http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/ en Copyright 2009 Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:22:11 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy held their annual bash at the Royal Geographical Society, with the Prince of Wales handing out the Awards and giving a stirring speech. For me, this event is one of the highlights of the annual calendar – it’s just incredibly uplifting to hear about the kind of cutting-edge success going on around the world from the people who are actually making it all happen. In the context of climate change in the UK, I just want to highlight two of the 2009 winners. First is Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council – one of the unsung heroes of local government who have been doing their "sustainability bit" for the last 20 years. But their current home insulation initiative has really made people sit up and listen as it has succeeded in achieving real scale – where so many of the current measures are just picking around at the edges. Here’s what the Award citation said: "In 2007, Kirklees Council committed £10 million to providing free loft and cavity-wall insulation for every home in the borough where it can be used. The scheme targets one council ward at a time, using the local Councillor and local advertising, then individual home visits by assessors. By May 2009, 66,000 out of the 172,000 households in the borough had been assessed, 54,000 referred for surveys, 26,000 surveys had been completed, and 21,000 had insulation installed. This avoids an estimated 18,000 tonnes a year of CO2. 140 jobs have been created by the scheme." In my view, every Local Authority in the country is going to have to introduce schemes along those lines over the next couple of years. That’s the consequence of the ambitious targets that have now been adopted through the Climate Change Act. But, for many, "seeing is still believing", and there are lots of people who are not yet persuaded that doing full-on home insulation actually makes much difference. And that’s where the Sustainable Energy Academy comes in – by persuading those who’ve already done it to demonstrate how they did it to those who’d like to do it. "The Sustainable Energy Academy has set up a network of homes, mostly built before 1919, whose owners have installed measures to reduce carbon emissions by 60% or more. Measures include roof, cavity-wall, solid-wall and under-floor insulation; triple-glazed windows; draughtproofing; heat-recovery ventilation; solar and biomass heating; efficient lighting; and solar electric supply. The SEA provides training and support to enable owners to open their homes to the public, providing real demonstrations of how to achieve significant carbon savings. To date, 25 homes belong to the network, and over 36,000 people have visited them. SEA wants to increase the network to 200 homes across the UK so that people can easily visit one." Kirklees Council Phil Webber Kirklees Council Civic Centre 3 Market Street Huddersfield HD1 1WG www.kirklees.gov.uk/warmzone phil.webber@kirklees.gov.uk 01484 223568 Sustainable Energy Academy John Doggart National Energy Centre Davy Ave Milton Keynes MK5 8NG www.sustainable-energyacademy.org.uk john.doggart@s-ea.org.uk 020 7431 9314 By the way, the International Awards are equally, if not more inspiring. Check it all out on the Ashden Awards website ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/06/ashden_awards_1.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/06/ashden_awards_1.html Climate change Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:22:11 +0000 Cheltenham Science Festival is now in full swing, and on Wednesday I went along to listen to Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century. Great talk. However, we didn’t get the full value of Jeremy’s insights, as the festival organisers had stuck him on a panel with four other people, one each for nuclear, coal, wind and Energy from Waste industries. The last two did well (yes, there really is a good sustainability case for the kind of Energy from Waste technologies), but our friends from the coal and nuclear industries were just dreadful. They'd clearly been sent on media training courses, which produced a weird amalgam of the patronising, the banal and the downright dishonest. But at least we know where we are these days. Not so long ago, the nuclear industry would disdainfully acknowledge that there was a role for renewables alongside nuclear. Not a big role, but at least something to add to the overall supply picture. In the last few months, however, they’ve decided to move into full battle mode, on a "them or us" basis. As Jeremy puts it: "Those reluctant to abandon the nuclear and fossil-fuel status-quo have been reacting to all this with a fresh candour. In March, both EDF and EON advised the UK Government to cut back on renewables in favour of nuclear. The energy giants declared efforts to get 35% renewables into the UK’s electricity mix – as the Government intends – to be not only unrealistic, but damaging to nuclear plans. They said additional carbon-generating plants would be needed because of the intermittency of renewables." I’m sorry, but this is truly pathetic. Little more a year ago, these nuclear zealots were telling the world (including any prospective investors who would listen) that any new nuclear in the UK would require zero public subsidies. Hardened anti-nuclear campaigners such as myself and Jeremy fell about laughing – not one kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity has ever gone onto the grid, anywhere in the world, over forty years, without some kind of public subsidy. So why does anybody suppose that it’s going to be any different this time round? At least the big energy companies have now had the decency to come out and tell us at least part of the truth about their nuclear ambitions. