August 08, 2008
Escalating Unimproved Property Values in the Daintree
The land valuation of our property in the Daintree rainforest has recently jumped by 250%. This may well reflect market activity over the last few years, but then again, government intervention has largely influenced these changes, with broad scale expropriation of development rights, including the right to construct dwelling homes on freehold land. It is unsurprising that properties with established homes would become more valuable, because of their administratively increased exclusivity, but these are not unimproved values. It is equally evident that those properties that were compulsorily stripped of development rights lost market value and for obvious reasons.
Our freehold property, in particular, was compulsorily inscribed within World Heritage in December of 1988. Its classification for farming was maintained, but World Heritage responsibilities, as prescribed within domestic legislation, have progressively diminished farming activities; most dramatically through the prohibition of harvesting native forests. At a local government level, World Heritage has been used to separate planning areas, to effectively deny development capabilities for the greater importance of protecting ecological values within the inscribed estate. In truth, the income-earning capabilities of freehold World Heritage lands have been progressively diminished.
On the basis of these mounting constraints, we lodged an objection to the new valuation, detailing the legislated conservation land-use and the lack of rateable services – no reticulated water, no reticulated electricity and a road that is frequently impassable due to the inadequacies of the existing infrastructure.
Not only was the decision on objection disallowed, but also a new valuation was simultaneously dispatched, with a further increase in unimproved value of an additional 250%. Details within our objection apparently alerted valuers to changes in land-use that no longer qualified for concession for farming. So what was once eligible for rateable concession, because of an existing right to harvest forest product, became ineligible, for the higher importance of protecting forest product. Go figure!
This reminded me of another valuation milestone in the Daintree rainforest, back in the mid-1990’s. Around $16million of Commonwealth and Queensland Government funds had been allocated for the voluntary conversion of Daintree freehold rainforest to National Park. Properties in the Cooper valley were prioritised for acquisition, because of their intrinsic values of rarity, endemicity and primitiveness.
In an act of perceived skulduggery, property values within the priority acquisition area, unexpectedly tripled. In response to the outrage of incensed landholders, officials insisted that those affected should have rightfully rejoiced, with the discovery that they had long enjoyed a ‘rate holiday’, brought inevitably into line with contemporary market-driven valuations.
I must confess that I remain unconvinced.
Posted by neil at 08:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 24, 2008
The Need to Balance Environmental Policies Against Economic Growth
There is an insightful short article in The Guardian by Irwin Stelzer, who is the director of the centre for economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, and editor of the book Neoconservatism:
Gordon Brown is eager to prove that red is green, while David Cameron is urging voters to "vote blue, go green". So far, so good. But the prime minister is having some difficulty answering the question "How green are your taxes?" - while the leader of the opposition's promise to make green taxes "replacement taxes, not new taxes", contains more than a dash of Brownian stealth.
Continue reading Brown's pale green policies are more honest than most, Unlike Cameron, the prime minister grasps the need to balance environmental policies against economic growth.
Posted by Paul at 09:51 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
May 01, 2008
The Tropical Troposphere Temperature Tax
The tropical troposphere is where we should see the 'fingerprint' of greenhouse warming according to climate models, so Ross McKitrick has devised a Tropical Troposphere Temperature Tax, or 'T3' tax. The explanation below is a composite from various T3 tax articles on his website:
Recently I came up with a policy proposal that reconciles my skepticism with the policy activism of the alarmists: calibrate a carbon tax to the average temperature of the region of the atmosphere predicted by climatologists to be most sensitive to CO2. I call it the ‘T3’ tax, and I think the proposal should make everyone happy, except the most extreme alarmists and the Trojan horse-types who see the global warming issue as a vehicle for imposing a set of anti-growth policies that they would want even if global warming fizzles as a pretext.
My "T3" formula – short for Temperature of the Tropical Troposphere – guarantees that, if carbon emissions do not cause global warming, the charge will not go up. The IPCC predicts a warming rate in the tropical troposphere of about double that at the surface, implying about 0.2C to 1.2C per decade in the tropical troposphere under greenhouse-forcing scenarios. That implies the tax will climb by $4 to $24 per tonne per decade, a much more aggressive schedule of emission fee increases than most current proposals. At the upper end of warming forecasts, the tax could reach $200 per tonne of CO2 by 2100, forcing major carbon-emission reductions and a global shift to non-carbon energy sources.
Some people have responded to my T3 idea with the concern that essential increases in the carbon fee might be delayed due to lags in the climate system. But the lags are associated with oceanic responses. According to models, the tropical troposphere responds relatively quickly to carbon emissions. And even if there is a short delay, it is better to learn with a lag than not to learn at all, which is the problem with all other policy plans.
