Dr Patrick O’Sullivan and Tony Brauer respond to George Monbiot’s claim that ‘there is no such thing as green growth’
George Monbiot (‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe, 29 September) has written more or less the same article for years, but he rarely offers practical solutions. True, uninhibited economic growth on a finite planet cannot continue, and politicians who offer us continued growth but along a “green pathway” are either being disingenuous – dangerously misleading – or simply lying. But “doing less of almost everything” is too simplistic an answer.
Monbiot recognises that wealth must be distributed, but he does not say how. And as long as what we are using is unequally distributed, any measures designed to achieve that goal are potentially unjust. Fortunately, the alternatives are not more of the unlimited growth that is already wrecking the planet, or some kind of green dystopia in which people’s lives, numbers and consumption are closely controlled. There is a third way, involving, for example, the wider adoption of ideas that underpin the “community wealth-building” approach by Preston city council and the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, and of various green new deals, and which may be summed up as “local production for local need”.