KEY POINTS:
It isn't true everything is getting dearer. A year ago, eBay customers were bidding £200 ($503) for an Anya Hindmarch "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" eco-bag, with "We Are What We Do" written on the inside, even though they knew it had just cost the eco-seller £5 from
the British supermarket Sainsbury's.
Today, that same INAPB bag brand, new(ish), with tags, may be had for about half that or less, although inevitably there are rumours some of these cheaper bags are in fact cynical, if hard-to-spot, copies, good for nothing but carrying groceries home in.
But consumer fear of being sold a fake (tip: watch out for zips and deformed apostrophes) cannot explain entirely the plummeting value of this once-sacred tote.
The credit crunch is already known to have had an impact on bag fever ... and one which is likely to be exaggerated when the bag in question is, like the INAPB, so plainly last year's model. But Anya prices might also have suffered from widespread consumer disillusion.
Some ethical shoppers are minded, apparently, to return bags which have conspicuously failed, even after a whole year of regular use, to save the world.
When the INAPB was introduced by an organisation called We Are What We Do, many bag devotees clearly believed it might not be beyond a truly special tote to succeed - where Al Gore, James Lovelock and the Smythson's Nancy Bag have so far struggled - in accomplishing "small changes and big differences".
One scholar, from think-tank Ekklesia, drew a parallel between this practical bag-engagement and Diognetus' doctrine of praxis. Hymning the bag after it appeared on the arm of Keira Knightley, the London Sun newspaper told readers: "Being green has never been more cool."
It would be unfair, of course, to blame the bag alone for the notably tepid interest in saving the planet recently expressed in a survey conducted by Opinium Research.
Something else must explain why, after years of environmental consciousness-raising, supported by an increasingly unanimous scientific community whose chilling prognostications are now regularly proclaimed by everyone from George Monbiot to Nicholas Stern, 72 per cent of the population said they did not want to pay any green taxes.
Almost as many Britons thought the green agenda had been hijacked by the Government as a dodge for raising taxes.
On the other hand, researchers found the great majority of consumers, 94 per cent, revealed some awareness of what Lovelock has called "the ineluctable consequences of destruction", and therefore "aim to behave in an environmentally friendly manner themselves". An understandable approach when you think how often politicians, eager to delegate an unpopular task, have reminded the public that, with climate change, every little bit really and truly helps.
"Each of us can make a difference," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown likes to drone, without ever saying what he has in mind. Should we be hanging 4x4 drivers from their own bull bars? Or taking cold showers to show China we mean business?
Why not start, instead, with a really weeny task, then work up? A website called Do the Green Thing applauds the most microscopic acts of altruism. Such as walking ("whenever possible"). Its latest proposal is "Stick With What You've Got". "Buying too much stuff puts a strain on the environment."
That sticking with what you've got and, indeed, with where you are should be so much less challenging during an economic slowdown has led some greens to welcome the prospect of recession, since a collapse in growth would inevitably slow energy consumption. This is a dream shared by Michael O'Leary from no-frills airline Ryanair.
"In many ways, we would welcome a chill or something even colder," he said recently. "We would welcome a good, deep, bloody recession in this country for 12 to 18 months. It would help see off the environmental nonsense that has become so popular among the chattering classes."
A somewhat graceless comment, perhaps, given the broadmindedness that has allowed these same chattering classes to continue to use O'Leary's airline for their European mini-breaks.
We are what we do. The piercing wisdom of the Anya Hindmarch bag in relation, at least, to middle-class green consumers is confirmed yet again by new figures showing a fall in sales of organic food and, outside the home, by a general apathy in the face of the exclusion of airline emissions from the I'm Not a Climate Change Bill.
For politicians intent on doing anything, such as carbon-taxing to avert catastrophe, the difficulty is (a) no one really believes it's coming, (b) they'll be dead anyway, (c) the recession has left people much too poor to care, and (d) they won't vote for anyone who tries to make them.
So Gordon Brown won't make himself more unpopular by reducing airline emissions or introducing personal carbon allowances. Neither he nor his opposition counterparts in Parliament will, to their collective shame, unite behind an effective carbon policy.
And when Conservative Party leader David Cameron finally becomes British Prime Minister, his strategy for "green growth" has as much chance of holding back the rising seas as did the Anya Hindmarch bag. And fair play to the bag: at least you could carry stuff in it.
- OBSERVER
