Sez report

Edmund Burke, 1757 
 
‘Modern compassionate Conservatism means recognising that there’s more to human life than getting 
and spending money.’ 
 
David Cameron, 2005 
 
1.1.1. The case for change 
Two centuries of industrialisation and economic growth have brought humanity huge material 
progress, from which Britain has benefited enormously. The post-war period, in particular, has been 
one of unprecedented prosperity. We have better homes, jobs, cars, education, and health care than 
ever before. We go on holidays to places our grandparents could only dream of. We have more money 
and more things to buy with it, than ever before in our history. 
Yet, despite that material progress, the UK seems to be experiencing a ‘social recession.’ Social 
cohesion is under increasing strain. Levels of trust, in each other and in our institutions, are dwindling. 
Rates of mental illness, drug abuse, ‘binge-drinking’, family break-up, and other symptoms of an 
unhappy society are rising inexorably. That is not to say that things were better in the ‘good old days’ 
but simply that material prosperity has not made us a contented society. 
Meanwhile, the damaging impact of our economic growth on the environment is increasingly obvious. 
Most urgently, global climate change tells us that our reliance on fossil fuels must be brought swiftly 
to an end. But climate change is only one symptom of the damage wrought by today’s lifestyles. There 
are others too: on a global level, we are seeing desertification, soil erosion, the destruction of forests 
and the continued extinction of unique species. At a national and local level we suffer air, noise, and 
light pollution, thoughtless development and the destruction of valued wildlife sites. 
What is going wrong? Standard economic theory tells us that there is a direct link between material 
wealth and human happiness. The more we have, in material terms, the more content it was thought we 
would be. The reality, however, seems to be more complex. When a nation is already wealthy, the 
continued pursuit of a very narrowly defined economic growth can have the effect of degrading the 
quality of life even while the figures show that it is increasing the standard of living.
In other words: beyond a certain point – a point which the UK reached some time ago – ever-
increasing material gain can become not a gift but a burden. As people, it makes us less happy, and the 
environment upon which all of us, and our economy, depend is increasingly degraded by it. 
This paradox poses a key question: can we continue to be an economically successful nation and, at 
the same time, an environmentally and socially healthy one? By following the current model we 
clearly can’t. Yet, the authors of this Report believe that there is a way through, given leadership and 
resolve. We need, however, to rethink how we measure our progress as a country. We need vigorously 

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9 
to tackle climate change and the other symptoms of our misuse of the planet, and we need also to 
commit ourselves, not just to economic, but to social and environmental growth.
We believe that doing so is entirely consistent with long-standing Conservative principles. We believe, 
also, that the pursuit of this aim can provide Britain with a new national purpose – true 21
st
century 
politics – a regeneration of our society and its values.
1.1.2. Hitting the buffers? 
John Maynard Keynes
1
calculated that between 2000 BC and the early eighteenth century, the 
standards of living in ‘civilised countries’ doubled. Yet, between those two dates, the material basis of 
society changed surprisingly little. In 2000 BC we already had fire, language, the wheel, the plough, 
sail, banks, governments, maths, and religion; in the 18
th
century, these things still formed the basis of 
our civilisation. 
The industrial revolution and the limited liability company changed all that. Mankind had a powerful 
source of energy, the means to harness it, and the financial mechanisms to exploit it. At the same time, 
modern advances in medicine, beginning with the smallpox vaccine, led to ever increasing life 
expectancy and ever falling infant mortality. The population would begin to increase exponentially.
The industrial revolution, and the stunning economic progress which followed it, were based on one 
key discovery: the wide availability of coal, oil, and gas – the fossil fuels. In effect, we were mining 
millions of years of concentrated sunlight and putting it to use to fuel our economies. What we didn't 
know then was that the mass burning of these fuels would begin to change the climate of the planet. 
The energy that had made our rapid progress possible was also capable of destroying us.
In those early days of industrialisation such environmental considerations were far from anybody's 
minds. The services provided to us by our natural environment – raw materials, assimilation of waste, 
and maintenance of biodiversity, clean air and water and a stable climate –came free and seemed 
inexhaustible. The overriding concern of capitalist economists was to maximise material welfare, 
expressed through the ever-increasing production and consumption of goods.
Now, that assessment has been reversed. The world is awash with capital-rich investors but 
increasingly denuded of natural resources. People are aware of the immense, often irreversible, 
damage done to our one and only life support machine – planet Earth. Air and water pollution, habitat 
destruction and species loss became widespread. In the late 20th century, the iconic images of the 
Earth from space, beamed down from the Apollo moon missions, helped to galvanise a new 
environmental politics. Through them we recognised the fragility of our natural environment and our 
dependence upon it. Increasingly, the mass media has brought faraway events such as the deforestation 
of the Amazon, the melting of the polar ice caps and desertification in sub-Saharan Africa into our 
living rooms.
At a more considered level, the UN’s Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, which reported in 2005, 
marshals with frightening effect the evidence of human abuse of the rivers, oceans, soil, and forests of 
this planet. ‘Over the past 50 years’, it tells us, ‘humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and 
extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing 
demands for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely 
irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth.’ 
The report’s facts tell their own story: 
1
John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, London 1987 (1930) – from Bill McBibben Deep 
Economy, 2007. 