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/06/nuclear_comes_clean.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/06/nuclear_comes_clean.html Energy Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:33:31 +0000 I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m finding it mighty difficult trying to work out whether these are good times or bad times for the renewable energy sector here in the UK. On the one hand, all the ‘big boys’ (Shell, BP, Scottish and Southern, and so on) have more or less given up and exited the country, and Vestas (the UK’s largest wind manufacturer) sent shockwaves round the markets last week by announcing that it was going to be closing its factory on the Isle of Wight. On the other hand, the British Wind Energy Association is full of confidence at the prospects for industry (particularly offshore wind), and not just for ‘big wind’. Its latest press release trumpets the conclusions of a new study from America demonstrating major growth in demand for small wind technologies (less than 50 KW). By all accounts, the UK is the world’s biggest exporter of wind turbines in this division, doubling its revenues in 2008 and creating 500 new jobs in the process. The recent Budget must have strengthened the hand of the renewables optimist, with an additional £500 million for offshore wind to be made available between 2011 and 2014, and £70 million to revive the Low Carbon Buildings Programme and provide new support for community heating schemes. That particular announcement must also have been very welcome to the UK photovoltaics (PV) industry. Back in March, DECC (the Department of Energy and Climate Change) went temporarily bonkers by axing funding for its solar PV programme – ostensibly on the grounds that it was proving “too popular”, depriving other technologies in the programme of their anticipated share of support. This is the kind of stop-start idiocy that has characterised the UK’s support for renewables (and PV in particular) going back over many, many years. Some have hypothesized during that time that this is all the proof you need of genuine conspiracy, not cock-up, engineered by a succession of senior civil servants in thrall to the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies. I, of course, couldn’t possibly comment on such scurrilous hypothesizing, but the intensity and frequency of the cock-ups do rather play into the hands of the conspiracy theorists. Perhaps that’s now all over? DECC has guaranteed a proper level of ongoing funding for PV, with “no more stop and start”. We’ll see. In the meantime, if I was an investor, I’d still be very wary. Incoherence in public policy plays straight into scepticism and ambivalence in capital markets. And that’s exactly the problem we still have here in the UK, on both the big stuff and microgeneration. http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/05/good_times_bad_times.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/05/good_times_bad_times.html Energy Tue, 05 May 2009 15:59:00 +0000 in practice. The reality is that the implications of having to get to an 80% cut in greenhouse gases by 2050 are unforgiving. Globally, countries like China, India and even the US (with very high dependence on very large coal reserves) just can’t do what they have to do without CCS, and CCS could be making a big difference in that respect just ten years or so from today - far quicker than nuclear power. That doesn’t necessarily make it right for the UK, but it does make it a big potential market for UK engineering. I can’t say I feel much enthusiasm for CCS. Its arrival will be testament to humankind’s utter folly in ignoring the build-up of greenhouse gases over the last twenty years, and a signal of desperate policy measures still to come. The imminent climate crisis means that there are a lot of things we’re going to have to do that we won’t be very keen on. Which makes it right for Ed Miliband to get this particular ball rolling. Click here for the full statement. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/uk_is_right_to_trial_carbon_ca.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/uk_is_right_to_trial_carbon_ca.html Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:10:13 +0000 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.” ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/the_budget_green_vs_sustainabl.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/the_budget_green_vs_sustainabl.html Government Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:37:22 +0000 I skimmed the newspapers this morning to pick up on any unexpected ‘green vibes’ around the Budget. Every indication is that there isn’t going to be any big “New Deal” brought forward, as part of a larger recovery package, although lots of ‘green lollypops’ will no doubt be there in the shop window. And almost certainly a number of them will cover transport. A £5,000 subsidy for purchasers of electric cars has been widely flagged plus a few tens of millions to subsidise charging points. Hopefully, we’ll also see some details around the Government’s earlier commitment to promote electric vehicles through the Low Carbon Vehicles Procurement programme. On the whole, this would be a good thing. The Committee on Climate Change has been very clear in its advice to government that the wholesale electrification of transport (apart from aviation!) is a precondition of meeting our long term targets on CO2 and other greenhouse gases. A lot depends on where that electricity will come from, but its good to see at least one little government toe in the water. And then there’s the whole debate about a possible scrappage scheme – with motorists getting up to £2000 to hand in their old cars and buy new ones. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has been lobbying ferociously to get this through, simply as a support mechanism for hard-pressed car companies. (Car sales in March were down 30% on last year). They argue it has worked in January in terms of new car sales, so why shouldn’t it work here? It might. But there will be zero sustainability benefits arising from such a scheme even if it does. Even if people buy slightly ‘greener’ models, there will still be very high emissions arising because of all the CO2 embedded in the manufacture of those cars. So the cost per tonne per CO2 saved is very high. Environmentalists have argued that a much better use of taxpayer’s money would be for the Government to support the establishment of low-carbon car clubs – reducing congestion, reducing emissions, and reducing costs for those motorists smart enough to realise they can get almost all the benefits they want from the use of a car, without the hassle of actually owning one. All of this will be a big test of Darling’s “seriousness of intent”, helping move transport policy just a little bit further down the road to its inevitable low-carbon destination. http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/transport_and_the_budget.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/transport_and_the_budget.html Government Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:44:03 +0000 The response to Peter Mandelson’s rather obvious point that Government is going to have to take a more hands-on role in shaping a low-carbon industrial strategy has been extraordinary. As if this marked some ideological reversion to old Labour at its command-and-control worst back in the 1970s! Work it out, guys. In the shortest possible period of time, we’ve got to move from an economy almost totally dependent on fossil fuels to one in which fossil fuels will be bit-part players in the energy mix. A 34% reduction in CO2 by 2020 (which the Government will announce as its interim target tomorrow) is just a taste of things to come. Which makes the debate about market-led or regulation-led interventions all but irrelevant. Markets only work when governments shape those markets to ensure the desired objectives – in this case, an ultra low-carbon economy. “Getting a realistic price on every tonne of CO2 “, to use Nick Stern’s phraseology, is of course a market mechanism – but getting us to that realistic price as fast as possible will be driven by governments not by markets left to their own devices. On which point, cracking good piece by Nick Stern in the Times today, laying down the law for Alistair Darling in terms of tomorrow's budget. Any new coal-fired power stations to have “carbon capture and storage” mandated by government as a condition of planning; government to re-think the third runway at Heathrow if the Committee on Climate Change indicates it can’t be done within the new carbon budgets; clear government leadership on efficiency and renewables, and a clear commitment to use public expenditure to help drive the new low-carbon industrial strategy. A lot of public expenditure: up to 1.5% of GDP. Part of which seemed to be what Peter Mandelson was saying about the need for a new kind of “low-carbon industrial activism”. However, I’m not sure he’s quite got Nick Stern’s equally powerful message about avoiding “lock-in” in terms of big, clunky, carbon-intensive infrastructure and investments. But perhaps we’ll hear more about all that tomorrow. http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/government_and_the_low_carbon.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/government_and_the_low_carbon.html Government Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:44:12 +0000 www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/SND_booklet_w.pdf ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/sustainability_on_the_politica.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/04/sustainability_on_the_politica.html Politics Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:59:59 +0000 Sustainable Development Commission’s magnum opus has landed. Prosperity Without Growth? was launched on Monday, representing the culmination of five year’s work. Tim Jackson, our Economics Commissioner has produced an absolute ‘tour de force’. And there’s a lot riding on this for the Commission. Way back in the mists of time, through the 70s and into the early 80s, there was an extremely lively debate about the compatibility between economic growth and big-picture resource and sustainability issues. Heavyweight economists batted academic papers back and forth; party political conferences formally debated the pros and cons of economic growth. All this was nicely stoked up by the two Opec-induced oil shocks, and even the media were all over it. Then oil prices came plunging back down, Jimmy Carter got stuffed by Ronald Reagan, and free-market fundamentalists began their long march through the knackered ranks of superannuated Keynesians. The consequence of which has been hardly any serious discussion about economic growth and sustainability since then. Unbelievable, in retrospect, as even a fool could tell you that if you continue to grow both the number of human beings and the volume of goods and services consumed by each of those human beings, on a planet with limited resources and stressed-out life support systems, then you are heading inevitably for a bust. Sooner or later. Politicians of all persuasions have