A 65-YEAR-OLD Brazilian man set fire to himself last week in a desperate attempt to “wake people up” — his words before he died — to the destruction of Brazilian wetlands and the Amazon rainforest. There was consternation in Brazil, where Francisco Anselmo de Barros was a respected and thoughtful man not given to impulsive gestures. But his cries have barely reached the countries, such as Britain, that import more and more Brazilian beef, palm oil and other products that destroy these habitats. The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest store of carbon, a buffer against climate change. But we have gone numb. We are saturated in protest, we turn the page, we cannot face the cumulative consequences of our snap purchasing decisions.

The green movement that used to be a spur to conscience is now irrelevant. If Barros’s horrific gesture could not grab a headline, Greenpeace’s puerile dumping of coal on Tony Blair’s doorstep last week — a protest against climate change — was never going to. People who rushed to save the whale and adopt pandas 20 years ago are bewildered by today’s green activists who have bolted on so many extra agendas — antiwar, anti-globalisation, anti-America — that they seem more like angry flailing students than grown-up organisations you could turn to for independent data on the environment. When people are trying to navigate a torrent of complicated and contradictory information, it is of little help to hear stuck records chanting “the end is nigh”. The average person says things still look OK to him, 20 years on, and turns away. But it is still easier to preach apocalpyse than to explain a slow, chronic deterioration.

Tony Blair is an easy target for greens, but he is the wrong one. He is hamstrung by fear of public opinion that dislikes higher petrol prices, thinks wind farms look ugly, wants to live now and pay later and blame everyone else for global warming. We live in a society that regards the £39 return flight to Málaga as one of the most potent symbols of our freedom, even though prices are kept artificially low by airlines’ indefensible exemption from fuel duty, and even though flights have a colossal impact on global warming. Polls suggest that seven out of eight people make no connection between flying and climate change. Even those who can no longer insure their homes against flooding still drive around in 4x4s, refusing to contemplate any contribution that they themselves may be making to extreme weather.

We don’t need activists lambasting government and business; we need marketers, advertisers, advocates who focus on educating consumers about the planet. We need sophisticated honest brokers to counter the cornucopians who believe in the limitless bounty of the Earth and worry about keeping up with the Joneses.

Six million of us sat down to watch Blue Planet on TV, to marvel at ecological wonderlands under threat. But we won’t buy cleaner cars, or energy-saving light bulbs, or stop snorkelling on the coral reefs. We blame greens for exaggerating, politicians for prevaricating, businesses for profit-making. And it’s not so surprising, when the only people who are trying to sell us a more responsible lifestyle are worthy pamphleteers or government agencies that print dull exhortations on itchy recycled paper. The green movement has left a vacuum and someone needs to fill it.

Jonathon Porritt does a good job of trying, in his weighty new book Capitalism as If the World Matters. He argues that to take on today’s “dominant ‘I consume, therefore I am’ mindset” will require positive messages from the green movement rather than predictions of doom. This reflects today’s Blairite thinking. Mr Blair told his officials more than a year ago that there was no hope of convincing America to do anything on climate change that would mean sacrificing lifestyles or GDP. Shortly after Gleneagles, he seemed to imply that he thought the same was true for Britain.

But while warm words may indeed penetrate the defences of people who fear greenies will take away their toys, there are huge dangers. Porritt is the first to acknowledge that it is business that will solve environmental problems. Enlightened companies will not be helped by rosy pronouncements that let the public off the hook. Toyota has reaped substantial competitive advantage by producing hybrid cars. BP and Shell are much better placed in alternative energy than most of their international competitors. To make more substantial and risky investments over long time-horizons. such companies need greater certainty from governments that they will regulate to support cleaner technologies. They also need concerned consumers who will demand them.

The last time I met Jonathon Porritt, I accused him of selling out. We were in the boardroom of a FTSE-100 company where I worked, and the director who met him with me shared my disappointment that in trying to see everyone’s point of view — governments, companies, consumers — he was in danger of absolving everyone of responsibility.

Porritt is right that only capitalism can solve the environmental problems it has got us into. This argument has been made most powerfully by Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, who has spent 20 years designing really useful things suchas the hydrogen-powered HyperCar. Lovins is an honest broker who paints a positive future of a world that is not dependent on oil, deforestation or pollution. He also emphasises the urgency of moving there. The people that Porritt calls “the ankle-biters” will be crucial in changing the paradigm, if only they can stop shouting into the wind and start showing people the hard connections between their actions and the environment. If we don’t fill that gulf of understanding, the warning cries from men such as de Barros will go unheard. And all of us will be diminished by it.

camilla.cavendish@thetimes.co.uk

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