Climate QE in the Guardian this morning

Posted on December 2 2015

This letter is in the Guardian this morning:

Your editorial rightly highlights the serious problem of finding adequate funding to allow developing countries to tackle and cope with climate change (Last chance salon in Paris: there is no planet B, 30 November). It has been estimated that this could cost about $3,500bn, a truly staggering sum at this time of a global economic slowdown. Yet it mustn't be forgotten that, when the global banking system was threatened, the world's rich economies responded with programmes to print €7tn of quantitative easing to keep the financial system afloat, ie twice that thought to be required to deal with climate change in vulnerable countries.

Indeed the European Central Bank is still e-printing €60bn a month under its QE programme and is committed to doing so until September 2016. Our report Climate QE for Paree proposed that if it were to allocate say €10bn a month either from this QE programme or from an additional QE commitment, it could use it to buy climate change bonds from the European Investment Bank. The EIB could then direct these funds to climate change programmes in both Europe and developing countries. This could have a galvanising effect on other rich countries, putting pressure on them to introduce their own climate QE initiatives and thus further bolster global funds towards thousands of billions eventually needed to keep temperature rises at 2C. We found the money to save the banks, we now need to do the same to save the planet.

Professor Richard Murphy
City University
Colin Hines
Convener, Green New Deal group

 

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6 Responses

  1. Mark Law says:
    December 2 2015 at 2:01 pm

    The arrogance of people who believe they can “save the planet”.
    The Earth has survived changes in polarity, two ice ages, asteroid strikes and more.
    Planet Earth is not going anywhere. Planet Earth is fine.
    We are! Pack your bags folks ….

    http://youtu.be/MTIsI95IscY

  2. Stephen Ferguson says:
    December 2 2015 at 2:20 pm

    Absolutely.

    Politicians who say ‘how we are going to pay for it?’ (a) haven’t grasped the gravity of the climate threat and (b) don’t know they the macroeconomic tools right in front of their noses.

    Rather than joining with well-meant, but piffling, $20 billion ‘investment funds’ from billionaires Gates and Zuckerberg etc., we should be ‘war spending’ spending via Climate QE.

    Oh and one more thing….it would also be the best ever deal in history:

    The present value of the damage caused by human-caused climate change from a moderate warming scenario is an astonishing $400 trillion, according to analysis from Cambridge University’s Judge business school. The author, Chris Hope, an expert on the economics of climate change, told me that the “corresponding value for a low emissions scenario is about $80 trillion.”

  3. Stephen Ferguson says:
    December 2 2015 at 2:24 pm

    Oops, forgot link to quote…

    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/09/30/3705639/climate-action-avoids-damages/

  4. Stephen Ferguson says:
    December 3 2015 at 12:51 pm

    Why we don’t need Bill Gates and his billionaire friends save the planet…

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2015/dec/01/will-bill-gates-and-his-billionaire-friends-save-the-planet