How green is our future? (From The Northern Echo)

How green is our future?

9:12am Friday 13th March 2009 in Search

A fascinating high-level debate unfolded yesterday about the future of the North-East. Chris Lloyd listened in.

IN the giant painting on the wall of the British Academy, Christ singled out Peter with his finger and declared him to be the rock on which he would build his church for the future. Yesterday morning, in the august surroundings of the Academy overlooking St James’ Park in London, a “new green deal” was singled out as the rock on which the North-East should build its future.

The great and the good of the region’s politicians and professors had gathered for a debate simply entitled “The Future of the North-East”.

It launched a series of essays on the same subject published by the Smith Institute – a thinktank set up to further the ideals of the late Labour leader, John Smith.

The essays make sobering reading. They paint a picture of a much-loved region with many positives that has made great strides in recent years – but is desperately searching for a prosperous future.

“Today’s North-East: disproportionately reliant on the public sector, scarred by the fleeting benefits of foreign direct investment, aspiring for a cultural revolution that will change, not just our economic base, but the whole collective outlook of a region desperate for selfconfidence as much as self-reliance,” wrote Kevin Rowan, regional secretary of the TUC, in his essay.

Lord Michael Bates, the former Langbaurgh MP who is now a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, called for “a new spirit of ambition”

to awaken his home region which he found “at the bottom of virtually every economic league table”.

With a plaintive cry, he wrote: “It is impossible for the North-East to progress from its present position as the smallest, least prosperous, most public-sector dependent and most peripheral region of England without cultivating a sense of competition.”

John Tomaney, professor of regional development at Newcastle University, spoke of a “triple crunch” – the credit crunch allied to a looming energy crisis combined with climate change.

“This is not merely a recession from which we will return to business as usual,” he said. “This is a turning point. It is a historical crisis, with growing criticism of the economic model that has underpinned the world’s growth for the last 30 or 40 years. This isn’t a question of how well placed the North-East is to survive the recession, but of what kind of society emerges after the crisis.”

He urged the region to cement “a new green deal”, to devote itself to futuristic industries in which Nature had kindly bequeathed it a competitive advantage. He spoke of clean coal from our hills and carbon capture beneath our sea, of geothermal warmth from our rocks.

He also spoke of the North-East’s biofuels potential – biomass, biodiesel and bioethanol – and the possibilities of windpower.

One of the essays in the book, by Neil Murphy, a visiting fellow at Newcastle University, argues for the new green deal to re-fashion our communities for sustainable living. Work, shops, homes and leisure are all nearby and interconnected by public transport.

Alan Clarke, chief executive of the regional development agency One North East, noted: “You’ve got to get a balance between how radical you can be and how realistic you are.” Referring to the experiments with Washington new town in the Sixties, he said: “With the motor car enabling people to travel distances to work, that sort of sustainable approach is very difficult to achieve.”

Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, injected another note of realism by saying: “In the week of 25th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike, are we confident short- termism is a thing of the past?”

Nick Brown, the Government Chief Whip and Minister for the North-East, replied: “I will do everything I can to make sure we don’t go back to mass unemployment. Windpower is the only renewable energy source that you can easily get to market. There’s a very good claim for it to be offshore because everybody agrees with it, but nobody wants it next to their house.”

He predicted “the greatest change in the employment base since the decline of shipbuilding”

would occur on the north bank of the Tyne where there are plans for a turbine building industry.

“Jobs will be in their thousands and they will endure not just for one generation but two and beyond, as then advances in wavepower will be developed.”

Ray Hudson, professor of geography at Durham University, took the debate on a different tack. With unemployment growing, he wondered about the role of the “social economy” in which voluntary organisations find imaginative ways of delivering services.

‘IS there a way for the social economy to maintain a sense of community cohesion and create worthwhile jobs that give people a stake in the region?” he asked.

The British Academy is in one of London’s finest Georgian buildings which WE Gladstone, the four-times Liberal Prime Minister, called home for 15 years. Perhaps fittingly, Sir Alan Beith, the Lib Dem MP for Berwick for 36 years, rose to ask: “Are regional institutions necessary to advance this kind of strategy?”

To a man, the attendees agreed they were.

“It’s very difficult to understand any other mechanism as it would mean either very small units of local government or very large units of central government making these decisions,”

said Alastair Thomson, dean of Teesside University’s Business School.

Only a noble lord disagreed. “I know the world is very differently viewed from Teesside as opposed to Tyneside,” said Lord Bates, “so giving greater autonomy (to smaller councils) is a good thing. We shouldn’t be afraid of competition within the region.”

At 10am the debaters dispersed. The only question remaining was another one about sustainability because the croissants, with which the proceedings had begun two hours earlier after a bleary-eyed stumble through London’s early-morning mayhem, were no longer up to the job.