Lib Dem’s turn to have Darling steal their policies

The great policy thief looks like he is about to strike again!

Alistair Darling, Labour Chancellor and policy plagiarist, is rumoured to be about to “unveil a host of new measures in his first budget on Wednesday aimed at cutting carbon emissions” in what is to be billed as “Labour’s greenest [budget] to date.”

Should we be surprised? Of course not. In his first pre-Budget report, Darling ditched months of Labour plans in a naked attempt to out-Tory the Conservatives by offering an Inheritance Tax cut that Nick Clegg argues will help just 6 per cent of the population. Nick suggests that these are richest 6 per cent, though the most South Easterly 6 per cent might be nearer the mark!

Now, Darling appears poised to out-Lib Dem the Liberal Democrats by finally addressing Climate Change in his budget. Naturally, however, the real motivation is not the global but the financial climate, as he faces a hole in his budget that will require tax rises of £8 to £9 billion a year

In truth what we can look forward to is a token gesture on the environment in a budget that will not satisfy environmentally or equitably.

The Liberal Democrats have proposed a massive shift of taxation from income to pollution. Lib Dem proposals would seek to raise (if I remember correctly) £18bn a year from new environmental taxes, with which we would finance a massive tax cut off the basic rate, reducing it to the lowest level since… well… the last time the Liberals were in power. The personal allowance would soar to well over £7,000 a year, so that those on very low wages would pay almost nothing. And the Council Tax would be abolished forever – a long overdue measure.

By comparison, we can expect a rather lukewarm series of ill-thought-out measures from Darling. For example, the rumoured "showroom tax" of £2,000 on the price of the most gas-guzzling cars may indeed discourage consumers from buying them, but it is not the purchase of these cars but driving of them that is the source of pollution: this measure will not only unnecessarily penalize those who drive very short distances in very flash cars, but will also create no incentive to those who have already bought such a car, or who choose to do so despite the new tax, to economise on fuel. Indeed, perversely, economic theory suggests that if the car is more expensive, the owner needs to drive it more to ensure that they get their money’s worth!

By far a more effective means of tackling carbon emissions would be to abolish all taxes on the purchase of cars, and raise the money instead by increased in fuel duties. As somebody who has become painfully aware of the cost of petrol recently, I can attest to the fact that there is nothing more effective at encouraging economic use of fuel than seeing the counter on the petrol pump spin round.

Sadly, while it is unlikely that Darling will satisfy anybody with his budget, it is equally unlikely that the media will recognise that he is beginning to accept the wisdom of Lib Dem policy. And with a General Election probably two years away, we are saddled with Labour incompetence for some time to come.

From Malthus to Deng in one easy think tank

Call yourself a “Think Tank” and it’s amazing what people will fund.

The Optimum Population Trust (OPT) is concerned with the effects of population growth on the environment. It has therefore proposed compulsory limits to family size if urgent action is not taken to restrain population growth through voluntary family planning. This is a common sort of nonsense that crops up from time to time: there are too many of us, they bleat; we are out-consuming our little old planet. OPT suggest that we are consuming 25 per cent more than our planet can sustain, which is odd, because our planet’s population is six times the size that it was when Thomas Malthus was declaring that we were too many and were all doomed.

Despite OPT including some fairly impressive names (one of its chairs and four of its patrons hold professorships from leading universities) it is based on some schoolboy errors. The report says the planet faces the biggest generation of young people in history, leading to “the creation of a huge cohort of young urban males who, through frustration and unemployment…seek an outlet in violence.”

This seems a curious inversion of the truth. OPT do not explain why there should be more males than females in their over-populated world. In fact, the only reason I can think of for a disparity between males and females is the very course of action that OPT is proposing: namely, mandatory birth control.

The classic example of this is the one child policy in China. It has been a disaster – as the OPT report grudgingly admits. It has been widely ignored, where it has not been ignored it has resulted in massive female infanticide, reflecting the bias for male children in Chinese society. The lack of females for brides has been cited as a reason for the rising aggressiveness and militancy of China, as frustrated males look to take their passions out where they can. It has also lead to the 4-2-1 families, with one child supporting two parents and four grandparents.

As for the frustration and unemployment that the report identifies, it is far from inevitable. Widespread unemployment in “young countries” such as Iran and Nigeria is the result of disastrous economic policies rather than some Malthusian-cum-Mercantilist natural limit on the amount of employment. In fact, larger populations enable greater specialisation, leading to more varied jobs and more economic progress. The greatest variety and productiveness would be achieved by creating one global economic area in which six billion people could work together.

If anything, the danger in the developed world is too low a growth in population, leading to too few workers and taxpayers maintaining too many pensioners. It seems rather incongruous – indeed, positively bizarre – that OPT should propose a two-child limit in the UK when the current average birth rate is approximately 1.8 children per woman. We appear to have more than achieved their objective already without having to impose the state’s will on individual’s desire or freedom to breed.

The suggestion that we are out-consuming our planet is equally ludicrous. While humans are undoubtedly causing environmental change that may create difficulties in the future, it does not follow that we have reached or exceeded the productive capacity of planet Earth, as the authors suggest. Crop yields have increased rapidly over the past two centuries and are set to do so again as genetically modified crops yield more produce and are more disease and insect resistant. There are still vast areas of land in, for example, Africa that have not been turned to agricultural use. The UNDP estimates that by 2050 the global population will be 9.2 billion, but they do not believe that this will be unsustainable.

The solution to growing populations is not enforced birth control but economic reform. In fact, with no effort by government whatsoever (except in the removal of currently-prohibitive legislation), greater prosperity will lead to greater use of contraception and so a declining birth-rate. This has been the case in every developing country since effective contraception became available, and explains why the UNDP believes that the global population will level off in the second half of the C21st. Economic progress will enable us to feed, clothe and house 10 billion easily; indeed, it will open up to that 10 billion a level of prosperity and luxury of which 6.5 billion can now only dream.

At the same time, that rising prosperity will be accompanied by declining pollution. Another trend that is clear across the developed world is that the amount of pollution generated per person has fallen in line with economic, and thus technological, progress. This has in the past been undermined by population growth, but only because there was a cavalier attitude to pollution in the C20th. New, cleaner technologies, greater prosperity and more awareness of the impact of our activities on our environment will make the world a cleaner, easier place in which to live. Here, too, economics can lead the way, by providing liberal, market mechanisms for pricing pollutants.

