Colin Hines and I are in The Guardian this morning:
Our letter says:
Rebecca Solnit's inspiring long read (Ten ways to confront the climate crisis without losing hope, 18 November) correctly emphasised the need to maintain hope when tackling the climate crisis by acting collectively, being tenacious through constant campaigning, despite setbacks, and listening to those whom the climate crisis most directly affects.
However, she left out the one factor crucial to achieving the systemic change required to protect the planet: to campaign to make clear how to pay for the enormous upfront costs required for such a fundamental transition.
This was addressed at Cop26 in Glasgow by Mia Amor Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, which is under threat from rising sea levels. She made this critical but shamefully underreported argument: “The central banks of the wealthiest countries engaged in $25tn of quantitative easing in the last 13 years. Of that, $9tn was spent in the last 18 months to fight the pandemic. Had we used that $25tn to finance the energy transition, we would now be reaching that 1.5 degrees limit that is so vital to us.”
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Excellent Richard. I so appreciate what you and many others do.
It makes sense as global heating is by far the greatest threat that we are accelerating towards than either the 2007/9 near international financial meltdown or the Covid 19 pandemic. The problem is how to persuade central banks and governments to heed the call. Unless Green QE is adopted at the Cairo COP then we certainly are doomed.
$25tn in QE with nearly one third to fight the pandemic? Great but most of the $25tn went to the richest most developed western countries especially the $9tn. I am pessimistic that monies of this scale will get to the least developed countries where it is sorely needed to fight climate change.
So, we have to defeat your pessimism
If we don’t we can kiss our proverbial goodbye anyway
Sure do. But with the West’s current political leaders it probably harder to change their approach than tackling climate change.
I think “Climate QE” is also essential to create the space for pension funds to disinvest from fossil fuels and other carbon intensive assets. My own personal experience as a pension trustee is that funds who claim to have “responsible investor” credentials argue that if they disinvest they have to sell them to someone else who may not care about climate change….so they don’t disinvest, they justify keeping the assets because they “engage”.
Climate QE could provide a solution – if central banks buy carbon intensive financial assets they can sequestrate them so they no longer circulate in financial markets. If the purchase is time limited it would avoid Climate QE then becoming a central bank backed insurance scheme for stranded assets.
If this “Carbon Finance Capture & Storage” mechanism was accompanied by the issue of climate bonds, pension funds would have a new low risk asset to purchase with the proceeds of “CFCS”.
Interesting….
I should have also said that pension funds, who claim to be “responsible investors” because they “engage” with carbon intensive companies in their portfolios, are guilty of greenwashing. Any such engagement only covers Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and ignores Scope 3 emissions, which, if they took them, into account, should lead automatically to disinvestment. There is nothing to be gained from “engagement” in these cases – no amount of engagement is ever going to de-carbonise coal, oil, gas, their derivatives or internal combustion engine technology.
Hence my work on sustainable cost accounting
Carbon capture and storage is rather a techno red herring. It is a colossally expensive, disruptive, and underdeveloped system. The “investment” would be far better put to use such as in insulation, wind and solar generation, etc.
Bill….I was proposing the capture and storage of carbon financial assets, not carbon. Central banks have the capacity to capture and store financial assets whilst the capability of carbon capture and storage is yet to be proven. I think you missed my point
Thanks, pont taken, I was getting a bit too enthused with the subject.