We can have growth but we need to be way more musical about it

Posted on November 2, 2012 by James Atkins

A recent report (http://www.boell.de/ecology/resources/resource-governance-ecology-green-growth-rebound-effect-15794.html) explains how energy and resource efficiency measures can backfire leading to a far small reduction in emissions than we anticipate. The report, which is written with admirable clarity, describes and explains the “rebound effect”.  Under the rebound effect if you save money on energy costs, then you spend the money elsewhere, causing further economic activity and further use of resources.

The conclusion of the report is the green growth is a fallacy.  It’s good that people are saying this and are able to back up the claim with some academic study.  The conclusion of Tilman Santarius, the author, is that we have to move to a sufficiency economy if we want to meet our emissions targets.

The size of the rebound effect depends on the amount of energy and resources used in the things that we do with the money we save.  So if we spend our savings from insulation on flying to the Canaries, there will be a very high rebound effect.  But if we spend it on a course of acoustic guitar lessons from our neighbour, then the rebound effect could be quite low.  Of course, that depends on what floats the neighbour’s boat… Is he a calligrapher or a biker?

So, we can have economic growth and a reduction in emissions if we do things with our increased wealth which don’t cause significant net quantities of emissions.  Things we can do with our money include buying land and planting trees, buying land to grow food on, getting private lessons in all manner of things, painting and drawing, playing mainly wooden musical instruments (sax players will have to upgrade to the clarinet or the taragot) and so forth.  A great service to mankind would be the production of a much longer list of such things which people could choose from.

I think that what we will see in that list is two broad categories.  One is material investments which cut emissions (tree planting, reinvestment into even more energy saving).  The second is a large number of intellectual, cultural and spiritual economic activities where we pay for the transfer of knowledge, skills and ideas rather than the transfer of matter.  This will have enormous implications for the kind of society we live in, but life might well get better.

Because there is an unlimited number of skills and ideas around, there is enormous potential for continued economic growth albeit of a different kind than what we have seen so far.

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Disasters – Climate Change for Football Fans on Sandy

Posted on October 31, 2012 by James Atkins

This is chapter 18 from Climate Change for Football Fans.  On whether disasters will change our views on climate change.

18.             Disasters

Why it’s no use hoping for disasters.

“What about disasters?” I asked after we’d thought about that.  “Won’t disasters change the mood of the people, and let us take more drastic action?”  The Professor had dropped his digestive into his tea and was using his finger to retrieve the bits.  “Disasters are very interesting,” he said, “but before they work in our favour, they have to meet a number of conditions.  An oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico won’t persuade us to use the bus.

“First they need to be close to home. It’s no use a million Bangladeshis drowning in floods.  It’s too far away.

“Then, people have to see that the disaster was caused by the problem in question.  It doesn’t help us if everyone thinks it was caused by sun spots or bad hygiene or poor safety regulations.  Scientists will have to get a lot better before disasters will work.

“Then, there’s the problem of forgetting.  As the memory fades, we forget the lesson.  So you want disasters to be repeated from time to time, lest we forget.”

“It’s hard to think of something like this.  Unless you’re anAccringtonfan.  Their disasters are repeated week in, week out,” said Joe.

“And that is not enough either,” continued the Professor.  “The disasters should be repeated, but they should not be predictable.  If they’re predictable, then we will start to adapt to the rhythm of disaster rather than fight its cause.  And it needs to be severe enough for us to wish to avoid it in the future, but not so bad that we slump into defeatism.”

Joe agreed.  “Right, look at the crowd sizes atAccrington.  They have given up hope.”

“I can’t think of any series of natural disasters which would meet these conditions,” I mused.  “Could huge blobs of methane hydrate be released from the sea at unpredictable moments, float overWashington, and go on fire just as they arrive?”

“Don’t confuse God with Terry Gilliam,” said Igor.  “The probability of this is even smaller than that of Burnley winning every game.  We can’t rely on angry nature to make us see sense.”

This dark note left us in a sombre mood.  It even put the defeat at Hull into perspective.

