The 'Green Principle is rather different - not that Greens, in the Party or in the pressure groups, are less prone to bend their principles to match their actions and not that such people are above advocating compulsions and constraints upon all of us merely because these compulsions and constraints seem green to them. The difference is that, since the Green Principle is that we really do foul and wreck the nest unless we take purposeful action to avoid doing so, there can be objective reasons for thinking some actions to be 'green' and some not to be. There is an element of factual verification potentially present in green projects because the environment is actually there and we may, or may not, in fact be damaging it when we take this or that action. The key word in that last sentence is 'potentially'. Green policies can be based on fact and informed assessment of the likely factual consequences of fact and we simply must admit that things are not as simple as they may seem to be in 'the eye of faith' or in instant good intentions.
The Greens are often romantics and this is the very last thing they should ever be. The buzz-word that makes you feel good may be alright for some people in their private free-floating ideological capsules but it cuts no ice against any over-heated growth in consumption and runaway global warming that might be demonstrated actually to be taking place. (Yes I know the metaphors are mixed but why not?)
'Recycling' is a trusted warmer of the green heart. It 'stands to reason' (a phrase which usually means that it does nothing of the sort but that it sits on dogma) that materials should be recovered and used again and again.
A knowledge of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which ought to be part of the core curriculum) makes us pause. One statement of this Law is that there is a spontaneous tendency for material order to become material disorder and that the reverse process is never spontaneous but can only be accomplished, if at all, by the input of energy in an appropriate manner. A stone, allowed to do so, will fall and break a glass object but there is no 'if allowed to do so' about the glass object mending itself while the stone rises back to its original position. Perhaps the glass object can be mended and the stone raised up but only if energy is spent doing so. Objects, once usable, becoming scrap is a spontaneous process; the reverse transformation - scrap changing itself to usable objects - is not; it can only be accomplished by appropriate energy input. Our bits of broken glass need heat energy to melt them to remake the usable glass object. Recycling sounds fine and thrifty but IF it consumes very valuable energy - and generates undesirable carbon dioxide or dangerous radiation or objectionable waste to boot - only to produce less valuable usable objects THEN there is no green mileage in it. 'Believing in' recycling in general is not good enough; we have to show that it is good green sense in particular instances. Sometimes it is and sometimes it is not.
Again, we are supposed to be glad that fast-food suppliers are thinking of using bio-degradable cutlery. This feels better, to a green romantic, than the thought of rubbish dumps full of stable discarded plastic knives, forks and spoons. But if the bio-degradation turns the plastic into carbon dioxide then we would be just as wise to burn it and wiser still NOT to let it degrade but make it keep its carbon atoms 'locked up out of harm' as, for millions of years, they had been locked up as natural petroleum or coal or whatever. Bio-degradation is not self-evidently a truly green fate for plastic waste.
Yet again, we have the attractive idea of low-energy light bulbs. The ordinary filament lamp dissipates, as heat, by far the greater part of the electricity it consumes; the low-energy bulb converts the electrical input mostly into light. Is this not self-evidently good? Yes, of course it is IF the bulb is outside in a porch or coal shed or suchlike place. In such circumstances the conventional filament bulb simply dissipates heat uselessly into the air while the low-energy bulb does not. But indoors, the heat from the ordinary light bulb warms the room and so saves on other heat use. But, if the light bulb is near the ceiling, its heat is no good to people at floor level. But, if there is another storey above, then the ceiling light below may not be so wasteful of heat. Perhaps we should use low-energy bulbs in top floors and attics as well as outside. Electric motors are relatively efficient energy users so perhaps a fan, near the ceiling, forcing warm air downwards (the rising of hot air is a spontaneous process that can be reversed only by energy input - Second Law) might make the use of old-fashioned tungsten lights a little greener in rooms like ours.
In rooms with poor natural light in countries where the climate is warm the use of tungsten lamps converts electricity to a lot of heat which is worse than useless; it actually makes such a room in such a climate needlessly uncomfortable; you would need more powerful air-conditioning plant if you used tungsten bulbs in such a case.
The ideas I have set out may well be arguable; I do not claim that they are the last word. That is not the point; far from it. I merely suggest that green practice CAN be factually based and that specific investigation of any projected green reform must be put in hand to validate that reform, to make it more than merely seeming to be green at first sight.