This sort of business is just one of the many carbon heavy companies which will and indeed need to die if we have any hope of saving the planet from the consequences of climate change. And those devastating consequences won’t hit the profligate and selfish cross-ocean frequent flyers anything as much as the world’s billions of food and energy starved. The UK has the opportunity and the responsibility to shift its economy to be a zero carbon leading light for a green future. Silverjet and its likes will not be a part of such a proud British future.

The Transition Towns movement is a great example of where ordinary people – butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, teachers and housewives – are taking control back at a local level. This movement which is active in over 30 UK cities, towns and villages (including Ambridge on Radio 4’s The Archers) is a rebirth of local community taking control of finding solutions to issues like peak oil, climate change and food security. Internationally there are 500 such initiatives. These communities have just given up waiting for local or national government to act. They are putting in place exciting and visionary steps towards a low carbon, local food, local currencies, and sustainable way of life. Totnes TT in Devon even has its own local currency – the Totnes Pound.

Kinsale in Ireland was the first TT. Their groundbreaking Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan has been adopted by the Town Council which now has plans to work towards energy independence. Initiatives include community gardens, a proposal to establish the first Community Composting scheme, energy audits for domestic, business and municipal buildings, pedestriansing part of the town, a prototype anaerobic digester for the Town (commercial food waste) and it’s environ (agricultural waste) and a ‘free cycle system’ in which people pass on unwanted belongings for free to others instead of dumping them.

This sort of local grassroots political engagement and democratic participative movement is surely a refreshing innovation and one which central politicians need to listen to and respond to. Its enacting right now the kinds of things we advocate in the QOL report. This shows there is a vibrant appetite from people for the kinds of things QOL have proposed.

The report supports a wider debate beginning to emerge in the ‘green movement’ which questions the way it has come to rely on ‘green consuming’ our way out of trouble. The report illustrates issues we raised in the QOL report about the crucial questions ‘what is progress’ and what is ‘a good life’. It investigates the way we have encouraged people to think of themselves as consumers rather than citizens and to become fixated on extrinsic values like image (which reduce our happiness) as opposed to intrinsic values like friendships and community involvement (which increase happiness).

This wider societal shift away from intrinsic to extrinsic values is merely being echoed by the green movement in its calls for people to just change a light bulb or unplug their mobile phones. Such incremental acts of greener consuming merely help to lock people into a mode of life centred on consuming rather than acting as citizens in a wider and deeper sense.

The report has set off a lively debate in the NGO movement and a debate which is timely for the wider sustainability shift that we all - citizens, companies and politicians - are part of.

Just this week Odin Knudsen, managing director for JP Morgan & Chase has said “Chinais making tremendous progress. It’s in China‘s interests and they want to be energy efficient.”

Admittedly Asia’s emissions have grown from 10% to 25% of global emissions in the last 30 years. But on a per capita historical basis Asian and other developing countries are still way behind countries lie the US and UK.

But countries like China see the writing on the wall (no pun intended). The UN calculates that food production will fall by 30% by 2050 in China due to climate change. China is the least resources rich country per capita in the world. Their rivers are almost ‘dead’ and they have terrible pollution and desertification problems.

Now China is leapfrogging many more developed nations to build huge amounts of renewable energy and energy efficiency.

This also bodes well for the successor to Kyoto due to be agreed by the end of 2009. Such a deal will need to include countries like China as well as the US and the word on the street is that this is certainly likely.

This is good news for the world. Its a shame the UK is not at the forefront of environmental technology which countries like China so badly need. Lack of Government foresight and support has left us way behind countries like Denmark and Germany. Perhaps it not too late – the UK has some of the world’s best science and engineering capability and could yet become a global player in the green energy revolution but this will need the kind of policy incentives QOL has proposed.

The President’s Climate Action Project (PCAP) has recently been in contact with the Quality of Life Group to learn from our experience in setting out future climate policy. The QOL group looks forward to supporting the PCAP’s efforts and we are also in contact with a number of right-of–centre parties in other countries who have sought out QOL support in their green efforts.      

We would be delighted to hear from others active on the green political landscape with either suggestions or seeking help in their work.   

This month’s theme echoes comments recently made by Sir Martin Sorrell CEO of global media conglomerate WPP. Sorrell has this to say about conspicuous consumption - “All our instincts as clients, agencies [and] media owners are to encourage people to consume more – super consumption.” He added that people had become used to: “The aspiration that you should consume more; the aspiration that you should have a bigger car; the aspiration that you should have a number of holidays, bigger houses [and] multiple houses. Our view, which is counter to what you expect our industry to argue, is that conspicuous consumption is not productive, and should be discouraged.”.

We are living through interesting times indeed when someone as close to our materialist lifestyles is recognising that we are suffering from societal affluenza which at the same time is choking our one and only planet. This does not in any way mean we need to return to a pre-industrial Luddite hair-shirt lifestyle (as some would characterise ‘green’) but it does open up a welcome and refreshing societal debate about the nature of ‘the good life’. This is a subject close to QOL’s heart and a debate we hope to play a role in encouraging.