Safia meets Zac Goldsmith, ecologist and politician, who also directs the Ecologist magazine, to find out what they share in common.
The Ecologist magazine, based in East London a few minutes walk from the People Tree office, was founded by his uncle Edward Goldsmith, but Zac invites me to his Richmond office where he is campaigning to be elected MP at the next general election. His office is fast becoming the epicenter of some very exciting eco-initiatives that you'll probably want to welcome to your neighbourhood soon. Amongst the books that were most influential to Zac are The Trap, by his father James Goldsmith, and Ancient Futures by Helena Norberg-Hodge - also two of my favourites with themes that echo through both our work. |  |
SM: When was your awakening as an ecologist?
ZG: As a child, I only wanted to listen to David Attenborough. As I grew up, I realised that all these wonderful things were under serious threat. Over the past months I've talked to 50 schools, and I've never met a child not interested in the natural world. The problem is they're insulated from it. According to a recent study, 1 in 10 children don't even know where eggs come from.
SM: What are you planning to implement in Richmond?
ZG: I've put a big emphasis on schools. One campaign is to ensure every school - there are 47 - is fitted with a proper kitchen that can double up as a classroom. Children need to know where their food comes from and how to cook it. We're also trying to help every school source it's food sustainably and locally.
We've just set up another radical campaign to support the highstreets. Britain lost 2,500 independent shops last year. Shopping areas in Richmond and Kingston are no exception. We've visited a variety of people who have successfully reversed these same trends in their own communities.
SM: Who are the winners and the losers of the present system?
ZG: Everyone will lose if we continue to destroy the planet. Food security, the destruction of our fish stocks, the erosion of our breadbaskets, climate change etc... will have profound implications. And as oil becomes more scarce, we will all feel the pain of our dependence. But it will be the poor who are hit soonest and hardest.
SM: So where do you stand on the role of the market?
ZG: We've been presented with a stark choice for decades - you can have the market or the environment. I don't accept this. The market is a reality. It is the most powerful force for change, other than nature herself. The market has been a force for destruction for many years because it has failed to internalise the value of the natural world. Pollution, and even the climate itself does not appear on the balance sheets. But if the market can be made to 'see' the environment, the pollution becomes an actual liability, then things will change - and fast.
SM: Is there a conflict between the environment and the development agenda?
ZG: No. It's not about stopping trade. Trade is good, at least where the terms are fair. That's why the Fair Trade movement is so important. We're always going to want things that can't be grown here. The problem is where there is an exaggerated trade in basic goods. We sell as much poultry meat to the Netherlands as we buy from the Netherlands. Only the middlemen benefit. I do believe we need a bias in favour of a more localised system. For instance, the government spends £2 billion on food for schools, hospitals and prisons. If we invested this money in the most sustainable local food - and where that's not possible, on Fair Trade products, we'd see huge benefits. The local economy would be bolstered. Oil dependence would decrease and children and patients would benefit from healthier, fresher food - as would the community that grows it.
SM: James Goldsmith argued the need for alternative indicators to success/prosperity as against GDP - how would you like to measure it?
ZG: GDP is inadequate. That's clear. It measures all economic activity as good. The Exxon Valdez oil spill boosted US GDP. The Tsunami had a similar impact in Indonesia. When the economic system measures as good what any normal person would regard as bad, we have a problem. I think we need to develop a new system that is able to discriminate between good and bad activity, a measurement that can place a value on the natural world, and on genuine progress.
The irony is that most people would like to take the train rather than fly. Most people would prefer to eat local organic food. Most people would favour a car that is cheaper to run. We need to find levers that allow everyone, not just the wealthy, to make green choices.
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SM: How?
ZG: The key is to make sure that pollution and the use of scarce resources is an actual financial liability, not just an externality - not just an invisible cost which the whole of society has to carry. That means putting a price on pollution. If chucking rubbish in landfills costs a lot of money, companies will start reducing the amount they generate. If carbon has a price, companies will start reducing their emissions. If producers are required to look after the products at the end of their - lives - they would design products that last.
