Events | 2010.08.17
Short-termism fails the environment | Leo Hickman
As seen in the current cuts, the environment always goes to the bottom of the priority pile in a war of political expediency
Is the coalition government now demoting the environment in light of its spending cuts? After a string of headlines over the past few days, it would appear so.
First we learned that the 40% cuts being earmarked for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs could see nature reserves being sold off and spending "slashed" on pollution and waste controls. Last month, a coalition of 25 leading conservation charities, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, attempted to head off these predicted cutbacks with a joint plea arguing that cuts "could have profound and perhaps irreversible consequences for wildlife, landscapes and people" and would be a "false economy – short-term savings would translate into huge long-term costs for our economy and our national wellbeing".
Then came the revelation in the Guardian that large coal-fired power stations could, according to green campaigners, be back on the table if, as now appears likely, the so-called "environmental performance standard" aimed at restricting power-station emissions fails to make it into the coalition\'s first energy bill, scheduled to be published later this year. Could this trigger a renewed fight over Kingsnorth , the proposed rebuilding of the coal-fired power station in Kent that came to symbolise the UK\'s climate legislation battleground in recent years?
In other spending cuts news, there have been reports of rail fares rising by up to 8% – the biggest increase since privatisation in the mid 1990s – should the Department for Transport also feel the force of the spending review, as is expected. As if our ludicrously priced trains weren\'t already pushing people into their cars.
And there was the news last month that the sustainable development commission, the government\'s sustainability watchdog, was to be axed . Cuts, as we are fast learning, are an inevitability for all sectors, but where will it end? The Times reported this week that the Treasury – that old adversary of the environment – is "planning to axe hundreds of millions of pounds from Britain\'s renewable energy and nuclear clean-up budgets" – a move being "robustly" resisted by Chris Huhne, the energy secretary.
The most telling line in the report is that Treasury officials "view the [Department of Energy and Climate Change\'s] £3.2bn budget as among the least damaging options for cuts". That\'s to say, the government\'s energy and climate change policies are now bottom of the pile when it comes to spending priorities.
How times have changed. Remember how this government was going to be the "greenest ever" ? And how David Cameron rode those huskies in Norway , urging us to "vote blue, go green"? The first signs of a wobble were being reported here back in April ahead of the general election . But when the Conservatives failed to win an outright majority at that election and formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats there was some hope that the Lib Dems – Huhne most prominent among them – would use their presence to prevent the Tories from being tempted into conducting the most swingeing cuts, particularly when it came to governmental efforts to protect the environment. But as we are seeing in other sectors, too, this appears to have been built on false optimism.
Sadly, the critics of environmentalism are certainly right on one thing: care for the environment is something that blossoms during times of economic bounty and quickly wilts when times get tough. We\'ve seen this play out before during the economic peaks and troughs of the 1980s and 1990s – and I expect we will see it again in the decades ahead. As has been observed many times before, environmentalism is typically a luxury pursuit of the wealthy few.
One of the principal challenges facing anyone concerned about the plight of the environment is how to break this relentless cycle whereby the environment ends up being a political plaything interpreted as little more than yet another cost code to be typed into a spreadsheet. The environment will never fare well when it finds itself caught up in a war of political expediency.
Humanity\'s fundamental flaw is that we are seemingly hardwired not to be able to do long-term thinking – our default setting is rarely one which looks beyond the present. Yes, we have certainly lived beyond our means in recent times and most agree that this must now be redressed. But taking a chainsaw to environmental regulations and conservation efforts will be judged by future historians to have been just as shortsightedly foolish as taking out a 110% mortgage.
Until we evolve beyond this mindset as a species, the environment will continue to be viewed by the likes of Treasury officials as "among the least damaging options for cuts".
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]hort-termism-fails-environment
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