Environmentalism in a recession
As Europe at least is in danger of sliding back into recession (or worse), how does this affect the environmental agenda? Indications are that greenery may suffer.
On a global level, the nations which are taking the most positive steps to protect the environment are rich ones. Arguably, they were also in the vanguard of causing damage in the first place – Blake’s ‘dark Satanic mills’ would have been an unpleasant reality for factor workers and their families once the Industrial Revolution got underway – but they also saw the need to clean up the air and water and had the resources to do so.
And it wasn’t just about water and air quality; landscapes and wildlife have become valued and protected. Zion was the first US national park, set up in 1916. Brits had to wait until 1951 for their first national parks, but pressure for their formation had started decades earlier.
In the lifetimes of most of us, standards of environmental protection have increased enormously. Both air and water quality are much improved and, despite the pressures of population growth and infrastructure development, many otherwise-threatened wildlife species are protected.
Contrast this with two other examples. First, the ex-Communist states of eastern Europe were responsible for large scale industrial pollution. Centrally planned, inefficient production of large quantities of poor-quality products trumped concerns about air and water cleanliness. The tragic, enforced experiment of the two Germanys illustrated the gulf which could open up between two parts of one country in only a few decades. Second, look at developing countries. China is currently going through its own dark Satanic mills phase, but is certain to follow the trajectory of the West and clean up its act before too long.
But in countries where people scrape a living either from subsistence farming or in a hand-to-mouth existence in urban slums, environmental concerns are far from top of the agenda. Areas around settlements are stripped of firewood, which is then burnt indoors on inefficient stoves whose smoke causes serious health problems. Poor quality soils give pitifully small crops without proper fertilization, and erosion by wind and water makes a bad situation worse. From our comfortable urban and suburban lives it is tempting to idealise poor farmers as living in harmony with nature, but the squalid reality suggests differently.
Until the basic needs of life are met – adequate, nutritious food, decent housing and clothes, running water, sanitation and a power supply – environmental concerns will take second place. But as we luckier ones tighten our belts, what influence will that have on green living in the rich world?
One indicator which is quite sensitive to income is the purchase of organic foods. The organic brand has been developed effectively to become a premium quality label. One of the claims made for it is environmental friendliness (of which more in a separate newsletter) and many purchasers see this as a plus, together with perceptions of healthiness. In 2008 the Guardian reported that, after years of steady growth, sales of organic food in the UK had dropped from £100mn to £81mn per four-week period (Shoppers lose their taste for organic food). Since then, the evidence seems to have been of continued depressed sales.
That’s something which is down to consumer choice. But there is also continued pressure from other directions. The German, Spanish and now UK governments have cut back the generous feed-in-tariffs which have made solar panels installations such an attractive proposition for those who can afford them. The price has fallen quite significantly as production has ramped up, particularly in China, but the unwillingness of European governments to use taxpayers’ money to keep funding an unsustainable solar bubble will cause problems for manufacturers left with excess capacity.
The lower level of economic activity in this time of economic uncertainty should, all things being equal, bring down carbon dioxide emissions. Certainly, it has hit the emissions trading scheme (see, for example, Carbon markets plumb new depths as price falls below €8 a tonne). In practice, as I reported in an earlier newsletter, carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, since it is China and other dynamic economies which are forging ahead at present, with the EU increasingly looking like an outdated backwater in global terms.
But even politicians in this still comfortable backwater are beginning to rein in their green rhetoric. It no longer seems quite so attractive to be out in front taking the lead on emissions reduction, particularly when no-one else seems to be following. There is a nascent sense that we can no longer afford to make ‘investments’ (aka subsidies) in renewable energy and other green technologies unless they make longer term economic sense.
In recent decades, environmental protection has become mainstream and widely accepted as a public good. But, when times get hard, newer environmental policies get reassessed against other priorities. For the foreseeable future, it is very likely that the pendulum will begin to swing back towards basics such as keeping the lights on affordably and away from expensive and difficult-to-justify green energy projects.
