Green New Deals (Jonathon Porritt)

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Green New Deals

Green 'New Deals' would appear to be breaking out all over. In response to the global financial crisis, governments have thrown all their remaining ideological scruples to one side in going for great big dollops of public money, over-riding market forces, picking 'winners', and doing it 'big' rather than via the pathetic drip-feed processes we have seen over the last decade.

The race is really on. And one intriguing aspect is all about jockeying for competitive position in the multi-trillion dollar environmental industries that are materialising on the horizon.

Heading up the field is, of course, the Obama ‘big bang’. $888 billion in all, of which around $150 billion could be said be genuinely green or sustainable. Over the longer term, the US President is talking about $150 billion just for clean energy and energy efficiency over 10 years – with the "double dividend" of up to 5 million jobs. And Obama didn’t beat around the bush in getting Congress to accept all this: "We don’t want the US to lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world." Not to be outdone here, Yuta Okazaki, Japan’s Environment Minister put it as follows: "If Japan does not start this kind of New Deal, we lose our chance to export our environment-friendly goods to other countries." Japan wants to see its environmental technologies sector grow to more than $1 trillion over the next five years, creating 800,000 new jobs in the process.

Elsewhere, South Korea has pledged $38 billion for new transportation and energy networks (creating one million news jobs); France and Germany are weighing in with mega-packages of their own, as are Denmark, Spain and Australia. The EU has its own programme, and the World Bank is creating a new fund of at least $10 billion. And China has ambitions to outspend the lot of them many times over.

So where does that leave the UK? Right now, it leaves us looking somewhat inadequate. In the Pre-Budget Report (when £12.5 billion was given away on VAT), Alistair Darling announced around £3 billion on 'brought-forward' investment, £500 million of which carries some kind of green tag, and about £150 million of which could be seen as new money.

The global sum the Treasury prefers to talk about is the £50 billion of net investment in the low carbon economy that was outlined in the Comprehensive Spending Review – both private and public sector spend on all sorts of things for the period of time between 2008 and 2011. Frankly, this is pretty hard to pin down and includes everything that it already happening anyway on renewable energy, energy efficiency schemes, public transport and so on. So it doesn’t really count as a stimulus package.

So the debate is joined: what should the scale of a UK green recovery package be?
Gordon Brown’s speech in Davos a couple of weeks ago mapped out the territory, but not the scale of involvement:

"So we cannot afford to relegate climate change to the international
pending tray because of our current economic difficulties. Instead, we
must use the imperative of building a low-carbon economy as a route to
creating growth and jobs, the path that will see us through the current
downturn

And already, together, we have begun the long walk down that road. In
the EU's economic recovery plan, in President Obama’s "Green Jobs"
package, in the stimulus packages of China, Japan, Australia, South
Korea, France, Germany, Spain and Denmark, and in my own
Government’s forthcoming Green Industrial Strategy, the contours of a resilient, low-carbon recovery are becoming clear."

As the Environmental Industries Commission has pointed out in its excellent paper, Peter Mandelson at BERR has got to get his head around the new competition going on out there. Our already somewhat fragile and seemingly unloved green industries could find their competitive position totally undermined as governments the world over pile in billions of dollars in good old-fashioned subsidy programmes.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on February 20, 2009 3:21 PM | Permalink

Comments (15)

I wish someone would tell me why there is an imperative to build a low-carbon economy. There is plenty of fossil fuel around (and nuclear) and there is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide causes significant change to the climate. In fact carbon dioxide is good for plants and hence it is good for animals and the general environment.

The myth of carbon dioxide and global warming is a gigantic political scam based on faulty computer models.

Posted by Phillip Bratby | February 20, 2009 4:50 PM

I fear that in the UK we will miss the opportunity to be truly globally competitive in the emerging green industrial sector. We have fortunate (?) to be a nation with plentiful wind and a history of innovation but political rhetoric will divert our energies whilst others steal a march.

Posted by David Connor | February 20, 2009 4:54 PM

'I wish someone would tell me why there is an imperative to build a low-carbon economy.' (Phillip Bratby)

How about boosting resource efficiency and therefore profitability? And then there is building up our energy security and creating many thousands of jobs in innovative indistries just when they are needed...

