“It is beginning to be seen as a gigantic con perpetrated against the very people who can least afford it” [Rod Liddle, The Spectator, August 6].

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves” [Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1897].

The Green backlash has started in Britain with a vengeance. It was inevitable, and the Green movement has largely itself to blame. The priggish and often patronising tone, the elitism, the abuse of science and risk theory, the peddling of trumped up ‘scares’, the desire to make everything cost more, and the authoritarian, anti-libertarian politics have all come together in these difficult economic times to cause folk to say that they have had enough. The media have also played a part in generating this reaction, especially the BBC, by adopting an often uncritical and over-indulgent attitude towards Green issues and Green political activists.

But people are now fed up to their waste bins with it all, and especially with being lectured to day-in-and-day-out.

Interestingly, the media are at last sensing the change of mood, and this is permitting the commentariat of all shades to start to turn on the Greens in one way or another, witness, for example, the following three articles, which have all appeared this week. I have selected these from a crowded field to represent a spectrum of critical comment: (a) a main-stream commentator and highly-respected journalist [Alice Thomson of The Times]; (b) a witty media rottweiler [Rod Liddle, formerly editor of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme]; and (c) a more idiosyncratic and unexpected commentator [Arthur Scargill, the miner’s leader who was instrumental in organising the Miners’ Strike that brought down Edward Heath’s Government in March, 1974. Scargill later became President of the National Union Of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982-2002. He is currently leader of the Socialist Labour Party].

1. (a) ‘Suddenly being green is not cool any more’ [Alice Thomson, The Times, August 7]:
   

“So the salad days are over; it’s the end of the greens. Where only a year ago the smart new eco-warriors were revered, wormeries and unbleached cashmere jeans are now seen as a middle-class indulgence.

But the problem for the green lobby isn’t that it has been overrun by ‘toffs’: it’s the chilly economic climate that has frozen the shoots of environmentalism. Espousing the green life, with its misshapen vegetables and non-disposable nappies, is increasingly being seen as a luxury by everyone....”

Yet, “... It’s not just the economic downturn that has harmed the green order. People have become wary of environmental causes that can turn out to do more harm than good. They don’t want wind turbines marching across Britain’s moors when nuclear power stations can do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They worry that washing and bleaching all those non-disposable nappies may be damaging the ozone layer, that the massive incentives for biofuels have distorted the world food market, and that green taxes are actually stealth taxes.”

2. (b)‘All these green taxes and rules are just witless nods to fashion’ [Rod Liddle, The Spectator, August 6]:
   

“And here are a few more environmental non sequiturs. Fining residents more than 100 quid for overfilling their wheelie bins by three inches is not merely fatuous and vindictive, it is also un-green. Clearly, the more waste removed in a single operation, the more environmentally economic it is. And if residents think they’ll be fined for slightly overfilling their bins, they may well resort to fly-tipping or  - and I accept that this is an attractive proposition, now I think about it  - ramming it down the throat of one of the local council’s bin snoopers. And while we’re on the subject, I still haven’t seen a study which shows the incontestable benefit of recycling glass and aluminium. I’m not saying that there isn’t one; merely that I have yet to see good hard figures which prove the case....”

“... The truth is, I suspect, that you can ‘prove’ almost any old rubbish to be environmentally sound or otherwise - the science is so inexact and so open to manipulation. This isn’t an excuse for doing nothing, but it is a good reason for suspecting the motives of any and all politicians when they use the word ‘green’. It is beginning to be seen as a gigantic con perpetrated against the very people who can least afford it.”

100. (c)‘Coal isn’t the climate enemy, Mr Monbiot. It’s the solution’ [an unusual voice from the past, Arthur Scargill (“For it is he!”), The Guardian,  August 8}:
     

“... We are facing an economic and political crisis on a scale similar to the Wall Street crash in 1929, the mass unemployment which affected the UK and Europe in the 1930s and the energy crisis in the early 70s.

We are facing a monumental energy crisis, yet we live on an island with more than 1,000 years of coal reserves from which we can provide all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that people need, without causing harm to the environment. Britain - despite its massive indigenous deep-mine coal reserves - has never had an integrated energy policy based on coal and renewables, and as a consequence we are now facing the worst energy crisis in our history.”

Just so. I have long predicted that this backlash would happen. The over-hyping of Green ‘scares’ has always always been a dangerous trope for their perpetrators, for they above all depend on the world not being frightened by real things, such as an economic collapse and a banking crisis.

Both have now, sadly, come to pass.

What is a tad worrying, however, is the possibility that the public will throw the baby out with the bath water, that is, genuine environmental concerns with the recyclable rubbish and nonsensical self-indulgent utopianism of the past two decades.

This would be a pity - but, paradoxically, it would be the Greens’ own fault.

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves” [Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1897].

Have wheelie bin of a weekend!