Diane Coyle says that the number of companies filing annual environmental reports is rising, but she gives no credit to Friends of the Earth (FoE): "They are doing this not because FoE thinks they should, but because it is what their customers, shareholders and employees want. For corporations are collective organisations that reflect the values of the societies in which they operate." I would just like to point out that the way mainstream social attitudes change is not simple. The extremes tend to define the center. If you want to shift the center towards environmentalism, it does not hurt to have some extreme environmentalists shouting that the sky is falling in - as long as there are moderate environmentalists who say, it's bad, but not that bad. This is then a position many reasonable people can agree with, and it more easily becomes received wisdom. If all the environmentalists are being Chicken Little (the character in the children's story who yelled that the sky was falling), and if the sky doesn't fall, then environmentalism gets a bad name. In fact environmentalists do have to watch that they don't squander their believability by exaggerating too much. They are in constant danger of this. At the same time, as long as there are moderate environmentalists to benefit from looking reasonable compared to the extreme, the extreme helps to shift the center. If the moderate position were the only one on offer, it would look extreme, or could more easily be painted by anti-environmentalists as such. As a result, there would be little pressure on corporations from their more mainstream stakeholders for environemntal change. So I think you'll find that in the social history of how it came to be that customers, shareholders and employees want environmental audits, FoE will have an honorable place - both when it has been acting moderately and when it's been on the extreme.