Posted by Glenn Vowles | February 20, 2009 5:48 PM

"with the "double dividend" of up to 5 million jobs."

Please, please, please, could you get this straight?

The creation of jobs is a cost of such schemes, not a benefit.

If you're going to have a job advising the government on matters economic could you, please, at the very minimum take the time to bone up on one of the most basic points about economics?

Jobs are a cost, not a benefit.

Posted by Tim Worstall | February 22, 2009 5:20 PM

Further to Phillip Bratby's comment, The political efforts relating to "green" energy are merely a scam. Politicians no more believe in human-made global warming than the majority of the world's population. As Philip says, its a SCAM. I posted the following on Mark Lynas's blog "A new green era is already unfolding".

Over three times as much fossil fuel is stored as methane clathrate as of coal, oil and natural gas combined. This will become the major source of energy for powering economic growth in the 21st century. Countries world-wide (especially China, Japan and India in Asia, Canada and USA in North America and Germany and Russia in European) are keenly interested in developing economic methane extraction technologies. Scientists are developing methods for replacing the methane in ocean sediment and permafrost clathrate deposits with CO2 obtained from fossil fuel exhaust gases.

Five times as much CO2 is stored in clathrate as is released as methane and the resulting CO2 clathrate is more stable. China and India expect to be able to begin the systematic mining of methane hydrate within the next decade.

Environmentalists are being placated through these world-wide developments being camouflaged behind the myth of human-made global climate change using the pretext of developing technologies for sequestering CO2 from fossil fuel exhaust. By the time it becomes obvious that the emission of CO2 through the burning of fossil fuel has negligible impact upon global climates, the extraction technologies will be fully developed and proven for economic use.

The political propaganda supporting the developments makes it sound almost too good to be true – meeting commitments to reduce human-made global warming by removing that polluting greenhouse gas at the same time as removing a potential time-bomb from the oceans and simultaneously providing secure fuel supplies. Everyone’s a winner!! – until the politicians and other vested interest groups promote the scare that we are removing too much CO2 and the globe is being precipitated into a catastrophic ice age that will leave the earth like another Mars. That will provide them with another money-raising scam.

Regards, Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Warming Agnostic

Posted by Pete Ridley | February 24, 2009 9:16 PM

Unfortunately I don't think those deals are neither New nor Green. I don't think deals to fix the economy back into unsustainable growth can be called Green.

Posted by Gunnar Rundgren | February 25, 2009 2:04 PM

Tim Worstall, thinking in economic terms,employment is a cost,but in human terms it is a benefit,given that we have a monetised society. Is "the economy",(or economics)for people, or are people for the economy? I would suggest that capitalist economists think that people (the more the better) are good for "the economy".

Having to work for money means that they compete with one another for work, and therefore work for less, thus producing profits; and also produce the excuse for the economic growth which has devastated that environment which, alone, keeps us alive. Looking at the world through a physical and environmental lens, into which everything else will fit,(and in fact HAS to fit), capitalist economics is a dysfunctional human construct, and can be, and needs to be changed.

"No growth" economics can be developed instead, and the human population reduced to one in balance with other life forms, which the earth can support, about one third of the present six to seven billion.

Posted by Cecily Smith | February 25, 2009 10:00 PM

Dear readers, at some stage Cecily (Smith) is going to realise that she is living in a dream world thinking that anything other than a very small minority of the world's population will come round to her way of thinking. Most of us aspire to improve things for ourselves and our loved ones and have no intention of depriving ourselves for the sake of the more privileged in society. Economic growth is essential for those of us who have little of anything. There are many more of the deprived than there are of the privileged (and wasteful) and they have to be placated in order for the privileged to survive. Why she believes "that capitalist economists think that people (the more the better) are good for "the economy" is a mystery to me. People came first with economics developing because it is beneficial to humans. It makes life better for people. If it didn't it would not exist. The world's population has not increased because of economics but because people have learned not only how to survive but how to flourish. There will probably come a time when this is not the case but it won't be as a result of someone like Cecily or Jonathan Porritt declaring that a limit must be imposed upon how many offspring we can have.

