I’ve never really been a strong supporter of the environmental movement. It appeared to be dominated by extremists and tree huggers, and ignored the harsh economic realities of life.

Sure, like nearly everyone else, I didn’t want to see the countryside damaged, I also hated waste and pollution worried me. But also like nearly everyone else, I was not prepared to do much about it. I certainly didn’t want to sacrifice our prosperity for the sake of the not very obvious dangers of global warming.

I was happy to put my concerns about the environment in a separate box which I would take out and refer to occasionally, but I treated the protection of the environment as something that’s nice to have, not a necessity. How foolish I was.

I now realise that the environment is, or should be, at the heart of everything we do. It is not a separate issue to be treated differently from, say, economic growth; the two should go hand in hand.

There are many more people around the world who now believe that the only kind of growth we should be striving for is ‘green’ growth. Any other kind will eventually lead to disaster, and much sooner than many people think.
But what has this got to do with the tiny island of Jersey which is isolated, and insulated, from most of the environmental catastrophes affecting so many other places around the globe?

Surely Jersey which relies on the ‘clean’ financial services industry and imports low carbon energy from neighbouring France, doesn’t have to worry too much. Our carbon footprint is pretty small.

Small it may be, but it’s not insignificant. Indeed our political leaders have warned us that we must take our environmental responsibilities seriously. They say that we not only have our own problems to solve, but as citizens of the world we should also be making a contribution to help solve a global problem.

Just as we don’t want to accept money laundering and dirty money, so we don’t want to be seen to be shirking our responsibilities as global citizens. If anything we would like to be seen as an example for others to follow. It’s a pity we’re not doing much about it.

Unfortunately our political leaders run hot and cold about the environment, so that no one is really certain that they take the subject seriously. Like me, they have put the environment in a separate box to be considered only occasionally.

What steps have been taken to tackle the dangers have been very small ones, and often those steps have been retraced when it dawns on our leaders that there’s an economic cost involved. So we still don’t have an energy policy, we’re still waiting for environmental taxes and programmes such as incentives for home insulation have been cut back because we have to save money for other things. The environment still comes a very poor second to the economy.

This may be entirely understandable, as apparently we can no longer afford the public services of a third world country. But it’s also a missed opportunity.
Take the support for energy saving and home insulation. On the one hand we have the States dishing out large quantities of money to help keep islanders in work under the fiscal stimulus programme. But on the other hand we are cutting back the support given to a few homeowners who qualify for help with insulation and energy saving. Did nobody think of connecting the two?

We could have used some of the millions of pounds of fiscal stimulus money to get everyone to make their homes more energy efficient. That would not only have saved jobs but probably created a few new ones as well, and it would have made a significant impact on energy use.

Most importantly, it would also have helped to foster innovation in the construction industry and brought new skills which will be much needed in the future. Without some government support, that innovation will never take place locally and we will have to continue to rely on expertise from outside the island. Never mind that this has been developed to cope for the problems facing the UK and might be totally irrelevant to a small, isolated community.

No doubt I am showing my naivety by believing that this should be the kind of new way of working that we are being urged to adopt. Unfortunately it’s those doing the urging that seem to be stuck in the old ways.

Then there’s environmental taxation, which has been promised – or threatened – for some time. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to our political leaders when they were hunting around for new sources of tax revenue, that environmental taxes could fit the bill.

That’s because they have apparently got the idea into their head that any environmental taxes must be ring-fenced for use on environmental measures. But why?

Introducing taxes designed to reduce energy consumption, pollution and waste would obviously help us not only meet our environmental targets but would produce some very useful revenue as well. It might even help to shift some of the tax burden, as the secretary general of the OECD, Angel Gurria said.

‘One of the most powerful and efficient approaches to encourage green innovation is to reform our tax systems,’ he said.

‘I am not speaking about higher taxes; I am speaking about shifting the composition of taxes: using environmental taxes more to create green incentives, perhaps while cutting taxes on corporate and personal income where it matters most for investment, entrepreneurship, employment and growth.’
But what does Jersey get? More GST.

Now don’t get me wrong. Increasing GST was by far the best option among the limited options presented to us, and the proportion of tax we raise from consumption taxes, such as GST, is still very low compared to the revenue raised by income tax. However environmental taxes did not even appear to have been considered as an option.

Then there are also enormous opportunities for the tourism industry if the island was to go for green growth. Imagine the benefits of the island being perceived as an environmental leader, rather than a laggard? It would not be easy, of course, and it would need courage and a lot of innovative thinking. Unfortunately both of those don’t appear to be in great abundance.

Peter Body is the editor of Business Brief magazine