Green shoots

Editorial
The Guardian, Tuesday 6 January 2009

Gordon Brown wants them. So do David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Oh, and don't forget Barack Obama, Ban Ki-moon and a phalanx of other heavyweights. Green new jobs are fast becoming the political equivalent of a new year's diet - a commitment nearly everyone yearns to make but finds damnably difficult to put into practice. Just like those January resolutions, the desire to create new green businesses and work makes good rhetoric and a noble ambition. But all political parties need to think much more broadly and radically if this really is going to be a green recession.
Take the prime minister's announcement this weekend of his drive to create 100,000 jobs, many green. All very exciting - but inevitably, less than the sum of its parts. Much of the spending had been laid out in last November's pre-budget report, while some of the schemes seem to have been knocking around longer (that plan for super-fast broadband sounds just like a strategy announced in October). Mr Brown famously likes recycling policies, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but what stands out about the list of job-creation schemes is just that - it is a list. Covering everything from school repairs to super-fast broadband, it has no unifying theme other than every item on it sounds vaguely good.
Still, that was more coherent than David Cameron's speech yesterday on the economy. The Tory leader called for "the family-friendly culture of Scandinavia", "the creativity and dynamism of Silicon Valley" - plus Japan's savings culture, Germany's manufacturing base and France's high-speed railways. If Mr Brown presented a shopping list, Mr Cameron was off to the travel agents. Behind this scenic itinerary lies a strategy of shifting the UK from a culture of borrowing and shopping to one of more saving and green manufacturing. Which is all commendable, but falls into the same trap as much Tory economic policy - it is not much help now, when a boost is most needed. Silicon Valley has a magical alloy of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, but it never yields results fast, and often not at all.
Voters are left with a choice, then, between Mr Brown's shopping list of jobs for today, and Mr Cameron's wishlist for a green tomorrow. Which sums up the tension in any green job-creation programme: is it about environmental sustainability (a long-haul game and about as structural as one gets), or about providing a cushion in a recession (usually a short-term, cyclical, fix)? The Green New Deal group (which includes this paper's economics editor, Larry Elliott) has done some excellent thinking on how to reconcile the two, but in mainstream politics only the Liberal Democrats have come up with a plausible sounding plan for a green recession and a sustainable recovery. The document lapses into superfluous accuracy (new rolling stock will cost £862m, it states - with greater precision than will be voiced by anyone working in transport infrastructure) but it sets a standard for the other parties to meet.
The government has talked before of launching a low-carbon industrial strategy, in the era when such things were nice to have, rather than a necessity. Were Mr Brown to revisit the idea (perhaps jazzing it up as his Green New Deal), he needs to address three areas: the short-term, the long-haul and the pain. For the short-term, a government-sponsored scheme of making old buildings more energy-efficient would be a good way of employing low-skilled and construction workers. Over the longer-term, the government should encourage research in renewable technologies and fund education for environmental engineers and workers. Spending is usually politically popular, and a recession gives it an easy justification. But there will have to be more regulation and in the short-term, higher costs. Politicians should admit that any green revolution will be more serious and longer lasting than spraying cash around.