The 17th European Biosolids and Organic Resources Conference will be held on 19th 21st November 2012 at the

e Royal Armouries in Leeds. The Sustainable Organic Resources Partnership are holding a seminar as part of the conference on Powering the Green Economy on Day 2 Tuesday 20th November.

A vision for a green economy

Shan Oakes Introduction Thank you for your invitation to speak here this afternoon. I'm delighted to have the opportunity . Organic resources clearly have a major role to play in a new economic paradigm. They have been, in the shape of fossil fuels, central to the economy of the UK since the 18th century.....But now - when mining, globally, is wreaking havoc, and with the crises of climate change, peak resources, economic meltdown and global conflict - they need to transform themselves, in the same way that every sector, including politics, must transform itself. Regarding change: as a teacher in Hull in the 70s I saw the consequences for a community of sudden, unplanned change the fishing industry collapsed due to overfishing - and Hull hasn't recovered. This is a microcosm of the challenge we are now facing on a global scale. I've just returned (by train and ferry!) from the Council of the European Greens in Athens. There were mass protests about the EU austerity measures peaceful, apart from the tiny minority of violent protesters shown on TV. Greeks admit that Greece isn't perfect, but they feel they are also being punished for the crimes of casino banking and amoral corporations. The problem goes very deep, and Greens stand with the protesters across the world who are struggling against injustice towards people and planet..... There IS another way - which I aim to outline here. And I'm not saying it's easy. As the party with one MP in the current UK Parliament, we know about pushing rocks up mountains! As a prospective representative of the people of Yorkshire and the Humber in the European Parliament, I know that to achieve anything, we have to work with everyone, across all sectors and the political spectrum to do some REALLY radical thinking. the Environment For Greens, the environment is fundamental to our view of the state of the nation: unless we find a way to live within our means, rather than by sacrificing the wellbeing of the rest of the world and future generations, our future will be bleak. Climate change, for example, is one of the greatest threats to our

national security. Thats not my assessment. Its that of the Governments former Chief Scientist. It is a threat to be compared to international terrorism. Not my words. Tony Blairs. Left unchecked, it could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy, with disruption and conflict endemic features of life thats the Pentagon. Yet, the political and economic elite has created a very perverse linkage between the environment and - 'austerity' - instead of the need for a new paradigm in politics and the economy. They see the environment as a form of consumption that we can ill afford; That its a luxury, like that extra cappuccino on the way to work, that we can do without when times are hard; That protecting the environment is a drag on the economy, and gets in the way of creating new jobs or preserving existing ones; And that those who think differently are middle class dogooders who dont understand 'the real world'. In short, in times of austerity, the environment becomes irrelevant. And it's that claim that I wish to challenge this afternoon Breadth of Green Policies But let me put to bed one myth about the Green Party and that is, that we only care about the environment. The truth is that we have policies for every aspect of our national life. In fact, if you set out the policies of the different political parties across health, education, the economy and so on in a kind of blind taste test, not revealing which party proposes what, then more people choose Green policies than those of any other parties. Our policies are based on fundamental values that we share with most people in this country So when we campaign against the current health reforms, it's because we are fundamentally opposed to the profit motive within the National Health Service. It isnt a question of how much private involvement, or on what terms, or how quickly the NHS is broken up. We are against it, and thats that. People like the clarity... they too believe that the profit motive has no place in the delivery of healthcare. Its the same on crime, transport, social care and pensions, agriculture, energy, and so on. Our policies are more popular than those of the other parties..not because we promise people the earth (although we do in a way!).... our policies and budgets are costed at tedious length. .but because what we say chimes with their own view of the world. The Greens are the only party that says that pursuing full employment is a better guide to economic decisionmaking than pursuing GDP growth. ...We alone balance a principled opposition to the euro with a positive vision for the kind of European cooperation that would bring people closer to the

