"Read my lips: there is no shortage of landfill sites. There is a shortage of landfill capacity, which is a wholly different thing. And that is entirely because of the EU's landfill directive which imposes severe constraints on the use of landfill as a waste disposal option.
We actually dealt with this issue in an earlier piece, where we relied on another blogger who had done the maths, demonstrating unequivocally that landfill sites are actually being generated faster than we could fill them.
That lack of knowledge also pervades the rest of his story. He writes uncritically of the government being "so confident that anaerobic digesters offer a realistic means of dealing with food waste that earlier this year it offered £10 million in grants to encourage the construction of further demonstrator plants. Plans for at least 60 are under way in Britain."
This we dealt with in a story last January when I set out a dire tale about how private enterprises had embraced anaerobic digesters as an admirable solution to organic waste disposal, only to have the economics of their systems wrecked by the dead hand of the Environment Agency.
The EA insisted on classifying these systems as "scheduled processes" – under an EU directive – and then charging exorbitant "authorisation" and "subsistence" fees which, with the stultifying and time-consuming bureaucracy involved, ensured that few digesters were installed. Those that were quickly became disused simply because, under the burden of regulation, they were too expensive to operate.
So, now that the government has effectively priced the system out of the market, it is offering public money – our money – to encourage the use of a well-tried and working technology that it, itself, has hamstrung."
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I was an anaerobic digester once...
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Are cities limited?
The recent instalment (PDF) of the Policy Exchange 'Cities Unlimited' series has provoked quite a reaction. There has been predictable fury from Northerners who don't take kindly to being told that we should accept their cities' decline. Southerners don't exactly see further expansion of the towns in their densely populated region as much of a reward for their economic success. Some of them rather dislike the idea of a deluge of Northerners. Those two reactions left little doubt about what the political response would be and sure enough both Conservative and Labour politicians have condemned the report in colourful terms.
Cities Unlimited deserves a more thoughtful reception. None of the 'rebuttals' offered by various politicians and commentators really stand up to scrutiny.
Some cite new investments as a sign that cities are regenerating. If they read the report they would see that the central case the authors are making is that investments haven't translated into lasting economic progress. An example they cite is the billions of pounds of Nissan investment in Sunderland. Citing more investments without showing those translating into increased prosperity, best measured through value added per person is pretty meaningless. All you're doing is strengthening the report's case that the cities have received substantial investment but failed to translate that into sustained greater incomes.
Others have pointed to an improving employment record in some areas, which creates more questions for the apologists for recent Northern economic performance than it answers. Why has a strong employment record not translated into higher incomes? An obvious answer would be that the employment is all being created in low value occupations, perhaps because the workforce in these cities doesn't contain enough high skilled workers. Unemployment figures are also easily distorted by the switch to incapacity benefit and employment figures by large scale immigration.
Challenging the report by arguing that regeneration policy has been a brilliant success isn't going to work. The empirical case in the report is solid. We've been spending a fortune for years and the income gap between the regions is expanding rather than contracting. There isn't really any way of talking around that.
To put all this in perspective, there is another case of a region that, over more than fifty years, failed to catch up with a richer rival's 25% greater income per head, with the gap actually widening to 27%. Eddie Hunt in 1986 studied historical pay for agricultural workers in different parts of Britain (the study is behind the academic firewall, I'm afraid). Agricultural pay isn't a perfect proxy but should give us a reasonable idea of general incomes in those areas as agriculture had to match levels of pay in other industries in order to attract workers. In 1976-1770 Buckinghamshire was 23% richer than Lancashire. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, by 1794-1795, Lancashire overtook its Southern rival and between 1833 -1845 and 1898 the gap in incomes between poor Buckinghamshire and rich Lancashire actually rose by 4 s. 2 d.
Clearly something has changed the economic fortunes of the two counties not once, but twice. It certainly wasn't regeneration spending. First, Buckinghamshire lost its old lead with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and Lancashire was richer for the best part of two hundred years. After that, we know that Buckinghamshire joined in the success of the South East of England in the twentieth century while Lancashire became one of the poorer areas whose problems Cities Unlimited is addressing.
