Green and Prosperous Land. Dieter Helm
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centres. It would be a world of public transport, not private cars, and of radically greater energy efficiency. It would leave most of the rest of the land open and green, and indeed it would create more scope to green the suburbs with lots of natural capital for these urban populations to enjoy.
What these considerations illustrate is that housing left to market forces will be an environmental disaster and will replicate some of those disasters now being witnessed in a number of rapidly developing countries. Market forces drive up demand for houses in line with income. If the next decades witness 2 to 3 per cent GDP growth per annum, it is not hard to see that much of the Green Belt, and lots more green fields, will be concreted over by 2050. If each development does not have to pay for the environmental and social costs it imposes on the rest of the population, it will impose them. Imagine how quickly the Green Belt would fill up if the landowners could sell to the highest bidders without worrying about planning permission and paying for the environmental detriments caused. Paying for top lawyers and using consultants, lobbyists and PR companies to influence legislation and planners’ decisions has worked for them in the past, and it could go on doing so. Indeed, it is.
This is why planning is essential to housing and housing development. Britain needs to decide how many houses should be built, what sort of houses should be built, and where they should be built. That was the step taken in the 1947 Planning Act, and with the creation of the National Parks (which were largely planning bodies – more on this later). It has now fallen away.
It is perfectly possible to house the growing population without a net detriment to the natural environment. Indeed, the environment can be enhanced as part of the process. Nor is it necessarily the case that house prices have to rise, provided that the impacts of developments on the rest of the natural environment and us are properly priced, compensation is paid and prudently spent on new and enhanced natural capital, and, overall, houses are not protected from taxation to make them particularly attractive ways of accumulating wealth. But to do this requires much more efficient policies, to which we will return later.
More infrastructure
There are probably not many people who think that Britain’s physical infrastructure is in good shape. Sitting in a traffic jam on the M25, experiencing the delays on the Great Western main line, trying to make a mobile phone call on Exmoor, let alone trying to get a decent broadband connection, are daily reminders that all is not well with Britain’s infrastructure.
Along with these basic service failures there are additional pressures. Water supplies are taken for granted, but the pressure on abstractions and the growth in demand with new housing have considerable implications for the natural environment. The attempts to reduce carbon emissions are leading to the need for new electricity transmission lines, new wind and solar farms, and new nuclear power stations.
It is not hard to argue that Britain’s infrastructures are generally not fit for purpose, even before we add the extra 10 million people and all the houses that are planned. If we do add these, and work out how much transport, energy, water and sewerage, and communications demand they will add on top, the scale of the new infrastructure development requirements that emerge is very large – with potentially massive implications for the natural environment.
Infrastructure comes in lots of shapes and sizes. There are massive projects like HS2, Crossrail, Hinkley nuclear power station, the Thames Tideway and new airport runways. Then there are significant increments to the existing systems: to roads, electricity and gas networks, and to the water and sewerage systems.
On top of all this, there are the connections to all the new houses. Travel around many smaller towns and villages, and you will see 500 houses being added here and there on the outskirts. Semi-rural Oxfordshire is littered with them – from the housing developments at Didcot linking up to the A34, to the housing estates added to villages without many amenities – in effect dormitories. One or two cars per new house on the existing roads is going to have obvious consequences, and yet the developers have only limited liabilities to address these.
Many conservationists take a hostile stance towards new infrastructure and new housing developments. Across Britain there are community initiatives to try to halt the bulldozers. Dismissed by the housing industry and their lobbyists as driven by ‘nimbys’ (‘not in my back yard’), these campaigns are typically about much more than the impacts on their individual properties. To many these look like a repeat of tagging housing on to existing communities in the 1960s, or, worse, the ribbon developments of the 1930s that helped to precipitate the planning legislation of the 1940s. They have much to fear and much to protest about if they want to protect their local communities.
The problem for these objectors is that they will mostly lose. Central government has pushed through a series of planning acts to tip the balance away from local communities, encouraged by the massive lobbying of developers. There are now national plans and national strategies, and local authorities are in effect told to get on with it.[17]
While there are good reasons for particular campaigns and objections, something more is needed if the impacts are not to be seriously damaging to the natural environment. This requires not only a return to planning, but also the urgent application of the ‘net environmental gain’ principle to infrastructure and housing developments, properly and comprehensively measured.
It also requires an intelligent approach to technologies. Electricity transmission lines no longer need to be a blot on the landscape. They can go underground. Roads and railways can be fully digital. The need to travel to work can be tempered by video links and ever more efficient communications. The comprehensive roll-out of broadband and fibre could reduce the demands for other physical infrastructure. Better measurement and management of energy supplies and water can reduce demand too. It is possible (and in the above examples it is necessary) to improve infrastructure and at the same time protect and enhance the natural environment, but only with an integrated and planned approach. The unconstrained application of market forces will not deliver this.
More consumption
The pressures of population growth, housing and infrastructure are multiplied through the rising levels of consumption. As GDP goes up, so does consumption. Indeed, most of the increases in economic growth in Britain are driven by spending ever more. Britain has a very high propensity to spend all of its income – and indeed more than its income – by increasing debt levels. In 2018, this was reflected in the average household spending £900 more than their income.[18]
Some numbers help to bring a perspective to this challenge. If GDP grows at 3 per cent per annum, it will double in less than 25 years. It is just the power of compound interest. Britain probably won’t quite make 3 per cent, but, as a rough guide, by 2050 a doubling is a plausible assumption to make.
Imagine what this would look like in 2050. Although the extra income would be spread over more people, think what you would spend twice your current income on. The better-off might buy bigger homes or even more second homes. The bulk of the population will buy more holidays, more clothes and more services. Most of this stuff has the potential to further damage the natural environment and create even more waste.
It is this that leads more radical greens to question whether we should be allowed to keep on spending so much or whether a more frugal lifestyle is required to ‘save the planet’. It is not hard to empathise with this sentiment. Looking beyond Britain, growth rates in China, India and increasingly in Africa are more like 5 to 7 per cent per annum. China has spent nearly 30 years growing at around 10 per cent per annum, which is a doubling of the size of its economy every seven years, and this is reflected in the new affluence of the emerging Chinese middle classes who now turn up in Britain in significant numbers as tourists. Whatever the benefits of all that extra consumption to the Chinese people, from a global environmental perspective, the spectacular GDP growth of China since 1980 has been a disaster for climate change, water resources, the state of the seas and for biodiversity. And it is one that continues to gather pace.
There are two dimensions to this extra consumption that impact on the natural environment: how much is spent; and what it is spent on. How much is spent should not be