Lifes Pressures Stop Us From Being Green (from Sunday Herald)

Hence hypocrisy, as Burchill would have it. It might gladden a green heart to see 4x4s forced off the roads because of fuel prices. It certainly wouldn't bother me. But is it equally pleasing to see old people freeze to death thanks to the same price mechanism?

Like it or not, the answer to that question is not, or not yet, "renewables". Hence Monbiot's reluctant embrace of nuclear. The actual alternative currently on offer is coal and the sop of (untried) carbon capture technology. The journalist has not found virtue suddenly in nuclear waste. He is simply choosing the lesser of two evils, no doubt with regret, in the battle to check CO2 emissions.

He is not the only one. Equally, contrary to Burchill's diatribe, the problem is no longer the province of the least prosperous. The better-off are also feeling the squeeze. For them, rising commodity prices and falling property values are no longer a mere inconvenience. Their behaviour may change, but not necessarily in the way greens might hope. In fact, with tens of millions around the world facing hard times, environmentalism could be facing one of its biggest setbacks in many a year.

The first truth is the most brutal: most people want energy supplies they can afford, and they don't much care where the fuel comes from. They listen to the arguments among those who would save the planet - the Monbiot betrayal is but one - and they grow impatient. They hear the arguments against oil. They hear the arguments against nuclear. They hear the arguments against coal. They hear the arguments against wind farms. They don't hear agreement.

Then they hear that gas prices are to rise by 35%. Then they note the price of a non-organic loaf, never mind the price of the responsible organic variety. Then, perhaps, they indulge in a hollow laugh when they hear lectures on the need to reduce consumption.

Environmentalists insult the public, perhaps unwittingly, when they welcome the end of "cheap" food and "cheap" fuel. Nothing feels cheap, apart from the insult. Most can't wait, cannot afford to wait, for the promised "new society".