Letters

Critical friends

Is Green Futures getting it right? We’re aiming to show that a sustainable future is both desirable and possible. Of course it’s not a done deal,  far from it; so we look for solutions, for positive steps. In one reader’s view, this risks spreading complacency...

I like your style. I send you a long rant about Green Futures issue 56 concluding that “I’m afraid I’m not willing to pay for what is too much an extended advertorial for Forum and its clients, and not enough critical analysis…” In reply you send me GF60 for free, and invite me to savage it in GF61.

But I must start with praise. Andrew Purvis’s cool review of what’s really driving supermarkets’ greening [p15] admirably counterbalances Polly Ghazi’s effusive earlier piece on Wal-Mart [GF56, p16]. And Mark Tran’s explanation of the limitations and ambiguities of carbon offsetting [p43] is a welcome corrective to the piece in GF56 illustrated with a jet romantically silhouetted against the sun that was captioned, apparently without irony, ‘Guilt free tripping - with a small price to pay’ [p31].

Congratulations also for a fascinating survey of China’s vast sustainability threat/opportunity, and for demystifying carbon trading while showing that until governments work up the courage to set carbon quotas that really bite, it’s only a game anyway.

“This is the sort of whinging and doom mongering which you denounce as disempowering, negative and defeatist. But I think we need to feel a lot more frightened, helpless and disempowered.”

But as I reach for my cheque book to subscribe after all, my hand freezes as I read the Royal Mail ‘Partner Viewpoint’. It’s bursting with impressive energy statistics. But isn’t this the same Post Office that recently moved all long distance mail from rail to road and air, closed its famous underground railway and put more vans on London’s roads, and keeps closing local post offices and moving distribution centres from cities to motorway junctions? And isn’t this Post Office that’s “helping clients improve their targeting and reduce mailings” the same one that recently tried to sack a popular postie who did precisely that by telling his grateful customers how they could use the Post Office’s own procedures to opt out of junk mail?

I don’t blame the Post Office for actions that are rational - perhaps unavoidable - in a world where air and road transport are still silly-cheap. And it’s daft dogma that foists ‘competition’ on an obvious natural monopoly, leaving the Post Office struggling to meet its universal service obligation and balance the books, while couriers cream off the easy and lucrative business market that used to cross-subsidise the deliveries up farm tracks and little old ladies getting five minutes’ chat while they buy three stamps.

And I don’t blame them for seizing the opportunity to tell only the positive. Though I think they should be a tad more careful about the details: two minutes on the Post Office website established that the 50% renewables target is only for electricity, not all energy, and that the fetching little electric buggy illustrated is one of only six in a fleet of 32,000 vehicles, and they are only on trial.

And I wonder what’s being not said in all the other ‘Partner Viewpoints’ for organisations less widely reported and less easy for readers to contextualise than the Post Office…

But most of all I’m uneasy at the cumulative message that companies are busy solving sustainability problems, so provided we all respond by travelling in hybrid taxis, tartan-upholstered gas tuk-tuks and hydrogen buses, planting grass on our roofs and buying strange fish and trainers wittily stitched together out of old clothes, all will be well. These solutions are admirable. But they are too small, piecemeal, ambiguous or undermined by rebounds, to slow the big dangerous trends in an economy still stacked overwhelmingly against sustainability. Concentrating on them is like admiring a handful of little boats struggling up the Mississippi without noticing the huge rush of water downstream. It risks spreading misleading reassurance and complacency.

This is, of course, the sort of whinging and doom mongering which Forum for the Future denounces as disempowering, negative and defeatist. But I think we actually need to feel a lot more frightened, helpless and disempowered about the looming sustainability crisis. Because only then will we let - and make - governments intervene vigorously enough to avert it.
Roger Levett,
Levett-Therivel Sustainability Consultants

Roger Levett’s not our only critic along these lines. Another suggested that Mark Tran’s piece [‘Slipping into neutral’] gave too much credence to BP’s carbon offsetting initiative.

