Future blog topics
14/11/2009 at 6:15 am | In Uncategorized | 2 CommentsOver the last year, I have had ample time to think about various topics and ideas that I would like to cover more thoroughly, and I think it is time I put these down somewhere so that I don’t lose track of them.
- Free and Open Source: I am currently working 2 days a week for a webdesigner who uses exclusively open source tools, and I am getting more and more into the whole Free and Open Source set of mind. One idea in particular that interests me is to figure out (a) how some open source projects work and (b) how to coordinate various organisations that would benefit from some tailored OS tools. Of this, the latter interests me a lot more. For instance, there are a whole bunch of organisations that have the same need for databases and sending out invitations to events, yet all of them use a combination of rewriting forms, sending them out in word documents, sifting through the answer emails and typing the details up manually. Yet there already exist solutions to these tools, that automate the “Send out mass email with link to form and automated entry in database”. At other times, there exists no solution, but the same need exists across various organisations. If these decided to go for an open source option, they could – if well coordinated – potentially pay for some developers to custom develop the tool for them, at a price that is still cheaper than the commercial products. How to do the coordination and spreading the information about these tools is something that interests me quite a bit.
- Economics and Heterodox economics in particular: right now, I am sitting through a master’s course in Economics in Brussels and it is very illuminating. Not so much on economic topics, but rather on the nature of economics. I never had a particularly high opinion of economists, as they seem to hide their confusion under a glossy varnish of high-level mathematics (which seems to be their understanding of what a science is about, maths…). This will be the main topic I will write about. A few concrete one’s:
- why are cost-benefit analyses in particular and the measuring fetish in general so misplaced, wrong, misguided etc. I have certainly not yet come to a conclusion for this myself, except that there is something deeply, deeply unsettling about many cost-benefit analyses.
- “Decroissance” and the Growth Fetish: why growth is such a stupid thing to care about (this obviously also falls under general measuring fetishes)
- Homo Economicus: “I, Robot” (Excellent, this will definitely be the title of one of the posts, as it summarises selfishness and rationality of homo economicus. This just occurred to me, so I am very happy!)
- The detrimental effects of full-time work and advertisement: While advertisement is at least accepted as having some limited negative impact – although usually belittled -, work is almost exclusively seen as a “good” thing. If you suggest otherwise, you will immediately be challenged “So would you rather be unemployed, you slacker? You can’t always be on holiday!!”. In my opinion, full-time work is one of the most destructive features of our current society, for once because working-time reductions are part of the solution to getting off our Growth Fetish
- Media and its bias: See Medialens.org, Chomsky-Herman Propaganda model and http://therealnews.com/t/index.php
- New ways of learning. See learning sciences.
- Climate change and how to communicate really effectively on this. Identitycampaigning.org is really interesting for this
- And finally: What I call my “Big Project”, which is a mixture of many of the above, as a real project, rather than just intellectual ramblings. It is half university/school, sustainable open source firm and society. But enough for now.
See you offline!
Hello from me
14/11/2009 at 5:26 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentThe multitude of users scanning this blog will be confused today to see a new face on this blog… mine.
Cathy and I thought that it would be a good idea to pull our forces together to blog, rather than fail both for lack of motivation, absence of feedback and long breaks between blogging. Hopefully, this will lead to us actually writing more often and at least commenting on each others blogs! Some others will hopefully join us soon in this endeavour.
Just to warn you in advance: while we will still be using climatepoliticstea, the scope of the topics will often stray further afield than hot air – both climate and politics – or hot drinks. Not that anyone will read this, really.
Measuring growth
11/07/2009 at 7:57 am | In Politics | Leave a CommentThe New Economics Foundation in the UK released their “Happy Planet Index” report this week, which tries to rank countries based on how good they are at satisfying basic human needs and producing happy citizens without destroying their environment. The basic premise underlying the report is hardly new – namely that GDP is not a great way to measure our growth as a society. GDP basically measures the value of all goods and services made within a country in a given period, regardless of whether those exchanges increase or decrease well-being. This means that GDP growth is obviously not equivalent to growing the things that we actually want to grow – expenditures on cleaning up toxic pollution, recovering from natural disasters, and increasing health care costs contribute just the same as positive investments in, say, education. In other words, “pollution is a double benefit to the economy since GDP grows when we manufacture toxic chemicals and again when we are forced to clean them up.” [Redefining Progress, p.4] Also, our economic growth currently comes at the expense of rapidly eroding our natural “capital,” and just looking at GDP growth completely misses this problem. GDP also misses the informal, non-cash economy based on bartered goods and services, which accounts for up to 44% of GDP in developing nations, according to the IMF.[Redefining Progress, p.4] Unfortunately, GDP is frequently used as a proxy for well-being in policy decisions and GDP growth is a central goal, if not the central goal, of economic policy in developed nations. NEF’s proposal basically amounts to redefining efficiency as how efficient nations are in using their ecological resources to achieve well-being.
