Joined up economic and climate research needed | Brussels Blog

Joined up economic and climate research needed

Introduction

I have been surprised over decades, on the lack of power of important economic models to investigate the policies that interested me. My proposal for modifying VAT to create employment (in 1978) could not be tested on the Treasury Model because its labour market segmentation was not rich enough.  I understand it is still the case that the Treasury Economic Model cannot investigate this and similar proposals which can actually be specified quite simply.

In the 1990s, a grant from the European Commission enabled Professor Kim Swales and colleagues to create a more sophisticated model than the one that I had constructed. The results showed the VAT with Rebate proposal was very promising. A proposal with some similarities, which has increasing support in the USA, is the one for a Carbon Fee and Dividend aimed at cutting carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

We propose an initial fee of $15/ton on the CO2 content of fossil fuels, escalating $10/t/y, imposed upstream at their point of extraction and collected upon entry into the economy. All revenues, less administrative costs, are rebated to U.S. households in the form of monthly dividends.

On behalf of the Citizens Climate Lobby, this proposal has been modeled by Regional Economic Model, Inc (REMI). This has produced encouraging results.

The full dividend drives new wealth into hiring, particularly among lower income groups. The rate of change in fossil fuel-dependent areas will be gradual, unfolding at the pace of “normal” economic evolution but in the direction of reduced fossil fuel dependence.

The Scottish Government funded economic research from the University of Strathclyde, The economic and environmental impact of the introduction of a carbon tax in Scotland. This concluded

when revenues from the tax are recycled to reduce taxes on employment there is a reduction in emissions accompanied by an increase in Scottish GDP and employment. Extensive sensitivity analysis allows us systematically to compare our results with others reported in the literature.

The effect to increase Scottish GDP and employment is similar to that reposted for the USA in the REMI modeling.

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The BBC: The Back Business Campaign

Complaints made to the BBC

The BBC imply: Only economic growth can create jobs.

…Sunday 5th October… CAS-2951985-CXGM61 …Complaint

All major political parties and business are pushing for economic growth. This is reported widely on the BBC and in other media.

The BBC has extensive coverage of business and presents economic growth as essential for the creation of jobs. The BBC also promotes economic growth as “good thing”. Every hour of every day there is business news, climate news is much rarer and of mixed quality (I will make a separate complaint on this.) There is hardly any mention of the fact that economic growth brings more environmental hazards, such as greenhouse gas emissions, except occasionally that “green growth” is a possibility.

By leaving the underlying assumption that jobs depend only on growth, the BBC is promoting a falsehood. The green agenda is being buried by growth propaganda. “Public purposes: Sustaining citizenship and civil society” says “You can trust the BBC to provide high-quality news, current affairs and factual programming that keeps you informed and supports debate about important issues and political developments in an engaging way.”

In leaving the public ill-informed the BBC is failing its guidelines. For background see:

Job creation doesn’t need economic growth

Greenwash from Stern?

“Public purposes: Sustaining citizenship and civil society

 … Monday 6th October… CAS-2954926-6XZMFL… Reply

Thanks for contacting us.

I understand you feel the BBC is reporting that all major political parties and business are pushing for economic growth but fail to mention that economic growth brings more environmental hazards such as greenhouse gas emissions. I also note your comments that by leaving the underlying assumption that jobs depend only on growth the BBC is promoting a falsehood.

The time given to each issue or report in the news is frequently a very difficult decision for our editors. Our audiences don’t look at events in the same way and there’s no one universal news agenda that applies to all. The time given has to be selective and no matter how carefully such decisions are made, news editors are always aware that some people may disagree with them.

Essentially this is a judgement call rather than an exact science but BBC News does appreciate the feedback when viewers and listeners feel we may have neglected a story or focused too much on a particular story or item.

Thank you again for contacting us, we value your feedback about BBC News. All complaints are sent to senior management and programme makers every morning and I included your points in this overnight report. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the BBC and ensures that your complaint has been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future programmes.

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Lord Deben, Lord Stern and the Physics-Politics Gap

The Physics-Politics Gap

Lord Deben was one of the headliners at the 2013 annual meeting of the Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group. Lord Deben (“the best Environment Secretary we’ve ever had”) is now Chair of the Committee on Climate Change. He spoke about progress towards the UK’s targets on carbon emissions. In the Q&A, Mayer Hillman of the Policy Studies Institute, suggested that, despite reducing carbon emissions, climate change required very much more.

