Putting a forcefield around green ideas

He’s a staple of office life: the penny-pincher checking that colleagues aren’t using too much paper or drinking more than their fair share of instant coffee. Now, anyone who shows open contempt for a colleague who does these things in the name of upholding ‘sustainable office practices’ or caring for the environment can be deemed prejudicial, and green workers can take their bosses to court if they feel they’ve been discriminated against because of their environmental convictions. A British court ruling this week by Mr Justice Michael Burton stated that ‘a belief in man-made climate change… is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations Act’. This signals that discrimination on the basis of green views is as unacceptable as sexism, racism or religious prejudice. How long before we see the term ‘envirophobia’ to describe people who dislike greens?...read more