MISSING the BEAR

I was horrified at Lib Dem shadow Chancellor Vince Cable’s attitude and behaviour at the Base Show Wednesday.

Vince Cable has a pretty good understanding of the imperative to address climate change but he’s shockingly still missing the bear on the interaction between the environment and climate change, and the economic crisis.

On Wednesday at the Base Show, Cable took a cheap shot at Tim Jackson and the decroissance or “degrowth” movement, showing he hasn’t got a clue!



Talking about the dual problems economic recession and climate change, he said:



“Now how do these two problems… interact? In the short term it’s been rather bad news for the environment. If you look at British opinion polls environment certainly climate change has dropped right off most people’s radar screens. They’ve got other things to worry about, they are more preoccupied with how they manage their jobs, about managing their household balance sheets, and a lot of anxiety about the economy dominates. Environmental issues, at least in the short term, have fallen down people’s list of priorities.

" And I think probably also, environmentalists who advocated zero growth , well, we’ve got zero growth in fact, we’ve got minus growth and it isn’t very nice. And I think people somehow wised up to this idea that all this puritanical non-consumption of resources we were being told was a good thing is actually really rather painful if you’re one of the people who was losing your job in the process. So recession has played very badly in terms of its environmental impact.

"Secondly, on the global scene there’s this lethal, what’s called this 10, 10 problem. 10% unemployment in the United States, 10% growth in China. So far the Chinese and the Americans have coordinated their activities relatively well in this recession but anybody who talks to anybody in American politics will tell you there is enormous tension building up in the system, resentments. The Obama administration has so far managed it well, clamor for action for protectionism, many ways return to atavistic prejudices of the 1930’s as this big new power growing up building a power station every week or every day I think. How do we cope with this?

"There’s a very strong resistance to people telling the Americans that they’ve got to calm down and deal with the climate….

[talks about science]

"The question now is how we bring together the concerns we have about the economy with the imperative dealing with the issues of climate change. I think they are compatible if the case is properly made… so how do we find a way out of this box.”


He then goes onto mention (ironically) restructuring British economy away from finance and dependence on London, and the need to concentrate on physical infrastructure projects for transport, new energy systems, a digital infrastructure, renewables infrastructure, etc, and the necessity to create growth.


“At the moment there is no mechanism for financing this because PFI has largely broken down, stock markets are unlikely to generate long term time horizons, private equity 5 year time horizons normally most companies will not embark on all this stuff because of political risk. There needs to be some mechanism that can bring in the enormous value of savings that we know is locked up in pension funds and insurance companies looking for a safe return with these very important needs for long term infrastructure much of which centers on low carbon future and long run environmental much more friendly economy. A lot of political will and a lot of imagination will be required to bring those things together. But I think the conclusion I have is that in both the short term and the long term there is a way in which economic recovery can be very firmly tied into an environmental agenda.”


During the Q&A I got lucky and was called on, I asked if the lack of financing for infrastructure and green projects couldn’t be resolved very simply by implementing what the Stiglitz Sarkozy report suggests (I didn’t even mention the New Economics Foundation because of his swipe at Jackson) and revaluing the economy, he replied:

“Well I obviously buy into that, to give the government credit they did produce a set of green accounts. They have done this technically but they haven’t made much use of it. It’s just sort of sitting there on our shelves. The technical side of the work has actually been done. It’s not easy-- there’s a lot of things you can’t quantify easily but the idea of getting parallel green accounts with the economy and what it tells you, which is not surprising, is that very often when we think we’re getting better off, we’re actually getting worse off if you factor in the environmental costs.”

(His equally uninformed answer to my second query, relating to personal carbon budgeting aside,)

Yes, Mr. Cable, it would show we are getting worse off. Then we would have something to change and work at wouldn’t we and wouldn’t that change make low-carbon, infrastructure projects more valuable?

If he buys into it, why isn’t he getting it?!

He has apparently never ever bothered to actually read anything about decroissance or flip through Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth (Jackson who contributed to a study commissioned by parliament) because if he had he would see that the problems he’s talking about can be resolved by changing incentives in the economy in a way that will encourage long term investment and conservation.

The potential in a huge rallying campaign behind changing society’s outlook and getting everyone on board to improve not only our long run well-being and ensuring growth of our society (not in terms of GDP growth, but as a people) wouldn’t make people turn against a government. Come one dude! You could solve long-run infrastructure investment, encourage savings, and shift the view of economic markets away from short-run returns in one move (well, likely a series of coordinated moves, but still). Long-run investment is low-carbon economy is “degrowth.”

With all the public support Cable has, I’m frightened.

And this is the man people want to be the next Chancellor under a hung parliament? CRINGE. I take back everything I ever said about the British public being generally better educated than the American public.


Though I won’t fault Cable entirely, the folks at NEF need to realize that the general public is (sadly) swayed by pretty language. Simply joking that ‘yeah, we should’ve thought about the “degrowth” title a little more carefully’ isn’t going to cut it. They’re spending too much time locked up in their tank rethinking the economy, they’ve forgotten that the use of language is as important as using language to begin with. I don't mean to be too hard on NEF, but I'd like to see a little more of the "do" bit in their motto.

