Thus Gore’s Climate Reality gig, though no doubt heroic, seems curiously at odds with the current mood. A disastrously crap summer in Europe – from any standpoint you care to choose – will almost certainly push us into a chilly winter of deep discontent, where the Mail’s version of reality will be much closer to most people’s than Al Gore’s. In this context, we won’t so much be concerned about climate sceptics as about the widely shared lack of interest in the realities of a changing climate.

Behind the FT’s pay-wall, Simon Kuper also neatly summarised climate politics (Climate Change: Who cares any more? 17 September). He repeats the US political scientist and Breakthrough associate Roger Pielke Jr’s iron law: ‘When policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on emissions reductions, it is economic growth that will win out every time.’

In facts it’s wrong to argue that people don’t care about climate change and that they don’t want to pay towards climate policy. On the contrary, in IPPR’s recent consumer workshops (in fact focusing on renewable heat and so buried in this report) there was no repetition of the climate sceptic line, much support for ‘doing something’ and a willingness to contribute. But many people’s attention is likely to be focused elsewhere.

The challenge for campaigners and Al Gore is to take the debate to where people are and not continue to argue as if most people would make a priority out of tackling climate change if only they knew the truth about the science. It didn’t work during the good times and our times are not good any more.

Last week’s Mail splash was a mash-up of two stories, both essentially from the same source; the Global Warming Policy Foundation. One part, which is of less interest, is based on a paper by Lord Andrew Turnbull, an economist and trustee of GWPF who served as Cabinet Secretary during the Blair years.

Turnbull’s is the tone of a climate sceptic. And while it would be a mistake to dismiss his views as irrelevant, there is strong evidence that recent controversies have had little impact on public confidence in climate science. But the other part of the Mail’s story should be of more concern, not least because it positioned right on the fault line between climate change policy and the state of the economy (or at least people’s experiences at the household level).

Using GWPF data, the Mail claimed that ‘cash strapped families pay an average of £200 a year in stealth levies to subsidise Britain’s massive expansion of wind farms, solar panels and ‘environmentally friendly’ heating schemes.’

This claim is at least partially debunked on fullfact.org and it’s worth noting that incentives for renewable heat are in fact funded from general taxation rather than by a levy on energy companies that is passed onto consumer in their bills (which makes a difference because the burden falls less on the shoulders of poorer households than had the policy been paid for energy consumers). But at a time when bills are rising – and rising dramatically – and household incomes are falling in real terms, the truth that a not insignificant proportion of people’s bills fund renewable energy is a hard fact to swallow.

There is also a kernel of political truth at heart of the Mail’s hyperbole. The same Cardiff University/Ipsos-MORI polling that shows public acceptance of climate science holding firm also sees 78 per cent of people questioned being ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ concerned that electricity will become unaffordable in the future. The lion’s share of future increases in people’s bills is almost certain to come from rising fossil fuel prices, but politicians may find it increasingly difficult to pile more climate policy costs onto domestic bill-payers; the Coalition has already backed off from doing this in the case of the RHI. But paying through taxation at a time when such stringent public spending cuts are being made also may be hard to sustain.

How then do we defend paying for renewable energy infrastructure at a time when the truth – or a somewhat distorted version thereof – is proving convenient for climate naysayers and fossil fuel lobbyists alike? There are three elements to this.

The first involves stressing the co-benefits. Unless economic growth in Asia grinds to a halt, demand for fossil fuels can only increase and even coal prices are likely to be high. Renewable energy will be essential in ensuring the UK has an affordable and secure supply of energy in future even if it is costly now. There are strong signs that after years of subsidy, solar power is now becoming competitive with fossil fuels; the cost of solar cells has fallen by 60% in the last 5 years, bringing solar to near grid parity at peak demand in the US.

The second involves innovation. In 1984, a well-known consultancy firm advised a well-know US telecommunications company not to bother developing wireless technology because there would never be a sizeable enough market. The same is now being said of some of the key renewables. And yet if we were to apply the same focus to new energy as we have to communications technologies, the costs may reduce much faster than has been the case with solar. In addition, the ability of economies to innovate is key to their future growth.

Finally, since renewable energy is highly capital intensive and running costs generally low, we should reduce the burden on current bill and taxpayers by borrowing to pay for energy infrastructure. Lest this should be dismissed as barking mad at a time when deficit reduction is the only game in town, then note that it is not only think tank wonks that are proposing this, but also avowed capitalists.

