Sunday, March 07, 2010
Top UN panel savages me on green economy
Most people find watching themselves on video odd but this item from BBC World television (only broadcast outside Britain) is truly weird. It holds me up as a critic of the “green economy” (which is fine) only to have me knocked down by a top panel at a United Nations conference in Indonesia including a Nobel peace prize winner, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme, the Indonesian trade minister and the Norwegian environment minister. Sadly I was filmed in London rather than Bali and I had no chance to reply to the critics.
Labels: development, economics, environment
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Critique of new economics part 2
The second part of Matthew Lockwood’s scathing critique of the New Economic Foundation’s Growth Isn’t Possible (see 27 February post).
Labels: economics, environment
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Indian growth scepticism
An example of the growth scepticism of Arundhati Roy, a leading Indian writer and social campaigner, in an article in Outlook India. Roy moves from criticising the Indian government’s repressive military campaign against “Maoists” in Orissa (which she suggests is actually against indigenous people), to a discussion of the vested interests of mining companies in the region to a rejection of growth in general:
“The real problem is that the flagship of India’s miraculous ‘growth’ story has run aground. It came at a huge social and environmental cost. And now, as the rivers dry up and forests disappear, as the water table recedes and as people realise what is being done to them, the chickens are coming home to roost. All over the country, there’s unrest, there are protests by people refusing to give up their land and their access to resources, refusing to believe false promises any more. Suddenly, it’s beginning to look as though the 10 per cent growth rate and democracy are mutually incompatible. To get the bauxite out of the flat-topped hills, to get iron ore out from under the forest floor, to get 85 per cent of India’s people off their land and into the cities (which is what Mr Chidambaram says he’d like to see), India has to become a police state. The government has to militarise. To justify that militarisation, it needs an enemy. The Maoists are that enemy. They are to corporate fundamentalists what the Muslims are to Hindu fundamentalists.”
I know nothing about the conflict in Orissa but I am certain it should not be used as a general argument against development. It is not growth that leads to repression but stifling people’s aspirations by keeping them poor.
“The real problem is that the flagship of India’s miraculous ‘growth’ story has run aground. It came at a huge social and environmental cost. And now, as the rivers dry up and forests disappear, as the water table recedes and as people realise what is being done to them, the chickens are coming home to roost. All over the country, there’s unrest, there are protests by people refusing to give up their land and their access to resources, refusing to believe false promises any more. Suddenly, it’s beginning to look as though the 10 per cent growth rate and democracy are mutually incompatible. To get the bauxite out of the flat-topped hills, to get iron ore out from under the forest floor, to get 85 per cent of India’s people off their land and into the cities (which is what Mr Chidambaram says he’d like to see), India has to become a police state. The government has to militarise. To justify that militarisation, it needs an enemy. The Maoists are that enemy. They are to corporate fundamentalists what the Muslims are to Hindu fundamentalists.”
I know nothing about the conflict in Orissa but I am certain it should not be used as a general argument against development. It is not growth that leads to repression but stifling people’s aspirations by keeping them poor.
Labels: environment, growth, india, inequality
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
"New" economics in America
America’s EF Schumacher Society is transforming itself into the New Economics Institute. The name change seems to at least partly reflect a closer link with Britain’s New Economics Foundation (NEF). Stewart Wallis, the executive director of the NEF, is on the board of the new organisation. Among those involved in the new organisation are Gar Alperovitz (professor at University of Maryland), Bill McKibben (veteran environmental campaigner) and Gus Speth (professor at Yale).
Speth recently gave a lecture in Washington DC on “a new American environmentalism and the new economy”. The main thrust of his argument is that: “we see that the new economy – the prime objective of the new environmentalism – must be about more than green. We need a broader, more inclusive framing of our goal. We need to answer the probing question posed by John de Graaf in his new film: What’s the economy for anyhow? The answer, I believe, is that we should be building what I would call a “sustaining economy” – one that gives top, over-riding priority to sustaining both human and natural communities. It must be an economy where the purpose is to sustain people and the planet, where social justice and cohesion are prized, and where human communities, nature, and democracy all flourish. Its watchword is caring – caring for each other, for the natural world, and for the future. Promoting the transition to such an economy is in fact the mission of the New Economy Network, which I’m now working with many others to build. It will be a broad, welcoming space for all those pursuing diverse paths to these goals.”
Essentially he is giving what I call growth scepticism - with its emphasis on environmental, moral and social limits - a positive spin.
Speth recently gave a lecture in Washington DC on “a new American environmentalism and the new economy”. The main thrust of his argument is that: “we see that the new economy – the prime objective of the new environmentalism – must be about more than green. We need a broader, more inclusive framing of our goal. We need to answer the probing question posed by John de Graaf in his new film: What’s the economy for anyhow? The answer, I believe, is that we should be building what I would call a “sustaining economy” – one that gives top, over-riding priority to sustaining both human and natural communities. It must be an economy where the purpose is to sustain people and the planet, where social justice and cohesion are prized, and where human communities, nature, and democracy all flourish. Its watchword is caring – caring for each other, for the natural world, and for the future. Promoting the transition to such an economy is in fact the mission of the New Economy Network, which I’m now working with many others to build. It will be a broad, welcoming space for all those pursuing diverse paths to these goals.”
Essentially he is giving what I call growth scepticism - with its emphasis on environmental, moral and social limits - a positive spin.
Labels: America, economics, environment
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Green police
This television commercial is meant to promote an Audi car but somehow ends up being a brilliant satire on the authoritarian consequences of environmentalism.
Labels: environment, ethics, television
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Beware of giant hamsters
There is little new in yesterday’s New Economics Foundation (NEF) report arguing growth isn’t possible apart from its vivid metaphor about giant hamsters. The report draws an analogy between a hamster rapidly gaining in weight and the dangers of economic growth:
“From birth to puberty a hamster doubles its weight each week. If, then, instead of levelling-off in maturity as animals do, the hamster continued to double its weight each week, on its first birthday we would be facing a nine billion tonne hamster. If it kept eating at the same ratio of food to body weight, by then its daily intake would be greater than the total, annual amount of maize produced worldwide. There is a reason that in nature things do not grow indefinitely.”
Although Malthus did not use the hamster metaphor this is essentially his argument in a different guise. Malthus famously argued that population growth would outstrip the supply of food and mass starvation would result. If he had thought of the hamster metaphor he could have used it back in 1798 when he first issued his warning about overpopulation.
The NEF takes rising consumption resulting from economic growth (rather than population growth) and represents it by the hamster. What it forgets is that human ingenuity can increase the supply of resources more rapidly than demand.
As a result humanity can get richer and consume more resources at the same time. Failure to recognise this elementary fact has meant that - fortunately - gloomy Malthusian predictions have proved appallingly innaccurate.
All the NEF report proves it that its authors have a vivid imagination and a gift for public relations.
“From birth to puberty a hamster doubles its weight each week. If, then, instead of levelling-off in maturity as animals do, the hamster continued to double its weight each week, on its first birthday we would be facing a nine billion tonne hamster. If it kept eating at the same ratio of food to body weight, by then its daily intake would be greater than the total, annual amount of maize produced worldwide. There is a reason that in nature things do not grow indefinitely.”
Although Malthus did not use the hamster metaphor this is essentially his argument in a different guise. Malthus famously argued that population growth would outstrip the supply of food and mass starvation would result. If he had thought of the hamster metaphor he could have used it back in 1798 when he first issued his warning about overpopulation.
The NEF takes rising consumption resulting from economic growth (rather than population growth) and represents it by the hamster. What it forgets is that human ingenuity can increase the supply of resources more rapidly than demand.
As a result humanity can get richer and consume more resources at the same time. Failure to recognise this elementary fact has meant that - fortunately - gloomy Malthusian predictions have proved appallingly innaccurate.
All the NEF report proves it that its authors have a vivid imagination and a gift for public relations.
Labels: consumption, economics, environment, growth, Malthus
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Malthusian maths
Listening to More Or Less or BBC Radio 4 I came across the Malthusian mathematics of Albert Bartlett. The emeritus professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder argues (video) that: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function". This function describes anything that is growing steadily – for example at 5% a year.
Bartlett’s point is that most people how rapidly something will grow if it is increasing at an exponential rate. For example, at a growth rate of 5% a year a population will double every 14 years. He uses this simple mathematics to show that Malthus was essentially right: our population and use of natural resources is bound to hit natural limits sooner or later.
In reality it is not the critics of Malthus who fail to understand the exponential function. It is the Malthusians who fail to understand humanity. For example, it is true that if the demand for natural resources grows exponentially it will increase fast. But human ingenuity can also lead the creation and production of resources to also increase exponentially. Indeed the production of resources can increase faster than demand. As a result overall human wealth can increase rapidly over time without depleting resources.
Bartlett’s point is that most people how rapidly something will grow if it is increasing at an exponential rate. For example, at a growth rate of 5% a year a population will double every 14 years. He uses this simple mathematics to show that Malthus was essentially right: our population and use of natural resources is bound to hit natural limits sooner or later.
In reality it is not the critics of Malthus who fail to understand the exponential function. It is the Malthusians who fail to understand humanity. For example, it is true that if the demand for natural resources grows exponentially it will increase fast. But human ingenuity can also lead the creation and production of resources to also increase exponentially. Indeed the production of resources can increase faster than demand. As a result overall human wealth can increase rapidly over time without depleting resources.
Labels: consumption, economics, environment, Malthus
An inconvenient democracy
Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch, two German professors, argue on Roger Pielke Jr’s blog that supporters of the climate change orthodoxy are increasingly open in their attacks on democracy: “Within the broad field of climatology and climate policy one is able to discern growing concerns about the virtues of democracy. It is not just the deep divide between knowledge and action that is at issue, but it is an inconvenient democracy, which is identified as the culprit holding back action on climate change. As Mike Hulme has noted, it can be frustrating to learn that citizens have minds of their own.”
They highlight culprits in several countries:
* America. James Hansen, one of the most prominent American climate scientists, has argued "the democratic process does not work". Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, who argues failure to except climate change orthodoxy is nothing less than a betrayal of the planet. Thomas Friedman, a colleague of Krugman’s on the newspaper, who presents the authoritarian state of China as a model to be admired and perhaps copied for its green policies.
* Australia. David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, two scholars, who argue openly in their book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy that authoritarian government is needed to tackle the threat of climate change.
* Britain. James Lovelock, who emphasised in The Vanishing Face of Gaia, that we need to abandon democracy in order to meet the challenges of climate change.
* Germany. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a German climate scientist, who argues we need a "great transformation" to a sustainable way of life.
An earlier version of the article appeared in German in Der Spiegel.
They highlight culprits in several countries:
* America. James Hansen, one of the most prominent American climate scientists, has argued "the democratic process does not work". Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, who argues failure to except climate change orthodoxy is nothing less than a betrayal of the planet. Thomas Friedman, a colleague of Krugman’s on the newspaper, who presents the authoritarian state of China as a model to be admired and perhaps copied for its green policies.
* Australia. David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, two scholars, who argue openly in their book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy that authoritarian government is needed to tackle the threat of climate change.
* Britain. James Lovelock, who emphasised in The Vanishing Face of Gaia, that we need to abandon democracy in order to meet the challenges of climate change.
* Germany. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a German climate scientist, who argues we need a "great transformation" to a sustainable way of life.
An earlier version of the article appeared in German in Der Spiegel.
Labels: climate, environment
Monday, January 04, 2010
Avatar savaged
Bill Frezza, a partner at Adams Capital Management, has written a review on Real Clear Markets which is by far the most astute piece I have seen on Avatar. An extract from his article on James Cameron’s epic science fiction movie:
“I didn't see him in the credits but Al Gore, earth's first carbonless billionaire, must have been a script consultant. The arch villains are stick figure caricatures of greedy, baby-killing corporate capitalists. Unrepentant conquerors of nature, these amoral Halliburton proxies think nothing of shipping an army of mercenaries across interstellar space to plunder and pillage for profits. Do you think Cameron might still be suffering from a touch of Bush derangement syndrome?
“The heroes are pre-technological tribal environmentalists. They don't just hug trees, they worship them. Living loin-cloth lives in harmony with nature, they are content to follow the mystical ways of their shaman, whose beautiful daughter of course falls in love with a crippled marine seeking redemption. Money and technology mean as little to the natives as written language, leaving aside what Ralph Nader might have to say about their dangerous pterodactyl piloting. Try as they might the ugly Americans can't find anything to offer these noble savages in exchange for the valuable mineral deposits they're sitting on, not even universal health care. Despite technical marvels half a century ahead of ours, mining technology has somehow degenerated back to the open pit horrors of the past. The wise and selfless scientists who have fallen in love with the natives are powerless to stop the inevitable conflict. Cut loose the dogs of war - cue tanks, bulldozers, and bombs!”
“I didn't see him in the credits but Al Gore, earth's first carbonless billionaire, must have been a script consultant. The arch villains are stick figure caricatures of greedy, baby-killing corporate capitalists. Unrepentant conquerors of nature, these amoral Halliburton proxies think nothing of shipping an army of mercenaries across interstellar space to plunder and pillage for profits. Do you think Cameron might still be suffering from a touch of Bush derangement syndrome?
“The heroes are pre-technological tribal environmentalists. They don't just hug trees, they worship them. Living loin-cloth lives in harmony with nature, they are content to follow the mystical ways of their shaman, whose beautiful daughter of course falls in love with a crippled marine seeking redemption. Money and technology mean as little to the natives as written language, leaving aside what Ralph Nader might have to say about their dangerous pterodactyl piloting. Try as they might the ugly Americans can't find anything to offer these noble savages in exchange for the valuable mineral deposits they're sitting on, not even universal health care. Despite technical marvels half a century ahead of ours, mining technology has somehow degenerated back to the open pit horrors of the past. The wise and selfless scientists who have fallen in love with the natives are powerless to stop the inevitable conflict. Cut loose the dogs of war - cue tanks, bulldozers, and bombs!”
Labels: climate, environment, film
Sunday, December 20, 2009
European Union backing eco-economics
I have discovered that the European Union is backing research in ecological economics as well as related campaigns by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The Civil Society Engagement with ECological Economics (CEECEC) is coordinated by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and involves organisations in Europe and beyond.
CEECEC is clearly intent on promoting green thinking rather than engaging in impartial research. However, its website is a useful resource for anyone wanting to study ecological economics.
For background on the subject a link to my essay on “the dismal quackery of eco-economics” is available in the “my essays” section on the left hand side of the homepage.
CEECEC is clearly intent on promoting green thinking rather than engaging in impartial research. However, its website is a useful resource for anyone wanting to study ecological economics.
