Its not a sexy chart to run down on Channel 4 at Christmas, but the Environment Agency’s list of the Top 100 Environmental Campaigners OF ALL TIME is nevertheless an interesting read. A few good worthies up top means you don’t even begrudge Prince Charles rocking up in the top ten, probably for the column inches. That said you wonder if desperation kicked in a bit further down the list as the following turn up:
47 St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and ecology
53 Swampy, roads protester
89 Dalai Lama, spiritual leader
95 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, romantic poet
98 Joe Strummer, former Clash frontman
100 Father Christmas, carbon-free delivery
PROVE IT! Prove that Father Christmas’s time-defying, law of physics bending delivery mechanisms are actually carbon neutral. Surely whatever the reindeer’s are eating gets turned into methane emitting biomass, and if you work out the amount of energy required to do this extensive milk round one wonders if that’s not an excessive amount of exhaust being produced. Not to mention the toys themselves. It might be that Santa’s elves are knocking up the trad-kiddie wooden toys instead of plastics (though Father Christmas always left me some Lego) but is that wood from a sustainable forest. AT THE NORTH POLE?
In one fell swoop, the Environment Agency have made their list worthless and a laughing stock. Which is par for the course for the greens.