Faced with the green energy backlash, we can bury our heads in the sand, continue to incant the mantras about the long term risks of climate change or face up to the energy challenge and acknowledge that while most people are not in doubt about climate change, neither are they likely to prioritise spending money on climate change policy while their incomes fall.

An earlier version of this article was published on the Liberal Conspiracy blog.

The city of Leipzig has been playing host to the International Transport Forum’s annual summit whose background paper this year focuses on the challenge of meeting the travel needs of a future world population of 9 billion.

This graphic showing the distribution across different income groups of vehicle use in the US caught the eye of a colleague to whom I sent the paper:

It tells two stories.

First, that car travel grows as incomes increase (music to the ears of those that have pilloried us for our pieces on growth and climate change). But the paper goes on to explain:

‘…if average income growth is distributed very unevenly, with high growth at the high end and limited, zero or negative growth at the low end, then average income growth does not lead to more travel as the growth accrues only or mainly to those income classes that have already reached the saturation point.’

However, the aggregate picture (told in the figure that is shown before this one in the paper) misses a very important story. In the top three income brackets, total car use has increased in the past decade – almost doubled in the case of those who earn more than $100,000 – whereas in all other income brackets bar the very lowest, car use has decreased.

Before the anti-growthers revisit the comment box below, this isn’t a growth story per se. In fact the suggestion is that there’s a saturation point for people on middle incomes (I’ve written about the peak car phenomenon elsewhere). However, it does show that the rich (of whom there are now a lot more hence in average terms the picture looks better) are consumers of a disproportionately high number of vehicle miles – to a quite staggering extent.

While perhaps a growing number of people can feasibly travel on public transport, car journeys are likely to remain a still relatively high if apparently declining part of this picture. So perhaps those on the right-hand-side of the chart above should be the ones who pay to decarbonise travel for those on the left-hand-side. In national climate policy hitherto, such as cap and trade and carbon tax, the transaction tends on the whole to happen in reverse.

Framing and its relationship to policy (i.e. does the way an issue is framed have implications for the way policy is designed – we think so) is thus of a high order of importance.

Partly out of naked self interest, as I’m chairing the event, I thought I’d flag a public debate taking place next Monday afternoon, 16 May, at UCL which focuses precisely on how to frame and communicate climate change. Some big hitters, such as Professors Chris Rapley and Mark Maslin of UCL and Prof. Nick Pidgeon of Cardiff are taking part.

I know from conversations with the science community that it has been badly bruised in recent debates. But it would be a shame if this event focuses only on the problems scientists face in taking a complex and not fully resolved (although not inconclusive) scientific enquiry into the public arena. Perhaps the more interesting questions (that it will be up to the audience to raise along with me in the chair) are those concerning how we frame and execute climate change policy now that people are beginning to understand its costs and how they will fall.

Here’s the cast list for the afternoon:

The role of science in the climate change debate

Professor Mark Maslin,UCL Geography and Co-Director, UCL Environment Institute

Response from Professor Nick Pidgeon, Director, Understanding Risk Research Group, University of Cardiff

Public attitudes to climate change

Professor Chris Rapley, UCL Earth Sciences

Response from Dr Jane Gregory, UCL Science and Technology Studies

Climate change and the policy context

Professor Maria Lee, UCL Laws

Response from Dr Slava Mikhaylov , UCL Political Science

Summing up from Professor Yvonne Rydin (Director, UCL Environment Institute)

Are you environmentalists in disguise (as the more ardent fans of my favourite football club often chant, although they substitute ‘environmentalists’ for ‘Derby’)? Greens have been criticised – at least by Matthew and I – for wanting people to take the necessary actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the name of the climate; to forfend Armageddon.

In truth it doesn’t matter. If people are in fact beginning to wonder if the whole oil thing looks a bit iffy and so whack a solar panel on their Wimpy semi then it’s all to the good (even if we do end up paying them for the privilege). Not only do they mitigate a little bit of climate change, but they’re also instant early adopters.

In a topsy-turvy fashion, one could apparently level the same criticism at denialist folk. If people are becoming disgruntled with beardy climate wonks (strokes beard!), it has to be because they’ve seen through the AGW lie and not due to a growing sense that dealing with climate change all looks a bit too tricky and pricey, thank you (is it your zeal I can feel?)

Can’t you Bishophillbilly types arrange to dance a fandango with some of the residents of the Dark Mountain. Or just have a big old hug. You’ll all feel better. Honest.

