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A Dogma That Has Had Its Day

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks, and that is why we need a different kind of economics, a system that is fit for the 21st century and the many unprecedented challenges it brings.

28th November 07 - Tony Juniper, The Guardian (UK)

Last week, Gordon Brown went a striking shade of bright green, talking about the need to cut our carbon dioxide emissions by up to 80%. This week, we appear to be back to normal, with a speech to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) that called for the expansion of Heathrow, an overhaul of the planning system (which will very likely increase climate-changing emissions from new infrastructure, including incinerators and bigger roads), and a reminder that new nuclear power stations remain high on the agenda.

On airports, the prime minister said that "We have to respond to a clear business imperative and increase capacity at our airports ... our prosperity depends on it ... And this week, we demonstrated our determination not to shirk the long-term decisions, but to press ahead with a third runway" (at Heathrow). While last week the business imperative was, quite rightly, on low-carbon development, this week the old economic dogmas have resurfaced, and as usual, they are covered in tarmac.

Similarly short-term and ecologically flawed logic has been applied to an analysis of the planning system. "Planning - which we all know that despite recent changes remains too inflexible. Following the case put in the Eddington and Barker reports, the legislation which will be published tomorrow will put in place a streamlined system for making decisions on key national infrastructure projects," he said.

The streamlining that ministers have in mind will downgrade environmental considerations and will limit the say that communities and people have in decisions that affect them. If the government's proposals are turned into new laws, your role in determining whether or not you will get an incinerator at the end of the street will in future be far more limited, to not much more than having an input to the design of the gates.

On both counts, the proposals from government are conceived from a rather outdated view of competitiveness. Because the French have a growing national airport outside Paris, we must have one that is bigger still outside London in order to compete. That is basically the message being put by ministers last week in the context of a process to consider if we should build a third runway at Heathrow. Even in conventional terms, the economics of airport expansion are arguable, and if we look at the issue through the prism of the findings of the Stern review on climate change (which told of the economic costs of continuing with high emissions), then surely a different conclusion should be reached.

In a world of massive carbon constraint, never mind peak oil, would it not be economically more rational to foresee that competition will very soon have a quite different meaning? Rather than being about who can build the biggest airport with the most centralised planning system, it seems to me that competition will soon be about who can build the lowest carbon economy and use energy most efficiently. Countries that can assist the emergence of the companies and industries that fit this new economic situation will be the most competitive - not those that can invent more "efficient" means to harness the influence of the state behind policies that will, in many cases, increase emissions.

There was also a reminder that a new generation of nuclear stations is in the offing in the UK. Following flawed consultations, it looks as though we will get the decision to go ahead for new ones in 2008. This was in a speech that said how Britain needed to "leave behind the old policies of yesterday" and, instead, to make new long-term decisions on planning, the environment and energy so as to be a leader in the 21st century.

I'm all for new thinking and the UK being a leader, but nuclear is very much old thinking: of centralised generation, of cold war politics and unfulfilled technological promises. As for being leaders, our future is surely in clean, sustainable and renewable power systems. Going nuclear would more benefit the French companies that will most likely be the manufacturers of the plants we would use. There would be more global leadership potential from assisting a conversion toward renewable power systems based on the vast engineering skill and capacity we have developed on the back of North Sea oil and gas.

The timing of today's speech coincides with a new CBI report on cutting carbon. Ditching what had become its kneejerk anti-regulation and pro-market reaction to environmental challenges, the CBI called for strong government intervention in creating a new economic dynamic. This suggests to me that Gordon Brown has more room for manoeuvre than today's speech set out. There is an appetite for a different approach, and he now needs to seize the initiative, not to trot out the tired old thinking of the late 20th century.

The prime minister clearly understands that change is taking place in ways that render many past policies well past their sell-by date. Today, he observed that "as we prepare and equip ourselves for the future, many of the policies of the past are out of date, with no answers to be found in old dogmas." Too true: you can't teach an old dogma new tricks, and that is why we need a different kind of economics, a system that is fit for the 21st century and the many unprecedented challenges it brings.

Tony Juniper is director of Friends of the Earth. He spends his days campaigning for a more sustainable society, both in the UK and worldwide.

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