We can also add that the Green New Deal won't actually work
Aditya Chakrabortty rather shocks contemporary opinion by stating that the Green New Deal probably isn’t quite the way to do it:
At some point, the post-2016 left, radicalised by Trump and Brexit, will have to surrender its notions of a radical programme executed through a vast state machinery. …(…)… I hope what comes next is a more focused, locally rooted and inclusive politics based around asking people what they actually need in their lives, and working out how to fit those things within an environmental framework. That can be done with universal desires such as housing and food, healthcare and education.
Indeed so, the task is how do we gain the highest possible standard of living for the most people within whatever constraints the universe throws at us? Highest here being measured by what actual people think best maximises their utility, by their preferences of what they value. Constraints being, well, everything. Physics just doesn’t work that way, or it does, being no different in the sense of constraining action than chemistry or known technology or human desires - constraints are constraints.
Programs executed through a vast state machinery don’t have a good track record at delivering that although of course hope springs, as ever, eternal that some day, with some plan or other, they will.
The solution will be, as it is with everything else, markets even if they need to be nudged or adjusted. Because that’s the system which does produce that maximisation of utility inside whatever constraints exist.
We can also add, and we should also add, that such centralised and clod-hopping state plans won’t in fact work. This is one of the strong messages from the Stern Review itself. Where it is noted that humans tend to do less of more expensive things, more of cheaper. This being just one of those human things. This is then linked to the insistence that state plans, the detailed direction of activity, are more expensive ways of dealing with climate change than markets suitably nudged and adjusted.
The implication of this, and it’s made explicit in that very Stern Review, being that if we adopt the expensive method, the state and planning, then we’ll do less climate change dealing with than if we used the cheaper, more efficient, method of nudged markets.
This then means that those who insist upon the Green New Deal aren’t, in fact, interested in dealing with climate change for that’s the way of doing less dealing with climate change. It is, instead, an excuse to impose their other plans upon us all.
Something that many of us have twigged already of course but worth pointing out once again.
The Emperor’s Net-Zero Clothes
Boris Johnson’s praiseworthy wish to save the planet rests on two ambitions: the UK itself achieving the global goal of net-zero carbon by 2050 and that example inspiring the rest of the world to follow, or at least moving substantially in that direction. The first ambition relies on the British people believing it to be feasible and affordable even for the poorest. My colleagues, Professors Edwards (Oxford), Kelly (Cambridge) and I address those issues in a research paper published by this Institute today.
We discuss whether the government’s strategy is coherent and the numbers add up, then whether it is feasible and, as the government does not seem to know, what the costs might be and, fourthly, whether the achievement can be rescued by new technology. The answers to those questions are “no”, “no”, “maybe £3trn (one and a half years of total UK GDP or over £8,000 per person)” and “only partly”. If you doubt these conclusions, read the paper.
This blog addresses why such a manifestly unrealistic ambition commands such widespread acceptance in the UK and who will be the little boy next door, following the fable, who will shout “the emperor’s got zero clothes.” It concludes with addressing the second ambition, namely that the rest of the world will follow the example of a piffling little country which is responsible for a mere 1% of the problem and cannot even command the support of its European neighbours. Or the Eurovision voters come to that.
The evidence for CO2 and methane rising is clear. Most of the public thinks that it is the cause of rising sea levels, floods and droughts and therefore, as with any threat to our way of life, the public holds government responsible for doing something about it. No one else can. “Doomsday” as the Prime Minister called it at COP26 can be forestalled if we all agree to take the medicine the government is devising: “we gave you vaccines for Covid and we can protect your grandchildren from the effects of climate change.” The medicine, renouncing fossil fuels and having less livestock breaking less wind, is disagreeable. Almost all energy will have to be in the form of electricity supplied by new, green, means. This will involve new science and technology, new green jobs for all at higher rates of pay. In short, the medicine is being coated with so much sugar that swallowing it will be a pleasure. These are the emperor’s net-zero clothes.
The conspicuous absentee from the ranks of the great and good applauding the net-zero attire is the Chancellor. When the Energy White Paper appeared last December, we were told to expect a paper from HM Treasury verifying the maths: none appeared. When the Net Zero Strategy Paper appeared last month in time for COP26, HM Treasury did add a review but it was not the expected support. While Number 10 claimed that the transition meant millions of highly paid new jobs and lower energy bills, the Number 11 review was equivocal: in true Wykehamist fashion, each opinion was balanced by the opposite. While acknowledging the Number 10 claims, Number 11 saw serious economic damage, business leaving the UK and higher energy prices and taxes as being just as likely – the implication was more likely – in short, a rift.