For background on the subject a link to my essay on “the dismal quackery of eco-economics” is available in the “my essays” section on the left hand side of the homepage.
Labels: economics, environment, Europe
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The battle for humanity
George Monbiot’s column in yesterday’s Guardian at least had the virtue of drawing out what is too often implicit in the discussion of how to deal with climate change. The veteran environmental campaigner talked of a battle to redefine humanity:
“Humanity is no longer split between conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives, though both sides are informed by the older politics. Today the battle lines are drawn between expanders and restrainers; those who believe that there should be no impediments and those who believe that we must live within limits. The vicious battles we have seen so far between greens and climate change deniers, road safety campaigners and speed freaks, real grassroots groups and corporate-sponsored astroturfers are just the beginning. This war will become much uglier as people kick against the limits that decency demands.”
Meanwhile, Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post, did a good job of outlining the anti-human outlook of the climate change mainstream.
“Humanity is no longer split between conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives, though both sides are informed by the older politics. Today the battle lines are drawn between expanders and restrainers; those who believe that there should be no impediments and those who believe that we must live within limits. The vicious battles we have seen so far between greens and climate change deniers, road safety campaigners and speed freaks, real grassroots groups and corporate-sponsored astroturfers are just the beginning. This war will become much uglier as people kick against the limits that decency demands.”
Meanwhile, Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post, did a good job of outlining the anti-human outlook of the climate change mainstream.
Labels: climate, environment, ethics
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Against “rights” for the unborn
A characteristically cranky article in The Ecologist but one that points to a dangerous trend. It seems that increasing credence is being given to the supposed rights of the unborn and the related concept of inter-generational justice.
Of course the unborn are not in any position to exercise their rights. What this means in practice is that environmentalists could try to impose their views on society by claiming to act on behalf of the unborn. For example, evidently Ed Miliband, Britain’s energy and climate change minister, gave a lecture at the London School of Economics on 19 November where he argued: “We need to institutionalise long-term change that protects future generations”.
Such a view sets all sort of peculiar precedents. Perhaps the unborn black children who are the victims of the Optimum Population Trust’s Malthusian policies could counter-sue?
Of course the unborn are not in any position to exercise their rights. What this means in practice is that environmentalists could try to impose their views on society by claiming to act on behalf of the unborn. For example, evidently Ed Miliband, Britain’s energy and climate change minister, gave a lecture at the London School of Economics on 19 November where he argued: “We need to institutionalise long-term change that protects future generations”.
Such a view sets all sort of peculiar precedents. Perhaps the unborn black children who are the victims of the Optimum Population Trust’s Malthusian policies could counter-sue?
Labels: climate, environment, Malthus
Thursday, December 10, 2009
False prophet
Dennis Meadows, on of the authors of the landmark 1972 report on The Limits to Growth, tells Der Spiegel in an interview that personal sacrifice is the only way to tackle climate change: “I don't ask for it but I say if we don't change our behavior then we will be in serious trouble. People are getting sidetracked if they think that new green technology will solve all the problems. There is no magic button. It is about our lifestyles.” He also joins the Malthusians in calling for substantial cuts in the world’s population.
Given that the predictions in his 1972 book proved abysmally inaccurate his arguments probably should not be taken too seriously. However, that did not stop him from claiming they were “amazingly good”.
Given that the predictions in his 1972 book proved abysmally inaccurate his arguments probably should not be taken too seriously. However, that did not stop him from claiming they were “amazingly good”.
Labels: climate, consumption, environment, ethics, Malthus
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
German magazine backtracks on Obama
Der Spiegel, a leading German newsmagazine, has recanted three weeks after attacking Barack Obama’s record on climate change (see 17 November post). According to an editorial by Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff argues: “Obama has done all that a single person can possibly do. He has become the greenest president his country has ever seen.” However, it maintains more general criticisms of Americans including conservative unions and companies which see the burning of fossil fuels as key to profits.
Labels: America, climate, environment, Germany, Obama
Monday, December 07, 2009
Diamond embraces green business
What’s happened to Jared Diamond?
Back in 1987 the professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles wrote a notorious essay arguing that the agricultural revolution was the worst mistake in human history (see 1 August 2006 post). Yet in yesterday’s New York Times he wrote an op-ed piece saying that he has moved on and now endorses the view that big business can save the earth.
Back in 1987 the professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles wrote a notorious essay arguing that the agricultural revolution was the worst mistake in human history (see 1 August 2006 post). Yet in yesterday’s New York Times he wrote an op-ed piece saying that he has moved on and now endorses the view that big business can save the earth.
Labels: corporations, environment
Monday, November 30, 2009
Žižek on natural balance
Slavoj Žižek, a radical Slovenian philosopher, is one of a tiny number of prominent contemporary thinkers who rejects the idea of a natural balance between humanity and nature. The New Statesman has an article summarising his talk on the subject at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London last week.
However, Žižek recoils from following through on the consequences of this insight. When I asked whether the classical humanist project of man taking control over nature should be rehabilitated his response was that this was far too simplistic.
However, Žižek recoils from following through on the consequences of this insight. When I asked whether the classical humanist project of man taking control over nature should be rehabilitated his response was that this was far too simplistic.
Labels: environment
Friday, November 27, 2009
The rise of a green bureaucracy
Josie Appleton has written a review for the spiked review of books which examines the creation of an artificial “carbon market”. She argues it involves the redistribution of resources to more stagnant economies and the creation of a vast green bureaucracy. The article focuses on the latest book by Nicholas Stern while also discussing work by Anthony Giddens and Mike Hulme.
Labels: book, climate, environment, review, spiked
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The myth of moral limits
Robert Skidelsky, an academic best known for his mammoth biography of John Maynard Keynes. Reiterates his support for the notion of natural and moral limits in an article on the Guardian comment is free site. Skidelsky is particular keen to rehabilitate Keynes’ argument about moral limits:
“Here I think Keynes comes closest to answering the question of why his "enough" will not, in fact, be enough. The accumulation of wealth, which should be a means to the "good life," becomes an end in itself because it destroys many of the things that make life worth living. Beyond a certain point – which most of the world is still far from having reached – the accumulation of wealth offers only substitute pleasures for the real losses to human relations that it exacts.”
The topic is discussed in more detail in his recent book on the resurgence of Keynesianism.
It is not clear to me why the accumulation of wealth should necessarily lead to real losses in human relations. On the contrary, the end of scarcity is a pre-condition for a full flowering of such relations.
“Here I think Keynes comes closest to answering the question of why his "enough" will not, in fact, be enough. The accumulation of wealth, which should be a means to the "good life," becomes an end in itself because it destroys many of the things that make life worth living. Beyond a certain point – which most of the world is still far from having reached – the accumulation of wealth offers only substitute pleasures for the real losses to human relations that it exacts.”
The topic is discussed in more detail in his recent book on the resurgence of Keynesianism.
It is not clear to me why the accumulation of wealth should necessarily lead to real losses in human relations. On the contrary, the end of scarcity is a pre-condition for a full flowering of such relations.
Labels: environment, ethics, growth
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Explanations for inequality
Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at MIT, summarises contemporary theories of global inequality in an article in Esquire (of all places). In broad terms two main lines of thought are popular nowadays: those that emphasise environmental factors such as geography and weather (such as Jeffrey Sachs) or natural endowments (such as Jared Diamond) or whose which emphasise “institutions” (which essentially means market incentives and stable politics).
Theories which look at society more broadly, such as Max Weber’s Protestant ethic, are summarily dismissed as superficial.
Theories which look at society more broadly, such as Max Weber’s Protestant ethic, are summarily dismissed as superficial.
Labels: corruption, development, environment, growth, inequality
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The UN's feminist Malthusianism
The new State of the World’s Population report from the United Nations Population Fund takes what could be called a Malthusian-feminist approach to climate change. First, it assumes there is some kind of relationship between population numbers and carbon emissions. Second, it argues that “women’s empowerment”, encouraging women to have fewer children, is the solution to the problem.
It is wrong on both scores. There is no correlation between population numbers and carbon emissions. Rich countries tend to have far higher carbon emissions per head than poorer ones. However, there are also big differences between rich countries depending on the extent to which the energy supply is decarbonised. As for women, putting pressure on them to have fewer children is the antithesis of free choice. To be truly free they should be able to choose to have more or fewer children.
It is wrong on both scores. There is no correlation between population numbers and carbon emissions. Rich countries tend to have far higher carbon emissions per head than poorer ones. However, there are also big differences between rich countries depending on the extent to which the energy supply is decarbonised. As for women, putting pressure on them to have fewer children is the antithesis of free choice. To be truly free they should be able to choose to have more or fewer children.
Labels: climate, consumption, environment, Malthus
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Rare common sense on climate change
Some all too rare common sense on climate change from Nancy Birdsall and Arvind Subramanian of the Center for Global Development in an opinion piece in today’s Financial Times. The two authors go against the conventional wisdom in arguing against the primacy of cutting carbon emissions in the developing world:
“But emissions are not the primary issue. People do not consume emissions, they consume basic energy services. In the developing world, billions of people are now cooking over health-harming wood fires in shanty towns (rather than receiving piped gas and electricity), doing backbreaking hoe farming (not operating tractors) and walking or cycling to work (not driving small cars, let alone gas-guzzlers). Cutting emissions would push them from just above subsistence back, literally, to the dark ages.”
I do not agree with the entirety of their article but in rejecting the overwhelming priority given to reducing carbon emissions they deserve a loud round of applause.
“But emissions are not the primary issue. People do not consume emissions, they consume basic energy services. In the developing world, billions of people are now cooking over health-harming wood fires in shanty towns (rather than receiving piped gas and electricity), doing backbreaking hoe farming (not operating tractors) and walking or cycling to work (not driving small cars, let alone gas-guzzlers). Cutting emissions would push them from just above subsistence back, literally, to the dark ages.”
I do not agree with the entirety of their article but in rejecting the overwhelming priority given to reducing carbon emissions they deserve a loud round of applause.
Labels: climate, development, energy, environment
Californian greens stunt economic growth
Joel Kotkin, writing in Forbes, argues that middle-aged “progressives” in northern California are stunting economic growth at the expense of the working class and largely Hispanic population.
Thanks to Sean Collins for the link.
Thanks to Sean Collins for the link.
Labels: America, environment
Monday, November 16, 2009
Engineers report on climate change
Britain’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers has produced an interesting report (PDF) criticising the government’s approach to tackling climate change. According to the report the government will not come close to meeting its target of reducing carbon emissions by 80% between 1990 and 2050 if it continues to purse an approach based overwhelmingly on mitigation. Instead it advocates what it calls a MAG approach based on a combination of mitigation, adaptation and geo-engineering.
To put the challenge into perspective the report argues that to be on track to meet its target Britain would be need to be as fuel efficient as France (the most decarbonised of the developed economies owing to its earlier investment in nuclear power) by 2015. This would mean the equivalent of building 30 nuclear power stations and retiring an equal number of coal-fired ones.
It is worth noting that the report is based on work undertaken by Professor Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado.
The report does not examine broader conceptual questions such as whether mitigation – which lumps together measures to reduce demand with measures to bolster a decarbonised supply – is a useful category.
To put the challenge into perspective the report argues that to be on track to meet its target Britain would be need to be as fuel efficient as France (the most decarbonised of the developed economies owing to its earlier investment in nuclear power) by 2015. This would mean the equivalent of building 30 nuclear power stations and retiring an equal number of coal-fired ones.
It is worth noting that the report is based on work undertaken by Professor Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado.
The report does not examine broader conceptual questions such as whether mitigation – which lumps together measures to reduce demand with measures to bolster a decarbonised supply – is a useful category.
Labels: climate, energy, environment
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Back in action
After a three week break I am getting back into blogging. Once I receive comments from my publisher I also will have to rewrite my book manuscript by the end of the month.
So far the links I have found are as follows. If you think I have missed anything particularly important while I have been away please email me.
* I was particularly said to miss this year’s Battle of Ideas festival in London. However, several sessions, including one on post-recession ideologies, are already available on audio. Others will hopefully soon follow on video. Rob Killick has also written up his speech on economic growth and its discontents.
* Worldwrite’s regular Worldbytes television magazine programme includes an item on austerity and the alleged lesions of the Second World War.
* Al Gore is in the news a lot with a new book coming out entitled Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. He is also the subject of the cover story in this week’s Newsweek while a New York Times article examines the possible conflict of interest between Gore as an investor and as an advocate for action on climate change.
* Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, made much of the battle against climate change in her address to the American congress.
* Meanwhile, the implication of this BBC article and the related radio programme is that nostalgia for East German values is a form that growth scepticism is taking in Germany. I am not sure this is correct but it is certainly worth investigating.
So far the links I have found are as follows. If you think I have missed anything particularly important while I have been away please email me.
* I was particularly said to miss this year’s Battle of Ideas festival in London. However, several sessions, including one on post-recession ideologies, are already available on audio. Others will hopefully soon follow on video. Rob Killick has also written up his speech on economic growth and its discontents.
* Worldwrite’s regular Worldbytes television magazine programme includes an item on austerity and the alleged lesions of the Second World War.
* Al Gore is in the news a lot with a new book coming out entitled Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. He is also the subject of the cover story in this week’s Newsweek while a New York Times article examines the possible conflict of interest between Gore as an investor and as an advocate for action on climate change.
* Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, made much of the battle against climate change in her address to the American congress.
* Meanwhile, the implication of this BBC article and the related radio programme is that nostalgia for East German values is a form that growth scepticism is taking in Germany. I am not sure this is correct but it is certainly worth investigating.
Labels: America, book, climate, environment, Germany, radio, television, Worldwrite
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Breakthrough in natural gas supply
This article from today’s New York Times gives just one example of why the notion of “scarce resources” is flawed. Over times new production techniques emerge which allow for the discovery and use of new sources of energy.
Evidently a new technique is allowing for just such a discovery of huge quantities of natural gas - the cleanest fossil fuel – from shale. According to the article:
“Shale is a sedimentary rock rich in organic material that is found in many parts of the world. It was of little use as a source of gas until about a decade ago, when American companies developed new techniques to fracture the rock and drill horizontally.
“Because so little drilling has been done in shale fields outside of the United States and Canada, gas analysts have made a wide array of estimates for how much shale gas could be tapped globally. Even the most conservative estimates are enormous, projecting at least a 20 percent increase in the world’s known reserves of natural gas.”
Evidently a new technique is allowing for just such a discovery of huge quantities of natural gas - the cleanest fossil fuel – from shale. According to the article:
“Shale is a sedimentary rock rich in organic material that is found in many parts of the world. It was of little use as a source of gas until about a decade ago, when American companies developed new techniques to fracture the rock and drill horizontally.
