In the Green

Google renewables

Google announced today that it would be spending "tens of millions on research and development and related investments in renewable energy", jumping into the fledgling industry that will no doubt make some people a lot of money in the next decade or two. They appear to be investing in a range of technologies and companies, but highlighted two - eSolar (for solar thermal) and Makani Power (for "high altitude wind" energy) - they were working with so far.

This is part of Google.org's work with climate change we mentioned a while back, and is certainly notable. The question, of course, is whether they can get money out of it. Renewables are notoriously speculative investments (I still hesitate to touch the PowerShares Clean Energy fund).

But past all of that, I must say that looking at Makani's website (and Google's PDF), the technology sounds a lot like dot-com era vaporware. They highlight why high altitude wind is desirable and have an impressive team of good-looking MIT types, but how they plan to harness it is nowhere to be found. I had to read through this Wiki to read up some imagined solutions.

But what can I say - that's how capitalism and R&D works. I wish them the best.

The CO2 economy?

Some clever folk from Denmark have just published an article on experiments with an SOEC, picking up on research in this area that was discontinued in the early 1990s. An SOEC is a Solid Oxide Electrolytic Cell, which works a bit like an SOFC, but backwards.

Essentially, you put in H2O and CO2 and get a highly efficient conversion to syngas (CO + H2) using an input of electricity. Syngas can be catalysed to excellent transport fuels such as FT-diesel and the electricity can be renewable. The researchers have even provided some preliniary cost estimates, which look great, but they had to admit to struggling to find a reliable price for 'renewable CO2'.

I instinctively like this kind of technology; it's clean, it's flexible, it's modular, and it could make FT chemicals environmentally acceptable. Unfortunately I'm struggling to think of  a source of renewable, pure and available CO2. Bearing in mind that gasification of fossil fuels or biomass will produce syngas anyway, removing the need for the SOEC, I'm stumped. Any suggestions?

Economic growth first!

Gordon Brown today gave his unequivocal support for a third runway at Heathrow airport, arguing that "Britain's prosperity depend[s] on it".

It reminds me of the Blair government, few months ago, strongly advocating in favour of the first UK supercasino project.

In both stories, the government pushes projects by emphasizing their immediate and short-term benefits, rather than seeing the longer-term consequences of such projects and all the externalities (especially negative externalities) linked to them.

In the case of Heathrow expansion, I don't see how the construction of a third runway will help mitigate CO₂ emissions and tackle climate change, which is supposed to be part of the government's policy.

As regards the supercasino project, I don't understand why it is this kind of project that is promoted to regenerate a deprived area. Why not build a new tobacco factory or a WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) complex with research departments, faculties, offices and factories.  Thanks to the opening of the markets in developing countries and very successful advertising campaigns, people in these countries are smoking more and more. WMD also have a very promising future since our developed countries societies tend to think war can solve all problems. Such projects would for sure bring lots of money and create numerous jobs.

Our current society sometimes contradicts to a point that is really ludicrous. This is the kind of messages that are sent by our government today:

“Reduce your carbon emissions or you’ll destroy our planet” and “take the plane, it’s good for our economy”.
“Gambling can lead to addict-like behaviours” and “ let’s build the first supercasino in this country”.

My understanding of these examples is that economy is still by far the most important corner of the sustainable development triangle (economy – environment – society). Until when?

Serious about nuclear?

In Thursday’s Guardian an article reporting on the results of an independent consultant’s study, The World Nuclear Industry Report 2007.

The article already summarise the contents of the report. But a quick look at the “Introduction and General overview” section of the report is interesting: after a long list of commitment and general optimism among government and energy institutions on the potential growth of nuclear in the face of the increasing energy demand and pressing CO2 reduction need, the authors provide an overview of what can actually be achieved and conclude by estimating a decline in nuclear plants worldwide, rather than growth. Here an abstract from the report,

 "The authors of the present report remain convinced, on the contrary, the numbers of nuclear plants operating in the world will most likely decline over the next two decades with a rather sharper decline to be expected after 2020. Many analysts consider that the historic key problems with nuclear power have not been overcome and will continue to constitute a severe disadvantage in global market competition. New difficulties have arisen.