Treasury inaction and actions threaten the transition, notably on nuclear. Renewables are volatile and, with the global warming we will have by 2050, increasingly so. That means the all-electric 2050 will need a “baseload” of up to 40% of total Grid demand. Without fossil fuels, that means nuclear. Fossil fuels and biomass may contribute but we have yet to build a single carbon capture and storage plant and we do not know how effective future ones will be. The Treasury has been blocking new nuclear for over 20 years. All existing ones are due to be decommissioned by 2035. That leaves Hinkley Point C as the UK’s only approved plant by 2050. It is scheduled to produce about 1.3% of our electricity needs. Some way from 40%. If Sizewell C is approved next spring, we will have 2.6%.
Advanced Modular Reactors (AMRs) are more efficient, faster to commission, more environmentally friendly and are being built in the USA, Canada and China. It is a competitive market with at least half a dozen suppliers and you can get ten of them, producing the same amount of electricity as Hinkley Point C, for about a quarter of the price. To get to a 40% baseload, we would require 323, at a cost of £254bn, presumably from multiple suppliers for security.
November last year saw a trace of enthusiasm with talk of investing “£385 million in an Advanced Nuclear Fund [research] for small modular reactors and advanced modular reactors. This is alongside £220 million for nuclear fusion.” Nuclear fusion is very unlikely to be a commercial proposition in this century and the £385M is going on the wrong horse, namely outdated Generation II SMR plants (as used in submarines), not the Generation IV AMRs everyone else will be installing. SMR plants, uniquely, are built by Rolls Royce and therefore, in the mind of the Treasury, must be the best. Lobbying works.
In the corresponding announcement 11 months later, all that had disappeared: the focus was back on big plants. A decision on Sizewell C (only 12 years and counting) was described as “urgent” and the cancelled Wylfa equivalent was back in discussion. The Treasury has refused to purchase even one AMR, allegedly on the grounds that they are new and have never been tried in the UK. More probably, the manufacturers of large nuclear plants do not care for AMRs and are lobbying strongly against them.
Not only is HM Treasury blocking new electrical capacity, it is ensuring that consumers will be ripped off by high energy prices. EDF is being compensated for delays and risks (for which it itself is responsible) by being allowed to charge the Grid prices well above market rates even though nuclear power produces cheap electricity. One of the factors delaying Sizewell C is the Treasury’s wish to try out its new “regulated asset based model”. This is a 2020s version of the Private Finance Initiative only worse: the consumer starts paying for the electricity 10 years or so before she actually gets any and the City makes a ton of money at public, i.e. the consumer’s, expense. The reality is that government can borrow more cheaply than City slickers and the Treasury does not have to bulk up those rates with commercial administration costs and profit margins. Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition spends so much time being Loyal, there is little left for Opposing such scandals.
Of course, the same thought applies to the Emperor’s net zero attire as a whole: if they shone too bright a light on the plans, the Opposition might be seen as climate deniers.
Being led down the right path for the wrong reasons is preferable to the right reasoning taking us down the wrong path. That may justify the Emperor’s net zero attire but not the Treasury’s wrong-headed approach to nuclear. On the other hand, (and no, I wasn’t at Winchester) the Treasury is surely right to seek to protect the economy and consumers’ pockets. Philip Davies MP is also correct in condemning the net-zero enthusiasts for taking the UK down a road the rest of the world does not take too. Saving only our 1% of global emissions would be simply “futile” as he calls it.
This is a global problem and it has to be solved globally. Assuming that the UK has some sort of divine right to world leadership to save the world is the sort of vanity that cost Charles I his head. In fairness, however, COP26 is proving far more productive than the cynics expected but we must wait to see if pledges are turned into action. Our Chancellor’s attention-getting pledge of making listed companies annually report their greening progress looks to me like more trees having to be cut down. But then the Treasury was always creative when it comes to putting their hands in our pockets.
Calling together 200 world leaders of countries, most of whom with equally little, or even less, contribution to emissions, is just as daft. The few major world emitters need to find the solutions and then the levers to get the necessary (which might not need to be much) acceptance from the rest. Key is to give far more thought to the optimal speed of transition. China has set 2060 as their target date rather than 2050 and they may be right.
The Treasury is right that overall, but not in the case of AMRs, the UK needs to move at the speed of the convoy, not commit kamikaze.
Good enough is, actually, good enough
We do, entirely, grasp the point being made about carbon border adjustments:
A powerful incentive for the developing world to get serious about climate change, or just protectionism dressed up in green clothing? Whatever it is, the concept of carbon border taxes, once a faintly whacky fringe idea, is fast going mainstream, threatening to rewrite the rules of global trade.
