Until quite recently, if it could be found at all in shops, the Ecologist magazine, which I edit, would invariably have been wedged somewhere between Motor Digest and Computer World at the far end of the lowest shelf in a magazine rack. That may have had something to do with the magazine itself. But not exclusively.
Survival of the planet, it goes without saying, is the ultimate priority. If only half the reports on the state of the world are true, then logically we should all be environmentalists. But we aren’t, and environmentalism remains a ‘niche’ concern. Newspapers, terrified of upsetting the corporations that subsidise them, are partly to blame, having too often relegated the worst examples of environmental destruction to three-line notes at the end of obscure pages. ‘Independent’ scientists who report falsely in the interests of further corporate perks and grants are also responsible.
But so too are environmentalists. During the last general election, a BBC camera crew accompanied a Green party campaign bus through London. As the bus stopped in front of a petrol station, activists poured out, screaming at startled customers that they were ‘killing the planet’. It was a frightening spectacle, and I would wager that the party, having berated the very people it was trying to enrol, failed to secure a single fresh vote on the back of it.
People don’t choose to wreak havoc on the environment. If a Londoner consumes more than an Indian, it’s because the system requires him to. The nature of the industrial economy is that luxuries like cars very quickly become necessities. If jobs are concentrated in urban centres, people have no choice but to commute morning and night. If basic foods are flown from one side of the world to the other, each mouthful is an ecological nightmare.
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