London debates the environmental imperative

Matt Ridley, the rational optimist, was the keynote speaker at yesterday's London debate on the environmental imperative. It was generally an interesting discussion, and in contrast to the vast majority of policy 'debates' actually contained some divergent views. I have become thoroughly bored with the type of occasion where six panellists all stand up one after the other and agree on absolutely every point.

There was of course disagreement from many in the audience about Ridley's sunny prognosis for the state of the planet and several people accused him of cherry picking his statistics, but I don't recall anyone actually being able to catch him out on a specific point.

I was surprised however by the general level of agreement with some of Ridley's views. In particular, there seemed to be recognition that innovation and new technology will likely be required to offset growing environmental pressures, and that economic growth will be required to generate the capital to fund these new technologies.

When it came to resources, Ridley made the point I would agree with that scarcity is not an issue. I was then disappointed that Ben Goldsmith, billed as an expert in green finance, chose to raise the issue of recent resource price rises and how these have wiped out a century of declines (previously argued by McKinsey in the circular economy report for the Dame Ellen MacArthur Foundation). I of course think that the real issue is the relative price of resources which are still at historically low levels. Commodity markets are in any case cyclical and prices will likely come down again.

Stuff is cheap and will continue to be cheap for a long wile yet.