Why ‘growth’ does not equal wellbeing for our young people

For energy, we dig up fuels, burn them to create electricity and pump the waste into our soil, our water and our atmosphere. Some nine million people die every year as a result of pollution.

In our economy, we dig up metals and oil, turn them into consumer goods, use them for a short time – sometimes a few months, sometimes just once – then throw them into landfill (if they’re not just dumped and end up as rubbish drifting out of sight and out of mind).

READ MORE: Majority of Scottish businesses believe climate change is a threat to them

And we’re told that we always want more. We need the next new, shiny thing. We need it yesterday and we need it before the one after that comes out.

We measure our “success” as an economy and as a country by our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Nothing else seems to matter, except perhaps things like “employment” and “productivity” – in other words, how much you’re contributing to that GDP and how you’re helping it grow. To endlessly and relentlessly grow. This can’t go on. Our planet simply cannot sustain this way of life. It is already telling us that we’re stressing it beyond its limits. The climate is changing, soils are degrading, resources are depleting and we’re feeling the impact on our own tired, stressed, overworked and increasingly polluted bodies.

We will pass these impacts on to the next generation. The links between exposure to pollution and the ability to learn is known and measurable. It won’t matter how well funded our schools are if the children in them are ill, stressed and malnourished.

We need to learn how to grow our food without destroying the ground underneath it. This means fewer of the most destructive products – agriculture contributes to around 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the third-largest source of emissions after power generation and transport – and it means growing more food closer to us. We need to consider another approach to how we live here. We need to close up those linear chains into loops. We need to build things to last, build them to be repaired and build them with sustainable materials. We need to stop powering the world with fuels that are killing us and shift to renewable sources.

We need to learn how to use less. Better, warmer homes, offices and schools need less energy to heat. We have the technology to construct buildings that can cut energy bills by 90% without increasing construction costs. If we do this using a National Investment Bank instead of relying on the “private market”, we can even build as many houses as we need and reduce the rent of tenants at the same time. This would have a massive impact on the living standards of young people and families, on energy use (thus reducing pollution) and on the shape of our economy as a whole.

The UK economy is now so dysfunctional that young people have no money left from their stagnant wages after paying their rent, utilities, commuting costs and childcare. Is it any wonder that a consumer-based economy starts to flounder when it runs out of consumers?

We can make a start on fixing a lot of this by changing how we measure “success” in our society. Instead of “GDP” and “growth”, let’s talk about “sustainability”, “wellbeing”, “environmental degradation” and “happiness”. What does it profit us as a whole if a few of us become as rich as Midas but we’re all just as miserable as he was? Instead of chasing growth, even the new sanitised version called “inclusive growth”, we can build a truly sustainable economy, society and environment.

Transitions are hard. Change can be scary. But once we find ourselves in our happier, healthier, more equal and more fulfilling lives who among us would ever think to look back and say, “I wish it was like it used to be”?

This article was originally produced as part of Children in Scotland’s

25 Calls to improve the lives of children and young people in Scotland. Learn more at the Children in Scotland website.