How to Make Do and Mend our Economy

Rethinking Investment Strategies for Construction and Industry to meet the Challenge of Sustainability.

This report is taken from chapter 4 of Green House's book The Post-Growth Project: How the End of Economic Growth Could Bring a Fairer and Happier Society published in 2014.

This report is about how ‘building’ a post-growth future cannot take for granted building in the literal sense: building comes at a huge ecological cost and tends to drive up consumption in all other areas.

The current economic strategies proposed to restart economies across Europe are reflected in two largely disparate policy debates: one around the nature of investment to kick-start growth, and another concerning whether or not there is a need for austerity measures to cut public sector deficits in many European states. This paper recognises that both of these mainstream approaches are failing: not just to produce a sustainable economy, but socially and environmentally too. This report presents a framework that enables both of these challenges to be addressed together, thus extending far beyond current efforts to produce greener businesses and construction. Such a single green economic approach has been considered under the banner of a Green New Deal, but this is often viewed as a specific green employment and energy efficiency investment programme, rather than a wider strategy to enable the transition of our economy to a sustainable future. Here, we propose that such a shift from post-crash economics to a sustainable future must also mean shifting from continued expansion in the scale of our built environment (both in the UK and globally), to prioritizing creation of new green jobs that sustain our existing resource use, and keep industrial products in circulation. This proposes we create a circular economy that reverses current trends of continued expansion in both the scale of resource and fossil fuel use, to recreate a reasonable chance of us remaining within 2⁰C of global warming. To achieve this we must avoid emitting no more than one fifth of all already proven reserves of oil, gas and coal listed by companies and countries. Therefore, an end to fossil fuel subsidies and divestment of these dangerous-to-use assets is needed, alongside a reduced scale of other unsustainable levels of exploitation of our natural environment. This will also require the removal of ‘perverse’ incentives that stop mainstream business being sustainable enough. We need to reduce the scale of our production and consumption and replace our cultural aspiration for ‘more’ possessions with making do with ‘enough’, and sharing more instead. In short, we need to make do, better, with less. This is contrasted to current green industrial strategies, which tend to be incremental and fragmented, focussed: either on one business at a time or aiming to make an existing industrial process or construction greener but within the context in overall growth in the scale of production and consumption. Unfortunately, greener cars, greener electricity generation, greener consumer purchases in greener high-streets, alongside continued expansion of the scale of our built environment and global supply chains is still increasing, rather than reducing, our ecological and carbon footprints.

new green jobs that sustain our existing resource use, and keep industrial products in circulation. This proposes we create a circular economy that reverses current trends of continued expansion in both the scale of resource and fossil fuel use, to recreate a reasonable chance of us remaining within 2⁰C of global warming. To achieve this we must avoid emitting no more than one fifth of all already proven reserves of oil, gas and coal listed by companies and countries. Therefore, an end to fossil fuel subsidies and divestment of these dangerous-to-use assets is needed, alongside a reduced scale of other unsustainable levels of exploitation of our natural environment. This will also require the removal of ‘perverse’ incentives that stop mainstream business being sustainable enough. We need to reduce the scale of our production and consumption and replace our cultural aspiration for ‘more’ possessions with making do with ‘enough’, and sharing more instead. In short, we need to make do, better, with less. This is contrasted to current green industrial strategies, which tend to be incremental and fragmented, focussed: either on one business at a time or aiming to make an existing industrial process or construction greener but within the context in overall growth in the scale of production and consumption. Unfortunately, greener cars, greener electricity generation, greener consumer purchases in greener high-streets, alongside continued expansion of the scale of our built environment and global supply chains is still increasing, rather than reducing, our ecological and carbon footprints.