Green Focus: What would a green economy look like?

How would it be different if we thought that looking after the environment was important?

If we lived with the future in mind?

What do we mean by green jobs?

A great deal of economic activity consists of manufacturing, construction, travel and transport.

These activities mostly have a harmful effect on the environment, but we are introducing new technologies and different ways of doing things that achieve the same objectives with less damage.

When people write about green jobs, they are usually thinking of manufacturing, transporting, installing and disposing of these new products.

It is said that the net zero economy is currently worth £100bn.

Much of this is in manufacturing, but it also includes waste management, recycling and other activities that reduce environmental damage.

Some of the technologies that are used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, however, bring their own environmental problems.

They make demands, for example, on the world's supply of non-renewable resources such as lithium, copper, cobalt and rare-earth elements.

We may hope – and expect – that the green technologies that we now use represent just one stage in a continuous process and that others will be developed in the future which are less damaging.

There are other jobs that would not be classed as green but, by their very nature, have little environmental impact.

That includes many service industries and online activities.

Carers and comedians, along with contraltos, cricket coaches and computer competitions: these – and many others – add to the quality of our lives, while doing very little damage to the natural world.

Those of us who care for the environment and are able to make our own choices can decide to participate more in such low-impact activities and less in the high-impact activities of manufacturing, construction, travel and transport.

There are other jobs, moreover, which, instead of damaging the environment, make a positive contribution.

By planting woodland, restoring peatlands and creating wetlands, they benefit biodiversity, they reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, they offer an improved living environment for people nearby – and they contribute to economic growth.

The £80m Green Recovery Challenge Fund, for example, set up by the government a few years ago, supported 150 projects, created more than 2,600 jobs and connected more than 400,000 people with nature.

Such activities represent only a small part of the economy but, for environmentalists, they represent win–win–win–win.

What about economic growth and the environment?

I shall discuss this in a future column.