:00:05. > :00:15.these figures being released, the price increased again.
:00:15. > :00:16.
:00:16. > :00:20.Welcome to HARDtalk. Economic growth and how to get it dominates
:00:20. > :00:24.the political agenda in countries across the globe, from China with a
:00:24. > :00:28.few it is slowing, to Europe, where there seemed to have none at all.
:00:28. > :00:32.Without growth, had to be climbed back out of the mess in which the
:00:32. > :00:35.financial crash put us in? Harder those parts of the world where
:00:35. > :00:41.basic needs for food, water and shorter have not been that has any
:00:41. > :00:45.chance of a better future? -- shelter. Andrew Simms things we are
:00:45. > :00:49.asking the wrong question. They advocate of economic growth fails
:00:49. > :00:59.to explain how an ever-expanding economy can be sustained if we
:00:59. > :01:03.
:01:03. > :01:13.carry on as we are, we are heading to the apocalypse. What is his
:01:13. > :01:27.
:01:27. > :01:31.Andrew Simms, welcome. What is wrong with growth. One of the
:01:31. > :01:35.problems is it measures the quantity and not quality. If you
:01:35. > :01:39.have something like a crime wave or epidemic or riot, the money spent
:01:39. > :01:44.on health services and cleaning up and security would look good in the
:01:44. > :01:48.growth figures. But that would be no indication of whether Law
:01:48. > :01:52.Society was succeeding or on a personal level, imagine we got on a
:01:52. > :01:56.Sunday morning. I had a choice of going for a walk in the fresh
:01:56. > :02:01.spring air, getting in a car, getting stuck in gridlock, going to
:02:01. > :02:05.a DIY shop to buy some chemical drain cleaner. According to the
:02:05. > :02:09.growth figures, I would be happier getting stuck in traffic then
:02:09. > :02:13.walking in my part. That is how it measures whether an economy is
:02:13. > :02:19.doing well. It does not make sense. It does not really be that all
:02:19. > :02:23.growth is bad. No. There are many different types of growth.
:02:23. > :02:27.Depending on the pattern of economic captivity. They can be
:02:27. > :02:32.more or less jobs, pollution. It can come in circumstances of
:02:32. > :02:36.suppression of human rights or to social freedom. These are the
:02:36. > :02:41.important questions to ask. What are we trying to achieve with the
:02:42. > :02:45.economy? How should we measure that success? You point out that the
:02:45. > :02:49.quality of economic growth is important. Economic growth is about
:02:49. > :02:54.adding up the goods and services in and out of an economy, coming up
:02:54. > :03:00.with something better than it was yesterday, last week, last month,
:03:00. > :03:05.last year. It can be positive development. In developing
:03:05. > :03:10.countries, I can cope for it to you a former chief economist, countries
:03:10. > :03:16.with higher GDP growth results in law mortality. Running water,
:03:16. > :03:20.sewage systems, better schools and education for children. With wood
:03:20. > :03:26.stoves, the air is clear of smoke. Although just come from economic
:03:26. > :03:30.growth. We have to make two distinctions. Growth works
:03:30. > :03:35.differently in countries like the UK and the US and developing
:03:35. > :03:39.countries where basic needs are not met. If you are tackling poverty in
:03:39. > :03:43.a developing country, but would almost certainly accompany economic
:03:43. > :03:47.growth. In rich countries where we have passed thresholds already, for
:03:47. > :03:52.the last few decades, economic growth has been delayed from rising
:03:53. > :03:57.levels of human well-being and life satisfaction. Really? You are
:03:57. > :04:01.saying everybody in a country like the US and UK already has so much
:04:01. > :04:06.of the benefits of growth that they no longer get benefit from any
:04:06. > :04:10.further growth? It is a consistent pattern across most advanced
:04:10. > :04:15.industrialised economies that for the last few decades, as growth has
:04:15. > :04:21.gone up, life satisfaction has flat land. In some places, it has gone
:04:22. > :04:24.down. You might take a different situation in a country with --
:04:24. > :04:29.where David Mead are not met. If you are getting people into work
:04:29. > :04:33.and 50 people out of poverty, you are getting levels of increase of
:04:33. > :04:37.GDP. What is the connection between the two. I do not people will
:04:37. > :04:44.disagree with you that growth is not the only thing that matters
:04:44. > :04:54.that the hummer other ways of pursuing satisfaction. Let me quote
:04:54. > :04:57.