Doom-mongers and population skeptics have a long pedigree, but like economic planners, reactionaries and Luddities they have been proven to be wrong time and again. I am sure that, when my allotted time expires (which on present trends should be around the time that baby 9.2 billion is born), we will be living in a cleaner, more abundant and more prosperous society, where nobody need want for the basics in life and most can look forward to a life as long as I will have enjoyed. Sadly, the patrons of OPT won’t be around to see it. But only because, like the dinosaurs, old age will have claimed them long before.

It’s a sad world in which we live

For most of my life, at least until my late-20s, the news that private jets are becoming so cheap that they are increasingly usable by middle-class people as air taxis would have been cause for rejoicing. It would be a sign that yet another play-thing of the elite was becoming more accessible, just as motor cars and mobile phones are no longer rich men’s toys but considered to be the bare necessities of life.

Not now. I see a green-eyed monster on the horizon, hurling abuse and opprobrium at this new scourge of the airways. I’ve not seen them yet, but sooner or later somebody is going to start bleating about the amount of carbon they pump out and how they’re contributing to global warming.

Oh, I know I ought to be more sympathetic to such concerns. Believe me, I do care. It’s just that I miss the days when progress was something to be welcomed.

Sigh! At least global warming should hasten the return of my other favoured form of air transport.

Question Time takes advantage of senile old man

I’ve missed almost all of the current series of Question Time, so tonight I was determined to watch it. For now, you can too, as tonight’s programme should be available online, but the BBC have previously proved bad at maintaining their archive.

Julia Goldsworthy (only third place? Your readers are mad, Stephen!) was pretty good, but hamstrung by being sat next to a bumptious buffoon (see below). Francis Maude was incredibly dull. Boris Berezovsky was interesting during the first half of the programme, which was devoted to Russia. And Melanie Philips was the token Daily Mail journalist, there to stir the pot on the far right (“I’m afraid I am one of that strange breed of people who are actually not persuaded of the man-made global warming theory at all.”)

To stir the pot on the far left, however, was Tony Benn, and he stood out from the crowd as singly the most bone-headed panellist that David Dimbleby could possibly have found. In just one hour, he managed to accuse Britain of locking up Nelson Mandela, suggested that Britain should not seek to extradite Andrei Lugovoi over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko lest it upset the Russians, and suggested that the Russians might fear the fairness of British justice because of Guantanamo Bay (which is, as some of my more sharp-eyed readers may have noticed, on a different continent from either of the protagonists in this case).

His most ignorant and facile point, however, was in opposition to carbon trading. He argued that the issue of greenhouse gasses was one of rationing, and that carbon trading was the equivalent of selling the single loaf of bread in a lifeboat to the highest bidder (“so that the rich gobble it up”). He catagorically opposed “marketing of ration books” and insisted that we share the right to emit carbon. This is both economically-illiterate and dangerous, but it is typical of a man who believes that governments are best placed to distribute both rights and wealth from on high.

In fact, carbon trading is the only means of ensuring that the right to emit a limited amount of carbon is distributed most efficiently. Most efficiently does not mean equally, of course; Benn may on the face of it be an egalitarian, but human progress depends on the efficient use of carbon, not its equal distribution. If we were each given our ration of carbon-emissions and banned from trading them – as was the equivalent during the 1940s and 1950s when the War coaliton and then the Labour government rationed food and banned its trade – those desparate to emit carbon would be restricted from doing so, while others with no particular need would be endowed with a largely useless permit.

A much fairer system, and one that would generate far more wealth for everybody, would see the government selling the credits, so that those that valued them most could secure them. We would all benefit from the money raised, which could be spent on establishing carbon sinks, buidling alternative energy infrastructure, or researching other solutions to global warming (or, for that matter, spent on health, education, or handed out to citizens as a form of dividend).

Anyway, it is likely to be primary polluters who need credits, rather than end-users. As long as the manufacturers of electricity and petrol and aviation fuel have to buy credits, our carbon emissions will be priced into our electricity bills, the cost of driving and the price of our holidays. This is a far fairer and more efficient means of distributing the right to emit carbon than government rationing. Bear in mind that rationing stretched well into the 1950s because governments, once endowed with the power, were reluctant to let it go. If you’re really worried about the poor, the solution is to enrich them and let them buy carbon-intensive goods alongside the rich.

Still, it should not be a surprise that Benn is confused, as he is clearly becoming senile. Only that can explain his daftest comment: that he is a libetarian. Tony Benn, the author of the “longest suicide note in history”, which would have arrogated more power to government than Britain had seen since the Stewarts, claimed to be a libertarian. The man’s clearly gone mad!

A house-price crash will save the Government from finding a policy solution

I’m sure Henry George was spinning in his communally-owned grave last night (though having seen this, I wonder if he’s been spinning for some time!).

Newsnight devoted most of their programme last night to housing. (Not that you’d guess by reading the first comment on the Newsnight blog, which drips anti-Semitic bile). Gavin Estler chaired a debate between Housing Minister Yvette Cooper, a Tory shadow less aristocratic than Michael Gove, the owner of a chain of estate agents and somebody from pricedout.org. It was interspersed with a few reports.

In the first instance, just about everybody agreed that more housing was needed. The Government recognised that 220,000 new houses were needed each year, but blamed Tory councils for blocking planning permission. One commentator then noted that it had taken the Government ten years to raise house-building from 100,000 to 110,000, whereas in the 1950s the Tories managed to raise house-building from 200,000 to 300,000 in a couple of years. The lady from pricedout.org agreed that more housing was needed. Everybody agreed that there was a supply problem, but nobody explained how it was to be solved, or why we are tearing down houses in the North of England while building new ones in the South.

There followed a series of truly bizarre proposals, including the usual anti-capitalist assault on second-homers and those buying to let (in an example of economic illiteracy, Ms. pricedout argued that more supply would merely be mopped up by wealthy buy-to-let landlords and so would not benefit first time buyers, which showed a total ignorance of the most basic principle of economics). Poor hippies could no longer afford to buy houses in the bohemian paradise of Totnes, lamented one Newsnight reporter, who seemed to wilfully ignore the fact that those selling their houses to property magnates and .com millionaires were the very hippies and artists who had given the place its character, and were now happily cashing in on the very material windfall that they had enjoyed.