Fastforward ten years and Todd Stern, the US’s chief climate negotiator, is making similar pronouncements about the perhaps equally ill-fated UN climate negotiations. The latest round, held in Bangkok, were, according to Stern, ‘marked by struggles over the agenda’ and ‘bickering over the shape of the negotiating table.’ In an address to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference, lawyer Stern said:

‘Legally binding international obligations to cut emissions are not necessary. It is the national plans of countries, written into law and regulations, that count and that bind.’

Meanwhile, over in South Africa, which will host this year’s climate ministerial in late Novermber, an EU envoy was delivering an altogether different-sounding message. Swedish environment minister Andreas Carlgren told his South African hosts:

‘The most important discussions will be around a legally binding global framework. The EU wants a second commitment under Kyoto and developed countries to commit to emissions reductions.’

The objectives of trade liberalisation and climate protection may appear very different, but many of the barriers (adjustment costs, the pleading of powerful interest groups, becoming or remaining competitive) and apparently aspects of the global politics are the same.

Back in December, I wrote in an article published in the UK’s Sunday Times that it was time to shift the objectives of climate advocacy away from the multilateral negotiations and towards alligning climate and national interests. ‘The task is no longer about targets to cut emissions, but about defining how a more secure and growing economy can also be a low-carbon economy.’

I agree with Stern, but reluctantly since it’s not at all clear how domestic narratives can be constructed to support the bottom-up effort, most notably in the US; climate-based arguments are as yet little more successful in capital cities than in convention rooms.

It’s worth paying heed to the experience of the WTO, from which political capital ebbed away at an alarming rate once the dust storm in Doha had settled down and negotiations hit grinding realpolitik first in Cancun and then in Hong Kong. There’s been plenty of trade liberalisation since, but not under the aegis of new WTO agreements (advocates of climate action take note). Some are still trying to revive Doha, but this seems Quixotic.

Increasingly those hoping for a revival in the fortunes of the UN climate talks and for a second Kyoto commitment period involving any other party than the EU appear also to be tilting at windmills. Perhaps the considerable efforts and resources of the climate change research and policy community should now be aimed mainly at raising the game at the national level; not as a means to a multialteral end, but as an end in itself.

If you’re George Osborne then you’ll be reaching for the fiscal levers if they’re still within reach. If you’re Mervyn King then you’ll perhaps be hoping that optimism can triumph over interest rate rises. If you’re Chris Huhne you’ll be arguing that the low-carbon economy reaches break-even point at $100 per barrel.

Especially at a time of fiscal constraint but in general, intervening to cut duty and lower pump prices is a really bad idea which has crude politics on its side. If Warner and a host of other commentators are correct, then for how long can a cash-strapped government provide fiscal buffers against long-term adjustments in a global commodities market? But echoes of the protests that took place in 2000 are already reverberating around Whitehall.

Huhne’s probably right, but his arguments are likely to fall on deaf ears in the treasury and also price signals alone may not shift incumbent technology. This suggests that we need to build a politics of investment in carbon-free technology with some early wins for motorists and others built in.

Anecdotally,  the market is already creating demand for alternatives, but there isn’t serious infrastructure in place to enable people to make  increasingly rational choices en masse. This isn’t insurmountable, but is unlikely to emerge out of a government ideologically hell bent on reducing the reach of the state.

Developing low-carbon technology to reduce our nation’s dependence on increasingly costly oil has a new-found logic to it. The market is currently working hard to help us; can the same be said of government?

One of us is highly likely to return soon to the issue of innovation and so we’ll set Stian Westlake’s contribution to one side for now. Gerry Holtham’s call for a public vehicle to carry private sector investment into major infrastructure projects will have particular resonance to those currently involved in the Green Investment Bank debate.

I’m afraid I can’t link directly to the essay, but the book is free and downloadable from the ippr website, so it won’t trouble you to go and find it yourself. Gerry Holtham is highly qualified to make his argument; he’s a former director of ippr and so knows the public policy field but in recent years has been working in the capital markets and so knows finance too.

In a nutshell, Holtham argues that UK has in recent years underinvested in infrastructure which is now hampering growth and that the gap can only effectively be filled by a government-backed institution to provide guarantees and take preference shares in productive, infrastrutural assets. His proposal is for the Green Investment Bank writ large.

Of course, this would reduce the costs of capital to investors, but it would also reduce risk substantially. But why wouldn’t it harm the government’s balance sheet and therefore fall foul of treasury rules? The answer is it might be a problem in principle for the treasury, but in practice, because the institution would be designed to leverage private capital into productive assets that will earn substantial returns – for instance, energy or railways – it need not be.

