How Green Was My Christmas Tree?

It's never enough, is it? No matter what you do, no matter how many concessions you make, it's never enough for the bloody middle class environmentalists. Taker bio-fuel, for instance - a renewable fuel source which pollutes less, great, eh? Got to earn you brownie points for using it in your care, surely? Apparently not. You see, if we all switched to bio-fuel, then vast tracts of agricultural land would go over to producing it, rather than feeding people. Very bad, according to the environmentalists. Forget about making your car greener - just stop using it altogether, they say. There really is no pleasing them, is there? They steadfastly refuse to allow you to win a single round. Nothing you do, it turns out, really helps the environment. Not even something as simple as using an artificial Christmas tree rather than cutting down real ones. Apparently, whilst it isn't OK to deforest the Amazon basin, it is OK to cut down tens of thousands of fir trees in the UK every year, just so that someone can decorate their living room for a couple of weeks. You see, that artificial tree you thought was so green, well it's imported from somewhere like China, and its production and transport to the UK creates all sorts of pollution. Not only that, but when you eventually dispose of it (after twenty generations of fir tree have been slaughtered), it isn't biodegradable. You environmentally irresponsible bastard!

You see, what these middle class environmentalists actually want isn't to save the planet, so much as return us to a non-industrial society. In truth, they want to retreat to some rural idyll where us working class types know our place. We give up our consumer goods, our cars, the lot, and tug our forelocks at those nice middle class people as they speed past us in their (very expensive) electric cars. That's the rub, environmentally friendly consumer goods will be so expensive that only the well-off will be able to afford them. OK, I exaggerate. However, the fact remains that they do want us to make fundamental changes to our lifestyles which are simply impractical for the less well-off. The middle class environmentalists might well be able to work from home and install energy-saving devices in their houses, but the working classes frequently have no choice but to travel to work. Poor and expensive public transport means they have no choice but to drive their own cars. Low wages mean they have no choice but to keep their older, less economic cars on the road rather than buying nice new energy efficient ones. It's the same throughout their lives: they can't afford to replace all their old polluting fridges and washing machines with new energy efficient ones.

The fact is that what we need to achieve the aim of an environmentally friendlier population is a fundamental redistribution of wealth - and the middle class environmentalists aren't going to back that: it sounds dangerously like socialism! I'm afraid that, as it stands, this middle class environmentalism is nothing more than the old class war waged under different colours. Some final thoughts: those bicycles you greenies so like to pedal - you do realise that they're mostly produced by low paid labour in polluting factories in places like India and China? Oh, and the environmental costs of transporting them here is far greater than the costs of bringing those artificial Christmas trees you so hate here once a year. In fact, the trees get pretty much free passage - the bikes and energy efficient fridges, washing machines, freezers and the like pay the costs. And why not be honest about why you hate those artificial trees so much - they're nasty and vulgar and mainly bought by poor people who can't afford real Christmas trees. Not surprisingly, the real trees tend to be the preserve of the middle classes.