More environmentally sustainable than other solutions

17 Sustainability One of the particular weaknesses of much public policy is short-termism: taking little account of how major drivers of social, economic and environmental transformation will remould the way the satisfaction of needs is experienced and the resources available to meet them. Yet, public services have a greater potential to pursue sustainability goals than programmes to disburse funds for consumer expenditure. In particular, they could play a greater role in prevention: ‘action to reduce the probability of a risk occurring’. The case for preventive public policy is essentially twofold: it is better for human wellbeing to prevent harm than to deal with its consequences, and it promises financial savings to expensive and hard-pressed welfare states.18 This is most apparent in facing the most profound, indeed existential, threat to contemporary public policy—climate collapse and extreme environmental stress. The urgent necessity to move away from unsustainable economic, social and environmental practices provides a novel justification for extending universal public services, in three directions.19 First, public provision of services strengthens the capacity of communities to adapt to or cope with severe climatic and environmental stress. 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. Second, public services can play a vital role in decarbonising the economy in a just way. For example, Green New Deal programmes to retrofit the vast bulk of the housing stock will require public planning, finance and management. They will be needed to ensure a ‘just transition’ to lower carbon living, not simply a green capitalist transition that will load costs onto the poorest people and communities. Third, UBS can play a vital role in switching the entire economy from an obsession with growth to a concern for human wellbeing within planetary limits. Public provisioning systems for healthcare and education are better able than market systems to promote sustainable consumption, to implement national strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to coordinate sustainable practices such as active travel and local food procurement. For example, the mainly privately funded 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. There is some cross-national evidence that more extensive and generous welfare states are better suited to adopting and implementing pro-environmental policies, especially where they U NIVERSAL B ASIC S ERVICES 7 © The Author 2019. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2019 The Political Quarterly embody ideas about shared needs and collective responsibilities.20