This article is written by Andrew Prentis, Environmental advisor to the 99% Organisation  and Visiting Fellow at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

Those who oppose tackling climate change claim that it would be unaffordable in the short term – we must choose between getting poorer today or getting poorer later. This article challenges that framing.

What happens if we ignore the climate crisis?

We all know that there is a climate emergency whose consequences – both in terms of human life and economic cost – will be devastating if left unchecked. As the climate changes, we are already seeing extreme weather events across the planet: powerful storms, increased rainfall, and temperatures at times far in excess of historical records. Our biodiversity is under threat and the risk of large areas of the planet becoming unable to support agriculture or even uninhabitable is real.

At the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris 2015 there was international agreement for ‘holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’. Since then, the last 10 years have been the hottest on record and 2024 was the hottest of them all, with the World Meteorological Office declaring that the average temperature rise globally was in fact 1.55°C, already exceeding the Paris limit.

The Independent Report of the G20 TF-CLIMA Group of Experts pointed out “Under current policies, warming is projected to exceed 3°C – twice as much as the 1.5°C target set in Paris in 2015. A temperature increase on this scale would lead to macroeconomic losses of at least 18% of GDP by 2050 and 20% by 2100. The costs of inaction are far greater than the costs of action.”

Why aren’t we taking more action now?

Even as we see crop failures, the devastation of tropical storms, out-of-control wildfires, widespread flooding and the anticipated billion or more climate migrants by 2050, there is a collective failure to take the necessary and decisive action required, due at least in part to arguments about growth. In short, it appears that policymakers do not fully understand the links between the environment and the economy.

Historically here has been a clear link between economic growth and the ability to lift and keep people out of poverty. Equally there has been a link between economic growth and energy consumption, as there has been between energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, primarily because of our use of fossil fuels. But if we don’t find a way to break some of these links, how are we ever going to be able to tackle the climate emergency without plunging billions back into poverty?

There is good growth and bad growth

Not all economic activities have the same environmental effects: insulating houses, for example, is good growth: it contributes to the economy and simultaneously, it contributes to tackling climate change. Opening a new coal-powered power station, is bad growth – it does contribute to jobs and GDP, but it accelerates climate change. If we do not make this distinction in our policymaking, we will not find a way out of the crisis.

The diagram below uses ONS data to plot greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (all converted to CO₂-equivalent emissions) against contribution to the economy by sector, and it shows that 75% of our economy produces just 10% of our GHGs (the green boxes). Growth in these sectors can be considered ‘good growth’, because they make little significant impact on the climate – and if they had access to clean energy, they could easily become positive.

By contrast, the largest generators of GHGs (the yellow and red boxes) – fossil fuel extraction, transport, agriculture and food production, energy for heating and cooling and manufacturing), together only make up a quarter of our economy but produce 90% of our GHGs. Growth here should be seen as ‘bad growth’, so these sectors need radical transformation.

This can be achieved with the necessary political will, but we need our politicians to stop talking about ‘growth’ as if it is all the same and start to formulate policy that builds good growth and stops bad growth. The data tells us very clearly that good growth in three quarters of the economy can help lift people out of poverty without environmental damage. We now need government and industry to focus on a radical new approach to taxation and subsidy to transform the emission-producing sectors of the economy.

But what about our individual actions? Is it true that going green is more expensive, and that we’re all going to get poorer?

Must we all get poorer to go green?

Let’s take a closer look. The subject is huge: too huge to deal with comprehensively in one article, so I have focussed initially on new housebuilding, and taken a quick look at four of the key sectors which do most damage to the environment.

Housing

Since the 1980s, housebuilding in the UK has consistently lagged behind demand, leading to an estimated backlog of over 4 million homes, so in 2024 the incoming Labour government set a new housing target of building 1.5 million new homes over term of this parliament.

One problem is that under current policy, it has been estimated that tackling housing alone would consume 104% of the entire UK cumulative carbon budget from now until 2050: 90% of this from maintaining and using our existing housing stock and around 10% from the construction and operation of new builds.

How can we fix this? Let’s take a typical 3-bedroom house of 140m2, and look at 3 criteria:

1. the embodied carbon of construction – the emissions created in building it;
2. the operational carbon – ongoing energy cost of heating;
3. the financial cost of building.

If we compare such a house built with standard bricks and mortar construction with one based on an environmentally friendly straw bale, cob & timber construction, we see the following.

Source: see Appendix 1

Natural building materials represent an extraordinary opportunity for savings in financial costs, embodied carbon and ongoing carbon costs of heating. Making such a change is good for our environment, and also for our pockets.

Other sectors

In the UK, nearly 90% of our personal carbon footprints come from four sectors: transport, food, domestic energy consumption and goods & services. There is certainly scope for significant reduction in carbon footprint; and in most cases for financial savings at the same time.

Source: see Appendix 2

 While there is not room to go into it in details in this article, green energy generation is also becoming cheaper than fossil fuel-based energy generation. Accelerating that transition would be a further huge boost both to the environment and the economy.

Going green without mass impoverishment

The myth is that the change to a greener, sustainable economy is unaffordable, and the fear is that the changes we should be making are going to make us all a lot poorer. But when you look at the numbers in detail, the reality is that many of the changes easily available to us are going to make us richer, not poorer. The claim that we must choose between getting poorer today or getting poorer later is very clever framing – but it does not stand up to scrutiny.

Our government can act decisively and we can tackle climate change without becoming poorer: it is time for policy changes that recognise and embrace the difference between good and bad growth.

If you think it is time for us to abandon the myths and start to repair the damage, please share this article widely using the buttons below. Take a look at the 99% Organisation and join us now!