It’s all the fault of the money-lenders, went up a cry that would not have been out of place in twelfth century York. House prices are over inflated because people are now able to borrow vast sums of money (up to ten times their salaries!). The words “credit control” appeared on the screen. The panellists happily discussed whether there should be a cap on the amount one is allowed to lend. Apparently, it is the job of the lender to lend responsibly. I had always though that it was the job of the borrower to borrow responsibly – it is they, after all, who must meet the repayments or lose their house – but nobody spoke up for the freedom of the individual to borrow whatever sum they deem necessary (or desirable) to make whatever arrangements they see fit.

At one point the Newsnight team mentioned property taxes. Apparently, they solve the whole problem. But Middle England wouldn’t like it, so it was brushed aside with a politically expedient waive. There was only one thing for it, they concluded. A nice house price crash will sort it out; but lets hope its not too hard, added the politicians.

It is a shame that Dan Rogerson was not available, as a Lib Dem might have tried to keep the discussion about property taxes alive for just a little longer. Like the issue of road user pricing (which is a Lib Dem manifesto pledge, though we have cooled to it since two million people signed a petition objecting to it), it is the right policy and one that needs to be defended, explained and pursued.

Land is a finite resource that owes nothing to the ingenuity or effort of mankind. It has more in common with fossil fuels or spectrum band-width than labour or capital. Because it is both limited and essential (unless one is a pirate radio station), it’s value constantly rises as society grows richer: money chases more and better goods, so prices actually fall in real terms (imagine how much a brand new ZX Spectrum would be worth now – kitsch value aside); wealth outstrips population growth, so real incomes slowly rise; but land is static, so rising wealth and demand must push prices up. Land value inflation is inevitable.

The most efficient way to prevent land becoming the preserve of the wealthy few (which George argues must inevitably lead to the impoverishment of those who do not own land, as any extra wealth they produce will be taken in rent) is for the state to capture rent and distribute it among the populous. The Lib Dem proposals are rather more modest; they would tax property values at 1 per cent per annum, with a view in the long-run to taxing only land values and not the value of improvements.

The result would be to calm house price fluctuation. It would discourage hoarding; it would be costly to own land that was not in use. It also rewards improvement: a field would have the same land tax whether or not a block of flats were built on it, so the owner’s interest would be in developing his land. It would capture a proportion of the wealth (as opposed to income) that would otherwise entrench privilege in families, and would capture unearned income (that deriving just from owning a rising asset). From an economic perspective, it would have a far more benign effect than taxation of labour or capital, both of which we should encourage. And it is devilishly hard to evade.

Middle England’s objection comes primarily from the fear that it will lead to a net increase in taxation. This is – or at least, ought to be – misguided. If land value taxation were the preserve of local authorities, it could replace the hated Council Tax. If it yielded higher returns than the Council Tax, the Government should respond by reducing the grant it gives local authorities and tax labour and capital correspondingly less (that is to say, reduce income, capital gains and business taxes). This would additionally hand much more fiscal authority to councils and so promote the devolution agenda. Tax changes should be at worst neutral, but would be altogether fairer, simpler, greener, more local and more efficient. Sound familiar?

More heat than light in global warming debate

Last week I reported on The Great Global Warming Swindle, Martin Durkin’s documentary claiming that the “climate change consensus” was a conspiracy of bad science, protected because it justifies massive research grants, that will ultimately retard the development of desperate Third World nations. My original article contains a précis of the programme and is followed by comments providing links to some counter-arguments.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the various arguments, I was at least glad that a debate was taking place. I had been aware for some time that there the so-called consensus was actually a widely-held prevailing belief, and that there were scientists out there that demurred. I was also aware that there has been a lot of vitriol directed at those who do not accept the orthodox view (and, to be fair, vice versa). As a liberal I find that uncomfortable; I believe that open and honest debate both uncovers lies and strengthens the truth. I had hoped that this programme would stir up such a debate.

Sadly, it seems that the elevated tone I had hoped for was a façade. The Times reported yesterday that Dr. Armand Leroi of Imperial College, London, wrote to Mr. Durkin to point out that the correlation between solar radiation and global temperature, posited in an article in Science in 1991, had been subsequently disproved. Mr. Durkin responded to this by explaining that Dr. Leroi was “a big daft cock”. Dr. Leroi was rather shocked by this: so much so that he has since withdrawn from a project that he was planning to work on with Mr. Durkin that was to discuss race. Race “is such a sensitive topic that it requires great care and great balance,” explained Dr. Leroi.

Simon Singh, a scientific author who had been copied into the exchange, intervened by writing “I suspect that you will have upset many people [Mr. Durkin]… so it would be great if you could engage in the debate rather than just resorting to one-line replies. That way we can figure out what went wrong/right and how do [sic.] things better/even better in the future”.

Mr. Durkin’s response concluded with the suggestion that Mr. Singh “Go and f*** yourself.”

Mr. Durkin has since apologised (via the Times, it seems), saying that “I regret the use of intemperate language. It is so unlike me.” That seems unlikely considering he originally considered calling his programme Apocalypse My Arse.

I am disappointed that the debate has so quickly degenerated to this level. However, I am encouraged by one comment from Mr. Durkin that the Times reported, that he has asked Channel 4 to stage a live debate on the issue. However, I wonder whether this is really the debate we need to have. Ultimately, global warming is just a scientific curio until it intersects with public policy. It is for scientists to argue and debate about the truth of the problem; us mere mortals must merely accept what wisdom filters down (though there is undoubtedly a question mark over government funding being directed towards research supporting the status quo). Policy-makers must act on the prevailing scientific evidence, even if there is still some doubt; I can think of at least one government that lost an enormous amount of power and influence because it resisted the prevailing view of science.

What is needed, therefore, is not a public debate on the science, but a public debate on our response to the prevailing evidence. Too much of the environmental policy debate is dominated by socialists and Gaiaists, those who believe that the solution rests in a massive expansion of state power and those who think that man is a blight on the planet. Too often have I heard otherwise rational people peddle the lie that there are too many people on Earth; that we need to reduce the human population to a “sustainable” level. Even more often the solutions offered seem strangely reminiscent of the state-planning consensus of the post-war world.