People think this will all cost a lot more. But it's not true. If a product's true cost was reflected in the price, the marketplace would look very different. In the UK we spend about £300 million each year cleaning pesticides out of our drinking water. If the polluter had to pay, the resulting - cheap - food wouldn't be half as cheap and our water bills would be cheaper.
SM: Even 10 year olds are beginning to wonder why politicians don't take the initiative, what do you think?
ZG: We have to let politicians know that there is an appetite for solutions. It's not only up to the individual. People want to see leadership. Take electrical appliances: we could beg people to switch over to more efficient appliances, but the government could raise standards at a stroke. If every light bulb in the UK was energy efficient, we'd save the power equivalent of two nuclear power plants.
What we can't accept are these half hearted, misleading non-solutions we've been seeing over the past few years. Offering to exempt zero carbon homes from stamp duty sounds good, but there isn't a single house that would benefit. We need to deal with the real problem - the 23 million existing homes. Sticking an extra £50 tax on a car you've already bought isn't going to change anything. It will have zero green effect, but it will turn people off. People aren't stupid.
SM: What are the most subversive things you have ever done?
ZG: We set up a group to challenge the National Farmers' Union a few years ago. At the time, it just didn't look or behave like an organisation battling a crisis. It was managing the decline of the farm sector. There was no real attempt to force the supermarkets to pay fair prices to farmers. Our campaign highlighted these problems and we did successfully shift the debate. The NFU today is a stronger, better organisation.
One of my favourite groups is the US-based Rainforest Action Network. It is small agile and highly effective when it comes to changing the behaviour of big business. The approach is combative, but when companies finally yield, they almost always benefit from doing the right thing.
SM: Tell us what you are working on with David Cameron these days?
ZG: We have published a 600-page Report on environmental policy for the Conservative Party. When we handed it over, there was a lot of discussion in the media. Some of it was excellent, but much was misleading. A lot of the media headlines focused on bans; banning TV, standby, etc, but in fact we only recommend one ban - the use of landfill for waste that can be recycled or composted.
To enable everyone, not just the wealthy, to make green choices we need to create powerful incentives. There are plenty of 'low hanging fruit'. For example, if nearly 60% of our emissions come from the built environment, we need incentives for people to upgrade their homes. The only time it makes sense to do that is when the home is bought or sold, and that's where the incentive needs to be offered.
Energy efficiency is the number one priority. The best power plant is one that isn't built because it's not needed. And for the energy we do need, I think places like Copenhagen offer a real model. It gets all its heat and power from a network of small scale decentralised combined heat and power plants. It's cheap, clean and highly efficient. Germany's approach to microgeneration is also impressive. One town in Bavaria generates more solar power than the whole of the UK. There are nearly ten times more people employed in renewable energy in Germany than in this country. We need to learn from these examples.
SM: Why the Conservative Party rather than the Green Party?
ZG: The Green Party is effectively a lobby group. It should generate good ideas and drop them into Parliament in the hope they'll be seized on. It should try its hardest to stimulate the competition that's already happening in Parliament on green issues. Sometimes it behaves in a territorial way, as if it has exclusive ownership of the green agenda. That is utterly mad.
I joined the Conservatives simply because it is the party with the biggest appetite for green solutions, and is likely to form a government.
SM: How would you rewrite the agenda for the G8 in Japan next year?
ZG: I think there is a real opportunity to ensure our lending agencies - the World Bank, the Export Credit Agencies etc... stop supporting oil projects overseas. We should be helping developing countries develop a cleaner, safer infrastructure. Subsidies on fossil fuels are estimated at about US$250 billion a year - we should push for agreement by members to identify and begin phasing them out. This is the key.
Zac has an amazingly holistic and practical approach to enabling people to change society and the need for political leadership without fear of the interests of big business to create a genuine democracy.
If I were David Cameron I would be tempted to make the Ecologist magazine a compulsory read for all party members. It's full of articles on the best thinking around and stuffed with useful information.
Zac and I do share a lot in common, we are passionate about finding solutions to global warming, ecology and social justice. Let's hope that given more real choice we can stop putting our money and time behind maintaining the status quo and build a new economy based on sustainability and humanity.