The report puts those changes down to economic geography. The period of Lancashire's success coincided with the importance particularly of coal and ports that could bring in cotton. Buckinghamshire now does well thanks to, particularly, its proximity to London.
The report establishes pretty conclusively that current policy isn't effectively addressing regional inequalities. Its case that some areas of the country have failed to replace the old staple industries is also clearly correct. The argument that new policies cannot be more effective in turning these areas around is, I think, less convincing. I don't think that the fortunes of areas are determined by the geographical hand they are dealt to the extent the report suggests.
Eastern Europe lost its old economic raison d'etre in the early nineties as the Eastern bloc fell to pieces and its manufacturing base collapsed. Estonia's success would, I think, be hard to predict from its geography. Equally, Ireland's economic geography hasn't fundamentally changed recently to turn it from a perennial no-hoper to the Celtic tiger. In both Eastern Europe and Ireland it isn't economic geography that has changed but policy. In particular, market reforms in Eastern Europe including the flat tax and cuts in corporate tax in Ireland (Benjamin Powell, for CATO, sets out how it wasn't EU subsidies that made Ireland rich). In 1993 GDP per capita in Britain was 28% higher than in Ireland, today the situation is reversed and Ireland enjoys a GDP per capita 20% higher than we do in Britain.
Those two examples suggest that it is eminently possible for policy reforms to turn regions around, even those like Eastern Europe with few obvious geographical advantages. In order for us to accept the Policy Exchange report's analysis that some regions decline is essentially irreversible we need to ask whether it is plausible that new policies can create a radical turnaround.
David B Smith, in a paper (PDF) for the Economic Research Council, sets out the status quo: Many of Britain's poorer regions can hardly be considered market economies. Public spending is 58% of the North East's GDP, against 31% in the South East. 24% of the workforce in the North East works in the public sector against 18% in the South East. Thanks to the black market it is thought that the state only controlled about 75% of the economy in the Soviet Union. In terms of the importance of public spending, Sunderland has more in common with the Soviet Union than Kent.
Other government policies also weigh more heavily on poorer regions. If you scaled the £5.35 minimum wage in 2006 to median earnings it would be £4.78 in the North East and £6.90 in London. This means that the minimum wage will have far more of an effect on employment in poorer areas. Italy's Mezzorgiorno and East Germany have had similar problems as labour market regulations and non-wage labour costs that richer regions can sustain do far greater harm in poorer areas.
Entrepreneurial activity is directed towards politics rather than capitalist enterprise. As David B Smith says, the high government spending regions "seem to produce large numbers of political entrepreneurs, who live off and lobby for a large state, but few of the traditional wealth creating kind".
Welfare dependency has nasty effects on people. Psychology has found it encourages the pursuit of instant gratification. This plays into high levels of drug and alcohol abuse in populations with large numbers of people on benefits. That might be one reason for the large number of incapacity benefit claimants in struggling towns.
Private sector employers have to compete with the public sector for staff. Centralised pay bargaining means that in poorer areas private sector firms struggle to compete with public sector salaries funded by the rich South.
Beyond that, the relatively high burden of personal and corporate taxes makes the North a more expensive place to do business. In particular, our corporate taxes are now above the average in the OECD. This stops the South, with its many advantages, fulfilling its full economic potential. Worse, it could clearly have a crippling effect on the North that more often competes with developing countries, which tend to have lower corporate tax rates.
The essence of the Policy Exchange report is that regeneration efforts have failed to resuscitate the economy in many old Industrial towns. That regeneration policy is premised on the idea that the market economy is failing, and needs help from the state. If we accept the reality of the situation, that a combination of massive state intervention and taxes that discourage private investment has left an economy that is more public than private sector, then we might start from a very different premise.
Cities Unlimited suggests that some Northern towns now don't have a raison d'etre. I disagree. There are plenty of ingenious people in even the most struggling towns and they'll find something to do, some reason to be. The problem is that the massive Southern subsidy, combined with taxes and regulations that choke business enterprises, channels the ingenuity of the North's brightest into lobbying for greater funds from the government. That is now the North's economic raison d'etre. A mind blogging array of government bodies has the ability to disperse lucrative grants and chasing them can be far more lucrative than plugging away at building a business. William Baumol wrote that the growth miracle of capitalism was founded on channelling entrepreneurship to productive ends, to enterprising activity that would make us all better off. An array of taxes, regulations and subsidies may have ended that in the North, is it any wonder that the region's economic performance has been poor?
