Part 1: Why we need a Great Transition
world’s population lived on less than equivalent of $2.50 a day. Research conducted by nef showed just how unevenly the proceeds of growth are shared out. For every $100 worth of growth, only $0.60 contributes to reducing poverty for the more than one billion people living on less than a $1 a day. As stark as these inequalities are on a global scale, we should not ignore inequality within countries. And the UK has one of the highest rates in the developed world. The richest 20 per cent have seven times the income of the poorest 20 per cent. One in three children grows up in relative poverty. All this makes for a profoundly unequal society, which matters from a social justice perspective but also because, as Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett demonstrate in The Spirit Level, less equal societies have poorer outcomes in nearly every social domain.29 And this holds true for people across the income spectrum. So while those on low incomes obviously have a disproportionate share of the poor outcomes, a middle-class person living in a country with high inequality will, for example, have a lower life expectancy than someone of the same socio-economic status in a more equal society.
So what if business as usual continued to 2050? It is hard to see how it could be done but, for arguments sake, what might the UK look like in 2050 if politicians did manage to restore business as usual? Figure 1 projects what could happen to GDP and to costs associated with climate change and inequality. We have been optimistic in our forecasts – this is not an attempt to deliberately construct a frightening scenario, but to give a clear-eyed picture of a possible future. GDP has been plotted as following a steady growth path and we assume that inequality remains at 2006 levels. With the climate change costs, however, we have modelled two separate cases. One – scenario B – takes politicians at their word and plots what could happen if the Climate Change Act targets of an 80 per cent reduction by 2050 and maximum concentration of 550 parts per million (ppm) are reached. Given the rate at which emissions are increasing and the lack of concerted policy measures being put in place to try to reverse this, we felt that it necessary to also project a more realistic scenario – scenario A – and have used the projections of the World Energy Outlook (WEO).30 Even in the ‘optimistic’ scenario where Climate Change Act targets are met, the UK is by no means a happy place by 2050. While GDP is certainly higher, this has been 23