The Happy Planet Index looks at 3 factors: life expectancy, life satisfaction, and ecological footprint. (Life satisfaction data has apparently been collected for nearly 50 years in many countries, typically by asking a question like, “all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?”, on a scale of 0-10. Supposedly this data has been correlated with other factors like income, education, etc to give sensible and useful results, so it is not a completely meaningless statistic). The broad conclusion, not surprisingly, is: “Whilst the HPI confirms that the countries where people enjoy the happiest and healthiest lives are mostly richer developed countries, it shows the unsustainable ecological price we pay. It also reveals some notable exceptions – less wealthy countries, with significantly smaller ecological footprints per head, having high levels of life expectancy and life satisfaction. In other words, it shows that a good life is possible without costing the Earth.” The highest score was Costa Rica, whose residents have the highest reported life satisfaction in the world and an ecological footprint less than 1/4th that of the U.S. 9 of the top 10 countries are in Latin America, and the highest-ranking western country is the Netherlands, at a distant 43rd. Looking at historical trends in OECD nations (i.e. developed nations), they found that life satisfactiona and life expectancy combined increased 15% over the last 45 years, whereas ecological footprints increased 72%. While I don’t take much stock in the actual numbers, the idea that consumption and ecological destruction have outpaced gains in health and happiness doesn’t seem too hard to swallow.
The idea that we should not base our economic philosophy on maximizing GDP growth, and instead use an indicator that more accurately reflects our aspirations as a society, has been kicking around for a long time and largely ignored. But we also ignored many other warnings about the unsustainability of our economic growth, ranging from the increasing consumer debt to finance consumption growth to the fundamental limits imposed by resource constraints. (It is darkly amusing to note that in 2003, the New Economics Foundation predicted “collapse in the credit system of the rich world, led by the United States, leading to soaring personal and corporate bankruptcies.”) The economic crisis is forcing us to confront some of our previously dominant economic ideas – it will be interesting to see whether the idea of re-defining how we measure economic growth will gain any more traction in light of the crisis.
Climate change bill in the House
22/06/2009 at 8:40 pm | In Climate change, Energy Efficiency, Politics | 1 CommentThe House of Representatives is most likely going to vote on a major piece of energy and climate change legislation within the next couple of weeks (the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a.k.a. the Waxman-Markey bill). There is a ton of stuff in this bill, so I figured I’d spend this week’s blog post going through some of the highlights – and lowlights. This is mainly for my own amusement; I’m sure there are lots of other better analyses of this bill out there.
1. Renewable Energy:
– The bill would require 20% renewable electricity by 2020, although up to 5% could be met by reducing demand through efficiency measures instead and this could increase to 8% from efficiency at individual states’ requests. This is pretty weak – and the original version of the bill was stronger. They also somehow include coalbed methane as a renewable fuel, which is a rather odd definition to say the least.
– The bill requires utilities to develop plans for integrating plug-in hybrid electric cars & requires the Secretary of Energy to establish a demonstration program in several regions to integrate plug-in electric vehicles into the grid.
- It requires research into smart grid technologies, coordination of smart grid planning, and requires major utilities to set peak demand reduction goals.
- Finally, it requires coordination of electricity transmission planning with the goal of building out the grid to facilitate deployment of renewables.
2. Energy Efficiency:
- Requirement of 50% reduction in energy use relative to today’s standards by 2014 for new residential buildings and 2015 for new commercial buildings
- Requires the Department of Energy to work with states to improve efficiency of existing residential and commercial buildings through retrofitting.