If we want to see real improvements then we need to change that. Fiscal decentralisation, as the report recommends, could encourage regional self-reliance and, if done properly, allow enterprising towns to slash taxes and show others the way. You could scrap the RDAs (PDF) and cut 4% off the small business rate. That would do a lot of enterprising souls some good and make setting up a new firm seem like a significantly better idea. You could make phased, pre-announced cuts of 2% to the 12.5% corporate tax rate (PDF) they have in Ireland. The economic effects across the country would be incredible, boosting incomes, investment and, over time, even corporate tax revenue. The boost to competitiveness would be particularly welcome in poorer parts of the country. It would be a swine to get past the unions but ending centralised pay bargaining would save lives in the South and make it easier for the private sector to compete for workers in the North.
All those policies would create more room for the private sector to grow in the North. They would increase the rewards to enterprising souls who decided to found businesses instead of trying to seize on the taxpayers' chequebook. They might make it possible for the North to join the long list of regions from around the world that have turned their fortunes around and gone on to become incredible success stories.
The steady increase in population in the South and decrease in the North causes a series of strains. Political institutions can't keep up and various services wind up under or over resourced in different parts of the country. There is additional pressure on the countryside in an increasingly densely populated South of England which can only be partially alleviated by some of the sensible steps Cities Unlimited recommends, such as allowing industrial land to be used to build residential property.
No one wants to give up on turning around the decline of old Industrial cities if we don't have to. While the authors of Cities Unlimited have done a good job of illustrating the weaknesses of current regional policy, I'm not convinced that there aren't better policies that could see the Northern cities prosperous again.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Is Chris Dillow Chinese?
"This is a divide that goes deeper than economics into the way people perceive the world. If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank,the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.
These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts."
Brooks goes on to describe how there is a continuum and we Brits are right at the individualist end with the Americans.
It sounds like we are culturally hard wired to what Chris would, I think, describe as an egoist way of understanding the world; the belief that our individual choices, actions and qualities are a crucial determinant of group success. Previously he has described how he would like his epitaph to read "he made no difference." This might make sense to someone from a more collectivist culture. Brooks describes how "[people in collectivist societies] tend to underestimate their own skills and are more self-effacing when describing their contributions to group efforts."
By contrast, Anglos are apparently disposed to want to make all the difference, and believe that they can do so effectively.
All this creates a conundrum for someone like Chris who combines a taste for liberal policy with a dislike of the kind of egoism that we are predisposed towards. Individualistic (egoistic) countries aren't just generally more prosperous, they also "tend to put rights and privacy first". If it is our sense of self-importance that makes us more protective of individual rights then are our inflated egos worth the various social ills Chris blames them for?
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Illness
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The Coming Energy Crisis
"After years of dereliction, when only a crash programme of measures could keep our lights on and our economy functioning, our policy has become so skewed by blinkered environmentalism and diktats from the EU that we are fast heading for the worst of all worlds - a near-total dependence on foreign sources of energy which will not only be astronomically expensive but which can in no way be guaranteed to supply all the electricity we need."
Read the rest of the article. If you want to learn more this article from John Constable is a good place to start, along with the REF's 2006 briefing in response to the energy review. EU Referendum and City Unslicker are also writing a lot on the issue.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
More on South Ossetia
"Russia may have provoked this crisis, and one may be properly critical of, indeed deplore, many aspects of recent Russian policy in the Caucasus or the Ukraine, but the immediate responsibility for this crisis must be borne by Tbilisi."
On that logic you could hold Britain responsible for the 1939 outbreak of war with Germany after they invaded Poland. You might even hold us responsible for the Falklands. In both cases there were massive provocations, including the invasion of our sovereignty, but we were the ones who turned it into a war.
