Speech on Sustainability

What is sustainability?  How about not cheating on your children?  Or, treating the world as if you intended to stay here?  So are we being sustainable?  Absolutely not.  For three reasons.  First, over exploitation of natural resources – oil, water, fish, species loss and pollution.  Second, over-population – a quadrupling of world population within the single century that has just ended, and with rising demands to share living standards at the level of the West.  And third, over pollution of the atmosphere from the global burning of fossil fuels leading to climate change.

Industry continues to press its own vested interests.  Not just the oil industry and the burning of fossil fuels which steadily intensify climate change, the greatest threat to the planet.  There are over a thousand chemicals in constant use which have never been tested, many of them a serious risk to human health and the environment.  Leukaemia clusters continue to be found near nuclear power stations.  Far too much waste still goes into landfill tips or incineration.

Airlines generate air pollution and noise, and increasingly contribute to climate change, yet are subsidised by VAT exemption on plane purchases and repairs and by yearly real terms cuts in fares.  Motor vehicles and air travel are the fastest rising cause of greenhouse gas emissions.  Power generation and transmission remains inefficient, leaking significant quantities of gases into the environment.  The construction industry builds few houses that are as well-insulated and energy-efficient as they could and should be.

None of these problems is insuperable, and many are being tackled, though usually too little rather late.

So what have we so far done to address this?  Although the Government’s industrial record in achieving our legally binding Kyoto Protocol commitments is good (we are on target), we have not switched away from fossil fuels, notably oil, or towards renewable sources of energy (solar, wind, biomass, tidal power) on anything like the scale required.    Coal, nuclear and gas still provide over 90% of our electricity, and renewables 4%.

Out of over 1,000 High Production Volume (HPV) chemicals in constant use in our environment, many are known to be Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic (PBT), or endocrine-disrupting (or gender-bending, changing the sex of fish or mammals), but the process of testing them, and banning them or substituting for them, is proceeding at a snail’s pace: Tony Blair, Chancellor Schroder and President Chirac not long ago wrote to the EU Commission to slow it down further.

Despite the epidemic of cancers over the last one to two decades, the nuclear industry refuses to acknowledge any responsibility, and therefore as Environment Minister I set up a new Committee balanced between all the relevant interests, to examine how far we have under-estimated the impact of nuclear radiation on human health by ignoring, or downplaying, the effects on people in the vicinity or nuclear reactors inhaling radioactive particles.  But the Minority Report which confirmed this was sidelined.

Landfills, unless engineered to the highest standards, are a potential risk to the environment and human health, yet we still generate 400 million tons of waste each year – enough to fill the Albert Hall every day – and over three quarters of household waste still goes to landfill.  Recycling rates, now averaging about 23% are improving, but still too slowly, and far behind other countries.

Air travel, like motor vehicles, are a major cause of global warming, yet, perversely, we the taxpayers still give the airlines which cause the problem huge subsidies every year amounting to £14 billion.

The building industry could do far more to improve housing standards through better roof and wall insulation, condensing boilers, and more Energy Efficient household appliances, but the industry continues to resist higher mandatory building standards.

So what are the lessons?

1. The Government is not sending the right signals to industry.
2. The public has too little understanding and industry is not given the leadership it needs.
3. Industry itself does not manage, measure and report adequately on its impacts.

1. What have been the examples of the Government not sending the right signals to industry?  Tony Blair has been toying with the idea of supporting the position of President Bush to end climate change targets, after the initial Kyoto Protocol phase, post 2010.  There has been no policy on car use since 2000, when the truck drivers’ strike forced the capitulation of the Government over the Fuel Duty Escalator.  There has been a tripling/quadrupling of air travel projected by the Government over the next 25 years which ends all serious carbon abatement from this source.  Nuclear energy is the wrong answer to carbon reduction – the cost, waste, terrorism risk, cancer/leukaemia risk – when the UK has (according to IAEA Technology) the capacity to generate a quarter of its electricity requirements from offshore wind turbines by 2020.  The building of over a quarter of a million homes in the South East has passed over the opportunity to regulate for higher and more energy efficient standards.  Measures systematically to secure greenhouse gas emission cuts in the domestic sector have been avoided, and there has been the failure to adopt Contraction and Convergence to give the UK a lead in international negotiations concerning climate change.

