“In the Nineties and early Noughties, paying through the nose to live out this fantasy was a luxury many felt they could afford. Organic - to adapt Robin Williams on cocaine - was God’s way of telling us we were earning too much money.” (James Delingpole, The Sunday Telegraph, May 25)

As long-predicted on GWP, the environment - more correctly, perhaps, environmentalism - is on the way out. The signs of organic decay are everywhere, even in bien pensant newspapers like The Observer. And the reaction to a decade of being lectured to about ‘global warming’, ‘organic’ food, set-aside, and pretty birdies can be surprisingly angry, as I recently witnessed at an agricultural conference where the speaker from the RSPB was attacked with quite extraordinary venom.

Today, the papers are full of it, from Guardianista, Catherine Bennett, twittering in The Observer [‘Green politics, like all fashions, has proved sadly transient’, The Observer, May 25] to libertarian, James Delingpole, blasting off in The Sunday Telegraph [‘Credit crunch means organic food is toast’, The Sunday Telegraph, May 25].

Ms Bennett is scathing about her liberal readers and their Anya Hindmarch ‘I'm Not a Plastic Bag’ fashionet(h)ics:

“The credit crunch is already known to have had an impact on bag fever. And one which is likely to be exaggerated when the bag in question is, like the INAPB, so plainly last year’s model ... But Anya prices might also have suffered from widespread consumer disillusion. Some ethical shoppers are minded, apparently, to return bags which have conspicuously failed, even after a whole year of regular use, to save the world.”

Mr. Delingpole is even more trenchant about “the organic craze”:

“In times of rising food prices (partly the result of eco-fanatics obsessing about organic and biofuels, and rejecting genuinely productive technologies like GM) and falling incomes, the last thing a hard-pressed family wants to spend money on is the warm glow of ecological righteousness. All it wants is a full stomach, and the more cheaply-filled that stomach the happier it will be. Organic will be off the menu for some time to come.”

And then there is Senior Royal Disapproval (poor Old Charlie), “Sir!”:

“The first blow was struck this month by the Duke of Edinburgh who - with a fearless disregard for his elder son’s Christmas card list - said in an interview: ‘It is not an absolute certainty that [organic farming] is as useful as it sounds.’”

Rowing Back

Ms Bennett further reminds us that our politicians are likewise rowing back from the green algae:

“So Brown won’t make himself more unpopular by reducing airline emissions or introducing personal carbon allowances. Neither he nor Cameron nor Clegg will ... unite behind an effective carbon policy which, appearing identically in every manifesto like the nasty nougat in every box of chocolates, may put the interests of future generations before contemporary self-pity. And when Cameron, versatile friend of both glacier and motorist, finally prevails, his strategy for ‘green growth’ has as much chance of holding back the rising seas as did the Anya Hindmarch bag.”

Brava! “Versatile friend of both glacier and motorist” -  wonderful stuff on ‘Our Dave’, Catherine. Meanwhile, the reasons for this change in fashion are superbly encapsulated in another piece today by the ever-excellent Nick Cohen [‘People loathe Labour’s elitists, not toffs’, The Observer, May 25]:

“Labour would do better to realise that millions of working- and middle-class people who can’t see the subtle social differences between Ed Balls’s private school and George Osborne’s are lying awake and wondering if the ground is shifting from under them.

They are sweating about debt, unemployment, repossession, pensions and inflation. Old Etonians are the least of their problems.”

As are ‘organic’ elitism, ‘global warming’ hot air, and the pretty birdies. They are all going to be set-aside, not just the bags. I’m afraid, Catherine, the alligators have it [see: ‘On Alligators And A Green Bubble’, May 24].

“Je ne Magritte rien!”

Time to return that Anya Hindmarch bag, then - “It’s so early Noughties, Keira!”

[See also: ‘Eco-farming ditched as food prices soar’, The Observer, May 25, p.24]