Edward Lucas, in the Times, characterises the current situation like this, and Alex doesn't appear to disagree:
"In short, it looks more and more as though Georgia has fallen in to its enemies' trap. The script went like this: first mount unbearable provocations, then wait for a response, and finally reply with overwhelming military force and diplomatic humiliation."
Svante Cornell, in the Guardian, provides a more detailed description:
"In recent years, the Kremlin had escalated its interference in Georgia's territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia - bombing Georgian territory twice last year, illegally extending Russian citizenship to residents there, and appointing Russian
security officers to their self-declared governments. South Ossetia's government in particular is practically under Moscow's direct control, with little if any ability to act independently.But this flare-up is a direct consequence of Russia's deliberate and recent efforts to engage its small neighbor in military conflict. In April, Russia's President Vladimir Putin signed a decree effectively beginning to treat Abkhazia and South Ossetia as parts of the Russian Federation. This land grab was a particularly galling move because Russia is in charge of both the peacekeeping operations in the conflict zones, and the negotiations over their political resolution. The mediator had now clearly become a direct party to the conflict.
Moscow then sent paratroopers, heavy weapons and other troops into Abkhazia. Although these measures constituted military occupation of Georgian territory, Georgia failed to respond militarily. Instead, with European aspirations in mind, Georgian leaders listened to western calls for restraint, and put their faith in half-hearted western diplomatic initiatives."
Of course, the immediate responsibility still lies with Georgia...
Also, there is this:
"As I say, there's plenty to dislike about recent Russian policy, but one thing might also be worth remembering: the Osettians (and the Abkhazians) want to be Russian, not Georgian. This may seem daft or incomprehensible to many people, but there it is anyway and one might think it something worth mentioning from time to time even if, clearly, it's also an inconvenient truth."
Russia isn't really looking to make them independent or a part of Russia. Keeping South Ossetia as a permanent thorn in Georgia's side, creating a permanent confrontation that prevents their neighbour saying no to Russia's "influence" is the objective. No side in this conflict is really fighting for South Ossetians' self-determination. Given the chaotic ethnic mix of many countries in that region, particularly Russia, it's questionable how such a principle could really function anyway.
The boot on Georgia's neck
Georgia is part of that grand sphere the Kremlin feels it has a right to control. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are the mechanism to exert that control. The two Georgian regions are being maintained in a permanent state of limbo, nominally still a part of Georgia but effectively controlled by a combination of militant separatists and the Russian military. That permanent instability makes it incredibly difficult for Georgia to engage independently with the outside world as Western nations with perilously little spine left are scared off engaging.
There have been steady attacks on Georgia from separatists, from the Washington Post:
“Georgia, meanwhile, said that its troops entered the South Ossetian "capital" in response to escalating attacks, which have been intensifying for a week -- and have been taking place for years, really -- as well as the Russian aerial bombardment of Georgian territory.”
The majority of Russian passport holders that we keep hearing about are no accident, from the Wall Street Journal:
“Russia in recent years has also granted citizenship to the separatists. That looks like premeditation now: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged yesterday to “protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, no matter where they are located.”
It is hard to imagine how Georgia can come out of this current conflict well. The separatists will probably become even more secure in South Ossetia. Our vacillation has created an ugly situation that we will struggle to rescue. Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post concludes:
"In any case, the time to deal with this conflict is not now but was two, or even four, years ago. For a very long time it has been clear that there was a security vacuum in the Caucasus; that this vacuum was dangerous; that war was likely; that Georgia, an eager ally of the United States, would not emerge well from a confrontation; and that a successful invasion of Georgia, a country with U.S. troops on its soil, would reflect badly on the West. Cowardice, weakness, lack of ideas and, above all, the distraction of other events prevented any deeper engagement. And now it may be too late."
However, Georgia's cause is not one we should abandon, from the Washington Post:
“The principles at stake, including sovereignty and territorial integrity, apply well beyond the Caucasus. To abandon Georgia and its fragile democratic Rose Revolution would send a terrible signal to other former Soviet and Warsaw Pact republics that to Moscow's dismay have achieved or are working toward democracy and fully independent foreign policies. The West has made that sort of mistake before and must not do so again."
