Reform joins the dirty brigade
Reform, a right-leaning think tank, has published a report arguing that the billions spent on subsidising the green agenda would be better spent on the UK’s basic infrastructure.
It is (rightly) embarrassed by the fact that the UK is the sixth richest country in the world and yet has a transport, utilities and communications infrastructure ranked 34th in the world, below Namibia and Spain.
To argue that that the Government should think about actually having a joined up strategy for infrastructure is absolutely right; its investment record in this area is poor at best and negligent at worst.
To argue, however, that this should be done in a way that excludes any consideration of sustainability or climate change impact is to miss the point of where we are, globally, in terms of depleting energy resources and the realisation that we need to consider new ways of generating energy, working and transporting goods and utilities if we are to come out of the other side of the current economic recovery with a global business model that is sustainable (in the traditional business meaning of the word).
Yet Reform has clearly positioned itself in this area by labelling green tech initiatives, such as offshore wind turbines, as white elephants. What the think tank does not merit worthy for consideration is the answer to what exactly will fuel the engines that will traverse this world class infrastructure after their master plan is complete.
Nor does it entertain the notion that perhaps a call for serious infrastructure improvement should take into consideration the new ways of working and transporting physical goods and electronic services, which smacks of short-termism and a clear alignment with the sentiments expressed, just prior to the publication of its report, by HM Treasury and RBS in the High Court case I reported on earlier this week.
If you add to this the (continuing) actions motivated by climate change denial of the US Chamber of Commerce (despite the spoof volte-face that nearly went global earlier this month!), the evidence suggests that there is a growing movement of right wing, free market, objectivist lobbying that seeks to convince us that the best way to make us all feel better is to ignore the reality that is being shown us by science and drilling reports and to revert to the old paradigm of throwing money at ‘stuff’ without any serious consideration of whether that ‘stuff’ has any relevance in a new global economy that will be based on, and subject to, dramatically different drivers to those that ruled in the run up to the current century.
There is an old sales saying that goes “the things you did yesterday, to get you to where you are today, will not get you to where you want to be tomorrow”.
As Adrian Wilkes, chairman of the Environmental Industries Commission, commented in response to the publication of the report, the authors are out on a limb and going against the consensus of a growing number of governments, not just Britain’s. “The problem is that we are dealing with a market failure here,” he said. “[..] If you don’t factor in the cost of carbon or any other kind of pollution, your market system is going to be fatally flawed.”
If the business community allows itself to be lulled into a desire to return to the business practices of the ‘good old days’ by bodies such as the ones mentioned, we run the very real risk of rebuilding an irrelevant and, ultimately, doomed business model that will only hasten the arrival of the next economic crisis; one that we may no longer have the resources to trade out of.
We should not let Vince Lombardi’s words become the epitaph of the UK and global economy, “We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.”