The UK Government seems determined to tax just about everything else, but you may be relieved to know it has no plans to tax meat. So said George Eustice, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, at the weekend, even though livestock farming is a big emitter of greenhouse gases and environmentalists would much rather we didn't practice it at all.
Yet the Government very much does have plans for a "carbon border tax", Mr Eustice said, or "carbon border adjustment mechanism" as it is otherwise known. Designing one that works is another matter; even Mr Eustice admitted that it was some years off.
If we are to have carbon taxes - which we are repeatedly told is the thing to deal with that climate change, if that part of the science is right - then border adjustments to deal with the offshoring of pollution make perfect sense. They’re also difficult.
And the thing is that good enough really is good enough.
If we lived in a static world where equity and justice were paramount in the distribution of production, consumption and emissions then sure, border adjust away. The thing is we don’t. This isn’t a static world in the slightest, it’s one with a continuing maelstrom of technological change.
It’s also one where the actual problem, climate change, depends upon pushing technological change into a certain direction - toward non-emittive techs. Once these exist at economic prices then the problem is largely over.
Yes, OK, coal plants are bad but there are very few indeed who think that solar won’t be cheaper in 20 or 40 years time. Or nuclear, or fusion, or whatever. Steel from coal fired blast furnaces will be replaced, in that two to four decades, by direct reduced iron using green hydrogen.
Or rather, as long as the rich nations who do near all of the technological development in this world are pushed into favouring those low to non-emittive technologies then they will be developed. Once they have been developed and are economic then they’re something like a public good, something that can be and will be adopted by others.
A system that was perfect probably would include those carbon border adjustments. One without it will still be good enough as we still will have the incentives to develop the techs that make a mockery of the problem under discussion. Our suggestion at this point would be to leave it be.
Agreed, this is in part coloured by our general suspicion of governmental ability to do complicated and difficult things but rather more by the insistence that it’s just not necessary. Good enough for government work is a real thing after all. We care much less about the perfection of any carbon emission management system than we do getting there with the least effort and fewest mistakes along the way.
Not that we think there's a coordinated plot here....
….but we’re entirely sure that at least some will have noted the implication, effect even, of such a ban:
If we ban second jobs for MPs now, we’ll soon wonder how they were ever allowed
Just for the avoidance of doubt, no, we’re not stupid enough to think that morals in Parliament - even if we just restrict ourselves to fiscal ones - are quite and wholly everything we should collectively be desiring.
Switch, for a moment, to the demand common enough in America these days. That no serving politician should retain control of their own money while in office - blind trusts all the way. Even, that Donald Trump should have entirely sold out of the family business. The effect of this is that anyone who has either the drive or fiscal acuity to build a business is barred from office. Anyone who has been successful in a capitalist - largely - and free market - OK, again only largely - economy is to be dissuaded from taking part in the ruling of a largely capitalist and free market economy.
Back to us here with Members of Parliament. A ban on any outside work would mean that anyone who had built a career outside politics and wanted to continue with it after politics would not be allowed to do so. Cincinnatus would not be allowed to go back to his farm because he’d not be allowed to maintain it while in office.
We end up in the same situation as that theoretic American one. Anyone who has been successful in that real world outside the halls of power is at best dissuaded and at worst banned from being part of the ruling caste of that outside world.
This being something which we rather doubt will increase the quality of the running and management of that outside world. We’d be left with only those who decided upon politics as a full time career and also only those who had no knowledge of anything other than politics. This would not be an advance.
The rot of their dead body politic fills the nostrils of the earth with a glorious stink
32nd anniversaries are not normally chosen for particular remembrance but what the heck, this is the grand moment of the past half-century.
From Conrad Schumann’s jump through to the Pan-European picnic there was a vileness that cut across Europe. And then on the 9th of November 1989 there wasn’t. Yes, the system, the entire countries condemned to oppression, more can be said about all of them but this specific and particular symbol finally fell.
Mr. O’Rourke:
The East German border guards didn’t interfere. Instead they came up to openings in the Wall and made V-signs and posed for photographs. One of them even stuck his hand through and asked would somebody please give him a piece of concrete to keep as a souvenir.
The hand of that border guard - that disembodied, palm-up, begging hand…..I looked at that and I began to cry.
I really didn’t understand before that moment, I didn’t realise until just then - we won.
