Nicholas Craig column

May 19 2006 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

How green are you? Take away the recycling bins and what are you actively doing to keep us going for another few centuries?

I'm probably a fairly sickly shade of yellowy green.

My desk is piled high with paper, much of which will be shredded, and I will drive home alone in my petrol-guzzling car, using non-recyclable batteries in my gadgets and committing numerous other environmental sins on a weekly basis.

I'm like most of you, shamefully exposing a yawning gap between good intentions and reality.

The two essentials in businesspeople's lives are time and money, according to economists. Environmental considerations have not yet provided quicker, easier, cheaper ways for us to buy into what we know we should do to help save the planet.

Public transport often means arriving late and weighed down with briefcases. Paperless offices will not exist in my working life because I need to see and show others written statements on paper. We may all spray ourselves less and understand the problems of landfill, but we still read and throw away daily newspapers, leave TVs on standby, eat non-organic food and enjoy a bath instead of an environmentally effective shower.

Being green stills feels like being on a diet. It's good for you and everyone around you, but it's so nice to forget about it and revert to self-indulgent junk food, bright lights and plastic cans.

At least I don't possess a 4x4, the "Chelsea tractors" which have become the new hate symbol for environmentalists.

Even worse is the prospect of having to rein in our holidays. Save the planet, stay at home. Cheap flights have opened up the world to millions of us.

They also cause huge emissions of carbon dioxide. In the future, we may all be allowed a carbon quota - the antithesis of Air Miles (CORRECT STYLE FOR TRADE MARK - CH) - cutting back our long-haul travel and causing problems for countries newly prospering from tourism.

Thinking green is, however, a discipline we all have to learn, even if we protest in a primitive way while doing so. The best answer is for there to be no choice but green.

In that way we will not be tempted to lapse. Green is good - it sounds so like the 1980s Wall Street mantra and yet it's a century and many worlds away from it.

Nicholas Craig is a partner at Watson Burton LLP