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10 
x
between 10 and 30% of all mammal, bird and amphibian species are currently threatened with 
extinction; 
x
60% of the world's ecosystems have been degraded by humans; 
x
20% of the world's corals have been lost in just 20 years; 
x
50% of the world's wetland ecosystems have been destroyed in the last five decades; 
x
more wild land has been converted to agriculture since 1945 than in the 18th and 19th centuries 
combined; 
x
the world's fisheries and freshwater resources are already so degraded that they cannot sustain 
current human populations, let alone projected future increases; and 
x
up to 70% of the rivers of the world’s largest country, China, are dead or dying.
The huge body of expert research behind the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment simply helps to 
bring home what we have been slowly learning over 300 years: economic growth, like all human 
activities, operates within environmental limits. The current Archbishop of Canterbury
2
put it well 
when he reminded us that ‘the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment’. When our 
demand for resources and environmental services starts to outstrip the planet's capacity to provide 
them, then the problems we are storing up for ourselves become exceptionally serious. We have 
reached that point, and moved beyond it. 
The underlying cause is a way of life which is out of step with the long-term health of the planet. The 
solution requires us to dig deep into our reserves of human ingenuity: to challenge our own cultural 
beliefs, economic assumptions, and policy frameworks. It need not be as difficult as it sounds. But the 
first step must be to understand the severity of the problem, and act accordingly. 
1.1.3. Climate change: The canary in the coalmine 
When Newcomen devised his coal burning steam engine in 1712, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the 
atmosphere sat at 275 parts per million (ppm) – much the same as they had for hundreds of thousands 
of years
3
. Today, they are at 380ppm, and rising fast. Changes in CO2 levels of this magnitude seem to 
be causing major shifts in the Earth’s climate. Climate change is now the ‘canary in the coalmine’: it is 
telling us that something is badly wrong.
The most recent findings of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
4
concluded that its 
global impacts could include:
x
75-250 million people across Africa facing water shortages by 2020; 
x
crop yields increasing by 20% in East and Southeast Asia, but decreasing by up to 30% in 
Central and South Asia; 
x
the global potential for food production increasing as temperatures rise over a range of
between 1 and 3°C, but decreasing above this; 
x
agriculture fed by rainfall potentially dropping by 50% in some African countries by 2020; 
x
20-30% of all plant and animal species at increased risk of extinction if temperatures rise 
between 1.5ºc and 2.5ºc; and 
x
glaciers and snow cover declining, reducing water availability in some countries. 
Scientifically, a consensus has been reached that any increase of over 2°C in the Earth's overall 
temperature is likely to have unpredictable and potentially disastrous consequences, including the 
death of the world's rainforests, a major rise in sea levels and a potential ‘tipping point’ in global 
species extinction. To prevent this, climate scientists tell us that we must stabilise atmospheric 
2
A planet on the brink: article for the Independent on Sunday, 17
th
April 2005.
3
McKibben 2007ibid. 
4
YUN IPCC, Fourth Assessment Report February 2007. 

