Political Climate

A number of the essays in Going for Growth, a new book edited by my colleague Will Straw, are well worth reading. Two in particular stand out as being of significance in the climate change debate.

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. Continue reading →

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).

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I responded to a piece by Viki Johnson of New Economic Foundation on the China Dialogue website. This is a re-post of my response, which you can also read here:

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.

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Grist posted the results of a US poll earlier this week showing the popularity of alternative forms of energy. Remarkably, its article is without substance or much commentary, which is why I’m merely pasting in the poll results here.

Three points of interest: First, a Senate bill focused on clean energy (ill defined in the question, but nevertheless pretty clear) is very popular. Second, a drilling bill is also fairly popular. Third, no mention of climate change. Continue reading →

Our good friends over at The Breakthrough Institute have a new report out on the rebound effect – the idea that as energy efficiency increases, we use part of the savings we make to consume more energy, and overall the impacts of energy efficiency are much less than we think. This comes on the heels of Steve Sorrell’s excellent review of the subject in 2009.

There is plenty of evidence that the rebound effect is real. But it would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that this means it is impossible to reduce energy intensity Continue reading →

Mckinsey have just produced a report for the European Gas Advocacy Forum saying that Europe could hit its 2050 emissions target (an 80% cut on 1990 levels) for almost €1 trillion less if it built more gas rather than wind. Leaving aside the fact that Mckinsey also recently worked on the ECF’s Roadmap 2050 project on how the EU could meet its targets without gas at reasonable cost, they are not alone in making the cost argument for gas. Continue reading →

If you watched this, read this. But then read this and this and then this. Continue reading →

We were recently challenged on the question of how inequality can be reduced at the same time as the transition to a low carbon economy can be managed. We agree that both need to be addressed at simultaneously, since sharp inequality makes the politics of climate policy much more difficult.

My starting point is to argue that we first need to understand what is driving inequality. At the top end, it is clearly about the rise of finance, but in a recent pamphlet co-authoured with Adam Lent, I lay out the case that in much of the economy it is innovation that is the main mechanism. Continue reading →

The transition to a low carbon economy is a transition, so indicators of change like investor confidence are a litmus test of the direction of travel. Sadly, news just in from an Ernst and Young survey of 529 UK- based firms and financiers shows such confidence sharply down since the Comprehensive Spending Review Continue reading →

Just a quick  one to say how delighted we were to learn of the excellent (and excellently named) Climate Sock, which tracks and offers comment on polling about climate change and climate policies. Check it out! (Hat tip to Will Straw)