- Stronger efficiency standards for lighting and appliances
3. Climate Change:
- Emissions reductions targets are 17% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050 to be achieved through a cap and trade system (the standard market-based mechanism where emissions are capped and in order to pollute the company has to purchase pollution permits, which can be traded between firms). One of the big debates in cap and trade is how the permits should be distributed – given away to firms, auctioned, or some combination? And if they are auctioned, what do you do with the revenue? This bill gives a fraction (about a quarter) of the permits directly to energy intensive companies. A large fraction (about a third) is given to “local distribution companies” (essentially electric utilities); the idea is that they won’t have to raise prices as much if they get the permits for free. Although this is one way of protecting consumers against rising electricity prices, it’s not really my favorite, but I think I’ll save that for another post. The remaining money from auctioning the permits is split among investment in renewables and efficiency research, state energy efficiency programs, climate change adaptation programs, programs to benefit low-income households, and federal deficit reduction.
- Unfortunately the bill allows 2 billion tons per year of carbon offsets, i.e. companies can by “offsets” instead of reducing their own emissions. Experience to date with offsets suggests pretty strongly that they don’t usually result in the emissions reductions that they claim, so this basically means that the bill won’t be as effective. (Note that 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide is nearly 30% of U.S. 2005 emissions).
Lots of people are concerned by how much this bill has been weakened so far and potentially further in the House floor debates. Some environmental groups are considering withdrawing support for the bill, which I think would be a huge mistake for a couple of reasons (see also ClimateProgress.org for more elaboration on some of these points). The first is that this bill really does have a lot of very good energy efficiency provisions that aren’t getting much attention. But the main reason is that if the U.S. doesn’t have some sort of national climate policy on the books before December, the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen are likely to be a disaster. I can’t imagine China and India being willing to undertake binding commitments to reduce emissions if the U.S. isn’t doing anything. Although some people have argued that Obama could still reduce emissions by requiring the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, there are two downsides to this strategy: (a) it could easily be overturned by a subsequent administration; and (b) it would still send a signal to the international negotiations that the U.S. is unlikely to be able to ratify an international treaty. So, to make a long story short, I really hope this bill passes.
Age of Stupid versus UK Climate Secretary
14/06/2009 at 3:56 pm | In Climate change, humor | Leave a CommentI posted a couple weeks ago about the climate change documentary,The Age of Stupid. It is apparently making a huge splash in the UK, and I just came across this video, a discussion between the director of The Age of Stupid and Ed Miliband, the UK’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary. I have trouble imagining this discussion happening in the U.S. 
But they both do make an important point about the need for public participation in putting heat on politicians:
(Technical note: Miliband makes the common mistake of referring to “negative feedbacks” when he meant “positive feedbacks.” Positive feedback means that the feedback serves to amplify climate change.)
Age of Stupid
17/05/2009 at 6:03 pm | In Climate change, Communication | 2 CommentsA couple weeks ago I went to the U.S. premiere of the new climate change documentary from the UK “The Age of Stupid.” The movie tells 5-6 interweaving stories of people involved in some way in the global energy economy and does a great job of showing how their stories relate to climate change. I loved the way the movie highlighted the interlinkages between climate change, human rights, the resource curse, consumption, and development (while actually being entertaining). The focus on human stories made the film far more powerful and (I hope) effective than the usual documentary of a bunch of scientists talking about climate change. For me personally, the most moving story was that of an 82-year-old mountaineer in the French Alps. His story not only conveyed his deep sense of loss at seeing the unnatural changes in the mountains he loved but also, by describing his fight against widening a highway through his village that brought “milk from France to Italy to be made into yogurt to be shipped back to France”, linked those changes to wasteful and overconsumptive lifestyles. Here’s a clip:
The movie will be more widely released in the U.S. in September and I’m very curious to see what impact it will have. Unfortunately there are two drawbacks that will probably limit its effectiveness. First is the title; when I first heard it, I thought “great, Americans always love it when Brits and Europeans tell us how stupid we are.” To my surprise, it actually turned out that the “this is the age of stupid” line was spoken by an American in the film – a retired Shell oil company worker in New Orleans. But, of course, anyone turned off by the title of the film won’t find that out. The second drawback is the argument in the film that the Iraq war was a war for oil. I fear that this will just give people who disagree with that argument an excuse to dismiss the entire film when in fact that point is basically irrelevant to the overall message and could have been left out without weakening the film. But the movie does have some big things going for it – by presenting human stories to highlight the complex interdependence of issues that goes far beyond pure climate science, the movie is far more moving and thought-provoking than any other climate change film I have seen.