“Because so little drilling has been done in shale fields outside of the United States and Canada, gas analysts have made a wide array of estimates for how much shale gas could be tapped globally. Even the most conservative estimates are enormous, projecting at least a 20 percent increase in the world’s known reserves of natural gas.”
Labels: energy, environment
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Oxfam calls for rationing growth
Duncan Green of Oxfam explicitly calls for the rationing of economic growth in his blog today. He summarises the conclusions of his talk to a Quaker economic conference as follows:
“if you want to maximise happiness (a utilitarian argument which offends the rights-based people, I know, but not a bad start) AND prevent catastrophic global warming, you need to make sure that incomes rise in the poor countries, but are steady or falling in the rich ones. i.e. we need to ration growth – it’s just too precious (and dirty) to waste on the rich countries.”
This neatly shows the use of climate change as an argument against growth in the mainstream discussion. At least Green - unlike many others - has the virtue of being open about his conclusions.
“if you want to maximise happiness (a utilitarian argument which offends the rights-based people, I know, but not a bad start) AND prevent catastrophic global warming, you need to make sure that incomes rise in the poor countries, but are steady or falling in the rich ones. i.e. we need to ration growth – it’s just too precious (and dirty) to waste on the rich countries.”
This neatly shows the use of climate change as an argument against growth in the mainstream discussion. At least Green - unlike many others - has the virtue of being open about his conclusions.
Labels: climate, consumption, environment, growth
Sunday, September 20, 2009
More climate change-ification
A couple more examples of the trend to interpreting questions through the prism of climate change:
* Some 18 of the world’s professional medical organisations argue that the failure to reach agreement at the climate change summit in Copenhagen will lead to a “global health catastrophe”. In this case health is not only being linked to climate change but to a specific conception of how the problem should be tackled. It is also worth noting that Michael Marmot, one of the instigators of the medical initiative, has also played a key role in arguing that well being and affluence should be separated.
* The Marie Stopes International, a London-based sexual and reproduction health organisation, argues that a shortage of condoms in Africa is leading to runaway population growth which will in turn cause climate change. Leo Bryant, an advocacy manager for the organisation and the lead author of a World Health Organization report on the subject (PDF), was quoted as saying: “It’s time to start looking at the environmental relevance of family planning,” in a telephone interview. “Reproductive health services ought to be integrated into the climate adaptation strategy.”
* Some 18 of the world’s professional medical organisations argue that the failure to reach agreement at the climate change summit in Copenhagen will lead to a “global health catastrophe”. In this case health is not only being linked to climate change but to a specific conception of how the problem should be tackled. It is also worth noting that Michael Marmot, one of the instigators of the medical initiative, has also played a key role in arguing that well being and affluence should be separated.
* The Marie Stopes International, a London-based sexual and reproduction health organisation, argues that a shortage of condoms in Africa is leading to runaway population growth which will in turn cause climate change. Leo Bryant, an advocacy manager for the organisation and the lead author of a World Health Organization report on the subject (PDF), was quoted as saying: “It’s time to start looking at the environmental relevance of family planning,” in a telephone interview. “Reproductive health services ought to be integrated into the climate adaptation strategy.”
Labels: climate, development, environment, health
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Against green growth
In the run-up to the Copenhagen summit in December there is no doubt going to be more of an obsession with climate change than ever. One area in which this is clear is in relation to development. A couple of key recent reports on the subject have made a concerted effort to redefine it in relation to climate change:
The World Development Report 2010 from the World Bank on Development and Climate Change The. There is also an accompanying World Bank blog combining the two topics.
- From the United Nations there is World Economic and Social Survey 2009: Promoting Development, Saving the Planet which covers similar ground as the World Bank report.
The combination of climate change and development can only damage understanding of both topics. No doubt there is a relationship between the two – it is a truism that the poor will suffer more as a result of climate change than the rich – but they should be kept logically distinct. Combining the two is essentially a way of putting limits on the possibilities for development. Despite the sometimes ambitious sounding rhetoric what is essentially being said is that development must be limited for the sake of the planet.
This combination of climate change and development also points to a broader and even more retrograde trend. It is what could be called “the climate change-isation of everything”. No doubt there is a snappier way of putting it – any suggestions please email me – but virtually every social problem nowadays seem to be being redefined in relation to climate change. It has become more of a moral category than a scientific one.
The World Development Report 2010 from the World Bank on Development and Climate Change The. There is also an accompanying World Bank blog combining the two topics.
- From the United Nations there is World Economic and Social Survey 2009: Promoting Development, Saving the Planet which covers similar ground as the World Bank report.
The combination of climate change and development can only damage understanding of both topics. No doubt there is a relationship between the two – it is a truism that the poor will suffer more as a result of climate change than the rich – but they should be kept logically distinct. Combining the two is essentially a way of putting limits on the possibilities for development. Despite the sometimes ambitious sounding rhetoric what is essentially being said is that development must be limited for the sake of the planet.
This combination of climate change and development also points to a broader and even more retrograde trend. It is what could be called “the climate change-isation of everything”. No doubt there is a snappier way of putting it – any suggestions please email me – but virtually every social problem nowadays seem to be being redefined in relation to climate change. It has become more of a moral category than a scientific one.
Labels: climate, development, economics, environment, growth
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Copenhagen climate game
I think I have worked out the rules of “the Copenhagen climate game” - officially known as the Climate Conference in Copenhagen - in December.
The aim of the game is to appear as pious as possible about climate change while playing down the practical difficulties of cutting carbon emissions. It seems the best way to achieve this objective is to declare ambitious targets on cutting emissions while making them conditional on others acting in a certain way. That makes it possible for each individual player to claim to be doing The Right Thing while blaming others for any failure to reach agreement.
It is hard to think of a more impractical and cynical process.
The aim of the game is to appear as pious as possible about climate change while playing down the practical difficulties of cutting carbon emissions. It seems the best way to achieve this objective is to declare ambitious targets on cutting emissions while making them conditional on others acting in a certain way. That makes it possible for each individual player to claim to be doing The Right Thing while blaming others for any failure to reach agreement.
It is hard to think of a more impractical and cynical process.
Labels: climate, environment
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Obama green adviser resigns
It is hard to work out what to make of the resignation of Van Jones as Barack Obama’s adviser on green jobs. In my Fund Strategy cover story of 2 March I described Jones as a key intellectual influence on the drive to implement a green new deal. This followed some flattering portraits of him in the media as a black community activist and environmentalist (see 18 January 2009 post). But since I wrote my cover story he has been appointed to the Obama administration and now resigned from this position.
Jones resigned after it emerged he had called Republicans “assholes” and signed a petition suggesting the federal government was involved in the 11 September attacks. But it seems likely that the Obama administration is terrified of being connected with any opinions seen as outside the respectable mainstream. However, the extreme fear-mongering and Malthusianism of the likes of John Holdren, his chief science adviser, apparently remain perfectly acceptable (see 14 August 2009 post).
Jones resigned after it emerged he had called Republicans “assholes” and signed a petition suggesting the federal government was involved in the 11 September attacks. But it seems likely that the Obama administration is terrified of being connected with any opinions seen as outside the respectable mainstream. However, the extreme fear-mongering and Malthusianism of the likes of John Holdren, his chief science adviser, apparently remain perfectly acceptable (see 14 August 2009 post).
Labels: America, environment, Obama
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Proposal for global carbon rationing
Back in 2006 David Miliband, then Britain’s environment minister, proposed that everyone in the country should have an individual climate change allowance (see 20 July 2006 post). Now Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the German government's climate protection adviser, has taken the argument a step further. He argues in an interview in Spiegel for an individual climate allowance for every person in the planet.
This proposal clearly amounts to support for rationing. Even if it is not implemented in practice it will reinforce the prevailing climate of austerity.
This proposal clearly amounts to support for rationing. Even if it is not implemented in practice it will reinforce the prevailing climate of austerity.
Labels: climate, consumption, environment, Germany
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Goldsmith junior
After writing about Teddy Goldsmith on Thursday a profile in Prospect magazine of Zac Goldsmith, his nephew and protégé, caught my eye. Zac wants to follow his grandfather in becoming a Conservative member of parliament so is standing in Richmond, a wealthy suburb of London, at the next election. According to the article:
“Goldsmith has certainly been on an intriguing intellectual journey. In his late teens, after being expelled from Eton, he ignored university and travelled the world. Returning from one trip he remembers picking up a book given to him by his father, the billionaire businessman James Goldsmith. The inscription said it would be the most important he would ever read.
“The book, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, told of the visits of environmentalist Helena Norberg-Hodge to a primitive but beautiful corner of northern India in the 1970s, and her subsequent horror at the province’s economic development. Inspired, Goldsmith met her, worked for her organisation, and also went to work in Ladakh itself.
“Norberg-Hodge, along with Zac’s uncle Teddy Goldsmith, had a powerful effect on Zac’s thinking. Both espoused a “deep green” philosophy concerned with the preservation of natural ecology and tribal societies, and a strong scepticism of capitalism and globalisation. Such ideas, in turn, underpinned Goldsmith’s early campaigns—as editor of his uncle’s Ecologist magazine—against everything from international trade and GM food to nuclear energy and climate change.”
“Goldsmith has certainly been on an intriguing intellectual journey. In his late teens, after being expelled from Eton, he ignored university and travelled the world. Returning from one trip he remembers picking up a book given to him by his father, the billionaire businessman James Goldsmith. The inscription said it would be the most important he would ever read.
“The book, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, told of the visits of environmentalist Helena Norberg-Hodge to a primitive but beautiful corner of northern India in the 1970s, and her subsequent horror at the province’s economic development. Inspired, Goldsmith met her, worked for her organisation, and also went to work in Ladakh itself.
“Norberg-Hodge, along with Zac’s uncle Teddy Goldsmith, had a powerful effect on Zac’s thinking. Both espoused a “deep green” philosophy concerned with the preservation of natural ecology and tribal societies, and a strong scepticism of capitalism and globalisation. Such ideas, in turn, underpinned Goldsmith’s early campaigns—as editor of his uncle’s Ecologist magazine—against everything from international trade and GM food to nuclear energy and climate change.”
Labels: environment
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The godfather of green
I do not feel any sadness at news of the death of Teddy Goldsmith, one of the pioneers of green thinking in Britain, but his obituaries are revealing about the nature of environmentalism.
Goldsmith launched the Ecologist magazine in 1970, and was its long-time editor, as well as the Ecology party (later the Green party). His best known book, originally a special issue of the Ecologist, was Blueprint for Survival (1972). Essentially he was an old-fashioned Tory with green sympathies who, by the sound of it, found the movement of the “left” towards environmentalism disorientating.
1)Goldsmith was a classic eco-toff. According to the obituary in yesterday’s Telegraph:
“Edward René David Goldsmith was born in Paris on November 8 1928, the son of a Suffolk landowner, Frank Goldsmith, Conservative MP for Stowmarket between 1910 and 1918. Frank's father had emigrated to Britain from Germany, and anti-German feeling in Britain during the Great War forced Frank to move to France, where he ran a chain of luxury hotels and married a girl from Auvergne called Marcelle Moullier, Teddy's mother.
“Teddy described his youth as one long holiday, moving between hotels across the south of France. The Goldsmiths returned to Britain (initially to Claridge's) during the 1930s, and from Millfield School he went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1947 to read PPE. Although he admitted that for 18 months he and his younger brother, Jimmy, did little but gamble with their friends, Teddy obtained his degree in 1950.”
2)Goldsmith was an arch-Malthusian who despised modern industrial society. According to an article by Paul Kingsnorth in the Ecologist two years ago his central idea was: “that small-scale, ‘traditional societies’ are the only ones that work, and that humanity needs to return to such a way of life if it is to have a future.” He was avidly opposed to, among other things, dams and nuclear power.
3)Goldsmith had problems coming to terms with the increasingly mainstream character of green ideas and their adoption by the “left”. According to Kingsnorth: “Today's leading Greens are almost all drawn from the political left. They speak the language of 'social justice' and 'multiculturalism', and are anxious to trumpet their 'progressive' principles. In this context, Teddy Goldsmith's stubbornly small-c conservative vision, and his commitment to 'stability', 'tradition' and the teachings of ancient religions are red rags to a green bull.”
This final point is only partially true. Although many greens see themselves as radicals their outlook is fundamentally conservative.
Goldsmith launched the Ecologist magazine in 1970, and was its long-time editor, as well as the Ecology party (later the Green party). His best known book, originally a special issue of the Ecologist, was Blueprint for Survival (1972). Essentially he was an old-fashioned Tory with green sympathies who, by the sound of it, found the movement of the “left” towards environmentalism disorientating.
1)Goldsmith was a classic eco-toff. According to the obituary in yesterday’s Telegraph:
“Edward René David Goldsmith was born in Paris on November 8 1928, the son of a Suffolk landowner, Frank Goldsmith, Conservative MP for Stowmarket between 1910 and 1918. Frank's father had emigrated to Britain from Germany, and anti-German feeling in Britain during the Great War forced Frank to move to France, where he ran a chain of luxury hotels and married a girl from Auvergne called Marcelle Moullier, Teddy's mother.
“Teddy described his youth as one long holiday, moving between hotels across the south of France. The Goldsmiths returned to Britain (initially to Claridge's) during the 1930s, and from Millfield School he went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1947 to read PPE. Although he admitted that for 18 months he and his younger brother, Jimmy, did little but gamble with their friends, Teddy obtained his degree in 1950.”
2)Goldsmith was an arch-Malthusian who despised modern industrial society. According to an article by Paul Kingsnorth in the Ecologist two years ago his central idea was: “that small-scale, ‘traditional societies’ are the only ones that work, and that humanity needs to return to such a way of life if it is to have a future.” He was avidly opposed to, among other things, dams and nuclear power.
3)Goldsmith had problems coming to terms with the increasingly mainstream character of green ideas and their adoption by the “left”. According to Kingsnorth: “Today's leading Greens are almost all drawn from the political left. They speak the language of 'social justice' and 'multiculturalism', and are anxious to trumpet their 'progressive' principles. In this context, Teddy Goldsmith's stubbornly small-c conservative vision, and his commitment to 'stability', 'tradition' and the teachings of ancient religions are red rags to a green bull.”
This final point is only partially true. Although many greens see themselves as radicals their outlook is fundamentally conservative.
Labels: consumption, energy, environment, Malthus
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Apocalyptic nightmare fantasies
John Beddington, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, argues the world is facing a “perfect” storm of crises by 2030: rising population, rising food demand, rising demand for water and rising demand for energy. Taking its cue from him the BBC has produced several pieces on the subject for its website and for broadcast.
It represents several environmentalist nightmares all coming true at once. However, it would be far more productive if they came up with solutions rather than moping about likely increases in demand for key resources.
