Failure of green politics

Green parties are strong in Germany, Italy and the Benelux states, but in France they have split themselves into irrelevance.

1. The environmental politics uses a theory of catastrophes that are making the world fall apart. This approach is wrong and it encourages the planet's decline even as it seeks to prevent it. With all the other pleas for righteousness out there, environmental catastrophism is becoming easy to ignore. Catastrophism encourages only short-term, narrow action and, by giving the impression that only a few bad guys are to blame, allows the rest of us to go on with our piecemeal destruction.

   The issues of rain forests, the ozone hole and the waste of energy, and many other stories have passed their catastrophic prime but remain important. But the environmentalists have shot the wad. The emergency stories have been done, the anxiety expended, the hour passed. Environmental groups have thrived on catastrophism. Yet the war is being lost. Slowly, relentlessly, the world grows more damaged. Environmentalists urge corporations to be more cautious and farsighted. Maybe they should take their own advice.

1. Four percent of Dutch members of either Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace. In Britain over four million belong to an environment or countryside organization.

1. Structural failure of opposition groups
2. National political disintegration

1. Violence by fanatical environmentalists

1. Reduced images of environmental protection
2. Neglect of environmental consequences of government policies
3. Insufficient environmental legislation

1. Untested efficacy of environmental policy
2. Unrealistic environmentalism
3. Unethical practices of environmentalists
4. Restrictive environmental policies
5. Lack of political will
6. Irresponsible politics
7. Intrusive animal-rights campaigners
8. Compromise as a betrayal of principles

1. Engaging in green party politics

1. Ineffectiveness
2. Failure