Update 1: Read Andy Wimbush's (blogmaster at NEF) much more eloquent response to Cable.

The Monocle reports in its November edition that Saudi Arabia has 66.5 years of oil left. Their answer: go nuclear. From the Monocle November issue:


"You know the world is changing when Saudi Arabia, the number one exporter
of oil and gas, is toying with the idea of building its first civilian
nuclear power plant."
(issue 28 (2009), p 74)

Let me get this straight: the "world is changing"?! The world will be changing when Saudi invests in purely renewable energy technologies. Going nuclear isn't changing the world, it's running home to what's close and familiar.

Monday evening I attended London's Green Drinks 20th Anniversary where I'm pleased to say that I've had my opinion on nuclear power in developed countries reversed (thanks to a big ginger-haired fellow and an energy infrastructure geek, where I mean geek in the most affectionate way possible). I now understand that in order to achieve emissions reductions necessary to hold the world at a 2 degree Celsius average global temperature rise that developed countries need to utilize nuclear. But Saudi isn't a "developed" country, it's not even an Annex 1 country. It has got more leeway than that and because it has that extra time should devote itself to finishing the development process clean and green.

"World changing"? Sorry Monocle, you've missed the bear.

Barack Obama is failing miserably on his promises reduce America’s carbon footprint. On Friday, Bloomberg News reported that Senator John Kerry said that the Senate will likely pass a Climate Change Bill that “puts America on track” to reducing carbon emissions but will likely fail to ratify an international Climate Change treaty. In other words, Copenhagen has been compromised.

Kerry’s admission that the US probably can’t ratify any treaty that comes out of Copenhagen compromises the summit in three ways: it reduces the ability of any country to negotiate for future emissions reductions that are high enough to be effective to prevent run-away climate change, it preemptively reduces the level of carbon emissions reductions that any country will commit to, it undermines any effort at making fast-growing emerging markets promise to improve carbon efficiency at a high enough level, and it reduces the responsibility of participating states to abide by any treaty agreed at Copenhagen. Without the world’s largest carbon emitter completely on board, there is no hope.

But hooray for America for passing the Waxman-Markey bill which legislates 17% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 on a 2005 baseline! Show the world the way forward, show the world how important it is to reduce carbon emissions and come to an agreement at Copenhagen to prevent runaway climate change! Way to go! Even though the UK has legislated a 34% and the EU a 20% reduction by 2020, both from a 1990 baseline. Despite the difference in baseline, the US is still the largest carbon emitter in either 1990 or 2005. Nice effort America. Way to lead Mr. President.

Kerry’s statement makes the passage of a toothless Climate Change bill, the Waxman-Markey Bill, by the US House of Representatives last week that much worse. The bill stripped the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) of it’s ability to regulate coal power thereby not preventing coal-fired power stations from being built in the future. The bill promises not to examine the environmental impacts of biofuels (which on net do not emit less carbon than fossil fuels when you take into account the production process; I won’t even mention price distortions biofuels cause in global commodities markets). The bill does not require the agriculture industry (including meat industry) to assess it's carbon emissions; instead it includes provisions that allow for big agriculture to make windfall profits from carbon offsets and drive out small family farthers (sustainable agriculture, I think not). According to the US director of Greenpeace Phil Radford, “The Renewable Energy Standard requires less new clean energy than we would have without this bill passing.” He also cited scientific evidence that US carbon emissions would have to be reduced 20-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 in order to prevent “catastrophic climate impacts.” The Waxman-Markey bill only provides for a 4-7% reduction below 1990 levels by 2020. Proponents of the bill like Joseph Romm from the conservative think tank Center for American Progress told Yale Environment 360 that the Waxman-Markey bill is compatible with preventing a 2 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures; last week scientists in the UK declared that 2 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures is guaranteed.

The bill also establishes an EU like emissions trading system which looks primed to repeat the mistakes the EU system has made. Namely by handing out some carbon permits for free, which according to WWF allowed for 6-15 billion Euros in windfall profits in the UK and 14-34 billion Euros in Germany, “providing a free allocation… does reduce the incentives provided by the scheme to invest in low emissions generation technology.” Issuing free permits coupled with over-issue of permits means that carbon per tonne is ridiculously underpriced in the EU ETS scheme. Free permits means the market price for carbon is distorted, the Carbon Trust’s chief economist Michael Grubb told Reuters recently. Granted, free permits in the US scheme will be “regulated” by state agencies such that any increase in the price of energy is felt by energy companies rather than consumers. This method should induce investment in efficient technology, but will simultaneously fail to induce consumers to use less energy. It isn’t enough that technologies become more efficient, people will have to learn to consume differently, to consume less in order to prevent runaway climate change.

It was the president's responsibility to lead on Climate Change, not just the US but the international community as well. His ability to lead at Copenhagen is now compromised. Sorry sir, but you've Missed the Bear, again.