It represents several environmentalist nightmares all coming true at once. However, it would be far more productive if they came up with solutions rather than moping about likely increases in demand for key resources.
Labels: energy, environment, food, Malthus, water
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Debunking peak oil
After slating the New York Times on Sunday it is only fair to point to an exceptionally good article debunking the idea of peak oil in today’s issue. Michael Lynch, an energy consultant and the former director for Asian energy and security at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, systematically examines three claims and shows they are false:
“that the world is discovering only one barrel for every three or four produced; that political instability in oil-producing countries puts us at an unprecedented risk of having the spigots turned off; and that we have already used half of the two trillion barrels of oil that the earth contained.”
His rebuttal is well worth reading.
“that the world is discovering only one barrel for every three or four produced; that political instability in oil-producing countries puts us at an unprecedented risk of having the spigots turned off; and that we have already used half of the two trillion barrels of oil that the earth contained.”
His rebuttal is well worth reading.
Labels: energy, environment
Friday, August 21, 2009
Stinging nettle underpants
Evidently pants made of stinging nettles are the Next Big Thing for greens. The idea is being promoted by Jean-Paul Flintoff, a Sunday Times contributor and author of Through the Eye of a Needle: The true story of a man who went searching for meaning and ended up making his Y-fronts, in an item in the latest Ecologist.
He makes the point that if people are expected to grow their own food then it is equally logical (or ludicrous I would say) to expect them to make their own clothes. Flintoff goes on to suggest that clothes could be made from fibres obtained from the stems of stinging nettles. Such an approach was followed by the Germans in the First World War – since the British empire cut them off from cotton supplies – and requires no pesticides or fertiliser.
I have nothing against individuals who grow their own food or make their own clothes as a hobby. But to expect most people to supply their own food and clothes this way would clearly mean a dramatic reduction in their standard of living. It would be enormously time consuming and inefficient.
Flintoff does say it should not be made compulsory but he certainly suggests there is a green virtue in people making their own clothing. I also imagine the amount of time the average person would take to make their pants out of stinging nettles – harvesting the nettles, drying them, extracting the fibre, spinning the yard, making the fabric, designing the pattern, dyeing the material, cutting the material and stitching it all together – must be enormous.
Stinging nettle underpants would be a painful waste of time.
He makes the point that if people are expected to grow their own food then it is equally logical (or ludicrous I would say) to expect them to make their own clothes. Flintoff goes on to suggest that clothes could be made from fibres obtained from the stems of stinging nettles. Such an approach was followed by the Germans in the First World War – since the British empire cut them off from cotton supplies – and requires no pesticides or fertiliser.
I have nothing against individuals who grow their own food or make their own clothes as a hobby. But to expect most people to supply their own food and clothes this way would clearly mean a dramatic reduction in their standard of living. It would be enormously time consuming and inefficient.
Flintoff does say it should not be made compulsory but he certainly suggests there is a green virtue in people making their own clothing. I also imagine the amount of time the average person would take to make their pants out of stinging nettles – harvesting the nettles, drying them, extracting the fibre, spinning the yard, making the fabric, designing the pattern, dyeing the material, cutting the material and stitching it all together – must be enormous.
Stinging nettle underpants would be a painful waste of time.
Labels: consumption, environment, ethics, food
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Pelican Brief and Julia Roberts
Until I caught up with the Pelican Brief, the 1993 legal thriller based on a John Grisham novel, on television I had not reallsed how much it reflects the environmentalist spirit of our times. The plot involves a law student (played by Julia Roberts) who stumbles across a conspiracy by a big oil company which involves gross environmental destruction (including the habitat of pelicans). To protect his commercial interests the evil oil magnate is willing to corrupt politicians up to and including America’s president.
For Roberts the lead role came several years before she played an environmental campaigner in Erin Brockovic (2000). She has since become a high profile green campaigner in her own right alongside the likes of George Clooney, Al Gore and Robert F Kennedy (see post of 17 May 2008).
For Roberts the lead role came several years before she played an environmental campaigner in Erin Brockovic (2000). She has since become a high profile green campaigner in her own right alongside the likes of George Clooney, Al Gore and Robert F Kennedy (see post of 17 May 2008).
Labels: celebrities, environment, film, television
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Downplaying economic pain
Partha Dasgupta, a professor of economics at Cambridge University and a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, tries to play down the costs of dealing with climate change in a lecture to the Sante Fe Institute. He argues that the costs of dealing with climate change could amount up to 10% of the GDP of the rich countries equivalent to trillions of dollars. But since GDP has grown at an average rate of about 2% a year for the past 30 years such a loss would mean going back to the way things were four or five years ago. Since things were not so bad then, he argues, going back to the recent past would not be a big deal.
Such an outlook reveals exceedingly low horizons. For example, think of the pain caused by the recent global economic crisis. Yet, according to the latest estimate from the International Monetary Fund, output in the advanced economies will fall by only 3.8% this year. In any case the world is not nearly rich enough to tackle all the challenges it faces now – let alone if it was 10% poorer.
Such an outlook reveals exceedingly low horizons. For example, think of the pain caused by the recent global economic crisis. Yet, according to the latest estimate from the International Monetary Fund, output in the advanced economies will fall by only 3.8% this year. In any case the world is not nearly rich enough to tackle all the challenges it faces now – let alone if it was 10% poorer.
Labels: climate, economics, environment, growth, Malthus
Thursday, August 13, 2009
GDP and the myth of natural capital
GDP is far from perfect as a measure of economic output but the suggestions for replacements are generally worse. The recent attack on GDP by Eric Zencey, a professor of historical and political studies at Empire State College, in the New York Times, is certainly flawed.
One of Zencey’s points is that GDP does not include volunteer work or unpaid domestic work, both of which contribute to economic output. While this is true it should be remembered that such quantities are, by their nature, difficult to measure. It is far easier to quantify transactions for which money is paid.
Apparently more substantial, but also more mistaken, is his argument that GDP should include “natural capital” or “eco systems services”. For example, he argues:
“If you let the sun dry your clothes, the service is free and doesn’t show up in our domestic product; if you throw your laundry in the dryer, you burn fossil fuel, increase your carbon footprint, make the economy more unsustainable — and give G.D.P. a bit of a bump.”
But the characterisation of “free” drying by the sun is misleading. A clothes line has to be manufactured by someone, probably along with clothes pegs, and erected. Then the clothes have to be hung by someone before being collected afterwards. The sun can only help dry clothes with the application of human labour.
The notion of natural capital also creates bizarre results. It means that a barren unusued land could be classified as wealthy whereas one with a lot of development could be seen as poor. Antartica, for instance, could be seen as rich because it has natural resources buried in the ground rather than poor because it has virtually no development.
One of Zencey’s points is that GDP does not include volunteer work or unpaid domestic work, both of which contribute to economic output. While this is true it should be remembered that such quantities are, by their nature, difficult to measure. It is far easier to quantify transactions for which money is paid.
Apparently more substantial, but also more mistaken, is his argument that GDP should include “natural capital” or “eco systems services”. For example, he argues:
“If you let the sun dry your clothes, the service is free and doesn’t show up in our domestic product; if you throw your laundry in the dryer, you burn fossil fuel, increase your carbon footprint, make the economy more unsustainable — and give G.D.P. a bit of a bump.”
But the characterisation of “free” drying by the sun is misleading. A clothes line has to be manufactured by someone, probably along with clothes pegs, and erected. Then the clothes have to be hung by someone before being collected afterwards. The sun can only help dry clothes with the application of human labour.
The notion of natural capital also creates bizarre results. It means that a barren unusued land could be classified as wealthy whereas one with a lot of development could be seen as poor. Antartica, for instance, could be seen as rich because it has natural resources buried in the ground rather than poor because it has virtually no development.
Labels: consumption, economics, environment
Saturday, July 25, 2009
British eco-toffs
Given that green thinking represents a reaction against modernity it is not surprising that it appeals to aristocratic types. There are a couple of reminders of this fact in today’s British press.
First, an article by Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph: “For much of the Nineties, three of Britain's bolshiest environmental pressure groups were led by a baronet, a hereditary peer and a prince of the realm. Prince Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron of Greenwich was the international head of the World Wide Fund for Nature (aka the World Wildlife Fund). Peter Robert Henry Mond, 4th Baron Melchett, ran Greenpeace in Britain. And the director of Friends of the Earth was one the Hon Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt Bt.”
And more on Jonathon Porritt in a piece in the Independent:
“He is the son of Arthur Porritt, the New Zealand athlete and surgeon who won the 100 metres bronze medal in the famous "Chariots of Fire" race at the 1924 Olympics. His father also went on to become Lord Porritt and New Zealand's Governor-General.
“Educated at Eton and Oxford, Porritt is in theory doubly-titled – he is "Hon" as the son of a life peer, and also Sir Jonathon Porritt, Bart, having inherited the baronetcy which was also awarded to his father.”
First, an article by Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph: “For much of the Nineties, three of Britain's bolshiest environmental pressure groups were led by a baronet, a hereditary peer and a prince of the realm. Prince Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron of Greenwich was the international head of the World Wide Fund for Nature (aka the World Wildlife Fund). Peter Robert Henry Mond, 4th Baron Melchett, ran Greenpeace in Britain. And the director of Friends of the Earth was one the Hon Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt Bt.”
And more on Jonathon Porritt in a piece in the Independent:
“He is the son of Arthur Porritt, the New Zealand athlete and surgeon who won the 100 metres bronze medal in the famous "Chariots of Fire" race at the 1924 Olympics. His father also went on to become Lord Porritt and New Zealand's Governor-General.
“Educated at Eton and Oxford, Porritt is in theory doubly-titled – he is "Hon" as the son of a life peer, and also Sir Jonathon Porritt, Bart, having inherited the baronetcy which was also awarded to his father.”
Labels: environment
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Miserabilism and antidote
While watching Robert Glennon being interviewed on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show I was struck by his miserabilism. Apparently Unquenchable, the new book by the Arizona law professor, bemoans the fact that the current generation of Americans have access to water without having to think about it. What should be seen as a mark of progress is viewed as a potential environmental disaster.
Fortunately I have belatedly discovered an antidote in James May’s 20th century. The television series shows the amazing extent of technological discovery by human beings in the last century. It also gives enormous hope for the future.
Fortunately I have belatedly discovered an antidote in James May’s 20th century. The television series shows the amazing extent of technological discovery by human beings in the last century. It also gives enormous hope for the future.
Labels: consumption, environment, science, technology, television, water
New links
I have added a couple of new websites to the links library in the left hand column. They are Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD and Indur Goklany’s website.
Labels: climate, development, economics, environment, science, technology
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Worldbytes on deforestation
The latest Worldbytes programme by Worldwrite is available online. I was particularly struck by the chill out desk item by Joe Kaplinsky on deforestation – a problem which obsesses the like of campaigners such as Prince Charles. Kaplinsky presents the problem as a symptom of a lack of rural development in contrast to the green view which presents economic growth as the problem. For example, the desperately poor will often collect fire wood as a way of earning a living. In contrast, more developed societies are in a better position to decide how best to manage the land, Other highlights of the programme include items on the supposed threats of hate speech, immigration, overpopulation and water shortages.
Labels: consumption, development, environment, film, Malthus, Worldwrite
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Treason against the planet?
I have not posted for a couple of days as I have been incredibly busy. However, Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times on Sunday particularly amused me. The Nobel prize winning economist denounced the “deniers” who opposed the Waxman-Markey climate change bill as guilty of “treason against the planet”. It is hard to see what this means. How can someone be loyal to what is essentially a lump of rock?
It is certainly possible to be concerned about the impact of environmental degradation on humanity. But “treason against the planet” is absurd.
Krugman is undoubtedly clever but his argument on this point makes no sense.
It is certainly possible to be concerned about the impact of environmental degradation on humanity. But “treason against the planet” is absurd.
Krugman is undoubtedly clever but his argument on this point makes no sense.
Labels: America, climate, environment
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Green growth is official
It’s official. The leaders of the world’s largest economies have endorsed the dogma of “green growth”. Ministers from the 30 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development alongside 10 other nations declared their support for the concept at a conference in Paris.
For my take on how “green growth” means austerity see the post of 2 March 2009 and the related link.
For my take on how “green growth” means austerity see the post of 2 March 2009 and the related link.
Labels: economics, environment, growth
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Global Warming and Other Bollocks
An interesting-sounding new book on some of the pervasive environmentalist myths is about to be published. Global Warming and Other Bollocks (Metro) argues, among other things, that Turkey Twizzlers are good for you and polar bears are not dying out. It is by Stanley Feldman, a professor of anaesthetics at London University, and Vincent Marks, a former professor of clinical biochemistry and dean of medicine at the University of Surrey.
I do not agree with all the arguments but it sounds worth reading. There is a sneak preview in this article in yesterday’s Daily Mail.
I do not agree with all the arguments but it sounds worth reading. There is a sneak preview in this article in yesterday’s Daily Mail.
Labels: book, climate, consumption, environment, food
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Conservatives have always been green
Many commentators, including many greens themselves and free market critics, are under the false impression that environmentalism is in some senses a left wing outlook. But this useful article by Geoffrey Lean in today’s Telegraph shows how mainstream conservatives have often backed environmentalist measures:
• Angela Merkel, Germany’s conservative chancellor, was instrumental in passing the Kyoto protocol on climate change.
• Richard Nixon, a Republican president, founded America’s Environmental Protection Agency.
• George Bush senior ran for presidential election as “the environment president” and endorsed the global declaration on the environment coming out of the 1992 Rio summit.
• Ted Heath, a Conservative prime minister, created Britain’s environment ministry.
• Margaret Thatcher was the first world leader to call for vigorous action on climate change.
Indeed Edmund Burke, the father of conservatism, described society as: "a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet unborn".
• Angela Merkel, Germany’s conservative chancellor, was instrumental in passing the Kyoto protocol on climate change.
• Richard Nixon, a Republican president, founded America’s Environmental Protection Agency.
• George Bush senior ran for presidential election as “the environment president” and endorsed the global declaration on the environment coming out of the 1992 Rio summit.
• Ted Heath, a Conservative prime minister, created Britain’s environment ministry.
• Margaret Thatcher was the first world leader to call for vigorous action on climate change.
Indeed Edmund Burke, the father of conservatism, described society as: "a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet unborn".
Labels: America, environment, Europe, Germany, sustainability
Friday, June 12, 2009
A fishy encounter
I had been hoping for a quiet evening after a hectic week’s work but unexpectedly found myself in a battle with some fishy environmentalists and an even fisher journalist.