His arguments turn the Private Finance Initiative on its head:

‘Instead of getting the private sector to raise expensive finance to build assets and lease them to the public sector, a public sector entity would raise cheap finance to procure assets and lease or sell them to the private sector for operation, thereby servicing its debt.’

This argument is very important. As the growth debate on this blog has hopefully illustrated, tackling climate change requires high levels of investment. The Green Invesment Bank was conceived of as a vehicle that would perform precisely the role Holtham outlines.

However, it suffers from two problems. First the case for requiring a GIB has not been made clearly enough by the right people. In yesterday’s launch of Gowing for Growth, the FT’s Martin Wolf dismissed it as uneccesary provided emissions were priced properly. However, while emissions pricing might deal with some aspects of market failure, the evidence so far is that they are not effective enough to provide strong investment signals and, critically according to Holtham, the private sector has been underinvesting for decades anyway. In addition there’s an element of risk in large – and especially in green – infrastructure that only government can deal with.

Second, explicitly labelling the Green Investment Bank green has made it unattractive to a Treasury that is both highly sceptical about using government guarantees for investment and about the whole green economy narrative. Perhaps rather than a bespoke green investment bank we should be aiming for a large-scale state infrastructure bank whose objectives are to create an investment climate and the infrastructure for growth, but wearing glasses tinted green by climate legislation and energy and transport policy.

Presumably, then, to many of those who’ve commented on yesterday’s post and to NEF and others, today’s confirmation of UK 2010 Q4 economic contraction is good news (the graph is from ONS data).

Even if we ignore the facts of the matter, the politics of arguing against growth when there isn’t any are Canute-like.

Yesterday, as part of chinadialogue’s series on well-being economics, Viki Johnson of the new economics foundation argued that endless economic growth is neither possible nor necessary. Here Andrew Pendleton, associate director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr), responds.

There are plenty of profound analyses of growth and enough soul- and brain-searching among economists concerned that growth alone is an inadequate measure of a nation’s prosperity. But Viki Johnson is wrong to argue that growth “is not only impossible, it is also neither desirable nor necessary.” Indeed, as we seek to deal with climate change, growth is possible, necessary and desirable.

Natural resources are finite in the absolute sense, but we must unpick the relationship between each of these and economic growth one-by-one rather than rely on a blanket assumption that we can no longer grow economies because certain resources are in short supply. Climate change, however, is not caused by resource constraint but rather by shifting carbon from one natural sink to another. There is still enough fossilised carbon in in the ground to cause major climatic shifts if burned, regardless of when oil, gas and coal reserves will be exhausted.

Similarly the sun – which is either primarily or secondarily the source of all renewable energy – is limitless in terms of our ability to exploit it. The challenge of tackling climate change, though fraught with complex politics and systemic and technological challenges, is at heart simply a matter of decarbonising energy systems. Energy is of course material to economic growth, but there is no reason why growth can’t be decoupled from emissions by a shift to apparently limitless clean energy.

And herein lies the most important and significant reason why the de-growth prescription is precisely the opposite of what is needed for a successful climate change cure. The recent global recession — a primary example of what happens when economies stop growing — illuminates this.

In order to make the transition from incumbent dirty technologies to new, clean technologies, we need high levels of investment. And yet during the 2008 recession, investment in many countries collapsed. In the United States, for instance, by the beginning of 2009 private sector investment in new plant and equipment was below 2005 levels. So while recession no doubt also produced an interruption in the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions, the economics of recession meant that less was done to mitigate future emissions. Unless you believe that climate change can be tackled without new technologies, this is clearly a bad thing.

In the political economy, the need for growth is just as keenly felt. The US recession produced levels of unemployment in excess of 10% and the Democrat government has struggled to reduce this quickly enough to avoid heavy losses in mid-term elections; if climate legislation was difficult in Obama’s first few months in power, it is nigh-on impossible now and recession is no doubt in part to blame for this.

In other words, recession in our existing economies equates strongly with human misery and entrenched, outmoded industrial practices. Growth shouldn’t be the only game in town; it’s a measure of success and not — as Johnson says — an end in itself. Inequality and how the proceeds of growth are better shared is an important debate too. But without it, our chances of investing in a cleaner, more sustainable future, avoiding dangerous climate change and raising living standards are scant indeed.

Perhaps there is another, growth-free way, but it is not at all clear from the emerging cabal of de-growthers what this would look like and how we would get from where we are now to wherever that is.