…
We won. And let’s not let anybody forget it. We the people, the free and equal citizens of democracies, we exemplars of the Rights of Man tore a new asshole in International Communism. Their wall is breached. Their gut string is busted. The rot of their dead body politic fills the nostrils of the earth with a glorious stink. We cleaned the clock of Marxism. We mopped the floor with them. We ran the Reds through the wringer and hung them out to dry. The privileges of liberty and the sanctity of the individual went out and whipped butt.
It’s possible to track it down to one specific moment too. In all those miles of videotape that exist out there of that night. Just before the barriers came up. The Border Guards had not been informed about the change in policy even as crowds were arriving to take advantage of it. A small group were, umm, discussing events with an officer of that Border Guard. Stating that the news was out, they could cross. He, that officer, insisting that he had no directions. So, if they tried then there would be repercussions. Possibly shots, as with so many hundreds before. All should go home and await formal announcements etc.
At which point the citizenry laughed. And that’s the moment, that’s the ripening of the glorious stink of that body politic. When the man in the street - here quite literally, not a euphemism or synonym of any kind - laughs in the face of the bastards with the guns then it’s all, finally, over.
There are times when there’s just nothing for it but the Happy Dance.
Fortunately it's only £9,000
We think this might be overpaying a little even at this low sum:
The National Railway Museum will investigate steam trains for links to slavery as forces behind the expansion of colonial power are readdressed.
The museum, in York, is one of a group of organisations examining how steam power aided imperial expansion and drove sugar mills on plantations and cotton gins in industrial cities.
Trains will be assessed for their role in facilitating expansion, according to experts involved in the £9,000 research project – entitled "Slavery and Steam: steam power, railways and colonialism" – which is backed by the universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York.
Given that Stephenson proved the viability of railways after the abolition of the slave trade and only just before the Empire abolition of slavery we’d think that the link might not be all that great. Between railways and causing or exploiting slavery that is.
The correct link between steam engines, rather than steam rail, and slavery is that the one entirely destroyed the economics of the other. Yes, Adam Smith did indeed suggest that free labour was more productive than slave. But it was mechanical power being made available that wholly killed the necessity of human and animal muscle power as the energy source of the civilisation.
£9,000 does seem a little much to be spending to confirm that already well known point. But then it is only £9,000 so why not allow them their little fun?
Apparently skimpflation is the new thing
To be a public commentator it is necessary to continually find some new thing to comment about. It’s the same with “influencers” on TokTok and the like - it must always be next week’s trend to be showcased, no one gets famous by being old fashioned. Which brings us to this new concept of skimpflation:
“Nothing prepared us for how much life has gotten worse,” Cole told the Guardian. “Most of these factors haven’t been picked up on by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We thought these changes to products were going to be temporary, so it was reasonable not to account for the changes. But now everything has got worse all at the same time, so even if you tried to account for them, you probably couldn’t.”
Even if skimpflation cannot be measured conveniently, consumers have certainly noticed that the quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere. Consumer satisfaction indices are trending down, as they have been since before the onset of the pandemic, while consumer confidence was mildly better last month after dropping over the summer.
The thing is this isn’t new. In fact, it’s what those in our right minds have been warning about concerning the minimum wage.
There are a number of axes along which producers can adapt to a change in the price of inputs. One of which is simply make the product worse. Which is one of the things we said could/would hap[pen from a rise in the price of labour. That the offerings to us consumers would decline in quality. Here we have the effects of a rise in the cost of labour and the pointing is to the decline in the quality being offered to consumers.
We ourselves will just have to remain unfamous therefore by continuing to be old fashioned. A rise in the price of labour reduces the quality of products offered to consumers. And?
The incoherence at the heart of the Mazzucato Plan
Mariana Mazzucato has a plan for sorting out the world. It suffers fro a number of problems, only one of which is an illusory belief in governmental competence. There’s a logical contradiction in there.
If we want to ensure a socially just – and thus effective – transition, green investment banks must be governed democratically, and their financial assets should be shared collectively among workers and citizens. This could take the form of a citizens’ dividend that would provide everyone with a guaranteed minimum income, for example.
This is presupposing that the entire plan is profitable. Well, OK. But then if the plan is profitable then the use of green investment banks, governmental insistences, forcings and so on aren’t necessary.
Just assume, for a moment, that the initial diagnosis is correct. There’s a climate change problem, we’re causing it and something must be done. It’s possible that the something which must be done is not conventionally profitable therefore the investment won’t arrive under its own steam. Thus the forcing by government is required.
Or, alternatively, the system is altered so that such investment is conventionally profitable. Externalities are internalised, climate costs are now in prices, green investment makes sense in traditional money grubbing terms.