hugely enjoyed their 20-year leave of absence. But it’s an inexcusable dereliction of duty to go on avoiding this crunch point in the light of what’s been happening over the last few years – with oil going to $147 a barrel, food reserves at their lowest level for decades, chronic water shortages the world over, accelerating climate change and so on. Paradoxically, the collapse in the global economy gives us some breathing space – but not much. If it’s back to business-as-usual, growth-at-all-costs as the sole route to progress, then biophysical reality will not long be delayed. Politicians have got used to using one get-out clause in terms of avoiding any intellectual encounter with that crunch point: decoupling. Just decouple the benefits of economic growth from its costs (or externalities, as economists call them) through technology-driven resource efficiency, and all will be well. If only. One of the toughest messages in "Prosperity Without Growth?" comes in Tim Jackson’s clinical critique of "the myth of decoupling". The reality is that even progress on relative decoupling (reduced environmental impact per unit of GDP) has been limited, whilst progress on absolute decoupling (reduced environmental impact, full stop - which is what we have to achieve) has been non-existent. That isn’t to deny the critical significance of decoupling. We desperately need far more of it than anything we’ve seen so far. Which means governments have got to do it, rather than just talk about it, even as they come to the inconvenient conclusion that it won’t be enough on its own anyway. Politicians may not want to hear these messages. But it’s our task to broadcast them much more loudly and much more clearly than we’ve done over the last 20 years. And "Prosperity Without Growth?" is what you need to make that happen. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/03/prosperity_without_growth.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/03/prosperity_without_growth.html Economics Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:34:55 +0000 all its energy (electricity, heat and transport) from renewables by 2020. Everybody knows we are massively off the pace at the moment – and even Ed Miliband at his most optimistic acknowledges that we haven’t got a hope in hell of getting from where we are now (performing worse than any other country in Europe, apart from Luxembourg and Malta) to where we need be without radical new measures. What we’ve got going for us at the moment is the Renewable Obligation Certificates scheme and the worthy but terminally inadequate Low Carbon Buildings Programme. The demand for its limited largesse (just a few tens of millions) to support the installation of photovoltaics and other micro-renewables is strong, and it’s already run out for this year. No more money, apparently, till the new feed-in tariffs kick in April 2010. That’s not good. But there’s something even more foolish going on. At exactly the moment when biomass boilers and the woodfuel industry is beginning to make a real difference, all grant funding has dried up until the new Renewables Heat Initiative kicks-in, in (wait for it!) April 2011. Between now and April 2011, as I learned recently on a visit to the UK’s first ever exhibition of woodfuel technologies (which could, by the way, meet all of the 15% target for renewables heat!), this nascent but strategically crucial industry will struggle to survive. And then I heard yesterday that Iberdrola (one of the biggest renewable energy companies in the world) is halving its investments in renewables in the UK, not just because of the credit crunch, but because of its very grave doubts about the UK Government’s renewables policy – and seriousness of intent. It really is bonkers, isn’t it? Old BERR clearly lives on in new DECC and Ministerial words clearly count for little at the moment. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/03/renewables.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/03/renewables.html Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:46:02 +0000 (Lord Mandelson, BERR) "The science says we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% to avoid the most catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change. We’ll have 20% of current emissions, with an economy that we want to be three times bigger. It’s not just a change, it’s a transformation." (Ed Miliband, DECC) "We can now build a new green economy. Rise to one of the greatest peace time challenges of all, that will not only help our country prosper, but will build a better, more secure and more sustainable world." (Prime Minister Gordon Brown) 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. To do that, the Chancellor has first to persuade himself that some further stimulus package is both necessary and desirable. Then he has to determine the overall scale of such a package (the eminent US economist Paul Krugman has urged all OECD countries to commit up to 4% of annual GDP – which for the UK would be around £60 billion) and then to determine what share of the total package should be devoted to "sustainability-specific" investments. And that’s where it gets really interesting. The NGOs are getting increasingly vocal about green tokenism: if the low-carbon, sustainability elements come in at less than 10%, say, then the 90% is, almost by definition, going to be "high carbon and unsustainable". That would hardly seem to fit with the green words from the Low Carbon Industrial Summit above. According to the new HSBC report (‘A Climate for Recovery – the colour of stimulus goes green’), the current sustainability percentage here in the UK is less than 7%. Compare that with China or South Korea.