As far as Obama talking about "clean energy", this is a smoke screen. What he is really after (apart from environmentalist votes and collecting taxes) is to reduce the USA's dependence on foreign oil. He said precisely this in his latest speech to congress. Keep an eye on what he does rather than listening to what he says. He is a politician after all.

On the issue of climate change, one of the major complaints that scientists who are sceptical the use of fossil fuels causing significant global warming hence changes to the global climates is that the supporters of that hypothesis refuse to enter into open debate with them. The impression is given that the supporters will do everything possible to suppress any counter arguments. This is borne out by the actions of Jonathan Porritt's other environmentalist organisation, Forum for the Future.

On 30th January 2009, Fiona Dowson, Public Sector published on their blog an article entitled "Saving more than our bacon" covering the NHS's proposal "about whether meat-free hospital menus had a place in its carbon reduction strategy" and invited comments. A couple of supportive submissions were published and I followed up with my own sceptical offering (extracts copied direct from their blog):-

QUOTE: Sat, 07/02/2009 - 12:53 — Pete Ridley (not verified) NHS Reduces Expenditure, not Carbon
.. on .. another .. blog .. Tony commented "I’ve just been reading this nonsense from .. the Guardian article on the NHS proposal .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jan/26/hospitals-nhs-meat-carbon)."
The most relevant words in the Guardian article .. is "Dr David Pencheon, director of the NHS sustainable development unit, said the .. NHS .. had to act to make cuts, and the changes would save money ..". According to the article Pencheon and the NHS chief executive, David Nicholson, on 27th January published the NHS strategy "Saving Carbon, Improving Health". A more honest title would be "Saving Money, under the pretext of Improving Climate".
As is to be expected, the Guardian distorts the facts (just as Mark, Jonathan and other devout environmentalists do). It falsely states ".. carbon dioxide, the biggest greenhouse gas ..". ..
In my comment of 17 January on Forum for the Future "Third runway turning point" post I said "the Government continues to 'make it absolutely clear' that it does not accept the myth of significant human-made global climate change through the use of fossil fuels". .. reply UNQUOTE

I then posted this:-

QUOTE: Mon, 09/02/2009 - 21:03 — Pete Ridley (not verified) Human-made Global Warming Myth
Dear readers, I was astounded to hear .. senior UK minister having the guts to admit that human-made global warming is a myth. Northern Ireland's .. Sammy Wilson blocked .. advertisement campaign on climate change .. he quite rightly .. acknowledged that the adverts were part of an "insidious propaganda campaign", saying he had no intention of supporting "New Labour propaganda". ... Well done Sammy Wilson.
Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Warming Agnostic. reply UNQUOTE

Both of my submissions were subsequently removed from the Forum for the Future blog some time after 15th Feb. Was this unusual step taken because of their fear of open debate? As I recently posted to Mark Lynas's blog " Fortunately it’s hard to remove all of the evidence from the Internet. You can see my two full posts on http://72.30.186.56/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=pete+ridley+climate+agnostic&fr=yhs-avg&u=www.forumforthefuture.org/blog/saving-more-than-our-bacon%3F&w=pete+ridley+climate+climates+agnostic&d=aaNIMw-YST4I&icp=1&.intl=uk" and even if the Forum for the Future manages to get this one removed, there's more than one cached copy out there.

Maybe I'm mistaken about the apparent reluctance to debate with agnostics, but I need some evidence of this. I've challenged both Jonathan and Mark to respond to my direct challenges without any success.

Regards, Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Warming Agnostic

Posted by Pete Ridley | February 26, 2009 11:08 PM

Dear readers, in a submission of mine on 26th I unfairly claimed that Jonathan had ignored a submission of mine on his 3rd Runway blog. His blog manager tells me that I did not submit to Jonathan, but to his charity Forum for the Future's blog and they had initially posted it but then removed it. They obviously hate to have any challenge to their own beliefs. I have now submitted the same comment to Jonathan's 3rd Runway blog if you are interested in seeing it.

