I am becoming increasingly concerned by the party’s continued stress on economic growth. This is in total contradiction to what is necessary on the environment. Of course, when pressed, this aim is hedged about as ‘green growth’, but increasingly this is detached from the direction needed to save the planet.
As a Quaker, one of my aims is to speak truth to power. When the very survival of our planet is threatened by widespread flouting and outright denial of the steps necessary to achieve a green economy, it is surely time that we, as radical politicians, start to tell the truth about the future direction of our country and our planet.
We can no longer promise never ending increases in living standards. So, all the pretence that somehow, we can improve life for those on lower incomes through growth must be discarded. The only way the poor can become less poor is through greater equality and this necessitates the rich having less. It is already obscene that a small number of people, both in the UK and worldwide, have income and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice and are able to use the power that it brings to pursue their goals at the expense of everyone else.
As a party, we pass policies which talk about equality, but our leaders continue to talk about growth, rather than facing up to the need to radically shift the split of income and wealth. It may not be a popular message and it will be roundly attacked in the media owned by the super-rich, but it’s the truth.
With Labour, the Tories and Reform all wedded to the economic past and in the case of both Tories and Reform also loudly proclaiming climate denial, how can we have a message that people will listen to if we continue to pretend that growth will solve all our problems?
In some areas we actually need degrowth. We must stop using oil now and stop discarding our things, end the throwaway society and build to last, not to mention helping the very poor across the world to a better life. It’s all very well by aiming for 2050, to achieve a green economy, which we all know will become 2060 or 2070, long after it will cease to be my problem, when we all know, but won’t say, that this will be far too late. Or to put it another way, we’ll pass the problems to our children and grandchildren.
What will be the point of getting power if it is all built on avoiding the hard facts. We can’t get power and then say, “I know we promised this but now we’ve got to do something completely different”. That went down well in 2010, didn’t it?
It is time for our party to speak truth to power and to tell UK voters that our country must follow a new path where greater equality is championed, degrowth becomes real and we truly seek the survival of our planet. Our world has no future, unless we do.
* Dr Michael Taylor has been a party member since 1964. He is currently living in Greece.
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18 Comments
So, I understand the argument about not having economic growth. I also understand that since poverty is defined as a relative term, there only way to end it is to achieve equality. However, you also mention the need to help “the very poor across the world to a better life.”
Taking all this together, I assume you want income and wealth to be redistributed from those who are wealthier/have higher incomes in the world, to those who are poorer/ have lower incomes in the world. Most in the UK are well above average on a world-wide basis.
Are you really saying you wish Liberal Democrat policy to be one of no economic growth and also redistribution of income and wealth from the UK to poorer parts of the world? Sorry, but this is not a policy agenda consistent with seeking to be a political party that hopes to grow and have increasing electoral success.
Jenny, it is a fact that we cannot deliver what people have been conditioned to want and lying about it by pretending that we can is not what I came into politics for. Are you really saying that we should pursue the current course if that means the destruction of the environment and our planet? I said the message would not be popular, but it’s the unvarnished truth. Pursuing a false prospectus to gain power is not what LibDems are about.
With respect, I think this article is based on a flawed assumption: That we cannot grow while protecting the environment. The reality is that technology is improving all the time, and is already delivering the ability to get energy from clean sources, to build houses that require less energy to keep warm, to recycle materials more, and so on. There is no reason why, with more development in those kinds of areas, genuine green growth shouldn’t be possible. Certainly there are some things we need to get people Worldwide to do less of (flying is an obvious one, at least until a clean fuel source for aircraft can be developed), or to do in different ways (use public transport more instead of driving), but none of that is incompatible with improving everyone’s standard of living through growth. It seems to me that pursuing growth while also taking a strong stand on protecting the environment and regulating/taxing to discourage polluting forms of growth is exactly the correct strategy.
However much people would like infinite growth on one finite planet to be possible, it isn’t. We haven’t had any since around 2008 – something happened then as I recall – oh yes oil was going to go to $200 bbl, which would be ok as there would be alternatives … but there weren’t, and it didn’t because the world economy crashed instead. Every time the price of oil rises, the economy tanks till the price of oil goes down. The predictions are for oil at $50 bbl by 2027. This is not good news, as it implies a drop in energy use to match the 17% price drop. Ah. Technology and AI will save us.
No, Simon Robinson. We can’t have the ideal of growth whilst protecting the planet. If we have it, then everyone else will want a piece of the action too. We will in a world of vast inequality, where a few mega-rich people control most of the assets and use their economic power to deny it to everyone else and to protect their vast accumulation of wealth and income. Most, but not all of this ultra wealthy group don’t want to share, don;t want or intend to pay taxes and couldn’t give a damn if we all go to hell in a hand cart.
Unpopular view, certainly, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
A Liberal world, where all share the abundance of the Earth is possible, but only if we recognise the problem – vast inequality of wealth and income – and act to change that.
My stance is that we can no longer go on promising ever increasing wealth and a better lifestyle whilst the majority of the world live in poverty and without democratic recourse.
Our party will be avoiding reality and deceiving the electorate if we pretend otherwise. Saying one thing and then doing another – as we did in 2010 – is definitely not the answer. In the gospel of Mark it says ‘For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul (Mark 8: 36)
@ Mick Taylor
Since we are going biblical, how would you deal with:
Matthew 26:11
Genesis 1 : 26-28
Matthew 25:14-30?
This is not to say that creating a stable and sustainable environment is not the most urgent problem humanity faces – it undoubtedly is. My own view is that the only hope is technology and human rationality – including without limitation the intelligent exploitation of market forces. I think we are most likely to get to a stable and sustainable ecology AND economy that way.
