Read Hutton's piece here
Hutton rightly identifies problems with the prince of wales and 'small conservation' greens, but he makes the mistake of including everyone else working to tackle climate change as just another wing of the 'the green movement'. it's clear by his use of this phrase that he doesn't know who or what he's talking about. He is hopelessly out of date. in the last 5 years a huge coalition movement has come together to demand global justice, only focussing on climate change for the pragmatic reason that it is the largest and most immediate threat to humans. The term 'environmentalists' hardly even scratches the surface.
He's also right about the film 'the age of stupid' that is a film that should have been released years ago and is now as out of date as Hutton. That kind of scare motivating of waving sea level graphs and expecting people to take action is in the past. Those that haven't been scared into action by now are never going to listen to this. This is mostly because at the same time people were told 'but all we have to do is change a few lightbulbs, do our recycling and build a few wind turbines' and it just didn't add up. Instinctively they knew that either it wasn't that bad or, if it was, this wasn't a solution - either way they were being lied to and, quite reasonably, preferred to continue with what they were doing.
The lack of action on climate change is because we haven't actually asked for it. I'm convinced that if we're straight with people about the threat, the big changes needed and the massive opportunities to make a better world at the same time we'll see a huge change, and even if we don't it'll be forced on us soon enough by the end of cheap energy.
The real activity is now to offer everyone a reasonably smooth transtion to completely new society that has to come anyway, while a few people do what they can to prepare for it to happen as painlessly as possible when we are ineviatably forced to.
on a similar note monbiot on plastic bags