:04:57. > :05:01.From -- he is talking about the importance and lardy of life in
:05:01. > :05:05.society. He says economic growth may be a necessary condition for
:05:05. > :05:09.the relief of poverty. Big is enough on its own but it is a
:05:09. > :05:15.necessary condition. Do you accept that? None of these good things can
:05:16. > :05:19.be achieved without economic growth. How can everybody collectively in
:05:19. > :05:26.the world survive and thrive? Working within the tolerance levels
:05:26. > :05:32.of the biosphere and life-support systems we have. If we get to that
:05:32. > :05:37.stage if we had economic growth? back to Adam Smith, John Stuart
:05:37. > :05:41.Mill. They imagined, 150 years ago, the more advanced economies were
:05:41. > :05:45.concerned, they were up to the level of material comfort they
:05:45. > :05:52.needed. But society would develop in other ways. So they were wrong
:05:52. > :05:57.about that? Things went on. Now we are against the buffers of our
:05:57. > :06:03.ecological threshold. Look at the number of people being lifted out
:06:03. > :06:06.of absolute poverty over the last few decades. Statistically, China
:06:06. > :06:10.accounts for the entire number of people lifted out of poverty. But
:06:10. > :06:14.even in China, depended on exploiting natural resources
:06:14. > :06:22.outside its boundaries, because it does not have enough itself, even
:06:22. > :06:24.there, a report that came... Lead before officials saw it, estimated
:06:24. > :06:30.three-quarters of one million people per year die prematurely as
:06:30. > :06:34.a consequence of pollution. How do we achieve in the development while
:06:34. > :06:37.working within the biosphere's tolerance levels. If we undermined
:06:37. > :06:45.those fundamental life-support systems, you are not being a front
:06:45. > :06:49.of the poor in any country. On that basis, there are ways showing that
:06:49. > :06:53.improvements can come about with economic growth. Because of the
:06:53. > :06:57.consequence of economic growth, it actually reduces the strain. For
:06:57. > :07:03.example, population growth. They are statistics that suggest
:07:03. > :07:12.population growth has declined as countries have become wealthier.
:07:13. > :07:21.Brazil, average size of the family, 6.2% in 1960. Now 1.8%. I quit the
:07:21. > :07:26.former Chief economist. Girls receive more education. The riches
:07:26. > :07:31.of economic growth. It is absolutely the case. People find
:07:31. > :07:34.their livelihoods are more secure. Victualler to raid struck off the
:07:34. > :07:39.cliff. There is something slightly misleading there. If you compare
:07:39. > :07:43.for example a typical individual in North America or the UK and look at
:07:43. > :07:47.the greenhouse gas emissions, and take one year, starting from the
:07:47. > :07:50.stroke of midnight, if you live in view as from January 2nd, you will
:07:50. > :07:54.have accounted for the same greenhouse gas emissions that
:07:54. > :08:00.somebody in Tanzania would emit over the course of an entire year.
:08:00. > :08:05.One measure. This is fundamental. This is one of the dominoes which
:08:05. > :08:10.when it topples, knocks on to all the life-support systems. Food,
:08:10. > :08:15.farming, Forest, Fisheries. The very basis on which our live with
:08:15. > :08:21.the band. If you get past the point of no return, he gets hit first and
:08:21. > :08:24.worst? People who are the poorest living in the most marginal land.
:08:24. > :08:29.That is the argument for saying we need for economic growth in other
:08:29. > :08:33.parts of the globe. The question is, how do we stay the right side of
:08:33. > :08:38.going beyond the point of no return in some of these critical support
:08:38. > :08:42.systems? Can that be achieved? Another environmental economist
:08:42. > :08:47.once famously said that in terms of how we can improve by efficiency,
:08:47. > :08:52.you can sure enough it further down the food chain but you cannot eat
:08:52. > :08:57.menus. This is the problem. How do we share the available
:08:57. > :09:00.environmental space upon which our economies depend in such a way that
:09:00. > :09:06.we all stand a good chance of leading a decent quality of life?
