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Climate change policies

Degrowth or some such similar conservation of all resources is the key, it is completely at odds with most of capitalism/economics that values growth over everything. And a radical shake up of transport and housing. Then it's all golden
 
I had a brief look at it a while back. Aside from the perfectly good takedown of the current economic order, there appeared to be almost nothing in terms of actual economics there.
Maybe it's mostly an attempt to get some kind of ball rolling.
What sort of "actual economics" do you think needs to be added to it?
 
Reduce private car use ?

Walking or cycling - not really practical, even with greatly reduced traffic, roads are not safe.

OK, somewhere to cheaply charge an electric car and it would need a decent range.
[Many of my business trips can be several hundred miles ... not frequent ones, I admit, but still have to do them - I can't prod a piece of wood to feel if it is rotten by remote means]

Or, decent access to proper public transport.
And, enough space etc on that transport to be safe - especially from Covid !
 
What sort of "actual economics" do you think needs to be added to it?

Any.

Like I said, it was a fairly brief look but please point out any I have missed.
What I saw was a proposed re-framing of priorities, which is nice, and some good descriptions of both the human shortfalls of the current setup and also how it fails on its own terms, which was all good.
 
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Reduce Carbon Footprint says the bbc. Carbon footprint is a marketing con. From oil companies.

That as maybe, but it is a shorthand term within a far more complex problem.

If it helps the general public & government / officialdom understand the problem, to devise ways and means to solve the climate emergency plus actually actively doing something towards the solution(s) ...

Then I'm all for it !
 
That as maybe, but it is a shorthand term within a far more complex problem.

If it helps the general public & government / officialdom understand the problem, to devise ways and means to solve the climate emergency plus actually actively doing something towards the solution(s) ...

Then I'm all for it !
It certainly helps Governments and the people who own them to offload the problem...
 
It certainly helps Governments and the people who own them to offload the problem...

Quite agree !

Initially there was far too much denial that there was even a problem.
Then too much shillly-shallying about what to do, [looking at 7rump here]
And despite the Paris Agreement in 2015, far too little has been done at the government level.
[Russia, China and India, for example are doing nowhere near enough to rein in their use of fossil fuels.]

It makes me quite depressed to realise that so many people, especially those who could be are in a position to help solve the climate emergency are doing the "head in the sand" & "I'm all right, Jack" manoeuvres ...
 
Just to speak to that, I've seen it mentioned in a few places, and recently here:

"In 2004, the advertising company Ogilvy & Mather, working for the oil giant BP, took this blame-shifting a step further by inventing the personal carbon footprint. It was a useful innovation, but it also had the effect of diverting political pressure from the producers of fossil fuels to consumers. The oil companies didn’t stop there. The most extreme example I’ve seen was a 2019 speech by the chief executive of the oil company Shell, Ben van Beurden. He instructed us to “eat seasonally and recycle more”, and publicly berated his chauffeur for buying a punnet of strawberries in January."

 
Doesn't work.

Still on IE? :D
Give Wikipedia a go....

What I am saying is that the book, as far as I can see, is offering a framework for asking certain kinds of questions, esp. in terms of development planning, because current priorities are not in line with either immediate or long-term human wellbeing, and from what I have seen, that bit is done well.

What it doesn't seem to do is answer any questions about what any of this would look like. I'm not sure whether it is actually trying to (Wikipedia's entry on it suggests that it is not), but if not then the title and blurb strike me as a little dishonest. Saying that economics is broken (however well you say it), and saying what you would prefer economics to prioritise, isn't in itself a new kind of economics.

Now, I'm not an economist either, but I'm familiar with what economics discussions broadly look like. For example, Raworth talks about growth not being a prime driver for established economies, but remaining necessary for developing economies, yet there are no mentions on the controls on capital movement necessary to achieve such a state of affairs in this kind of two-tier setup <is cross-boundary trading of shares and derivatives allowed to happen?>. It seems to skip over the Government controls on resource use that would seem necessary in more developed (non-growth) regions too. I'm also not clear on whether strongly negative interest rates would be necessary in order to afford to, say, buy a house in one of the richer countries once the previous problems have presumably been solved, and who could be expected to grant a loan in such a case, and whether further levers would be used to destroy the resultant money released into the economy etc. (if thinking in terms of 'steady state' type economic theory, and I'm unclear on whether that is the idea either).

Even very basic things like how prices are set seem to be glossed over. I'm not sure whether it means we should assume that things generally stay as they are if something is not mentioned.

Etc.

But I haven't read all of it, like I said, so happy to be corrected. I looked at some videos where the author talks about the subject and haven't found anything to change my impression.
 
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Still on IE? :D
Give Wikipedia a go....

What I am saying is that the book, as far as I can see, is offering a framework for asking certain kinds of questions, esp. in terms of development planning, because current priorities are not in line with either immediate or long-term human wellbeing, and from what I have seen, that bit is done well.

What it doesn't seem to do is answer any questions about what any of this would look like. I'm not sure whether it is actually trying to (Wikipedia's entry on it suggests that it is not), but if not then the title and blurb strike me as a little dishonest. Saying that economics is broken (however well you say it), and saying what you would prefer economics to prioritise, isn't in itself a new kind of economics.

