Eco-loons on the march

Only this morning I got an email from an evidently very bright 17-year-old at a certain nameless public school. ‘I’m so sick of having to study “environmental ethics” for hours on end, being split into “study groups”, and making lovely colourful mind-maps for presentations; the syllabus is infantile, and I feel increasingly infantilised by my relativist, happy-clappy and downright incompetent teachers,’ he wrote. Amen, brother.

I’m not sure who I feel sorrier for: the poor kids being force-fed this drivel; or the poor parents who probably imagined that for the price of £30,000 a year they’d bought the right not to have their beloved ones indoctrinated with all this specious eco-propaganda. But there’s no escape, unfortunately, from the ‘Clamour of the Times’. More unfortunately still, this clamour is going to have truly dangerous consequences for us all.

One of these consequences — the growth of eco-terrorism — was explored in this week’s Storyville: If a Tree Falls — a Story of the Earth Liberation Front (BBC4, Monday).