:09:06. > :09:10.Not so long ago, there was a leader. He spoke as if he should your
:09:10. > :09:14.perspective. The rate, the pursuit of wealth is no longer as it was to
:09:14. > :09:18.hit people's hopes and aspirations. Of the consumption of resources
:09:18. > :09:22.cannot for this fight our in borders buyers. The quarter of life
:09:22. > :09:27.means more than quantity of money. You could those words from David
:09:27. > :09:32.Cameron. And then be speech he made three years later, when he had
:09:32. > :09:36.indeed come to power. He said, it is a new year. The coalition
:09:36. > :09:42.government has one resolution, to help drive growth. Where did he go
:09:42. > :09:47.wrong? By getting elected, David Cameron said it had four in
:09:47. > :09:53.opposition. In fact, he was echoing the words of another once head for
:09:53. > :09:57.a politician, Robert Kennedy. Half a century ago, the thing about GDP,
:09:57. > :10:01.it measures everything apart from that that makes life truly
:10:01. > :10:05.worthwhile. David Cameron came from an idea of general well being, an
:10:05. > :10:08.equal indicator that should direct our economics policies. You are
:10:08. > :10:12.saying that is not compatible with being an elected politician in
:10:12. > :10:19.power? It is not compatible with some of the choices are made all
:10:19. > :10:22.been in a force. There is a great mistake. -- Office. There was a
:10:22. > :10:29.moment around the time of the financial crisis in the 2007, 28
:10:29. > :10:33.back. Many economies that had been Systems
:10:33. > :10:37.Systems fell into great difficulty. The US and UK were two of the
:10:37. > :10:41.leading examples. There was an opportunity to have a multiple
:10:41. > :10:46.winner, to stabilise the economy, to get good quality economic
:10:46. > :10:51.activity to create jobs. It would have been through green stem this
:10:51. > :10:55.spending. Cut a cyclical investment to invest in green energy and green
:10:55. > :11:00.transport. Increasing the energy efficiency of our building stock.
:11:00. > :11:08.But could have achieved more carbon emissions, more jobs, greater
:11:08. > :11:11.energy security. It would maintain the economy. That was an
:11:11. > :11:18.opportunity in some countries missed. Other countries took it.
:11:18. > :11:25.South Korea did it well. But not other places? Knocked Europe, not
:11:25. > :11:30.the US. The best emerging economies in your opinion. Not withstanding
:11:30. > :11:34.getting elected, it simply came up against reality. An economy that
:11:34. > :11:38.Nick Bailey is not growing but has been shrinking. At the end of this
:11:38. > :11:42.week, we will find out whether the British economy has struck again in
:11:42. > :11:46.to seize what is described as a triple dip recession. British
:11:46. > :11:52.politicians are nervous about it. Presumably, you would actually see
:11:52. > :11:57.it as good news. It is an odd reality they are facing. You take
:11:57. > :12:07.an organisation like the Labour Organisation, which sees 60 million
:12:07. > :12:10.
:12:10. > :12:15.drugs in the Queen, sectors. -- I'm not asking about them. What
:12:15. > :12:20.would you think. Would it be a good thing if we go back to recession?
:12:20. > :12:27.Economic growth is similar to the IDs he would achieved. Recession is
:12:27. > :12:32.neither here nor there. It is for many people. You have not got a job
:12:32. > :12:36.and you cannot face prospect of having to pay -- let me make a
:12:36. > :12:40.point. How do you deal for the practicality for people who are not
:12:40. > :12:44.living in this degree of uncertainty his life prospects may
:12:44. > :12:47.be negative. You are saying economic growth is a bad thing for
:12:47. > :12:51.them and for what they are sitting, it is beefing it makes a difference
:12:51. > :12:56.between a decent quality of life and a miserable existence. Growth
:12:56. > :13:01.has failed many of those people. If you look at wage levels among the
:13:01. > :13:10.income brackets, growth has failed globally. Tricking benefits killer
:13:10. > :13:16.was income bracket. Even in richer Why have you not been able to
:13:16. > :13:22.persuade people of how this was this is? It is a default position
:13:22. > :13:27.to look at how growth has gone up by. It is nonsense to look at that.
:13:27. > :13:31.We need to look at what it is but we want to achieve. If people want
:13:31. > :13:35.nor energy bills and a jobs and not the few of going into another
:13:35. > :13:40.resource driven conflict, the answer is to re-engineer euro
:13:40. > :13:44.economies with something like a green deal to create jobs. Take a
:13:44. > :13:49.Baker which a bank. If you invest in a renewable energy driven
:13:49. > :13:53.economy rather than having a fossil fuel for nuclear power one that is
:13:53. > :13:58.decentralised, pound-for-pound. For - what dollar for dollar, you will
:13:58. > :14:02.create more jobs. If you would homes for pensions, look at the
:14:02. > :14:12.renewal will energy sector. Developed infrastructure that pays
:14:12. > :14:22.
