Wednesday 17 March 2010

Greens under attack

Environmentalists have come under some unpleasant attacks in the press following some research that shows that they are meaner than others and more likely to break important social rules.

Liars, cheats, thieves: the terrible truth about the mean greens: The right-on brigade has been unmasked. About time too, says Iain Hollingshead

He writes "Do Green Products Make Us Better People?, a paper in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science, argues that those who wear what the authors call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. Faced with various moral choices – whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage – the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper's question, then, is: No. Greens are mean"

and

"We've always suspected they were bullies. In the Seventies British film Nuts in May, Mike Leigh hilariously skewered the sort of couple whose supposed love of the environment ... is really just a device to stop everyone else having fun."

Perhaps this is a bit over the top. But one thing I have noticed is that green campaigners often seem to have little interest in upholding rights and benefits for people and society, but instead over emphasise the need to protect some animal or plant that could live just as well somewhere else. Sometimes it seems that stopping a social benefit is more imortant than protecting nature. There can then be an anti-social lack of balance in their work.

I do wonder whether the need to be alternative and dictatorial towards others in this way is perhaps due to a repressed desire for recognition and acceptance in the community.

1 comment:

John said...

One of my favourite activities is to accost a Greenie when I see them collecting in the street. I give them the following thought experiment.

Imagine I tie you up to a chair. You cannot escape and both your hands are restrained. Under the right is a button attached to a cable leading to a machine which will kill the last female whale. Under the left is the same device but going to your worst enemy. I have a loaded .45 calibre gun aimed at your head. Choose one victim and press the button or I will kill you. Nearly all - and I mean that - choose to kill their enemy because we can't have the last female whale die and humans are too numerous, blah, blah, blah. Fine, I say, but now we swap your worst enemy for your mother, lover or child. Instant mental breakdown.

Sad. So sad.

‘Induction over the history of science suggests that the best theories we have today will prove more or less untrue at the latest by tomorrow afternoon.’ Fodor, J. ‘Why Pigs don’t have wings,’ London Review of Books, 18th Oct 2007