I’ve been reading today about a new book, ‘Prosperity without Growth’, which has been written by economist Tim Jackson, who is Economics Commissioner for the Sustainable Development Commission.  It sounds full of really interesting ideas about today’s society and how we need to change.  He argues that our government and media are fixated by economic growth and by rises on the stock markets.  If our economy isn’t growing, the perception is that we’re getting less prosperous, and that’s bad.  If stocks and shares are low, pension funds do less well, meaning that we have less prosperous pensioners, and that’s bad too.

But there are now a growing number of economists and commentators who are starting to think that prosperity and growth are not infinitely linked.  Indeed, they think that soon, prosperity will be impossible WITH growth.  Tim’s argument is summed up brilliantly when he writes, “The idea of a non-growing economy may be an anathema to an economist. But the idea of a continually growing economy is an anathema to an ecologist.”

An ecologist would argue that we can’t continue economic growth indefinitely, because we live on a finite planet with finite resources and if we use up those resources through growth, eventually we reach a full stop.  An economist would argue that we can ‘decouple’ economic growth from resource use through the increasing efficiencies that capitalism brings and indeed that we can reverse the damage through growth too.

Jackson argues that decoupling is a myth.  If we continue to push growth, we can’t achieve the CO2 emissions reductions that are needed and we will continue to accelerate climate change.  What we need, he argues  is for governments to stop thinking short-term.  They need to look further into the future than the next day’s headlines – or even the date of the next elections when it comes to deciding economic and ecological policy.

He argues that the market won’t move in the direction of sustainable development without incentives.  According to the UN Conference on Trade & Development’s World Investment Report 2010, $400bn (£250bn) would be required every year between from 2010-2015 to make the shift to a low-carbon economy, and this figure could climb to £1,300bn a year by 2030.  This kind of investment can only happen through governments taking long-term decisions. It requires a sustained effort from both the public and private sectors across a number of years, to promote new, cleaner technologies, to develop renewable sources of energy, and to shift to more sustainable consumption.  And these efforts need to be applied holistically: it’s no good encouraging renewable energy if you’re simultaneously outsourcing food and energy production to palm oil plantations or soy-fed livestock farming, which drives deforestation in other parts of the world.

How do we achieve this massive shift?  Jackson argues that measures to prevent climate change should be enforced through human rights law – for example, the rights to food, water and development.  Human rights courts could treat serious ecological damage such as mining and deforestation as human rights issues, blocking developments that cause climate change.

So by making the transition to a low carbon society a human rights issue, human rights organisations can put pressure on governments to ensure that long term strategies for carbon reduction  are drawn up, adhered to and if necessary enforced by legal action.  This idea is similar to barrister Polly Higgins’ idea of drawing up the crime of ‘ecocide’, where significant damage to the environment becomes a crime against the planet.  But in Jackson’s premise, it’s the rights of humans to a decent life and environment, rather than the rights of the environment itself that would be protected.

And his suggestions for achieving ‘lasting prosperity’?  Well, for a start we all need to consume less “stuff” and to seek a type of prosperity outside the conventional trappings of affluence: within relationships, family, community and the meaning of our lives and vocations in a functional society that places value on the future.  I completely agree and indeed I wrote about some of this in this blog last October (albeit not so eloquently).  I’ve ordered my copy of Prosperity Without Growth today and am looking forward to reading it.

Supermarket chain Sainsbury’s is launching a new line in loo roll.  The cardboard tube inside is having its diameter reduced from 123mm to 112mm, but the number of sheets on the roll will remain the same at 240 and both the cardboard and the paper are Forest Stewardship Council certified, meaning that they are coming from sustainably managed sources.  The impact of the new slimline rolls is a big reduction in CO2 emissions, which is achieved by using less cardboard, less packaging and through reduced transportation costs.  More of the slimline rolls will fit on a truck, so less HGV journeys will be needed to transport them.

It’s a brilliant idea and is the product of a lot of research.  Sainsbury’s had to find out how much they could reduce the diameter of the carboard tube without making the new skinny rolls too thin to fit on customers’ loo roll holders.  And that’s really important, because in the UK, we use a lot of loo roll – about 50 rolls a year each – making us among the most enthusiastic wipers in the world!

