[diggers350] R4 'Analysis': Are environmentalists bad for the planet?

Wed Jan 27 10:12:20 GMT 2010

Yes I heard that programme and was suffficiently pissed off to write  
this letter to them:

Dear Radio 4

Your programme  "Analysis" ought to be renamed "Polemic". The mere  
title of this evening's programme "Environmentalists? Bad for the  
Planet?" betrayed its bias. The issues  were covered competently  
enough — yes many environmentalists view global warming as a symptom  
of capitalist overdevelopment — but in a faux-naif tone that  
suggested that something new was being uncovered, when of course it's  
all old hat and greens have debating these matters ad infinitum for  
the last 50 years, if not the last 500.

What really infuriated me was the concluding sentence where Justin  
Rowlatt suggested that this was a "hidden agenda". Hidden? There are  
mountains of books and articles and films  putting forward the  green  
anticapitalist  philosophy and agenda which Rowlatt  made a pretence  
of exposing. The only sense in which it is hidden is that it hardly  
ever gets fairly represented on the BBC and other mainstream media.

Either you should get rid of your "Ethical Man", or else employ a few  
more so we get a balanced selection. And while we are on the subject  
of ethics, could we please have somebody with a radical green outlook  
on the Moral Maze panel from time to time? I suggest the Scots  
philosopher Alastair McIntosh, mail at AlastairMcIntosh.com.

Yours sincerely

Simon Fairlie
On 27 Jan 2010, at 01:23, Paul Mobbs wrote:

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> Hi all,
>
> Have a listen to this.
>
> I've only had a cursory listen, and I might go back over it again  
> if I have
> time to put "finger to keyboard" on its content. It appears to me  
> that it
> proceeds from the notion that the ONLY major problem we have in the  
> world is
> climate change -- and thus omits reference to the limits to human  
> ecology in
> general, and the failure of the the "growth economy" to internalise  
> this
> issue.
>
> Certainly I think "The Ethical Man" needs to decide whether he's into
> 'ethics/justice', 'green consumerism' or serious environmentalism  
> -- perhaps
> you might like to contact the Beeb on that too!
>
> P.
>
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00q3cnl/ 
> Analysis_Are_environmentalists_bad_for_the_planet/
>
> Analysis - Are environmentalists bad for the planet?
>
> The BBC's 'Ethical Man' Justin Rowlatt asks if the environmental  
> movement is
> bad for the planet. He explores the philosophical roots of a way of  
> thinking
> that developed decades before global warming was an issue. He also  
> examines
> some of the ideological baggage that environmentalists have brought  
> to the
> climate change debate, from anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism to a
> suspicion about technology and a preference for natural solutions.  
> Could these
> extraneous aspects of green politics be undermining the  
> environmental cause,
> and are some environmentalists being distracted from the urgent  
> task of
> stopping global warming by a more radical agenda for social change?
>
> Justin speaks to green capitalists including the Conservative MP  
> John Gummer,
> who thinks that technology and reinvented markets hold the answer  
> to tackling
> global warming. He talks to Greenpeace chairman John Sauven about  
> green
> attitudes to so-called techno fixes, including nuclear power, and  
> discusses
> green conversion tactics such as so-called identity campaigning  
> with Tom
> Crompton from the conservation charity WWF and Solitaire Townsend,  
> co-founder
> of the green public relations company Futerra.
>
> The programme also hears from the leading green thinkers Jonathon  
> Porritt and
> Professor Mike Hulme, founding director of the Tyndall Centre for  
> Climate
> Change Research, and from the theologian and United Nations advisor  
> on climate
> change and world religions Martin Palmer. Martin sees parallels  
> between some
> parts of the green movement and millenarian cults who have claimed  
> that 'the
> end of the world is nigh'. Justin also interviews Andrew Simms from  
> the New
> Economics Foundation, who believes we can only tackle climate  
> change if we are
> weaned off our addiction to consumption and economic growth.
>
> Broadcast on:
>     BBC Radio 4, 8:30pm Monday 25th January 2010
>
> (available until next Monday)
>
>
> - --
> "We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government,
> nor are we for this party nor against the other but we are
> for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom,
> that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness,
> righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with
> God, and with one another, that these things may abound."
> (Edward Burroughs, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')
>
> Paul's book, "Energy Beyond Oil", is out now!
> For details see http://www.fraw.org.uk/ebo/
>
> Read my message board, "Ecolonomics", at:
> http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/ecolonomics/
>
> Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations
> 3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN, England
> tel./fax (+44/0)1295 261864
> email - mobbsey at gn.apc.org
> website - http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/index.shtml
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