I believe that we can have a sustainable environment and a tolerable climate, with room for humans and polar bears alike, without giving up our freedom or our right to have children. But if that is to be achieved liberals must wrest control of the debate from the crypto-socialists and enviro-fascists, and offer a liberal alternative. The debate is more urgent than ever.

It ain’t easy, being green

Two interesting articles show just how hard it is to be environmentally friendly, especially if you are trying to ameliorate your carbon footprint by offsetting the carbon you produce.

Carbon offsets are a popular form of conscience-salving, practiced by Oscar-winning environmentalists and vote-seeking political parties alike. Yet the economics of carbon offsetting leaves a lot to be desired.

An article on the Economist blog explains that carbon offsets may have exactly the opposite effect from that desired. On the one hand, by alleviating us of our sense of guilt, we may continue to consume and even expand our consumption of (now offset) carbon-intensive fuels. Even if we do consume less, carbon-intensive power stations tend to have low marginal- and high fixed-costs, so if the reduced demand leads to falling revenues, the power supplier need merely lower prices to stimulate more consumption, thus maintaining profits but at the cost of higher output. Meanwhile, the offsets act as subsidies to low-carbon power producers, enabling them to lower their prices, thus sending out a signal to the consumers that energy is cheap, and thus stimulating more consumption. The result, therefore, is that carbon offsets may actually increase energy use.

Furthermore, wind farms (the most common and so far most successful form of renewable energy) and solar power tend to compete not with coal-fired power stations, those dirty smokestacks that provide us with the base-load that we need to ensure all-round supply, but with cleaner power stations (such as gas-fired) that are more easily switched on and off.

In a separate article, Arnold Kling argues – in what is that rare piece, an article on the environment by an American from the liberal right that does not cast doubt upon the actual fact of climate change – that subsidies to green energy are nothing more than “pork”, rewarding good lobbying or financing investment where politicians think it should go.

Kling also condemns “cap and trade” systems as subsidies to energy firms. In this, he is right in practice though not in theory. The European market is carbon has been undermined by the decision to hand out permits to energy producers rather than selling them on the market. By giving away what is a tradable commodity, European governments effectively handed out a licence to print money.

However, all is not lost. What we have here is not proof that nothing can be done – let alone that nothing should be done – about global warming. Rather, we have a good case study in how governments tend to play into the hands of special interests, and another for how empty gestures are no substitute for real solutions.

Cap and trade systems fail because they are missing one simple element; the correct system is cap, auction and trade. Rather than giving away carbon quotas, governments should sell them in an open market – much as they sell bandwidth to telephone and broadcasting companies. Even non-energy producers may buy them, gambling (but not knowing) that they will be able to sell them on at a profit. Thus government both controls emissions and get a return for the nation’s precious asset (its atmosphere) while the power companies get a working market to provide incentives to environmentalism, while not enjoying vast and unwarranted windfalls.

Even better, governments could abandon the whole quota system and impose a uniform carbon tax. This would require those who emit carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gasses) to pay a pollution charge, which could then be passed on to consumers, thus encouraging energy efficiency. This would provide no subsidies to special interests – even wind-powered ones. They would not be necessary. As the taxes pushed up the price of “dirty” energy, “clean” energy would become economically viable, but the rewards would go not to those energy producers whose lobbyists were most effective, but to whomever was able to produce the cheapest energy after carbon-output was factored into their costs.

So maybe its easy being green after all, as long as we don’t buy piece of mind with a donation to Al Gore.

The Great Global Warming Swindle?

Last night I watched The Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4. It was a very interesting programme, whether or not one believes in anthropomorphic global warming. In essence, it argued that

1) Our climate is always changing. The current change is not out of the ordinary if one considers the Little Ice Age of C16-C18th, or the Medieval Warm Period

2) Man produces only a small amount of carbon dioxide compared with natural causes

3) Changes in carbon dioxide do not precede global warming. They follow global warming

4) If the theory of climate change science is correct, temperatures should be rising more rapidly in the troposphere. This is not the case

5) Global temperatures are dependent on cloud formation, which in turn are seeded by sub-atomic particles from the sun. In periods of high solar activity, such as now, fewer particles reach the earth leading to fewer clouds and therefore more warming

6) Support for global warming science began in the 1980s with an unholy alliance of anti-capitalists and anti-coal Thatcherites; after the death of communism, environmentalism became a useful rack on which to hang otherwise-discredited socialist beliefs

7) Promoting climate change was a great way for climate scientists to leverage money for their research. It has since become a way for any researcher to attract cash. It has spawned a massive industry that is now devoted to protecting its “rents”.

8) The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change is a political body, and its findings are shaped by politics, not science. Of the thousands of scientists listed as contributing, many are not scientific contributors but reviewers and government officials. Other scientists that demurred from the agreed position had their names added to the IPCC’s list of supporting scientists anyway. Sceptical portions of the IPCC’s report were excluded in the final draft

9) The global environmental movement has been radicalised by its own success: once they became mainstream, movements such as Greenpeace could only continue to make headlines and generate revenue by becoming ever more extreme (e.g. their campaign to ban chlorine, an element!).

10) Efforts to convince Third World nations to limit their development to the use of renewable energy sources will retard their economic development and leave them mired in poverty.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten large parts of it, but I think that’s a reasonable précis. Other viewers are welcome to add (or disagree with) bits.

What was interesting was that the programme interviewed many physical and climatic scientists from renowned institutions (including MIT and Harvard), as well as Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder and critic of Greenpeace and now a hate figure for some environmentalists. On the one hand this would appear to undermine the suggestion that only a few kooks and petrophiles still question the “global warming consensus”. On the other hand, at least one blogging colleague has suggested that some of these academics and researchers may not be all that they seem.

Other criticisms include The Independent saying that many of the scientific objections have already been addressed long ago (certainly no.1 is not new), and suggestions that the producer of the programme, Martin Durkin, has in the past used selective editing and misrepresentation to present interviewees’ beliefs in a manner that supports his views (though, to be fair, the people interviewed last night seemed fairly categorical).

