Environmentalist Andrew Simms, author of the posh grocers’ bible, Tescopoly, has a bit of a problem. And it is not just the nauseating, name-dropping self-obsession so evident in his new book, Cancel the Apocalypse: The New Path to Prosperity. (Of his changing perception of aeroplanes after 9/11, he writes: ‘Contrails behind disappearing jet engines meant something different also after a conversation I had with the author Philip Pullman, but I’ll come to that later.’ The tease.) No, Simms’ other problem is one that he shares with many other current environmentalists: an apocalypticism in want of an apocalypse, an environmentalist End of Days in want of a devastated, I-told-you-so terminus.
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