Lord Deben said there was only so much that was politically possible. As I was waiting in the lobby to buttonhole him, I heard him say something more explicit: Meyer was not being realistic – there were political limits to what could be achieved.

Mayer’s point was that the laws of physics are greater than the laws of politics so we had to do much more to avert climate disaster. The Zero Carbon Britain report has called this the Physics-Politics-Gap.

Lord Deben may be right that there are political limits to action on climate and Mayer may also be right saying that won’t be enough. This would mean that the Physics-Politics-Gap cannot be closed. The end-of-nearly-all-life-on-Earth scenario presented by LastHours.Org is actually looking plausible.

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The UK should be an environmental leader

This is evidence to the Treasury Subcommittee written in 2007 but still relevant.

See http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmtreasy/231/231we20.htm

Executive summary:

The UK generates a small percentage of the world’s CO2. The best role for the UK is to show the rest of the world that pleasant environmentally friendly lifestyles are possible. Economic mechanisms such as earmarked taxes are necessary but it will be necessary to go beyond purely economic disciplines.

Large budgets for education and promotion are necessary to gain public acceptance. So are large environmental lifestyle projects such as model settlements. The finance can be found within the planning system. It should be recognised that the planning system creates very large amounts of wealth, which can be traded on an international scale. It is possible that existing development corporation legislation can be used to this effect.

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Submission to the Lyons Review on Housing

A note for the Lyons Housing Review

Geoff Beacon, May 2014

Context

In this note I propose radical solutions for housing based on two themes: the unfairness built into the housing market and the damage our lifestyles are causing to the world. Political aspects of these proposals may be difficult.

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Today’s standard two bedroomed, bricks and mortar house is expensive. It is possible to build dwellings at a small fraction of the cost, but the planning system works to prevent this. The system supports the housing shortage which keeps house prices artificially high and benefits house owners at the expense of others, particularly the poor.

At the same time, the huge amount of embodied energy within a standard brick built house is largely ignored and conventional affordable housing often has associated social problems.

In this note I propose radical solutions for housing , political aspects of which may be difficult.
I hope that the members of the Lyons Review can use their experience of business and academia to listen to these proposals that, at first glance, may not be in interests of their organisations.

This note is divided into four sections.

1. Low cost housing.

2. Land use, landscape and food production.

3. The environmental impact of housing.

4. Discovering new ways of living.

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Geoff Beacon elsewhere

I have been writing elsewhere on topics that are similar to those on Brussels Blog so if you read any of these here …

Twitter @GeoffBeacon

Dontlooknow.org

• The Wall Street Journal, Climate Change Denial, and the Galileo Gambit
• All Hell will Break Loose
• Correcting for more than just el Niño
• Sadiq’s housing policies
• London Housing Commission misses bigger pictures
• Don’t nuke Brazil
• Green belts and corporate land banks
• Prototype sustainable neighbourhoods
• Tax credits tame the self employed
• £slavestretcher
• How The Joseph Rowntree Foundation Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Tory Party
• Can we keep under 2°C without reducing consumption? And 1.5°C?
• The Committee on Climate Change should tell the whole truth.
• Working Full Time And Think You’re Safe From The Jobcentre? Not If The DWP Get Their Way.
• Did Angus Robertson svengali Mhairi Black’s maiden speech?
• Capitalists are not all nice but…
• Green growth and the limp left
• More climate silence from the BBC
• The BBC and missing climate feedbacks
• Optimism and pessimism on climate
• Brazil’s Great Amazon Rainforest Burns
• Reduce meat & dairy to the save climate
• Cars: A waste of space
• Courage in Congress
• Climate and the Maharaja Mac
• Must a Green City have Tall Buildings?
• The Met Office doubts the IPCC
• Labour should read the Daily Mail
• Lord Stern speaks
• Car filth kills
• Spin: UK footprint

YorkMix.com

I have several pieces on YorkMix.com. Thanks to guidance of the editor, Chris Titley, I think the writing is rather clearer than usual:

• Can your children afford to live in York?
• York is drowning in a sea of greenwash
• York’s burning questions about this incinerator
• How Drax could be the greenest machine in the world
• Four steps to turn York University green
• Public schoolboys thrive while student nurses struggle
• Putting York’s ‘premature deaths’ claim to the data test
• York’s great £1 billion giveaway
• How the ‘Halifax tax’ adds £50k to the price of every new York house
• How the Joseph Rowntree Foundation could do more for the poor

The list of these is updated at YorkMix Author Archives: Geoff Beacon

Renewalcities.org

A Renewal City is an urban development that from the time of its foundation, and throughout its life, creates wealth to sponsor projects that are beneficial to life on Earth.

