St. Andrews, Scotland – I’m standing at the 18th green of the Old Course on an unseasonably beautiful day in late March, watching golfers from around the globe finish their rounds at the most famous golf course in the world.
St. Andrews is the home of golf, but it’s also a municipal course with open access to everyone, including walkers and dogs. Historically maintained by grazing sheep, the course still prides itself on minimal upkeep, eschewing the massive use of water, pesticides and other expensive North American techniques in favour of world-leading environmental practices.
St. Andrews Links Trust, which operates the Old Course and six others, is a big employer in the area – part of the tourism industry that is one of Scotland’s top three employers, along with oil and gas and distilling. (Best of all, residents pay only £180 per year ($280) to play at these courses. As my cabbie puts it, “We are all socialists here.”)
As a guest of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, I’m in the city to speak about green-city initiatives and how empowered municipalities can help create new, sustainable jobs. Some vested interests in North America have spread the lie that the environment and the economy are opposed, but nothing could be farther than the truth. Smart countries, and smart cities, get it.
Like here in Scotland, where the theme of the SCDI 2011 forum (the org was founded during the Great Depression) is Fast Forward: Accelerated Change. And the key question is, how does Scotland create future-oriented, sustainable work?
The first speaker and head of Shell UK, James Smith, speaks passionately about the need to address climate change, find new green-energy sources (tidal and wind are receiving significant investment here from public and private sources) and consequently create new jobs.
At first I wonder if it’s the jet lag. But, no, the head of a major oil company is not just acknowledging the need for climate change action but also expressing urgency. I share Smith’s pressing concerns it’s important not only for our environment but also for our economy and particularly for the next generation. Where will people work? And how will there be decent well-paid jobs for all, not just some?
The same urgency is felt by international organizations like the World Bank and the OECD, both of which I am working with to craft strategies for creating green jobs in cities.
We know some of the answers. In fact, we developed them in Toronto and internationally in partnership with a coalition of cities. What is required? First, committed leadership from governments. The main sources of emissions in cities are the heating and cooling of buildings, transportation and energy generation. Addressing each can create huge numbers of jobs.
The government in Scotland, in the run-up to an election, has made a series of announcements about massive investments in tidal and wind power that would usher in significant green employment in a country with an engineering heritage but a manufacturing base that has never recovered from the cuts of Margaret Thatcher.
Around the world, it’s often cities that lead. In Toronto, for example, Transit City would have provided rapid transit for neighbourhoods that need it most and would have been the impetus for massive private sector investment in mid-rise development along the rail lines. Furthermore, it would have supported high-quality Ontario manufacturing due to the made-in-Canada policies we passed for the vehicle procurement.
And Toronto’s Tower Renewal project will create 30,000 construction jobs the unions are ready to train people in the necessary skills. Leadership by cities is why the World Bank and the OECD are extremely interested in their work.
But besides governmental action, there’s a need for committed support from our financial sector. Although there are some success stories, not nearly enough is being done in Canada to provide venture funding to early-stage companies – a huge problem if we want to use innovation from our universities and hospitals to create new sustainable businesses. (It’s an issue I will be working on in my new capacity as counsel, international business and sustainability, at Aird&Berlis LLP).
We also need businesses to take a longer-term view. Building retrofits often don’t get financed because the payback period is 10 years and the industry standard is four. This is a straight financing issue the technologies exist and the energy-and-greenhouse gas savings are real, as are the jobs. We simply need our financial institutions, like our pension funds, to become more future-oriented.
Finally, we must also look to ourselves. We can’t afford to be complacent. We need to challenge the falsehoods. In Toronto, at least, people are awakening and fighting against the lunacy of cancelling Transit City. But how much better it would have been if we had stopped Premier McGuinty last year from shamefully deferring the funding for the Finch LRT, which would have improved lives in Jane-Finch and Rexdale.
We also have to speak up to businesses in our private transactions. Any honest commercial landlord in downtown Toronto will tell you that buildings have to be LEED-certified because tenants are demanding it. We should all be so demanding. And if business won’t listen, we should create our own models and social enterprises that will.
And we know these can be successful, like the ones in St. Andrews. An ancient publicly owned golf course, so old its architect is unknown, shows us that sustainable action can not only work, but become a huge part of a modern economy that operates on behalf of people and the planet.
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