Opinion: A just transition

Green innovation can't only be about flashy tech, argues Martha McPherson, Head of Green Economy and Sustainable Growth (UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose). The pandemic has laid bare the fragility of the UK's economy, health and public realm. Around 22 per cent of the UK population found themselves in a position of poverty last year, with our most disadvantaged pupils and their teachers coping with a "digital divide." Ethnic minority groups are suffering more in both the heath and economic spheres. These systemic shortcomings require multiple, sustained, and directed forms of innovation. The notion of the state as intervening only to "fix markets" becomes untenable when the market failure is so all-encompassing. Meanwhile, the climate emergency-another enormous "market failure"-is not running far behind; indeed they are painfully linked. Covid-19 is a direct consequence of environmental degradation, with one National Institutes of Health study dubbing it "the disease of the Anthropocene." To create an economy that is resilient against incoming crises, the promised green industrial revolution in the UK needs to extend far beyond the "deus ex machina" of clean technologies.