It's so easy being green

'It's not easy being green' - it makes my blood boil every time I hear that. A misguided person at the BBC must have decided it was a catchy title for a TV programme and now I keep seeing and hearing it. Well, maybe it's not that easy to rig up your own electricity and water systems, as the moustachioed one did on the telly, but we're not being asked to do that, are we? (Yet). What exactly is so difficult about stuff like switching off electrical appliances rather than leaving them on stand-by, and cutting down on the amount of water you use? All it takes is a little thought and hopefully a realisation that the earth's resources are finite and could probably be put to better use than heating your house to the point where you can comfortably wear a Tshirt on a January day.

I attended a seminar about waste management and recycling last week. Apparently in the UK we throw away the equivalent of 600 cows every day by chucking out beef that is superflous to requirements or past its use-by date. Not to mention the obscene amount of other foodstuffs piled into landfill. This is going to have to stop, if only because we are rapidly running out of holes in the ground to pile it all in.

James Lovelock, the scientist responsible for the well-known Gaia theory, believes mankind is too late and whatever we do now with our recycling and environmental programmes, which he regards as worse than re-aranging deckchairs on the Titanic, cannot avoid catastrophe in about 20 years time.

He might be right, how do I know? But I can't help thinking that taking what you need from the earth and making sure there is plenty left for future generations is a much more emlightened way of living than the ugly consumerism that has become the norm.

I keep looking for some words of wisdom from someone who can advise me how to prepare for the future, as I'm sure it's going to be very different from what we experience day-to-day now, but so far I've found nothing, apart from some survivalist Americans who recommend stocking up on rifles and retreating to the backwoods. Are we really all marching cluelessly into the dark?