TV review: What the Green Movement Got Wrong

Published on Thursday 4 November 2010 10:48

What the Green Movement Got Wrong Channel 4

LET'S get one thing out of the way: climate change is a fact, and anyone who disagrees is a wilfully ignorant poltroon. Now we're agreed, let's dispense with the name-calling, move from the barricades, and examine the issue in a calm, productive fashion.

Let's approach more sensibly that which we believe to be bad for the planet, and question more rigorously that which we believe to be good. Because otherwise the environmental movement - and by association, everything - is screwed.

That, in a genetically modified nutshell, was the message in What the Green Movement Got Wrong, a provocative documentary in which prominent environmentalists challenged the certainties they once believed in.

They included Stewart Brand, one of the first and most influential Green proselytisers, and former anti-GM activist Mark Lynas, both of whom believe that the environmental movement has failed to tackle climate change effectively due to its unwillingness to alter its outdated prejudices.

"Ideology needs to be put aside for a while," said Brand, who spoke for all concerned when he urged environmentalists to accept that it's OK to say they were wrong about nuclear energy and GM and adapt their views accordingly. Not that softening one's beliefs is easy. "It was like coming out as a paedophile or something," said Lynas of his decision to rethink his stance.

But a radical rethink is necessary, they claimed, and I was inclined to agree. A rational argument based on scientific evidence and research is more persuasive than an intransigent shriek, whatever side of the fence you're on.

Though indisputably well-intentioned, the cry-wolf scaremongering of environmentalists has had the counterproductive effect of driving people away. If you demand that someone cancel their holidays in order to save the planet, then it's only natural for them to rebel and dismiss you as a crank. Instead, environmentalists need to replace their didacticism with open-minded humility. And I can't stress that didactically enough.

Add this to the debate: GM foods haven't been shown to have any ill-effects on consumers, and nuclear energy may not even be the bogeyman of a billion 1980s nightmares. A UN report has apparently shown that the effects on health from the Chernobyl disaster were greatly exaggerated. Contrary to widespread reports, no children in the area were born with defects. It's also impossible to prove whether anyone contracted cancer as a direct result of higher radiation. Then again, they may have done.

Lynas argued that nuclear technology has progressed safely and significantly, and that we should stop basing arguments on irrelevant Cold War anxieties.And what of the developing world, where nuclear energy and GM crops can help in the fight against poverty and disease? Should millions be damned simply because of loosely researched western arguments?

The programme offered more grievances than answers, but as far as Brand and co are concerned, environmentalists and the nations of the world must unite in agreement over the short-term benefits of geo-engineering, which in theory could cool the planet while scientists work on long-term strategies for renewable energies. Sounds reasonable to me. You?