- This week the government dropped plans for zero carbon homes – throwing away 9 years of a decade-long drive in innovation and efficiency. (This was announced in a Treasury document called ‘Fixing the Foundations: Creating a more prosperous nation’)
- The government also reversed previous commitments this week and decided that fracking will be allowed on sites of special scientific interest. (There are enough SSSIs that a ban “would would have an adverse effect on the development of the shale gas industry”, says the DECC)
- The chancellor would do well to read Fergus Green’s latest paper from the LSE: Nationally self-interested climate mitigation. (It concludes that “the default assumption in social science scholarship should be that actions to reduce emissions are nationally net beneficial.”)
- Meanwhile, the Church of England synod voted to divest from coal and tar sands. (“We need an imaginative commitment to new ways of approaching the subject of climate change that does not accept a deterministic or selfish nationalistic policy” said Archbishop Justin Welby)
The Earthbound Report 
Thanks for alert. “Productivity is the challenge of our time.” (first sentence of Fixing the Foundations) – revealing insight into a different worldview.
I despair of this Government. In the circumstances we need a faster growing grass-roots movement to change our culture. We do have one of course; this blog is part of it, but until most people naturally would rather go for a walk than go shopping, work less rather than have the new car, we won’t get there.
But yes, productivity IS an issue in this country. It does need to be higher. The question is more what do we produce and why. High productivity of ‘green’ products, same rewards but more leisure time etc etc.
The things tories are doing just is beyond my understanding. I hope we can all stand together and make some changes of our own. The collapse is coming and the people who have community will be prosperous, the Tories are trying to destroy that but as long as we know it’s there we can win!
It is depressing, isn’t it? I don’t think the Conservatives are trying to destroy community though, not deliberately. It’s more of a by-product of selfish capitalism, which was no less selfish under Labour. That’s a cultural problem as well as a political one, and a problem that we are all complicit in to one degree or another.