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11 
concentrations of greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalent) at a maximum of 450-500ppm, by the year 2050 
at the latest.
Globally, politicians are beginning to respond to these warnings. What we know is that our actions 
over the next 10 years will determine whether we can hit this crucial target. Atmospheric emissions 
have a time lag associated with their final effect. We have now just 10 years in which to set in place a 
trajectory in which our emissions will peak and then decline by 2050. If we fail then we will over-run 
our ability to keep our climate stable – with potentially disastrous effects. Hitting it will require a 
transformation of our energy and transport infrastructures – not just because those sectors represent 
approximately 60 per cent of current global emissions, but because these emissions are set to grow 
sharply as a result of economic development in the giant emerging nations. 
Economists, too, are adding up the costs of inaction. The ground-breaking Stern Review spells out the 
potential for significant dislocation of the economic system, social disruption, and the destruction of 
human and animal life on a major scale. Even so, we believe that Stern was actually too complacent, 
both in terms of the high emissions target he recommended as acceptable and his calculations of the 
likely cost of climate change impacts. Nevertheless, we accept his fundamental case: that the cost of 
inaction is likely to be significantly greater than the cost of precautionary action now.
Already there is evidence that parts of the economy are responding to these pressures. In the UK, 
insurers are reassessing the risk profiles of floodplain and coastal properties. Investment houses are 
downgrading the credit ratings of inefficient, energy-intensive companies. Business is recognising the 
opportunities for ‘green growth’. Large utility companies have brought renewable power into millions 
of homes. Consumers are fuelling demand for lower carbon products. Supermarkets are taking the 
carbon battle to their customers and their suppliers. 
But on top of the economics and politics, our response to climate change has a strong moral 
dimension. It brings humanity face to face with its responsibilities, both to those sharing the planet 
now, and to the generations to come; recepting such responsibility is entirely in line with Conservative 
principles. With it, comes the need to ensure that the global response is fair and just, and that those 
countries most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change are helped to pursue a path of 
sustainable economic development.
Within this context, the first duty of the British government must be to protect its people, present and 
future, from the risks of climate change. This will of course demand international action. But Britain 
will have to play a key role in securing an international consensus on emissions reductions targets as 
well as helping to define delivery mechanisms for them. 
It will also be important not to use any lack of international progress as an excuse for a lack of 
progress at home. The often-quoted fact that the UK contributes ‘only 2 per cent’ of global carbon 
emissions is highly misleading, referring only to emissions released directly within UK territories and 
not taking into account the emissions associated with the overseas production of products and services 
destined for consumption by UK citizens.
But the precise allocation of emissions responsibility is really beside the point. The issue of climate 
change is going to intensify, not go away, and the UK needs to respond to it by developing policy that 
demonstrates leadership and encourages British companies to help build a greener Britain. Committing 
to a low carbon economy offers many advantages, both economic and social, to governments that are 
far-sighted enough to seize the opportunities.
Doing so will involve transcending party politics and building a cross-party consensus on a radical but 
realistic long-term framework for emissions reductions. In the UK, all three main political parties have 
already committed themselves to cutting emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050, and a draft Climate 

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Change Bill, the first of its kind in the world, has cross-party support. As a nation, we are well 
positioned to meet our moral responsibilities on climate change and build a successful, profitable, low-
carbon economy as we do so. All that is needed to make this vision a reality is the encouragement of a 
far-sighted government. 
1.1.4. The problem with growth 
No one could sensibly deny that economic growth has brought us enormous benefits. Yet those 
benefits have come at a great cost to our environment. This cost will continue to rise, as fossil-fuelled 
growth continues around the world. Over the last 20 years, an extra billion consumers have joined the 
world's population, and rapidly developing nations like China, India and Brazil will increasingly claim 
a fairer share of the world resources. We are already perilously close to causing runaway climate 
change. However we fuel our civilization from now on, we need to recognise that fossil energy was, in 
the words of writer Bill Mckibben, ‘a one-time gift that underwrote a one-time binge of growth.’
In terms of the scale of action required, we have worked on the assumption that developed countries 
need to be reducing cumulative emissions by at least 80 per cent over the next fifty years. In effect the 
science is requiring us to ask ourselves: ‘what would a low-carbon British economy look like, and how 
do we get there? It seems a very daunting task but the alternative is even more frightening and the 
drivers for change are not just associated with global warming. 
The social cost of material growth is becoming increasingly clear. Even as the global economy 
continues to consume beyond its ecological means, the long-assumed link between increased financial 
wealth and increased social wellbeing is showing signs of stress. Levels of income and consumption 
have soared over the last three decades in most developed countries. Yet consistently, the people of 
those same countries report no increase in their sense of contentment or wellbeing. In many cases they 
report a decline. It seems that in wealthy countries, a continued increase in economic growth, is not 
increasing wellbeing. 
Here in Britain, the signs of this are everywhere. Levels of mental illness, drug abuse and ‘binge 
drinking’ are rising even as our economy continues to grow. The Samaritans report that five million 
people are ‘extremely stressed.’ Unicef research suggests that British children are the unhappiest in 
Europe. Crime levels continue to rise. Meanwhile, surveys show that nearly nine out of ten members 
of the public think British society is ‘too materialistic’, and that a quarter of 30 to 59 year-olds have 
voluntarily ‘downshifted’, accepting less income in exchange for more free time
5
.
Yet, according to standard economic and political thinking this ought not to be. Economic growth, 
measured as an increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should bring a correlating growth in our 
happiness and wellbeing and any attempt to prioritise environmental social health over economic 
growth is widely supposed to make people less content. 
The truth, though, is beginning to seem more complex. Evidence from many quarters suggests that 
human wellbeing does not rise indefinitely alongside gains in material wealth. In fact, that once we 
reach a certain level of income and material wealth, gains beyond that level can actually begin to 
exacerbate social problems, from ‘status anxiety’ to a deteriorating work-life balance. These findings 
challenge the assumption that environmental and social wellbeing parallel economic progress and raise 
questions over the very nature of economic growth and its role in society.
Our increasing awareness of the need to phase out fossil fuels rapidly is accompanied by an awareness 
that economic growth based on them is only part of what improves human lives. The real questions 
5
For details on these statistics see our Chapter on Wellbeing. 

