A message to Westminster: the villages of England would like their idiots back

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The entire idea of feed in tariffs for solar PV electricty generation is ludicrous anyway. For the declared aim is to develop the industry, support an infant industry, so that prices fall and finally it will become economic to actually use solar PV electricty.

But Britain is a tiny, tiny, market by global standards for this technology. It's not just that we're only throwing a few hundred million £s at it, it's that given what we have for weather, it's not a good technology for us anyway. It's the huge great big gobs of money that places like Germany, Spain and China are throwing at the industry which is making it cheaper: prices for the cells themselves are falling by 4% a quarter, 20% a year when compounded. And yes, it is the falling price of the cells which is driving prices down, not their packaging or installation. And absolutely no one at all is sugggesting that we should build a solar cell manufacturing plant in the UK: for the price of a silicon fab alone we could build four or five nuclear power stations.

So the rational thing for the UK to do is simply wait a decade, when solar PV will at current cost cutting rates actually be economic, and then install it.

But even if those who rule us insist that we must indeed have feed in tariffs, then we do in fact want them to go to the most, not the least, efficient solar PV plants. So, is that what is being done?

The companies are furious over the potential Government reversal on supporting subsidies for farms of up to 5 megawatts - projects which cover acres of the countryside or old industrial land in solar panels . However, Ministers now look set to ensure the £360m pot of funding is directed solely to individuals putting solar panels or wind turbines on their roofs.

No, that isn't what is being done at all. The government is specifically and exactly insisting that whatever taxpayer or energy user subsidies are on offer must be directed to the most inefficient subset of an already inefficient technology. One that will become efficient soon enough without our doing anything at all.

This is insane.

Come along now Westminster and Whitehall: the villages of England would like their idiots back, where we can keep an eye on them and make sure they come to no harm and they do no harm to us.

Apologising for what she got right

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After two weeks of huge fuss, Caroline Spelman MP has received the grudging respect of MPs by publicly announcing in the House of Commons that she was sorry, she had simply got the policy to sell Forestry Commission wrong.

Er, no, Caroline. The policy was exactly right. The Forestry Commission is a conflicted quango, trying to regulate forestry while also being the sector's biggest owner, manager and producer. Most of its land is not green and pleasant leafy groves that welcome the public. The private sector could manage things much better.

What was wrong was the presentation. It's not too difficult to predict that the 'selling the family silver' charge is going to be hurled against any privatization (or in this case, merely leasing-out) plan. That's the statists' nuclear weapon. Most people don't realise that the family silver is already bashed and tarnished – that part of it that hasn't been stolen in a smash and grab raid by the trade unions and the officials in Whitehall who actually run things.

Still, Eric Pickles MP is doing far better at justifying his cuts to local authority spending, albeit after a bit of time on the back foot. He's pointing out the sheer scale of the waste that goes on. Again, the government could have been better prepared, though. Like forests, the fuss on libraries was predictable. When faced with budget tightening, the first thing a bureaucracy does is axe the services that will cause a fuss, in the hope that its paymasters will back down in the face of that fuss. Nobody in the back office loses they job, of course. But it is easy to counter this policy. Private firms who run libraries in the US reckon they could shave a third off the libraries budget, and extend opening hours and buy far more books at the same time. Westminster politicians need to tell us things like that.

I do hope this government is not going to be like Blair's, tossed on the sea of public opinion as it ditches good policies that don't go down well. My guess is that it will not, and that it has a better sense of direction as to what it wants to achieve and the difficult measures it needs to take to achieve them. But when you know you will face difficulties, you need to prepare well to get through them.

Radical thinking on forestry

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I don’t know whether all the fuss about forests is down to ignorance or malice. Certainly all those celebrities who are complaining about a ‘sell-off’ don’t seem to know much about the actual proposals – nor about Britain’s forests, for that matter. Maybe they are just being manipulated by spin-doctors whose agenda is to unseat the government and expand the state.

As Miles Saltiel points out in his new ASI report today, Seeing the Wood for the Trees (PDF), three-quarters of England’s forests are already privately owned. And there are strict rules on them – things like public access, biodiversity and conservation. So what’s the problem?

