Changing values (original version)

If our government refuses to listen to us, if any evidence we provide as to the harmfulness of its policies is summarily dismissed as 'hearsay', if the research is required to reveal hazards is starved of funds, if vital information on pollution and other dangers is kept secret under the Official Secrets Act and if public inquiries are little more than PR exercises, is there anything we can do to change government policy? Are there any grounds for hope?

The answer is a guarded 'Yes' - although we should never underestimate the likely resistance to change. The 1985 Social Attitudes Survey reveals that a significant proportion of the population is already beginning to regard a number of environmental problems as 'very serious' - (see Table 1). Public hostility to nuclear power is also growing daily, and unless Britain is transformed into a police state, it is difficult to see how our government can actually implement its present highly ambitious nuclear programme.

In the meantime, the environmental movement in Britain has never been more active. Friends of the Earth are producing extremely high-quality reports on key environmental issues, obtaining wider press coverage than ever before. Greenpeace, also, has shown the effectiveness of non violent direct action which, as Nick Gallie points out, is one of the best means available for attracting the public's attention, arousing its sympathy and stimulating debate on the need to safeguard our environment against the depredations of industry. [54]

Many other groups (such as Ecoropa, the Soil Association, the Henry Doubleday Research Association, the Farm and Food Society and the Conservation Society), together with countless local groups which have been set up to oppose irresponsible developments in their own areas, are also doing invaluable work.

The trade unions are increasingly taking up the green banner. Thus, the National Union of Seamen (NUS), the train drivers' union ASLEF, and the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) have combined to ban the movement of nuclear waste to be dumped at sea and have even persuaded the international Transport Workers' Federation to ban ocean-dumping worldwide. [55] The National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers has instructed its members to refuse to handle 2,4,5-T and, as Chris Kaufman points out, [56] many other unions now support a total ban on the herbicide. Meanwhile, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT) has instructed its members to refuse to work with any form of asbestos. [57]

Britain's Green Party is now becoming better known and could eventually play an important role in the political life of Britain. Its activities attract considerable public attention at election time, publicising both the ecological policies that it supports and the ecological value system which they reflect. This is of vital importance, for if real change is to be achieved, we must face up to the need for a radical shift in our values. There is, as Jonathan Porritt notes, a limit to what can be gained by acting on specific issues:

"The superficial sound and fury of many environmental battles conceals the fact that the real struggle is between ... different value systems, a deeper confrontation which is only marginally influenced by the outcome of one specific issue. It has therefore been deeply frustrating to have to re-fight the same battle in different places at different times, as if nothing has been learnt from previous clashes." [58]

Underlying the destruction we are witnessing today lies a value system which is wedded to the belief

"that human needs can only be met through permanent expansion of the process of production and consumption - regardless of the damage done to the planet, to the rights of future generations, to the human spirit and to the living standards of all those who end up as the losers in this global, all-encompassing human race." [59]

Indeed, in terms of the value-system of industrialism (and, in particular, in terms of modern economic theory) the environmental damage we are inflicting on the planet is of no consequence whatsoever. Today's economists are trained to maximise 'benefits' and minimise 'costs'. By definition, a 'cost' must reflect a deprivation of some sort - more precisely, the deprivation of some 'benefit'.

Yet Nature's benefits - the fresh, clean water that flows in unpolluted streams and rivers, the rain that naturally irrigates our crops, a stable and predictable climate, and the fertility of the soils upon which our agricultural system depends - are all taken for granted by economists and ascribed no economic value of any sort.

As a result, the loss of Nature's benefits (which only accrue through the proper functioning of the ecosystem) is not considered a cost. It does not appear to have occurred to economists that if our activities interfere too radically with the workings of Nature, then Nature might no longer be capable of providing the benefits we now take for granted and upon which our very survival depends.

So long as we adhere to such a cock-eyed view of the world, we will continue to believe that if a project is 'economic' - that is, if it maximises the short-term return on the resources it uses - it must be 'good' for the country regardless of the environmental damage it causes. The environmental movement must reveal such thinking for the nonsense it clearly is.

We must convince the public that economic growth - the "permanent expansion of the process of production and consumption" - cannot solve the basic problems that confront us today: material goods cannot compensate for the breakdown of communities or the destruction of the environment; institutions, staffed by anonymous civil servants wearing (to use John McKnight's phrase) "the mask of care", cannot replace a mother or, in a cohesive community, even a neighbour; and technology (however sophisticated) cannot solve the problems of alienation, alcoholism or drug abuse simply because these are not technological problems.

The crisis we are facing today is not caused by a lack of material goods, nor yet by a lack of technology: it is caused by the social, biological and ecological disruption we have inflicted on the world in our relentless pursuit of material 'progress'. It can only be solved by re-establishing the social, biological and ecological systems we have disrupted. Only then can we hope to achieve a sustainable, just and self-reliant society.

The Chilean economist Manfred Von Neef notes how even Lord Keynes warned that "the importance of economic problems should not be overestimated with the result that matters of higher and more permanent significance are sacrificed to its supposed necessities." [60] The contributors to this book show how completely we have ignored that warning. We cannot afford to do so any longer.

A fundamental change in the attitude of our political leaders is required - one which will lead to a veritable reversal of present policies. At stake is whether or not we and our children are to inhabit the industrial wasteland our politicians are busily creating for us, in what can still be "a green and pleasant land".

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Notes