Since I finished work unexpectedly early I decided to go to see the End of The Line, a newly released documentary about over-fishing, as the only cinema where it is showing in London happens to be close by. But I had not realised that I was attending a special showing followed by a Q&A with the author of the book on which the film is based, Charles Clover, and an expert on fisheries from Imperial College London. It was more Daniel in an environmentalist shark pool, if you can have such a thing, than in the lions' den.
Most of the questions were about how to regulate overfishing. For example, does Britain need more fishery protection vehicles in a certain stretch of water? I decided the best thing for me to do was to pose a polite but pointed question. I asked Clover how the human need to feed about 6.5 billion could be met. A woman in the audience immediately heckled me to say it would soon be 9 billion people – most likely because she was concerned about “overpopulation” – but I simply agreed with her that we needed to feed that many.
Clover’s response was measured but he insisted that there were limits to what could be achieved by fish farming (even though I had not mentioned aquaculture). Nor did he see ways round the problem. Large fish in fish farms are evidently fed with small fish from the oceans, inefficiently in his view, but he insisted there is also a limit to the number of small fish we can eat. Nor did he see great potential in vegetarian fish, such as tilapia, which can be farmed but do not depend on other fish as food. Obviously his arguments against fish farming were well rehearsed but he did not come up with a solution to the problem I had posed.
At the end of the film a journalist from the London Paper, a daily free sheet, stood up and said he wanted comments from the audience on the “fantastic film” we had just seen. When I confronted him afterwards to point out he had violated the basics of objective journalism – in effect telling people what he wanted to hear – he did offer to interview me. But I countered that I would not trust him to write a balanced article as he had already decided what to say. He said his article should appear in the paper on Monday.
I was then accosted by a smug environmentalist who accused me of being a “cynic” as if it was a swear word. When I pointed out there was another side to the story he said his viewpoint was rational and right. Obviously it is wrong to extrapolate from one person’s views but it seems to me typical of many environmentalists to want to deny alternative voices the right to be heard.
Anyone who wants to read a critical review of the film should look up the piece by Rob Lyons on spiked.
I am now going to make myself a fish supper.
Since I finished work unexpectedly early I decided to go to see the End of The Line, a newly released documentary about over-fishing, as the only cinema where it is showing in London happens to be close by. But I had not realised that I was attending a special showing followed by a Q&A with the author of the book on which the film is based, Charles Clover, and an expert on fisheries from Imperial College London. It was more Daniel in an environmentalist shark pool, if you can have such a thing, than in the lions' den.
Most of the questions were about how to regulate overfishing. For example, does Britain need more fishery protection vehicles in a certain stretch of water? I decided the best thing for me to do was to pose a polite but pointed question. I asked Clover how the human need to feed about 6.5 billion could be met. A woman in the audience immediately heckled me to say it would soon be 9 billion people – most likely because she was concerned about “overpopulation” – but I simply agreed with her that we needed to feed that many.
Clover’s response was measured but he insisted that there were limits to what could be achieved by fish farming (even though I had not mentioned aquaculture). Nor did he see ways round the problem. Large fish in fish farms are evidently fed with small fish from the oceans, inefficiently in his view, but he insisted there is also a limit to the number of small fish we can eat. Nor did he see great potential in vegetarian fish, such as tilapia, which can be farmed but do not depend on other fish as food. Obviously his arguments against fish farming were well rehearsed but he did not come up with a solution to the problem I had posed.
At the end of the film a journalist from the London Paper, a daily free sheet, stood up and said he wanted comments from the audience on the “fantastic film” we had just seen. When I confronted him afterwards to point out he had violated the basics of objective journalism – in effect telling people what he wanted to hear – he did offer to interview me. But I countered that I would not trust him to write a balanced article as he had already decided what to say. He said his article should appear in the paper on Monday.
I was then accosted by a smug environmentalist who accused me of being a “cynic” as if it was a swear word. When I pointed out there was another side to the story he said his viewpoint was rational and right. Obviously it is wrong to extrapolate from one person’s views but it seems to me typical of many environmentalists to want to deny alternative voices the right to be heard.
Anyone who wants to read a critical review of the film should look up the piece by Rob Lyons on spiked.
I am now going to make myself a fish supper.
Labels: consumption, environment, ethics, film, food, science, technology
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Marxist ecology
One of perhaps the saddest and most peculiar intellectual developments of recent years is the development of a “Marxist ecology” (for instance, in the work of John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett). Whereas Marxism, at least in its origins, was a theory of human liberation, the project of Marxist ecology is broadly to pose the case for natural limits in radical sounding language. In simple terms it could be said to be taking what are essentially the arguments of Thomas Malthus – to which Karl Marx was vehemently opposed – and expressing them in Marxist language.
Although Marxist ecology is not directly influential it does have an important indirect influence. Many contemporary green ideas are expressed in apparently radical, almost Marxist, terms. Think, for example, of authors who talk of powerful corporations subverting the state (for example, Noreena Hertz, Naomi Klein and George Monbiot). Anti-capitalism, at least of a sort, is in fashion.
For that reason I was particularly struck by the essay on Capitalism in Wonderland in the May issue of Monthly Review. The authors of the article in the self-styled “independent socialist” magazine attack economists and their supposed slavish devotion to economic growth. From their growth sceptic perspective the obsession with capital accumulation (that is economic growth) inevitably leads to environmental degradation. Orthodox economists are essentially lackeys of the capitalist system. The thinkers who figure most prominently in the attack are those who have most prominently criticised the environmentalist viewpoint: Bjørn Lomborg (who is not an economist by profession), William Nordhaus and Julian Simon.
However, it is only possible to sustain such an argument by misrepresenting both neo-classical economics and Marxism. In brief:
* Orthodox economics is much more wary of economic growth than the Monthly Review narrative suggests. Although it is cautious pro-growth its starting point is the allocation of scare resources. In this sense it shares common ground with environmentalism. It is also striking how economists have taken on board the notion of “sustainability” – in other words there needs to be limits on growth. This assumption has become thoroughly mainstream.
* Marx, who was writing at a time when economic growth was generally seen as welcome, was strongly in favour of increased prosperity. His concern was that the capitalist mode of production limited the scope of economic expansion. In other words, growth under capitalism tended to be uneven and crisis-ridden. It is possible to contest Marx’s ideas but to portray him as anti-growth is a gross misrepresentation.
As it happens its environmentalist ideas that are apologetic in character. They are what Georg Lukács, a Hungarian Marxist thinker, referred to as “indirect apologetics”. Rather than directly defend capitalism they argue that the damaging effects of the market system are somehow natural. For example, the current lack of economic growth is the result of natural limits rather than anything to do with the specifics of capitalism. For Lukács: “indirect apologetics crudely elaborated the bad sides of capitalism, the atrocities of capitalism, but explained them not as attributes of capitalism but of all human existence and existence in general” (The Destruction of Reason, Merlin Press 1980, p202-3).
Despite their radical rhetoric the ecological Marxists are deeply conservative.
Although Marxist ecology is not directly influential it does have an important indirect influence. Many contemporary green ideas are expressed in apparently radical, almost Marxist, terms. Think, for example, of authors who talk of powerful corporations subverting the state (for example, Noreena Hertz, Naomi Klein and George Monbiot). Anti-capitalism, at least of a sort, is in fashion.
For that reason I was particularly struck by the essay on Capitalism in Wonderland in the May issue of Monthly Review. The authors of the article in the self-styled “independent socialist” magazine attack economists and their supposed slavish devotion to economic growth. From their growth sceptic perspective the obsession with capital accumulation (that is economic growth) inevitably leads to environmental degradation. Orthodox economists are essentially lackeys of the capitalist system. The thinkers who figure most prominently in the attack are those who have most prominently criticised the environmentalist viewpoint: Bjørn Lomborg (who is not an economist by profession), William Nordhaus and Julian Simon.
However, it is only possible to sustain such an argument by misrepresenting both neo-classical economics and Marxism. In brief:
* Orthodox economics is much more wary of economic growth than the Monthly Review narrative suggests. Although it is cautious pro-growth its starting point is the allocation of scare resources. In this sense it shares common ground with environmentalism. It is also striking how economists have taken on board the notion of “sustainability” – in other words there needs to be limits on growth. This assumption has become thoroughly mainstream.
* Marx, who was writing at a time when economic growth was generally seen as welcome, was strongly in favour of increased prosperity. His concern was that the capitalist mode of production limited the scope of economic expansion. In other words, growth under capitalism tended to be uneven and crisis-ridden. It is possible to contest Marx’s ideas but to portray him as anti-growth is a gross misrepresentation.
As it happens its environmentalist ideas that are apologetic in character. They are what Georg Lukács, a Hungarian Marxist thinker, referred to as “indirect apologetics”. Rather than directly defend capitalism they argue that the damaging effects of the market system are somehow natural. For example, the current lack of economic growth is the result of natural limits rather than anything to do with the specifics of capitalism. For Lukács: “indirect apologetics crudely elaborated the bad sides of capitalism, the atrocities of capitalism, but explained them not as attributes of capitalism but of all human existence and existence in general” (The Destruction of Reason, Merlin Press 1980, p202-3).
Despite their radical rhetoric the ecological Marxists are deeply conservative.
Labels: climate, consumption, economics, environment, ethics
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Brilliant sceptic on climate change
I was struck by the good sense of Freeman Dyson in his interview with Yale Environment 360 on climate change. The eminent 85-year-old scientist upset the orthodox climate change lobby when he criticised their views in a recent profile in the New York Times Sunday magazine. His views are sceptical in the best sense of the term. For example, he questions the usefulness of models in predicting climate and challenges the view that change is necessarily for the worse. He also takes a broadly humanistic perspective. According to Dyson in his Yale interview:
“I feel very strongly that China and India getting rich is the most important thing that’s going on in the world at present. That’s a real revolution, that the center of gravity of the whole population of the world would be middle class, and that’s a wonderful thing to happen. It would be a shame if we persuade them to stop that just for the sake of a problem that’s not that serious.
“And I’m happy every time I see that the Chinese and Indians make a strong statement about going ahead with burning coal. Because that’s what it really depends on, is coal. They can’t do without coal. We could, but they certainly can’t.”
He also wrote a review of some key books on climate change in the New York Review of Books last year.
“I feel very strongly that China and India getting rich is the most important thing that’s going on in the world at present. That’s a real revolution, that the center of gravity of the whole population of the world would be middle class, and that’s a wonderful thing to happen. It would be a shame if we persuade them to stop that just for the sake of a problem that’s not that serious.
“And I’m happy every time I see that the Chinese and Indians make a strong statement about going ahead with burning coal. Because that’s what it really depends on, is coal. They can’t do without coal. We could, but they certainly can’t.”
He also wrote a review of some key books on climate change in the New York Review of Books last year.
Labels: consumption, development, economics, environment, globalisation, science
Sunday, May 31, 2009
How to lie with statistics
Environmentalists often draw ludicrous conclusions from their beloved statistical models. A recent prominent example is the estimate from the Global Humanitarian Forum, an organisation led by Kofi Annan (a former secretary-general of the United Nations), that global warming is causing more than 300,000 deaths and about $125 billion (£77 billion) in economic losses each year. The report is also endorsed by, among others, Jeffrey Sachs.
But the estimates are described as a “methodological embarrassment” by Roger Pielke, a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who specialises in disasters, in a recent blog post. He points to several flaws in the model including:
• The stochastic nature of extreme weather events. In other words it is impossible to say for sure that an extreme weather event, such as a hurricane, is the result of climate change. It may be that climate change makes more events more likely but they would probably happen in any case without it.
• A shortage of good quality data. For sweeping conclusions to be justified they must be based on better data than is generally available.
• The role of various other potential factors that act in parallel and interact. For example, with economic development it may be that there are more buildings to destroy in a hurricane. But it does not follow that the physical force of hurricanes has necessarily become more destructive than in the past. .According to Piekle: “the increase in disasters observed worldwide can be entirely attributed to socio-economic changes. This is what has been extensively documented in the peer reviewed literature, and yet — none of this literature is cited in this [Global Humanitarian Forum] report. None of it!”
Piekle has also written a critique of similar methodological flaws (PDF) in the Stern Review on the economics of climate change.
But the estimates are described as a “methodological embarrassment” by Roger Pielke, a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who specialises in disasters, in a recent blog post. He points to several flaws in the model including:
• The stochastic nature of extreme weather events. In other words it is impossible to say for sure that an extreme weather event, such as a hurricane, is the result of climate change. It may be that climate change makes more events more likely but they would probably happen in any case without it.
• A shortage of good quality data. For sweeping conclusions to be justified they must be based on better data than is generally available.
• The role of various other potential factors that act in parallel and interact. For example, with economic development it may be that there are more buildings to destroy in a hurricane. But it does not follow that the physical force of hurricanes has necessarily become more destructive than in the past. .According to Piekle: “the increase in disasters observed worldwide can be entirely attributed to socio-economic changes. This is what has been extensively documented in the peer reviewed literature, and yet — none of this literature is cited in this [Global Humanitarian Forum] report. None of it!”
Piekle has also written a critique of similar methodological flaws (PDF) in the Stern Review on the economics of climate change.
Labels: climate, consumption, development, economics, environment
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Official “development” against growth
A hugely revealing essay attacking growth by James Gustave Speth for America’s Schumacher Society. Speth is, among other things, a former head of the United Nations Development Programme (1993-9). Yet a man who was entrusted with the leadership of one of the world’s key development institutions is blatantly anti-growth:
“Economic growth may be the world's secular religion, but for much of the of the world it is a god that is failing – underperforming for most of the world's people and, for those of us in affluent societies, creating more problems than it is solving. The never-ending drive to grow the overall U.S. economy undermines families, jobs, communities, the environment, a sense of place and continuity, even mental health. It fuels a ruthless search for energy and other resources, and it rests on a manufactured consumerism that is not meeting the deepest human needs.”
Thanks to Austin Williams for the link.
“Economic growth may be the world's secular religion, but for much of the of the world it is a god that is failing – underperforming for most of the world's people and, for those of us in affluent societies, creating more problems than it is solving. The never-ending drive to grow the overall U.S. economy undermines families, jobs, communities, the environment, a sense of place and continuity, even mental health. It fuels a ruthless search for energy and other resources, and it rests on a manufactured consumerism that is not meeting the deepest human needs.”
Thanks to Austin Williams for the link.
Labels: consumption, development, environment, growth, sustainability
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Environmentalism and the crisis of legitimacy
David Chandler, professor of economics at Westminster University, has written a fascinating essay on the politics of environmentalism (PDF) in Radical Politics Today. It argues that state institutions have promoted environmental ideas in an attempt to bolster their legitimacy. This is in the context of traditional measures of welfare and educational progress appearing increasingly contested. Under such circumstances measures such as reducing an institution’s “carbon footprint” becomes more important as a form of validation than as a practical measure.
