Green before their time?

IN GREEN POLITICAL THOUGHT, Andrew Dobson asserts that ‘we must understand Green, in a political sense, to be historically specific’. ² Essentially, what he is arguing is that Green is a political response to the threat of ecological catastrophe which has emerged during only the past couple of decades. Prior to this, Green elements might have occurred in the ideas of this political thinker or that political movement, but a sustained Green critique of existing society and the posing of a consistently Green alternative could not have arisen because the conditions for bringing these about had not yet developed. Hence Dobson maintains that: ‘these are obvious ways in which the fully developed ideology of the Green movement could not have existed up to now. It is clear, for instance, that the gloomy future predicted for us would have no persuasive purchase if damage to ecosystems had not reached levels that can sensibly be argued to be globally disruptive.’ ³