Personally, this reminds me of much of the debate that flies around many major issues. It is a debate between scientists, which we poor mortals are obliged to look upon with increasing incomprehension as the debate becomes ever-more arcane. As we have been warned many times, the tyranny of “experts” is one of the most dangerous of all; we need to keep strict democratic control of policy, while trusting neutral and well-informed people to judge the evidence and advise accordingly.

However, if there is one accusation within the programme that is undoubtedly true, it is that those who dissent from the “global warming consensus” are increasingly being treated not as mistaken or even stupid, but as callous or wicked. As liberals we should be open minded to debate. As I have argued elsewhere in other contexts, we need sceptics. If we are correct then they will help sharpen our arguments and iron out any inaccuracies in our theories; if we are wrong they will save us from disaster.

So I welcome Mr. Durkin’s programme (as long as it was not deliberately disingenuous or based on misrepresentation or lies), not because I believe that the “climate consensus” is exaggerated, but because I believe that it is important that people question received wisdom.

Let the debate roar on!

Spoilsports undermine the silent motorbike

Ask people what the two worst things are about road transport and they’ll probably tell you that they are noise and pollution. We have turned our cities into loud, dirty places, spitting climate-changing gasses into the atmosphere while the air below causes respiratory diseases among our children. A few loons derive from this a loathing for modern society and a desire to return to a more Arcadian existence. The saner elements accept this as the grudging price of progress and hope that a combination of moderation (aka. conservation) and innovation can make the future brighter. Or even, brighter still.

So one would have thought that the development of a silent, pollution-free vehicle would be greeted with universal joy. The bicycle is such a device, but is not suitable for all – those with a long commute or no showers at their destination, for example. It is also reviled by drivers and pedestrians alike. But if a motorised vehicle could be made both whisper-quiet and carbon neutral, that would be a miracle of modern science, wouldn’t it?

Apparently, not.

The hydrogen powered motorcycle is now a reality. It is a matter of opinion whether it looks sleek and shiny like a freshly-pressed cyberman, or plastic and boxy like a glorified Sinclair C5, but the designers of the Emissions Neutral Vehicle or ENV bike claim it has the running noise of a PC and produces waste that is drinkable. It’s a miracle of modern science.

Unless you are a killjoy. So when it was launched last year, the killjoys crawled out of the woodwork. The bike, they complained, was too quiet. It will confuse unsuspecting motorists and pedestrians who are – they fear – too stupid to stop and look, as well as listen. So instead it is being suggested that the ENVs be fitted with a false engine noise, a synthesised “vroom” to alert other people that it is comingh.

This has disturbing echoes the Locomotives on the Highway Act that required men with red flags walk in front of every motor car. That piece of meddling legislation was eventually repealed once it was realised that both drivers and other road users could be trusted to use the road responsibly, and a few accidents could not be allowed to stymie progress.

Similarly, adding an unnecessary whine to the silent motorbike would be as counter-productive as adding smoke to the exhaust to make a visible plume. The potential benefits to quality of life from reducing the high levels of noise in busy urban areas is incalculable. The ENV may not itself be the vehicle of the future, but it may prove to be the antecedent of generations of silent, pollution-free vehicles that will transform our cities into cleaner, quieter but still lively places to live.

If you listen very carefully, you can hear the future.

…and what should be done to tackle climate change.

The European Commission has produced another daft and damaging proposal in their efforts to combat climate change. This is regrettable both for the commission’s image and for the climate cause.

My efforts to comment on this have produced an essay, so I am going to post it in three parts, which readers may read from as they will. In Part 1, I explained why I believe that Europe is the right forum in which to address climate change. In Part 2 I looked at Wednesday’s announcement and explained why I feel it is misjudged. I also touched upon the failing of the EU’s existing cap-and-trade system. In this part I will offer a liberal alternative to the authoritarian socialism that has suffused much of the environmentalist debate.

The European Commissions proposal highlights a far broader problem that infuses the climate change debate: that it is a Trojan horse for authoritarianism and socialism. The commission’s plan is a classic example: to save the planet we are to be told how to drive. Other examples are legion: subsidies for favoured industries and technologies (wind power, trains); protectionism (dressed up as reducing “food miles”); rationing (aka. “carbon quotas”); population control (which needs no explanation); over-regulation (housing and vehicle standards). The list could go on. These methods may or may not curb climate change, but in the process they will curtail freedom and condemn millions – perhaps billions – to poverty.

The Left was quick to see the opportunities presented by global warming and environmental degradation, and have moved quickly to occupy the commanding heights of the debate, from where they will once again seek to control the economy and curtail individual freedom. Climate change may be the justification now, but the techniques are the same, and the desires within the rationalist-progressives are also the same, rooted as they are in a belief that a few intelligent people with the time to think it through can create and manage a better society than we all can as individual actors perusing our interests.

So what’s a liberal to do? Nobody wants to fiddle while Rome burns, but neither do we want to place our writs willingly in the state’s shackles and accept the slavery that we fought so long to resist. Fortunately, there is a liberal alternative. In fact, there are two.

The first, and one that appeals most to me, is a carbon tax. Rather than ration supply by issuing quotas, or picking particular egregious sources of emissions and stamping down on them, we set a price for carbon and let the individual decide how much to pay for. After all, there is nothing wrong with a 4x4 emitting exhaust, or with a skier jetting off to Aspen; what is wrong is the global excess of carbon emissions. Reducing the emissions produced by power stations is not an end in itself; the end is reducing all emissions. Focussing on individual types of emission is arbitrary, because it squeezes some more than others, and it also harms us all more than it needs to because uneven economic meddling reduces the efficiency of economic activity, which means less wealth to go round – wealth that may pay for my holiday, your school or a Gambian’s dinner.

A carbon tax, by comparison, allows us all to continue to make the same individual decisions in our own best interests that we have always done, but forces us to bear the cost of our pollution. If I drive inefficiently or fly to Aspen my activity carries a cost; if I fit solar panels to my house or buy a bicycle my carbon-tax bill will fall. It is easy to apply and hard to avoid (it would be like VAT). It would be easy to control emissions: if they are too high, the tax rises, if they are well within tolerable limits, it can be reduced. But most importantly, it would not hand power to state officials who are at best fallible and at worst arrogant, capricious or venal. Neither will it admit the command economy through the back door. At worst, there is a danger that it could simply be used as a new tax to fill the coffers of some grasping finance minister, but any government of principle would seek to make the change revenue neutral, and voters would be able to judge their politicians against their tax burden and the state of the world.

