The other day (OK, it was fourteen years ago) I visited a university in Mexico in a town called something like Unfortunateaccidentinascrabblefactory. I called in at the library to find a marked absence of books and journals. “Books and journals, fawgh!” said the librarian. “They’re too expensive! We do as much as we can online.” In those days, Mexico’s telephone system was a basket case – so the country sidestepped the normal route of what we might call ‘progress’ and embraced mobile telephony and the internet.
Returning to today (and from lunch) I found the following invitation in my inbox, from the author Austin Williams.
- I would like to invite you to the launch of The Enemies of Progress by Austin Williams on Wednesday 21st May at Waterstones/Economist bookshop, Clare Market, LSE.
The invitation came with assorted puffs for the book. A much-needed diagnosis of the bleak anti-human pathology described as environmentalism quoth Dominic Lawson, columnist for The Independent and brother of voluptuous sexpot celebrity chefette Nigella. A very persuasive contribution by a thoughtful subversive, opines Frank Furedi, author of Politics of Fear and Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone. Austin Williams has a gift for lobbing well-directed grenades adds Philippe Legrain, author of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them.
And a review in Ecos magazine says that the book has the gall to argue for the right to leave lights on in empty rooms, wallow in deep baths, drive cars, get fat and unfit, and fly further, to which Mr Williams’ response is guilty as charged.
Now, I’ve met and corresponded with Austin Williams and can safely say that he’s no more a dribblingly insane lunatic than I am (don’t answer that, Grant). But I haven’t had the chance to read the book, either.
However, I’d guess that Williams is calling for a more moderate form of environmentalism, one that cleaves more to commonsense than that one imagines is espoused by the grow-your-own-birkenstocks knit-your-own-muesli brigade, to whom Chelsea Tractors are not the work of the Devil (because, hey, Christianity has given all such pagan spirits a bad name, right?) rather than expressions of the jackboot of the imperialist running-dog lackeys of the capitalist military-industrial complex (how was that? Did that sound OK? Yes, I thought so, too.)
I should put it on record that I think that history will show that Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, will have been the greatest stateman of this or any other age; that I sometimes read the Daily Telegraph; and that I’d sooner listen to my tapes of kittens being impaled on red-hot skewers than vote for the Green Party, because if you scratch their paintwork, you’ll see that they’re really the Red Party.
And yet I am seriously worried by Williams’ cheerful admission of profligacy. OK, I haven’t read the book, but he admits, candidly, to advocating wallowing in deep baths, driving a lot, and flying further.
I don’t know about you, but I have trouble with that attitude. It is self-evident that one should adopt sensible management of one’s own resources (baths, flying and motoring) because these things cost money. What’s more, they cost disproportionately more money than they did a few short years ago, and sensible stewardship of resources is, if anything, a Tory creed, and was so probably long before the Greens adopted it. It’s what St Margaret of Thatcher called ‘sound money’.
But it goes deeper than that. To me, saving water, recycling, composting, growing veg, keeping chickens and so on is not about saving money, or even saving the planet. It’s an aesthetic – a matter of good taste. It just seems like the right thing to do. I wouldn’t advocate trashing peoples’ 4×4’s to score political points, to strike a pose, or at all. I just think that the people driving them have no taste (unless they’re hauling a trailer across a field in Norfolk, of course). They are chavs, with more money than sense, driven by selfishness and conspicuous consumption. The same people who now find themselves up to their eyes in unrepayable mortgages while the rest of us bask on the Costa Del Schadenfreude.
So if Mr Williams advocates burning more fuel and taking deeper baths to score a kind of political point in reverse, he’s as silly as an Essex girl covered in spray-tan and dancing round her handbag. Of course, he isn’t. Unless -
His book is called The Enemies of Progress from which one can infer that he thinks that ‘progress’ is universally a good thing, and that people who do not agree with that are to be reviled, if not defeated – enemies. Well, that’s a point of view, I guess. But I, for one, do not subscribe to the whiggish view of history that the term ‘progress’ implies. There is no ‘progress’; there is no ‘manifest destiny’. I think most historians (and many scientists) would share my view.
So if I am an enemy of progress, so be it. And if I am, so was that university librarian in Mexico, who used technology to stick two fingers up at the conventional, linear nature of progress; to think of innovative ways to get round the chronic poverty and lack of resources that afflicts most people in the world – people who can’t rejoice in leaving lights on in empty rooms, wallow in deep baths, drive cars, get fat and unfit, or fly further. Because they have no electricity, no rooms, no water, no cars, no food and no money to fly or even get to the airport – and no choice but to suffer such deficiencies.
The greatest luxury in the world is not electricity, nor a roof over one’s head, nor clean water, nor food—but choice. We say that access to clean water and suitable health care, education and a bed to sleep in under a roof should be regarded as basic human rights. That is as it should be. But we say nothing about choice. That’s because choice is not a right, but a privilege.
If you are lucky enough to have it, use it wisely, my friend: use it well.
I have some sympathy with Mr Williams, because being I think it’s too easy to slip into a ‘one size fits all’ view of being green.
