But those Greens will run headlong into those whose jobs and profits are dependent on this kind of wastefulness. The trick will be to give people a practical sense that a society that values usefulness and beauty and not just more, bigger, faster is not only desirable but also possible. The Greens believe that things will only improve if we do a lot more for ourselves. And it s not only money. Such dependence also involves giving up the right to take basic decisions over what we want to eat and how to care for the sick.
Corporate experts turn farms into factories and lace our food with chemicals.
Health professionals hand us high-tech medicine and a pill for every ill. But we often prefer to abdicate to the experts so that we can watch Dallas or go and see the local team play. Going to community meetings takes time and having a garden takes energy. The Greens point out that when we dump radio-active waste, spray toxic chemicals or release sulphur dioxide or leaded gasoline fumes into the air, these return to us in the form of human cancers, poisoned water, acid rain and infertile soils. We can, they say, run the economy in a much less destructive fashion if we break our chemical and energy fix .