and dislike wind power in particular. In order to keep these people onside, Osborne seems to want to do something to please them.
But many people from all backgrounds roundly reject Osborne’s views. What is really interesting to see is how his analysis is thrown out by business – the very group he says he is speaking for! And it’s not only the green and clean companies who say he’s wrong, but also the mainstream Confederation of British Industry (CBI). John Cridland, the CBI’s director general, said last summer: “The so-called choice between going green or going for growth is a false one… With the right policies in place, green business will be a major pillar of our future growth.”
Cridland pointed out that the green parts of the economy, for example renewable energy, delivered a third of the UK’s growth in the previous year. This was a really significant intervention. If the head of the CBI says he got it wrong (and he did) then Osborne is dangerously isolated. He has nonetheless done a lot of damage.
One obvious effect has been in relation to investment in renewable energy. Delays in policy decisions caused by Treasury scepticism have led to investors putting on hold their own plans to invest in the UK economy, thereby causing the exact opposite to what Osborne said he wanted; and far from helping the UK’s recovery, he is stopping investment, squandering opportunities for green growth, and losing jobs.
So much for slogans like “Vote blue and go green”, which were put to the electorate before the last general election by the Conservative Party, or indeed comments made after election by the prime minister to the effect that we would see the “greenest government ever”. Neither has been the case, and the main reason is the Treasury, and the man who leads it: Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
This is not to say that the Conservative Party lacks green thinkers with track records. It does have them: for example Tim Yeo and Zac Goldsmith in the House of Commons, and the likes of Lord Deben (John Gummer) in the House of Lords. The question is, what direction will the party take in the run-up to the next general election? Will it allow the Treasury to continue to drag the country back to the 1970s, or can it still change direction?
Sooner or later economics and ecology will need to be recognised as the two complementary faces of the same coin. The longer we leave it in making that the case, then the more difficult, expensive and complicated it will be to do it. George Osborne is unfortunately wasting a lot of time, and in the process doing a lot of damage. It is time he and other Conservatives realised how disastrously out of touch Treasury policy has become, and changed those policies before too many more UK companies suffer from its ignorance and ineptitude.
Tony Juniper is a sustainability adviser and writer. His new book, What Has Nature Ever Done for Us? will be published in January 2013.
Pricing
The takeover of environmentalism by the neo-liberals is not a paradigm but a confidence trick, warns Paul Evans
There were very few butterflies around last summer. Although I saw plenty of meadow browns, they’re dull and nowhere near as exciting as many other species, which have been absent. I feel this physically and emotionally; it has affected my wellbeing so I think I deserve compensation. If I compare my feelings about the loss of butterflies to an injury I sustained in a traffic accident, I’d say it’s worth about £1,500. No butterflies = a pain in the neck.
If environmentalism can be said to have soul, this is where we fight for it
Water, air, food, aesthetic quality, wildlife: the ecosystem does indeed provide me and everyone else with services we value greatly, and I appreciate they carry a cost. There are many academics and institutions working on what the environmental journalist George Monbiot described in a recent article for The Guardian as “natural capital”, “ecosystem services”, “green infrastructure”, and biodiversity and habitat “asset classes” within an “ecosystem market”. There are people working on toolkits to identify and describe ecosystem services. Thus they are creating markets from methods of valuation for these things, and economic instruments through which ecosystems can be both exploited and protected through pricing. My problem is that my willingness to accept the market approach is coloured by the opinion that it’s stupid, irresponsible nonsense.
The neo-liberal takeover of environmentalism is not a paradigm but a confidence trick, perpetrated by market forces and supported by complicit environmentalists more interested in corporate goals than in anything as antiquated as Nature. As such, it will crumble if enough pressure is applied by those prepared to articulate intrinsic value in Nature and the kind of care that stands up as advocate, rather than stands in as manager.
This requires a cultural project that explores value, not price, and socio-economic alternatives to the marketdriven commodification of Nature: a job for the truth and reconciliation process that emerges from the joining of Resurgence with the Ecologist. If environmentalism can be
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Resurgence & Ecologist
November/December 2012
