A vision of sustainable living

All Articles | Engaging | more by Nick Spencer

Nick Spencer paints a picture of what a relationally and environmentally sustainable society might look like today.

There is no obvious and incontrovertible vision of sustainable living to which we should aspire. There will be as many impressions of the genuinely sustainable society as there are people to advocate them.

Imagining a sustainable society does not demand a kind of eco-fascism that seeks to impose its vision of the future on all, threatening violence to recalcitrants and sceptics. What follows, therefore, is a vision, not a template, of what sustainable living might look like at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Reducing energy use

People are far more conscious of energy issues. They are acutely aware that they do not live in autonomous bubbles, but that every decision they make has an impact on someone somewhere. Subsistence farmers and their families in sub-Saharan Africa or surrounding the Bay of Bengal are not simply starving figures on the 10 o’clock news but real people who are taken into account in everyday energy, transport and consumption decisions.

Accordingly, use of renewable energy suppliers has increased, both for households and businesses. There is more localised and micro energy generation, as well as a growing market in ‘domestic combined heat and power’ boilers.

The great majority of households and businesses have implemented energy-saving measures, such as wall and roof insulation and energy-efficient appliances, which significantly reduce energy wastage. Substantial government grants are available for those living in or near ‘fuel poverty’ to help them improve their homes. This has resulted in millions across the country, not least the poorest, saving money on fuel bills. In particular, the grotesque situation whereby the poorer you are the more you pay in real terms for your domestic energy is now a thing of the past.

New housing developments are built to far stricter energy standards, with many following in the footsteps of the Beddington Zero Energy Development, being effectively carbon neutral. Legislation is soon to come into force that will make such carbon-neutral developments obligatory.

Valuing family relationships

There is greater recognition of the contribution made by the extended family structure, not only to social cohesion but also to environmental issues. There has been a steady rise in the marriage level and a slow decline in divorce, as well as more co-habitation and co-location of relatives, and a greater emphasis on local employment and shorter commuting times. Many people are able to work closer to home, giving them extra time to spend with family and local friends.

There is also greater general recognition of the unpriced yet invaluable contribution to social order, cohesion and wellbeing made by those men and women who have chosen to stay at home and look after children or elderly and frail relatives, rather than earn a wage – a recognition that has significantly lifted the status of the housewife/husband and helped encourage many extended families to restructure their lives accordingly.

Changing transport priorities

Car use is lower than used to be the case and is still falling. There is greater use of and investment in public transport, with public space and infrastructure being planned around pedestrians, cyclists and public transport rather than cars. People talk about a return to the age of the train. New housing developments are built into an established and spreading integrated transport network, which makes buses, coaches and trains a cheaper, easier and more attractive option than cars. Infrastructure investment has done much to silence criticisms about the infrequency, lateness and unreliability of public transport. Car sharing and teleworking are also increasingly popular. Those car journeys still made rely more on electric vehicles, or cleaner and more efficient (but higher priced) fossil fuels.

Aircraft use has begun to fall and airport expansion has been checked. VAT on airline tickets is significantly higher than at present. More promisingly, the European Union has made genuine progress towards persuading the International Civil Aviation Organization to renegotiate the 1944 Chicago Convention, which allows an exemption from taxes on air fuel, something to which even the US and Australia are now amenable.

At the same time, there has been a marked rise in domestic holidaying (and with it a significant boost to the UK tourist industry), as well as a notable trend towards holidays by train, coach and boat. In the business world, an expansion of (vastly improved) videoconferencing facilities has helped reduce business air miles. People still fly to visit relatives living abroad but do so less frequently and for longer periods. A high proportion of people who still fly voluntarily contribute to carbon-offset schemes. Generally, there is a much more cautious attitude to the whole business of moving long distances from loved ones.

Focusing on business efficiency and local supply

All but the smallest businesses now participate in a compulsory carbon-trading scheme. This has focused their minds on energy efficiency, with two effects. First, businesses now see it as strategically and financially sensible to take serious efficiency measures in their premises and the vehicles they use. Second, those that have been unable to make such changes are spending a large and growing sum on financing carbon-offset schemes in poorer countries. Some still complain about this, but the steady investment in low-income countries is making a difference to their economies and is popular with the public at home. Moreover, there is every sign that the carbon-trading scheme will become more rather than less demanding.

Agriculture, the food chain and grocery retailing is more localised. Shoppers make greater use of local grocery retailers who, in turn, are more inclined to source from local suppliers. Supermarkets also make greater use of local suppliers and have modified their supply network so as to minimise the food mileage accrued. There is a significant rise in on-line grocery shopping, with supermarkets boasting about the reliability of their in-store ‘pickers and packers’. Delivery is by electric vans – a modern, grocery version of the milk float.

The localised grocery infrastructure has helped revitalise British agriculture and agricultural communities, as has considerable investment in UK biofuel and biomass production. These crops still only provide a relatively small proportion of the country’s fuel and energy needs, but it is growing. Between them, local agriculture and biofuel production has helped dwindling rural communities to re-establish their economic viability. Pubs, post offices, local banks and grocery stores are now re-opening, and farmers’ markets are no longer limited to the rich suburbs. Commentators now talk about a ‘rural renaissance’.

