As the Guardian notes this morning:
Britain's biggest environmental groups and charities have warned the government it must double funding to tackle the climate emergency from next year to avoid ecological catastrophe in the future. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and Christian Aid are among those calling for at least £42bn to be allocated over the next three years. It is equivalent to about 2% of economic output each year and 5% of total state spending. Among priorities they list are an £11.6bn expansion in transport spending, including a UK-wide car scrappage scheme to remove polluting vehicles, as much as £2.6bn per year for rewilding projects and land management, and billions for sustainable buildings and industry.
I have two pints to make. The first is that these organisations are talking about the cost of tackling the climate emergency created by global heating. They are not talking about funding the Green New Deal, which also tackles the social and economic crises created by a decade or more of austerity. That will cost more. The Green New Deal Group suggests a cost of £50 billion or more. Nonetheless, the broad alignment is useful.
Second, I have suggested that meeting this goal is straightforward and tax increases are not required, in articles here and here.
The time for innovative thinking to tackle this crisis has arrived. Reallocating existing savings could provide sufficient funding to deliver a Green New Deal. It is time for that thinking to be better known.
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I’m an engineer, not an economist or even a tax accountant. I’ll admit to not yet having fully grasped MMT. I get it at the level of an insular economy such as that of the USA in the 1930s and 40s, but I can’t quite get it when currencies need to be exchanged for international trade. Setting all that aside, and assuming that money’s no object, the limit then becomes the pace at which practical measures can be put in place. Engineers have that phrase.. ‘The difficult we can do immediately, the impossible will take a little longer’.
Let’s take an example.. The amount of money put to a car scrappage scheme cannot sensibly be more than that which matches the rate at which electric vehicles can be supplied to the market, charging infrastructure put in place, electricity grid reinforced and additional generating capacity installed. The additional generating capacity, should ideally be powered by wind turbines but, due to the intermittency of this source it will have to be backed up by new closed cycle gas turbine plants until battery or other new forms of storage can be developed and put in place. Oh, and smart metering will be needed too: otherwise much of the money spent on grid reinforcement and new generating capacity will be wasted. Money wasted is money not available to be spent on the other social and economic crises. Or does this just demonstrate my ignorance of MMT?
The great problem with GND at present is too much time and energy is being devoted to rhetoric and too little to the hard work of planning. To give her credit, Greta Thunberg, on her arrival in New York, made a similar comment on the need for a concrete plan.
Your MMT understanding is limited
And your reliance on cost benefit analysis is worrying
But the reality is that there are plans
Some were issued this morning
One is coming in Scotland
And candidly, what is so hard to understand about the GND Groupo plan to make 30 million buildings thermally efficient?
I am sorry – but if you don’t want to look for a plan that does not say there isn’t one
I have been involved in efforts to model the physical economy at a national macroeconomic level, along the lines you suggest. Ie, assuming the money and political will is there, and no magic technological bullets, what is physically possible over what time scale. I’ll try to post some links later.
Steve Keen and others are working in the opposite (as in complementary) direction, introducing physical constraints into macro production functions, specifically energy and its efficiency of conversion into useful work.
All are welcome to the party
“I’m an engineer” – snap – me to!. I specialise in renewables. A 2019 literature survey by the Met Office threw up the factlet that wind farms with a separation of more than 400kms de-correlate in terms of output What the UK lacks is enough renewables sufficiently dispersed. This would mitigate against fluctuations in output.
A BERR report of 2008 on EVs showed even with 6 million EVs on the road would have an 8% impact on additional demand. Arranging so that said EVs trickle charge during off-peak times is, from an engineering PoV trivial & can be done now with minimal cost. 8% in the context of current Uk power generation is, likewise tirival to cover with RES and could be done quickly.
The problem with EVs is their up-take. This lies in the hands of the OEM (i.e. car manufacturers) who have groomed car drivers over many decades to believe that they need to buy SUVs (or “wanks” as I prefer to call them – I’ll leave it to you to work out what the drivers might be called) or similar over-powered, heavy gas-guzzling vehicles. Even if a scrappage scheme led to 1 million new EVs on the road in 1 year, that would lead to an additional 1.3% rise in UK electrical demand – = noise.
“The great problem with the GND”…. is that no serious money is being spent. There, fixed it for you. Engineering and the development of generation capacity capable of meeting demand is not & for the last 4 – 5 years has not been a problem. Government (or what passes for it) is the problem
I believe your conclusion is completely correct
And I am not an engineer
In short – No because they do not believe in anything that will upset the big business polluters.
And I will have one of your two pints !
As I read the article I was struck by how dated it was – all about “spending” & “costs” – very much the kind of stuff that used to come out of the European Commission. At the risk of sounding like a broken record: wind, on & off-shore has a positive business case now & if the planning process was streamlined it would have an even better business case. Roof-mounted PV has a business case – now – with no subsidy. Areas with a weaker business case include: warm comfortable homes that use less energy and transport. Nevertheless the area needs to be addressed & will require the most investment.
In the case of transport – people own & use cars because the alternative (public transport) is either non-existent or very expensive. It is worth remembering that this was the reason for the Gilet Jaunes in France – fuel tax rises impacting on people for whom there is no alternative because, in many areas, “public transport” is an oxymoron. Not so different from the UK. Tory action in the 1980s with respect to buses (& their “privatisation”) needs to be reversed and a fit-for-purpose public transport policy implemented.
For those that need an example of “fit for purpose” I can point to Vienna. I was at Schonbrunn, one Sunday – for an open air opera – it finished around 2330hrs. Tram, S-bann, U-bann got us back to our hotel – we did not need to wait more than 5 mins for any connection. This was not an accident. If public transport is there & is convenient, people will use it. A bus going from one place to another twice per day is not “convenient” & does not encourage people to use it (apart from the desparate, the young, the old or the infirm). Perhaps spending on public transport first & a scrappage scheme later is the logical way forward. I am certain that the Tories will never do this.
I have to agree with the last and much else in this
Thanks
Agreed.
Whether is better services for older people’s care or public transport to reverse global heating (or anything else for that matter) the ‘Bob Geldolf Solution’ is still the best:
‘Just give us the effing money’.
Why – because it does not have to come from taxation – that’s why?
I note the IFS are saying that the Johnson needs £5 billion to fund his latest bribes no doubt referring to increased taxation.
Well print it then is all I can say. And we can increase taxes for the very wealthy and corporations for that matter.