decisions that affect them the most, while also promoting human rights, peace and wellbeing for all European citizens . Sustainable Development Were not a single issue party. And so we dont approach the question of the relationship between the environment and the economy on the basis that only the environment matters. We say that the kind of economic progress that requires the environment to be sacrificed is not economic progress at all, but a form of barbarism. And... that an economy that is in crisis, that fails to give people stability and a measure of prosperity, that leads to the waste of unemployment, bankrupt businesses, lost savings that kind of economy- will not help ensure that the environment is protected and enhanced. We say that the benefits must be shared fairly: economic activity that exploits or impoverishes people is not acceptable. Nor is maintaining a good environment for the rich or the middle classes, while the poor and vulnerable suffer from overcrowding or pollution. To put it another way, we need to find a way of integrating economic, social and environmental considerations to the benefit of all of us, now and for the future. There's a term for this: sustainable development. Or rather, there used to be For, over the last 25 years, the term has been deliberately and entirely debased by politicians and others who dislike its implications. Now, anything from a new kind of hair conditioner to a new runway at Heathrow, can be spun as sustainable. Energy companies spewing out millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, or house builders ploughing up fields or woods rather than reusing existing sites, or retail chains selling clothes made in dubious circumstances for less than the price of a sandwich. None of this is sustainable. Not for the environment, because it is helping to degrade the planet. Not for society, because it is based on exploitation and inequality. And not for the economy, because it depends on the consumption of finite resources. Thats why we propose an alternative to the current economic and political orthodoxy. And why we refute the current idea that the environment is a luxury. Weve seen reductions in support for Green industries, for basic environmental programmes such as insulation and microgeneration, for bodies that are supposed to look after our environment, like English Nature and the Environment Agency. Weve also seen attempts to sell off environmental assets: notoriously, the proposed sale of the Forestry Commissions estate. ..the heart of the coalitions case is that the environment itself must be sacrificed.... that protecting the environment gets in the way of

economic activity and employment. Employment The argument on employment is firm ground for the Greens, for, as I mentioned earlier, we are the only party to put employment ahead of economic growth as an objective of government policy. We think it vital that everyone in our country has the chance to fulfil their potential and put something back into the community. We see it as vital to be more flexible in how we judge peoples contribution .. As a teacher I remember the dismal struggle of a girl who simply wanted to keep pigs, to scrape a grade E in GCSE English. We see caring for others or volunteering in the community as having the same potential contribution as formal work. In other words - full employment . And in the Green New Deal, we have a robust and costed plan for investing in new jobs: A programme of renovation, insulation and microgeneration that would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and also bring wider social benefits through improving peoples homes, addressing the continuing scourge of fuel poverty and reducing peoples energy bills. A Green economy is far more labour intensive than the fossil fuel economy .. And so, far from being a burdensome distraction from addressing our economic difficulties, investment in the Green economy is the fastest route out of them. The green economy already contributes 7% of GDP and employs 900,000 people in the UK that's more than in teaching. Moreover, it's that rarity in these austere times: a growing sector in which the UK has a competitive advantage. Yet the investors who will fund the nation's transition to a clean, sustainable green economy desperately need wholehearted backing from the top of government.... they need policy certainty The number of people employed in Britains solar industry soared to 25,000 since the launch of the Feedin Tariff scheme, and could have continued growing vigorously, had the Government not created chaos by its sudden changes to the support regime. Marine energy has enormous potential. With the right support, the UK industry could seize almost a quarter of the worlds potential market, according to the Carbon Trust worth an estimated 29 billion per annum to the UK economy in 2050, and supporting nearly 70,000 jobs. The money could be found - But currently it's being channelled into other areas such as subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and the arms industry, where the social benefits are less clearcut, to put it kindly. Redirect those resources into the Green New Deal and we'd see more jobs supported for each pound spent, and far greater social benefits, even setting aside the environmental considerations. Instead, we have the Governments dumbeddown Green Deal a scheme so

lacking in ambition and so hollowedout in conception that some question whether its worth having at all. Regulation The other claimed impact on employment is from environmental regulation; in other words, the assumption that protecting the environment must cost jobs, presumably because it stops businesses doing just what they please. Now for any act the government might take or not take, there will be claims that it affects employment. The first caveat is that we should concentrate on net job losses or gains, not gross effects. Were all familiar with how the supermarket chains will claim to be creating new jobs from store openings but of course they don't take into account the job losses arising from the impact of their competition with other shops. The second is to consider the quality of those jobs, both for those who have them, and for their benefits to wider society. The fact is, jobs are being gained and lost all the time, and this reflects changing priorities within society, and new technologies. People dont work making fax or telex machines any more, because the world's moved on. There's a role for government in dealing with the consequences or helping people to retrain or companies to develop new products but not to subsidise their production. . all regulation is likely to have both positive and negative effects on employment: these need to be taken into account, but they can't trump other factors.... Otherwise we would still have capital punishment, for fear of making the hangman unemployed. GDP Its the same when we turn to the economic case for sacrificing the environment to boost the economy or rather, to boost the growth in GDP. GDP in itself is a pretty poor measure of economic activity, because of the arbitrary way in which it values all activity in the same financial terms, regardless of its true value to society, and because it only covers some of the socially beneficial activity we undertake. Raising a child, for example, is not part of the nations output. Nor is cooking your child a meal. But sending your child to a nursery to be looked after, or buying her a Krispy Kreme donut, are both part of GDP. So GDP is not only incomplete, but also distorting. How tempting it is for governments even the ones that go on about family values to encourage parents to go out to work, even if they'd prefer to look after their children themselves. This is why over the last few decades, we have been told that we are getting richer as a nation. ... we have rates of GDP to prove it. Yet at the same time, people have no greater sense of wellbeing than they did a generation or two generations ago. Materially, most are better off: but at a huge price in uncertainty about the present and fear for the future, about divisions in society and the

