Des King: Taking green to the extreme doesn’t represent genuine progress

Contrary to what I’d always naively supposed, a dog is neither for life nor for Christmas. The indulgence of a canine companion is the latest transgression to have attracted the attention of the climate change Gestapo. Apparently, feeding Archie, my four-year-old Schnauzer, incurs an annual carbon footprint equivalent to driving a 4×4. As dispatching him to the hereafter – presumably in a conflagration of flambéed plastic bags – would extend the life of the planet by a whole nanosecond, clearly a no-brainer then.

Other household pets have fallen under similar scrutiny. In reviewing your preferences, you may soon have to choose between fuelling the cat or the VW Golf; a pair of hamsters or that plasma TV; a goldfish or a couple of mobile phones. Cows, of course, are already way beyond the pale. Never mind that they make the countryside a green and pleasant land.

Never mind the milk they so biddably dispense; the ballast they add to two veg; or their contribution to the leather industry – it’s the wrong sort of wind power they generate.

What’s so distressing about the mostly laudable attempts of the environmental lobby to ensure a more sustainable future are the fundamentalist fellow-travellers that have subverted the cause. Their credentials may purport to be greener than green, but give them their head and what a joyless dog’s dinner of a world they’d have in store for us.

Classifying anything that isn’t perceived as being of benefit to the carbon register as inherently wasteful throws up consequences too unpalatable to countenance. We’re not just looking at food spoiled for the saving of some shrinkwrap here. Take the principle to its logical conclusion and you might as well write off anyone not productively employed.

Decimating the animal kingdom to avert climate change is a hypothetical act of self-righteous rectitude waiting to happen. In the present day, there’s a tastier goose to be cooked: sackfuls of post-Christmas cheer that’ll be lined up kerbside for collection in a couple of weeks’ time.

All that ‘waste’ will be the result of your best endeavours, of course, you wicked, wicked planet destroyers. Never mind the glow of excitement you’ve helped to kindle in a small child’s eyes. Never mind the gloss you’ve given to an otherwise pedestrian pair of socks. Never mind the lustre you’ve added to what would otherwise have been just another Friday.

It’s a goose you say boo to at your peril; being labelled as a denialist in the process at the very least, What I can’t get my head around, however, is, whether it be belching bullocks, trips to Tobago or bags of bananas, who in their right mind seriously believes that it’s possible, practical or God knows pleasurable to pass their days without leaving some sort of a footprint in their wake?

Surely, what we should be thinking about, not least at this festive season, is taking the steps to make do and mend, rather than not taking any steps at all.

Des King is a freelance journalist specialising in packaging. He can be contacted by email at packagingnews.editorial@haymarket.com

Popular Articles