But only 8% of the land held by the Forestry Commission – the UK’s state forestry quango – are the broad-leafed woodland that the celebrity hikers love so much. The vast bulk of it – 72% in England and 93% in Scotland – comprises endless acres of identikit conifers. Dark, dense and unwelcoming, these plantations serve none of the interests that the campaigners champion. They are largely inaccessible to the public; they generate almost no rural employment; with their depressing monoculture they promote neither biodiversity nor wildlife. They may contribute to the acidification of rivers. And they don’t make money – the Forestry Commission fails even to cover its costs.

The rest of the Forestry Commission’s estate is non-wooded farmland – potentially very valuable in this era of food shortages. Indeed, Saltiel figures that, forget the broadleaf heritage forests, selling the pines and pastures alone could bring in over £4bn – a welcome boost to the taxpayer right now.

But the government isn’t even suggesting that. It is talking about leasing forests, and favouring charities, community and other ‘civil society’ groups – and only in England. With such strict regulation already, why don’t we just sell the forests to commercial managers, and get some fresh capital into the sector – and some fresh thinking?

Robust political economy

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On Wednesday we held an event on the future of planning. Speaking were the Planning minister Greg Clark, Tim Hellier, Head of Planning at a major law firm, and Dr Mark Pennington, who is carving out a niche for himself as one of the UK’s foremost classical liberal academics. (Along with a few others like John Meadowcroft and Anthony J Evans.) All the speeches were interesting but Mark Pennington’s was particularly good. He combined an approach grounded in classical liberal – even, dare I say it, Austrian – thought with a mastery of the details of planning law.

One of the points he made was that centralized government has removed almost any incentives that local councils have for allowing new developments on their land, by mostly centralizing revenue-generation. The consequence of this is that there is an acute housing and land shortage in Britain’s major cities, particularly in London, while there is no shortage of land.

As luck would have it, Mark has a new book out, Robust Political Economy, which expands his approach across a few topics of political economy – poverty relief, international development, and environmentalism, among others. The book defends the classical liberal approach from neoclassical concepts of perfectly knowledgeable and rational market actors, which are often used in conjunction with the ‘market failure’ approach to justify government interventions in the marketplace. Mark rejects this model as being unrealistic, and instead proposes a model of political economy that is robust to the failings of administrators and actors. Government actors are as flawed as market actors, so a political economy that is robust to the existence of flawed actors should be better than one that assumes away the central problems of life.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m quite interested in strategy for libertarianism – how can we increase our influence in Britain, and ultimately roll back the state. Books like Robust Political Economy are a cornerstone of this push, because they attack socialism’s intellectual foundations. As Hayek knew, intellectuals were the key drivers behind the birth of socialism, and I think they’re the key to its demise as well. If you’re interested in cutting-edge scholarship with a liberal twist, Robust Political Economy is required reading.

Fixing forestry

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The knee-jerk public and celebrity outrage is entirely predictable. We saw it thirty years ago when the government was trying to sell off other 'priceless national assets' like the telephones (where business customers used to wait three months to get a phone line, and for domestic customers it was eighteen), the steel plants (which lost £1m a day) and the gas board (need I say more?). Now we're told the nation's forestry heritage is up for grabs.

From the sound of it, you might think that Britain's forests are going to be sold off to keep Rupert Murdoch in paper, or maybe concreted over for car parking. Hardly. State forestry is a mess, and private ownership will revitalize it, and will actually extend the public amenity that our forests afford us. Private owners are actually more likely to encourage public access than the Commission has been – they can see more commercial potential in doing precisely that.

The Forestry Commission already plans to sell small bits of its forest estate, which will earn taxpayers a useful £100m. The question mooted by the government today is whether it should sell the whole lot. That's actually no really big deal. The Commission owns only a fifth of England's forest land. Most of the rest, about 68%, is already in private hands. (Various government departments, like Defence, own other bits too.) Many of the celebs who are saying how much they love forests could well be thinking about ones that are already private.