While the localised grocery infrastructure has significantly reduced the grocery trading links that rely on airfreight, international trade remains strong in other ways. Freight transport by sea remains steady and those economies that had relied on air-freighting raw food products to the West, increasingly ship processed food products instead. In doing so, they earn a larger share in a more profitable sector of the grocery market, which has significant knock-on effect in their own economies. Like all other fuel, that used for air travel, freight and for shipping produces less pollution and is more efficient than ever before.

Increasing corporate responsibility

There is greater recognition of the principle of rest. A grass-roots movement to ‘give us a break’ and protect workers’ family time has grown significantly and put real pressure on government and large retailers. Accordingly, Sunday trading became increasingly cost-ineffective and supermarkets, which are now involved in the carbon-trading scheme outlined above, now recognise a day of rest as one of the most cost-effective ways to meet their emissions targets. There is mounting pressure to tighten regulation on Sunday trading, with only shops under 3000 sq. ft. being permitted to trade, for social and environmental reasons.

Public pressure has also helped establish a string of well-policed Kite marks on products sold in the UK, guaranteeing fair wages, treatment and investment to overseas workers, and sustainable agricultural practices.

Corporate Social Responsibility is now taken seriously, with widespread recognition that companies that pay serious attention to stakeholder concerns rather than just shareholder concerns actually perform better, securing better quarterly results, more robust brand reputation, and attracting some of the most able young recruits to work for them. Environmental and social accounts are based on reliable and respected metrics, and are submitted and audited with the seriousness of financial accounts. There is genuine public interest in these results and companies stand to damage brand image and lose significant High-Street reputation for falsifying accounts or failing to live up to stated corporate objectives. Those ‘green’ companies that moved early into the supply or use of renewable energy have become market leaders as the price of fossil fuels has rocketed and other companies have been left with obsolete infrastructure. Their share prices have risen steeply.

Improving the health of nations

There is broad acceptance that GDP is only part of the picture. Several other measures of national health, such as Relational Well-Being (RWB), have been informally adopted and are used to shape policy. These go beyond simple market growth to incorporate a range of other factors, such as health, education, reported wellbeing, national income distribution, levels of relationship breakdown, the value of domestic labour, the impact of environmental pollution, and crime.

At the same time, there is growing debate over demography. The question of the nation’s optimum population has been liberated from the shadow of racist and nationalist invective, and people are genuinely asking how many people the nation can sustain. Population size has shown signs of levelling off, and the question of how to maintain a growing economy with a static or even slowly declining population size is very much a live one.

Both nationally and internationally, there is growing recognition that not only should human beings avoid ‘mining’ rather than ‘farming’ environmental resources, but that each human being has the same farming rights. In other words, global inequalities are unacceptable and it is recognised that everyone, no matter where they live, has the right to an equal share of the planet’s resources. Accordingly, a far greater proportion of the budget of high-income countries is spent on overseas development and, at an individual level, a greater proportion of personal income is donated to domestic charities and international development organisations.

There is also recognition that carbon rationing is the only just and fair means of apportioning pollution ‘rights’. Even those high-income nations who might appear to stand to lose, at least at first, from such arrangements, now recognise that the domestic impact of climate change, and the need to liberate themselves from vulnerable, overseas energy supplies, now support the idea of ‘fair shares’, and are helping to develop the international mechanisms by means of which they might be implemented.

Modelling sustainable living

The introduction of carbon ‘rationing’ and taxes; the growth of energy-saving measures and of the renewables industry; the precipitous decline in greenhouse gas emissions that has occurred without damaging the economy; the increase in reported wellbeing – all these factors have cemented the UK’s position as the model for how a modern society can live sustainably. Environment ministers from other countries study the UK’s transition. The nation’s position as world leader in this field gives it unprecedented weight on the world stage, and it is using this to push through an ambitious framework for international targets, as well as developing mitigation funds and carbon-trading schemes that are further reducing carbon emissions worldwide.

It is equally widely regarded that the changed national consciousness and raft of new policies has been effected, in large part, by the role of the churches. By insistently pushing this agenda, thinking innovatively about policy options and mobilising a grass-roots campaign, not unlike the earlier ‘Drop the Debt’ campaign, the churches caught the public imagination and created the space for government policies that would, only a few years ago, have been deemed idealistic.

This vision will not please everyone. Some will object to the details: aviation fuel taxed, car use reduced, pollution rights rationed!? Others will dismiss it as pie-in-the-sky. Will we ever transfer our allegiance from private to public transport? What are the odds of getting the US (or any) government to renegotiate the 1944 Chicago convention exempting aviation fuel from taxation, let alone signing up to international carbon rationing?

All such objections may be valid but, for the time being, immaterial. This vision of sustainable living is not offered for its appeal or for its feasibility. Rather, it is offered as a picture of what the principles outlined in Christianity, Climate Change and Sustainable Living might look like when implemented in a modern, Western economy like that of the UK.

This article is taken from ‘Christianity, climate change and sustainable living’ (SPCK 2007) by Nick Spencer and Robert White.

Nick Spencer is an Associate of LICC and is Director of Studies at Theos, the public theology think tank www.theosthinktank.co.uk