Green dream depends on economic forces

Published on Tuesday 6 May 2008 09:12

IMAGINE a world without flowers and/or orangutans. What type of world do you wish to leave your children? And not just your children but your children's children?

Wouldn't it be nice if we could all live together in a green world with lots of clean air? Now stop using all that petrol and go plant some trees. And recycle more while you're at it.

This is more or less the hard-hitting sentimental guff that politicians have been trying to sell us for a number of years now. Unless I'm grossly mistaken, it hasn't been that effective.

The last time I looked, there were no major wind farms being constructed all over the country, as one might expect if the public demanded that the country clean itself up. Nor has there been a mass nationwide spurning of car travel in favour of cleaner, greener sources of transport.

This, by and large, is because people don't care. People will nod like donkeys to whatever questions a pollster puts to them about an environmentally cleaner future – after all who wouldn't like cleaner air or a happy future for orangutans, particularly when all it involves is saying "Yes" to a man with a clipboard?

But people are generally much better at agreeing that "something must be done" than doing it themselves.

It's one thing to tell the man from Gallup that we need to combat global warming; it's quite another to make substantive changes to your own lifestyle. And please, cutting out the plastic supermarket bags in your life doesn't make you the Joan of Arc of recycling.

Combine public indifference with politicians who lack any genuine leadership skills – would the army promote as leaders people who could only lead in non-dangerous situations – and you have a set-up that is geared towards inaction.

Thankfully we have the market to save us. By this I don't mean the farmer's market. Welcome though their individually milked honey bee produce is, the scale of such endeavour might salve weekend consciences but it won't undo the effects of a food system that has seafood sent to Thailand for processing before being sent back for packing in Arbroath. That's going to take the market to fix it.

There was only ever going to be one thing that ultimately affects consumers: price. No amount of winsome television ads with children puffing at dandelions will ever have the effect on petrol consumption that doubling the prices will.

All the measures that most people now appear to be trying to take to reduce their petrol and/or energy consumption could have been taken ages ago. The only reason they are doing so now is price.

When government operates on a system of pandering to their people, by refusing to put in place measures because they lack the leadership skills to sell them and retain their jobs, then the market will at some point step in with measures that are far more brutal and indiscriminate.

What has been one of the most controversial undertakings in Edinburgh in recent years? The trams.

Were politicians wise to force this through? Given that the era of cheap energy is dead and rotting, the prescience of that decision seems all the more astounding. The fact that there are still some who cannot see that mass public transportation schemes such as this are the only way forward, even in the aftermath of the Grangemouth fiasco, says a lot about collective wisdom.

With the market now dictating the green "choices" we will be forced to make for the indefinite future, it's worth reflecting how much easier it is to think and plan ahead with vision and leadership.

Man of experience

The fact that Alex Salmond appears to be winning over Scottish businesses to his cause should not be that surprising.

The difference between Salmond and what has gone before him, and what currently sits in opposition, is that he has actually worked in business, as an economist.

The dearth of MSPs with worthwhile business experience explains a lot of their ineffectual posturing. And being on the government payroll doesn't count. Just because you are good at taking taxpayers' money in your salary does not mean that you know a lot about taxpayers' money.

All it shows is that you know how to spend, and not how to create.

Brown's cul de sac

The demise of the Labour Party in England and Wales is just desserts for a succession of arrogant gestures – including the 10p tax band idiocy. The incessant crowing about being an Iron Chancellor when times are good means that when things turn bad economically, there is nowhere to hide; you've already claimed credit for everything economic. Congratulations for manufacturing your own cul-de-sac.