Boris's green guff

2108

barmy-boriss-green-guff

In his weekly Telegraph column, London Mayor Boris Johnson writes that the UN “must be totally barmy" if they think that people should give up meat to combat climate change, as the head of the IPCC Dr Rajendra Pachauri suggested. But his own solution to this nonsensical and moralising policy is just as bad.
 
Johnson says it is the “world's excessive and intolerable population boom" that has caused “deforestation, global warming, the depletion of the seas, the destruction of species and just about every environmental problem that afflicts us". There is nothing new here: time after time, this self-disgust with the human race resurfaces, in apocalyptic religions and extremist politics – and now it has a Green tint.
 
During the 20th century both living standards and food production far outstripped population growth. As economist Indur Goklany puts it, “we're living longer, healthier, more comfortable lives on a cleaner planet." This does not disregard the 800 million people still suffering from hunger: it shows us that, with the right policies, enough food can be produced and delivered for everybody to eat well...

As for protecting the environment, it is countries that have become wealthy through institutions such property rights and the rule of law that do the best job. It should be no surprise, as they have more time and money to devote to issues like bio-diversity conservation or reforestation. And the West’s record on environmental issues is not as bad as the media or pressure groups would have us think – water and air pollution have gone down, more species and habitats are being protected and forests replanted. Institutions like property rights and free trade give entrepreneurs incentives to keep rivers clean and to develop more efficient and cleaner technologies. It is no surprise that seven out of 10 of the world’s most polluted rivers are in Communist China.
 
Of course, some issues like climate change pose great difficulties. But human beings don’t just cause problems – they also bring about great solutions and life-enhancing inventions. Reducing the number of people is a cowardly and ineffective solution to any problem. As Nicholas Eberstadt pointed out in his report Too Many People?, only coercion has been proven to reduce fertility rates.
 
Let’s hope Boris Johnson isn’t as inspired by China’s population programme as he was by the Beijing Olympics.

Caroline Boin also blogs here on CriticalOpinion.org.

Biofuel and the great disruption

2103

biofuel-and-the-great-disruption

The commodity with the greatest potential to create economic and social disruption is not oil but food. In more than 30 countries food riots and protests have signalled international tensions since 2007. The world food market is not only growing fast due to emerging big economies but is also more concentrated than even the oil market, meaning that supply problems easily ripple through the world market. Whereas the top five oil producers supply only 43% of the global oil market, the top five corn suppliers muster 77%, rice producers 73% and beef and wheat producers 66 %. Bio-fuel mandates by many Western governments have proven particularly disruptive, as the example of the United States shows:

U.S. law requires that ethanol make up at least five percent of vehicle fuel (rising to 22 percent by 2022), and 30 percent of U.S. corn went toward ethanol production last year. The U.S. government has claimed that bio-fuel demand is responsible for only three percent of the increase in global food prices over the past year, but a recent World Bank report estimated that figure to be 75 percent. Moreover, the price hikes of the past three years threaten to push 100 million people back into poverty, erasing seven years of progress.

Market forces are expected to bring the food prices down eventually but according to the pundits not to the level where the hike started. This is because of distorting government intervention. We are entering a new era of food pricing, one that will probably discredit the whole issue of renewables, not only bio-fuels. The lesson: green policy hurts poor people in developing countries most and is not compatible with the social credentials of liberal politics.

Climate change econometrics

2094

climate-change-econometrics

Maybe econometricians have their uses after all. That is my view having just heard a paper on the economics of climate change by Chicago prof Kevin Murphy.

Murphy pointed out a few concepts that are a mundane part of economics, but which seem to cause great confusion to global warmists. Such as the discount rate. A bird in the hand is indeed worth two in the bush: but by imagining that the bird in the bush is worth nearly the same as the handy one, allows things like the Stern Review come up with hugely alarmist demands. A 1% difference in handiness makes a huge difference over a century or two, or three.

So future generations want us to make sacrifices now to make them better off? Suppose Stern demands we make an investment now of £1bn in order to give the world a benefit of £20bn in a century's time. Twenty-to-one benefit: a no-brainer? No, says Murphy: if interest rates are 6%, we would be better to invest the £1bn, which would earn £339bn by 2108. So the lucky people then could buy their own £20bn benefit - and blow the other £319 on a big party.

Indeed, 'the incremental costs of emissions reduction,' says Murphy, with some simple calculus, 'should rise at the interest rate.' The more you expect the future economy to grow, the more you are making yourself and your future offspring poorer by Kyoto-style cutbacks today. QED.

One plus one equals?