I was particularly struck by Chandler’s quotes from National Health Documents increasingly defining its role in relation to climate change. A similar trend is apparent in education.
These themes will be expanded on in Chandler’s forthcoming Hollow Hegemony (Pluto 2000).
I was particularly struck by Chandler’s quotes from National Health Documents increasingly defining its role in relation to climate change. A similar trend is apparent in education.
These themes will be expanded on in Chandler’s forthcoming Hollow Hegemony (Pluto 2000).
Labels: consumption, environment, ethics, globalisation, progress
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Dialectic of anti-Enlightenment
An excellent recent essay by Neil Davenport in mute magazine helps to draw out the intellectual backdrop to the rise of growth scepticism. Davenport’s piece is a review of two classics of the “Marxist” Frankfurt school - Dialectic of Enlightenment and One-Dimensional Man - plus a trilogy on the Third Reich by Richard Evans.
Davenport shows how the Frankfurt school turned what was perceived as left wing thinking on its head:
* It argued the second world war, including the Holocaust, was a culmination of Enlightenment thinking rather than a violation of it. In so doing it ignored the character of Nazism as a reaction against modernity while itself rejecting the ideas of reason and progress.
* It argued the mass of the population, the working class, largely backed Nazism. In this respect it was historically inaccurate too: it ignored the rise of Nazism as a middle class phenomenon which later became popular among the elite.
Frankfurt school ideas helped pave the way for contemporary social pessimism. It embodied a rejection of reason and a disdain for the masses. It converted what were previously seen as conservative ideas into a radical sounding form. Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man helped popularise such ideas among the 1960s counter-culture and the themes were then taken up by the rising environmental movement.
As Davenport argues: “The contemporary political juncture can perhaps be defined as a general disdain for universalism, liberty, modernity and social progress. Far from a widespread celebration of the marvels of medicine, increased food production and increased living standards, modernity is seen to lead to environmental catastrophe, urban ugliness, stress and mental health problems and even the destruction of childhood innocence. For many radicals today, the preferred option is to seek ways in which to retreat from the ‘alienation’ of modern day life via rural retreats or organising life around ethical consumption habits. Above all else, a desire to put some distance against the imaginary masses and their cultural tastes pretty much constitutes and defines ‘radicalism’ today.”
Davenport shows how the Frankfurt school turned what was perceived as left wing thinking on its head:
* It argued the second world war, including the Holocaust, was a culmination of Enlightenment thinking rather than a violation of it. In so doing it ignored the character of Nazism as a reaction against modernity while itself rejecting the ideas of reason and progress.
* It argued the mass of the population, the working class, largely backed Nazism. In this respect it was historically inaccurate too: it ignored the rise of Nazism as a middle class phenomenon which later became popular among the elite.
Frankfurt school ideas helped pave the way for contemporary social pessimism. It embodied a rejection of reason and a disdain for the masses. It converted what were previously seen as conservative ideas into a radical sounding form. Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man helped popularise such ideas among the 1960s counter-culture and the themes were then taken up by the rising environmental movement.
As Davenport argues: “The contemporary political juncture can perhaps be defined as a general disdain for universalism, liberty, modernity and social progress. Far from a widespread celebration of the marvels of medicine, increased food production and increased living standards, modernity is seen to lead to environmental catastrophe, urban ugliness, stress and mental health problems and even the destruction of childhood innocence. For many radicals today, the preferred option is to seek ways in which to retreat from the ‘alienation’ of modern day life via rural retreats or organising life around ethical consumption habits. Above all else, a desire to put some distance against the imaginary masses and their cultural tastes pretty much constitutes and defines ‘radicalism’ today.”
Labels: environment, ethics, modernity, progress, review
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Contempt for democracy
A good example of how environmental “consultation” can work. No doubt if these Scottish high school students had given the “correct” answer when canvassed – that they wanted a community wind farm – it would have been used to help justify support for such projects. But because they said they desired things deemed environmentally incorrect the whole thing is dismissed as a “prank”:
"The sixth formers were asked what they would like to be developed in Selkirk and came back with an Astroturf playing field, a sports centre and a cinema.
"Also a brothel, a Primark store and a Kentucky Fried Chicken."
Environmentalists are all in favour of democracy – as long as it gives the “right” answers. Genuine democracy – giving ordinary people control over their lives – is anathema to the elitist advocates of environmentalism.
"The sixth formers were asked what they would like to be developed in Selkirk and came back with an Astroturf playing field, a sports centre and a cinema.
"Also a brothel, a Primark store and a Kentucky Fried Chicken."
Environmentalists are all in favour of democracy – as long as it gives the “right” answers. Genuine democracy – giving ordinary people control over their lives – is anathema to the elitist advocates of environmentalism.
Labels: consumption, energy, environment, ethics
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
‘Green’ lightbulbs poison workers
According to this article in the Sunday Times (London) the Chinese workers who produce energy efficient lightbulbs for the West are suffering from mercury poisoning:
“Doctors, regulators, lawyers and courts in China - which supplies two thirds of the compact fluorescent bulbs sold in Britain - are increasingly alert to the potential impacts on public health of an industry that promotes itself as a friend of the earth but depends on highly toxic mercury.
“Making the bulbs requires workers to handle mercury in either solid or liquid form because a small amount of the metal is put into each bulb to start the chemical reaction that creates light.”
“Doctors, regulators, lawyers and courts in China - which supplies two thirds of the compact fluorescent bulbs sold in Britain - are increasingly alert to the potential impacts on public health of an industry that promotes itself as a friend of the earth but depends on highly toxic mercury.
“Making the bulbs requires workers to handle mercury in either solid or liquid form because a small amount of the metal is put into each bulb to start the chemical reaction that creates light.”
Labels: china, environment, technology
Monday, May 04, 2009
The pro-nuclear myth
James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky argue in an article on spiked that New Labour’s apparent support for nuclear power is a myth. Although the British government is formally committed to atomic energy its support is qualified by so many caveats – on such questions as energy security and climate change – as to render it meaningless. It also grossly underestimates the need to increase energy supply.
I suspect the same is true of those environmental campaigners who have apparently switched to supporting nuclear power. Their support is likely to be so conditional that it would lead to opposition in practical terms.
I suspect the same is true of those environmental campaigners who have apparently switched to supporting nuclear power. Their support is likely to be so conditional that it would lead to opposition in practical terms.
Labels: climate, energy, environment, spiked, technology
Sunday, April 26, 2009
The new age of austerity
It is important to put the current demands for austerity in Britain into the right perspective. The more explicit character of the call for austerity is an important development. But the drive for austerity is not new nor has the process unfolded to its full extent.
The Conservative Party has pushed the idea of the age of austerity hard at its spring forum in Cheltenham this weekend. It is also calling for a “government of thrift”.
But the Liberal Democrats had already beaten it to the post with Nick Clegg’s call for a mood of austerity earlier in the year. He also said it should be “green” and “fair”.
As I have argued previously on this blog the idea of austerity is implicit in growth scepticism. The idea that there is a need to put limits on growth for the sake of, for example, the environment or human happiness became mainstream in the 1970s. The importance of the recent statements is that they are becoming more explicit rather than implicit.
This more open drive to austerity also shows the idea of the “green squeeze”, popular last summer, is wrong (see 1 July 2008 post). Green ideas are not going to suffer a backlash as a result of the economic crisis. On the contrary, austerity will often be sold to the public as a desirable green measure.
However, it is clear from the Labour Party’s reluctance to talk openly about austerity that the process still has further to run. The governing party is still talking coyly about “efficiencies” rather than “cuts” in public spending. It is also trying to balance its desire for austerity with its fear of worsening the downturn by discouraging consumers from spending.
The unfolding of the demand for austerity should be monitored closely in Britain and in other countries.
The Conservative Party has pushed the idea of the age of austerity hard at its spring forum in Cheltenham this weekend. It is also calling for a “government of thrift”.
But the Liberal Democrats had already beaten it to the post with Nick Clegg’s call for a mood of austerity earlier in the year. He also said it should be “green” and “fair”.
As I have argued previously on this blog the idea of austerity is implicit in growth scepticism. The idea that there is a need to put limits on growth for the sake of, for example, the environment or human happiness became mainstream in the 1970s. The importance of the recent statements is that they are becoming more explicit rather than implicit.
This more open drive to austerity also shows the idea of the “green squeeze”, popular last summer, is wrong (see 1 July 2008 post). Green ideas are not going to suffer a backlash as a result of the economic crisis. On the contrary, austerity will often be sold to the public as a desirable green measure.
However, it is clear from the Labour Party’s reluctance to talk openly about austerity that the process still has further to run. The governing party is still talking coyly about “efficiencies” rather than “cuts” in public spending. It is also trying to balance its desire for austerity with its fear of worsening the downturn by discouraging consumers from spending.
The unfolding of the demand for austerity should be monitored closely in Britain and in other countries.
Labels: consumption, economics, environment, ethics, growth
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Welcome environmental impact
Until I read this article in the New York Times I had not realised the relationship between the Obama administration and a key environmental formula. Evidently the IPAT formula – which holds that environmental Impact = Population multiplied by Affluence multiplied by Technology – was devised by John Holdren, a physicist and Barack Obama’s science adviser.
On one level the equation can be said to be common sense. The higher the population, the greater the affluence and the more advanced the technology the more of an impact humanity will have on the environment. The problem comes when impact is assumed to be a bad thing. From that mistaken premise it is a short distance to the conclusion that there should be fewer people, less affluence, less advanced technology or some combination of these factors.
In reality environmental impact can be a good thing. Humanity has the potential to shape the environment for the better rather than simply damage the planet. As I argued in my essay on eco-economics (see links on the left) the domination of nature should not be confused with its destruction. Nature should be moulded and reshaped for the benefit of humanity.
On one level the equation can be said to be common sense. The higher the population, the greater the affluence and the more advanced the technology the more of an impact humanity will have on the environment. The problem comes when impact is assumed to be a bad thing. From that mistaken premise it is a short distance to the conclusion that there should be fewer people, less affluence, less advanced technology or some combination of these factors.
In reality environmental impact can be a good thing. Humanity has the potential to shape the environment for the better rather than simply damage the planet. As I argued in my essay on eco-economics (see links on the left) the domination of nature should not be confused with its destruction. Nature should be moulded and reshaped for the benefit of humanity.
Labels: consumption, economics, environment, Obama, technology
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Sesame Street and green religion
It is evidently never too young to inculcate children to behave in what is deemed an environmentally correct fashion. Sesame Street has recently released a DVD called “Being green” which features Paul Rudd as “Mr Earth”. Evidently in the DVD for pre-schoolers: “Mr Earth teaches Elmo and Abby how ‘it can be easy being green’ by recycling, re-using, and conserving water and energy.”
In some respects this resembles the traditional teaching of religion to children in schools. However, as Tom Jacobs argues in an article for Miller-McCune on “getting religions to worship ecologically” environmentalism is not a human-centred perspective. Jacobs quotes Bron Taylor, author of the forthcoming Dark Green Religion (University of California Press) to the effect that:
“Taylor believes these ‘post-Darwinian religious forms’ will look a lot like the traditional religions that flourished before the Judeo-Christian traditions, such as animism (which views the natural world as enspirited) and pantheism (which considers the biosphere "part of a divine intelligence"). "All over the world, people are articulating, developing and promoting such spirtualities, sometimes without even knowing it — just by doing the work they do," he said.”
It is hard to think of anything more primitive than worshipping nature. Hardly the kind of thing we should be teaching our children.
In some respects this resembles the traditional teaching of religion to children in schools. However, as Tom Jacobs argues in an article for Miller-McCune on “getting religions to worship ecologically” environmentalism is not a human-centred perspective. Jacobs quotes Bron Taylor, author of the forthcoming Dark Green Religion (University of California Press) to the effect that:
“Taylor believes these ‘post-Darwinian religious forms’ will look a lot like the traditional religions that flourished before the Judeo-Christian traditions, such as animism (which views the natural world as enspirited) and pantheism (which considers the biosphere "part of a divine intelligence"). "All over the world, people are articulating, developing and promoting such spirtualities, sometimes without even knowing it — just by doing the work they do," he said.”
It is hard to think of anything more primitive than worshipping nature. Hardly the kind of thing we should be teaching our children.
Labels: book, consumption, environment, ethics
Sunday, April 19, 2009
New York Times embraces green authoritarianism
Today’s New York Times magazine is a special green issue. It includes several interesting – although flawed – articles on the subject including:
•Why isn’t the brain green?. Implying that failure to accept environmental priorities suggests some kind of mental disorder and suggesting people need to be “nudged” in the right direction. This form of insidious authoritarianism is deeply trendy at present (see my post of 21 July 2008). It also links in to the idea that those who “deny” climate change (that is critics either of the mainstream scientific views on the subject or of the idea that it can only be tackled by austerity) must be mentally ill.
•The end is near! (yea!). An article on the “transition movement” – which sounds like a kind of survivalism: “The Transition movement was started four years ago by Rob Hopkins, a young British instructor of ecological design. Transition shares certain principles with environmentalism, but its vision is deeper — and more radical — than mere greenness or sustainability. “Sustainability,” Hopkins recently told me, “is about reducing the impacts of what comes out of the tailpipe of industrial society.” But that assumes our industrial society will keep running. By contrast, Hopkins said, Transition is about “building resiliency” — putting new systems in place to make a given community as self-sufficient as possible, bracing it to withstand the shocks that will come as oil grows astronomically expensive, climate change intensifies and, maybe sooner than we think, industrial society frays or collapses entirely. For a generation, the environmental movement has told us to change our lifestyles to avoid catastrophic consequences. Transition tells us those consequences are now irreversibly switching on; we need to revolutionize our lives if we want to survive.”
•Natural happiness. Arguing conservation on the basis of the pleasure it gives to humans: “Real natural habitats provide significant sources of pleasure for modern humans. We intuitively grasp this, and this knowledge underlies the anxiety that we feel about nature’s loss. It might be that one day we will be able to replace the experience of nature with “Star Trek” holodecks and robotic animals. But until then, this basic fact about human pleasure is an excellent argument for keeping the real thing.”
It is hard to distinguish such pieces from the kinds of arguments that could be found in such publications as the Ecologist magazine.
•Why isn’t the brain green?. Implying that failure to accept environmental priorities suggests some kind of mental disorder and suggesting people need to be “nudged” in the right direction. This form of insidious authoritarianism is deeply trendy at present (see my post of 21 July 2008). It also links in to the idea that those who “deny” climate change (that is critics either of the mainstream scientific views on the subject or of the idea that it can only be tackled by austerity) must be mentally ill.