Ken Silverstein, Director of the US based consultancy Energy Industry Analysis states:

“As a result of deregulation of power and other market – and policy-based uncertainties, no nuclear power company can afford to take the financial risk of building new nuclear power plants. A report published by Standard & Poor’s identifies the barriers. The financial costs for construction delays, for example, could add untold sums to any future projects. […] Peter Rigby, a Standard & Poor’s analyst and author of the report says: “The industry’s legacy of cost growth, technological problems, cumbersome political and regulatory oversight, and the newer risks brought about by competition and terrorism concerns may keep credit risk too high for even (federal; legislation that provides loan guarantees) to overcome”.

and discussion then goes on..

 Acute shortage of skilled engineer, manufacturing bottleneck, technical issue and market and policy uncertainties seems to be the main causes of such relented growth.

 Let me know what do you think, but this list of causes sounds very familiar to me: quite similar to the list of barriers for renewables deployment (apart maybe – in an optimistic view- for the shortage of skilled labour and taking in consideration "technologies specificity"). How to interpret all this? Letting aside the debate on the opportunity of nuclear, shall we assume that governments do not really have a clue of how climate change issue will be addressed? That a serious commitment and willingness to act is not there yet? Or just that nuclear does not really convince markets and governments?

also, what about energy security?

Are you kidding me?

Earlier today I found this article from Platts, which I found astonishing.  According to a report published by E3 International around 18 million EU emissions allowances have been surrendered for compliance more than once ("double counting"). Surprisingly this was the only article I found on this topic so far. Hopefully "someone" will investigate such allegations. Even though EU emission allowances are only worth few 0.08 €/tonne CO2 these days, doesn't this sound a little bit like counterfeit money? Last time I checked, people were going to prison for this. But that's just me....

Oil that glitters is not gold

In the more exciting moments of my day I like nothing more than to have a little wonder about oil and gas supplies. Often this is from the point of view of how it impacts raw materials for the chemical industry. Recently I read a few interesting things that I’ll try to put into some perspective here*.

There has been news about new discoveries. Brazil, we are told, is about to become ‘the new oil superpower’ due to its recent discovery of 5-8 billion barrels of light oil and gas, the biggest discovery since 12 billion barrels in Kazakstan in 2000. Disagreements between Cyprus and Turkey continue to surface over Turkish access to Cypriot gas discoveries. Cyprus is thought to have discovered 4-10 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas, which it says could power the island almost indefinitely, so it is converting its power stations from oil to natural gas. It is also courting foreign firms to build an offshore LNG terminal, so much of the gas will never actually make it onshore. So, if these big new discoveries are shipped to the international market, what is the impact on our ability to meet demand?

In a couple of weeks the IEA formally unveils its World Energy Outlook 2007, but we already have the executive summary. Not much has changed since last year, and the ‘base case’ and ‘alternative policy’ scenarios are familiar. In the base case global oil demand to 2030 rises to 42 billion barrels per year from 31 in 2005, whilst with the alternative policy (new technologies, climate action) it only grows to 37. In the base case gas demand reaches 28 billion barrels compared to 17 in 2005. 

This tells us that the Brazilian, Cypriot and Kazakh finds (if mostly oil rather than gas) would support us for almost a year in 2005 but for just 42 weeks in 2030 in the most optimistic case (the upper limit is recoverable, alternative policy scenario). But, of course this is unlikely to be the case as discovered fields are rarely fully exploited. Taking a less optimistic approach (base case, lower limits) these three big finds since 2000 might not last 6 months in 2030. That is, if Brazil's deep sea reserves can actually come on line anytime soon when they are 4.5 miles below the surface and the technologies still need to be developed to extract them.

New discoveries need to replace expiration of existing reserves and also meet new demand. The huge Kazakh field meets base case demand growth over the coming 25 years. What is needed is a replacement for the >85 billion barrels currently being used each day. 

Peter Davies, ex-BP economist and still BP-payrolled, doesn’t think we need to worry. I went to a presentation in which his main points from an economist’s perspective were:

1. Peak Oil is not a problem because Hubbert’s Gaussian distribution is inaccurate if you include unconventionals and new discoveries due to new technologies;
2. Oil will peak, however, due to physical limits;
3. An economist cannot account for physical limits, but history tells us that unconventionals and new technologies will respond to price signals and overcome physical constraints.