It’s very easy to give up something and save the planet, if you don’t like it much anyway. I proudly tell people I’ve only flown once on business in the last 15 years, and haven’t flown on holiday for getting on for 20 years. However, I then have to admit I really don’t like flying – and spending 17 years working for an airline means you have all too good a grasp of how much luck and a prayer is sometimes involved in air safety.
I’ve not heard of Mr Williams, but he seems to operate along the same lines as Jeremy Clarkson – and I have to admit to a sneaking admiration. At least people like them seem to enjoy themselves. All too often eco-friendly people don’t seem to like anything – which makes it very easy to give everything up.
Lovely post, Henry.
Interestingly, I gather that Nigel Lawson, father of the aforementioned Dominic and Nigella, has just published a book arguing against Global Warming. I read about it on Susan Hill’s blog. She is very impatient with global warming evangelists, and I think also with me for the comment I made to her post (link in previous sentence) because “she wrote about the topic again, here”: http://blog.susan-hill.com/blog/_archives/2008/5/11/3685017.html, and she cetainly gets cross with me in the comment thread (which contains some other “global warming stuff” as well).
Be all that as it may, I do agree with your post, Henry. Whatever is or isn’t happening to our climate, whether global warming is an irrelevance against the context of the next ice age, or whatever, living in a socially responsible way is not difficult, it just shows good taste as you say. One does not have to be pious about it – I hope my comment does not read that way.
I do disagree with you on the spray-on tan being chav though. I rather like my fetching shade of pea green.
Here is that second Susan Hill link again.
A dentist recently told me that repeatedly putting one’s tongue to the side of the mouth and absent-mindingly biting down on it can, over time, distort the alignment of one’s teeth. Or is cuddly, foppish, bumbling Boris a mate of yours?
@Brian – I like Jeremy Clarkson, too, most of the time. I find his point of view refreshing, and he’s also one of the funniest writers around. There is also a range of views in the green movement, too. Some, such as Donnachadh McCarthy, author of Saving The Planet Without Costing The Earth, can come across as rather grim and puritanical. One of the eco-friendly measures he suggests is not to have any children (I don’t believe Mr McCarthy has any). I lean more towards Dick Strawbridge, author of It’s Not Easy Being Green, who views eco-friendliness more as an aesthetic, a series of engineering challenges and problems to be solved, than a proselytizing religion.
@Maxine: I am still amazed to learn that intelligent, informed people still exist who think that climate-change is a con.
Henry, great post. I too derive a deep satisfaction from recycling, composting, growing food, switching off the lights and so forth, and it’s not because it saves money or the planet. But I don’t know it aesthetics or good taste are the right concepts here. I don’t know how best to define the feeling of well-being I receive when I do these things. For me, I think it is more about keeping in closer contact with the world rather than living one step removed, and never forgetting where our livelihood (in the natural sense) really comes from.
@Jenny – I take your point about feeling that one is in closer contact with the world, rather than at one step removed.
When I lived in London I had an allotment, from which I learned a number of lessons.
First, that we easily underestimate the sheer effort and time involved in bringing food to our table, and how many things can go wrong on the way.
Second, how proud I was when I succeeded.
Third, how important it was to get one’s children involved. This allotment was in Barkingside, north of the torrid jungles of Ilford and south of the sunlit uplands of Chigwell: on the fringes of Footballers’ Wives country where most of the natives wouldn’t get their hands dirty for fear of breaking their false nails or tarnishing their bling: my allotment site was one of the few in London with less than 100% occupancy, and the occupants were either the dig-for-victory generation (rapidly dying off); eco-interested middle-class families (us), or immigrants and asylum-seekers (meetings at the allotment were like the UN). Essex-bling children were usually convinced that fruit and veg, if they came across any such things at all, were spontaneously generated in plastic bags in Tesco. My children, however, got a real feel for the cycle of growth and decay, I’m pleased to say.
However, I think the feeling of well-being you get could be thought of as aesthetic. It certainly works that way for me. Seeing a well-tended veg plot, or a rain-barrel, or my chickens clucking round the garden, generates the same kind of satisfaction I get from seeing a well-tempered bookshelf, or hearing a particularly tasty Hammond-organ riff.
Very true, Henry.
Actually, growing my own food, rather counter-intuitively, ended up increasing my respect and gratefulness for supermarket produce and high-intensity farming: it really is an amazing thing. I worked in the garden for many hours, but the amount of actual food that came out couldn’t have fed a family for more than a fortnight.
Too right, Jenny. Farming is hard work, and as subject to economies of scale as much as anything else.
I’ve just taken delivery of this pair of 200-litre water butts.
The one on the right will collect rainwater from the house roof, mainly to top up the pond.
The one on the right will collect ‘grey water’ from the bath to water the garden when the other water butts (I have two more elsewhere) run dry.
Water use is a huge issue. I reckon that no new houses should be built without serious rainwater harvesting and grey-water use as standard. Believe it or not, average annual rainfall in the eastern counties of England compares with that of … Jerusalem.