•The end is near! (yea!). An article on the “transition movement” – which sounds like a kind of survivalism: “The Transition movement was started four years ago by Rob Hopkins, a young British instructor of ecological design. Transition shares certain principles with environmentalism, but its vision is deeper — and more radical — than mere greenness or sustainability. “Sustainability,” Hopkins recently told me, “is about reducing the impacts of what comes out of the tailpipe of industrial society.” But that assumes our industrial society will keep running. By contrast, Hopkins said, Transition is about “building resiliency” — putting new systems in place to make a given community as self-sufficient as possible, bracing it to withstand the shocks that will come as oil grows astronomically expensive, climate change intensifies and, maybe sooner than we think, industrial society frays or collapses entirely. For a generation, the environmental movement has told us to change our lifestyles to avoid catastrophic consequences. Transition tells us those consequences are now irreversibly switching on; we need to revolutionize our lives if we want to survive.”
•Natural happiness. Arguing conservation on the basis of the pleasure it gives to humans: “Real natural habitats provide significant sources of pleasure for modern humans. We intuitively grasp this, and this knowledge underlies the anxiety that we feel about nature’s loss. It might be that one day we will be able to replace the experience of nature with “Star Trek” holodecks and robotic animals. But until then, this basic fact about human pleasure is an excellent argument for keeping the real thing.”
It is hard to distinguish such pieces from the kinds of arguments that could be found in such publications as the Ecologist magazine.
Labels: America, consumption, environment, happiness
Thursday, April 16, 2009
An exemplary thinker
I was particularly sad to read of the death of John Maddox, a former editor of Nature, who in many respects had an exemplary attitude towards science and society. I recently ordered - although have not yet read - his What Remains to be Discovered (Free Press 1997) which argues there is still a huge amount of the scientific agenda still to work on. He also wrote The Doomsday Syndrome (Macmillan 1972), an early attack on environmentalism.
Labels: book, environment, science
Monday, April 13, 2009
A contemporary misanthrope
John Gray, one of the gloomiest social thinkers around, has just had another book published on why the drive to social progress is dangerous. The human imagination, in his view, led to the worst crimes of the twentieth century. Gray’s Anatomy (Penguin), a collection of his essays over the past 30 years, takes contemporary misanthrope to its logical conclusion.
Labels: book, environment, progress
Sunday, April 12, 2009
A call for pragmatic austerity
Will Hutton endorses recent Anthony Giddens’ call for a pragmatic middle of the road environmentalism in his regular Observer column (see 2 April 2009 post for book reference). Hutton rejects the utopian conservatism of the likes of Prince Charles and what he sees as the left wing anti-capitalism of the G20 protestors. Instead he favours mainstream arguments such as energy efficiency being sensible and the need for energy independence. However, he tellingly reveals that his goal is to persuade the mass of the population to make sacrifices: “to persuade western publics to make sacrifices requires more than trying to terrify them. It requires laying out concrete actions that collectively make sense now.” Hutton and Giddens are essentially arguing that the demand for austerity should be couched in the language of realism (for a similar argument in the Financial Times see post of 12 December 2008. Also see post of 4 February 2007).
Labels: climate, consumption, economics, energy, environment
The myth of “eco-systems services”
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times foreign affairs correspondent, tries to popularise the flawed notion of eco-systems services in a comment in this weekend’s newspaper. The globetrotting correspondent uses the example of Costa Rica to show that:
“As we debate a new energy future, we need to remember that nature provides this incredible range of economic services — from carbon-fixation to water filtration to natural beauty for tourism. If government policies don’t recognize those services and pay the people who sustain nature’s ability to provide them, things go haywire.”
There are at least two fundamental problems with this argument:
* Nature does not provide “services” in the way suggested. Without the application of human labour it does not provide anything. Even something as basic as water generally needs to be collected, stored and transported.
* It can lead to the perverse conclusion that an economy with a rapidly rising GDP can be experience slow economic growth because it is running down “natural capital”. Minimising the impact on nature, rather than maximising the benefit for humanity, become the goal of economic policy.
The myth of “eco-systems services” is discussed in more detail in James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky’s Energise (p457-462) (for review see 9 February 2009 post).
“As we debate a new energy future, we need to remember that nature provides this incredible range of economic services — from carbon-fixation to water filtration to natural beauty for tourism. If government policies don’t recognize those services and pay the people who sustain nature’s ability to provide them, things go haywire.”
There are at least two fundamental problems with this argument:
* Nature does not provide “services” in the way suggested. Without the application of human labour it does not provide anything. Even something as basic as water generally needs to be collected, stored and transported.
* It can lead to the perverse conclusion that an economy with a rapidly rising GDP can be experience slow economic growth because it is running down “natural capital”. Minimising the impact on nature, rather than maximising the benefit for humanity, become the goal of economic policy.
The myth of “eco-systems services” is discussed in more detail in James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky’s Energise (p457-462) (for review see 9 February 2009 post).
Labels: economics, environment, water
Thursday, April 02, 2009
More growth sceptic tomes
Three more substantial and high profile contributions to the vast growth sceptic canon have recently been published in Britain:
Anthony Giddens The Politics of Climate Change (Polity Press). View of an influential sociologist and government adviser.
Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save (Picador) argues the rich should give more to the global poor. In doing so it seems to assume there is only a fixed amount of resources to go round.
Nicholas’s Stern’s Blueprint for a Safer Planet (Bodley Head) updates his argument on the economics of climate change.
It constantly amazes me how authors of such books typically present their arguments as if they are unorthodox. They are without doubt purveyors of today’s mainstream consensus.
On a more positive note Mike Hulme’s Why We Disagree about Climate Change (Cambridge University Press) looks set to be a measured contribution to the discussion.
Anthony Giddens The Politics of Climate Change (Polity Press). View of an influential sociologist and government adviser.
Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save (Picador) argues the rich should give more to the global poor. In doing so it seems to assume there is only a fixed amount of resources to go round.
Nicholas’s Stern’s Blueprint for a Safer Planet (Bodley Head) updates his argument on the economics of climate change.
It constantly amazes me how authors of such books typically present their arguments as if they are unorthodox. They are without doubt purveyors of today’s mainstream consensus.
On a more positive note Mike Hulme’s Why We Disagree about Climate Change (Cambridge University Press) looks set to be a measured contribution to the discussion.
Labels: book, climate, consumption, development, economics, environment
Monday, March 30, 2009
Prosperity without growth?
It’s official. The reason the economy is not growing is that we have had too much growth. The solution is to curb consumption. These are the conclusions of a report on Prosperity Without Growth by Professor Tim Jackson for the Sustainable Development Commission. Given his long-standing views on the subject the likely conclusions were pretty clear before it was written.
When I have time I hope to do a more detailed critique of the report. In the meantime I’d like to suggest the subject of a new report for the British government to commission. How about “breathing without oxygen”? Or perhaps “redefining black as white”?
When I have time I hope to do a more detailed critique of the report. In the meantime I’d like to suggest the subject of a new report for the British government to commission. How about “breathing without oxygen”? Or perhaps “redefining black as white”?
Labels: climate, consumption, economics, environment, sustainability
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Time magazine on “era of excess”
The cover story of Time magazine’s American edition seamlessly moves from blaming bankers to placing responsibility on everyone for the economic downturn. In its view it is a crisis of generalised excess.
The starting point of the piece by Kurt Andersen, a novelist and former Time columnist, is the Reagan era of the 1980s. In Andersen’s telling the free marketer president irresponsibly allowed people’s desires to run amok:
“In the early 1980s, around the time Ronald Reagan became President and Wall Street's great modern bull market began, we started gambling (and winning!) and thinking magically. From 1980 to 2007, the median price of a new American home quadrupled. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed from 803 in the summer of 1982 to 14,165 in the fall of 2007. From the beginning of the '80s through 2007, the share of disposable income that each household spent servicing its mortgage and consumer debt increased 35%. Back in 1982, the average household saved 11% of its disposable income. By 2007 that number was less than 1%.”
For Andersen the Reagan era led not just to financial but to economic and environmental excess. We are now suffering as a result. The solution proposed by Time is that we should cure our “addiction” by consuming less:
“Given that we've brought on the current crises through a quarter-century of self-destructive financial excess and overdependence on debt and fossil fuels, during the same quarter-century we've all become familiar with a way of thinking about self-destructive excess and dependence. The vocabulary of addiction recovery could come in handy just now. We are like substance abusers coming off a long bender, hitting bottom (we can only hope) and taking the messes we've made as a sobering wake-up call. I've always thought many of the 12 Steps were superfluous, so here is a streamlined, secularized Three-Step Program for America — Bubbleholics Anonymous? — to start getting back on track:
“• Admit that we are powerless over addiction to easy money and cheap fossil fuel and living large — that our lives had become unmanageable.
“• Believe that we can, individually and collectively, restore ourselves to sanity and normal living.
“• Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and be entirely ready to remove our defects of character.
“Of course, when addicts finally quit, it feels awful for a while, and that's where we are right now. The recession, provoked by the sudden, essentially cold-turkey abandonment of spending, lending and borrowing, is something like our national equivalent of the jitters, sweats and seizures that addicts experience right after they give up the junk. Actually, the applicable addiction trope is more like food (or sex) than drugs or booze, since as economic creatures, we can't quit; we just have to teach ourselves to buy and borrow in moderate, healthier ways. The new America must be about financial temperance, not abstinence.”
Evidently the story is a little more muted in the European edition but the message is the same.
The starting point of the piece by Kurt Andersen, a novelist and former Time columnist, is the Reagan era of the 1980s. In Andersen’s telling the free marketer president irresponsibly allowed people’s desires to run amok:
“In the early 1980s, around the time Ronald Reagan became President and Wall Street's great modern bull market began, we started gambling (and winning!) and thinking magically. From 1980 to 2007, the median price of a new American home quadrupled. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed from 803 in the summer of 1982 to 14,165 in the fall of 2007. From the beginning of the '80s through 2007, the share of disposable income that each household spent servicing its mortgage and consumer debt increased 35%. Back in 1982, the average household saved 11% of its disposable income. By 2007 that number was less than 1%.”
For Andersen the Reagan era led not just to financial but to economic and environmental excess. We are now suffering as a result. The solution proposed by Time is that we should cure our “addiction” by consuming less:
“Given that we've brought on the current crises through a quarter-century of self-destructive financial excess and overdependence on debt and fossil fuels, during the same quarter-century we've all become familiar with a way of thinking about self-destructive excess and dependence. The vocabulary of addiction recovery could come in handy just now. We are like substance abusers coming off a long bender, hitting bottom (we can only hope) and taking the messes we've made as a sobering wake-up call. I've always thought many of the 12 Steps were superfluous, so here is a streamlined, secularized Three-Step Program for America — Bubbleholics Anonymous? — to start getting back on track:
“• Admit that we are powerless over addiction to easy money and cheap fossil fuel and living large — that our lives had become unmanageable.
“• Believe that we can, individually and collectively, restore ourselves to sanity and normal living.
“• Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and be entirely ready to remove our defects of character.
“Of course, when addicts finally quit, it feels awful for a while, and that's where we are right now. The recession, provoked by the sudden, essentially cold-turkey abandonment of spending, lending and borrowing, is something like our national equivalent of the jitters, sweats and seizures that addicts experience right after they give up the junk. Actually, the applicable addiction trope is more like food (or sex) than drugs or booze, since as economic creatures, we can't quit; we just have to teach ourselves to buy and borrow in moderate, healthier ways. The new America must be about financial temperance, not abstinence.”
Evidently the story is a little more muted in the European edition but the message is the same.
Labels: America, consumption, environment, ethics, finance, sustainability
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Myths about "green jobs"
An interesting looking paper by four American academics looking at “seven myths about green jobs”. To quote the abstract:
“A group of studies, rapidly gaining popularity, promise that a massive program of government mandates, subsidies, and forced technological interventions will reward the nation with an economy brimming with green jobs. Not only will these jobs allegedly improve the environment, but they will pay well, be very interesting, and foster unionization. These claims are built on 7 myths about economics, forecasting, and technology. Our team of researchers from universities across the nation surveyed this green jobs literature, analyzed its assumptions, and found that the special interest groups promoting the idea of green jobs have embedded dubious assumptions and techniques within their analyses. We found that the prescribed undertaking would lead to restructuring and possibly impoverishing our society. Therefore, our citizens deserve careful analysis and informed public debate about these assumptions and resulting recommendations before our nation can move forward towards a more eco-friendly nation. To do so, we need to expose these myths so that we can see the facts more clearly.”
“A group of studies, rapidly gaining popularity, promise that a massive program of government mandates, subsidies, and forced technological interventions will reward the nation with an economy brimming with green jobs. Not only will these jobs allegedly improve the environment, but they will pay well, be very interesting, and foster unionization. These claims are built on 7 myths about economics, forecasting, and technology. Our team of researchers from universities across the nation surveyed this green jobs literature, analyzed its assumptions, and found that the special interest groups promoting the idea of green jobs have embedded dubious assumptions and techniques within their analyses. We found that the prescribed undertaking would lead to restructuring and possibly impoverishing our society. Therefore, our citizens deserve careful analysis and informed public debate about these assumptions and resulting recommendations before our nation can move forward towards a more eco-friendly nation. To do so, we need to expose these myths so that we can see the facts more clearly.”
Labels: economics, environment, work
Sunday, March 22, 2009
More on Malthus
The Guardian’s Malthus comment discussed in a post yesterday was itself a response to a speech by John Beddington, the British government’s chief scientific adviser, arguing the world is facing a “perfect storm” of energy, food and water shortages by 2030.
Beddington does qualify his remarks by saying that the development of science and technology can help deal with such effects but it is a disingenuous claim. For example, it is almost true by definition that a rising population is a problem if there is not at least a corresponding rise in food supplies. Rather than point out the obvious surely it would be better to work on ways to raise productivity to enable humanity to overcome any shortages – that has been the pattern of modern history.
It is also sad to see the increase in the number of human beings discussed solely in terms of demand and consumption. Humans are producers too – with the ingenuity and capability of finding ways to overcome problems.
A particularly bleak interview with Beddington was that by John Humphrys on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. Humphrys focused on what he saw as the need for population control and cuts in consumption. In effect he was asking Beddington whether he was being pessimistic enough. With critics like that it is not surprising that environmentalism is making the running.
Beddington does qualify his remarks by saying that the development of science and technology can help deal with such effects but it is a disingenuous claim. For example, it is almost true by definition that a rising population is a problem if there is not at least a corresponding rise in food supplies. Rather than point out the obvious surely it would be better to work on ways to raise productivity to enable humanity to overcome any shortages – that has been the pattern of modern history.
