would never see what we see and enjoy. They had a vision and invested in the future.

That surely is capitalism. Let us be environmental capitalists.