(this amuses me because just the other day I saw a piece speaking of
lower sales at Whole Foods (here in the USA) and other 'greenie'
shops... plus another piece telling of sales increases at 're-sale'
clothing stores and drops at higher end stores.)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4474202...

Suddenly being green is not cool any more
As the credit crunch bites, environmental policies are being ditched.
But oddly we are doing better at saving the planet
Alice Thomson

Julie Burchill can't stand them. According to her new book, Not in my
Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, she thinks all environmentalists
are po-faced, unsexy, public school alumni who drivel on about the end
of the world because they don't want the working classes to have any
fun, go on foreign holidays or buy cheap clothes.

Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, agrees. In an interview
with Rachel Sylvester and me, he told us that the “nutbag ecologists”
are the overindulged rich who have nothing better to do with their lives
than talk about hot air and beans.

So the salad days are over; it's the end of the greens. Where only a
year ago the smart new eco-warriors were revered, wormeries and
unbleached cashmere jeans are now seen as a middle-class indulgence.

But the problem for the green lobby isn't that it has been overrun by
“toffs”: it's the chilly economic climate that has frozen the shoots of
environmentalism. Espousing the green life, with its misshapen
vegetables and non-disposable nappies, is increasingly being seen as a
luxury by everyone.
Background

Only a year ago, according to MORI, 15 per cent of those polled put the
environment in their top three concerns. That figure has dropped by a
third to 10 per cent this month. Now that people are fighting for their
own survival rather than their grandchildren's, they put crime, the
economy and rising prices at the top of their list.

According to Andrew Cooper, director of the research company, Populus:
“There is a direct correlation between how people perceive the economy
and the importance they place on the environment. When times are tough
people resent paying more to salve their conscience.” This means that
fewer people are now buying organic chickens from smart supermarkets
when they can pay £3.99 at Lidl. With all food prices rising, the
organic market is being credit-crunched. Demand for it grew by 70 per
cent from 2002 to 2007; now it has stalled, according to the consultancy
Organic Monitor.

The vast new organic Whole Foods Store on Kensington High Street in
London is so quiet you can hear the cheese breathe in the specially
designed glass room. Meanwhile the demand for takeaway pizzas and
McDonald's has risen as people find the cheapest way to eat.

When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party he said that
green issues were at the top of his agenda. His slogan for the local
elections last year was “Vote Blue, Go Green”. But in the past few
months he has realised that voters have lost the appetite for their greens.

He has only given one environmental speech since Christmas. Once he used
to talk about putting a £3,000 windmill on top of his house. Now the
message is not about conserving the planet but preserving his bank
balance. He wears catalogue clothes, grows his own vegetables and
holidays barefoot in Britain because it is less extravagant, not because
he is trying to reduce his global footprint.

In fact, when the Tory leader's bicycle was stolen a week ago, the
message of the story was not how green he was for riding his bike, but
how broken our society has become when a politician finds his bike
nicked from under his nose.

Boris Johnson was the first to realise that the tolerance for green
taxes may have peaked. When he became Mayor of London, he dropped plans
to charge a £25 congestion fee on gas-guzzling cars.

The Tories have quietly been reviewing many of their green policies. A
range of measures designed to penalise motoring and other polluting
activities has been put on hold in case they alienate families
struggling to pay their bills. A proposal to tax the highest emitting
cars up to £500 more than the greenest vehicles has been quietly
shelved, as has the plan to raise taxes on short-haul flights. Instead
George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, has promised to cut tax on fuel
when oil prices rise.

Gordon Brown has also stopped discussing his solar panels and compost
heap in Scotland and is trying to dissociate himself from local council
rubbish taxes - even though they have been driven by central government
plans to put up landfill charges.

Both parties are looking at ways of rewarding people for being green
rather than penalising them for throwing out their yoghurt pots with
their teabags. Mr Osborne, in a speech last month, admitted: “When
people are feeling the pinch, we need to make it pay to go green.
Instead of being fined for not recycling, households should be paid for
recycling.”

When Barack Obama first decided to run for the presidency, he embraced
the green cause. Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, about global
warming had just become the biggest grossing documentary in history and
Mr Gore had won the Nobel prize. But recently Mr Obama has been talking
more about thrift than trees. Instead of showing off his recycling
skills, he explains that his children don't receive Christmas or
birthday presents.

It's not just the economic downturn that has harmed the green order.
People have become wary of environmental causes that can turn out to do
more harm than good. They don't want wind turbines marching across
Britain's moors when nuclear power stations can do more to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. They worry that washing and bleaching all
those non-disposable nappies may be damaging the ozone layer, that the
massive incentives for biofuels have distorted the world food market,
and that green taxes are actually stealth taxes.

But paradoxically, just as Britain is turning its back on the
environment, the country is finally becoming greener. Fewer people are
moving house so they are buying fewer new white goods such as washing
machines and fridges. They may not be queueing up for £9 organic Poilâne
bread, but for the first time in a decade they are discarding less food.
They buy less impulsively and think more carefully before their weekly
shop. Children are wearing hand-me-down uniforms rather than new ones
made in sweatshops.

Bottled water sales have fallen. Garden centres have reported a 10 per
cent rise in the sales of vegetable seeds in the past 12 months. People
are saving money by growing their own potatoes and carrots. They are
turning off their central heating for a few more months of the year and
ditching their second car rather than buying an electric runaround. And
instead of carbon-offsetting their holidays, they are simply going on
fewer of them.

It's the downturn that has made greenery look unappetising - but it may
yet prove to do more than anything to save the planet.