2082

one-plus-one-equals

If you want to read some confused journalism, try reading Simon Fletcher in The Guardian attacking the recent fare rises in London, introduced by London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Fletcher blames previous Conservative governments for not spending enough on transport infrastructure (most notably Thatcher). He postulates that they “imposed an ideologically driven policy of leaving London's problems to the market to sort out. Unfortunately for London, the market did not oblige.” Pardon? Government underinvestment is not leaving things to the market. Privatization is leaving things to the market.

In the same piece, Fletcher claims that former Mayor Ken Livingstone’s finances were balanced; a cursory look at last years Annual Report shows the truth. In fact you need not dig so deep. Simply read fellow columnist Dan Milmo writing earlier this year:

According to the latest TfL accounts, its operational expenditure was £4.6bn last year - supplemented by a government grant of £2.3bn. Without that subsidy, TfL would face a substantial deficit. Its bus operation runs at a loss of more than £600m and the gap between fares and expenditure on the Underground is £550m.

Milmo celebrates this government bailout. Some journalists don’t seem to know where taxes come from. It is not a good thing that central government has to subsidise London’s transport infrastructure. He should not be celebrating the fact that we pay twice for our journeys around the capital.

Boris is right to try to balance the books. Putting up fares is not popular, but it is presently necessary. Afte rall, those outside London should not be paying for those in the capital to get to work (and that's especially true of the poor of Venezuela). That TfL is not able to break even is surprising given the numbers that travel, but then that’s government run industries for you.

Going nuclear

2079

going-nuclear

This month's Spectator Business contains an excellent special feature on the alternatives to oil. Andrew Kenny's article on the benefits of nuclear power is particularly good. I'd really recommend reading the whole piece, but the following section makes a particularly important point:

Perhaps the most curious of all the objections to nuclear power is to do with waste. By any rational assessment, the disposal of waste is an overwhelming advantage for nuclear over all other sources of energy. Nuclear waste (from spent fuel) is tiny in volume, solid, stable and easy to store so that it poses no threat to man or the environment. It becomes less and less radioactive as time goes by. By definition, a radioactive element is one that does not last forever: it has a finite half-life. Non-radioactive elements or stable elements do last forever; their half-lives are infinite. The lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium and other toxic heavy metals in coal waste all last forever, yet they are spewed into the air we breathe or dumped on to open ash tips with scarcely any protest. Coal waste is vastly bigger in mass per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced than nuclear waste. Solar photovoltaic power units use ‘deadly’ materials such as cadmium and lead that remain dangerous forever. I have never heard of any plan for storing ‘deadly’ solar waste until the end of time. I’m not saying it’s a serious problem. It is not. But still less is nuclear waste.

Well, I think it's about time we got on with it. As Kenny's article shows, nuclear energy is abundant, cheap and secure. And The private sector is now willing to invest tin new nuclear build in the UK (without subsidy); they just need the government to sort out the planning approval, otherwise progress will take many more years.

Road-pricing solution?

2069

road-pricing-solution

Professor Gabriel Roth has been thinking about road pricing since he was a member of a government committee on the idea back in 1964. He's convinced that motorists should pay for the roads they use – and for the congestion that they impose on others – rather than through taxes such as the fuel and vehicle excise duties. Price road-use properly, he says, and people would use them more carefully, avoiding the morning and afternoon peaks if they could, and maybe deciding to walk or take the bus or the train. Good for smoothing traffic, and good for the environment.

London's road-pricing system is crude, though. You are charged for entering the central zone, not on how much congestion you stoke up while you're inside it. A better system would charge people more for being on the busier roads at the busier times. But that means that some authority somewhere has to know where and when you're driving – yet another form of surveillance and an obvious threat to personal privacy.

Roth's answer is to fit vehicles with GPS devices that transmit only a regular digest of the journeys they log – how many miles you travelled, on what kind of road, in busy or non-busy periods. And you would be billed on that basis. But the details of exactly where and when you were driving stays with you. And Roth has in mind that the regular digest would go not to government officials, but to companies like those who handle telephone billing. (Maybe then you could even have different kinds of tariff depending on exactly how you use your car or prefer to be billed.)

I would also think it quite possible that, after your bill has been settled, you could wipe past journey information from the memory of the device. So you would have more privacy over where you take your car than you do at present over where you take your mobile phone. I don't know that this idea solves all the privacy questions, but it's certainly worth mulling over.

Fight of flight?

2007

fight-of-flight

Back in May, things were looking good for London, with the arrival of the excellent Tim Parker as a deputy mayor. However, following his resignation last month, the dreams of major reform in Transport for London (TfL) - which he was supposed to become chairman of this month - feel increasingly distant.

