Which is just as well because what they built for us so far hasn’t been very impressive.
Start with the simple fact that the main power source for our entire civilisation is the burning of fossils that can’t be replaced. Then add in the fact that the economic system relies on market signals about what is profitable to the person who makes it, supplies it or consumes it without many serious incentives to have regard to the consequences to others. So, the cost of a flight doesn’t remotely reflect the impact of that flight on the environment. The cost of a gallon of petrol pays scant regard to air pollution or CO2 emissions as the taxes pretty much only cover the realistic costs of road construction, maintenance and traffic management. And we produce mountains of plastic waste that have now reached the bottom of the deepest oceans and the top of the highest mountains.
Then there is the vulnerability of our civilisation. Our supermarket shelves are filled with products that are out of season in the UK that are shipped or flown in just in time to be sold. Any disruption to the supply chain and the country will be short of food in a couple of weeks. There is little or no connection between the growers of food and the buyers.
Add to that the gambles we are taking with human health. We have already seen a new illness spread across the planet just a couple of months after it spread between caged live wild animals and the humans who bought them to serve up to party functionaries at sumptuous banquets. Scientists have been warning for years that cutting down rain forests and mistreating wildlife would increase the risk of pandemic and that mass cheap air travel would make control of infection spread near impossible. They’ve also repeatedly warned that there is an imminent threat of us losing the availability of antibiotics through over use and misuse.
Unfortunately, when many politicians talk about building back better they show little or no grasp of any of these issues. The Johnson government has just agreed to allow antibiotic soaked meat from the US to be brought in huge quantities into the UK to be put into processed food that will be that little bit cheaper and nastier. The grain they are seeking to import is soaked with pesticides that are illegal in Europe. They are busy negotiating with the airlines what financial support package they would like. Whilst working hard to make sure as many cars are sold as possible with some slight incentives to switch to electric.
The opposition isn’t doing much better. I heard Ed Milliband, who now speaks for them on trade and industry, speaking on the radio just before I sat down to write this piece. His argument was that we should support Virgin Airways once they registered themselves in the UK for tax and promised to spend a little more in the future on greener air travel. That attitude is fundamentally flawed. Airlines that paid tax abroad don’t need UK taxpayer help to get back to business as near normal. The people with the skills to make plane parts, service or fly the planes and work in the travel industry need help to adapt to a necessarily smaller market not guarantees that their industry will soon be back to normal.
Air travel has experienced a huge drop in demand. The challenge isn’t how to restore that demand. The challenge is how to stop it returning quickly. There will, of course, be people who will wish to take the kids off the Benidorm for their annual holiday without worrying about the possibility that they will return with a virus that could kill their Granny. More understandably there will also be business travellers that genuinely have little option other than to travel to meet with international clients. Such travel needs to be at a much lower level than before lockdown permanently. We have learned a lot during lockdown about how to be happy without travel and how to do business via videoconference. At a time of fresh austerity what Chief Finance Officer is going to sign off on a first class flight across the Atlantic to stay in expensive hotels to do a job that could be done in minutes on Zoom? A few short months after news reports of people trapped on cruise ships riddled with a deadly virus how many pensioners are going to shell out large amounts of money to travel across the world for pleasure? The whole airline and travel industry is going to be smaller for years whether we like it or not. The planet will like it. Those working in that industry need help to adjust not promises that there is going to be an early return to irresponsible levels of air travel.
Building back better therefore needs real thought about how to help workers who need to retrain and regions that are suffering job losses. Amongst the issues we need to be addressing if we really want to build back better are:
- Where are the new opportunities going to be over the next decades?
- How do we organise the retraining and direct investments that will need to be made in order to take advantage of them?
- How do we pay for the investment and support the workers that need retraining?
- How much of the money we need can we safely generate by simply printing money and pumping into the system during a deep recession? (Clue: a great deal particularly if it is done intelligently in several countries at once)
- What price do we want fossil fuels to be to the consumer and how much must taxes go up now to stabilise that price at a time when oil and gas are at record lows?
- Which sectors of the green economy can the UK realistically succeed at?
- Can we avoid signing a trade deal with the US that makes government investment in UK industry and agriculture illegal?
- Can we avoid a no deal Brexit?
- How do we work with consumers to help them experience the changes as a positive?
- How do we work with businesses, the public sector and the voluntary sector to help them prosper instead of being left to sink or swim in a fresh and more severe form of austerity.
- How can we make agriculture a large, more secure and stable part of our economy?
- How can we protect and grow public transport at a time when people are scared of mixing?
- How can we make health and happiness a fundamental element of our economic planning instead of a nice add on?
It is up to us on the opposite side of the fence to articulate a genuinely better alternative and to make sure we do indeed build back better. And to do so in ways that build on the support of the large majority of people who enjoyed the clean air, the lighter traffic and the more sociable contacts with their neighbours that we experienced during lockdown whilst telling them the honest truth. A lot needs to change. That change needs to be fundamental and rapid.