:14:22. > :14:26.You have talked about alternative growth. What effect it will have on
:14:26. > :14:32.our well-being. How are they determined? Who decide and how do
:14:32. > :14:35.they decide if these things need your objective? You talk about a
:14:35. > :14:41.wind farm. That could pass your first Test on impact on the
:14:41. > :14:44.biosphere. It may not be detrimental to Bolton -- equality.
:14:44. > :14:50.But it may be to my will be in if I live next to it. I might not like
:14:50. > :14:55.the noise. I might find my quality of life deteriorates. Who weighs
:14:55. > :14:58.that in the balance? Who decides if my view counts or doesn't? Straight
:14:58. > :15:04.forward statistically, whether something goes up on -- or down
:15:04. > :15:08.based on that, there are many ways of measuring it. Sometimes observed
:15:08. > :15:14.in linear cause and effect is not straightforward. For example, if
:15:14. > :15:19.you do not go down a safe energy -- track, you get high energy prices,
:15:19. > :15:24.global instability. You don't have a job to go to. Those things
:15:24. > :15:31.undermine your well-being. You are saying my well-being as I perceive
:15:31. > :15:37.it, I should be ignored? You may say, you may not like it but tough.
:15:37. > :15:43.Absolutely not! But if you are not saying that... Every society has to
:15:43. > :15:48.make democratic choices. Well, they have been made! That is why David
:15:48. > :15:51.Cameron is saying, Surrey. raise an interesting example about
:15:51. > :15:56.windmills. If you go to an area where old forms of doing business
:15:56. > :16:03.have started to fail the people, you take full farmers are amongst
:16:03. > :16:06.Welsh farming communities, there is an awful lot made about what impact
:16:06. > :16:11.they might have. But there are quite a few communities there where
:16:11. > :16:15.farmers who could no longer make a living from their hill farms want
:16:15. > :16:20.to see wind turbines put up. The people who object are the second
:16:20. > :16:25.home owning incomers from another place. Perhaps we want to pop out
:16:25. > :16:30.for a weekend from London. These require balancing. But we do have
:16:30. > :16:34.ways of measuring alternative ways -- alternative ways to measure
:16:34. > :16:38.success or failure. We could get into an interesting argument about
:16:39. > :16:42.who dislikes windmills or not and who dislikes having them next to
:16:42. > :16:47.them. You might have used on that, I am sure the audience would. But
:16:47. > :16:51.it might be more productive to ask this. There are theories that are
:16:51. > :16:54.quite entertaining renewed talk about them in a television studio
:16:54. > :16:58.and they make quite a good reading a book but they are not practical
:16:58. > :17:02.and will never actually happened. The problem with much of this
:17:02. > :17:05.debate is, and probably very frustrating for you, is that it
:17:05. > :17:10.won't happen. Renewed talk about practicality and whether things
:17:10. > :17:17.will happen, I notice that in the most recent economic Outlook, they
:17:17. > :17:21.are expecting to see something like a three. We global growth next year.
:17:21. > :17:26.-- when you talk. That means in 20 years, the global economy would
:17:26. > :17:32.have doubled. We are already using about 1.5 planets worth globally of
:17:32. > :17:35.the ecosystem services on which we depend. I predict it is entirely
:17:35. > :17:39.unrealistic and impractical to think that we can continue in the
:17:39. > :17:45.way that we are. If we wish to preserve the climatic conditions in
:17:45. > :17:49.which civilisation emerged. Those are the words used by the leading
:17:49. > :17:53.climate scientists from a NASA mac. We are because -- cost of losing
:17:53. > :17:58.the climatic conditions upon our livelihood depends. What is the
:17:58. > :18:01.plan to get us to the right side of the danger zone? As you say in this
:18:01. > :18:05.book, a simple historical fact, human beings have an amazing
:18:05. > :18:10.ability to change and adapt. But you are worried about the kinds of
:18:10. > :18:15.adaptations but to at least accept we have the capacity to do that. A
:18:15. > :18:21.practical example. The extraction of shale gas. Fracking. Very
:18:21. > :18:26.interesting. When the government encouraged it, you published an
:18:26. > :18:31.article saying we can't afford to invest in fracking. Why not? One of
:18:31. > :18:35.the reasons it is another fossil fuel, it locks us into a fossil
:18:35. > :18:38.fuel based infrastructure. An example by Cambridge... It is but
:18:39. > :18:45.in the absence of other fuels that we can go to in the big scale, at
:18:45. > :18:49.least it has less impact. There is not an absence of other
