I do wish that the young Goldsmith would buck up his ideas:

‘The market is blind to the environment. Fact. Unless you correct that blindness, we’re stuffed. We haven’t a hope in hell.’

Not so. The market is blind to things which are external to the market, yes, but that’s not the same as being blind to the environment. As soon as consumer tastes start to make the environment internal to the market then, as the boom in organic food shows, the market has very good eyesight on such things.

For example:

There is also an exciting statistic about recycled aluminium cans (the
US threw away 32 billion of them last year – enough to replace its
entire civilian fleet of aircraft).

Not quite sure where that number comes from for the 2004 figures are that some 51 billion were recycled (that being 51% of production). So why are aluminium cans one of the most recycled products? Could it be because people make money from doing so? You know, that market thing aiding the environment?

I’ve no objection to the privileged being concerned about the environment: but I do think that those with the resources to do so have a duty to actually find out about it all.