Green House Gas

If knowledge is power then Tim Jackson's book Prosperity without Growth should have moved the political debate. By now our politicians should have been making plans to shift our central economic objective from growth to sustainability. The book, and the report for the Sustainable Development Commission on which it was based, provided the evidence: where is the policy that should duly follow?

Instead, the government abolished the Sustainable Development Commission during its 'bonfire of the quangos' just three months after its election, giving the lie to the mantra about evidence-based policy-making, as well as its claim to be the greenest government ever. The evidence that the late capitalist paradigm is suicidal is all around us: what we need is to turn that knowledge into meaningful change.

To take a step forward towards that end a group of green-minded academics and politicians are launching a new thinktank: Green House. Its commitment is to a politics of hope and to a greater confidence in the new paradigm in social and economic life that has been built up since the environmental movement arose in the late 1960s. The strategy is one of 'reframing', so that policies which seem disconnected and extreme come to be the common sense of tomorrow.

Caroline Lucas MP will launch the Green House thinktank in central London on 21st July. The launch will begin at 9.30 am and will be held at the Westminster Friends Meeting House at 8 Hop Gardens, off St. Martin's Lane, WC2N 4EH.
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Rage of a Porritt Spurned

What a pleasure it is to find Jonathan Porritt on rampagingly good form. In a post yesterday he bemoans the passing of the Sustainable Development Commission, of which he was formerly chair, and indeed of any commitment to sustainable development from the Condem government.

This doublespeak is becoming something of a habit with our government. We have numerous examples locally, where our MP tries to portray himself as a defender of the very local services which his government is forcing us to cut. Then we have the odious Pickles portraying the privatisation of public services as something we should feel empowered about.

In case you cannot cope with this level of rage you may enjoy a light-hearted paper called Japan's Phillips Curve Looks Like Japan, whose only reference is a paper called 'All Meat Looks Like South America'. The Phillips Curve is a rather nasty piece of economic theory that says there is an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. This can be interpreted as the suggestion that we need unemployment to keep prices under control. The theory is not very well supported empirically, suggesting that its primary motivation is political.

In the paper cited,* you can see a clear relationship between the two variables in the case of Japan, but not what you might expect. As shown in the figure what we ascertain is that the datapoints produce a pretty picture of the country itself. Aw: isn't that sweet!

*Thanks to Tom Lines for sending me this link. Tweet

Sustainability Watchdog to be Put Down

Producing a report, as a government body, that recommended ending economic growth was always a risk. It seems that the Sustainable Development Commission just went to far, when its economics commissioner Tim Jackson did this last year. Reports suggest that the closure of the SDC is to save money, but with such an absurdly small budget this is surely just political cover.

For more than ten years now, the Sustainable Development Commission has been trying to do what I, and many other green commentators, think is impossible: persuading those who hold power in business and politics within this paradigm that they should take a path that does not threaten the planet. They did this politely, and in a measured way, backing their arguments up with clear and irrefutable evidence.

This result is that the SDC has been closed. This is surely evidence in itself, if such evidence were needed, that the existing power structures cannot be changed incrementally, from within. We need to recognise that the political system we struggle with will not allow us make the changes that the planet needs - the Westminster system of power and its corporate lobbyists are corrupt from top to bottom.

Tim Jackson's report was the latest and clearest statement of the total incompatibility of capitalism with sustainability. He may not have phrased it in those terms, but since capitalism cannot survive without growth, to challenge growth is to challenge capitalism itself. So I am not surprised that the SDC has met its doom; I only hope that those who thought that the art of persuasion could be successful will learn this lesson and have the courage to join us in building the new paradigm outside the mainstream. Tweet