Country/Region	Fund $b	Period	Green Fund $b	% Green
Asia Pacific
Australia	26.7	2009-12	2.5	9.3%
China	586.1	2009-10	221.3	37.8%
India	13.7	2009		0%
Japan	485.9	2009 -	12.4	2.6%
South Korea	38.1	2009-12	30.7	80.5%
Thailand	3.3	2009		0%
Subtotal Asia Pacific	1,153.8		266.9	23.1%
Europe
EU	38.8	2009-10	22.8	58.7%
Germany	104.8	2009-10	13.8	13.2%
France	33.7	2009-10	7.1	21.2%
Italy	103.5	2009 -	1.3	1.3%
Spain	14.2	2009	0.8	5.8%
UK	30.4	2009-12	2.1	6.9%
Other EU States	308.7	2009	6.2	2.0%
Subtotal Europe	634.2		54.2	16.7%
Americas
Canada	31.8	2009-13	2.6	8.3%
Chile	4.0	2009		0%
US EESA	185.0	10 years	18.2	9.8%
US ARRA	787.0	10 years	94.1	12.0%
Subtotal Americas	1.007.8		114.9	11.4%
TOTAL	2,796		436	15.6%

Source: ‘A Climate for Recovery – the colour of stimulus goes green’ (HSBC, Feb09) So if the Chancellor is going to do something in the Budget, it needs to be big. And that’s what the Sustainable Development Commission is going to be recommending in our forthcoming “Sustainable New Deal” paper. This really is the moment. If not now (with only a year or so before the next General Election), then one really has to ask when. I’d hate to think of all those fine words just left hanging in the wind. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/03/pre_budget_talk.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/03/pre_budget_talk.html Economics Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:24:13 +0000 I’ve always felt that logic and sound evidence provide a pretty solid foundation for good policy-making. But some issues are more amenable to logic than others, and population is clearly the least amenable of all. I’m in the population doghouse yet again. On 1st February the Sunday Times carried a front page story based on comments I had made that as we are heading off into some very troubled times, it would come to be seen as “irresponsible” for families to have more than two children. You’d have thought I’d advocated compulsory sterilisation, emasculation, euthanasia, and baby-slaughtering all in one fell swoop. Melanie Philips likened me to Pol Pot and Hitler (who was “green” after all!), and when Fox News in the US got hold of the story, every religious nutcase with nothing better to do crawled out from under their stones to suggest the best thing I could do to help address population pressure would be to top myself. Instantly. Logic and sound evidence were not much in evidence. So let’s just start all over again – here’s the logic, in 12 easy steps. 1. The more human beings there are on the planet, the bigger our collective impact. There were about 3 billion of us in 1950, and there will be about 9 billion by 2050 – if we just carry on as usual. That’s an extra 6 billion in 100 years! 2. Our impact is felt in many different ways – in terms of soil erosion, over-fishing, deforestation, water shortages, loss of species and habitats, and so on. Most particularly, it’s felt in terms of the rising emissions of C02 and other greenhouse gases that we’re putting into the atmosphere, with the prospect of horrendous consequences by the end of the century if we can’t turn this around. 3. Each individual is responsible for their own carbon footprint. Here in the UK, it’s about 12 tonnes per person per annum. In China, it’s about 4 tonnes per person per annum. It soon mounts up. Were it not for China’s ‘one child family’ policy (which is certainly very controversial), there would be as many as 400 million additional Chinese alive today – with a combined annual carbon footprint of around 1.6 billion tonnes of C02! 4. Population and environmental impact are therefore inextricably intertwined. New technology (around energy efficiency and renewables) can do a lot to help reduce that impact. But at the moment, the efficiency gains it gives us are not even keeping up with the combined increase in human numbers and economic growth. 5. Here in the UK, we have adopted some extremely ambitious targets to reduce emissions of C02 and other greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. On a per capita basis, that means going from around 12 tonnes per person per annum today to around 2.5 tonnes per person per annum by 2050 – if our population remains the same in 2050. 6. But it’s not going to! Current projections indicate that our population is going to grow from 61 million today to 77 million by 2050. Logically, that means there’s a lot less C02 to go round (in terms of our per capita allocation), making it all the harder to achieve that 80% target. (A target, incidentally, which many scientists now see as the absolute minimum which will be required in rich countries like ours). 7. It also means a lot more overcrowding, a lot more pressure on housing, on water supplies, on our trains, on our already congested roads and so on. 8. If you accept that this is a not very attractive proposition, and that it would be better to aim for a lower, rather than a higher population, there are two things that have to happen here in the UK. 9. The first is to allow into our country no more people than leave it on an annual basis. That’s called “net zero immigration”. This is not xenophobic, let alone racist. It’s just common sense. 10. The second is to see if we might persuade (please note, persuade, not coerce!) the 26% of women in the UK who are currently expected to have more than two children to ‘stop at two’. (The other 74% already do stop at two, or have one child or none.) If we did this, we would be able to cut our forecast population by around 7 million people. 