ANOTHER VOICE
Watch out for Mr Heseltine's green shirt brigade
AUBERON WAUGH
With these documents also came a leaflet gloating over the new Antarctic Treaty (which apparently binds its signatories to abstain from any attempt to develop the Antarctic's mineral resources for 50 years) and giving a preview of Battles Yet to Come: On Energy, on Clean Seas, on Rain Forests and on Genetic Engineering. Everything is written in the breathless, huckstering, Bookerish style that engenders instant disbelief and mindless opposition:
The rainforests are the heart of the world, circulating warm, moisture-laden air around the globe.
The polluting emissions from burning fossil fuels are poisoning the atmosphere and threatening to wreck the world's climate pat- terns. How, and how quickly, can the world wean itself from fossil fuels? This is the cen- tral challenge posed by global warming and all atmospheric pollution.
Either these campaigns are tackled and won and the future of the natural world is secured or they are not undertaken and the natural world simply comes to an end. The choice is
OUTS.
My only contribution to the Antarctic debate was in a proposal that the continent should be used as an international tip, for the dumping of dangerous nuclear waste, toxic chemicals and other waste material whose sheer bulk makes it an embarrass- ment in the densely populated developed nations of the world. Although it may prove a useful source of income for the under- developed nations to have the rest of the world's rubbish dumped on them, one can see that there might be environmental objections. Where you have humans, you also have flora and fauna. But in the 5.5 million square miles of ice south of latitude 60 degrees, you have neither flora, fauna nor human beings, that is to say there are only two flowering plants, a grass and a pearlwort, and the only land animals are tiny insects. It would be a cruel practical joke to send Booker down to study them. The average temperature is -30C, there are cruel and violent winds, and the continent is continuously dark throughout the winter. I have always been sceptical about the prospects of commercial mineral extraction in such a hostile environment, where the average thickness of the ice is 7,100 feet, exceeding 14,500 feet in places. Punish- ment freaks might find a use for tht accursed region as a site for penal colonies — specially catering for 'green' saboteurs, perhaps — but nobody in his senses would want to go there, and if God had any pur- pose in mind when He created Antarctica, it must surely have been as an industrial dump for the developed world.
One may never decide exactly what pro- portion of 'green' motivation is supplied by simple misanthropy, but it is easy to reckon that 60 per cent of what they say is benevo- lent twaddle, 30 per cent malign rubbish, and 10 per cent good sense. It might well be a good idea to concentrate research on alternative sources of energy — from the sun, winds and movement of water. The time has probably indeed arrived when the oceans need some form of international protection. Possibly agricultural innova- tions need government control, although I am not sure about that, since few farmers wish to destroy their land. The existing au- thorities should be able to implement these needs without assistance from a rabble of yapping enthusiasts, but that is no reason to forbid the yapping. Western sentimentality about elephants and whales is harmless en- ough, even if it destroys human livelihoods in large areas of Africa and deprives some Japanese of a traditional luncheon. The campaign for Antarctica may be an absurd- ity, and for rainforests a malevolent imper- tinence, but the broad spectrum of green support would appear to be composed of a mixture of the amiably loopy and the less 'My mission is to destroy our stereotype of fawning subservience.' amiable, unintelligent deeply earnest.
Their electoral significance can be pre- cisely gauged by a study of the Green Party vote in the 1987 election. It • was quite impressive, seeming to average rather more than 12 per cent of votes cast in those con- stituencies where a Green candidate stood, and knocking the Liberal Democrats for six in most of them. One's instinct is to see it as another manifestation of the traditional- ly volatile third party vote, which might go to the Liberal Democrats or the SDP ac- cording to the mood of the moment, but even if one sees it as a solidly motivated Green vote, one cannot believe that it is up for grabs by the Conservatives if they can adopt a suitably Green posture. It isn't, just as you will practically never persuade a Guardian reader to take the Telegraph. Of course Green policies have their attraction to politicians, involving a vast increase in government controls. It was when Mrs Thatcher started hinting at £640 billion plans to combat global warming that many waverers decided it was time for her to go.
Mr Heseltine's adoption of a high-Green posture should not be seen as foolish so much as sinister. Not to put too fine a point on it, he is up to playing silly buggers again. His only motive — since nobody in a posi- tion to know is in the least bit impressed by all this twaddle about carbon dioxide or global warming, and there is no money in it for him — must be to secure a power base of cheering young Greens in the con- stituencies and at the Conservative Party conference, rather like Esther Rantzen's cohorts of cheering children who accompa- ny her wherever she goes.
Conservative ministers have long seen the electoral advantages of appearing to take a strong line on green issues, but Mr Heseltine is determined . . to give teeth to high sound- ing government policies
intoned the Independent on Sunday. I do not believe there are any such electoral ad- vantages. Slowly, the Independent on Sun- day is beginning to encapsulate the silliness of the 'right-on' generation. I dread for my friend Wallace Arnold in that crowd. But one is beginning to see the start of another Heseltine bandwagon. We were all — or nearly all — grateful to him when he finally plucked up courage to stand against Mrs Thatcher but Mr Heseltine needs constant- ly to be sat upon, and the sooner the Prime Minister does it, the more trouble he will save himself in the long run.
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