:18:49. > :18:52.technologies. A study by Cambridge made the point that if you invested
:18:52. > :18:59.similarly in offshore... A combination of offshore and onshore
:18:59. > :19:03.wind, it would generate potentially 100,000 jobs. I have seen that
:19:03. > :19:07.article. I would say there are alternatives. What happens when the
:19:07. > :19:12.wind doesn't blow? You have to have an alternative supplier. Therefore
:19:12. > :19:16.you are into education. The good thing about renewable energy is
:19:16. > :19:21.when you have a combination over -- spread over a large geographical
:19:21. > :19:25.area and, something that works well in the day, wind that works well in
:19:25. > :19:29.the night, a grid network that can pick up the slack across a large
:19:29. > :19:33.area, in many ways renewables can be more reliable. There could be a
:19:33. > :19:38.time when a network of nuclear power stations have gone down and
:19:38. > :19:43.have had to be bailed out. We are talking about extraction of shale
:19:44. > :19:49.gas. In for 2011 it was said that fracking has reduced the emission
:19:49. > :19:53.of greenhouse gases. Do you accept that? Gas can definitely play apart
:19:53. > :20:00.as a transition to a lower carbon future. What is the problem with
:20:00. > :20:05.fracking? For one thing, it's a very energy intensive and
:20:05. > :20:08.inefficient use of fossil fuels. Let me say what you wrote in his
:20:08. > :20:12.article. In 2013, we will have a repeat in energy policy of the
:20:12. > :20:17.folly of the reckless and rational approach to finance and banking.
:20:17. > :20:22.How is this reckless? That is absolutely the case. It is reckless
:20:22. > :20:26.because we have a very short window of time in which to lay the
:20:26. > :20:30.foundations, rewire and economies, get the infrastructure in place.
:20:30. > :20:34.How does that compare with banking and finance? Because there are
:20:34. > :20:38.fundamental mistakes made about reading the signs of risk. There is
:20:38. > :20:43.an interesting... A great statistician... I don't want to go
:20:43. > :20:45.into him. I want to ask you this. Isn't the problem you face that in
:20:45. > :20:49.the frustration to deal with the fact that politicians and political
:20:49. > :20:53.leaders and the rest of us have not taken seriously the concerns
:20:53. > :20:58.expressed, that you fall back on not argument but exaggeration?
:20:58. > :21:04.There's no exaggeration in any of this. The his book is called
:21:04. > :21:07.'Cancel the Apocalypse'. What Apocalypse? -- this book. If the
:21:07. > :21:11.best signs we have available is right and we have no reason to
:21:11. > :21:16.believe it is not, we have a terrifying we short window of a few
:21:16. > :21:20.years to avoid the point after which the environment will dominoes
:21:20. > :21:26.begin to fall. There's no sound signs that tells us the opposite is
:21:26. > :21:30.the case. Let me put to you...I understand it is difficult and
:21:30. > :21:34.there are reputation will risks in predicting the apocalypse. After
:21:34. > :21:38.last year when we had various crazy readings of ancient calendars and
:21:38. > :21:42.readings from the Bible, people were saying... People make jokes
:21:42. > :21:46.about the Apocalypse like there's no tomorrow. But bad things do
:21:46. > :21:51.happen. In the history of life of this earth, they have been a series
:21:51. > :21:55.of mass extinction events. Are we heading for mass extinction now?
:21:55. > :21:58.Are we are living through what scientists call an mass extinction
:21:58. > :22:06.event. Climate change is progressing ten times at the rate
:22:06. > :22:12.that it did previously. I fear time may be running out for his
:22:12. > :22:20.programme. It is all about problem. Fair enough. It was observed in an
:22:20. > :22:27.interview in 2010 that the facts environmentalists thought would
:22:27. > :22:31.convince everybody to change their progress -- actions. The next was
:22:31. > :22:35.the apocalypse. Society would fall apart. It is that use of fear that
:22:35. > :22:39.is the main indicator of this. You are up -- is threatening the
:22:39. > :22:43.Apocalypse the only way to convince us to abandon African economic
:22:43. > :22:49.growth? You have misread my approach. The book is called
:22:49. > :22:56.'Cancel the Apocalypse'. -- economic growth. And our ability to
:22:56. > :23:01.dig ourselves out of this. If we ignore the signs, if we willfully
:23:01. > :23:06.ignore the signs that threaten our ability to we joy and flourish and
:23:06. > :23:09.prosper as a civilisation, we will only have ourselves to blame. But I
:23:09. > :23:13.think we have the techniques, technology and human a ingenuity to