It is also sad to see the increase in the number of human beings discussed solely in terms of demand and consumption. Humans are producers too – with the ingenuity and capability of finding ways to overcome problems.
A particularly bleak interview with Beddington was that by John Humphrys on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. Humphrys focused on what he saw as the need for population control and cuts in consumption. In effect he was asking Beddington whether he was being pessimistic enough. With critics like that it is not surprising that environmentalism is making the running.
Labels: climate, consumption, energy, environment, food, Malthus, science, technology, water
Saturday, March 21, 2009
A misleading “consensus” on climate change
A piece on the BBC website by Mike Hulme, a professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, on the misleading idea of a consensus at a conference of over 2,000 climate change researchers in Copenhagen this week. From his account it was a vigorous and thoughtful conference with numerous opinions being expressed on a wide range of subjects related to climate change. Yet the 600 word statement, containing six key messages, coming out of the conference was largely drafted before it started by a small organising committee. It did not, in his view, represent the collective consensus of the event:
“The six key messages are not the collective voice of 2,000 researchers, nor are they the voice of established bodies such as the WMO [World Meteorological Organization]. Neither do they arise from a collective endeavour of experts, for example through a considered process of screening, synthesising and reviewing.”
He also criticises the vagueness of the messages:
“It … seems problematic to me when such lively, well-informed and yet largely unresolved debates get reduced to six key messages, messages that on the one hand carry the aura of urgency, precision and scientific authority - "there is no excuse for inaction" - and yet at the same time remain so imprecise as to dictate or resolve nothing in political terms.”
“The six key messages are not the collective voice of 2,000 researchers, nor are they the voice of established bodies such as the WMO [World Meteorological Organization]. Neither do they arise from a collective endeavour of experts, for example through a considered process of screening, synthesising and reviewing.”
He also criticises the vagueness of the messages:
“It … seems problematic to me when such lively, well-informed and yet largely unresolved debates get reduced to six key messages, messages that on the one hand carry the aura of urgency, precision and scientific authority - "there is no excuse for inaction" - and yet at the same time remain so imprecise as to dictate or resolve nothing in political terms.”
Labels: climate, environment
Friday, March 20, 2009
Robot fish tackle pollution
A heartening story from today’s Financial Times shows how human ingenuity can help tackle environmental problems:
“Scientists are building a shoal of robot fish to be let loose in the port of Gijon [in Spain] to check on the quality of the water.
“Modelled on carp and costing about £20,000 ($29,000) each to make, the fish are to be lifelike in appearance and swimming behaviour so that they will not alarm their fellow marine inhabitants.
“The robots, the first of their kind, are equipped with tiny chemical sensors capable of detecting pollutants in the water.”
“Scientists are building a shoal of robot fish to be let loose in the port of Gijon [in Spain] to check on the quality of the water.
“Modelled on carp and costing about £20,000 ($29,000) each to make, the fish are to be lifelike in appearance and swimming behaviour so that they will not alarm their fellow marine inhabitants.
“The robots, the first of their kind, are equipped with tiny chemical sensors capable of detecting pollutants in the water.”
Labels: environment, science, technology
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Environmentalists impoverish Americans
An excellent article in Forbes by Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow and director of the urban futures program at Chapman University, on how environmentalism creates shortages:
“the new scarcity does not simply advocate humane ways to deal with shortages, but seeks to exacerbate them intentionally. This reflects a doomsday streak in the contemporary environmental ethos – greatly enhanced by the concern over climate change – that believes greater scarcity of all basic commodities, from land and water to energy, might help reduce the much detested "footprint" of our species.
“One key element of this agenda has to do with reducing access to critical resources like water beyond those required to support existing uses. To be sure, two years of below-average precipitation helped create central California's current water shortage. Planting crops such as cotton, which needs lots of water, may also have contributed to the problem.
“However, this only explains part of the problem, which increasingly has to do not with vicissitudes of nature but conscious political action. In prior dry periods, the state has managed its water resources to supply farmers and other users as effectively as possible. Today, in response to seemingly endless litigation to protect certain fish in the Delta region west of Sacramento or to "revitalize" valley streams, enormous amounts of water have been allowed to flow untapped into San Francisco Bay.”
Kotkin is also interesting on the distinctive policies of “de-development of the Obama administration:
“It is critical to understand that anti-growth politics diverges from the old conservationist ethos in radical ways. No longer is it enough to talk about growing intelligently or using technology to meet long-term problems. Instead, scarcity politics seeks to slow and even reverse material progress through what President Obama's science adviser, John Holdren, calls "de-development."
“"De-development" – that is, the retreat from economic growth – includes some sensible notions about conservation but takes them to unreasonable, socially devastating and politically unpalatable extremes. The agenda, for example, includes an opposition to population growth, limits on material consumption and a radical redistribution of wealth both nationally and to the developing world.
“In much the same way as seen in California's water crisis, many of the administration's "green" energy policies pose a direct threat to blue-collar workers employed in extracting and processing fossil fuels. The resultant high energy prices caused by the proposed "cap and trade" system – essentially a system for creating scarcity – also will cost middle-class consumers, blue-collar workers, truckers and manufacturers. These constituencies could well face the kind of water policy-related decline that is destroying farming communities throughout central California.
“Yet at the same time, such policies make the well-to-do and trustafarians in San Francisco and Malibu – for whom higher energy prices are barely a concern – feel better about themselves. In what passes for progressive politics today, narcissism usually takes priority over reality.”
Thanks to Sean Collins for the tip.
For more on John Holdren’s rampant Malthusianism see the briefing from the Competitive Enterprise Institute here (PDF).
“the new scarcity does not simply advocate humane ways to deal with shortages, but seeks to exacerbate them intentionally. This reflects a doomsday streak in the contemporary environmental ethos – greatly enhanced by the concern over climate change – that believes greater scarcity of all basic commodities, from land and water to energy, might help reduce the much detested "footprint" of our species.
“One key element of this agenda has to do with reducing access to critical resources like water beyond those required to support existing uses. To be sure, two years of below-average precipitation helped create central California's current water shortage. Planting crops such as cotton, which needs lots of water, may also have contributed to the problem.
“However, this only explains part of the problem, which increasingly has to do not with vicissitudes of nature but conscious political action. In prior dry periods, the state has managed its water resources to supply farmers and other users as effectively as possible. Today, in response to seemingly endless litigation to protect certain fish in the Delta region west of Sacramento or to "revitalize" valley streams, enormous amounts of water have been allowed to flow untapped into San Francisco Bay.”
Kotkin is also interesting on the distinctive policies of “de-development of the Obama administration:
“It is critical to understand that anti-growth politics diverges from the old conservationist ethos in radical ways. No longer is it enough to talk about growing intelligently or using technology to meet long-term problems. Instead, scarcity politics seeks to slow and even reverse material progress through what President Obama's science adviser, John Holdren, calls "de-development."
“"De-development" – that is, the retreat from economic growth – includes some sensible notions about conservation but takes them to unreasonable, socially devastating and politically unpalatable extremes. The agenda, for example, includes an opposition to population growth, limits on material consumption and a radical redistribution of wealth both nationally and to the developing world.
“In much the same way as seen in California's water crisis, many of the administration's "green" energy policies pose a direct threat to blue-collar workers employed in extracting and processing fossil fuels. The resultant high energy prices caused by the proposed "cap and trade" system – essentially a system for creating scarcity – also will cost middle-class consumers, blue-collar workers, truckers and manufacturers. These constituencies could well face the kind of water policy-related decline that is destroying farming communities throughout central California.
“Yet at the same time, such policies make the well-to-do and trustafarians in San Francisco and Malibu – for whom higher energy prices are barely a concern – feel better about themselves. In what passes for progressive politics today, narcissism usually takes priority over reality.”
Thanks to Sean Collins for the tip.
For more on John Holdren’s rampant Malthusianism see the briefing from the Competitive Enterprise Institute here (PDF).
Labels: America, consumption, environment, Malthus, Obama, science
Monday, March 16, 2009
Past masters and the future of capitalism
The following review by me appeared in the latest Fund Strategy (16 March).
The debate about the future of capitalism is welcome in many respects. It raises the possibility of developing a deeper understanding of how the real economy works. This in turn would make it easier to find solutions to the present crisis.
It would certainly be welcome if people became familiar with great economic thinkers of the past such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. Despite their lack of elaborate mathematical models they had a better understanding of economic fundamentals than any living economist.
Hopefully people would read what these men actually said rather than rely on secondhand accounts. For example, the portrayal of Adam Smith as an 18th century Thatcherite is a historical travesty. Nor was he, as others argue, a precursor to New Labour’s economic world view. It is equally wrong to present Marx as a believer in an inevitable socialist victory over capitalism. This is just one of several areas where he did not argue what is widely supposed.
However, reading economic greats would only be a first step in getting to grips with contemporary capitalism. Ideas cannot be taken in a ready-made form from any previous thinkers. Capitalism has moved on in important respects since the early 20th century, when Keynes was writing, let alone earlier. Ideas from dead economists are useful but they have to be adapted to the conditions of the present day.
There are important ways in which contemporary capitalism differs from earlier variants, including:
- The massive growth of the financial sector. Although it would be wrong to see this as driving the economy, it is more substantial in size than in previous incarnations of capitalism.
- The relative decline in importance of industrial production in the West.
- The rise of substantial emerging economies in Asia.
- The powerful current of risk aversion that envelops contemporary societies and particularly the West.
- The pervasiveness of green ideas about the importance of limiting the rise in economic output and consumption.
It is not possible to talk meaningfully about the future of capitalism before properly getting to grips with its present.
The debate about the future of capitalism is welcome in many respects. It raises the possibility of developing a deeper understanding of how the real economy works. This in turn would make it easier to find solutions to the present crisis.
It would certainly be welcome if people became familiar with great economic thinkers of the past such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. Despite their lack of elaborate mathematical models they had a better understanding of economic fundamentals than any living economist.
Hopefully people would read what these men actually said rather than rely on secondhand accounts. For example, the portrayal of Adam Smith as an 18th century Thatcherite is a historical travesty. Nor was he, as others argue, a precursor to New Labour’s economic world view. It is equally wrong to present Marx as a believer in an inevitable socialist victory over capitalism. This is just one of several areas where he did not argue what is widely supposed.
However, reading economic greats would only be a first step in getting to grips with contemporary capitalism. Ideas cannot be taken in a ready-made form from any previous thinkers. Capitalism has moved on in important respects since the early 20th century, when Keynes was writing, let alone earlier. Ideas from dead economists are useful but they have to be adapted to the conditions of the present day.
There are important ways in which contemporary capitalism differs from earlier variants, including:
- The massive growth of the financial sector. Although it would be wrong to see this as driving the economy, it is more substantial in size than in previous incarnations of capitalism.
- The relative decline in importance of industrial production in the West.
- The rise of substantial emerging economies in Asia.
- The powerful current of risk aversion that envelops contemporary societies and particularly the West.
- The pervasiveness of green ideas about the importance of limiting the rise in economic output and consumption.
It is not possible to talk meaningfully about the future of capitalism before properly getting to grips with its present.
Labels: Asia, economics, environment
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Goklany optimistic on climate change
The ever astute Indur Goklany made what sounds like a fascinating speech to the International Conference on Climate Change in New York, judging by a report in Reason by Ronald Bailey (for my January 2007 interview with Goklany see the My Reviews section on the left hand site of the homepage). Evidently Goklany used data from, among others, the World Health Organization (WHO ) and the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to show that the world looks like getting better in many respects even on highly pessimistic assumptions:
“From the Stern Review, Goklany took the worst case scenario, where man-made global warming produces market and non-market losses equal to 35 percent of the benefits that are projected to exist in the absence of climate change by 2200. What did he find? Even assuming the worst emissions scenario, incomes for both developed and developing countries still rise spectacularly. In 1990, average incomes in developing countries stood around $1,000 per capita and at aroud $14,000 in developed countries. Assuming the worst means that average incomes in developing countries would rise in 2100 to $62,000 and in developed countries to $99,000. By 2200, average incomes would rise to $86,000 and $139,000 in developing and developed countries, respectively. In other words, the warmest world turns out to be the richest world.
“Looking at WHO numbers, one finds that the percentage of deaths attributed to climate change now is 13th on the list of causes of mortality, standing at about 200,000 per year, or 0.3 percent of all deaths. High blood pressure is first on the list, accounting for 7 million (12 percent) of deaths; high cholesterol is second at 4.4 million; and hunger is third. Clearly, climate change is not the most important public health problem today. But what about the future? Again looking at just the worst case of warming, climate change would boost the number of deaths in 2085 by 237,000 above what they would otherwise be according to the fast track analyses. Many of the authors of the fast track analyses also co-authored the IPCC's socioeconomic impact assessments.
“Various environmental indicators would also improve. For example, 11.6 percent of the world's land was used for growing crops in 1990. In the warmest world, agricultural productivity is projected to increase so much that the amount of land used for crops would drop to just 5 percent by 2100, leaving more land for nature. In other words, if these official projections are correct, man-made global warming is by no means the most important problem faced by humanity.”
“From the Stern Review, Goklany took the worst case scenario, where man-made global warming produces market and non-market losses equal to 35 percent of the benefits that are projected to exist in the absence of climate change by 2200. What did he find? Even assuming the worst emissions scenario, incomes for both developed and developing countries still rise spectacularly. In 1990, average incomes in developing countries stood around $1,000 per capita and at aroud $14,000 in developed countries. Assuming the worst means that average incomes in developing countries would rise in 2100 to $62,000 and in developed countries to $99,000. By 2200, average incomes would rise to $86,000 and $139,000 in developing and developed countries, respectively. In other words, the warmest world turns out to be the richest world.
“Looking at WHO numbers, one finds that the percentage of deaths attributed to climate change now is 13th on the list of causes of mortality, standing at about 200,000 per year, or 0.3 percent of all deaths. High blood pressure is first on the list, accounting for 7 million (12 percent) of deaths; high cholesterol is second at 4.4 million; and hunger is third. Clearly, climate change is not the most important public health problem today. But what about the future? Again looking at just the worst case of warming, climate change would boost the number of deaths in 2085 by 237,000 above what they would otherwise be according to the fast track analyses. Many of the authors of the fast track analyses also co-authored the IPCC's socioeconomic impact assessments.
“Various environmental indicators would also improve. For example, 11.6 percent of the world's land was used for growing crops in 1990. In the warmest world, agricultural productivity is projected to increase so much that the amount of land used for crops would drop to just 5 percent by 2100, leaving more land for nature. In other words, if these official projections are correct, man-made global warming is by no means the most important problem faced by humanity.”
Labels: climate, environment
