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Richard Wilkinson
© Richard Wilkinson 2008
The difference between before and after New Labour is that time has been wasted and the world is nearer the brink of environmental disaster. Either we reduce carbon emissions by 90 percent over the next 40 years, or we face the consequences of runaway climate change and the conflict and disruption caused by growing scarcities of oil and other resources.
Consumerism is the biggest obstacle to sustainability and the pressure to consume is stoked by greater inequality. Inequality amplifies social status differences and adds to status insecurity and competition. People in more unequal societies struggle to keep up: they work longer hours, borrow more and save less.
Fairness is also key to policies to reduce global warming. Allowing rich nations or individuals to produce ten times the carbon emissions of the poor is not a basis for agreement and effective enforcement.
Even if we have to accept lower living standards to reach the target for reducing carbon emissions, that need not reduce the real quality of life. Health, happiness and measures of wellbeing in the rich world have long been decoupled from economic growth. What matters is no longer whether the whole society is a bit richer or poorer, but how big the material differences between us are. Wellbeing and the quality of life in modern societies is now better served by reducing inequality rather than by promoting growth. The data shows that more unequal societies suffer worse health, more violence, worse mental health, more drug problems. They have higher obesity and teenage births rates and they imprison more people. Inequality is also socially divisive: greater inequality goes with lower levels of trust and weaker community life.
If this is the picture presented by the data for rich, stable, market democracies, before the financial crisis, how much more might be at stake if societies suffered bigger shocks? Where inequality and insecurity are almost entirely unrestrained the consequences can be appalling for everyone. In Russia, with its oligarchs and poverty, average male life expectancy is 18 years less than in Britain, and female life expectancy 9 years less. Compare that with Cuba where resources, though no more plentiful, are much more equally shared. Life expectancy is almost as good as in the USA and only a year or two less than in the UK.
We face a choice between coordinated change initiated and planned by ourselves, or the conflict and suffering resulting from failure. The rich individuals and nations may think money of military force will keep them out of trouble. But that is a false hope. The data show that the health and social consequences of inequality envelop whole societies.
According to the WWF Cuba is the only country which has managed to combine an environmentally sustainable footprint per head of population with an acceptably high quality of life as measured by the UN Human Development Index. And if Cuba can do that without the latest and most economical technology, how much easier should it be for us?
Material inequality is a powerful determinant of the quality of social relations, of public spiritedness and of the psychosocial wellbeing of modern populations. Blaming our broken society on the poor and the broken economy on the rich must not obscure the need to reduce inequality or the fact that more equal societies perform measurably better on environmental goals.
Part of the Comment is free Soundings debate, first appeared 30 October.
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