February 2010 printable subscriber newsletter

Ecologist

1st February, 2010

In this month's newsletter, we look at using historical records to understand today's fish populations; we wonder whether existing sustainable businesses will support tomorrow's economy; we look at the worrying prospect of peak phosphorus and uncover the green truth about tetrapak food cartons. To download the newsletter, log in and scroll to the bottom of the page...

So, the UK is officially out of recession. Judging by the ambivalence of the headlines writers (‘UK crawls out of recession’, admitted the FT at the end of January), no-one is quite sure what to make of it.

On the one hand there is clearly a reason to be cheerful – no-one wants recessions. Even those most committed to steady-state,
ecological economics realise that a recession is not a sustainable way in which to reduce an economy to its ecologically appropriate size – it is messy, causes great amounts of non-economic suffering, reduces investment in environmental projects and encourages politicians to reach for the nearest quick-fix solution. If that means shovelling in the coal, oil or gas even faster then so be it, most politicians would reason.

But at the same time there is a pervasive feeling that the recession woke the West up from its collective dream, and, like most dreams, certain parts of it don’t make a right lot of sense.

Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, told MPs in late January that, in light of the fact that the UK banking sector was five times the size of the nation’s GDP, ‘one way or another it doesn’t...

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