As I said previously, supporters of the hypothesis that using fossil fuels causes significant human-made climate change refuse to enter into open debate with the sceptical scientists. Here are further examples of that.

1) On 14/10/08 I E-mailed a challenge to Jonathan Porritt via his environmentalist organisation, Forum for the Future. It read as follows QUOTE: Jonathon, Having been introduced to your book "Playing Safe - Science and the Environment" , which I have read very carefully, I was astounded at what apears to me to be merely scare-mongering propaganda. I invite you to respond to the challenge in the attached E-mail. UNQUOTE

I attached a detailed (20 page) scientific paper by Dr John Nicol in June 2008 which included the conclusion that QUOTE: The above analysis … shows that the actual level of GHGs in the atmosphere…is almost of no consequence in determining the increase in surface temperature from the Greenhouse effect.…In summary, small quantities of radiation from excited Greenhouse gases …. provide direct feed back of heat towards the earth…The proportion of this free radiation…. will be independent of … the concentration of a given Greenhouse gas". UNQUOTE

The challenge was for someone to put their alternative analysis on record, showing clearly where and how it was considered that Dr Nicol had erred. NO RESPONSE!

2) On 21/10/08 I again E-mailed Jonathan via Forum for the Future. It read as follows QUOTE: Please find attached a draft paper on the subject which I would like you to take a look at if you have time. It makes significant references to yourself which you may wish to have corrected. I propose to submit this for publication but also wonder if it would be worthwhile debating within the Forum for the Future's Masters course. Having read two of the booklets being used as an introduction to the course this year, which I find to be highly biased, I believe that it would be useful for the students to consider the arguments of the anthropogenic climate change agnostics like myself. UNQUOTE

This challenge was again completely ignored by both Jonathan and his charity. Jonathan did not even acknowledge my E-mail and my paper "Politicization of Climate Change & CO2" was ignored. The Forum for the Future wasn't even prepared to have it debated by their Masters students, obviously fearful of opening their eyes to the sound arguments from sceptics!

The final version of the paper that I had attached is available on the Climate Science Coalition Web-site at:- http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=374&Itemid=1

Regards, Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Warming Agnostic

PS: It was recently reported from the Fens that the trunks of oak trees which grew there thousands of years ago following the last ice age are being exposed as the land dries out. The oaks were killed off as the sea level increased due to the rising temperatures and caused flooding of the land. The land is now drying out again, which must mean that the sea level is falling once again, contrary to what the global warming scare-mongers are suggesting. PR.

Posted by Pete Ridley | February 28, 2009 9:09 PM

Pete Ridley (or should that be Leo Tolstoy?) - how can we achieve continuous economic growth on a finite planet??

Posted by Glenn Vowles | March 3, 2009 4:56 PM

Glen, did I say or imply anywhere that we could "achieve continuous economic growth on a finite planet". I fully appreciate that there is an ultimate limit, but we are nowhere near it yet. regards, Pete Ridley.

Posted by Pete Ridley | March 4, 2009 6:33 PM

Dear Glen, you'll be delighted to know that our "we saved the world" leader Gordon Brown agrees with me. In his "partnership for prosperity" (seen by many as the UK begging bowl) speech to the two houses in the US he confirmed this by saying "Over the next two decades billions of people in other continents will move from being simply producers of their good to being consumers of our goods and in this way our world economy will double in size. Twice as many opportunities for business, twice as much prosperity and the biggest expansion of middle class incomes and jobs the world has ever seen".

What he omitted to say, lest he might lose a few environmentalist votes, was that this doubled world economy would be powered by fossil fuels (e.g. in the form of natural gas from seabed and permafrost deposits). He did try to appease the environmentalists (he needs those votes) with appeals for action on climate change, which he is fully aware is pure hot air, since humans have negligible impact upon global climates.

Keep smiling, regards, Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Warming Agnostic

Posted by Pete Ridley | March 5, 2009 8:25 PM

Dear readers, you may be interested in seeing my comments on Jonathan's "Sustainable Population" blog about the Climate Change Convention in Copenhagen and the myth about significant sea level rises.

Regards. Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Warming Agnostic.

