Sir Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the UK's Sustainable Development Commission - the most influential Green in Britain - told journalists today that British politicians were "in a state of cognitive dissonance" over the
ecological crisis.
Cognitive dissonance is the psychologists' term for an inability to make rational decisions despite being able to clearly see the evidence.
The Green Party, on the other hand, has been right all along, Sir Jonathan continued.
Speaking in Bristol at the launch of the South West Green Party campaign for the European Parliament elections, Sir Jonathan said that he fully supported the Green Party and had been a member continuously since its founding.
Sir Jonathan, who was director of Friends of the Earth before taking the top UK sustainable development job, told his audience about a recent analysis he had carried out on the 1979 election manifesto of the Ecology Party, the former name of the Green Party. It showed that 65% of the policies which were included have now been adopted by the three "mainstream" parties. "We were right all along," he said. But he warned that the big three parties still haven't got it right:
"Every single one of the issues that the Green Party has been campaigning on for the last 35 years is getting worse and worse, which means that people should no longer put off the day when they accept that the future is either Green or not at all."
Jonathan Porritt drew attention to the recent negotiations in Copenhagen and his amazement at the level of shock on the part of normally sober scientists when confronted with increasing evidence of runaway climate change.
He said he has been unable to make clear his political allegiances while working as a government adviser but this time around he is prepared to pin his Green colours to the mast. Joking that he only had four months left at the Sustainable Development Commission so he was unlikely to be sacked, he gave a ringing endorsement to the Green Euro-candidates.
A party spokesperson commented: "Now we need all those scientists who are fed up of governments dragging their heels over climate change to point out which party has the right policies. Alternatively, scientists can stand on the a-political sidelines and watch the holocaust that they've predicted actually happen."