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Boredom intolerance

Posted on October 28, 2012 by James Atkins

“’Th’”, said Arthur Scrotum.  “As in ‘thought’, ‘thank’… Not ‘f’ as in ‘feeble’.” He found that it was always best to sort out the name thing up front.

“You can blame your parents for your Christian name,” he said.  “But, even they can’t help your surname.  It’s not as if there was a mass-murderer called Scrotum.”

“I see, my dear,” said Dame Daphne.  “You mean it’s not as bad as “Hitler”, so why change it.”

“That’s right, Dame Daphne.”

Arthur Scrotum ran a corner shop in Telford.  From behind his counter, wearing a Union Jack apron, he observed his corner of England buying its morning paper, picking up an egg sandwich at lunchtime, fumbling for a lighter after buying an emergency packet of fags, or rolling in for more beer at midnight, burping drunkenly.  He quietly harboured big political views which he hid behind a small moustache.  But now he was visiting Dame Daphne Bulge, Minister for Education, who was also the local MP for Telford.  She was holding her weekly surgery where people could come and discuss their problems with her.

“I see, Mr … Scrotum.  And how can I help you.”

“Have you noticed, Dame Daphne, how cats relish boredom?  They have immense tolerance of doing nothing.  They can sit quietly, contentedly, for hours on end.”

This was a new one for Dame Daphne.  Usually her constituents talked about neighbours and hedges, rejected planning applications or bus stops in the wrong places.

“Go on, Mr Scrotum.”  She could not see where this was leading to.

“Well it’s the solution to climate change, Dame Daphne, it’s the solution.  We get all people to be like cats and then they will be happy just sitting about quietly.”

“And what about the meat eating?”

“Vegan cats.”

“I see,” said Dame Daphne kindly.  “And how do you propose to do this?”  Dame Daphne discreetly pressed a button under the table with her knee.

Scrotum scratched his head.  “You mean, how to make us tolerant of boredom?  Probably surgical intervention.  We can have a network of mobile brain surgeries, powered by-”

Scrotum heard a step behind him and turned to see Dusty Mendoza, Dame Daphne’s assistant, walk in.  At six foot, the former Argentinian female body building champion filled the door frame.  She could (it was rumoured) open beer bottles with her nipples.

“Dusty,” said Dame Daphne kindly, “please show Mr … err … Mr Scrotum out.”

“My pleasure, Dame D,” smiled Dusty.  “This way, Mr Scrotum.”

But after he was gone, Dame Daphne thought about boredom and our inability to tolerate it.  Indeed, there must be some policy measure there which would calm us down and make us dart about less, looking for advancement.  She mulled on this for some time and searched “bromine” on Google.

 

 

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In defence of the EU ETS (but not of the European Commission)

Posted on October 23, 2012 by James Atkins

Today Reuters talks of the “battered carbon market”.  All this year folk have been swiping and sniping at the EU ETS, starting with the CEO of E.On back in January this year.  They don’t like the low carbon price and they say that’s a problem.

But this has been covered earlier in the Bustard (https://www.thebustard.com/?p=680, https://www.thebustard.com/?p=756, https://www.thebustard.com/?p=782).  Here is a recap:

  1. The EU ETS is a cap and trade scheme.  The environmental bit is the cap, not the trade.  The price just tells us where emissions are vis a vis the cap.  Today emissions are well within the cap, that’s why the price is low.  So the EU ETS is doing its job as far as the cap goes.
  2. People think that the EU ETS is a vehicle for promoting investment in green energy and so are disappointed when they don’t see a high price and lots of windfarms.  They have only themselves to blame for having illogical expectations.  If you want investment in green energy use feed-in tariffs or a green certificates scheme.  If you want a cap on emissions have the EU ETS.
  3. The die was cast when a political decision was taken (in 2008 or 2009?) to set the Phase 2 cap to where it is now.  That level was politically acceptable then and, presumably, as far at the Commission felt it could get away with.  We can blame the Commission for a lot of things, but we can’t blame them for not foreseeing the extent of the recession.

