Food for thought in Susan Rudie's backgreen garden

Published on Friday 10 July 2009 19:00

THIS summer, Susan Rudie is happily tending vegetables in an east Edinburgh garden called Strawberry Field.

She is one of 120 people who have signed up to the Edinburgh Community Backgreens Association which, by reclaiming overgrown tenement gardens, grows food and fosters community spirit as well as helping to reduce Scotland's carbon footprint.

It is people like Susan that politicians need. For if the government is to meet its carbon reduction target and G8 nations are to limit the global temperature rise, our rulers will need to enter uncharted political territory. They will need to broach the subject of curbing GDP growth, and eventually cutting back our consumption.

For the first time since rationing, the Climate Act offers a legal frame of reference for this conversation.

Our target of 42 per cent carbon reduction by 2020 includes a provision to include the embedded carbon emissions of imported goods, including food.

Cultivating "dig for victory" areas, such as back greens, could become an important way to avoid these carbon emissions.

The logic behind a limit to growth, based on rising populations and finite resources, is nothing new. In 1798, Thomas Malthus said: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". Adam Smith recognised the limit in his Wealth of Nations.

Today's global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. This has come at the expense of the degradation of 60 per cent of the world's ecosystem. If the predicted 2050 population of nine billion aspires to affluence, the global economy would need to be 15 times bigger than today's. Regardless of ecology or ethics, this is not possible.

The Sustainable Development Commission, a government-appointed advisory body, is becoming more vocal in its calls for reconsideration of the fallacy of eternal growth. Its Scottish arm now calls for a "root and branch review of everyday life in Scotland in order to become a truly sustainable society".

At the moment, this is a particularly difficult conversation to have with the electorate, with the economy in such a fragile state.

American officials have privately told the media they cannot cut emissions as fast as the science requires, because the issue is still too politically contentious in the US Congress.

Back in Edinburgh,

the Backgreens Association is moving into more direct climate change action, through a grant from the government's Climate Challenge Fund. It will help residents achieve energy efficiency in their stairs and install bike storage sheds.

Many of the knotty issues of relentless economic expansion are covered in the Sustainable Development Commission's March think-piece, Prosperity Without Growth? in which Professor Tim Jackson acknowledges: "The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability. When growth falters – as it has recently – politicians panic. Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries."

The piece offers alternatives to measuring economic output and accounting for renewable energy investment, as well as a shorter working week.

It also proposes more green investment by government, accelerating technology through a narrow "window of opportunity" to meet carbon reduction targets.

If these tough decisions are not made by government, global trends will make them for us. Many believe the first catalyst will be rocketing energy prices, caused by diminishing oil reserves and rising demand from the developing world.

When we reach the peak of oil production, it is argued, economies will shift away from the globalisation cheap energy allows, bringing localisation back. Many expect peak oil to be reached in the next five years.

Transition Towns are driven by this philosophy. Local activists in areas such as Biggar and Dunbar engineer "energy descents", including market gardens and installation of micro-renewable energy.

As the Transition mantra goes: "Climate change makes this carbon reduction essential; peak oil makes it inevitable."

&#149 Charles Henderson is managing director of Climate Futures

&#149 www.climatefutures.co.uk