Letter

Intrinsically radical

Dear healthmatters— In their cogent article arguing the case for health promotion, and the health sector more generally, to address the positive implications of environmentally sustainable development (issue 21), Andrew Rogers and Desmond Whyms take me to task for suggesting that in addition to teaching about the relationships of health and sustainable development we focus on ‘anything that helps sustainable development’. Quoting Noam Chomsky, they rightly point out the dangers of distracting attention from underlying economic and political causes if the focus is on surface manifestations.

I wholeheartedly agree with this basic point. Far from suggesting that attention should focus on the superficial, I think we often need to lead people into considering territory which they normally do not enter. If we distinguish between broadly sympathetic and unsympathetic audiences, I do not regard it as a waste of time and effort to try to shift an unsympathetic audience that typically does not consider environmentally and socially sustainable development at all to think about the policy. I regard sustainable development as intrinsically radical policy.

With many UK politicians and most economists and industrialists constantly using the concept of sustainability to mean crude economic growth without recessions - i.e. with no environmental implications - I think we often have to seize available opportunities at least to introduce and legitimate the Brundtland concept. If we can go further and discuss underlying economic and political causes, excellent, but in my experience of what one might call ‘NHS audiences’, that is more often likely to be counter-productive rather than helpful.