OSTRICH is a name I’ve never been called before – not even when I was the Tory candidate for Maryhill, where the local lingo is so colourful. My congratulations to Hugh Noble of Appin, then, who hit on this epithet as the best barb for anybody, like me, who believes economic growth is a basic answer to the problems of the NHS, as of much else. He should be careful, though. The ostrich does not only hide its head in the sand when it faces a challenge. If cornered, says the encyclopaedia, “it can attack with a kick of its powerful legs”. Quite like Maryhill after all.

Naturally I would never dream of such a response when confronted with Hugh, so notable for the courtesy of his interventions in various debates in The National. I hope to respond in the same spirit. He said in his letter to the editor about me on January 18: “I have some questions to which I would really like his response.” Here goes.

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His first question for me was: Does he think Earth is infinitely large and can supply resources (like oil, clean air, clean water, food, living space) all without end?

Well no, it’s obvious the Earth is not infinitely large, yet there are some resources it can supply without end. Not oil, which will run out one day, though the day is hardly imminent to judge by the way the Saudis are still pumping the stuff from the ground. Nor food, while there are still famines in the poorest corners of the globe. Living space we have yet to run out of, even though the human population of the planet is now about five times what it was 100 years ago.

At least the rate of increase is falling and the present figure, 7.5 billion, is projected to rise only to 11 billion 100 years from now.

But Hugh should have framed his question more carefully when he came to clean air and clean water. Polluted air and water can be purified and are purified every day by the technology that regulation requires and economic growth enables. Not many years ago the buildings of Edinburgh and Glasgow were covered in thick black soot, while the lungs of the working population, if dissected after their early deaths, were just as black and slimy. Today the soot has been sand-blasted off so we can see the cream or red sandstone of the facades beneath, and it is not coming back. Again, in Victorian times heavy industry poured waste water straight into the rivers and, for example, killed all the fish in the Clyde right up to the falls at Lanark. Today salmon swim and breed in the pools below. Once upon a time, thousands of people died of the water-borne diseases cholera and typhoid. Today these diseases are eradicated.

What is it in capitalism that is going to deprive us of clean air and water? The places with the heaviest pollution have been socialist countries, most of them now ex-socialist and even now not fully cleaned up. Capitalism, once it puts its mind to the matter, has dealt with pollution because growth, and the wealth it creates, gives the means to do so. Communism never achieved this.

Hugh’s second question for me was: Does he think climate change is real – or a hoax created by the Chinese?

I accept that climate change goes on today, as it always has done. From the available evidence we know the medieval period was relatively warm, so that marginal regions like Greenland could be colonised by Europeans and vines were introduced into the British Isles. Next came the Little Ice Age with northern Europe freezing over every winter, as we see in anything from Flemish paintings to the curling ponds that dot the Scottish landscape (hardly worth constructing unless they could be regularly used). And now we have a warming phase again, though not of any sustained intensity.

It is easy to assume that one cause of this latest phase has been the spread of industrialisation to new regions, especially in Asia, with the copious release of greenhouse gases. Yet it is not plausible to suppose a global trend can be put down to a single cause, not when there are other forces visibly at work beyond our control: changes in solar radiation, plate tectonics, volcanic activity. Unlike the gaggles of amateur environmental activists, few scientists actually analysing these forces are prepared to be dogmatic about their effect on the climate. Without a claim to any expertise of my own, I am content to go along with them.

Hugh’s third question for me was: Does he think that economic growth (as we currently know it) can continue indefinitely into the future?

Here I can be more certain. Yes, I do think economic growth will continue indefinitely. In fact I believe it is impossible to stop. One reason is that we constantly bring new resources into production as we find them. North Sea oil is an obvious example. Is anybody going to claim that it should have been left under the bottom of the briny, and that its development has been bad for Scotland? Even if we have got none of the revenue from its exploitation, and none of the commercial earnings from its export, there is still huge benefit in the transformation of the North-east from a laggard region to one of the most advanced in the country, and from the development by local companies of skills that can also be exported worldwide.

By the same token, I do not see how anybody can seriously want to stop the quest for oil under the ocean to the north and west of our shores, at least once we have perfected the technology to do so.

To foster growth we can also enhance our human resources. In Scotland we make a good start with our excellent universities. Despite fierce international competition, we are managing to hang on in the top rank. In fact it is amazing such a small country houses so many of the world’s top academic institutions. We also put in a big effort with vocational courses and apprenticeships. We could save ourselves all this trouble and expense if we opted for no growth.

Those who did qualify themselves in some way might just emigrate to the many countries which have always welcomed the products of Scottish education. Those who stayed behind would need to content themselves with low-grade and low-paid jobs making no demands on themselves or their society, so that the whole of Scotland could turn into a giant Appin, picturesque but poor. Is this the Green dream?

Finally, we should recall that even if there were no expansion of resources, and even if the supply of labour remained the same, we would still get growth. We are homo sapiens, a knowing or savvy species. In the heavy industrial plants of old, bosses and foremen ruled the roost in a regime of restrictive practices. Nowadays, there has been a liberation. In the most modern parts of our economy – such as computer games in which Scotland is a global leader – managers and workers are free to invent for themselves more efficient ways of doing what they want to do.

In other words, we achieve increases in productivity. We get more outputs for our inputs. We make profits. Then we can invest the profits in more workplaces and more jobs for more Scots.

It is true that at the moment this path seems strewn with obstacles, many of our own or our government’s making. Scottish productivity is stagnant, which means the chain of desirable consequences has turned rusty. There is still time to change for the better, once we put our minds to it. We will need to if we want to be an independent nation.