Investors – it’s time to put your mouth where your money is

The collective wisdom of capital markets is probably still ‘in some doubt’ in many peoples’ minds at the moment. Interestingly though, from a green perspective, capital markets appear to have been estimating the likely costs of climate change to be higher than those predicted by cost-benefit analyses (such as the Stern Report) that have been much maligned by some industry lobby groups. And, of course, this implies that – even from a purely economic point of view – there is a case for stronger climate change mitigation policies than have been suggested by the cost-benefit analyses.

Evidence based politics

The Spirit Level may be the most significant book I have read in 10 years.

Many people, myself included, hold to the ideological belief that social justice is a prerequisite for a truly democratic, peaceful, sustainable society. What Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett provide in The Spirit Level is the evidence to back up the belief.

When we look at the wealthiest nations, despite the inordinate wealth we find many health and social problems. While it is clear that the prevalence of these problems is hugely variable from one country to another, the evidence shows quite clearly that it is not the level of income in the different countries that is correlated with health and social problems.

Wilkinson and Pickett show – with detailed consideration of a mass of data covering 23 wealthy countries, ie those with a national income above US$25,000 per capita – that the prevalence of health and social problems is greater in countries with higher income inequality.

Getting climate policy back on course with the Kaya Identity

Here’s another take on the need for a new approach to combat climate change. It is based on the Kaya Identity – not, as you might think, a novel by Robert Ludlum, but a simple equation that gives some very useful insights into the factors that determine levels of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Basing their alternative ideas on this equation, Gwyn Prins and 12 colleagues explain How to get climate policy back on course (pdf here). It needs to be put back on track because, as Prins and colleagues put it, the existing policy approach (based on carbon markets) is an “abject failure” (p.4).

The Kaya Identity suggests that there are four – and only four – macro-scale policy levers that are available for making emissions reductions and each of the four levers suggests a particular approach to policy:

Beyond the silver bullet: the case for diversity in responding to climate change

With all the buzz and anti-buzz about the climate change talks in Copenhagen, it’s easy to get caught up in the dis-empowering idea that a global Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), agreed upon top-down, at Copenhagen (or maybe at the next conference…) is the only hope for meaningful action on climate change. After all, climate change is a global problem, with huge free-rider risks, so it must require a global solution, right?

Nobel prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom makes the case, in her working paper “A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change” that a better response to the problems of climate change is ‘polycentric’ with a diversity of responses occurring simultaneously in different geographical locations and at different levels of government and society.

News media and the logic of commerce: The rising tide of “churnalism”

In his groundbreaking and highly influential book first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson suggests that nations are socially constructed and imagined into existence. The title of the book is now just about a cliché: Imagined Communities.

One of the major contributing factors in the emergence of nations and nationalism in the era of the industrial revolution, Anderson argues, was the development of mass communication – books and newspapers – which he refers to as “print capitalism”. It was this new means of regular communication among and between people who had never met each other which was critical to the development of the imagined community of an entire nation.

The continuing power of communication media to determine how we understand ourselves and engage with each other in both the public and private sphere is well recognised. But degree of this power is difficult to assess accurately. In particular, we might ask – to what extent does the media report political events and to what extent does it control and shape them?

What is the true meaning of climate change?

At national and international levels climate change policy is in a state of almost total paralysis. There is much talk, but very little substantive action.

In part, this paralysis stems from the different ways in which society makes sense of the phenomenon of climate change. Naming and characterising these competing frames is enormously useful in understanding – and perhaps doing something about – the policy paralysis.

In a New Scientist opinion piece (here), Mike Hulme gives a brilliant, concise sketch of four key “myths” about climate change. But these are not myths in the sense of falsehoods, says Hulme – they are myths in the sense of stories that embody deeply held beliefs about the world:

Shell to Sea campaign vindicated

In February 2008 I wrote about the 10-year long campaign in Co. Mayo, Ireland, opposing pipeline construction in relation to Shell’s development of the Corrib gas field.

It is great to be able to report that the campaign has been vindicated by a recent decision of An Bord Pleanala (The Planning Board). The Bord describes the risks to people living close by the intended pipeline route as “unacceptable”. See the report in the Irish Independent, here, and analysis of the decision by campaign supporters here.

Of course, the struggle is far from finally won. But as a result of the campaign, and the decision of An Bord Pleanala, Shell has to submit a new plan.

There is much inspiration to be taken from this campaign. The patience, tenacity and commitment required for successes in such situations is considerable; mutual support and solidarity is essential; maintaining the vision throughout is absolutely critical.

Growth, inequality, and the environment – evidence from the UK

Measuring fossil resource inequality – A case study for the UK between 1968 and 2000 (Eleni Papathanasopoulou and Tim Jackson, Ecological Economics, 2009, 1213-1225)

In this paper the authors examine inequalities in fossil fuel use among different income groups in the United Kingdom between 1968 and 2000. They find that fossil fuel use inequalities have risen faster than expenditure inequalities, and conclude that policy to reduce fossil fuel use needs to pay careful attention to distributional differences. Further, I would argue, with a little unpacking evidence such as this calls into question the dominant mainstream narratives around the unquestionable desirability a) of ‘growth’ and b) of  decreasing the progressivity of income tax regimes.

Decoupling: green capitalism’s cunning plan

‘Decoupling’ is green capitalism’s cunning plan: break the link between ecological degradation and economic growth, and voila! The ecological crisis of capitalism is overcome.

If decoupling is achieved, growth can continue, profits can be taken, standards of living can be raised, and there will be no discernable ecological consequences.

In their recently published article “The emperor’s green clothes”, urban planning academics Petter Naess and Karl Georg Hoyer have reported on their search for signs of decoupling. Their conclusion is that the possibility of decoupling is  “not valid.”

Like many another cunning plan, decoupling is simply an empty promise.

Don’t frighten the horses! Emissions trading as “regulation lite”

The advocates of ‘more markets’ and ‘minimal government’ would like us to think they know the secret to efficient and effective regulation of human behaviour. But can we really apply such neoliberal thinking to the climate change crisis? Can the application of more markets possibly fix what Nicholas Stern (2006) describes as “the greatest market failure in history”?

In 2008, Robert Baldwin, professor of law at the London School of Economics, published a working paper that examines the case for and against emissions trading as effective regulation.

What I want to look at here is Baldwin’s analysis of the regulatory philosophy which underpins the current trading approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Disturbingly, he finds an erosion of democratic accountability and reduced expectations of legitimacy; this is what he calls “regulation lite.”