Green: the evolution of a definition

For most of my life the main idiomatic meaning of ‘green’ was naive. Now that definition has been overtaken by a loose and woolly definition around the environment and its protection. How apt it is that so much of what is spouted about the environment relies on flawed understanding of scientific and/or economic principles and that so many self-appointed leaders of the environmental movement manage to combine well-meaning earnestness with staggering ineffectualness.

The LibDems seem to be the latest to confuse these two definitions. Their green tax proposals have a superficial appeal but are full of fairly obvious holes. They would be likely to hit the poorest in society hardest and if they were to meet their environmental objectives they wouldn’t raise the revenue the LibDems are banking on. Environmentally friendly or naive?