11. Combine both policies (neither of which, I think you’ll agree, are that extreme, let alone threatening, let alone totalitarian!), and the consequences are enormous: instead of a population of 77 million, we’d have a population of around 55 million – 6 million fewer than we have today. 12. Amazingly, if we then applied ourselves to doing more or less the same for women the world over, during the course of the next 20 years or so, by the tried and tested means of improving education for all (but particularly for girls), including healthcare for all (but particularly for women), and ensuring a choice of contraception for all women so that they are free to manage their own fertility, without fear of oppressive religious and male-dominated constraints, then we might just be able to stabilise world population to something closer to 7.8 billion instead of 9.2 billion. And just work out what that means for climate change, the planet and all future generations. So that’s the logic. Of course, it isn’t as easy as that. The barriers are still huge. Many religious people still think the use of any contraception other than abstinence or the ‘natural method’ runs counter to the will of God. Many economists still think that a declining population will create an increasingly problematic imbalance between those at the end of their working lives and those whose taxes will be needed to support them. But there seems to be little reason, on either count, to declare that population must remain for ever a taboo subject, beyond rational discourse, worthy only of the rantings of Daily Mail columnists and religious extremists. So I shall stick to my guns on this one! As a Patron of the Optimum Population Trust, I shall be keenly supporting their ‘Stick at Two’ campaign. And as an environmentalist with a bit of a track record, I shall continue to point out to many of my colleagues that their continuing silence on the links between population, climate change and social justice is actually a betrayal of everything that they stand for – however ‘politically correct’ they may imagine it to be. http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/03/a_sustainable_population.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/03/a_sustainable_population.html Population Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:17:59 +0000 Environmental Industries Commission has pointed out in its excellent paper, Peter Mandelson at BERR has got to get his head around the new competition going on out there. Our already somewhat fragile and seemingly unloved green industries could find their competitive position totally undermined as governments the world over pile in billions of dollars in good old-fashioned subsidy programmes. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/02/green_new_deals.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/02/green_new_deals.html Economics Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:21:31 +0000 djerassi@stanford.edu First published in The Guardian, Comment is free, Tuesday 27th January 2008. I never blamed the pill for the fall in family size]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/01/dont_always_trust_the_guardian.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/01/dont_always_trust_the_guardian.html Population Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:19:44 +0000 Soil Association’s admirable contribution to the Job Summit will have got very short shrift. That’s a shame, as it makes some telling points, based on extensive research carried out by the University of Essex: • UK Organic farms provide, on average, nearly 2.5 times as many full time equivalent jobs as non-organic farms in the UK. • Jobs per 100 hectares were 14% higher on organic farms (at 2.49 jobs compared to 2.19 jobs on non-organic farms). Small organic farms with an average size of 36 hectares supported the greatest number of jobs (5.23 jobs per farm). • Organic farms are 3 times more likely to be involved in direct or local marketing (39%), compared to non-organic farms (13%). • Organic farming is attracting younger people into farming compared to the farm industry as a whole. On average, organic farmers in the UK are 7 years younger than non-organic farmers (whose average age is 56). • If all farming in the UK became organic, over 93,000 new jobs directly employed on farms would be created. Somewhat forlornly, the Report concludes: "Government policy for UK food and farming should explicitly encourage farming systems that provide greater employment in agriculture and in farm-based or local food processing and retailing." Fat chance. I suspect that the total pool of talent inside government, looking at this or any other sector of the economy, that is capable of advising on "job generation", must be very shallow indeed. It's a very long time since the spectre of very large numbers of people unemployed over very long periods of time was causing Ministers sleepless nights. Indeed, for the best part of 20 years, it's been ideological heresy to argue that it's legitimate to use taxpayers’ money either to protect existing jobs or create new jobs – except in exceptional circumstances. The ruthless pursuit of increased productivity (in terms of per capita Gross Value Added) at almost any social cost ensured that all the brownie points went to those who helped shed jobs rather than create them. Now that the Government has been forced into some kind of rolling, cumulative stimulus package, there is at last a new reality dawning. ]]> http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/01/agricultural_employment.html http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/01/agricultural_employment.html Economics Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:39:22 +0000