The Enemies of Progress: Dangers of Sustainability (Societas) [Paperback]

This book champions the benefits of industrialisation for developing countries and the rights of consumer free choice over the concerns of today's environmentalists. It opposes environmental legislation, and sees environmental advocacy as the new orthodoxy. Architecture is a particular focus of interest. The book comprises selected quotations, examples and commentary aimed at humorously exposing environmentalist excesses. This makes it an easy, even amusing, read, at some cost to the coherence of the analysis. By arguing that progress is a political rather than scientific issue, Austin fails to challenge the underlying environmental analysis or address widespread concerns over climate change, resource depletion and environmental degradation. Ultimately, the fundamental arguments of modern environmentalism aren't seriously challenged.

As an undergraduate geography student i found this book very interesting and not too complicated, offering a different view on sustainability which i had not considered myself before. Easy to read and not too long.

Austin Williams, an architect who is Director of the Future Cities Project, argues that sustainability is a dangerous concept, at odds with progress. He urges us to see human beings as the solution to problems, as against Greens, who see people as the problem. The increasingly odd John Gray shares this misanthropy when he sweetly compares humanity to `slime mould'.

Again, the reactionary Club of Rome wrote in 1991, as the Cold War ended, "in searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention ... The real enemy then is humanity itself." This turns human beings against each other and against themselves.

Greens want no growth or industry, less production and consumption, more social restraint and conformity. Activist Susan George says, "Growth is not the solution but the problem." They see producing energy and using it as bad. This new Puritanism chimes in with the ruling class's interests: they want us to accept lower living standards and less freedom.

So European Commission President Barroso says, "Europe must lead the world into a new, or maybe one should say post-industrial, revolution." The Bishop of London tells us that flying is `a sin against the planet'.

Greens also try to impose their ideas on other countries, to hold back their progress towards better lives for their people. Green Jonathan Porritt (son of Lord Porritt, who was once Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief over New Zealand) says, "Massive large power stations, connecting up every single individual wherever they are in that country, to a centralised distribution system of large-scale energy generation. That's it, that's the end of the world." Bono justifies colonial-style looting of poor countries, saying, "Aid for Africa is just great value for money ... the investment reaps huge returns."

A group of academics, who travelled to Keele University for a conference called `Against Mobility', said, "a car-based regime generates widespread problems - ecological collapse, war, widespread death and ill-health and economic dysfunctionality, to name but a few." Cars cause wars - that's novel, if nothing else.