Mar 2008: A proposal for a renewal city on the Hoo Peninsular

The Green Ration Book

A panel approach to carbon footprints: The aim of the panel is to give guidance on our daily activities with regard to the damage we do to the global environment in relation to what our fair share should be.

May 2006: Green Ration Book: The cost of everyday living.

It’s simple (itssimple.org.uk)

A collection of websites about climate and economics

Sep 2009: Its Simple and related websites.

The Treasury Select Committee (written evidence)

Jan 2007:  Memorandum on environmental leadership

Climate Change Questions (ccq.org.uk)

Sep 2009: Construction pollutes

No high buildings (nohighbuildings.org.uk)

Oct 2009: Eco-towns aren’t eco

More jobs (morejobs.org.uk)

May 1987: Employment creation with very large scale labour subsidies.

Nov 1995: The employment effect of subsidies – a report for the European Commission“.

Auntie Jayne solves you poem

My good friends at RenewalCities have kindly had this new web-site designed for me. It is a showcase of my work as a poetic agony aunt – I answer problems sent to me as poems.

May 2008 : We’ll fly you over burning forests

Centre for cities (my comments)

Jun 2014: The conflict at the heart of the garden city idyll (see comments)

Transition network (my comments)

Mar 2014: BBC: The wrong debate

Treehugger (my comments)

Jul 2014: No magic bullet — study challenges perception that CO2 reduction can be delayed by other actions

AECB (my comments)

Jan 2007: Topic: Operation vs Construction CO2

Feb 2007: Topic: Lower building densities – good for the environment?

Jan 2008: Topic: keeping draughty house warm

Food Climate Research Network (my comments)

Jun 2014: FCRN commentary on Sustainable Food Trust blog on red meat. My comment at the end. See also my NoBeef.org.uk

Sep 2014: The role of no-till agriculture in climate change mitigation may be over-stated. My comment “Where’s the budget for proper research?

Arctic Sea Ice Blog (my comments)

Jul 2014: Wildfires not in the CMIP5 Models

Arctic Sea Ice Forum (my comments)

Aug 2014: Local effects of methane emissions

Sep 2014: Comments on the work of David Wasdell

Sep 2014: Comment on “Population: Public enemy No 1”

Oct 2014: Comments on interesting building projects

Oct 2014: Comment on the effect of tree planting

Grist.Org (mycomments)

Sep 2014: Why coal is (still) worse than fracking and cow burps. Pierrehumbert underestimates the dangers of provoking positive climate feedbacks

CCCQ.ORG.UK

Jul 2008: Questions for Lord Turner of the Climate Change Committee. I set up this website to report exchanges with the Committee on Climate Change.  Slight tinges of green ink on my part but broadly: I was right they were wrong but I’m still not sure who “they” really were.

Forbes.com (My comments)

Jul 2014: What did Adam Smith believe about large international companies?

DOSBAT.com (My comments)

Jul 2014: Question about Foster and Rahmsdorf on That ‘no warming since 1998’ bollocks meme

RealClimate.org (My comments)

Aug 2014:  Comment 84: Some of us see the bleedin’ obvious

Huffington post (My comments)

Oct 2014: the Physics-Politics-Gap

Labour List (My comments)

Nov 2014:  Labour consider selling off central London buildings to help pay off debts

The Guardian (My comments)

Dec 2014: Cutting carbon pollution is the key to curbing global warming

Carbusters (My comments)

Dec 2014: Keep the European night trains

Disqus (My comments)

Comments made on blogs via Disqus

To be continued …

Not a 50% chance. A 50% conditional probability.

Below is a reply to Lord Deben, the chair of the Committee on Climate Change.

The Committee has focused on “an approximately 50% chance of a global average near surface temperature increase of 2ºC above pre-industrial levels” (see below).

Their reasonong is flawed.

To get their “50% chance”, the Committee had to exclude the effects of feedbacks missing from climate models. See Missing Climate Feedbacks in my previous post.

This means the Committee really considered a “50% conditional probability“. It is conditional because this probability depends on the assumption that the missing feedbacks would have no net effect on global warming. This 50% conditional probability is not the same as a 50% chance.

