Rainy Week at the Seaside Anyone?

I keep coming back to this rather gloomy thought: many people still think that Greens want to take the fun out of their lives. Too many Green scribblers seem to take pleasure in the thought that our civilisation is on the verge of collapse. They love to tell us that unless we stop doing everything we like RIGHT NOW the sky's going to fall on our head.

Maybe this is true. Maybe we're all doomed. Ho hum.

Greens aren't the only ones who think like this. There are people holed up in cabins in America waiting confidently for the world to end. We think they're crazy, but that we're right. As I said, maybe we are, but why bother being Green and talking about these things if you don't have anything positive to add to the human experience?

Too often activists try to sell the Green message as if they were selling the world's worst holiday. Come and have a week in the rain, in Weston-super-Mare, with the tide out all the time! I think the Transition Man says this in his handbook, that we have to offer people a vision of something better than they have now - a sunny week in Weston, maybe, with the tide in.

Here's a great example: my kids' primary school is on the edge of a lovely city park, but until recently the playground was the traditional expanse of tarmac - easy to maintain and unlikely to make anyone muddy. Then some Greenish parents got together and dug up a corner and planted a funky little willow tunnel and some little bushes. It really isn't an Eco-anything, but it's a patch of non-tarmac and the kids love it. They play in it is if it were an enchanted wood.

There was a story in America recently about an insurance company cancelling an advert that showed a man forced to ride a bike because petrol (gas) was too expensive. Basically all the joy had gone out of this guy's life because he couldn't drive. Lots of Greens protested about this and the ad disappeared. BUT THE ATTITUDE HASN'T. Most people still think that bike-riding is a stage of growing-up between riding a scooter and driving. They will do anything to keep their car on the road, even if it means turning all the world's food into Biofuels. Yet riding a bike is usually much more fun than driving. You get the buzz of exercise, the thrill of zooming about, and in most cities these days you get where you're going quicker than you do in a car.

How to change the attitude, though, that's the question.