ABSTRACT
Modern environmentalism, of which William Morris is often cited as an ancestor, probably began with the publication of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s seminal examination of the harmful ecological effects of chemically-persistent, ‘broad-spectrum’ pesticides. Among ‘resource pessimists’, there is however a small minority of ‘red-greens’ or (broadly) ‘ecosocialists’, who, though pessimistic about the Earth’s capacity to support continued economic growth, regard this problem as one of demand for resources, rather than supply. It is in News from Nowhere that Morris’s red-green ideas are most fully realised, and it is that book which provides us with a ‘blueprint’ in which the likely nature of the economy, polity and social structure of an ecological society are most fully explored. Instead, Morris insists that ‘the chief duty of the civilised world to-day is to set about making labour happy for all, to do its utmost to minimise the amount of unhappy labour’.
