B.Skanthakumar FIVE years ago this month a gigantic jamboree popularly known as the "Earth Summit assembled in Rio de Janeiro. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development as it is properly called was surrounded by all manner of hopes and all kind of hype.
It was hailed as the event to save our planet.
Certainly well before the official summit assembled none of the grey suits in attendance were in any doubt as to the expectations placed in them. Ecological consciousness and concern was not the preserve of alternative life-style "cranks" or alienated youth but was generalised across and within divided societies.
Non-governmental organisations proselytised and mobilised in force believing that with good and the majority on their side their arguments for stronger, speedier, more radical measures would carry the day.
However governments and big F GET T THE ELL ERIA a darth NIGERIA THE presented another illustration of La carth No decisive action is being taken by offending countries because it is simply not in the interests of the rich and powerful there. Neither scientific advice nor rational briefing papers and cocktail parties will shake them.
The environmental movement in Britain used to have a slogan, "Neither Red nor Blue but Green". That was not an intellectual breakthrough but an evasion. It is not the ignorance or intransigence of a few but the logic of capitalism that is hurtling humanity to ruin.
It is not only the lobbying of non-governmental organisation but the organisation and movement of the majority that will alter that course.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the environmental movement which reminded us of nature and the ambivalences towards technology and "progress" in our nineteenth century forebears like William Morris.
Will the environmental movement remember the question of class - and support the right one?