I have been observing a huge range of comments on this theme in the National Press and other promotion material.

George Monbiot’s plea in his article ‘Ethical shopping is a charade of the rich’ is to suggest that we cut back on what we buy in shops rather than just switch to ‘greener’ stuff. He states “ Uncomfortable as this is for the media and the advertisers, giving things up is an essential component of going green.”

Controversial position to hold methinks, but one I increasingly applaud. We do try and echo this sentiment in our way of life so it takes on board less travel, less luxury, less car, less energy use, less packaging, less food purchased from the other side of the planet.

This sounds a bit like preaching/laying down the law, but I feel it’s more to do with recognising that less does equal more! More connection with one’s immediate locality, more chance of a sustainable future, more recognition that going green is fun, smart and uplifting.

Another controversial media comment, and tying in with the ‘less is beautiful’ age is made by Ian Sample, a science correspondent, who states in a feature ‘The renewable delusion’, “ A fundamental credo of being green is that you cause minimal interference with the landscape. We should be farming less land, logging less forest, trawling fewer oceans, disturbing the landscape less and sparing land for nature. Renewables may be renewable, but they are not green.”

Yikes! Such comment will upset the average environmentalist. But are we beginning to notice that getting real about a sustainable future is much more challenging than just swapping ungreen stuff for green stuff.

In this context I was drawn to Madeleine Bunting’s comments in her ‘Heeding nature to understand ourselves.’ She states ”Nature is an experience, a relationship in which human beings are as much part of nature as any so-called wildlife. In contrast she talks about an age obsessed with targets and goals.” She refers to an increasing sense of fragility of the natural world” and “needing to know what we are fast losing. We need that attentiveness to nature to understand our humanity, and how we fit, as just one species, into a vast reach of time and space.”

This sort of thinking is taking us towards a very different culture in which the aggressive consumer capitalist world needs to be replaced with a more benign alternative! This is sticking my neck out but just to say in our own microcosm way we try and apply such an approach ‘in house’.