Out on the doorstep this month, the words ‘low-carbon economy’ were not exactly tripping off voters’ lips. But when they talked about gas bills, transport costs and a lack of jobs, that is exactly what they were asking for. Families in rented accommodation paying a disproportionate amount of their income on electricity bills because landlords haven’t installed double glazing and insulation; people living in villages with no bus service, struggling to pay for the petrol to get to work; communities still recovering from the loss of heavy industry, wondering where the jobs of the future were going to come from, but with large numbers of unemployed skilled workers who could be building the wind turbines we currently import.
With even the middle class being described as ‘squeezed’, it is tempting to ignore all of this, to fall back into the old thinking – that worrying about the environment is not that important compared to worrying about jobs and the economy. But these are one and the same issue.
Tying these together is our addiction to oil. Predictions of prices hitting $185 a barrel by 2020 are being confidently made. Unless the government is committing to massive public subsidies for oil-guzzling activities, food, transport and heating will become unaffordable for many people and whole sectors of the economy will close down.
Breaking with oil will make our economy more stable and resilient. Take organic food as a surprisingly instructive example. Usually thought a luxury for faddy, middle-class households, rather than shrinking in the downturn, organic sales have held up. And the reason is entirely related to their sustainability: organic farming has been cushioned from the oil price hikes as it does not rely upon energy-intensive chemical fertilisers. It operates in more local markets, so organic farmers are less sensitive to global price fluctuations. Since they do not sell corn to south America, they cannot hike their prices here just because people will pay more over there. As a result, the organic prices have remained stable. It may not be cheap food, but in the future, organic could be our best hope of consistently affordable food.
Furthermore, companies that embrace sustainable business practices have fared better during the economic downturn. One of the reasons for this is that the greener companies can access capital at better rates because they are judged to be exposed to less risk. Even markets are starting to recognise that the businesses most likely to survive escalating energy prices are those that use less energy, or alternative sources of energy. And they are also the ones that are doing the least damage to our environment.
So while we rightly point out that the coalition’s cuts are hurting the most vulnerable the hardest, we should also be arguing that its failure to invest in a low-carbon economy will continue to disproportionately affect the most vulnerable. The government might claim to be the greenest ever, but never before has the impact of climate change been felt more keenly. Unless we want an increasingly unfair and unequal society, we desperately need to see a government that does nothing less than kickstart the green revolution.