The alternative method, favoured in both Europe and the United States (due to the visceral reaction that the word “tax” engenders) is a “cap and trade” system, whereby companies buy permits to emit and then either use them – and hand the costs onto the carbon-consumer – or trade them on the market. While this has had some serious problems (caused in Europe by allowing national governments to issue too many permits, and by the decision to give them away rather than selling them – a licence to companies to print cash) it still has the merit that it leaves individuals in the position to allocate their resources as they see fit, perhaps by driving a big car (which they may need if they have a big family or a big farm) but never flying, or doing both but buying solar panels, or making any number of choices that would see their overall “carbon footprint” reduced, while allowing them to reduce it in the manner that best suits their needs and their lifestyle.

In a seminal essay, Friedrich Hayek explained that the bipolar view of the world as divided between Left and Right wings is inaccurate, a result of conservatives and socialists associating liberals with the other camp because liberals may share common ground with other groups on certain issues. The environment is a classic example of where liberalism is clearly distinct from the other two creeds.

For socialists, global warming requires interventionist measures, complex planning and more power to the bureaucrats. It provides the excuse that for a decade and a half they have lacked for implementing the policies that until the 1980s they advocated on the grounds of economic efficiency. Conservatives for a long time denied global warming; now their responses are typically authoritarian. Liberals are open to the evidence of global warming, but not to the autocratic solutions that most environmentalists propose. The solution is to encourage and enable individuals to find their own way of reducing the negative impact they have upon the environment, rather than force centralised solutions down from above. For liberals, a world in which we are subject to the state is not much better than one where we are subject to the elements.

…why the European Commission is doing more harm than good…

The European Commission has produced another daft and damaging proposal in their efforts to combat climate change. This is regrettable both for the commission’s image and for the climate cause.

My efforts to comment on this have produced an essay, so I am going to post it in three parts, which readers may read from as they will. In Part 1, I explained why I believe that Europe is the right forum in which to address climate change. In this part I will look at Wednesday’s announcement and explain why I feel it is misjudged. In Part 3 I will offer a liberal alternative to the authoritarian socialism that has suffused much of the environmentalist debate.

I have explained in a previous post (probably to the boredom of many of my readers) why economics compels us to treat carbon pollution as a European phenomenon (efforts to create a world-wide approach having failed). Sadly, European solutions are not promising.

The proposal announced by the commission on Wednesday is aimed at improving the efficiency of our driving. Apparently, we are all driving inefficiently, and this is causing our cars to emit more carbon-laden exhaust than is necessary to get us from A to B. Late gear changes, sloppy breaking, stop/start driving, the speed at which we drive and low tyre pressure make our driving inefficient. Something needs to be done.

In the worst traditions of untrammelled bureaucracy, the solution proposed by Industry Commissioner Günter Verheugen is to micromanage our driving. Manufacturers are to be required to fit new cars with electronic stability control, emergency braking systems and warning lights that tell drivers when to change gear or pump up their tyres. The commission also plan to make it compulsory to use headlights even in broad daylight – a policy that might have some merit on grey days in northern Europe, but which will baffle Spaniards in the blazing sun of June.

The commission is not alone in this sort of enviro-economic engineering. Mayor of London Ken Livingstone is expanding his congestion charge by creating a Low Emissions Zone. Richmond Council is to penalise drivers of “gas guzzling” cars through a graduated price for parking permits. These, too, are blunt tools that unnecessarily obstruct freedom of choice. There is something particularly egregious about the European Commission’s plans, however.

While there is probably some merit in encouraging people to drive more efficiently, doing so in this interfering way is likely to generate anger and derision in equal measure. The car is a symbol of freedom for many, and its operation an art. To have it reduced to a science and guided by a bank of irritating lights on the dashboard is likely to infuriate drivers; rather than improving driving quality, it will simply cause drivers to curse the European Union while sticking black tape over the lights. The danger of flicking lights distracting drivers needs also to be considered – I would prefer drivers near me watched the road rather than the dashboard.

As I will explain in Part 3, there is no reason why efforts to curb carbon emissions need to involve bureaucratic control of the minutiae of decision-making. What matters is the aggregate amount of carbon mankind emits; individual decisions as to the source of those emissions are unimportant.

Ironically, the proper solution to car emissions – as a result of both the quality and the quantity of our driving – is revealed in the Commission’s own case. In response to industry criticism that the new bells and whistles may add up to £2,000 to the price of a new car, the Commission argues that drivers will save more in the long run due to lower fuel bills. If this is true then it is surely in the drivers’ own interests to drive more sensibly, in which case this intervention is not needed.

What is needed is a system that makes polluters aware of and bear the costs of their pollution, but one that does not arbitrarily punish some emissions or emitters over others, instead letting individuals continue to make decisions about how to allocate their resources (including the carbon they are prepared to ‘buy’) as they see fit. In Part 3 I will set out the options.

Why carbon emissions need to be dealt with at a European level…

The European Commission has produced another daft and damaging proposal in their efforts to combat climate change. This is regrettable both for the commission’s image and for the climate cause.

My efforts to comment on this have produced an essay, so I am going to post it in three parts, which readers may read from as they will. In this part, I will explain why I believe that Europe is the right forum in which to address climate change. In Part 2 I will condemn the announcement that was made yesterday. In Part 3 I will offer a liberal alternative to the authoritarian socialism that has suffused much of the environmentalist debate.

Let me be clear about where I stand from the outset. There are things which should be settled at a European level, and there are things which should not. One of those that should is carbon emissions.

Pollution is a classic “free rider” problem. Firstly, pollution is an “externality”, dull econospeak for a cost which an individual (business or person) can place on society while reaping the benefits themselves; I gain from driving my car, whereas the cost of the exhaust is shared equally by all of us. Secondly, reform costs the producer a lot and the benefits are shared across everyone; I give up a lot if I decide to forego the car, but the benefits are spread very thinly across lots of people. Consequently, as Jean Jacques Rousseau pointed out so eloquently in the C18th, the rational choice for the individual is to encourage others to do the right thing while being selfish oneself.