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Thomas Sowell on capitalism
"Many have argued that capitalism does not offer a satisfactory moral message. But that is like saying that calculus does not contain cabrohydrates, amino acids, or other essential nutrients. Everything fails by irrevelant standards."
Monday, August 04, 2008
White Diamond
Diamonds don't have a fragrance!
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Public service oddities: Shall I compare thee to a Water Framework Directive? Edition
"Among these treasures of our land is water - fast becoming our most valuable, most prized, most critical resource."
"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water."
"Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can an man; but will they come when you do call for them?"
That burst of enthusiasm out of the way they get back to EU water safety law.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Don't impose a windfall tax on energy companies
I've written a post for the TPA blog making the case against a windfall tax. Chris Dillow does the same, from a more left wing perspective, over at his blog, Stumbling and Mumbling. A windfall tax would hurt the incentive to invest in really important energy infrastructure and is an awful, awful idea.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Crime and cognitive biases
...
...
In 2007/08 the police recorded 1,899 incidents of rape of a child under the age of 13.
That's far higher than I would have expected, the high hundreds at most. At work, I asked around and everyone else was equally shocked. The number is particularly high when you bear in mind that it is recorded crime and, as we are talking about a sexual offence, almost certainly a severe underestimate.
Now, a common theory for why the public see crime as such a serious issue is that they overestimate its prevalence because of sensationalist news reporting. We see the reports and assume they represent a broader pattern, fall victim to the distortions of the availability heuristic.
If an entire office of people with plenty of exposure to the right-wing press could make the opposite error about a crime that is clearly, in a horrible way, sensational doesn't that raise some broader questions about that hypothesis?
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
First, do no harm
In recent months there has been a lot of discussion about how the Government might help people facing high energy prices. The unions, politicians and various campaigners have called for a crackdown on energy companies they accuse of profiteering.
Yesterday, the Renewable Energy foundation revealed that the Government's own environmental policies are a major component of the price of energy:
Despite this massive cost the regulations are projected to achieve very little. The Renewables Obligation is expected to cut emissions by just 1.6% at an incredible cost of £400 per tonne of carbon emissions saved.
Most of these climate change policies, from the Renewables Obligation to the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, have been introduced since the current Government came to power. They have been major drivers of the rises in energy prices. While politicians single out energy companies for criticism they keep quiet about their own complicity in rising prices.
With Ofgem confident that our energy market is reasonably competitive isn't hounding electricity companies just a crude attempt to displace popular resentment of high prices? If the Government were really committed to bringing down prices it could easily do so by scrapping some of these ineffective climate change regulations.
Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance blog.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Unframed Window
One of his first posts is about the quality of Obama's oratory. Charles isn't impressed. I also felt a bit let down when I first watched an Obama speech at length and then saw his faltering performances in Q & As.
It might well be a difference in the style each nation expects. Obama is a superb example of the preacher-like style of American political speech. That style is forged as a way to deliver an uninterrupted speech heavy on moral content. By contrast, Britons are used to political rhetoric forged in active debate whether in parliament and the courts or in university sparring. That makes British political speech lighter footed and sharper but often less weighty.
Monday, July 28, 2008
An article on the politics of environmentalism at The American
"With less than two years remaining until the next general election, Britain’s Conservative Party has surged to an historic 22-point opinion-poll lead over the incumbent Labour Party. This turnabout has followed an energetic campaign by the Tory leader, David Cameron, to wrench the party out of its ideological comfort zone and overhaul its public image. Cameron has indeed handled many issues deftly. However, his initial attempt to spark a bidding war over climate alarmism backfired enormously, and it should serve as a warning to other Western political parties that are trying to burnish their green credentials."
Sunday, July 27, 2008
AA Gill on Burn Up
"Imagine writing this: “It is my belief we are standing on the very edge of history.” Having written it, what would a normal, sensitive, moderately intelligent person do? Well, 99% of us wouldpush the delete button with a faint shiver or tear up the piece of paper so that the young and impressionable couldn’t read it. We understand that it’s utter bilge, but, you see, that’s why we’re not scriptwriters. It takes a very special person to write that sentence and think: “Yes, high five, nice job, really profound! What shall I do next?”