Posted by Pete Ridley | March 11, 2009 6:19 PM

In December, 2006, we received news that an inhabited island off the coast of Bangla Desh had been inundated, and that the inhabitants had moved to another island, which had, itself, already lost a considerable area. That is significant to them, and the host population, if not to Pete Ridley.

Posted by Cecily Smith | March 21, 2009 8:06 AM

Cecily, there are plenty stories around like this one that are used by environmentalists, etc. as part of their propaganda about human-made global warming, but facts are distorted. On 10th March BBC Environment Correspondent David Shuckman had interviews that with a couple of Professors at the opening of the Climate Change Convention in Copenhagen. He asked one lady a question to which many of us are awaiting a convincing answer. "How do you account for the fact that the Hadleigh Centre's data analysis shows that global temperatures have been falling for the past 11 years instead of rising along with the claimed increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide?" Unable to give a straight answer, she responded "you have to look at the rising ocean temperatures". The BBC then showed an interview with Professor Konrad Steffen making predictions of sea level rising between 0.9 and 1.2 metres by the end of the century. The climax was the expected environmentalist question "What will it be like when sea levels rise as predicted"? implying devastation for the Netherlands, East Anglia, Tuvalu (Note 2), The Maldives (Note 3), etc. etc. etc.

I have done some research into the formation and development of those beautiful Pacific islands. Surprise, surprise, these are of volcanic origin, only rise to a few metres above sea level and have a tendency to sink when the volcanic activity subsides.

Emeritus Professor Nils-Axel Mörner Head of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden President, (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, Leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project claims to know more than most when it comes to sea level changes. He is reported as saying "I am a sea-level specialist. There are many good sea-level people in the world, but let's put it this way: There's no one who's beaten me. I took my thesis in 1969, devoted to a large extent to the sea-level problem. From then on I have launched most of the new theories, in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. I was the one who understood the problem of the gravitational potential surface, the theory that it changes with time. I'm the one who studied the rotation of the Earth, how it affected the redistribution of the oceans' masses. And so on".

In 2005 he submitted a memorandum to the UK's Select Committee on Economic Affairs which is well worth a read. It includes the following statements:
QUOTE It is true that sea level rose in the order of 10-11 cm from 1850 to 1940 as a function of Solar variability and related changes in global temperature and glacial volume. From 1940 to 1970, it stopped rising, maybe even fell a little. In the last 10-15 years, we see no true signs of any rise or, especially, accelerating rise (as claimed by IPCC), only a variability around zero. ..

From 2000 to the present, we have run a special international sea level project in the Maldives including six field sessions and numerous radiocarbon dates. Our record for the last 1,200 years is given in Fig 6. There are no signs of any on-going sea level rise. It seems all to be a myth. ..

Tuvalu in the Pacific is often said already to be in the flooding mode. The tide-gauge record (Fig 7) for the last 25 years does not show any rise, however. The truth seems to be that a Japanese pineapple industry had subtracted too much freshwater by that forcing saltwater to invade the subsurface.

Most remarkable in the record of climatic changes during the last 600 years are the cold periods around 1450, 1690 and 1815 and their correlation with periods of Solar Minima (the Spörer, Maunder and Dalton Solar Minima). The driving cyclic solar forces can easily be extrapolated into the future. This would call for a new cold period or "Little Ice Age" to occur at around 2040-50. Still, we hear nothing about this. It is as if IPCC and the Kyoto Protocol enthusiasts want to "switch off the Sun itself".
UNQUOTE

I expect that you environmentalists will come back with "Oh, yes, but he's been paid by the energy industry to tell these lies". Of course, as global temperatures continue falling (as they have done for the past 11 years) the politicians will claim that it's due to the lower CO2 levels that they have achieved through their "Carbon Taxes". When the next "Little Ice Age" hits us (around 2050) the new politicians will bring in taxes to encourage us to start using more fossil fuels. I'm sure that the new generation of environmentalists will be fully behind this initiative.

Regards, Pete Ridley, Human-made Global Warming Agnostic

Posted by Pete Ridley | March 23, 2009 8:17 PM

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