The
Cambridge Econometrics’ report for WWF last year claimed that the UK climate
plan would by 2030 add £565 to the average household
income, increase GDP by 1.1% and create 190,000 jobs while cutting emissions by
60%.
DECC
has made similar claims about the benefits and viability of it’s ‘green growth’
plan: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prosperity-and-growth-hand-in-hand-with-carbon-reduction
So is it really
possible to have economic growth, while cutting carbon emissions? Some say that
this might be possible in some affluent countries, since they can export their
dirty industrial activities and /or import produce produced (along with
emissions) elsewhere. But the report from the Global Commission on the Economy
and Climate ‘Better Growth, Better Climate’, says that economic growth and
action on climate change can now be both be achieved everywhere. It claims that there are major
opportunities in three key sectors of the global economy – cities, land use,
energy. By improving efficiency, investing in infrastructure and stimulating
innovation across these sectors and the wider economy, governments and
businesses can it says deliver strong growth with lower emissions.
The Commissions
chair, former President of Mexico Felipe Calderón, said the report ‘refutes
the idea that we must choose between fighting climate change or growing the
world’s economy. That is a false dilemma,’ and ‘shows
how technological and structural change are driving new opportunities to
improve growth, create jobs, boost company profits and spur economic
development.’ http://newclimateeconomy.report/
Lord Stern, one
of the Commission team, has stressed that what’s changed is that, crucially,
renewables are now getting cheap and we are also realising that the cost of
continuing to use fossil fuels is not just their ever rising direct costs, as
resources deplete, or the huge social and environmental impacts of climate
change, growing long term, but also the huge and immediate health costs of
emissions from coal - as witnessed by the air pollution crisis in some cities
in China. It’s said that this is
costing around 10% of their GNP. It’s getting similar elsewhere. So now making
the transition to renewables and fuel use efficiency makes massive economic sense and will strengthen economies.
It’s certainly
clear that innovation, increased efficiency and fuel subsitution can reduce
impacts, but on a finite planet surely there have to be limits on consumption
at some point? Renewables can, at least in theory, progressively replace all
fossil and fissile fuels. We can haggle over how long that might take (30-50
years?), and over what to do meanwhile. But by 2050 we ought to be on the way
to a sustainable energy system, in terms of energy resource use. However there
may be other resource limits which might constrain that global project- the
most obvious being land. That could limit how much biomass we can rely on. Wind (increasingly offshore), solar (on
roof tops) may not be land use limited, but there may be material constrains –
‘rare earth’ minerals especially, although substitute may be found and
recycling practiced. Water is another issue. Unlike fossil and nuclear plants, most renewabes do not need it for cooling, with the exception of Concentrated Solar Power plants, and water is not
something easily available is desert areas where they would be mostly
located. But they can also
be air cooled and water can be piped from the sea.
The general point
is that there are, potentially, technical fixes to most problems like
this. Which means we can have
growth in energy use, should we want it. Of course we must reduce energy waste as
much as possible- energy efficient energy use is vital. It saves money and
resources and makes it easier for renewables to meet needs. It also reduces any social and
environmental impacts from using renewables- they may be small and local, but
we want to minimize them.
What about other
limits to growth? There are absolute
limits to how much energy we can extract from natural energy flows and the
sun’s energy input to the planet, but these are some way off- e.g. there are
plenty of desert areas for solar and sea for offshore wind, wave and tidal
projects. By contrast, if we continue to expand our economic, industrial and
agricultural activities, we may come up against other limits much sooner. Again
land - and water- are obvious issues. To some extent you can use energy to make
fresh water (by desalination) but you can’t make land, and although we have
learnt how to use energy to increase the productivity of land, this can be at
the expense of soil quality. And,
more generally, the continued growth of a consumer society of the current type
is perhaps not something everyone wants – except perhaps those who are
currently excluded from it!
The ‘green
growth’ view is that all can share in it, but of course that ignores the vast
inequalities and imbalances that exist at present. As with all economic growth,
the benefits may only trickle down slowly and partially to the poorest,
reinforced by competitive pressures and the grim reality that the poor don't
consume as much as the rich. And at best, as the global population grows, and
if affluence spreads, we may still hit material limits imposed by the carrying
capacity of the planet. Some
greens think we already have and in any case object to what they see as
soulless consumer lifestyles. They seek a shift to a steady state global
economy, freed from endless pressure to keep expanding so as to sustain the
skewed social structure and rapacious economy. Certainly a shift to a more
sustainable approach to consumption would have many benefits, as Tim Jackson
highlighted in his seminal study ‘Prosperity without growth’, although winning
over the global majority to that view may prove hard: rising consumption is an
endemic expectation in most cultures: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781844078943/
Ultimately though
we may have no choice. The big question is whether we need to start on that
now, or, if as some fear, it’s already too late and we have it forced on
us.
For an optimistic
‘deep green’ views see: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-11-04/how-to-shrink-the-economy-without-crashing-it-a-ten-point-plan and http://earthconnected.net/egaia-2nd-edition/buy-or-download-egaia/
