You are invited to the Sheffield City Council Green Commission Public Participation Session:
Tues 8 April: at 7pm Reception Rooms, Town Hall.
7.00 Introduction and scene setting followed by interactive discussion around the proposed topics including climate change – adaptation and mitigation, Sustainable transport, Green Business and Sustainable Growth, Green infrastructure/Quality of life\Placemaking , low carbon energy, Resource efficiency
One purpose of the session is to seek views to ensure that the topics are the right ones and understand the top priorities within each area so that these can be examined in further detail in in commission hearings.
“Sustainable Growth” is an oxymoron. It’s an illogical concept. The whole point is that growth is an exponential process. A growth rate of 10% a year will mean a doubling of the size of an economy in 7 years. 3% growth rate a year will double the size of an economy every 23 years. The Earth is not getting any bigger yet if OECD countries consumption rates (like the UK) were reached by every country in the world we would need three planets to support us.
The UK is living way beyond its means, our economy is already unsustainable. Further Growth of the economy measured as Gross Domestic Product cannot be sustained. We need far better ways of measuring prosperity and ditch growth as a goal.
I think Bernard makes a very important point. This commission is being run by Labour who still don’t understand how serious the threat of climate catastrophe is. The danger is that they will use the commission as a talking shop to appear to be doing something, while carrying on as normal. We need to change Sheffield so it is much more self reliant, increasing local food production, increasing our energy supply through renewables etc. Continually aiming for a higher GDP moves us quickly in the wrong direction.