So which bit here means that the EU ETS is bust?  Monitoring, reporting and verification still works.  Annual surrendering still works.  Fines are imposed for non-compliance.  The mechanisms of the cap are robust.

You can say: “Well what about the fact that it’s cheaper to burn coal than gas?”  What about it?  It will be cheaper as long as emissions are well below the cap.  If you don’t want it to be cheaper to burn coal in any circumstances then you should tax coal.

The problem with the EU ETS is not the system but the administration.  Here are some highlights:

  1. Back in Phase 1, amateurish release of emissions data.  They didn’t think of seeing how it is done in financial markets.
  2. In Phase 2, constant breaking down of the registry system.  They wrote their own instead of getting experts in financial markets to provide tried and tested kit.  (https://www.thebustard.com/?p=400)
  3. In Phase 2, diffident and late responses to the problems of fraud and the threat of such problems.  If Brussels were a zoo, then the Commission would be near the ostrich enclosure.  Very near.
  4. In Phase 3, absurdly burdensome auctioning rules which disingenuously claim to make auctioning accessible for all.
  5. In Phase 3, unthinking complexity with the introduction of trading accounts, seven day delays, and byzantine transfer rules.
  6. And of course the eternal catalogue of delays in implementation including linking of the CITL and ITL, allocations, registries, auctions and now NIMs.  Sure, it’s often the member states which are at fault, but if the Commission acts like a wet mop, people will clean the floor with it.

But none of this addresses the predicament of climate change.  For that, yes a cap on industrial emissions is a vital start.  But it’s a drop in the ocean.  The real problem lies in our hearts and until we acknowledge that, everything else is just tinkering.

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Solidarity against protecting the climate

Posted on August 21, 2012 by James Atkins

A new front has emerged in the battle for climate policy.  Until now the right wing had an exclusive claim to campaigning against measures to cut emissions.  Now this has changed.

Reuters Point Carbon reported earlier this month that the Polish trades union, Solidarity, famous for its role in precipitating the fall of communism, has now identified a target far more insidious than the creed of Marx: the EU Emission Trading Scheme.

They are campaigning to collect a million signatures to take to Brussels and stop the nonsense about making companies cut their emissions of greenhouse gases.  According to Reuters, “Solidarity fears that high carbon prices in coal-intensive Poland will drive up energy prices and lead to job losses in heavy industry.”

Says Zbigniew Płonker, Deputy Ladder Support, Independent Union of Silesian Pylon Cleaners: “We’ve had enough.  Our brothers down the mines have shit lives as it is, spending 24 hours or more each day underground in the dark in the most horrific conditions.  It’s outrageous that anyone would want to change it.  What would we have to complain about?”

Another Union Leader, Pawel Porschiewicz, told us: “All my brothers down the mines would like to be able to drive Porsches like me.  It’s crazy that the EU Bureaucracy should be preventing them from realising this dream.  First Moscow, now Brussels.  Crazy, crazy world,” he shook his head, then jumped into his Porsche Mephisto and drove off.

But not everyone is happy about the left donning the mantle of climate change denial.

In an angry phone call, Brad Spiegelbutt, chairman of the American Libertarians for a Hot Planet, railed at the incursion into his space by socialists.  “We consider this not just a clumsy discourtesy, but an act of aggression!  American Libertarians are outraged at the brazen impudence of a left wing organisation encroaching into our exclusive domain!  Climate change denial has been clearly reserved for the libertarian right and other crackpots.  It’s written clearly on the door of my office.  What else do we have to do?  What’s the point in having property rights if Polish unionists can run roughshod over them willy nilly?  What happened to law and order?”  He then began to hiccough ferociously said  it would only stop once he read out a chapter of the Albanian translation of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged backwards.

In an email correspondence, Günther Ohm, spokesman for the European Commission on climate change and the dimensions of ice cream cones, wrote that Polish ice cream cone dimensions are in full compliance with the Ice Cream Directive, but he is not in a position to comment on the length and breadth of waffles.  His favourite flavour is pistachio.

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