Separately anyone who thought a Lib Dem-Tory coalition in the run up to the 2010 election was not a possibility simply wasn’t paying attention.
Mike, as a resident in Greece, you may know that in the six months April to September Corfu had only one day of rain. The reservoirs were empty; the bore holes were dry, and water had to be shipped in from the mainland.
In 2024, I made my film Edward Lear’s Corfu in Climate Crisis which failed, at the final hurdle, to be shown at the London Film Festival in June. It is now available on YouTube. It is frightening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXbW9GOrbJY
With a large water tank and a well we have become independent of the mains water supply. With 20 solar panels on the roof and a battery in the hall, we no longer need the mains electricity.
But I am depressed by ‘Dig, Baby, Dig’ Donald who cancels the Wind Farm off Long Island and halts Solar Farms across the US. SUVs get bigger and use more fuel.
Mike, you correctly write: ‘the very survival of our planet is threatened by widespread flouting and outright denial of the steps necessary to achieve a green economy’.
Solar panel costs are down orders of magnitude. Now battery prices are tumbling as well. Yes we need to stop burning oil and gas, but we must not accept the narrative that we have to choose between living standards and the environment.
Well said Artie. The last thing either our country or the world needs is degrowth. Michael – read Nick Stern’s latest book.
@Mike Taylor
I respect your opinion on this matter though I happen to disagree. I see no sign that large numbers of voters are likely to vote for a party that promises to make them poorer for the good of even poorer people in other parts of the world, or as a means to help protect the environment. Unless that changes, us becoming such a party will merely lead to our demise – and that benefits neither the world’s poorest or the fight against climate change.
I would suggest it is better to have a policy platform that takes some step towards protecting the environment but has a chance of being electorally palatable, than of taking a position that we know voters will reject and instead result in parties that offer even less for the environment being able to advance at our expense.
John Waller and Jenny Smith. Why do you think you can call me Mike? I have never been so called and have always been known as Mick.
It may be true that Corfu didn’t have rain in the period you suggest, but if it’s anything like the rest of Greece the weather has made up for it in November and December with huge amounts of rainfall. Certainly my oranges, lemons and olives benefitted from it.
There are already two parties, Reform and the Tories, who will be campaigning against environmental policies that already exist, inadequate though they are and Labour will do nothing positive about the environment either.
If we do not tell voters what is necessary to save the planet, then we deserve all we will get from the Greens.
If we know that we can’t sustain our current way of life – and we can’t – then surely it is totally dishonest to put forward a platform that suggests we can. There is a really positive message we can put out, that we can change the way we live, make our society much more equal and save the planet.
We can of course have growth and its patent nonsense to say we can’t. If as Mick says he wants to help the very poorest across the world we know how to do that – free trade and free markets have taken billions of people out of the direst poverty.
Still if you don’t like growth you must love brexit
@ Simon,
If it’s growth you want , maybe we should establish closer ties with the USA?
In 2008 the GDP of the EU was 6% larger than the USA’s.
In 2023 the GDP of the USA was 18% larger than the EU’s
@Peter: Is that GDP or GDP per capita? Coz there was a certain date in January 2020 when the EU suddenly lost a significant proportion of its population, which would surely skew any total GDP figures 😉
Having said that, it’s very true that the USA has for some years had greater per capita) growth than the EU, apparently driven by productivity increases in the USA that the EU has been unable to match. We certainly should be asking what about the US economy has allowed that, and whether there are any lessons there in how to manage our economy.
Let’s make it simple.
1. The Earth has finiate resources and we are well on the way to using them up
2. We are a wasteful society, which creates vast quantities of rubbish that we bury, burn or dump in rivers and seas. Recycling efforts are infitely too little to make a real difference.
3. We are destroying the environment and the ozone layer and taking far too long to do anything about it, with the result that we face several degrees of global warming, with dreadful consequences
4. Political parties like Reform and the Tories, added and abetted by Labour’s rolling back of targets, intend to halt any progress on the green agenda and to reverse it.
Yet, in the face of all this, some people want to continue with policies that are contributing to the destruction of our planet. Far too many politicians continue to lie to the electorate about the prospects for the future and to refuse to face up to the vital necessity for greater equality and higher taxation on the obsenely rich as one of the things needed to create it.
Our party used to believe in progressive taxation to make our society more equal. The excuses that are being made for opposition to even modest moves in that direction are not what we stand for.
@ Simon,
It’s a good point that Brexit would have reduced the GDP of the EU by a significant amount. Therefore we should be looking at GDP per capita.
I’ve found this on the link below.
“…….EU GDP per capita as a percentage of U.S. GDP per capita fell from 76.5% in 2008 to 50% in 2023. ”
The fact check article doesn’t give any explanations other than “The major factor for this widening economic gap is a discrepancy in productivity” which isn’t telling us very much as we already know that economic growth comes from increased productivity.
Everyone will have their different theories and many will have some validity. I would put the use of the euro and the associated deflationary policies which accompany it at the top of the list.
https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-has-the-economic-gap-between-europe-and-the-united-states-increased-in-the-past-decade
@Simon – building houses (and places of work, leisure and shopping) for the envisaged 2047 population of 77M can only be achieved by further irreversible (within 400+ years) destruction of the environment and an increase in consumption of fossil fuels etc.
We need to start setting realistic expectations on what “growth” that can be sustained over many decades and potentially beyond the expiry of our Uranium and other energy reserves actually looks like.
>” Certainly there are some things we need to get people Worldwide to do less of ”
Using “AI” needs to be high on that list.
@Michael Sorry, Syngnomi
We are agreed on the Climate Crisis. Please check out the film. Frightening.
Same goes for any non-believers.