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Venter: are we missing the point?
Anna Simpson, June 2nd 2010, Innovation, Transport
Forget Jesus sandals. The recent surge of interest in biochemist Craig Venter has overwritten time-honoured notions of the earth-born god. Gone is the modest immaterialist: in his place stands a surfing dude with a sailing yacht named The Sorcerer and his eyes set on what he touts as the next multi-trillion-dollar industry. He even has a one-up on water into wine. Thin air into fuel.
Is Venter playing God… is God playing with Venter… The media debate, which peaked for me with the concern expressed by one atheist Guardian-reader "that a crazed evangelist may use the technology to create God", has been a lot of fun.
But it has also missed the point. Which is not whether Venter's synthetic addition to the earth's inventory of species is the eighth day of creation – or whether it is no more than a slightly obscure feat in computer-programming. The exciting part is that Venter wants to harness his creative powers to give the world a biologically engineered, renewable fuel – one he claims could scale up to rival the petrochemical industries.
He isn't the first one to think of harvesting CO2 from the air and turning it into fuel, in the same way that trees and algae do. As Duncan Graham-Rowe explains in this recent feature http://www.forumforthefuture.org/greenfutures/articles/co2_new_green_fuel, the conversion process has already been sussed, and researchers across the world are working on ways to make it more efficient.
As it stands, it's exceedingly energy-intensive – and this is the problem Venter intends to address, by genetically designing bacteria that would convert CO2 into fuels with a higher energy content and at a much higher rate than currently possible.
It's not the stuff of miracles. If he pulls it off, it'll be thanks to everyday, down-to-earth, lab-based science. And it will be just the sort of game-changing innovation that could help to tease us away from our obsession with fossil fuels.
Image Credit - Christopher Halloran/shutterstock
What's in store for city-dwellers in 2040?
Ivana Gazibara, April 26th 2010, Cities, Built environment, Futures, General, Transport
Imagine a world where each morning, you and your family hop in your self-driving hydrogen vehicle. You program your destination into the digital journey planner, and settle into an onboard breakfast around the table, as your h-pod gets you to where you need to go. After dropping the kids off at school, you leave the h-pod to refuel at the local energy hub while you work in the neighbourhood smartoffice, using avatars to connect with colleagues in a virtual conference room.
Sounds futuristic? Welcome to Sustainable Urban Mobility: 2040.
In partnership with Vodafone, FIA Foundation and EMBARQ, the Sustainable Urban Mobility: 2040 (SUM2040) project aims to help key constituencies in global cities – including government planners, urban designers, businesses and civil society groups - find long-term, sustainable urban mobility solutions. It does this by exploring coherent, plausible scenarios of the world 30 years from now. By mobility, we mean transport but also the other means of access to goods and services people need in daily lives that may act as a substitute for physical movement – from ICT, to different ways of urban design.
We’re now halfway through the project and at a point where we’ve done extensive research and consulted a wide range of experts and the insights that have come out have been fascinating. Before the scenarios for mobility in 2040 are written and published, I wanted to share some top-line thoughts about how your city might look in the future.
People-friendly cities: The concept of cities designed for people, not cars, will grow. What does this mean in practice? Urban design focused on developing local neighbourhoods as opposed to more urban sprawl, for a start. People will increasingly choose to live, work and play in the same area. The local street will undergo a renaissance, with small shops popping up again, more footpaths, more green space, and efficient, 24-hour use of community infrastructure, such as the local school doubling as a community centre after hours.
Mobility-on-demand: When people do venture out of their neighbourhood, they will probably be able to connect much more smoothly and quickly between different modes of transport. They’ll check air quality or traffic conditions on their mobile, laptop or using public access touch screens before setting out. Far fewer people will need to own vehicles – they’ll be able to rent cars, electric scooters, bicycles and other modes at mobile rental hubs that can easily be shifted around the city in response to changes in demand.
The changing shape of the office: In the 20th century, we got stuck in traffic jams every morning while commuting to head office. Experts expect this to change. We are already seeing more home working and video conferencing. This trend will grow and fundamentally change the way office spaces look and feel. Companies will likely build smaller, decentralised working centres. They may even use existing neighbourhood infrastructure – from the local coffee shop to the community centre – for flexible working arrangements.
The wired automobile: The car itself will be transformed. Manufacturers are already thinking about how to incorporate ICT into vehicles, and odds are that over the next 30 years we will see this trend become much more mainstream. Expect, more information and entertainment; automated navigation that supersedes bad driving for optimized safety; and cars that are able to communicate with other vehicles on the road.
Inclusive mobility: Thirty years on, we will still have significant low-income populations, for which tailored mobility solutions will be designed, enabling a greater degree of access to goods and services and more employment opportunities. The mobile phone penetration in the developing world has already shown us the potential of ICT to enhance mobility for the poor, by providing an affordable, quick way to connect to the market by phone rather than on foot, and by allowing delivery of previously inaccessible services such as banking.
Partnerships redefined: As the sustainability challenges facing cities grow, and traditional ways of operating become more and more difficult, we will increasingly form hybrid value chains - business models where commercial partnerships are established between businesses and citizen sector organizations (e.g. NGOs) in order to transform markets and meet critical human needs. Government, business and civil society will likely be working together in much more creative, collaborative ways than ever before. This could include handing over areas of governance to local NGOs and outsourcing operations to local businesses. Nothing we haven’t seen before – but odds are we’ll be seeing more of it in the future.
Needless to say, this will not play out across the board. We are exploring different pathways for these trends and the corresponding societal responses through our scenarios. These will be shared shortly our workshops in Mumbai and Istanbul this June, and published in the autumn. We will be sharing updates as we go along, so stay tuned for more!
http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/sustainable-urban-mobility
Flying stops. World does not.
Rupert Fausset, April 19th 2010, General, Transport, Travel and tourism
We will discover this week not how many good reasons there are to fly, but how few, and we should use this lesson to help us fly smarter.
I had the time and space yesterday to ponder what – if anything - volcano ash means for sustainability. A cloudless sky at my home in South London is normally criss-crossed with contrails, any sunbathing subject to the continual roar of jets lumbering directly overhead. I can normally see the oil stains and sometimes watch the wheels coming down as they join the Heathrow final approach.
But yesterday, with UK flying shut down due to the dangers of the volcanic ash from Iceland, there was none of that. Instead the sky was clear, and I found myself picking out all the different bird songs in the gardens around us (and feeling slightly ashamed that I couldn’t identify any of them). So my first reflection was that, for the vast majority of us who are not flying, this is bliss – more please.
But surely the new peace is bought at a price, with thousands stuck on the holidays they jetted off to so heedlessly last week, the airline industry losing millions every day, and food supplies rotting at airports?
Well perhaps: we all know somebody who has been unable to travel. I’m only writing this now as an international meeting has been cancelled, and it is strange how a longed-for holiday can become a burden when it is involuntarily extended (I’m told…). But we should not overestimate the importance of flying. You will notice that life goes on. Business goes on. The supermarket shelves are full. Almost all business can be done by other means if necessary – indeed the crisis management around this event is being conducted by videoconference. Less than 1% of UK food is air freighted, and you will often be able to buy almost identical produce that has been much more efficiently imported using modern refrigerated container ships. There is no disaster, only the inconvenience caused by unexpected change.
This is a good thing. Because whatever the amazing experiences flying can bring us, they come at enormous cost – gulping increasingly expensive fuel, for example, and vast CO2 emissions. These costs are increasing, and will become insupportable, if they aren’t already – who’s up for a banking style bailout of the airlines for example?
I feel for anybody who has just missed out on the chance to visit an amazing, far-off part of the world. But missed business trips will be forgotten, even welcomed, and African farmers will export almost all of their produce by ship, as they always have.
Finally, people will discover new and interesting ways to travel. Three of my Forum for the Future colleagues found themselves ‘stranded’ in Sweden on Friday night. They were all in the office in London on Monday morning, having used their expertise in sustainable travel to get themselves home via train and ferry through Denmark and Brussels – and guaranteeing far better pub tales than you will ever get from an airport check-in.
Every volcanic ash cloud has a silver lining...
Stephanie Draper, April 19th 2010, Climate change, General, Transport, Travel and tourism
I’ve spent the last two days on a train travelling back from Sweden to London. The volcanic eruption in Iceland left me and my two colleagues stranded on Friday night, and since then we have been making slow, but solid progress home.
This is the sort of crisis that brings Dickens to mind: ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ (all the more appropriate because of the links being made between the last Icelandic volcano and the French Revolution) .
The worst of times clearly point to struggle to get on trains and ferries, the sleeping in airports and not being at home with our loved ones. The commercial losses also have serious implications. KPMG estimates that it will cost the aviation industry £200m. It’s a disaster for airlines, tour operators and for Iceland too especially if the disruption continues. And then there is the knock-on effect for imports, exports and all that lost business time. Ironically we can’t get to our Indian session on sustainable mobility next week now either!
But the experience has been good too. Not only did we manage to get on the trains we needed, especially a hotly contested Eurostar out of Brussels, we have also seen some stunning parts of Northern Europe that you never see going from airport to airport. I have been on a train that goes on a ferry from Denmark to Germany. We met new friends and the people I talked to were impressed by the calm, ease and workability of the train, so perhaps it is something that they will do again.
It has also brought out our ingenuity and ability to collaborate. People come together in these sorts of crises and they innovate – our colleagues at the workshop used Facebook to hire some students to drive them home. And while the airlines have suffered, a number of other businesses have gained – the ferries, coaches and Eurostar have probably had their best weekend ever. And our iPhones and wireless connections have meant that we were always up on what was happening.
It’s hard to see beyond the frustration and commercial risk what something like this presents. But it also gives us a glimpse of a different sort of world, elements of which are already described in our Tourism 2023 scenarios. A world where we connect more virtually, through tele-presencing and other new conferencing technologies, and are ingenious about how we solve problems. This is the sort of thinking that we need to get to a sustainable future. Could this week’s events be a catalyst for the sort of creative disruption that we need?
In the coming days as we continue to be grounded – people will continue to test out lower carbon travel options like trains and buses. They will use teleconferencing more, and they will innovate to find more new ways of doing things. So after all the pain of adjusting, we could find an opportunity for localism, information and communications technology, and overland travel to take us in positive direction towards that sustainable future.
Oil threat prompts call for green industrial revolution
David Mason, March 16th 2010, Climate change, General, Transport
Soaring oil prices may drive politicians to take tough action to create a low-carbon economy while sceptics are still arguing the toss over climate change.
The era of cheap oil is ending and, unless we take urgent measures to reduce our dependence on it, Britain – and by extension other oil-importing countries – faces a crisis as early as 2015, according to the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security.
Its latest report, which calls for a “green industrial revolution” was launched a few weeks ago by a panel of high-profile business leaders: Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, Phllip Dilley, chairman of Arup, Ian Marchant, CEO of Scottish and Southern Energy, Brian Souter, CEO of Stagecoach Group, Jeremy Leggett, chairman of Solarcentury, and Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic.
We’re used to hearing this call from environmentalists and climate change campaigners, but these leaders come to the same conclusion based purely on the availability of oil. The message: regardless of whether or not you believe in man-made climate change, we still have to decarbonise our economy.
The taskforce claims that within the next decade, possibly as early as 2015, we will have reached peak oil - the maximum rate at which we can pump oil out of the ground. It forecasts that prices will soar because demand from developing countries is still growing and because new oil reserves are increasingly expensive to exploit.
Developed world economies have been built on the premise of cheap and plentiful oil, so shortages and high prices are likely to affect vast areas of our lives, causing social, economic and political disruption. We use oil for transport, heating, fertilisers and plastics - so high prices will feed through into more expensive food, travel, utility bills and goods in our shops. The poorest people are likely to be worst hit.
Countries which rely on oil imports will be badly hit. Although North Sea oil is still flowing, the UK has been a net importer since 2006, and the Taskforce warns that it could face a balance of payments crisis by the middle of the decade.
No wonder then that the report is called: ‘The oil crunch – a wake-up call for the UK economy’. It makes an explicit link with the credit crunch and warns that the UK must not be caught out again and needs to take action now.
The report calls for the new UK government, after the election, to work with local authorities, business and consumers to put in place policies to deal with the threat of peak oil. Key recommendations include support for low-carbon transport technology and sustainable bio-fuels; a focus on energy efficiency and the development of alternative sources of energy, including renewables and nuclear; and incentives to encourage the public to adopt greener behaviour.
The danger of framing the argument for a low-carbon economy solely in terms of climate change is that many people remain determined sceptics. The science is complex, scandals like the University of East Anglia emails shake public faith, and many feel they are being asked to take painful action now to avert a distant and nebulous threat.
In contrast, peak oil offers a clear and present danger. Oil is part of our daily life, we’ve all experienced the pain of petrol price spikes and it’s easy to understand the damaging consequences of a sustained increase in prices. Peak oil could just be the unambiguous threat we need to galvanise the green industrial revolution.
Carbon in our roads and rails – the bigger picture
Lorna Pelly, December 14th 2009, Built environment, General, Transport
Should an engineer designing a new road worry about the embodied carbon of a traffic cone? Should they be calculating the carbon sink opportunity of putting a shrubbery in the middle of a roundabout?
Perhaps not, but they should be considering the further maintenance and operation associated with the project and yes – the million dollar question - they should definitely be thinking about the 34 million cars registered in the UK which could drive on the new road.
Traditionally, design and build infrastructure projects have concentrated on just that - delivering a new asset ready for use, and then handing this over for operation. Anything beyond that - maintenance or repair, or the ongoing use of the asset - simply didn’t fall under the remit of the designer.
Over time however, contracts have expanded in scope, and contractors are now often expected to take on the first five or ten years of operation and maintenance to ensure they plan for the future. Any serious ambitions to rethink our approach to infrastructure to reduce carbon also need to take this wider, whole-life approach.
To take one example, when specifying a motorway central reservation with low carbon in mind, a road engineer may well opt for a metal barrier rather than the full concrete block. But if they were asked to think about the use of the road over the next 50-100 years and the maintenance of that central reservation, they might come to a different conclusion. The metal barrier – though lower in embodied carbon – is likely to be replaced more often than the concrete one, each time requiring a lane to be shut down, causing congestion and consequently a more significant whole-life carbon output.
Four major clients and experienced delivery partners working in infrastructure teamed up with Forum for the Future to think about a consistent method of approach for more holistic carbon management. Through the Engineers of the 21st Century programme, The Highways Agency, Network Rail (supported by RSSB), Atkins and Balfour Beatty tasked young engineers from each organisation to develop a way of assessing and managing the whole-life carbon of an infrastructure project. They came up with a carbon framework, a set of guidance principles and methods of assessment to start developing a common approach for carbon management.
Infrastructure projects, such as building or renewing roads or rail tracks, can take years in the design and build stages, involving a vast list of stakeholders and partners. To manage projects of this size, you have to break them down into contractual stages, supplier frameworks, scope of works and so on, all of which lead towards working within preset boundaries. But what we really want to know at the start of a project is ‘what will be the full carbon impact of doing this?’ or ‘which of our three major options would be lowest carbon overall?’
If the scope of infrastructure projects is expanded to include maintaining and using assets as well as building them, the first challenge is to understand what then falls within the full boundary of each project. If you are considering the impact of people driving on a new or improved road, do you need to also consider the embodied carbon of the cars? And when the construction phase causes congestion or diversions on existing roads, or those popular bus replacement services when railways are being maintained – should that be included in the project carbon total as well? And what about the embodied carbon of the sandwiches eaten by the construction workers on the site, or the paint on the white lines that need to be touched up 20 years later – do we really have to include that much detail to get a full picture?
The carbon framework offers general rules of thumb that will help with these tricky questions. It suggests that first, you should consider all carbon caused directly by a project. Once you have drawn the big circle around the full impact of the project, you can prioritise what carbon you will actively manage and, perhaps more controversially, what carbon you can dismiss because either you cannot influence it or because it is insignificant.
The framework sets out three main categories: carbon you will report (all carbon within the boundary of the project); carbon you will manage (significant, controllable and reducible carbon within the boundary); and carbon you will influence (significant, reducible carbon that may be in or out of the boundary).
It is in this influence box that we can start putting some big issues. A client or designer may not be able to control the number or type of cars driving on a road, but they can influence how they drive with smart design and traffic management. And the carbon reductions available from these kinds of interventions are significant.
The objective is really to enable smarter management of carbon. As carbon becomes an increasingly important factor in projects, the first reaction is to grab whatever data is available, apply some carbon conversion factors and set a reduction target. However, as our understanding matures we need to take a step back and think about where we can get the biggest and quickest carbon reductions – moving on from the low hanging fruit to the big, juicy fruit.
We need serious conversations about a project’s overall carbon impact at the early decision and design stage, informed by clear carbon estimates, in order to sensibly plan for lower-carbon infrastructure.
Mark Ellingham: Air travel must help cut CO2
, October 12th 2009, Futures, Transport, Travel and tourism
Hurrah for Tourism 2023, airing so many issues that have been engaging so many of us involved in the travel industry. Is a travel industry sustainable? Can it in some way clean up its own act, or at least clean up its own CO2 emissions? And if climate is changing apace, what on earth might be in store?
I came into the travel industry in the early 1980s, when I set up Rough Guides. Although back then I must say that I hadn’t thought of travel, at least not its independent wing, as an industry. At Rough Guides we were just writing books to inform people about the countries they visited, while most of the small, independent operators we dealt with were enthusiasts first, business folk second, and often driven by a passion to get involved with destinations and communities where they felt strong bonds.
Nor had I thought very much about the travel industry’s effect on the environment, beyond the sorry over-development of mainstream resorts. For back in the 1980s, there wasn’t much observable effect in many of the countries we covered: even in countries like Peru or India or Morocco, where tourism is today a significant part of the economy. And crucially, there was no popular perception about climate change, or about the role aviation emissions play.
When a year or so ago, I was asked to take part in the discussions out of which Tourism 2023 was shaped, the landscape was altogether different. Although I had by then left Rough Guides, to set up an environment imprint for Profile Books, I had a sense of guilt, almost a feeling of shame, about having been a part of the travel industry for so long. And I think that sense is shared, in rather perplexed fashion, by much of the industry. Certainly among the independent travel sector, the sector I know best, which is populated on the whole by thoughtful souls, who care deeply about the countries where they organise trips and tours. People and companies who for many years have been trying to ensure that their brand of tourism puts something back into local communities, by encouraging genuinely local development, supporting local infrastructure, and often putting money into aid projects in areas they know there will be real benefit.
Which is why I think Tourism 2023 is so important – and why it is so good that it has had partners like ABTA and British Airways involved. We need to make sure that the future of travel becomes positive, delivering benefits to the communities we visit. And, crucially, we need to somehow find a golden bullet to make tourism a “low carbon, low impact industry” as the report sets out as a primary aim. That is a vision we must all advance. And perhaps it is one that tourism actually can deliver, to show other sectors the way forward. Aviation, of course, is the key, as an area that is currently unsustainable in its contribution to carbon emissions, and is potentially disastrous if it grows as governments predict.
We need an industry that sets out its store: to remove every gram of CO2 that we emit. Better than that: why don’t we set out to remove twice as much CO2 as we emit? Turn tourism into an industry leader in removing emissions.
There is enough money in the industry to make this happen, and there is evidence that the technology to do so is emerging. Klaus Lackner, at Columbia University, has developed a working prototype of a carbon scrubber that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere, anywhere in the world. If his technology were to go into production right now, Lackner estimates that it would cost around $200 to remove each ton of CO2. Some travellers would be happy to pay that cost today. But with mass production, Lackner estimates a CO2 removal cost dropping to around $35 a ton. That would add a very manageable extra cost to flights: $50 on a return flight from London to New York, $10 for London to Madrid.
We need to apply the pressure to make that happen – urgently.
Mark Ellingham co-founded Rough Guides and currently runs a green and ethical publishing list for Profile Books. He is a member of the Tourism 2023 Steering Committee.
Yellow peril, or sustainability gold?
James Taplin, March 17th 2009, Transport
Continuing our explorations of links between ICT and sustainability that are low on glamour, but high on impact, our latest subject is image capture vehicular-velocity management solutions – or speed cameras to you and me.
I suspect that this may be a subject that generates greater extremes of passion than tropical deforestation and indeed, until recently, I was a frothing camera curser myself. In the last few weeks, however, three things have happened to reconcile me to the yellow sentinels and convince me that one class of speed camera at least – the average speed check – may in fact be a powerful tool in the climate change armoury.
The first was attending a presentation of work commissioned by the Sustainable Development Commission, and conducted by Jeremy Green into the interface between transport and technology. This included a piece of research by the UK Energy Research Council which found that simply enforcing current speed limits would save a million tonnes of CO2 per year, with another million achievable if the maximum limit was dropped by a further 10 mph.
The second eureka moment came at a public services conference into intelligent transport solutions - the headline sponsor of which was Speed Check services. As usual, towards the end of the first plenary session there was the ‘word from the sponsors’, and I settled back and began to switch off. However, instead of the thinly-veiled sales pitch I was expecting, I learned about plummeting accident rates (down 60 per cent in average speed check areas), largely through reduced variability of traffic speed, and reductions in the number of motorist penalty fines.
My conversion was completed on the road to Bristol whilst moving my growing family to our new home. There are currently about four sets of temporary average speed check cameras in either direction on the M4 between London and Bristol, and I went back and forth through them repeatedly during the move. These didn’t bother me too much in the underpowered and overloaded van, but tested my resolve a lot more during the final excited family run to our new house in the car. I could feel my newfound camera goodwill beginning to evaporate at the indignity of being asked to put literally minutes on my total journey time. . . . and then sunshine broke through the clouds of fury and frustration in a moment of enlightenment. . . . .
