Delving deeper still into this ideology, arriving at the maximum misanthropy terminus, the ‘Deep Green Resistance’ minions of Derrick Jensen meanwhile have fever dreams of a total collapse of human civilisation. Jensen would not stop at the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Like Zerzan, Jensen prefers a neo-lithic jam. For him,

In forgetting all these works, the myth of the Ecological Indian infantilises and denies agency to native peoples, erases civilisations and replaces them with imaginary wildernesses. It too is an act of conquest.

As Ben Goldacre, the doctor and health campaigner who manages to be simultaneously Britain’s most trenchant critic of Big Pharma and of medical frauds such as homeopathy, herbal medicine, acupuncture and ‘nutritionists’, puts it: “Repeat after me: pharma being shit does not mean magic beans cure cancer.” The socialist left, with its historic

Recycling, done sensibly, can play a large part in achieving these efficiencies, as well as more widespread adoption of industrial and urban systems that conserve materials. It would be absurd to be pro-waste, to be pro-profligacy. But the biggest achievements to this end will come from an emphasis on technological transformation in infrastructure

Progress and growth need not hold back sustainability. But the politics of limits, like capitalism, certainly hold back progress.

It might seem strange to say this as a nature lover, but from all this, it follows ineluctably that it is only through appreciation of humans that there can be an appreciation of the rest of nature. We care about nature because we care about ourselves and our desires. Prior to the advent of humans, nature was indifferent to the particular form that

We are nature, and all that we do to nature is natural.

It is precisely as a result of my concerns about these topics and my familiarity as a science writer with the reality of anthropogenic global warming that I am frustrated with what I argue are a series of romantic proposals from the green left that at best do very little to deal with the issue and at worst are counterproductive. Climate change is

it is evident that the neoliberal species of capitalism unnecessarily bridles innovation, as does capitalism more broadly; it should be remembered that the left has in its toolbox a series of implementable policy responses to the innovation desert; and, most importantly, it is clear that if the left is to experience any revival, it must return the