Producing energy from carbon is cheap, because the producer bears only some of the “social cost”, the rest being “externalised” to the wider population through pollution. If we are to curtail pollution, we must make individuals (be they businesses or people) bear the full social cost of what they are doing. However, national governments cannot be trusted to do this, again, due to the free rider problem: restricting activities that generate waste carbon dioxide will reduce short-term and localised economic efficiency, while the benefits are long term and widely distributed. Consequently, it is in any one country’s interests to let others confront climate change while the country in question carries on in the most individually-economically efficient manner; so China may burn coal like there’s no tomorrow, while hoping that the USA joins the EU in sweating about climate change.

The economic principle behind the European Union (not always treated with due respect by its member states) is that no country should seek economic advantage by trading unfairly. This is why we are faced with sometimes baffling European directives: it is only if a German customer knows what a Portuguese manufacturer means when they say “widget”, and what has gone into producing it, that the German customer can make an informed choice as to whether the Portuguese widget is worth buying in comparison to the (perhaps more expensive) German variety. Sometimes this goes too far: if the rules require that everything going into the widget be the same, including (for example) the cost of labour, then the Portuguese lose their competitive advantage and, potentially, if over regulated to the point of uniformity, the whole point of competition is lost. Thus not everything needs to be regulated at a European level.

Carbon emissions are one area where European collaboration is required. No individual nation-state can be relied upon to curb carbon emissions if it requires the government to cut off the nation’s economic nose to spite the world’s polluting face. In truth, as this is a global problem, this probably requires a global solution. The flawed Kyoto protocol aside, however, this remains a pipe-dream – or perhaps a nightmare, if too much universal government is the price that must be paid. However, in the absence of a global solution, a multilateral scheme among some of the world’s largest economy’s, which between them form the largest single economic union in the world, seems like a good place to start.

France (say) will never cut carbon emissions if it fears that Italy (for example) will thumb its nose at such efforts and gain an economic advantage by carrying on as normal. But if enough major economies take a stand, the costs will be spread, the benefits tangible, and other nations may just be shamed into pulling their weight.

Only through working together can climate change really be addressed. Collaboration is essential, but it alone is not sufficient. The right policies are also required.

More heat than light in organic food debate

I wonder whether David Miliband leaked Ruth Kelly’s decision to send her child to a private school as a means of distracting people from the adverse reaction to his interview with the Sunday Times in which he argued that the consumption of organic food was nothing more than a lifestyle choice. If so it would be very “New Labour”, but to be fair I doubt it. He knew exactly what he was doing and will stick by what he said.

I have been kicking myself for not writing about this yesterday, when I had the chance. Today I have been at work and so unable to post, except with a brief intervention on Duncan's and Tristan's sites. Some of what follows incorporates those comments, but I have added further thoughts as well.

To start with, I cannot see why the question of whether organic food it better for the consumer, the environment or the future of farming should be incompatible with its consumption being a lifestyle choice. When I used to go to the gym five times a week (Oh halcyon days!) it was a lifestyle choice even though it was good for me. Similarly, a friend of mine is motivated to compost his own waste (and I do mean his own waste) for environmental reasons, but it is nonetheless a lifestyle choice.

The real controversy about organic food is the wealth of unproven claims made by those who oppose modern farming methods. One of these is that modern farming methods harm the environment more than the organic alternative. In fact, all agriculture damages the environment, if one’s image of the environment is one of natural habitats. Agriculture is inherently unnatural because “unnatural” is a euphemism for things done by man but not other creatures; we destroy “natural” habitat to grow “unnatural” crops that would not exist without our efforts.

However, this “unnatural” process was integral to the birth of civilisation, a process which began in modern-day Iraq and Egypt and has now spread to Brazil. I know some people think that man is just a parasite but most of us want to live in a civilised society. Most of us also want to feed the earth’s 6 billion people, though again I’ve heard a few (some among my own party!) who would like to cull the population of the earth by two thirds.

If we are to feed 6 billion we need to embrace the Green Revolution of the 1960s (that’s “green” because of all the crops in the fields, rather than because it serves a nature goddess). This entails the use of fertilisers and insecticides. Only modern agriculture can sustain the population of our planet; it is this kind of agriculture that has meant that the age of mega-famines in India and China (prevalent until only a couple of generations ago) is over.

Organic production cannot produce the yields necessary to feed the earth at all, let alone at an affordable price. Thus the (Hobson’s) choice is either to plough over more natural habitat – the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that we would need to farm an additional area the size of South America to produce the same amount of food organically as we do now by modern means – or watch billions starve.

In the UK, this is not the case. We are rich enough that we can always afford to pay a premium for produce that is grown by traditional (as opposed to by modern) means. This is a choice – a lifestyle choice. We can pay British farmers a premium so that they produce lower yields by methods that cause less harm to butterflies and song birds. However, if we do reduce the yields of British farmers, we will need to source more food abroad. We then have a mini-version of the Hobson’s choice: do we buy food that is intensively farmed or put more land (in the producing country, rather than our own) under the plough. To put it another way, do we export the use of artificial fertilizers and insecticides, or do we cultivate thousands of acres of foreign land.

The aim of this article is not to criticise those who wish to consume organically produced food. They are welcome to do so, and if they believe they are avoiding as-yet-unproven health hazards then that is a rational choice that they have made. I would not dream of curtailing their freedom to do so any more than I would expect them to curtail my freedom to eat food laden with 30 different chemicals.

The aim is to highlight the fact that many of the claims of the organic food lobby are spurious and probably have more to do with protecting their market share than the health of either their consumers or the environment. Meanwhile, many of those who have swallowed these claims (along with their organically produced tofu burger) react furiously when confronted with the (lack of) evidence. Many of these are in influential positions – as I have noted before, both organo-sceptic and free market arguments receive short shrift from the BBC.

What we need (domestically and globally) is free trade in agriculture (as in all things) and honesty in labelling, advertising and describing products. We also need a balanced debate about this important area of policy. Sadly, there is a lot of nonsense talked about food. David Miliband was right to point that out.

A sportsmanlike attack on the polluter pays principle

The Times is clearly a kind employer that likes to develop its staff, because occasionally it lets specialist columnists loose on its general comments page. So it was on Tuesday when Martin Samuel, “Sports Writer of the Year at both the What the Papers Say awards and the Sports Journalists' Association Awards”, wrote a typically ill-informed piece about waste disposal and the polluter pays principle.

