As if to prove the relevance of what Danny Blanchflower and I are calling for in the Mile End Road Economists' initiative, this academic journal paper was published a few days ago in the Journal of Environmental Politics:
As the abstract says:
The role of particular scientists in opposing policies to slow and halt global warming has been extensively documented. The role of economists, however, has received less attention. Here, I trace the history of an influential group of economic consultants hired by the petroleum industry from the 1990s to the 2010s to estimate the costs of various proposed climate policies. The economists used models that inflated predicted costs while ignoring policy benefits, and their results were often portrayed to the public as independent rather than industry-sponsored. Their work played a key role in undermining numerous major climate policy initiatives in the US over a span of decades, including carbon pricing and participation in international climate agreements. This study illustrates how the fossil fuel industry has funded biased economic analyses to oppose climate policy and highlights the need for greater attention on the role of economists and economic paradigms, doctrines, and models in climate policy delay.
In other words, there are economists for hire who work on anti-social projects to suit the interests of the few in exchange for what is likely to be a useful financial reward without much care as to the consequence. Since we won't know who they are unless we call for full transparency on funding we will do just that. And if anyone says that we should not, we'll simply call for them to disclose their reason, including their funding.
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Things have come a long way with the OECD, the IMF and two Nobel Laureates being on board with carbon taxes.
The first Green New Deal was on board with this once, before abandoning it.
There are unfortunately a number of organisations such as the GND now dedicated inadvertently to making the problem worse than it needs to be by advocating for solar farms in temperate countries and opposing nukes. Even advocates of tree planting are making it worse than the most obvious alternative which is not to turn up in your 4*4s and put seedlings in the ground with their little plastic bark protectors, and let nature move in.
Tell me how you are going to stop Sizewell being overwhelmed by the North Sea?
When you can – and be sure it will work thousands of years then tell me how it will be protected from terrorist attack?
After that, please provide all your explanations for preventing carbon taxes being regressive?
There are good reasons for thinking you are very wrong
So, tell me who is funding you to be so wrong in that case?
I’m with you on the ignorance or deliberately not to plan on coastal or low lying places for development wrt to even the ocean rises already dialled in as current warming penetrates deeper into the oceans expanding the water.
A good case in point would for eg be the new V&A Museum here in Dundee. Not just on the waterfront but built out into the Tay (which is tidal all the way up to Perth btw). We apparently have an urban beach now too. Though I have not had a chance to go and see it yet.
There are also plans for an expensive folly thing in the harbour in Dunedin NZ where I used to live and my daughter’s family live now. The whole of South Dunedin where we used to live is a former salt marsh. Rain water and sewage has to be pumped out of it. Dig down in our garden a spade depth or two in the sandy soil and you hit water.
Already at severe liquifaction risk in a quake the whole area is at sea level rise risk. Yet life and planning sail on regardless. The cost of saving it would be huge. Thames barrier style booms across the island gaps further up the harbour for eg. Eye wateringly expensive. The entire peninsula is at risk of becoming an island if South Dunedin is inundated.
Human short sightedness always astonishes me.
What about people who think they know about economics but don’t really know what they are talking about? What can be done to try to encourage them to look at things differently? The problem is that many people think they know all there is to know about economics without ever even having studied it or even thought much about the subject. These people are not in any way malicious and are not working for any vested interests, but they can be very influential.
A case in point is the political YouTuber Phil Moorhouse, who makes two posts a day on the channel “A Different Bias” and has 111 thousand subscribers. He keeps banging on about “taxpayer’s money” and talking about scenarios in which the government will not have enough tax receipts to pay for what it needs to do. In a recent video he even used the phrase “the laws of economics of economics are not so easily broken” in support of his views – I don’t know if that is in response to some of my comments on his channel. The point is that he seems so sure he is right that he doesn’t even consider any other views.
I’m sorry to mouth off about it but I find it all very frustrating.
So I keep trying to create an alternative narrative…
And it’s not just economists – it can be QCs and ‘legal opinions’ too that can be bought – when 38 Degrees contested Andrew Lansley’s health bill, my local MP had one of those up his sleeve, provided by the Government.
As I keep banging on, providing ‘other opinions’ is typical agnotological practice that is embedded in modern PR. The result is division, confusion and ultimately inaction.
It is part of the entrenchment of the status quo by established interests.
The broader issue here is corporate ethics or, rather, the total absence of an ethical framework in favour of bottom line ruthlessness. The obvious analogy is the tobacco industry, on which a wealth of studies has established beyond a shadow of doubt that it financed corrupt ‘research’ for decades to downplay (and also flatly DENY) the adverse effects of smoking. This was a part of the evidence leading to the settlement with the US Federal government, itself a separate scandal. But ponder the list of corrupt sectors that supported this outrage and took the money: corporations, politicians, scientists of many disciplines, economists, marketing experts and amoral liars and low life from almost every area of expertise you care to name. BUT you are correct this is the BIG one, affecting a raft of vested interests making the tobacco scandal an ephemeral sideshow. It is also the most profoundly ideological of problems, since it can ONLY be solved by concerted, international STATE action requiring money on a scale that would dissolve, atomise every monetarist on the planet. And they won’t go quietly.