Cruising along at a sedate 50 I realised that the previous few days had been delightfully . . . predictable. They had involved no unexpected delays caused by other peoples’ accidents – a tragic but expected part of most long car journeys – and had actually allowed me get where I needed to be when I wanted to be there. In fact, the logistics of the previous two days would have been impossible were it not for the ability to plan and marshal help precisely when it was needed, and get to and fro in sufficient time to complete the move within the tight timescale.
So there we have it. Emissions saved by driving at more optimal speeds, emissions saved from reduced congestion, emissions saved from reduced wear on road surfaces, emissions saved from avoided infrastructure repairs following accidents. Taxpayer costs saved from disruption, lost earnings, highways services, and clean-ups. More predictable journey times, and less stressful journey experiences. . . . . . brothers and sisters, what sane person amongst ye can still continue to harden your hearts to these unsung yellow heroes of the road?
Image: Russ Witherington
Flying blind
Rupert Fausset, January 16th 2009, Transport
So the long-feared announcement has finally been made, and the British government has approved the construction of a third runway at London’s Heathrow airport. Environmentalists worldwide, and the millions living under the flightpath, have their heads in their hands as the integrity of climate policy is cut to pieces.
But all is not as it seems. There are many stages yet before the houses are demolished, the concrete poured and the new flights thunder over. Spare a thought for the executives of BAA, and their Spanish masters Ferrovial, who have to decide whether or not the £13bn or so the new runway will cost will eventually translate into solid long term profits and big bonuses, or whether the old adage might just be true
- that if something can’t go on forever, it won’t.
Consider this: in May 2008 the economy had yet to feel the real chill winds of recession, and airline traffic was booming. But the frenetic global activity from Heathrow to Hyderabad was sucking up every drop of oil that could be produced, driving its price to $147 a barrel. At this level the airlines could not make an operating profit, however many people they carried. As BA’s Chief Financial Officer stated: “Long run fuel prices at those sorts of levels would result in pretty fundamental changes in our industry”. This could mean capacity cuts, ticket price increases, rationalisation – all due to excessive growth.
In other words, this global boom in air travel was not just environmentally unsustainable, it was – and is – economically unsustainable. We don’t have enough oil to fuel it, so it chokes on its own success. Ironically, the recent downturn may have saved large portions of the industry, because falling demand slashed the oil price as well as air traffic. So although many airlines were forced to cut capacity, they now make a better profit on the reduced operations, and passenger numbers at BAA’s airports fell last year.
The implications for Heathrow expansion are clear. Only a resumption of global airline growth can give BAA a return on the huge cost of the new runway. But those same conditions are most likely to drive oil demand – and its price – right back to the peaks we saw last year and beyond, forcing up ticket prices and so constraining air traffic growth. There is no prospect of new cheap oil supplies – as the boss of Shell UK has warned: “The era of easy oil is over”. BAA may just have been handed a poisoned chalice by the Brown government, but it doesn’t have to drink from it.
Third runway turning point
Jonathon Porritt, January 16th 2009, Forum founders, Transport
Yesterday’s decision on the third runway at Heathrow marks a critical turning point in UK politics: the point at which the Labour Party turned its back on the future.
What makes politics so fascinating today is its bipolarity. We can’t help but live simultaneously in two worlds: one based on abundant fossil fuels, the pursuit of economic growth at almost all costs, rampant consumerism and grotesque inequality. And one based on elegant, very low-carbon, hyper-efficient lifestyles, in a fairer, less frenetic, genuinely sustainable world.
The longer we hang on to the first world, the harder it gets to make the transition to the second – and if we can’t make that transition, we’re stuffed. Persisting with the first world, means the death of everything we hold dear. Horribly soon.
A few people in the Labour Party – including at least six members of the Cabinet – get this. Most still don’t. Those who do are constantly trying to persuade their colleagues that we have to accelerate the speed of the transition. We can’t forever live in both worlds. Which means that every big decision taken that locks us deeper and deeper into first (old) world ways of creating wealth and notionally improving people’s lives is a profound betrayal of progressive, forward-looking politics.
So the decision for a third runway at Heathrow is not only massively flawed on both economic and environmental grounds. And not only stupid, as it will never happen anyway. It also marks the death of any residual aspiration on the part of (this particular expression of) the Labour Party to help guide us towards a better world.
Which leaves us all with a lot to reflect on.
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