The chancellor's tie may have been green, but otherwise, the Budget left environmentalists feeling rather blue. Nothing substantial bar some vagueness on the Green Investment Bank news, and other individualised commitments, such as the promise to review airline passenger tax and an increase in landfill costs.
Interesting though to ponder, is the VAT increase. You could argue that a tax on consumption, is to some degree, a green tax. Particularly for those who argue that less is most definitely more in sustainability terms. This ties into the thinking that GDP itself is an insufficient measure of the 'triple bottom line'.
Within this argument, growth at any cost itself is to some degree the wrong aim for the economy (just as profit at any cost has been criticised within the banking sector). Let's give up on the pursuit of growth, argues Professor Tim Jackson. Radical.
But if the economic effect is as some economists fear, and it squeezes spending, then the drop in consumption is not the type of green progress we can get excited about. The hope is that these more austere times bring forward innovations in the products we buy, how we buy them, and the full supply chain, that mean not less consumption per se, but more sustainable consumption.
This is down to the customer choices we make, and how business can lead and harnass these progressive choices - getting ahead of the curve to provide the services and products that will be the green equivalent of the next industrial revolution - far more than any Budget announcements.
Posted by Clare Moore-Bridger
Leave a comment...
< Back to list