THE GREEN REVOLUTION: 2/5 Society. Will being green soon be as normal as saying please and thank you? A recent book explains how things we take for granted can change remarkably quickly.

Yu-fang's ordeal is described by her granddaughter Jung Chang in her classic book Wild Swans. For years she lived in excruciating pain, with her feet tightly wrapped so that they could not recover their natural shape. When she begged to have them released, she was told that to do so would ruin the rest of her life.

For Chinese girls at the start of the 20th Century, this suffering was the norm. The thinking was that the sight of women teetering along on feet no more than four inches long was attractive to men. Those with normal feet could not find a husband.

But within one generation, reformers ended the 1,000-year-old tradition. They explained that it did not exist in other countries, and that natural feet were far healthier. They also set up societies whose members pledged not to bind girls' feet, or to let their sons marry women who had been abused in this way.

In his book How Change Happens, Duncan Green argues that things a society considers normal are not so set in stone as people imagine. Foot-binding is a prime example. Similarly, colonisation and slavery - which were generally seen as the natural order of things 200 years ago - are now considered beyond the pale. Norms, Green writes: "are a continuously evolving system".

Often it is activists like China's natural-foot societies who set the ball rolling. But there are also what Green calls "critical junctures", such as political or economic upheavals. World War Two - which saw White and Black US soldiers fighting alongside each other - gave crucial impetus to America's civil rights movement.

Support from governments is vital, though they are often initially resistant to change. Green lists various stages: repressing activists; denying that a problem exists; making tactical concessions to keep critics quiet; and finally, passing laws to make people respect the new norms.

Customs check

Mahatma Gandhi put it another way: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

International bodies such as the United Nations can also play a major part, while writers, artists and film-makers often prove very influential.

Financial interests are hugely important too. Nothing has signalled the change in attitudes to the environment more dramatically than the decision of car manufacturers to switch to electric power. President Biden's assertion that alternative energy could be a huge source of profit and employment was a key part of his election strategy. Businesses have realised that they must go green to attract investors and talented personnel.

Will being green soon be as normal as saying please and thank you?

Some say, no. Foot-binding was a deep-set tradition, but giving it up did not cost Chinese society anything - in fact, it made half the population much happier. But going green is expensive and involves giving up things you love, such as enormous TV sets and roaring log fires. Politicians, meanwhile, think in the short term and worry about losing votes by closing industries like coal mining.

Others argue that we have reached a tipping point. Most people now recognise the catastrophic damage done by climate change; many have experienced it first hand. Businesses know that it will cost them a fortune if they ignore it; most political parties see greenness as an important part of their agenda. Increasingly, those who fail to act responsibly will find themselves treated as pariahs.