Now, I'm not an economist either, but I'm familiar with what economics discussions broadly look like. For example, Raworth talks about growth not being a prime driver for established economies, but remaining necessary for developing economies, yet there are no mentions on the controls on capital movement necessary to achieve such a state of affairs in this kind of two-tier setup <is cross-boundary trading of shares and derivatives allowed to happen?>. It seems to skip over the Government controls on resource use that would seem necessary in more developed (non-growth) regions too. I'm also not clear on whether strongly negative interest rates would be necessary in order to afford to, say, buy a house in one of the richer countries once the previous problems have presumably been solved, and who could be expected to grant a loan in such a case, and whether further levers would be used to destroy the resultant money released into the economy etc. (if thinking in terms of 'steady state' type economic theory, and I'm unclear on whether that is the idea either).

Even very basic things like how prices are set seem to be glossed over. I'm not sure whether it means we should assume that things generally stay as they are if something is not mentioned.

Etc.

But I haven't read all of it, like I said, so happy to be corrected. I looked at some videos where the author talks about the subject and haven't found anything to change my impression.
Thanks for the detailed answer. I've got to finish it myself actually. If it contained the detail you're looking for then it'd probably be 10 times longer and as you said earlier, that's probably not the point. It's more - at a high level here's how you think about things differently in terms of economics. I also agree that it's a great takedown of the current orthodoxy.
 
Tax the rich and throw money at alleviating as much as we can as quickly as we can. $Trillions, whatever it takes. Incentives here, help there.

Would be interesting to know how much wealth that would liberate in reality.

Regardless, I lean more towards a much greater proportion of the spoils going
directly to workers as opposed to taxing the rich and trusting Governments to equitably distribute things later.

Those workers will still be taxed, so it’s still more funds in the pot.
 
Just to speak to that, I've seen it mentioned in a few places, and recently here:

"In 2004, the advertising company Ogilvy & Mather, working for the oil giant BP, took this blame-shifting a step further by inventing the personal carbon footprint. It was a useful innovation, but it also had the effect of diverting political pressure from the producers of fossil fuels to consumers. The oil companies didn’t stop there. The most extreme example I’ve seen was a 2019 speech by the chief executive of the oil company Shell, Ben van Beurden. He instructed us to “eat seasonally and recycle more”, and publicly berated his chauffeur for buying a punnet of strawberries in January."

Just read this in the rag " our survival depends on disobedience".
 
I'd like to see a proper public education campaign on cars idling. Idling already breaks the law, but I think few know that, and fewer still know why. It's a small element of even the transport footprint, let alone the whole country, yet it'd help engender that "every little helps" mentality we're going to need.
 
Not just cars, but buses, waggons and railway locomotives all contribute to the pollution from this "idling" problem.

I must admit that a few years ago various railway depots had problems with certain locos, if they were stopped to appease the neighbours, getting them to restart on demand was, shall we say, a bit difficult ! I think it was Bescot that had several locos coupled together shunting around the yard - which wasn't that bad an idea, as it stopped the points freezing ...
 
I'd like to see a proper public education campaign on cars idling. Idling already breaks the law, but I think few know that, and fewer still know why. It's a small element of even the transport footprint, let alone the whole country, yet it'd help engender that "every little helps" mentality we're going to need.

Honestly I think were at the stage where nearly all private cars need very quickly phasing out. Alongside a massive investment in public transport infrastructure, subsidized bus and rail tickets (inc. free passes for students, the unemployed, etc.), community car clubs, free bike schemes, home working, etc. And yes some exceptions for rural usage, people with special needs, those that have to have one for work, etc. but generally 95% or so of private car ownership needs to go.

I mean never going to happen, but think it needs to and should. (It would also not take that long for the benefits to involve lessening of some chronic health issues and the burden of them on the NHS.) And imagine the example it would set to the 'developing world' in terms of 'sacrifice' we're making. It would also show that it's best for some of them to entirely skip the car culture private ownership stage of development and go straight to (or stay with) the mass free/cheap public transport, similar to how much of the world jumped from no phone to mobiles without the wired phone network we had for decades.
 
Cars will be around for the forseeable, in any event are they the biggest polluter? Electric cars just shuffle the problem from one area to another.
What's the biggest issue; cruise liners, private mega yachts, private jets and or helicopters, space tourists, delivery vehicles?
 
Cars will be around for the forseeable, in any event are they the biggest polluter? Electric cars just shuffle the problem from one area to another.
What's the biggest issue; cruise liners, private mega yachts, private jets and or helicopters, space tourists, delivery vehicles?
None of them.
If you are talking about a serious reduction in carbon emissions.
In 2014, electricity generation produced 44% of them ...


ClCh - or Capture ? par StoneRoad2013, on ipernity

For the past few years I've been picking up snippets of general information about the subject of climate change - and COP26 brought a lot of graphics out of the woodwork. I've grabbed a few to study. The above was just one of around 50 that I've found to be the most interesting.
 
I mean never going to happen, but think it needs to and should.
This is why I aimed relatively low with the anti-idling idea. This is something I can see the current government getting behind, although some there might dismiss it as too big state. The only negative that some may perceive is that keeping the engine running prevents the car getting cold whilst waiting. I believe this theory has been well and truly debunked for all the most common lengths of time spent waiting in a car, that is, under half an hour.

Otherwise the driver saves money on fuel, they themselves breath cleaner air, and so do all those around the vehicle.
 
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