And private forestry is already heavily regulated in terms of the owners' obligations to the protection of nature, logging schedules, public access, and development. Thos protections would remain, even if the whole estate were sold. And indeed there would be extra protections for ancient woodlands like the Dean, New, and Sherwood forests. As in New Zealand and other countries, there could be a mixture of commercial, non-profit, community and mixed ownership.

Right now, the Forestry Commission is compromised. It is supposed to be the regulator, but it is also the biggest owner and manager on the block. You can't be poacher and gamekeeper at the same time. The whole of its forestry estate should be sold, and it should become the pure regulator, protecting those amenities that the celebs are screeching about.

Thick as two short planks

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Scores of celebrities – actors, TV chefs, even the odd archbishop – have written to the Sunday Telegraph to complain how our countryside would be ruined and made inaccessible by plans to sell off 15% of the UK's state-owned forests. They're talking utter, ignorant rot.

In the first place, the current plans would raise £100m for the taxpayer. Dame Judy Dench and company may not care about high taxes, but those of us trying to run homes and businesses do. Second, access and environmental conditions can easily be inserted into any sale conditions – just as we made British Telecom maintain free 999 calls when it was privatized in 1984.

Third, Dr Rowan Williams and disciples have an odd faith in the state forest quango, the Forestry Commission, when most of the forest it runs is completely inaccessible anyway – dense, ugly, upland pine plantations. What is to be lost by selling that? And in terms of the deciduous lowland forests of England, local non-state owners would have very much more incentive than a quango to make them more accessible and improve their leisure use and biodiversity dimensions.

Fourth, Ranulph Fiennes and party seem not to have explored the success of forest reforms in places like New Zealand, or the variety of different ownership models, from outright sales to local community trusts, that have produced benefits in other countries.

Fifth, not even Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall could rustle up such a dog's breakfast as the Forestry Commission. It owns, manages, exploits and regulates forests – poacher and gamekeeper at the same time – and completely dwarfs and dominates the private sector. And, of course, the Department of Environment plus the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all butt in on it too . There are far too many cooks in this broth.

No: the entire forestry estate should be sold as appropriate to private, local, voluntary or community groups, and the Commission should focus on making sure that it is managed with public and environmental interests in mind. That would be good for taxpayers, good for forestry, good for the environment, and indeed good for everything these cocooned celebs actually want to achieve – or say they do.

Update: Simon Cooke has also blogged on this, which you can read here.

Who says CO2 is bad?

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Matt Ridley has a good post on his Rational Optimist blog, where he does some back-of-the-envelope sums to figure out what the impact extra CO2 would (or will) have on crop yields over the course of the century. Taking the standard estimate that CO2 levels will probably increase by 300ppm (parts per million) by 2070, he says that:

There have now been 235 studies of what happens to wheat yields when you increase CO2 levels by 300ppm.

Answer yields increase by 32.1% +/- 1.8% (SE).

There have now been 182 studies of what happens to rice yields when you increase CO2 levels by 300ppm.

Answer: yields increase by 34.4% +/-1.8%

There have now been 179 studies of what happens to soybean yields when you increase CO2 levels by 300ppm.

Answer yields increase by 46.5% +/- 2.8% (SE).

This doesn't account for the longer warm seasons we can expect, nor the technological progress that we're likely to make between now and 2070. As Ridley says, CO2 isn't always the limiting factor, but there's a lot of cause for optimism here – bigger crop yields mean cheaper food, fewer people involved in farming, and more land that can be put aside for recreational use. Points like this are reminders that we don't really know if reducing carbon emissions is worth the cost, and it's silly and dangerous for politicians to pretend otherwise.

Cancun climate talks. Nothing to see here, except…

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Another year, another meeting to save the world from climate change. A notable difference between this year’s conference and the disaster that was Copenhagen was the absence of overwhelming publicity. Whereas last year’s garnered front page coverage, the media was deafeningly silent about last week’s Cancun summit. The lack of wall to wall coverage is likely not due to climate change being 'fixed'. No, the problem is – we're told – only getting worse every day, hour and minute for all humankind. Instead, there might be another dynamic at work: public skepticism.