We would all agree that the capitalists are greedy for profit - sorry, are motivated by their enlightened self-interest. That means that we only require - again, assuming the base diagnosis is itself correct - one of the two sets of actions.
We either require the forcing into unprofitable investment or, having adjusted the system’s incentives, we stand back and gawp at the rush for the lucre to be had by going green.
What cannot possibly be true is that we’ve this gushing fountain of profit to be had which we also have to force finance to gulp from. And yet that’s what the insistence is. There’s going to be this massive profit to be had from greenery which must be shared directly among the citizenry but also we’ve got to force finance into partaking because there’s no profit available in their doing so.
We can’t believe that we’re the only people to spot this logical contradiction at the heart of this plan for the species. But then it never is popular to be pointing to the errors in recitations of currently fashionable nostrums, is it? However contradictory they are when piled upon each other.
So, what are we all going to do about aviation and climate change?
We’ve always struggled with the opprobrium aimed at flying when considering climate change. Currently the sector is some 2% of emissions which makes it an entirely marginal issue. Even when claims about the future are made - that it will be 20% of emissions say - that’s because total emissions will fall, not because aviation ones will rise all that much. Further, whatever limitations there should be, or will be, upon emissions we want those that can happen to be devoted to the highest value use possible. That being the very definition of being richer, that scarce resources are devoted to their highest valued use.
Combine this with the cornerstone of any liberal polity, that it is the individual that determines value - not some bansturbator in an office nor even majoritarian imposition - then if people wish to fly then why shouldn’t they? Staying within those necessary limits, of course.
However, even the debate itself seems to be missing technological advance. It’s possible to imagine all sorts of outcomes here. Plastering the planet with a network of trains say. Taking a week - instead of that month by rail - to get somewhere by airship. Limiting long distance travel only to the antinomian elite such as those visiting Glasgow this week.
Or, what we think is far more likely to happen. Synthetic aviation fuel:
Rolls-Royce, working with Boeing and World Energy, has carried out a successful test flight of its 747 Flying Testbed aircraft using 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) on a Trent 1000 engine.
SAF might not meet everyone’s definition of sustainable, true. But insisting that it isn’t also means that all biofuels are not, that burning American woodchips in Drax isn’t and so on.
It’s also possible to see a pathway to something that is sustainable by any definition. Really cheap solar power (Abu Dhabi is apparently managing 1.5 US cents per kWh in new auctions) the electrolysis of water and once you’ve got H2 then hydrocarbons are easy enough. Yes, this might well still be more expensive than current fuels but this is rather the point we’re interested in. Observation of people tells us that they really, really, value being able to leave on a jetplane.
We do not, by the way, offer this as investment advice or anything like that. That route to truly sustainable flying is one of those that is obviously technologically possible and the jury is entirely out on whether it is economically so.
Which does, finally, bring us to our point here. Imagine that it does work out that way. Synthetic jetfuel turns out to be entirely useful and appropriate. We then get to use the standard infrastructure of currently extant airports, ‘planes and so on to continue to travel much as we did before ‘rona. No, just imagine, as a thought experiment.
There are those out there who would decry this, aren’t there? The conclusion we must reach about those people being that their opposition to population mobility is an opposition to population mobility, climate change is just an excuse.
Trains aren't as green as all that you know
An interesting number from the trains regulator:
Due to the effects of the pandemic, passenger kilometres fell by 81% and trains planned fell by 22% compared with 2019-20. As a result, estimated normalised CO2e emissions increased by 316% from 35.2g to 146.5g CO2e per passenger kilometre.
Which we can compare to:
The average carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new passenger cars registered in the European Union (EU) in 2018 increased for the second consecutive year, reaching 120.4 grams of CO2 per kilometre.
Yes, clearly, lockdown was exceptional. The point being - and it’s an obvious one but all too rarely baldly stated to our mind - that emissions from any particular mode of transport depend upon the capacity utilisation of that mode.
Empty trains have greater emissions, per passenger km, that single occupancy cars. Further, a little manipulation tells us that a four occupant car has about the same emissions as the average pre-lockdown and special circumstances train journey.
Trains just aren’t as green as many seem to think, nor cars as un-green as the general insistence.
There is also a point that can be derived from this. For a train system to be properly green, as is generally assumed it always will be, it has to be packed. It’s not possible to have a system that goes everywhere, at all hours, with lots of spare capacity, and still have it be green. We can have green transport by the usual measures. But it does require that the trains which are a part of it be a heaving mass of folk fighting for a seat. Or, obviously, just as green, four people in a car.