Honest Greens

I've written a few posts [1,2,3,4] on economic growth, energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Essentially I've pointed out that energy conservation plans, and the energy plans of both McCain and Obama are not going to help us for long, because with economic growth will come ever-increasing demand for energy.

Now there is this report from the UK on Greens who see GDP growth as the real root cause of the problem:

John Barrett, one of the authors of the reports by the Stockholm Environment Institute at York (SEI-Y) for the government and campaign group WWF*, was quoted by the BBC today:

"We are constantly battling against increases of wealth... There's a very fundamental problem here that no one really wants to talk about..."

Stuart Bond of WWF told the Beeb: "Our claims on emissions are simply a big lie.

"There is no way the government can hope to achieve any of its emissions targets without cheating unless it changes its policies on encouraging flying and hoping to satisfy people's insatiable demands for buying more and more stuff."

As to how that should be done, Bond was reluctant to give specifics. But he said there was a need for a "strategic plan to set out very clearly how the UK will become a low carbon economy by 2050... at the moment there is no central priority for environmental issues. Consumers' consumption of goods is the driver of emissions. The continued pursuit of GDP, of economic growth - that is a mantra that we must question."

So with one hand, I salute them for their honesty and recognition of economic growth as a factor. With the other I point to my temple and move my finger in small circles, the universal symbol for "cookoo."