But what if these technologies are unable to come online in time? An interesting study by Robelius that looks at the decline in production and discovery of so-called Giant Fields (>0.5 billion barrels) is sadly pessimistic. It says that during 2005, a year with the highest oil price in over 20 years, only 11.5 billion barrels were discovered in new fields and 9 billion barrels as additions to existing reserves. This was almost 10 billion barrels less than the produced volume that year. If technologies for discovery are not responding fast enough to price signals, what about unconventional reserves? On a technical basis Robelius calculates that optimistic output from the largest oil sand deposits in Alberta could physically get up to 2 billion barrels per year by 2040. Not much of a stop gap while we look for alternatives, and this discounts the possibility that investment is discouraged due to a carbon price. 

Perhaps more frighteningly, Robelius tells us that existing reserve estimates are levelling rather than being revised upwards due to new technological capabilities. Instead, last year it was revealed that Kuwait may be overestimating its reserves by stating them as 101.5 (the number used by BP) rather than 48 billion barrels. A difference of 53.5 billion barrels, potentially dwarfing all discoveries this Century. 

I haven’t really mentioned peak oil arguments here, because they have become quite confused by poor interpretation of price signals and a focus on physical natural resource limits. Whilst the physical limits are real, they are compounded by the problem of adjusting to a world in which the race for new reserves needs to be more frantic. To date this race between depletion and new technologies has not been lost for any mineral, but the IEA and Total predict some serious supply constraints by 2015 with no relief for oil prices. It is the speed of adjustment that is crucial. The speed at which discoveries are made, at which new regions are opened to exploration, and at which new technologies enable extraction in hostile environments. At the moment we seem to be losing, and yet economists continue to be optimistic based on the long-term, rather than short-term, feasibility of adjustment. 

For a comparison of arguments used by peak oil researchers and energy economists, see a paper in this month’s Energy Policy by Bentley et al. of Reading University. 

In my next post I will take a similarly quick and non-expert look at coal reserves, which I have also been reading about, and which are no rosier.

* I’ll do my best not to mention that the oil price yesterday hit $99.29 for light, sweet crude.

Can algae save the world? a new exhibition in London

A nice follow up to a previous post (with apologies for keeping posting on the same topic!):
maybe those reading this blog based in London might be interested to know about this new exhibition at the Science Musuem:
"Can algae save the world?"

Paper's carbon footprint

The west management world has looked the report from Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI). They developed a Carbon Footprint Framework for paper and board products in response to the growing requests by paper buyers.

The starting point for the framework is the capacity of forests - the origin of paper and board raw materials – to bind CO2 while growing positively contributing to the mitigation of climate change. If forests are managed sustainably, trees are renewable and recycle carbon from the atmosphere therefore having a neutral effect in the amount of atmospheric CO2.

Several different tools exist which analyse and present the carbon contribution of various products and services including product profiles, life cycle assessments and so called carbon-footprints but there is currently no pan-European standardised approach.
As a result, CEPI has developed its framework for paper and board products based on ten key elements, the ten toes of the Carbon Footprint. Under this framework, companies and sectors will be able to address their individual needs and help the industry to contribute to the policy debate by providing a transparent and coherent information base for decision-making, across regions and countries.
The carbon footprint of a product may be seen as a balance sheet of greenhouse gas emissions and removals (transfers to and from the atmosphere) and because these balance sheets usually cover more than CO2, the units of reporting are usually CO2 equivalents. The framework looks at direct and indirect emissions, carbon sequestration in forests and in products, the value of bio-energy and the concept of avoided emissions and proposes a common approach to deal with them.
The some toes of CEPI's Carbon Footprint are as follows:
•    Carbon sequestration in forests - sustainable forest management (SFM) secures the stocks of carbon in forests to stay neutral or even improve in time
•     Carbon in forest products – a product contains biomass carbon and as long as it is in use, it will keep this biomass carbon from the atmosphere.
•     Greenhouse gas emissions from forest product manufacturing facilities –from fossil fuel combustion at manufacturing facilities that produce forest products, including primary manufacturers and final manufacturing facilities.
•    Greenhouse gas emissions associated with purchased electricity, steam, heat and hot and cold water.
•    Transport-related greenhouse gas.

