"If environmentalists
are to maintain their current momentum, they will need to switch from defensive
to offensive strategies. The battle needs to be moved on to new ground and
fought in new ways."
A Year in the Greenhouse
"If environmentalists
are to maintain their current momentum, they will need to switch from defensive
to offensive strategies. The battle needs to be moved on to new ground and
fought in new ways."
A Year in the Greenhouse
Other
A Year in the Greenhouse: An Environmental
Diary
John Elkington, Victor Gollancz, London, 1991.
1989 - the year of the Tiananmen Square and Timisoara massacres, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of many East European regimes - was a momentous year with far-reaching consequences. But it was also a watershed year for the international green movement. As events unfolded day-by day … the foundering of a Soviet nuclear submarine, the loss of 6 tonnes of toxic Lindane in the English Channel, the devastating oil slick from the Exxon Valdez … green issues dominated public attention and, increasingly, the political agenda. The book is a personal diary of an extraordinary period in our history.
The final paragraphs:
"Genetically, we are still - and always will be - territorial animals, programmed to behave in exactly the same ways we did through the bloodstained millennia of our 'civilised' history. The real question of the 1990s is whether we can begin to switch our allegiances from narrow definitions of ethnic or nationalistic interests to new, more global allegiances and alliances.
"Ironically, one of the most serious threats now is that the environmental movement will be throttled by its own green growth. If environmentalists are to maintain their current momentum, they will need to switch from defensive to offensive strategies. The battle needs to be moved on to new ground and fought in new ways.
"At no stage will environmentalists be able to pack up their bags, declare the war won and cycle home. Indeed, the challenge facing us grows day by day. For as far as one can foresee, we will be fighting a losing battle, in the sense that we will continue to lose habitats and species, with the result that we will find our own headroom reduced in this global habitat. But, however many battles we may lose, we have no future unless we genuinely believe that the war can be won."