The budget - green vs sustainable (Jonathon Porritt)

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The budget - green vs sustainable

There’s a world of difference between a “Green Budget” and a “Budget for Sustainability”.

On the “green front”, it could have been a lot worse, but it could have been better too. (See yesterday’s press release from the Sustainable Development Commission below). Not exactly the mega-recovery package that has been called for but not insignificant either: £525 million for offshore wind; £435 million for additional energy efficiency measures; £405 million for green technologies; encouragement for CHP; and new support for carbon capture and storage – with more details on this coming from Ed Miliband today. And all of that backed up by the new Carbon Budget – with a target of a 34% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020.

The papers today have good coverage of this. On the broader sustainability front, however, there’s been much less coverage. But both the new 50p rate of income tax and the projected levels of debt have highly significant sustainability implications.

Fairer taxes (I would argue) are a critical part of any sustainable economy. All the evidence shows that more equitable societies (i.e. with lower levels of income disparities) are more contented societies. The data on this has been compellingly brought together in a new book called “The Spirit Level”, which makes the case that almost all the worst socio-economic problems in society today can be traced back to chronic poverty. So, being very obvious about it, better-off people should pay higher taxes – and that’s as much a part of a sustainable society as very low carbon.

On the debt front, the bottom line couldn’t be clearer. We have indeed been living way beyond our means; levels of public debts are going to have to rise dramatically to bail us out of that mess; it will take many, many years before our public finances are back in balance – and the pain of that will be spread over the next generation of tax payers as well as this one.

Not good from the perspective of intergenerational justice that lies at the heart of the concept of sustainable development.

Sustainable Development Commission PRESS RELEASE:

BUDGET FOCUS ON LOW CARBON TECHNOLOGY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY TO BE WELCOMED – BUT MUST BE PART OF LONG-TERM STRATEGY

The Sustainable Development Commission welcomed the Budget announcement of £495million of additional funding for low carbon technologies and energy efficiency over the next two years, and called for this to be part of a committed, long-term strategy to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
But the Commission questioned the announcement of a £2,000 discount on new cars for motorists scrapping cars over 10 years old, arguing that under such a scheme, the cost per tonne of CO2 saved is very high. It also criticised the fact that no emissions requirements are attached to new vehicles.
Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, said:
“The transition to a low-carbon economy is the most urgent challenge facing the government – both economically and environmentally; and achieving this calls for a long-term commitment. While we welcome the investment announced in today’s Budget, this spending ceases two years from now, and its scale not going to put us on track to achieving the extremely ambitious targets of the Climate Change Act and its associated carbon budgets.”
The scale of green spending announced today falls far short of the £30bn a year for the next three years called for by the Sustainable Development Commission in its recent Sustainable New Deal. The report argued that only a commitment on this scale can ensure a globally-competitive, low carbon future for the UK. It argued that more than 50% of such a package would generate significant financial returns within two to three years, and could create at least 800,000 jobs.
Jonathon Porritt said:
“An investment strategy of the kind we have called for would create appropriate incentives for both the private and public sector, and would demonstrate the kind of unequivocal leadership that UK citizens are now ready for.”

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on April 23, 2009 12:37 PM | Permalink

Comments (3)

Jonathan, in your blog "Sustainability on the political agenda" you seemed to be unduly excited about this week's political activity. As you well know, any "big announcement" by politicians has to be very carefully scrutinised before drawing conclusions about what it really means, as opposed to what it says. In such announcements the politicians usually say what they think will attract votes, regardless of what they actually intend to do. DECC has already made it clear that on the energy front it will be concentrating on nuclear as the major RELIABLE source (its claimed support for renewables such as wind is purely for catching environmentalist votes). This and the continued use of power stations using fossil fuel, especially methane, will be the major electricity generators in the UK for many decades. DECC's Office for Nuclear Development has already chosen the sites for the new nuclear power stations due to be operational before 2020. Using the human-made climate change myth as a smoke screen, chairman Tim Stone said "If we are to reduce our carbon-dioxide emissions sharply, nuclear is not the only answer but it is a large part of that answer. The Government wants to make Britain the best place in the world to do nuclear business and it is clearly succeeding. .. This is a huge investment in UK plc. and will bring with it good long-term jobs and many business opportunities". No suggestion in those words of any "prosperity without growth". On the contrary, it promises "prosperity with lots of growth".

Tim Stone also stated that "Britain is fully committed to dealing with climate change" and this is apparently through reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions by humans. Politicians (like environmentalists such as yourself) appear to equate global climate change with global temperature change and rising global temperatures with the use of fossil fuels. Despite the continuing increasing use of fossil fuel, we have had 11 years of global temperatures falling. How will the Government deal with that? By their (and your) logic, trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will exacerbate this cooling trend, leading the globe towards another little ice-age.

As it turned out, Darling didn't make any "big announcements" in his (bankrupt UK) Budget, except to confirm that his November 2008 Pre-budget Report forecasts had been totally wrong (as all economists of any standing had told him). He totally ignored your opinion about "the desirability of the Chancellor announcing some kind of “green recovery” initiative" (see your blog "Pre-budget talk") and showed no initiative whatsoever. Despite your suggestion that "there are .. all sorts of initiatives urging the Chancellor to seize hold of this opportunity to demonstrate that behind all this talk about a low-carbon Britain there is some real substance" (same blog) there's not even substantial TALK about it, let alone any real action. As I've said before, politicians say whatever will attract votes and your three quotes (Mandelson, Milliband and Brown) in that blog were purely to attract the environmentalist vote, as were the minor "green" (re-)announcements in the Budget. As the next election approaches "The eloquence of the talk reaches ever greater heights" for the same reason. Although "On that basis, you’d expect something more than another dribble of stuff along the lines that we had in the 2008 Pre-Budget Report" the reality is that the UK cannot afford the economic stupidity of unnecessarily cutting the emissions of CO2 from our use of fossil fuel.

Darling added his support to these vote-catching words by announcing the plan to be the first country to set legally binding "carbon budgets" to combat global warming, with cuts in CO2 emissions of 33% in 11 years. (This will not be achieved, of course, but it kills two birds with one stone - environmentalist votes plus hefty fines imposed to help raise the money needed to pay off the UK's debts.) As that highly respected economist Bjorn Lomborg says about it "This is pure wishful thinking. No country in the world has ever managed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by a third in just 11 years. It will cost billions of pounds and the net effect will be to reduce world temperatures by one three-thousandth of a degree by the end of the century". It is reported the Government's own Climate Change Committee "last year estimated the switch to a low-carbon economy would .. shrink the economy by around £14 Billion a year by 2020". As I said in my post on Mark Lynas's blog "A New Green Era .. " on 19th April "To move to renewables or alternatives in the short term would be placing a totally unnecessary burden on under-developed economies and subject already deprived millions into even worse deprivation (Try reading Bjorn Lomborg’s “Cool It”)".

Regards, Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Warming Agnostic.

Posted by Pete Ridley | April 23, 2009 10:40 PM

Another book which has a similar theme to 'The Spirit Level'is 'The Gods That Failed':Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson.
Recommended as an excellent critique of free market dogma and its devastating legacy:all politicians should read it.

Posted by wendy | April 27, 2009 6:08 PM

Jonathan, Ed Miliband might on the one hand say that the Government will spend "£525 million for offshore wind; £435 million for additional energy efficiency measures; £405 million for green technologies; encouragement for CHP; and new support for carbon capture and storage" but watch that Darling "other hand" of Government. My post today on your "Renewables" blog refers.

Regards, Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Warming Agnostic.

Posted by Pete Ridley | May 18, 2009 12:38 PM

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