How to be Green

• A Green Manifesto for the 1990s by Penny Kemp and Derek Wall
  Penguin, 212 pp, £4.99, July 1990, ISBN 0 01 413272 9
• Social Philosophy and Ecological Scarcity by Keekok Lee
  Routledge, 425 pp, £40.00, September 1989, ISBN 0 415 03220 2
• Mother Country by Marilynne Robinson
  Faber, 261 pp, £12.99, November 1989, ISBN 0 571 15453 0
• Blueprint for a Green Economy by David Pearce, Anil Markandya and Edward Barbier
  Earthscan, 192 pp, £6.95, September 1989, ISBN 1 85383 066 6
• The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon by Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn
  Verso, 366 pp, £16.95, November 1989, ISBN 0 86091 261 2
• Thinking Green: An Anthology of Essential Ecological Writing edited by Michael Allaby
  Barrie and Jenkins, 250 pp, £14.95, October 1989, ISBN 0 7126 3489 4

If the crisis for the environment were a purely physical problem it could be resolved by protective legislation. Because markets are arraigned as responsible for the disastrous state of the environment, profound paradoxes arise for Western political thought. Much Green writing implies that in addition to a change of heart, the remedy would require strong political and economic controls. Herein lies the dilemma, for the idea of moving to a command economy is repugnant to a tradition committed to liberty, equality, free enterprise and consumer choice.