Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
•
imposed a 10 per cent tax (the GST) on public transport fares, and
•
extended the diesel fuel excise rebate.
All of these increase the amount of fossil fuels burnt, with the associated
increases in urban air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. They also
shift the relative costs of individual transport modes for consumers. There is
nothing 'sustainable' about increasing the financial incentives to shift from
reliance on public transport to heavier reliance on private motor vehicles.
In contemporary debate it is rare to find a policy maker who will argue
against protecting the natural environment. However, it is also rare to find a
senior policy maker who will agree that protecting the environment is more
important than maximising the rate of economic growth. Most will agree
that both are important, but priorities are revealed in actions not in words.
There have been very few prominent policy decisions in Australia that have
explicitly sought to protect the environment in the full knowledge that such
protection would be likely to reduce economic growth. When environmental
protection does cause harm to an industry, such as reducing access by fishers
to the Great Barrier Reef, policy makers typically stress the economic bene-
fits that will accrue to other sectors of the economy (for example, tourism).
The pursuit of economic growth stands in the way of solving a wide
range of environmental and social problems. Talk of 'win-win' policy out-
comes, where both the economy and the environment benefit, typically
masks an asymmetry in the policy-making process: policies that are good for
the economy but bad for the environment are allowed but policies that are
good for the environment but bad for the economy are not. In modern Aus-
tralia, social and economic problems will remain unsolved unless it is possi-
ble to develop policy responses that address those problems without
threatening to reduce the rate of economic growth.
Is a post-growth society possible?
It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital
and population implies no stationary state of human improvement.
There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture,
and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of
living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds
ceased to be engrossed by the Art of getting on
(John Stuart Mill,
Principles of Political Economy,
1865).
