ABSTRACT
Since 1945, the majority of the population of the rich industrial nations have enjoyed a higher living standard than has ever been achieved before in world history. During the post-war years, laboursaving domestic appliances such as washing machines, fridges and vacuum cleaners found their way into working-class homes. With rising real incomes by the late 1950s, the ‘affluent society’ had emerged, and the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan could tell the British people in a famous phrase that ‘you have never had it so good’. The affluent working class began to enjoy pleasures that were previously the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and the middle class. Cars and foreign holidays were now within the budget of many working people. In the 1950s and 1960s, the impact of a consumerist way of life on the natural environment was not discussed. But by the early 1970s, the mounting evidence of the damage that the industrial way of life was causing led a sizeable body of opinion to question the direction of advanced industrial societies.
