ENVIRONMENTALISM HAS smoothly transitioned from a countercultural force, at odds with capitalism and mainstream politics, to a ubiquitous shibboleth, on the lips of every CEO, politician and academic. As with so many modern orthodoxies, it is not so much that ecologists won the debate, as avoided ever having it.
Vital and important questions went unasked and unaddressed. For all the whining about the BBC “both-siding” issues such as climate change, nothing has better served the cause of trendy environmentalism than the succession of useful idiots plonked onto our screens to be subjected to a ritual bear-baiting.
In this, as so much else, conservatives have been easily outmanoeuvred and outdistanced by opponents who frame the terms of debate with skilled ease and ensure that the war is won before battle is joined.
The most inspired move was