So, how much do you like rainforests?

I found these two interesting links a few weeks ago, and have been meaning to post them. This first article sees Indonesia recently campaigning for help in saving their rainforests:

Rachmat Witoelar, environmental minister of Indonesia, had recently proposed that richer nations pay Indonesia $20 per hectare to preserve the rapidly shrinking forests in the country.

Recently, the deputy environmental minister of Indonesia, Masnellyarti Hilman, said: “We can’t do it alone. Developed countries need to help us because they have the money, the financing and the technology. We need their help if we are going reduce emissions and not sacrifice our future development.”

The day after, I saw this article which reported Norway paying Brazil €17 million to help save the Amazon:

Norway will contribute 60 million kroner to two projects run by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and an additional 70 million kroner to a special rain forest fund.

According to Brazilian authorities, 27,429 square kilometers of Amazon rain forest were destroyed between August 2003 and July 2004.

Between August 2006 and July 2007, after the government adopted measures to protect the forest, the rate of deforestation slowed to 9,600 square kilometers.

So, are these two examples just reasonable application of the Coase Theorem, or a perverse approach to deforestation and climate change?

As we are all aware, deforestation and carbon sinks are going to be a big part of the climate negotiations. Big forestry nations like Brazil, Indonesia, Australia, and Canada are keen to get credit for protecting their trees. Once possibility is to introduce sink protection into the CDM, although this is still up in the air. Whether it pulls through, I don't know - perhaps someone can fill us in in the comments below?

As for the usefulness of sending money to protect the forests, I can't think that this is a bad thing - as long as it goes for its intended purpose. Subtract the climate change, and it's just like any other development funding. Of course, one could be cynical and say that this is blackmail... well, so be it.

Tired of green?

This is my first contribution to inthegreen! There are so many things I want to write about but I’m feeling pessimistic today so here’s one about “eco- fatigue”. From a quick scan of past posts it strikes me that the issue of public attitudes and the take up of responsibilities towards sustainability and climate change is a recurring theme on this blog. Well, I think this is all for a good reason: we are asking ourselves whether our efforts to make contributions in the field will be of any use against the whims of our audience, society.

In the face of a couple of surveys which received a lot of coverage in the last days, and which tended to conclude that public is willing to “sacrifice” (note the dangerous wording) some lifestyle choices to protect the environment and fight climate change, I bumped into a smaller survey that says some other interesting things:

"An ICM report for the Ideal Home Show also found nearly a quarter of people (23%) admitted they were bored of "eco news" and nearly a fifth (18%) exaggerated their environmental behaviour because it is fashionable.

While more than half (57%) believed a difference could be made to the environment if everyone did their bit, nearly four fifths of those questioned (78%) think not everybody is making the effort." (The Guardian, Oct 28).

This didn’t strike me, apart from the part on environmental behaviour being “fashionable” (but just because when hearing “fashion”, images of Victoria Beckham and other champions of throw-away culture spring to mind). Apart from boredom, there’s scepticism, as shown in one last survey:

"Although 45% of those questioned said climate change was the greatest threat to mankind, terrorism, crime, graffiti and even dog mess were all higher on the list of local concerns.

Ipsos Mori interviewed 2,031 adults in their homes between June 14 and 20, and found that 56% believe scientists themselves are still questioning climate change and believe there is a live debate going on, when in fact there is virtual scientific consensus." (The Guardian, Jul 3)

2007 has been a year for revitalization of many environmental concerns among the public, and to an impressive growth in the knowledge that “the person on the street” has about the science and policy of climate change. I’ve noticed a marked difference when talking to friends and relatives about this. Of course this momentum has been built partly (or mostly) by IPCC’s third report and Al Gore’s documentary making it out of the “environment” headlines and into the front-pages and TVs.

