catalyst forum

Welcome to Green Alliance's catalyst forum, our online space for contributions from leading thinkers on our core themes and emerging issues. It provides the opportunity to develop ideas further around debates we have started. In 2011 and 2012 we are holding a series of expert catalyst debates on key political themes.

The views of contributors are not necessarily those of Green Alliance.

Contact: Karen Crane, senior communications manager kcrane@green-alliance.org.uk

What would a sustainable economy look like?
What role should it play in the UK's economic recovery?
What are the policies, measures and institutions to bring it about?

We've addressed these questions, by asking top economists to give their views in the spring 2011 edition of our magazine Inside Track  and with policy experts at our catalyst debate in June 2011. See more below.

Here, Tom Burke, Matthew Lockwood and Jules Peck answer the question: 

Is green growth a good goal for government?

Tom Burke - Yes. But we must be clear about what makes growth green

No-one should doubt the government’s current appetite for growth. The economy grew by a mere 0.2 per cent in the last quarter. The accuracy implied by a number as precise as 0.2 per cent is wholly misleading when it comes to the economy. In reality, all we know is that it did not grow a lot but nor did it shrink very much.

Nevertheless, such is the government’s hunger for growth of any kind that it is now proposing to throw out more than sixty years of successful planning in its pursuit. This will not generate ‘green growth’ and may not generate much growth of any kind. But it will certainly destroy the government’s claim to be ‘the greenest government ever’...Read on>>  

Matthew Lockwood - It's an unprecedented challenge 

Economic growth has a lot to recommend it. Growth brought mass prosperity to Britain in the 20th Century. It provided the resources to build the health, education and social security systems that we value so much, and that have been so widely copied around the world. Now, in the wake of the financial crisis, we appear to be mired in economic stagnation, with high unemployment and no sign of a private sector-led recovery.

At the same time, we know that we require government action to tackle the externality at the heart of climate change. Markets on their own will not deliver the emissions reduction we need, until the point where low carbon technologies become competitive with their fossil fuel alternatives.

So, if we could get all the benefits of growth without the environmental damage, wouldn’t that be ideal? And isn’t it clear that we need action by government to deliver both parts of the green growth package?... Read on>>   

Jules Peck - We need to take a longer view 

Politics in Britain today is failing to recognise the need for a radical updating of capitalism. At the heart of this is a need for a new macroeconomics with people and planet not wealth and growth as its focus.

Wellbeing economics is a fast moving and game-changing subject, it is at the vanguard of debate about the updating of values, capitalism and macro-economics. It’s where the ecological economics of Professor Herman Daly meets Nobel Laureate welfare economist Amartya Sen’s work and that of Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman’s hedonic psychology and behavioural economics. Similarly, in the UK, Professor Tim Jackson is breaking new ground around prosperity without growth and wellbeing economics and Dr Tom Crompton of WWF, likewise, around values, see www.identitycampaigning.org/about/. Senior leaders in business are also active in these exciting debates.

These thinkers are daring to imagine a new future defined not by ‘wealth and growth as prosperity’ but by ‘wellbeing as prosperity’... Read on>>  

More from Green Alliance on green growth:

Inside Track, spring 2011  A better route: mainstreaming the green economy  

• Diane Coyle, Taking the long view "The claim that happiness and GDP growth are not linked is incorrect... A government that abandoned growth would also abandon its hopes of re-election."
• Dieter Helm, Green growth, infrastructure and national accounts  "We have scarce resources. To allocate them to one thing means they are not available for another. Growth is enhanced by finding the highest returns. Offshore wind does not make the cut."
• Dimitri Zenghelis, Grasping the opportunity  "There is no lack of private money in the current market. However, there is a perceived lack of opportunity. All that is required is for governments to grasp the green opportunity to unleash huge private investment and innovation opportunities."

Green Alliance catalyst debate, June 2011 What role can green growth play in the UK's economic recovery? 

Panel: Michael Jacobs, Professor Tim Jackson, Rhian Kelly, Tera Allas, and Paul Johnson 
(see panellists' profiles) 

Watch it here: