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Jaded greens

  • 14/06/1995

Green philosophy has suddenly come under strong criticism from those ruled by economic logic, so much so that in the first few months, books lambasting environmentalism and debunking their theories of doom are swaggering in the US market. Small is Beautiful: Blowing the Whistle on the Greens by Wilson Beckerman, Life on a Modern Planet by Richard North and Down to Earth by Matt Ridley belong to this genre of anti-environmentalism. All 3 authors have aor such changeling attitudes: that people, mainly in the West, are fed up of alarming prophecies that failed to arrive, and disillusionment has set in because of the scuttling of measures suggested at Rio by strong opposition from the industrialist lobbies. The authors try to prove that "sustainable development" is a concept without meat or meaning.

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