Analysis: Does the environment matter during a downturn?
Passing on a healthy world may require sacrifice
The Countryside Alliance’s purpose is to campaign for the countryside, country sports and the rural way of life. |  |
Land earmarked for the proposed construction of a third runway at Heathrow Airport has been purchased by a Greenpeace-led coalition of climate change protestors. |  |
On another cold, wintry recession-hit morning you might expect politicians to help shoppers out. So it's a surprise they are hinting at something slightly unusual – that the price of English bacon should go up. |  |
Wednesday, 14, Jan 2009 12:00
By Ian Dunt
It had to happen eventually.
When times were good, it seemed as if action on climate change could be fitted safely into our economy. There would have to be incentives, of course, and a complex system of carbon trading, perhaps, but it was a management question, rather than a philosophical one.
As the times become increasingly less rosy, and the UK economy continues to plunge into the abyss, that picture begins to look a little quaint.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the debate over expanding Heathrow. The government is staring a blank contradiction right in the face. It has promised to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent, and even buckled under pressure to allow aviation emissions into the calculations. But business leaders say we need a third runway to be able to compete with other European countries. The government has got itself in such a tangle over the issue its announcement on the runway is being endlessly delayed, with a pre-Christmas statement being cancelled and the chances of something being said this week – when it was expected – slowly fading away.
But Heathrow typifies a problem all governments have with green issues, which is that they fundamentally contradict basic features of a market system. As former Tory advisor Jules Peck said on politics.co.uk today, real environmental progress depends on a change in our pattern of consumption.
"At the moment… there's a very, very poor political discourse on the scale of change that's needed. It's not about a few wind turbines – it's about transforming our society away from consumerism," he said.
And yet government responses to the economic downturn act in precisely the opposite direction, by trying to encourage spending. Germany, for instance, is offering significant economic incentives to get car sales going again, even if it is weighted towards those which are more eco-friendly.
If there is a way out it lies in the 'New Deal' packages rearing their head on both sides of the Atlantic. All three main parties in the UK have now fitted some green industry spending – now rather painfully described as 'green-collar jobs' – into their spending plans. The plans originally came from the Green party, who have a pretty well thought-through process for using the downturn to create a thriving green industry base. You can read some of the Green party plans in John Whitelegg's article for politics.co.uk.
Green technology has one serious advantage in this respect. It is skills-heavy. It requires learning, which under new government re-skilling programmes will have an important place in the process of economic recovery. And it is less machine-reliant, meaning labour groups can be offered safe, reliable work in an industry with long-term prospects.
It won't be easy, but the option is there. As the downturn deepens, we'll increasingly find green issues and market economics make uneasy bedfellows.