At Samizdata Jonathan Pearce considers whether it is becoming cool to mock the Greens.
With respect I would suggest that this is a somewhat broad-brush approach. There is more to the so-called ‘green agenda’ than the discredited dogma of global warming.
Recycling, for instance, is not a bad idea, and has been practised in industry for centuries (some steelmaking processes depend upon scrap iron as an ingredient). Modern business is rightly reluctant to throw away anything from which another penny of profit (selling the leftovers) or cost savings (not leaving them over in the first place) can economically be wrung. Just because local ‘authorities’ always make a dog’s breakfast of arranging domestic recycling doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea either.
If, instead of being threatened by councils with £1000 fines for misunderstanding this week’s reorganisation of council recycling strategy (and thus putting something in the wrong bin), people were instead offered by industry a reasonable percentage of the profit from efficiently organised recycling, things would change radically overnight.
It is noteworthy that many people apparently incapable of the simplest arithmetic are more than able to calculate odds, study form, lay bets and fill in complicated pools coupons.