In February, BBC News reported that the number of British people skeptical about climate change is rising. A good read, the polling confirms a couple of important points. One, the public is very much in-tune with the climate-change debate and, secondly, it is beginning to see through the ‘exaggerated risks’ associated with a changing climate. Obviously, the alarmism, incorrect facts and inflated rhetoric has had its opposite effect here in the UK as well as in the United States. The press, recognizing the continuing trend of public cooling towards climate change, is moving on to other, more pressing matters.

None of these results should be very surprising. The public is unconvinced and the hope should be that the science community gets back to basics before climate science is completely and utterly discredited. Climatology, such as it is, should be about the study of the climate – not a subset of campaigning scientists. We need scientists investigating, exploring and debating theories on climate science and the likely winners and losers. This, combined with a mature and rational discussion, would go a long way to serving the public and pursuing knowledge for the betterment of all.

Big Society, Big Nudge

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The latest disastrous weather is a golden opportunity to put into practice David Cameron’s vision of the Big Society, egged on by the theory of Nudge economics.

As near as anyone can figure out, the Big Society means individuals doing things for the greater good, rather than counting on the government. Nudge economics believes government can encourage desired behaviour through low-level persuasion, rather than law or regulation.

Well, let’s try these two big ideas on dealing with our current “extreme” weather. In short, the government should encourage all households to clear the snow from their private lanes, adjacent pavements and the street in front of their property, followed immediately by a quick sprinkling of rock salt. Job done!

This won’t solve all the nation’s transportation woes but it’s a cheap start to at least part of the problem, namely dangerously impassable local streets.

Striking now while the snow is still on the ground and more forecast in the coming days makes good sense. A single speech on the subject by Mr Cameron would top all front pages and news bulletins. Instead of gathering experts to decide whether there’s been a longer-term significant change in winter weather, Transportation Secretary Philip Hammond could commission a quick’n’dirty advertising campaign to get the message out in cinemas and on television.

We all know that other northern countries deal with such weather as a matter of course. It’s a no-brainer in these places to take half an hour with a shovel and a bucketful of grit to get things on the move again.

In this country, though, the shock from a couple of inches of snow is pathetic to see. Grownups venture out, get into their cars and are then dumbstruck when the wheels spin wildly. The sight of so many incompetents with no shovels, no gloves and inappropriate footwear reduced to cursing their local councils is at complete odds with a nation that built an empire upon which the sun never set and which stood alone against the might of the Nazi military machine.

So, come on, Dave and Phil! Here’s your big chance to put theory into practice. Let’s nudge the Big Society to shift that snow.

Sense needed in climate change talks

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It is fitting that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is gathering this week and next in the tropical resort city of Cancun, Mexico. Far from a mecca of environmental activism, the lush party spot until recently consisted of mangrove swamps with no human development. The irony should not go unnoticed as the same technocrats who wish to stymie economic development take advantage of the resulting comforts while the US, UK and Europe freeze.

For a movement whose credibility has been effectively destroyed by proven false claims on melting Himalayan glaciers, polar bears becoming extinct and increasing natural disasters, you would think the climate elites might take a lesson on public relations. Those with a guilt complex granted to those benefiting from advances made in a carbon-based world seem to be unable to promote rational policies and instead continue to call for unrealistic and draconian measures like World War II style rationing. What we need instead is a mature, open discussion on climate change; without the Al Gore and International Protocol on Climate Change alarmism.

Back in 2007, Der Spiegel put together a balanced, responsible article on climate change. For as we have seen over the past billions of years, our climate will change; whether humans are making an impact or not. Indeed, this is what climates do. Further, there is no evidence that the status quo climate, what we have now, is the most ideal for the planet. Far too many questions remained unanswered to even consider imposing such concentrated costs today for a fool’s gamble on tomorrow.

The climate change crusaders now gathering in Cancun should work towards a more constructive, even-keel conversation about the potential effects, positive and negative, of the inevitable change. That is, of course, if preventing disastrous changes to the world’s climate is their primary motive.