This simple change is going to reduce Sainsbury’s loo-roll related CO2 emissions by a massive 140,000kg per year.  Other loo roll manufacturers should take note and do some blatant copying of what is a simple, but highly effective idea for reducing our CO emissions.  Sainsbury’s manufacturers have had to make major modifications to their production machinery in order to make the new tubes and there is  a six week exclusivity period, during which Sainsbury’s will be the only skinny rolls available.  After that, I hope every other major brand will follow suit and put their loo rolls on diets!

Some great news today for the environment.  Sales of low emission cars are growing in the UK.  In fact, almost 47% of new cars sold in 2011 emitted less than 130 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre travelled.    To give an idea of how much of an improvement that is, in 2007 just 10.6% of new cars sold emitted less than 130g CO2.

The average emissions of new cars sold in 2011 was 138.1g/km.  By 2015, average emissions must fall to below 130g/km to meet with EU targets and by 2020, average emissions for new cars have to be 95g/km or less.  High fuel prices, along with higher insurance and maintenance costs are influencing drivers’ buying decisions – it’s not just environmental concerns that are causing the shift.  What’s more, car manufacturers are designing and building increasingly fuel efficient cars, to the extent that a new car bought today is on average 18% cleaner than the average UK car and 23% cleaner than a car designed and built in 2000.

Petrol-electric hybrid and all-electric cars still only have a very small share of the market at 1.3% of new car sales, so there is a lot of scope for much bigger CO2 emissions reductions in the future, as electric vehicles become a more credible alternative to conventional petrol or diesel powered cars.  But it’s great to see that petrol and diesel engines are becoming very much more fuel efficient, thanks no doubt to the regulations that have been imposed by the EU.

So maybe this the start of a shift away from the internal combustion engine.  Engines are getting smaller and more fuel efficient.  Drivers are seeing that lower fuel bills, lower insurance and lower tax make greener cars more attractive.  This is a trend that looks set to continue.  We’re on the right track, but with more and more cars coming onto the road each year, there are no grounds for complacency.

There has been a trend in recent years to outsource certain elements of UK businesses to operations overseas.  Customer call centres are perhaps the most notorious example.  Worryingly, it seems that UK consumers have been doing the same, but with the things they buy and the result has been that our carbon dioxide emissions are effectively being outsourced too.

The UK’s emissions of carbon dioxide have reduced between 1990 and 2008 by 19% – mostly as a result of switching to gas rather than coal to fuel our electricity generating power stations.  But a new report commissioned by the Energy and Climate Change Committee has shown that the UK’s carbon footprint actually grew in that same period by 20%.

Why?  Well, it’s because we not only have cleaner power stations, we also manufacture less in the UK.  That means that our CO2 emissions have fallen.  But if you include the CO2 emitted by the manufacture of the goods that we import from other countries, China for example, we’re actually producing more CO2 than ever.  Many other countries don’t have policies on reducing CO2 emissions that are as stringent as our own.

Energy and Climate Change Committee chairman Tim Yeo said: “Successive governments have claimed to be cutting climate change emissions, but in fact a lot of pollution has simply been outsourced.”

It’s refreshing to see this honest approach, but it’s also a shame to find that we’re not really making any progress on reducing our CO2 emissions.  The trouble is that we’re such a consumer society.  We’re always buying new stuff and lots of it comes from overseas.  Just because it wasn’t made here doesn’t mean it has no environmental impact.

This demonstrates what we’ve known for a long time.  You can’t bring down carbon emissions in isolation.  No matter how tough regulation is in the UK, unless the rest of the world is playing its part too, significant reductions in CO2 emissions aren’t going to happen.  What’s needed is a global agreement.  But in the meantime, greater investment in renewable energy generation for the UK would definitely be worthwhile and would set us up nicely for a low carbon future.

It would seem that fracking (the hydraulic fracture of shale rock to recover shale gas) is to be permitted in the countryside near Blackpool in the northwest of England after all.  A review of the fracking operations, which caused two earthquakes in Lancashire of Magnitudes 2.3 and 1.5 has concluded that further earthquakes are quite likely, but that they will be of a magnitude too small to cause damage on the surface and would be very unlikley to produce an earthquake in excess of Magnitude 3.  If I were living in that area, I don’t think I’d find that expert assessment particularly reassuring.
Shale gas is found deep in the layers of sedimentary rocks like, generally several kilometres underground.  There is an estimated 200 trillion cubic feet of gas in the reserve that has been discovered under Lancashire – that’s more gas than is left in our North Sea reserve, so from that point of view, you can see why getting at it is appealing.
But if it’s going to cause earthquakes and possible pollution to groundwater, is it really such a good idea?  I can certainly sympathise with the local people who are against it.  There is to be a safety limit imposed on the frackers, so that if they cause an earthquake in excess of Magnitude 0.5, they have to cease fracking and take remedial action before restarting operations.  This is a much tougher limit than exists in other countries – Switzerland for instance has a limit of Magnitude 2.3 before operations have to stop.  But it doesn’t mean that earthquakes in excess of Magnitude 0.5, or even 2.3 will not happen.
There are frightening videos from the US showing what can happen when fracking goes wrong and the effects it can have on people living too close to the fracking sites.  In fact, on YouTube you can find numerous examples of householders showing how they can set light to their tap water!  Pollution of groundwater is another problem linked to fracking, as a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is pumped into the wells to cause the rocks to crack and free the gas.