I find it very difficult to distinguish between supporting companies in becoming more sustainable and exposing ‘green wash’. If BP’s level of investment in renewables is really as low as is reported, should we not be exposing this?
John de Carteret

But others feel quite the opposite…

Your commitment to solutions and the belief in the better part of human nature make Green Futures not only informative but a pleasure to read.
Christina Robert, Easy Living magazine

Greening the Dragon

Our Special Supplement on China has brought us some (welcome) praise.

Congratulations on the Greening the Dragon supplement. It put everything together very nicely.
Sir Crispin Tickell

Its feature on ‘Fresh water thinking for a thirsty nation’ sparked off a lively blog.
China’s water crisis is agricultural and rural, rather than urban. China’s agriculture produces only 15% of GDP, but pays next to nothing for water. Pricing has been discussed for years and still there is no agreed solution. Price increases would either impoverish millions of farmers (unable to afford the new rates) or send food costs and inflation soaring.

Drip technology, syringe injection and other cheaper but genuinely innovative solutions for the poor are out there, but have been neglected by the government and the international donor community.
LXY on the blog at www.chinadialogue.net

Reform of agriculture practice is the route to making a greater quantity of water available, while massive investment in municipal and industrial wastewater treatment is needed to improve the quality of water available… Water policy and agricultural policy need to merge to give the farmer flexibility and guidance tied to incentives. There is too much focus on the technological fixes. The development of an enabling environment - providing finance, training and leadership - is the key to success.

Part of the solution does involve treating water as an economic commodity and applying the proven economic tools of supply demand, markets and incentives to formalise management of a scarce resource in an equitable manner and prevent widespread abuse of commons. The Chinese government now is in a position to meet the challenges it faces and should be supported in doing so by the international community.
Simon Spooner, Mott MacDonald

I’d have to dispute LXY’s contention that the international community has ignored cheap, innovative solutions for the poor. DFID, for example, has been one of the prime proponents for the spread of Water User Associations within China, as well as technologies which try to address environmentally related poverty problems.
John Warburton, DFID

Visions of 2025

Not everyone was inspired by Martin Wright’s projected future [‘It’s 2025. Who’s making money - and how? ’]

Your article on life in 2025 misses the point. While the environment is an important problem, it is not as worrying as our inability to get along with each other. What is the point of living on a slightly greener planet if we continue killing each other by the million, if the West continues to exploit the rest of the world for its own selfish interests, and if one half of the human race (men) continues to treat the other half (women) as second class citizens?
Nigel Mullan, London

Is your predicted 2025 one I want to be alive in? No. Underlined three times. Your article sparked my first doubts in what we’re aiming for. Artificial holidays? Virtual reality grandma? 

Part of the joy of life, of human existence, is its vibrancy, its unpredictability and its vulnerability. The day I can climb a tree without a tree needing to be involved, is the day it becomes scary and not fun anymore. I think most people would be frightened by this medicated utopia of yours.

Technophobia, probably, but perhaps there’ll be a pill for that soon.
Ben Brown, Devon

“2025: Virtual reality holidays? Virtual reality grandma? Most people would be frightened by your medicated utopia.”

I was interested in your reference to oil growing on trees. Henry Ford envisaged cars made out of hemp and fuelled by crops from the fields.

Today, still, hemp would make an excellent bio-diesel - its big advantage being that it crops annually or even twice a year. All those fields of rapeseed which play havoc with allergy sufferers should be changed to hemp, as it is an excellent food source as well. Why not give over the millions of acres of heroin poppies in Afghanistan to the stuff?
Nicholas Mackintosh, co-editor of Hemp for Victory

What’s missing from the 2025 view is that people’s commuting behaviour will have changed. Sure, we’ll be working more from home offices, but the need to meet and the social sides of work will always keep this to a relatively low proportion of all workers.

What we need, instead, is a major change in the amount of ridesharing. For in 2025 we’ll say ‘we always knew there was enough road, and plenty of seats; we just needed to figure out how to use them more effectively’.
Paul Minett, of New Zealand lift sharing company Trip Convergence

Wrong to right

Sadly not just 2.2 households are fuel poor in the UK today, but 2.2 million [GF59, p5].

8 November 2006