2. The classic example of a general lack of public understanding, for which the politicians (including me) are largely responsible, is the effect of cars on climate change and air pollution.  The Tories, rightly, introduced the higher petrol tax in 1993, raising the cost of petrol/diesel each year by 5% over inflation, to send a message to all motor vehicle owners that they were inflicting damage on the environment which had to be paid for and car use discouraged.  Did people get the message?  Virtually not at all.  The message they did get was that the price of petrol was going up too fast, they thought it was another stealth tax for the Exchequer, the lorry drivers besieged the oil refineries, and the whole policy of increasing environmental consciousness ignominiously collapsed.

So what are the lessons?
• A sensible policy is useless unless people have understood it and taken ownership of it.
• The principle of charging factory owners, car drivers and households for the external damage to the environment which their behaviour causes (“making the polluter pay”) is a good one, but the policy has to be accepted, and then the charges or penalties have to be large enough to provide a real deterrent.
• Much is being done, but much more could be done – especially regarding incentives rather than penalties, to raise customer awareness about the environmental cost.  For example, requiring labelling for household appliances, cars, and even houses according to their energy efficiency; using the tax system to penalise the use of virgin materials and to encourage the use of recyclates; allotting each household, according to its size and composition, a total amount of carbon emissions permitted per year, and then penalising those who use more, and rewarding those who use less.

3. It was agreed under the Government’s Operating and Financial Review (OFR) that the top 1,000 companies would report on their social and environmental impact which were material to the firm.  Gordon Brown, a few months ago, arbitrarily and unilaterally, abandoned that which I regard as a serious mistake.  There has been far too much reliance on voluntary agreements and codes of practice which are never effective.  Industry does need mandatory environmental reporting.  An OFR should be agreed now and should be mandatory.  In its place the Government emphasis is on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) which is seen as a soft voluntary option.  This is a cop out – we need much tougher cutting edge measures such as naming and shaming at home, and illegal damage to the environment abroad should be prosecuted and punished in the UK courts e.g. illegal logging in rain forests, degradation by oil companies (Shell – Nigerian delta), dumping toxic chemicals abroad.  The Government, Environment Agency and NGOs, need a collective campaign to raise penalties for environmental offences.

So what is needed to bring about a greening of industry?

Firstly, systematic reporting on CO2 emissions, energy efficiency improvements, resource productivity, water consumption, waste management and recycling, reduction in transport impacts (vehicle use/air miles), procurement leading to a green supply chain.

Secondly, a systematic framework to reduce emissions/pollution.   This requires an EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) and a National Allocation Plan (NAP).

Thirdly, a de-coupling of growth from environmental impacts.  This means the re-design of processes such as end-of-pipe technologies, cleaner processes and sustainable technologies.  What is required is growth while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, waste, transport impacts, material use, and energy consumption.  The preservation of natural capital – in other words preservation not running it down. 

Fourthly, how should the Government encourage the greening of industry?  We need a change to the tax system to penalise environmentally damaging behaviour and reward environmentally harmonious action. Government should tax the use of virgin materials and remove/reduce tax on recyclates.    There should be eco-labelling of all products including household appliances, cars and even houses.  Regulations needs to be introduced requiring fuller reporting of social and environmental impacts. The use of  Government procurement (worth over £300 billion per year) to encourage green products and processes.   On life cycle analysis,  the Government should devise and propagate a National Welfare Index or Genuine Progress Indicator to replace or operate alongside the conventional GDP and build up a green GDP.

I recommend the WWF Ecological Footprint which demonstrates that we will need two Earths not one by 2050.

So, I return to my original questions about sustainability.    How about not cheating on your children?  Or, treating the world as if you intended to stay here?