Leaving aside for a moment the whole debate about the effect that “deniers and delayers” have had on public perceptions about climate change, I’ll venture this thought: if one can crudely relate this increase in how much people understand and care about climate change to an increase in media coverage (cf. government campaigns, civil society movements, policies directed at households… and a long list of other possible stimuli) then I cannot hide that I am curious to see how much this concern will last. We have reached eco-fatigue in many other issues before: years ago my mum preferred to buy the less material-intensive detergent re-fills instead of plastic bottles. But then these re-fills gradually disappeared from supermarket shelves. From what I see in Western Europe, now you can only find them easily in – lo and behold – Germany. I don’t see the growth of the demand for organic and even fair trade products losing pace any time soon, but –who knows- they could be next on the line if the policy support and awareness-raising is not continued, and people grow sceptical as to their benefits. I can’t back this up, but I even feel that local air pollution has gone down in the ranking of people’s concerns.

Working in the field of environmental policy we do need to be aware that many of the public opinion and consumer trends are temporary, and can very easily reverse unless rigour and trust in information are maintained, with a coherent policy framework running in parallel. Thinking again of those oft-quoted examples of new social taboos (not using seat-belts, drink-driving), it is that sense of “responsibility”, not just of fashion, that should be awoken in the public.

Will being Carbon Neutral™ save the world?

Considering the growth of recycling rates and the increasing sales of organic food in the UK (up 22% throughout 2006), let's assume that people are genuinely more environmentally aware than ever.

It is therefore understandable that many companies want to green their image to attract this growing niche of environmentally-aware customers (conscience-customers).

One good way to convince people to buy a specific product is to advertise values of the brand that will appeal to the targeted groups.

One striking example is the recent TV commercial for Sky Group, showing a nice and funny cartoon ending with “Sky, carbon neutral since 2006”..

But what does it mean for Sky to be “carbon neutral”? If you watched the clip carefully, you might have noticed that Sky is actually “Carbon Neutral™” to be precise. As wealthy Catholics could buy indulgences from the Vatican to find a place in heaven, Sky is buying carbon offsets to find a place in the Green-Wash Market.

I am dubious that carbon offsetting helps solve any environmental problems. Surely the best CO₂ reductions are the non-CO₂ emissions. How can you encourage people to have a lower environmental impact (and therefore a more aware and sober consumption) if they can easily clear their conscience by just paying few quid to be environmentally forgiven? Can you really ask other people to repair your sins when you don’t change your habits and behaviour yourself? (check this comics to see how you can easily offset your friends’ CO₂ emissions).

In the case of Sky, I don’t know what the real benefits of Sky’s purchase of offsets are, but their clip gives an oversimplified view on how to save our planet (you just need to have a contract with The CarbonNeutral Company)?

Rather than paying to be Carbon Neutral™, let’s all become carbon responsible (without ™) by being sober in our consumption and responsible in our choices.

Outsourcing emissions

A quick post, and a good follow-up to Miles' previous entry. I subscribe to Google News RSS feeds, and while I get a lot of new headlines every day, once and a while one will catch my eye.

This article in the Wall Street Journal highlights how difficult it is to account and attribute carbon emissions in an interconnected and globalised world. It raises important questions about how we should look at the emissions we are ultimately responsible for - many of which are beyond our own borders. We in the West have avoided inflation in the recent decades by outsourcing production to places like China and India; in doing so, we have outsourced our emissions as well. When a product is exported, it leaves behind at the border the emissions associated with its production - emissions which are then tallied onto the source's annual emissions inventories.

A recent study by researchers at the Norwegian Technical University has tabulated the carbon emissions embodied in exports across the world. The figure below highlights that approximately 23% of China's annual emissions are actually embodied in goods/services that are eventually exported.

This number is actually quite staggering - and raises questions about how we should bring in China (and other production centers) into post-Kyoto climate agreements. And importantly, how do we decide who should pay for the reduction of this share of emissions?

Of course, a global carbon tax offers a simple solution. But given that it is unlikely to be politically feasible, second-best solutions may be necessary - like a border-tax adjustments such as those proposed by Sarkozy recently.

Interesting stuff.

Sarko measure: Qu'est-ce que c'est?

It's October 25, 2007 and French President Nicolas Sarkozy is about to give a big speech to assembled delegates and dignitaries at France’s <<Grenelle de l’environnement>>. The Grenelle has been a month-long, multi-stakeholder discussion covering just about every angle of environmental affairs. Although weighty topics have been discussed and aspirational consensus reached on major issues (e.g. 50% reduction in pesticide use), there’s a lot of reading and sifting to get through before the success of the gathering can be measured. So the speech begins, and Sarko needs to make sure the Grenelle isn't buried in tomorrow's headlines.