growing gap between the rich and the rest. The orthodox view about the environment and austerity is also dependent on GDP. So walking in our own forests, or kicking a ball around in the park, doesnt count. But if more people pay to watch football at home on Sky and even better, if they indulge in some inplay betting at half time then GDP goes up and were supposed to be a richer country. No wonder it's easier for governments to think of selling off those forests, or cutting the funding for those parks, than regulating the broadcasters or betting firms. Competitiveness We are also told that we have to sacrifice our own environment because thats what everyone else is doing, and if we dont, then we will lose out in the race for international competitiveness. ..this proposition is equally bogus....it's wrong on moral grounds. And its foolish on economic ones. The answer is more international cooperation, not more uncontrolled competition.... Environmental Capital Our natural environment is a capital asset that belongs to our nation. So, too, are its natural resources from fish stocks, to oil and gas reserves. Use them, or abuse them, and they are gone. And if you use them up, this doesnt make you richer, but poorer. Businesses know this. That's why they have separate profit and loss accounts, and capital accounts. The first shows if you are paying your way, year in, year out. The other shows whether you have added to, or reduced, your capital assets. Farmers know that soil quality must be nurtured, not endlessly exploited. What goes around comes around....As we all know, only a cyclical, rather than a linear economy is truly sustainable. But government accounts dont set out separate national accounts for capital and revenue. That means that using up irreplaceable resources such as gas reserves are counted only as revenue, with no corresponding debit on the capital account. Similarly, if a field is built on, this counts as economic activity but the corresponding loss of that field as productive capacity for farming or forestry, or as a breathing space for nearby residents none of that 's taken into account. But how convenient to governments of left and right to use up these national assets, and pretend the country is paying its way. In the 1980s and 1990s, Britain was kept afloat by oil from the North Sea. But those assets were treated as revenue and squandered on a property boom, financial speculation and wasteful investment and consumption. Not good for the environment. But not good economics either. So if there isnt an economic case let alone a social case for sacrificing

the environment, then what we have is a conflict of values and interests. Sacrificing the environment is, at heart, about reducing the quality of life of some to benefit others. But let me also caution that there is always a risk that by trying to quantify the value of our environment in monetary terms alone, we increase the chances of that sacrifice happening. .Of giving the impression that some kind of tradeoff is possible, that environmental capital can be substituted for another type of capital with an apparently equivalent value. Rather than trying to shoehorn the environment into our discredited economic framework, we need the economy working within environmental limits. One example of how we could begin to do that, which you may be familiar with, is the idea of the carbon bubble. Huge reserves of coal, oil and gas held by companies listed in the City of London have been termed subprime assets that pose a systemic risk to economic stability because, if we are to limit average temperature rises to 2C, it has been shown by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, that more than four fifths must remain in the ground. Five of the top 10 FTSE 100 companies are almost exclusively high carbon and alone account for 25 per cent of the index's entire market capitalisation. Just as with the precrash years, a huge investment bubble is being fuelled by the over valuation of assets where enormous systemic risks are being either mistakenly ignored or deliberately underplayed. Yet the stocks and shares of carbon intensive firms continue to be Triple A rated despite the risks. We should use the ratings system to flag genuine and significant legislative, reputational and environmental risk across the short and longer term. Opportunity However, there is an opportunity in the current bout of austerity.... Greens are often accused of being negative that we bring depressing news about intractable problems. .And there is some truth in that. .. because we dont want to mislead people, or give them false comfort. The problems we face are deadly serious. For example, scientists have consistently underestimated the speed with which the climate is changing. More and more people are now coming back to accepting the evidence of climate change not just the science, but because the changes in the weather and the seasons are all around us but in the meantime we've lost several vital decades. But where we can be positive is in presenting the alternatives. Here, the caricaturing of Greens as hairshirt types who want to return to the Middle Ages is deliberate. Make a conference call rather than flying to New York for a meeting and you save a ton of carbon. Better still, you avoid the horror of the whole flying experience and are home in time to see the kids. Doing the right thing doesnt have to make you a martyr.

