A browner shade of green

American environmentalist Jay Westerveldt, writing in 1986, coined the term 'greenwash' to describe the act of playing-up something's environmental benefits in order to justify its existence - and yet, twenty years later, ecological sophistry of this kind is still thriving.

In July 2007, the Department for Communities and Local Government published its 'Eco-towns Prospectus', outlining plans for ten new towns, each with 5-10,000 homes, to be built by 2020.

The development, according to the document, "should reach zero carbon standards," and "each town should be an exemplar in at least one area of environmental sustainability."

Furthermore, the towns are intended to combat both the rising price of houses ('affordable housing' will make up between 30 and 50 per cent of the homes) and the simple lack of space for a growing population.

However, both these issues are leaving most commentators puzzled - many analysts have even categorised the scheme as a piece of Orwellian 'Doublethink', defined by the author as "The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them".

And they have a point. Saving the environment by building ten new towns hardly makes perfect sense on first hearing.

The whole eco-towns project is covered in a thin coat of greenwash, which is flaking off daily.

Gus Unger-Hamilton

This may sound rather glib - new homes, after all, have to be built, and if they do achieve carbon neutrality it would certainly be an improvement on most housing developments to date - but what the government aren't so keen to point out is the negligible dent these eco-towns would make in the massive number of new homes needed.

This time last year, Gordon Brown announced plans to build 3,000,000 new homes by 2020, also the intended date of completion for the eco-towns project; so, as Richard Girling (Sunday Times, June 15) points out, eco-towns would in fact account for about 3% of these - not what one would call "a radical programme to increase housing"! (Yvette Cooper MP, introducing the Eco-towns Prospectus).

The whole project is covered in a thin coat of greenwash, one which, unfortunately and embarrassingly for the government, is flaking off daily.

Who knows how they will attempt to dress up the other 97%? Perhaps we will have ten new 'Festivilles' - small towns with huge areas created specifically for Glastonbury-style music festivals.

Or maybe a darker, more scaremongering scheme of anti-terror towns - far from inconceivable, as in the case of Paris's wide, straight nineteenth-century boulevards, designed to impede the building of rebellious blockades and to facilitate the operation of artillery by the army in such circumstances.

Before the next half-baked scheme is announced, however, the government must put some serious work into convincing us of the efficacy of the eco-towns, as another, similarly derisive 'Must try harder' verdict is one thing Gordon Brown cannot afford.