Then of course there’s the fact that burning a load more gas is not going to help the UK to reach our targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.  Surely further investment in green, renewable energy would be a better move?
Tara, age 12, one of the winners of ‘Have Your Say on Sustainability’, the competition that we ran with Eurostar produced her own video on fracking.  She was able to present her concerns last month to a group of MEPs in Brussels as part of her prize.  She has really thought about this issue and it’s one that really concerns her and indeed could possibly affect her in the future.  You can watch her video here.  Give it a watch and see what you think.  Is fracking such a good idea?

Last week, Edinburgh Zoo’s giant pandas, who are, on loan from China failed to mate, despite or perhaps because of much anticipation and interest from the UK’s media.   Yang Guang (male) and Tian Tian (female) showed only a passing interest in each other when they were put into the same enclosure, despite the fact that Tian Tian was on heat.

In a strange way, I see the giant panda as a kind of anti-dodo.  Whereas dodos seemingly delivered themselves willingly to death and ultimately extinction at the hands of the Portuguese sailors who discovered them on the island of Mauritius in the 17th century, pandas seem to be wilfully resisting all human efforts to save them.  Female giant pandas are only on heat for 72 hours a year, while males only have 24 days a year when they are at their peak to reproduce.

In the wild, these normally solitary creatures are sometimes able to meet up at the right time to produce young, but in captivity, it’s even more complicated trying to find a time when both male and female are in the mood for mating.

There are just 1,600 giant pandas left in the wild, living in China’s mountainous bamboo forests.  Destruction of their habitat is now their biggest threat, though in the past, pandas were poached as well.  And pandas need a lot of bamboo.  They have the digestive system of a carnivore, yet for some daft reason, they have chosen to eat a diet almost exclusively based around bamboo, a very tough fibrous plant that’s very hard to digest and has very little nutritional value anyway.  That means that each giant panda spends up to 14 hours a day feeding and they can eat up to 38kgs per day of bamboo to stay well fed, which means that the very small panda population of 1,600 individuals could still devour over 22,000 tonnes of bamboo per year, which is almost 14 tonnes per panda!

With all that searching for and devouring of bamboo to do, it’s perhaps not a surprise that having babies seems a low priority to a panda.  For years, giant pandas have been a symbol of human conservation efforts and indeed, without human intervention, it does seem that this is a species that might have disappeared already.  It’s true that humans caused the giant panda to be endangered in the first place, but now as a species they seem determined to finish off the job themselves.

Captive breeding programmes have sometimes been very successful.  The golden lion tamarin, a monkey from the Amazon rainforest, has been brought back from the brink of extinction thanks to a worldwide captive breeding effort made by zoos.  But whilst I think it’s worth protecting the giant panda’s habitats for the future in the hopes that enough individuals will decide it’s actually worth keeping their species going, successful captive breeding of pandas seems very expensive, quite unlikely and possibly distracts from the captive breeding of species that can breed more successfully.

There is no doubt that we humans have caused countless species to become extinct in the past and our endeavours across the world still threaten many species whose habitats we have decided are more valuable to us than to them.   Whilst there are species like rhinos, elephants and tigers that still need protection from us because people will hunt and kill them to make money there are many more that are in danger simply because we want to turn the place they live into something else.

For example, rainforests in Indonesia are being cut down and burned to make way for palm oil plantations, reducing the habitat available for wonderful creatures like the orang utan.    Endangered species should definitely be protected from human activities, whether it’s hunting or habitat destruction.  I’m totally supportive of protecting as many species as possible and I would definitely advocate continued protection of panda habitats in the wild.  However, I think captive breeding is probably better suited to other species than the panda and that captive breeding efforts should probably be focussed on more enthusiastic species!