The devastating virus 0157 .......

..... otherwise known as eco-smugness.

Never let it be said that we don't comment on both sides of the enviro argument. This from The Times is actually quite an amusing rant against the environmental movement.

"What is becoming so fascinating about the new puritanism is not just that we are all being brainwashed to accept the inevitability of hair shirts, but also their unquestioned moral worth. That somehow or other, this life of sackcloth and bicycles is going to benefit our souls and make us all better people."

"My real problem with the eco-alarmists is the pleasure they take in austerity; their evident desire to strip away pleasure. Deep down, they disapprove of skiing, even on a Scottish scale. They dislike colour, excess and fun. They really do want to see us imprisoned in a narrow, grey, scratchy world of recycled car tyres and hemp lingerie (and no, I didn't make that up)."

Ooooo-errrrr! Something has definitely gotten up this lady's nose!

"we will chant a litany of carbon offset, recycling and composting, the buttresses of a new religion that makes radical Islam resemble Methodism."

"the thought of life in this smug, dull, joyless, labour-intensive, recycled, fair trade, waste-free world makes a woman yearn to be already dead and buried in her eco-friendly coffin, fertilising some field for methane-free cows."

Methinks she is taking something of a micro-view of the whole issue? Or maybe her hemp lingerie is itching?