To refute the words of Kermit the Frog, it sometimes can be easy to be green. Of course, flying to New York costs more than Skype. So youll be missing the chance to boost Britains GDP by a few hundred pounds. The reality is, austerity is here to stay. Whatever politicians say in public, they accept, behind closed doors, that growth is finished. They are managing down expectations for the economy. And accepting that the burden of debt will be a critical issue for at least another decade. This on top of the recessions of the 80s and the 90s. And it creates a climate in which people are ready to consider alternatives. To reduce the taxes on jobs and so foster employment. To explore shorter working weeks to share that employment around. To support local, smallscale and more resilient businesses and economic relationships which are an antidote to the instability and uncertainty of deregulated markets. To consider setting quality of life targets to replace our national obsession with the single target of GDP growth. To question whether growth is in itself a good thing, given that constraints on the worlds resources are closing in on us, and that we already consume vastly more than our fair share. The Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and a number of the Financial Timess commentariat, are among those now arguing that prosperity is possible without GDP growth, and indeed that prosperity will soon become impossible because of GDP growth. That because of the environmental costs associated with indiscriminate growth, economic growth is itself becoming uneconomic. Professor Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity without Growth, remarked, Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists, and revolutionaries. But question it we must. ...it gives us the chance to explore a transition to a steady state economy. Proposals These, then are the arguments. But if we are to avoid seeing the environment sacrificed for profit, in the name of boosting growth or employment, then we need reforms too. Parliament has shown that it struggles to represent the natural world, and future generations....so we need at the very least an independent and powerful voice a kind of informed and active conscience. Everywhere we can see the consequences of the environment lacking proper representation and protection. That's why we are calling on Parliament to consider creating an Environmental Rights Commission, that would be independent of Government and have the powers and the resources to challenge policy or practice where this harms or puts at risk the natural world. Its mission to ensure that the world we hand on to our children is not in a worse state than that which we inherited from our parents. And it would give a voice to the environment that did not depend on heroic individuals or communities taking up the battle alone. To conclude and to clarify:

So.. 'Un-green' means blinkered, quick-fix, same old same old, or 'quick and dirty' thinking. 'Green' means ethical, visionary, innovative, and appropriate long term thinking . Small, and local, is beautiful. In terms of biomass, it means smallscale plants based near where the energy and heat is needed, and using the various and particular sources of feedstock available in that area....not importing it. Green agriculture is about working with natural diversity, using human husbandry (more jobs) instead of oil-hungry machinery on vast prairies of monoculture requiring chemical fertilizers, and pesticides for the resulting swarms. It's about permaculture (diverse, vertical, tree-based) instead of industrial, horizontal crop-based. The West Balkans, for example, an area rich in timber and sparsely populated, could meet its building and energy needs from wood not monocultures of pine, but diverse forestry. In southern Spain I was struck by the beautiful cork-oak forests, home for black pigs eating acorns, not to mention all the bird and other wildlife. . Sustainable agriculture but threatened by the growing use of plastic corks and screw tops for wine! Regarding feedstock, human sewage surely has massive potential where there is a high concentration of population. In Uganda we visited a university farm which used students' urine for fertiliser. Having just passed the olive fields of southern Italy on the train from Brindisi , we wondered whether olive stones are used in that area. ... It has to be about working with local diversity of climate, soil type, topography, and culture. The Calder valley (near here) was well known for the mungo-shoddy industry recycling woollen clothing for reuse in uniforms and duffel coats. To use a Yorkshire expression - 'Where there's muck there's brass.'.. yes, the rewards are high, but they will be short term and strictly for flybynights if they're not ethical. So let's put that other famous Yorkshire maxim firmly into a museum: ...'If tha ever does out for nout do it for thisen' Let's learn and debate across the globe A politician we spoke with in southern Italy last week said that covering good agricultural land with solar panels is not green Why can't the panels be on the top of buildings and leave the fields for trees, grazing, leisure or crops? . Because its easier for companies to install and make large profits using fields ...This has to change. The overriding crisis is a crisis of the imagination. Its only hard thinking in partnership that will get us out of the box we're in...or get the rock up that mountain.... 'Failing to plan is planning to fail' Thank you. END - so true!