UBS emphasizes environmental sustainability – public services reduce energy consumption and direct consumption toward sustainable practices

SUSTAINABILITY Sustainability involves, at its simplest, an inherent ‘capacity for continuance’.46 That suggests a system that can function in ways that continue to achieve its desired goals over time. UBS could have positive impacts on sustainability through prevention of harm, through economic stabilisation and through helping to mitigate climate change and the depletion of natural resources. Depending on how they are designed and delivered, and how they interact with each other, public services can prevent harm. They are arguably better able to do this than market-based systems, because their aim is not simply to sell specific commodities, but to serve the public interest. When people are healthy and able to think for themselves and function well in society, they are less likely to have problems that require costly interventions. Good education and decent housing can help to avoid illness, for example.47 Preventative services not only help people to stay well and flourish; they also preempt spending in the medium and longer term. They generally cost less than downstream interventions that try to cope with the consequences of harm.48 And they can reduce demand for a range of services, not just healthcare. Unemployment, anti-social behaviour and many forms of crime, for example, have roots in poverty and deprivation.49 Public services can help to stabilise economic fluctuations by generating relatively secure employment. And, while they are vulnerable to government austerity policies, they are not directly linked to downturns in the market. By acting as a counter cyclical buffer, helping to offset the effects of market cycles and recession, they contribute to the economy’s ‘capacity for continuance’. A move towards more and better public services is likely to prove more environmentally sustainable than a market based system. There is some comparative evidence that publicly funded health care has a lower carbon footprint than privately funded alternatives. For example, the US healthcare system directly accounts for 8 per cent of emissions in the US, compared with 3 per cent of UK emissions directly stemming from the NHS. This is due both to the greater macro-efficiency and lower expenditure shares of health in the UK, and to lower emissions per pound or dollar spent, presumably as a result of better allocation of resources and procurement practices.50 Public services perform important precautionary environmental and climate functions in their own right. The impact of Hurricane Katrina on the poor and black populations of New Orleans, in contrast to the population of Cuba, affected by the same hurricane, demonstrated the importance of collective services in dealing with climate-related risks. They are also better able to pioneer and support environmentally sustainable practices, for example energy and resource efficiency in social housing and other buildings, and supporting sustainable travel for staff, and are more likely to spread these out among a wider range of institutions. They are more ready to follow guidance and directives from government to reduce emissions, because they share public interest values. Finally, there is some evidence that welfare states are generally better suited to adopting and implementing pro-environmental policies, especially where they embody ideas about shared needs and collective responsibilities.51