Parker quit because it was decided that the role of chairman of TfL was too political for an unelected official. There are also reports that he was frustrated with the inefficiency of working in the public sector and had a number of clashes with Tory councillors over possible job cuts. Whatever the reasons, it is a shame for London that he was not able to step into this role.

While the underground is becoming increasingly unpleasant to travel on, Bob Crow - head of the RMT union - is still regularly threatening strike action. As a Times leader argued last month, Johnson should “be preparing for a ruthless confrontation with RMT militants that must end with Mr Crow's defeat.” Tim Parker would have been the ideal figure for such a confrontation. Unions have not dubbed him ‘the prince of darkness’ for nothing.

Sometimes there is no political triangulation to escape through. Boris Johnson will have to face down Bob Crow and the RMT as Thatcher did to Arthur Scargill in the 1980s. So far Johnson has failed to give Londoners any hope that he will do so. Events may yet force his hand, and if they do, the people of London will undoubtedly be behind him.

The green gold rush

2018

the-green-gold-rush

The green cause of preserving nature has been corrupted ever since ugly, towering wind turbines began appearing in many beautiful locations. But now renewable politics is disrupting even the social texture of rural life. One man, who along with his wife has become active in a network of people who oppose the wind companies, told theNYT: “They tear communities apart... My sisters and brothers won’t even talk to me anymore".

Soft energy is the new gold rush. So much so that people in upstate New York, speckled with huge areas of industrial decline, are scrambling to get hold of the green cash thereby intoxicating not only community relations but even splitting families. The industry is being accused of targeting the weakest NY-upstate communities whilst avoiding more affluent areas like Long Island, even though the wind blows much more strongly there.

But in the small towns near the Canadian border, families and friendships have been riven by feuds over the lease options, which can be worth tens of thousands of dollars a year in towns where the median household income may hover around $30,000. Rumors circulate about neighbors who can suddenly afford new tractors or trucks. Opponents of the wind towers even say they have received threats; one local activist said that on two occasions, she had found her windshield bashed in.

There seems to have surfaced so much corruption that Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has promised to investigate the allegations. It could be that the nobler the cause they pretend to serve, the worse the business's ethics.

Climate change, property rights and free trade

1976

climate-change-property-rights-and-free-trade

The Institute of Public Affairs (in Australia) has a report out looking at the issue of property rights and trade in the various goods and services that might be used to lower CO2 emissions. They point out that a number of NGOs and developing country governments (no doubt prompted by said NGOs) are arguing for two things. This first is that it should be possible to compulsorarily licence CO2 reduction technologies. The price to be paid to be determined by the party wielding the compulsion of course. The second that developing countries should not need to open their economies to  trade in goods from more advanced economies, that they should be allowed to keep their tariff barriers.

This is, as they point out, an extremely odd set of arguments. Assume for a moment that everything the IPCC tells us is true. We therefore want to increase the incentives for people to invent those new technologies. We most certainly also want people to be incentivised to develop the technologies that will allow developing nations to develop but without going down a carbon intensive route. So the proposal actually being put forward to encourage such is that if these inventors and innovators are successful then they can have their intellectual property taken from them?

This is an incentive?

The very same developing countries also have tariff barriers of up to 30% and non-tariff of up to 160% on the similar CO2 reducing technologies being imported. They're arguing that take-up of new technology will be higher is it's more expensive?

As the IPA points out, it's difficult to think of a series of policy positions which would make things worse. So why on earth are such things being proposed?

Getting off the bus

1943

getting-off-the-bus

I have to admit, I was rather embarrassed to watch the eight minutes devoted to Britain in the closing ceremony of the Olympic games in Beijing. That said, it could have been much worse…

The red bus that formed the centrepiece of the celebrations was a lot swankier than my experience of catching buses in London. With the exuberance of a bull, Lynsey Hanley was prompted to celebrate the bus in a piece for The Guardian. It is the usual anti-car, anti-Jeremy Clarkson drivel, eulogising the wonder, the humanity and the diversity of the daily bus commute. I don’t know where she lives, but after a year of commuting from Deptford to Russell Square on the 188, I had a glimpse of hell. Read on the bus she suggests…I couldn’t hear myself think.

Perhaps things have changed over the last couple of years. Certainly, the part-privatization of the buses is starting to pay off. The underground should be liberalized as well. The experience is becoming far worse than catching the bus. Hosting the Olympics in 2012 will surely be the breaking point. By then I may well have volunteered myself to life in a padded cell and the promise of two hot meals a day.

Maybe Hanley is right. Maybe everyone loves public transport and will flock like sheep to it upon hearing her wise words. Well if that’s the case, then fine. When I am rich enough to afford the various taxes and charges to drive to work, it will be just the buses, the taxis and me on the road. Or am I not alone?