I think scientific judgements (even at that time) predicted the net effect of the “missing feedbacks” would increase global warming. This means that taking these missing feedbacks into account, the chance of exceeding a 2ºC limit would be greater than 50%.

I don’t remember Lord Turner (then chair of the Committee on Climate Change) making the conditionality clear when he spoke at the meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change on 2nd July 2008.

The reply to Lord Deben

Lord Deben
Chair
The Committee on Climate Change

19th October 2013

Dear Lord Deben,

A “50% chance”?

Thank you for your reply. I am pleased to hear that the CCC is in the process of considering the effect of permafrost melt and other feedbacks on future global warming. May I draw your attention again to the work of Kevin Schafer. There is an accessible report of his concerns in Science Daily, Thawing of Permafrost Expected to Cause Significant Additional Global Warming, Not Yet Accounted for in Climate Predictions.

Nov. 27, 2012 — Permafrost covering almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere contains 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon, twice that currently in the atmosphere, and could significantly amplify global warming should thawing accelerate as expected, according to a new report released November 27 by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

and

Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost seeks to highlight the potential hazards of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from warming permafrost, which have not thus far been included in climate-prediction modelling. The science on the potential impacts of warming permafrost has only begun to enter the mainstream in the last few years, and as a truly xanax “emerging issue” could not have been included in climate change modelling to date.

I read the title of this article as meaning the same as “There is a substantial probability that thawing of permafrost will cause significant additional global warming”. Do you read it differently?

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The Committee on Climate Change: Letters and response

Lord Deben
The Committee on Climate Change

15th October 2013

Dear Lord Deben,

DECC and the Committee on Climate Change

Thank you for agreeing to read this letter. I hope you remember our conversation after the PRASEG Annual Conference. You may find some passages tangential but I hope you will see why I include them. The first tangent is about the classical theory of the optical properties of matter.

The classical theory of the optical properties of matter

When I was reading Physics at Hull, I attended a series of lectures on the optical properties of matter. This used classical physics i.e. the physics developed before Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and quantum theory.

At the beginning of the series I wondered why we were being asked to learn a theory, which was based on concepts that had been overtaken by relativity and quantum theory. I assumed that the lecturer was lazy and just used some old notes of lectures he attended years before.

To my great surprise the theory, based on outdated concepts, seemed to work – and work reasonably well. Here was a theory about matter that had hard solid little things called atoms, nuclei and electrons whizzing round inside solid matter affecting the light that passed though it. We then knew such things were a nonsense and that the ‘reality’ was much more complicated, but the theory worked. Amazing!

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Appointments to the Committee on Climate Change

I had a conversation with Ed Davey at the PRASEG annual conference in July and also talked to Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change. I suggested he make an appointment to the Committee as it only had one climate scientist, Sir Brian Hoskins, who I believe to have rather conservative views that underestimate the impact of climate change.

Ed Davey seemed to be unaware he could appoint members of the CCC. I consulted the Climate Change Act 2008 to find out that he could, particularly as the legislation allows for eight committee members plus the chair. I emailed a letter to him explaining this on the 12th July 2013.

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Fabians should wake up to climate change.

I have just received my copy of the latest Fabian Review titled “Green Space”. It has depressed me very greatly. It is not the omen for the New Year that I had hoped for. All the pieces in it are well written and discuss important issues particularly the attitudes of public on green issues. For example

But new polling conducted by YouGov for the Fabian Society and WWP shows a large majority of the public still support the transition to a low-carbon economy as both an economic opportunity and an environmental necessity.

Keith Allott, Head of climate change WWF-UK

and

This latest polling confirms that the idea of a green economy that can help the planet while also creating jobs and boosting economic growth is no longer a fringe issue to be dismissed as fanciful, or a product of the wishful-thinking left.

Cathy Jamieson, MP for Kilmarnock

Most of the main articles in the review are concerned with this issue and associated ideas – the public are ready to support “green growth” which will create jobs and save the environment. (But do remember Job creation doesn’t need economic growth.)

I think the tone is summed up by the title of an article by the political adviser to Greenpeace: “The foundation of one nation Labour is the place we live, the land upon which we depend, and the climate that surrounds us all, argues Ruth Davis”. Rousing stuff.

Its good that political people are trying to argue for action on climate change to be integrated in mainstream politics but my worry is that it will be too little too late. My problem with the Fabian Green Space is that in the 15000+ words and eight “green” articles there is little awareness of the seriousness of climate change or any recognition that the official line on climate change is disastrously behind real world climate change.

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