<<Thanks to those present... France aspires to leadership... New Deal for the planet...>>. 

But then, as if worried that EC President Barroso (present) is falling asleep, he slips in the following:

 “We must, Mr President study the possibility of taxing imports from countries that do not respect the Kyoto Protocol. … I propose to you that within 6 months, the European Union should debate the meaning of fair competition.”   

Does he really mean it!? That'd be awesome! ‘Talk’ about whether trade rules can be used for environmental policy has been going on for years – most notably in occasional speeches, on both sides of the Atlantic, calling for Brazilian ethanol to be treated as a tariff-exempt environmental good. However, genuine ‘debate’ on this or (heaven forfend) a ruling from the WTO, would really be groundbreaking. The current issues are neatly summarised here by Aimee Gonzales of WWF (see here also).

- The issue of whether or not discrimination against imports on environmental grounds is ok falls under the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade agreement.
- Voluntary certification of products (e.g. FSC wood) appears to be ok
- The Most Favoured Nation principle applies. Treatment of imported products must be “no less favourable than that accorded to like products of national origin and to like products originating in any other country”.
- You have to have a legitimate objective for discriminating against a product on the basis of how it’s made. Health and safety and national security are legitimate objectives. Environmental protection is another one.

So it looks like certification of biofuels or discrimination against products with high embodied pollution might be ok BUT…

 
- It could be that this applies only to product-related environmental damage (the agreement doesn't say). In this case you could impose fuel efficiency requirements on imported cars (because use of the car causes greater damage) but you couldn’t tax cars (or biodiesel) that have lots of GHG embodied in the production process.
- A raft of similar not sures apply to this question. They haven’t yet been tested in any relevant tribunal and no-one on the planet seems to know whether a Sarko-style measure is really legitimate or not.

Considering that this is a legal issue, and therefore fundamentally to do with organised human institutions, the current ‘no-one knows’ impasse is patently absurd – especially when compared to genuine scientific uncertainties like NO_x emissions or the long-term net carbon emissions of the Amazon rainforest.

So a big thank you to Sarko for trying to barge through the deadlock on this issue, whatever his motives might be.

Protecting Forests And Climate Change

Major new research has found a direct link between land-clearing and climate change, and that land clearing triggers hotter droughts. Areas throughout southern Queensland cleared of native vegetation were found to have lost 12 percent of their summer rainfall and to have experienced an average 2C rise in temperatures. The study found that land clearing was just as significant in terms of climate change as greenhouse gas production from fossil fuels.

Should these findings hold up and are found to be generalized throughout Australia and other areas globally clearing remaining natural vegetation, it would suggest a major revision in climate change policy-making is due. It is not enough to just focus upon greenhouse gas emissions, but maintaining natural vegetation through preservation, conservation and restoration may be an equally important policy response if global heating is to stopped.

While reducing industrial emissions is critically important, we must also stop deforestation, which accounts for roughly 20 percent of all global emissions. Brazil's Amazon, for example, contains 70 billion tons of carbon, but activities such as cutting and burning make Brazil one of the largest carbon dioxide emitters in the world.

These scientific findings further bolster the unity of being and the ecological intuition that we are not just undergoing a climate change crisis; but rather a series of crises that also includes water shortages, habitat loss, ocean decline, persistent toxics and others; that are each intimately connected and reinforcing. Together these crises undermine the Earth's sustainability, threatening it and humanity with global ecological collapse.

The importance of tropical forests for conserving biodiversity is also critical. Tropical rainforests house thousand of species found nowhere else. Therefore,  our goals are to reduce carbon emissions while promoting biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Given the importance of forests for both climate and biodiversity conservation and link field and policy projects that will guide the development of sustainable biofuels worldwide.

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Not wishing to overshadow Nathan's fresh post below (check it out!) I thought this little gem too good to hide from the blog board. check out the image - a little bit of genius! and who says those marketing hacks don't deserve all that dollar!

So come on, take your medicine...