There is a simple logic to his point that he does not ask for his food to be over-packaged or to be inundated with unsolicited mail, and that it is therefore unfair that he should have to pay for unwanted waste. Why it is beyond his wits to return his junk mail to the sender I do not know? If we all sent our junk mail back it would quickly dry up, as the sender would be hit by the cost of disposal and either they or an increasingly-unamused Royal Mail would have to pay for the return postage.

The problem with Mr. Samuel’s basic argument is that he thinks packaging is something that is done to us by supermarkets against our will: “We did not ask for green beans from Zambia to be available 12 months a year, cased in two layers of Cellophane and a black plastic tray.” Perhaps not, but if we did not buy them they wouldn’t be available. The fact that they are suggests there is a market for them; somebody, somewhere is thanking The Lord (or Tesco) that they can make that Green bean tempura they’ve been planning since Boxing Day. The rest of us are thanking whomever we see fit that companies constantly vie to offer us new opportunities – some of which we like and some of which we reject. Mr. Samuel could chose not the buy the green beans if he wanted – just as he could return his unwanted mail – and he would not have to pay to bin the waste, but again that thought seems to have escaped him.

Supermarkets do over-package goods, of course, but they undoubtedly do so for a reason. Having stood next to shoppers who are prepared to spend precious minutes of their lives hunting for the most perfect pepper, I can see why supermarkets want to cushion their wares. More to the point, though, if there is a demand for less packaging, the supermarkets will package less. Next to the GM-free, organic, fair trade, locally produced, low-carb, tuna friendly products will be the low-packaged section. The market, Martin, will provide, but only if there is a demand. Demand will be generated when the polluter pays.

Mr. Samuel has no time for the “Polluter pays” principle, however. The problem, it seems, is that he does not consider himself a polluter – at least, not by choice. Instead, he harks back to a world where wardrobes did not come flat packed but were delivered by men you called “mate”, though more often than not they were actually bought in jumble sales and had a broken leg, because Ikea had yet to drive down the price of new furniture. He longs for local shops (less choice, lower quality) and more people in manufacturing jobs (lower wages, more expensive products).

The polluter pays principle does not “presume that when we wake in the morning we are immediately the bad guys”, but it does recognise that we all have an impact on our environment and that the way to minimise that impact is to make people pay proportionally to the amount of pollution they create. At present, we pay through our taxes so that low-polluting poor people (who buy neither shrink-wrapped green beans nor lots of new furniture) subsidise rich people with houses to furnish and dinner parties to host. Similarly, it would not matter if “Tony Blair’s winter holiday equates approximately to waste pollution from your side of the street for the next 12 months” because Mr. Blair would pay for the pollution from his holiday while your side of the street would pay (individually) for the pollution they created.

Using the price mechanism to ensure that polluters pay for their wastefulness while the conscientious are rewarded with low bills is fair. It is also an effective way of making individuals pressure companies (silently, through a billion tiny purchases). It is a fairly simple but incredibly effective means of solving societies ills in an equitable manner. However, it is economics, which isn’t a subject that I imagine they discuss much over the Sports Desk.

Ideology trumps journalism in BBC debate on “ethical shopping”

You know you’ve touched a raw nerve when everybody attacks you. So Kendra Okonski discovered when she was interviewed on the BBC this morning. The Environment Programme Director at the International Policy Network had been invited to appear to discuss a report in The Economist about the contradictions within the ethical shopping industry.

According to The Economist, organic production is less intensive than production that relies on chemical fertiliser, and so requires more land. Thus a greater reliance on organic production would require turning more of our natural environment into cultivated farmland. Ms. Okonski noted on the BBC that UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimate that to turn the world’s farming over to organic production would require additionally farming an area of natural habitat size of South America.

“Fair Trade” is equally misguided. While it may demonstrate a caring heart that a consumer buys a product at above the market price and transfers the premium to the poor farmer, this is nothing more than a form of charity channelled through the purchase of tea, coffee or some other commodity. Prices are low because of overproduction – there is a glut of coffee on world markets, for example. “Fair Trade” encourages farmers to continue to supply an over-produced commodity where they would be better off shifting to producing different commodities. This further depresses the price, hurting those farmers not receiving the so-called “fair” price.

As for the new fad for locally produced food, as over half the “food miles” added to UK food production are generated by the purchaser, and most people live nearer the supermarket than the farmer’s market, buying locally can actually result in adding more food miles to a product. Furthermore, farming locally is inefficient: it uses less energy to raise lamb in New Zealand and fly it to the UK than to raise it in Britain, because farming in New Zealand is less energy intensive. The fad for local food is actually old-fashioned protectionism masquerading as ethical shopping.

The Economist has always produced articles under its title without naming contributors. Thus we have no idea whether Ms. Okonski contributed to the report. The BBC invited her to comment on the report, however, so one would have expected her to be treated neutrally. Sadly, it was not to be. Both Ms. Okonski and the Economist had clearly hit upon a sensitive subject at Broadcasting House. After her first comment, BBC presenter Susanna Reid flatly contradicted her: “No!” she said, dismissing Ms. Okonski’s opinion, before arguing the counter case. As the BBC had also invited another speaker to put the supposedly ethical case, this was unnecessary; Ms. Reid’s role was to facilitate the debate rather than take sides.

At the close of the item, Ms. Reid was seen to pull what one can only assume was her “What was all that about?” face, before moving on to advertise the following programme, Saturday Kitchen. There, chef James Martin – who was drafted into the programme after the infinitely superior Anthony Worrall Thompson defected to ITV – and his two guests proceeded also to rubbish the evidence and research of international institutions, think tanks and the media. Presuming that neither Mr. Martin nor his fellow chefs have a PhD in Environmental Science or several years experience in a research institute, one can only assume that they were pontificating about something of which they knew nothing.

If consumers are to make choices that are really environmentally conscious and serve the interests of the world’s poor, they need to be better informed. This requires serious debate. Sadly, serious debate is difficult on the BBC when the ill-informed but nonetheless entrenched opinions of its staff are challenged. Universal condemnation often confronts those who make unorthodox and challenging suggestions. The more roundly these new ideas are condemned, the more carefully they should be examined.