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Burn Up
Methane
I'm no scientist but I know enough to be pretty confident this film isn't going to enlighten anyone. It dresses up the speculative fringe of climate science as the absolute truth. "Runaway climate change is upon us", apparently, if everyone doesn't sign up to 'Kyoto 2'. The only character in the film who is a scientist, an academic from Oxford, tells us that is because methane deposits are going to be released unless we meet a 5 to 10 year deadline for curbs in emissions.
Let's see what the Met Office's Hadley Centre, definitely part of the alarmist scientific 'consensus' says about possible releases of methane:
"Substantial quantities of methane are emitted naturally from wetlands, and this emission is expected to change as wetlands change. Changing rainfall patterns will cause some wetland areas to increase in extent, others to decrease, and increases in temperature will act to increase emissions from wetlands. One version of the Hadley Centre climate model includes a description of wetland methane, and this predicts an increase in natural wetland emissions by the end of the century equivalent to the amount of man-made emissions projected for that time, thus leading to a more rapid rise in methane concentrations, and hence warming.
On the other hand, the chemical reactions in the atmosphere which destroy methane are expected to become more efficient in future, largely as a result of increased water vapour. This will act as a negative feedback on methane amounts.
Methane is also stored in permafrost, and it is likely that some of this will be released as surface warming extends into the permafrost and begins to melt it.
Finally, huge amounts of methane are locked up in methane hydrates methane clathrates) in the oceans. They are currently at high enough pressures and temperatures to make them very stable. However, penetration of greenhouse effect heating into the oceans may destabilise them and allow some of the methane to escape into the atmosphere. The potential for this to happen is very poorly understood. There is concern that this may be another positive feedback not yet included in models, although there is little evidence for this from the behaviour of methane during the large temperature swings between ice ages and interglacials, and in particular over the last 50,000 years."
This bears no relation at all to the 'science' in Burn Up. There is no suggestion here that we face an imminent threat of runaway clmate change. Apocalyptic methane releases don't appear to have occured in previous, natural warmings. Most people watching Burn Up won't know how speculative the film's vision of imminent, methane-driven climate catastrophe is. No character in the film questions the idea.
Burn Up isn't really trying to enlighten people but, like Al Gore's film, to create an emotional reaction. To scare people so that rational and measured debate over policy can safely be avoided, so that proper scrutiny of policy can be written off as irresponsible and immoral.
Eskimos
In the first part of Burn Up, in particular, the Inuit are crucial to the story. A campaigner for their cause protests to the film's central character, Tom - head of Arrow Oil, and then, having lost in a legal case suing Arrow for climate change-related harms to the Inuit people, burns herself to death on the court's steps.
This is brutal stuff and , of course, climate change could create challenges for a people whose way of life is so intimately related to particular conditions. However, just a little research confirms that the film utterly distorts the true nature of the problems facing the Inuit.
There is little sign that the destruction of the Artic habitat is really taking place on anything like the scale that is being suggested. Polar bear numbers are still robust, this is from the Telegraph:
"A survey of the animals' numbers in Canada's eastern Arctic has
revealed that they are thriving, not declining, because of mankind's
interference in the environment.
In the Davis Strait area, a 140,000-square kilometre region, the
polar bear population has grown from 850 in the mid-1980s to 2,100
today.
"There aren't just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more
bears," said Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist who has spent 20 years
studying the animals.
His findings back the claims of Inuit hunters who have long claimed
that they were seeing more bears."
Their numbers wouldn't be as strong if the number of seals was in serious decline. Life in the Arctic appears to be in solid shape at the moment.
I know Wikipedia isn't the most reliable of sources on this particular issue but it is probably correct when it suggests that the major problems facing the Inuit are those faced by many North American aboriginal peoples:
"Inuit communities in Canada continue to suffer under crushing unemployment, overcrowded housing, substance abuse, crime, violence and suicide. The problems Inuit face in the 21st century should not be underestimated. However, many Inuit are upbeat about the future. Arguably, their situation is better than it has been since the 14th century."