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13 
now are beginning to focus on what defines ‘progress’, what is ‘quality growth’ and what determines a 
‘good life’.
1.1.5. How government has failed us 
One of the lessons of the past two decades has been that governments of all stripes have been too slow 
in recognizing the magnitude of the environmental challenge and in responding to it. Often there 
seemed good reasons. Governing is a complicated business and easy solutions are very rarely 
forthcoming. Nevertheless, it is clear that any future Conservative government will have to buck the 
trend and commit to a step change.
In the last 10 years, New Labour has brought some progress, particularly in the prominence of climate 
change as an international political issue. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair must be given credit for 
forcing it up the international agenda. However, the Government at home has pursued contradictory 
policies. While promoting international action on climate change, it has advocated the building of 
thousands of miles of new roads and motorways and backed the rapid expansion of aviation: policies 
which are set potentially to cancel out any emissions reductions made in the UK over the next few 
decades. It has often seemed that Britain has had two governments – one committed to preventing 
climate change, and one committed to causing it. 
Another governmental problem has been the gap between the setting of policy and its implementation. 
New Labour has been notorious both for setting targets and for failing to implement them. It has 
created some innovative policies on the environment, but they have too often been complex and badly 
implemented. Setting targets for the use of renewable energy, for example, was the right policy. 
Unfortunately, the implementation of this policy was chaotic. As a result, instead of being a leading 
innovator in renewable energy, we are now the country with the most expensive wind energy in 
Europe and the country condemned to building the first new coal-fired power stations for thirty years, 
despite our commitments to tackle climate change. 
Part of the problem has been that too much weight has been placed on the power of central 
government to drive change almost unaided. There has been insufficient engagement of key partners – 
local government, the world of business, local communities, and individuals. As a result, people feel 
disempowered and disconnected even from the Government’s good intentions on green issues. There 
is no doubt the Government needs to pursue a radical green agenda over the next two decades. But 
there is also no doubt that unless this agenda is carried through not only with the consent, but the 
active participation of the British public, it is bound to fail. It is an unhappy reflection on the 
inadequacy of government that one film of Al Gore and the evident commitment of David Cameron 
have done far more to engage the UK public with the scale and urgency of climate change than ten 
years of Tony Blair.
In other areas, too, there are serious inconsistencies. If a Government is serious about the risks of 
climate change, it doesn’t build homes in flood zones. If it is genuinely concerned about the growth in 
emissions from aviation, it doesn’t adopt a ‘predict and provide’ approach to airports. The confused 
state of environmental policy results in a failure to engage the British people in a vision of a green 
future. A future Conservative government will need to be resolute in its determination to infuse all its 
policies, at home and abroad, with clear environmental purpose. Only then will the British people join 
in with the wholehearted enthusiasm that the task demands.
The ground has been prepared. The public is more concerned about environmental issues than ever 
before. The danger is that the debate about environmental policy is becoming combative rather than 
consensual. Suggestions of higher taxes on polluting products and activities are greeted with hostility. 
Regulation and efforts to provoke behaviour change are derided as the actions of an over-zealous 
State.

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14 
To change this atmosphere, a future Conservative government will need to be open about its objectives 
and motives and must sustain an honest dialogue about why measures to advance a sustainable future 
are important for all of us. It will need, for example, to make a clear, transparent commitment to use 
environmental taxes to reduce taxes elsewhere. It must justify regulation where it is necessary and 
remove it where it isn’t. Above all, it must engage and share with the whole of society so that this 
becomes a common endeavour and not a state enterprise. 
The scale and depth of the change which will be needed will not be easy to achieve. It will require true 
leadership from government. As the Sustainable Development Commission puts it: 
‘…the truth of it is that taking resource productivity seriously (ie, systematically driving 
down resource and energy consumption across the entire economy) is not as pain-free as it 
first appears. Decades of perverse subsidies and the licensed externalisation of costs to 
keep prices low has left a mountain of market failures that people have got used to and 
resent having taken away from them. The fuel tax protests of 2000 are etched in the 
memory of civil servants and ministers alike, as an example of what happens when an eco-
instrument is deployed insensitively or punitively.’
6
Sustained and inspirational political leadership is precisely what will be required of a future 
Conservative government. It will be hard and often very challenging. There is, however, no serious 
alternative. 
6
Sustainable Development Commission,