Economists usually model the world from a very neoclassical viewpoint with rational actors. So when it comes to limiting greenhouse gas emissions, a standard carbon tax or carbon trading is usually called for - leading agents to make substitutions as necessary/wanted. It's so clean cut and simple, it makes you wonder why we are all having a hard time getting anywhere with reaching Kyoto Targets (see Japan, for an example).

This isn't the end of the story though, in a number of ways. Firstly, humans aren't always rational agents - giving rise to the field of Behavioural Economics. There may me other ways than carbon taxes and technology that are cheaper and more effective at reducing emissions and changing production patterns. But what I wanted to point out in this post (and this may be obvious to everyone) is the natural tendency of procrastination that pervades a lot of what we do as humans.

Procrastination, of course, has many forms. A quick search reveals a number of papers on the economics of procrastination. (And of course, with only my brief knowledge I will probably not do it justice in the space of a blog post. Hopefully my sloppiness will yield more comments.)

In the case of climate action, the rational agent will undertake an assessment of the discounted costs and benefits of action. Because of improved technology in future, and the sunk costs of currently installed technology, it is sometimes argued that significant abatement should be delayed.

But what got me thinking to write this post is the type of procrastination that which we experience more often in the context of a task that we know we must complete - writing an essay, revising for an exam, or <ahem> writing a blog post. This has less to do with making a rational discounting calculation - and more to do with self-control and an expectation that undertaking the activity will be unpleasant. The self-control side leads us to assume that in future we will finally sit down and do the task, and do it in shorter time. In my experience, it is the expected unpleasantness of the task that yields us to seek other diversions. And because the deadline is the same no matter what the procrastination, the payoff is the same.

In the context of carbon limits, I began to superficially think myself that they would be pretty annoying for me (I fly home a lot). When it came down to it I could really see why even people who cared about the environment would still say they didn't want to have to pay more for carbon energy, or didn't put their money in green funds. Because both these things require a change, and viewed from their current paradigm looks like either a hassle or a lot of work. It's the same as when you're watching TV and you think that you should be revising for your exam.

These ex-ante assessments are usually much worse than you expect. Once you've finally sat down to do your work/revision, you don't sit and moan about it - you just do it and get used to it. I will hazard a guess that the changes in our lifestyle required to reduce emissions will not be as scary as we anticipate them to be. Humans adjust quickly to new paradigms, and this will be no exception. We as a population should be aware that it won't be as bad as the doom-mongers predict. (As I wrote that, Iraq came to mind, but I'll save that for another time.)

What does this mean for policy? If the population is aware of this ex-ante paradigm issue, then implementing policy should be more politically acceptable. While this won't overcome the need for new technologies, it is certainly contributes to the wider picture. And if the population doesn't become aware? The cynic in me suggests that politicians should ignore political acceptability, and force us to swallow the bitter pill - knowing it won't be so bitter in the end. That, of course, is not realistic or prudent.

Futures Thinking

At the end of August, I began working at Forum for the Future as a Senior Sustainability Advisor on financial markets. I’m not going to turn this post into a plug for Forum, though as a charity it doesn’t seem so wrong to do so. What I will say is that there are really interesting pieces of work coming out all the time. Just last week, Forum launched its new website. A look at the projects page shows its most accessible stuff. If you want an idea of what food shopping will look like in 2022 or why Brighton and Hove is top of the  Sustainable Cities Index .

If you’re more interested in the big picture stuff, then take a look at Jonathon Porritt’s updated ‘capitalism as if the world matters’. This goes to the heart of sustainability, grappling with the idea that the capitalists' runaway train is fundamentally unsustainable because it runs on a track of continual economic growth, or as Porritt puts it the “get rich quick, party on politics”. I have only just started reading it, but it does well to crystallise the problems that we are all dealing with: ecological crisis: opportunity or threat?; is economic growth without degradation of natural and human capital possible?; what do we need to make capitalism sustainable?

So it's clear that our way of life is threatening our way of life. One message rings loudest from my colleagues at Forum, much more so than academia: however serious the crisis, only by showing that a sustainable future is possible and that it will actually be a rewarding journey to get there will we get out of this mess. So, tell the truth about the state of the earth and tell everyone how it can be fixed and why our lives will be better than now. If you’re in need of inspiration the best thing about the new website is that Forum’s magazine – Green Futures – now has its whole back catalogue as free online access.