Green future the only way ahead

WE HAVE just endured the worst recession since the war. The recovery, such as it is, is desperately fragile; and with massive public sector cuts looming, for many of us the worst is yet to come.

Many working in the public sector fear losing their jobs. In the private sector, pay has been frozen or pegged back at the very time when fuel and food prices are soaring.

At times like this, admits Jonathon Porritt, it is easy to want to just batten down the hatches and think only of looking after Number One. That is why historically, in times of recession, people tend to be less concerned about things such as the environment.

“When the economy is doing well, people seem to focus a bit more than they otherwise might do on the environment,” says the former director of Friends of the Earth and co-chair of the Green Party.

“But when the economy is not doing so well, people tend to think a bit more about whether they can ‘afford’ to worry about the environment.”

But actually, now is exactly the time when we should be thinking about changing the way we live, he says.

A Green New Deal – with substantial investment now in green technology that would create jobs and lead to innovation which would turn the UK into a world leader in the field – would not only help us economically. It might also help save the world.

Mr Porritt, who is now founder director of Forum For The Future, the UK’s leading sustainable development charity, says we need a completely new economic model for the way we live if we are to avoid an environmental catastrophe.

That catastrophe will come, he says, if we continue to consume precious and limited resources, and spit out waste products and greenhouse gases in their place.

“We are quite close to the point now where some people, not just me, are beginning to comment on the degree to which we are imperilling the secure future of humankind, and putting civilisation at risk,” he says.

Continued rapid growth, in which we consume ever more and more of the world’s resources, cannot be allowed to continue, he believes. Instead we need to move towards a more sustainable economy, one that is not based on relentless growth and ever greater consumption.

But how? It would be political suicide for any mainstream politician to suggest we should aim at anything other than continuous steady growth. We are all too much in love with our consumer comforts.

Indeed, some commentators have pointed out that mankind has an almost lemming-like like ability to ignore the warning signs of climate change and resource depletion, and that we will continue running headlong onwards to destruction before it is too late.

Mr Porritt, who will be in York later this week to take part in a public seminar run by the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York, does not believe that.

Our survival instincts will kick in, he believes. “Survival outweighs everything.”

The good news, he says, is that the recession – dreadful as it has been – provides the perfect springboard from which to begin taking stock.

There is a sense in which recessions are good for the environment, he says, speaking over the phone in advance of the seminar. The very slowdown that sees people thrown out of work also means production slows down – so that there is less damage caused to the environment.

“There is evidence that the global recession in 2008/9 led to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions in a number of countries.”

The key thing is what do we do as we come out of recession? Do we simply carry on as we did before – or look for new ways of doing things?

There are very good pragmatic and economic reasons for change, quite apart from the environmental reasons, Mr Porritt believes.

Any business leader will tell you that it pays to be efficient, and not to waste expensive resources. So being more efficient in our use of energy, which is getting more and more expensive, makes good business sense. It will increase competitiveness.

That applies to a nation as much as a corporation, he says. Investing in renewable energy sources, a more efficient transport system, and more energy-efficient homes and buildings has the capacity to save the national economy billions of pounds a year.

Then there are the huge opportunities that new green technologies offer. We are talking about what will become a multi-trillion dollar industry in the near future, Mr Porritt says. If the UK is smart, it can seize for itself a substantial share of that market.

We could, for example, become world leaders in the field of offshore wind and wave technology – a key area, since just last week Yorkshire Forward estimated offshore wind farms could create 10,000 jobs in Yorkshire.

Britain has much of the expertise it would need already, because of the North Sea oil rigs and the infrastructure and expertise needed to support them, Mr Porritt believes. “No country in the world can match that.”

If we don’t seize the opportunities that green technology offers, other countries will get in ahead of us, he says. China and South Korea are already making substantial investments in alternative energy technology – and that will certainly focus the minds of business leaders in the US.

If we don’t want to miss the boat, the time to start serious investment is now. We could create jobs, pave the way for green industries that will help end our reliance on foreign gas and oil – and become a world leader in the field, with all the opportunities for the export of expertise that that would offer.

There are signs the Government is beginning to wake up to this, with initiatives such as the Green Investment Bank, which is being set up to help fund renewable technology initiatives.

It doesn’t go far enough, Mr Porritt says. As usual, the Treasury is playing hard ball. The £1 billion in start-up funds pledged for the bank isn’t nearly enough, and there are still questions over exactly what role the bank will play. But at least it is a start.

If we are really to put an end to the unsustainable continuous growth model by which we run our societies, however, we need something else, too, he believes. A different way of measuring GDP, that doesn’t see rapid economic growth as the only worthwhile aim.

There are at last some signs that we are beginning to move that way, he believes. “David Cameron has started to talk about the importance of well-being and the quality of life.”

Now there’s a really radical idea. Organise society so it is geared to making us all feel better, rather than to promoting relentless consumption?

It’ll never happen. Will it?

Fairer societies work better...

A MORE equal society could be one of the keys to a greener way of living, believes York academic Kate Pickett.

The Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York is co-author of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, which has been described as “among the most influential books of 2009”.

The book’s general theme is that, when societies are more equal – in other words, when there is less of a gap between the richest and the poorest – we all tend to do better. Does she mean more equal societies are happier societies?

“That’s a bit too fuzzy,” she says.

“But certainly life expectancy is longer, infant mortality is lower, mental health is better, and levels of obesity are lower.”

More equal societies also tend to be better in terms of trust, public spiritedness and social cohesion – and they are even more creative and innovative, she says. “There is evidence for all of this.”

But in what way are more equal societies also greener?

Because people living in more equal societies tend to be less obssessed with consuming, says Prof Pickett, who will share the platform with Jonathon Porritt at Thursday’s seminar in York on Ecological Responsibility in an Age of Austerity.

Inequality heightens the consumer instinct – it makes us all desperate to keep up with the Jones’s next door, and so to want to buy and own more.

“What drives people in unequal societies is status competition,” Prof Pickett says. “The more egalitarian a society, the weaker the drive to consume.”

Fact file

• Jonathan Porritt will be speaking at a public seminar, Beyond Prosperity: Equality and Ecological Responsibility in an Age of Austerity, at the National Science Learning Centre at the University of York, from 5.30pm to 7.30pm on Thursday.

• The seminar is the first of what is intended to become an annual seminar run by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York, the aim of which is to promote debate and discussion about the environment.

• To find out more about the work of the SEI, visit york.ac.uk/sei/