Climate change and the Maldives
10/05/2009 at 6:33 pm | In Climate change, Politics | Leave a CommentThere was a fascinating feature article in the New York Times today (“Wanted: A New Home for My Country”) profiling the president of the Maldives and his dilemma over how the Maldives should adapt to climate change. Sea level rise is the big threat they’re facing since the Maldives are an average of 4 feet above sea level. They are currently pursuing two strategies: becoming carbon neutral and approaching other countries about buying a new homeland for their people. The first strategy is really more of a political ploy since obviously the Maldives going carbon neutral would do next to nothing to reduce global carbon emissions.
As the article points out, there are a couple of factors that make understanding the impact of sea level rise on the Maldives more complicated than just comparing the projected global average sea level rise to the average elevation of the Maldives. First, regional sea level rise is not the same as the global average, and the net sea level rise for the Maldives may be reduced if storms bring sand that can build up the islands further. Second, and not mentioned in the article, salinization of the water supply could force people to move or invest in desalinization before sea level rises enough to drown them out. These complications have led to the controversy reported in the article over what residents of the Maldives should expect in terms of sea level rise in the next few decades and whether or not they’ll have to relocate.
Despite the various complications involved in making sea level rise predictions for the Maldives, one thing seems very clear to me and was not mentioned in the article: melting of either the Greenland Ice Sheet and/or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would be the end of the Maldives. Melting of either ice sheet would raise sea levels by 5-7 meters; granted this would take several hundred years, so it would be possible for the nation to artificially build up their islands over that amount of time, although I’m not sure whether or not such an investment would be more expensive than relocating. “Business as usual” scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions (i.e. those with no climate policy) would lead to ice sheet collapse. Some recent studies suggest that in order to avoid an ice sheet collapse, atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations need to stabilize at 350-450ppm, which would basically require global greenhouse gas emissions to peak and start declining within the next decade or two (at the most). It is a bit unfortunate that the NYT article didn’t mention this issue, since it seems like there would be less controversy among Maldivians if the issue were simply framed as: don’t let climate change proceed to the point that locks us into 5-7 meters of long term sea level rise. Even this modest demand from the Maldives would already be a serious political challenge.
Major EPA announcement: Climate change threatens public health (!)
18/04/2009 at 8:44 pm | In Climate change, Politics | 1 CommentApologies for the long time without posting. I suspect that posting will continue to be sporadic until this semester is over …
But, I was quite excited to see the Environmental Protection Agency officially released this major announcement on Friday:
“EPA Finds Greenhouse Gases Pose Threat to Public Health, Welfare / Proposed Finding Comes in Response to 2007 Supreme Court Ruling”
After a long scientific review process, the EPA has come to the conclusion that greenhouse gases, via the climate change that they cause, pose a threat to public health and welfare. This may not come as a shock to a lot of people, but it has the very significant implication that the EPA will now be able to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. (Actually the EPA’s conclusion published yesterday is only a “proposed finding;” the “final finding” will not be released until after a public comment period, and only then could regulations be imposed).
Some background on this issue:
In 2003, the EPA Administrator decided that the EPA lacked authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and, if it did in fact have the authority, it wasn’t going to regulate them anyway. [1]. Twelve states and several cities sued the EPA over its refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars. The Supreme Court ruled against the EPA in April 2007 (Massachusetts v. EPA), finding that greenhouse gases are pollutants and therefore the EPA would have to regulate them under the Clean Air Act if they were found to endanger public health and welfare. The Bush EPA basically sat on this court order, dragging its feet until Bush left office.
The interesting thing about the Clean Air Act, which I was only recently made aware of, is that the legislation requires the EPA to put public health and welfare first when making regulations. That is, the economic costs don’t enter into the EPA’s pollution standards; they only enter into the second stage when deciding how to go about achieving a given reduction in pollutants. This is how the national ambient air quality standards are set for the major air pollutants (particulate matter, ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and lead). After my non-expert reading of the relevant section of the Clean Air Act, I’m pretty sure that the same situation would also apply to greenhouse gases, now that they are considered a threat to public health and welfare. Thus, I would suspect that utilities and other carbon-intensive industries would much prefer having a carbon policy imposed by Congress, where they will likely get more of a say in shaping the legislation, rather than having a mandate slapped down on them by the EPA. It will be very interesting to see if/how this new statement from the EPA will change the dynamics of the climate bill debate in Congress in the coming months.
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