That is what makes all this focus on climate change so dangerous for peoples like the Inuit. They have huge social problems and it would be far too easy to forget the genuine issues in a mad rush to co-opt them into a grand narrative around global warming.
Hurricanes
Once again, the idea that the number of hurricanes and other natural disasters is massively on the increase was brought up. It can't be repeated enough that increases in insurance industry claims are not necessarily a sign of increased damage but, more often, a sign of increased development (meaning there is more valuable stuff to be damaged) and increased take-up of insurance (the stuff damaged is more likely to be insured).
I've written before about the actual data on hurricanes and how the best indicators we have are that we are currently seeing particularly low levels of hurricane activity. Beyond that, Indur Goklany, in the excellent Civil Society Report on Climate Change (PDF), shows that deaths from natural disasters have massively declined over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Figure 6, on page 48, really says it all (the low numbers pre-1920 are almost certainly the result of poor data).
More prosperous, more technologically advanced and more democratic societies are better able, and have more of an incentive, to help those facing a natural disaster and they do a very good job. We do not have increasing difficulty coping with natural disasters and the best way to help the poor world enjoy the security we do is to promote the institutions that can deliver a prosperous and democratic society.
Anti-Americanism
This film was shot through with anti-Americanism. The evil characters are portrayed wearing cowboy hats, getting teary eyed over faith healing TV and doing all the other things snobbish Europeans like to laugh at.
Their democratic process is portrayed as an utter joke. A Senate hearing falls to pieces in a flurry of sordid ad hominem. Their political parties have been bought by the oil firms. None of this reflects reality but it is a comforting way for Burn Up to write American resistance to the Kyoto-plus agenda off as venal. At the same time the programme potrays we British heroically promising to wreck our economy to satisfy the green agenda - at one point we even promise to send so much money to China that country will profit from restricting emissions.
Conspiracy theories
There are a breathtaking number of conspiracy theories in this film. The Department of Defense have a study that they're covering up which shows the harms of climate change and plans to take water from the Mexicans. The Saudis are concealing the fact they've pretty much run out of oil. Americans are killing anyone, even on the streets of London or in a hotel at the centre of a major international conference, who might let out the Saudi secret to prevent an oil shock.
However, the mother of all conspiracy theories is only revealed at the end. Apparently the reason the Americans aren't acting on climate change actually isn't an attachment to economic prosperity or even petty venality. Instead, they're hoping that climate change will kill all the poor people and then that will leave the Americans in a stronger geopolitical position. While it will hurt them they'll be the last ones standing.
Just when you think the Americans can't get any more evil it turns out they're actively plotting ecopocalypse! This is absolutely mad.
Ad hominem
The scientist is testifying before the Senate and is silenced by one of the Senators bringing up old, and false, accusations of sexual misconduct. This is a really perverse reversal of the reality that, while the greens are free to speak their minds, there are serious attempts to silence sceptics.
The charge that a scientist or other has, at some point, received funding from fossil fuel companies is just a lazy ad hominem. Most academic researchers get funding from all manner of sources and some of that, at some point, coming from industry doesn't imply they've been bought. However, that lazy ad hominem is used by Monbiot and countless others to try and prevent 'deniers' being heard. Burn Up reverses the situation and has the alarmists as the victims of mindless ad hominem.
Renewables
There is never any question that renewables might not be able to effectively replace fossil fuels. Of course, within the craziness of this story that makes some kind of sense. People don't want renewables to work because then we wouldn't need to wreck the planet. Real world considerations such as providing an affordable and reliable supply of power aren't nearly melodramatic enough to fit in this silly story.
The creepy bits
From the polar bear, with "Extinct" written on it sitting incongruously in the middle of climate negotiations to the bizarrely precise "cut emissions by 90%" banner a protestor is holding. This film is trying to get a lot of messages across without ever openly confronting the audience with them.
At the start, the father can't drive to work because it is "Environment Week" and the kids have taken his keys. Isn't the idea of the children imposing the state's new moral code like that a bit Orwellian?
Conclusion
Burn Up is pure alarmist propaganda. If the Greens have such a strong case why do they have such a need to continually resort to such wild distortion?