Another advantage of the T3 tax is that it would create a market for accurate climate forecasting. Someone building a billion-dollar power plant would want an objective estimate of the likely carbon emissions price five or 10 years out. Competition would create strong incentives to get the science right. The T3 rule would create market incentives for climate modelers to eliminate sources of exaggeration in their models. And investors would search out the best forecasts to guide their current planning, thereby factoring long-term greenhouse warming changes into today's investment decisions.
Nor would we need politicians to argue about how weak or strong the long-term policy should be – the atmosphere would decide. If the policy turns out to be too weak to force emission reductions, it would indicate that the climate is not sensitive to emissions.
Climate policy needs to shift from static to dynamic thinking. This requires tying policy to actual greenhouse warming. Anything else is like taking a shot in the dark.
Read Ross McKitrick's articles on the 'T3' tax on his publications website.
Steve McIntyre has plotted a graph over at Climate Audit which shows the UAH (black) and RSS (red) data for the tropics (both divided by 1.2 to synchronize to the surface variations - an adjustment factor that John Christy is said to use in an email). Allso collated is the most recent CRU gridded data and calculated a tropical average for 20S to 20N, shown in green. All series have been centered on a common interval:
Steve notes that there have only been a few months in the past 30 years which have been as cold in the tropical troposphere as March 2008.
In comment 118, Ross McKitrick says, "...when I wrote that chapter last year the T3 tax rate was $4.67. It’s now $3.33 and falling. If this trend continues it could indeed become a subsidy, but to oppose it on the grounds that it might end up as a subsidy for CO2 emissions is to admit that one actually expects global cooling."
As Ross McKitrick says - Why not tie carbon taxes to actual levels of warming? Both skeptics and alarmists should
expect their wishes to be answered.
Posted by Paul at 01:41 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
April 28, 2008
100 per cent 'Green' Tax Increase, Less Than 1 per cent Decrease in CO2 Emissions
In case anyone didn't notice, the UK Treasury is the epicentre of climate related reports and also benefits from the resultant so called 'green taxes.' Nicholas Stern was a member of the Treasury at the time of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change, which was based on extreme computer modelled scenarios. The Stern Review spawned the equally absurd Garnaut Review.
The most recent review instigated by the UK Treasury was the King Review of Low Carbon Cars, which looked at the potential for alternative fuel cars, such as ethanol, hydrogen, or battery powered electric vehicles My suggestion for considering methanol as an alternative, as proposed by Nobel Prize for Chemistry winner George Olah, was ignored. Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend Professor Julia King's inaugural lecture as Vice Chancellor of Aston University, which was based on the King Review. I talked to her afterwards and it became clear that isn't a fan of personal motorised transport and is 'government friendly.' Hardly a recipe for objectivity, yet government reports and reviews are always described as 'independent.'
March saw the Chancellor of the Exchequer's 'Budget.' This included changes to the current road tax system for cars, which is based on CO2 emissions. As a result, the vast majority of drivers will pay more, drivers of family-sized vehicles being the hardest hit. Last week, as reported in The Telegraph, shadow Treasury minister Justine Greening obtained Treasury projections which disclose that while the amount raised from car tax will more than double - from £1.9 billion to £4.4 billion by 2010 - carbon dioxide emissions from motoring are expected to drop by less than one per cent.
I'll leave the last words to Greening, who said, "This is a massive tax hike which will have virtually no impact on the environment. Despite their claims, the Government don't expect this move to change behaviour at all - it is just another eco-stealth tax of the worst kind."
Posted by Paul at 05:19 AM | Comments (32) | TrackBack
April 23, 2008
Australia's Emissions Trading System to Cost Business $22 Billion
THE Rudd Government's planned carbon trading system will cost business between $14billion and $22billion a year and will have to be considered in a review of the taxation system.
Taxation Institute director Michael Dirkis yesterday said that the money generated by the emissions trading system would be equivalent to more than 40 per cent of company tax revenue.
"You cannot design a system that impacts on business and brings in that level of government revenue without dealing with tax," he said.
The Australian: Carbon plan 'to cost business $22bn'
Of course, the effect on climate will be a big fat zero.
Posted by Paul at 05:50 PM | Comments (49) | TrackBack
March 28, 2008
Typo in 2002 Australian Report Responsible for Plastic Bag Mythology
The plastic bag is the latest useful item to fall victim to a factually challenged campaign aimed at achieving a world-wide ban in the false name of being 'green' or 'saving the planet.' Australia has to take much of the blame for this, due to a 2002 report misinterpreting the original 1987 Canadian Study in Newfoundland claiming that 100,000 marine mammals and birds were killed by 'plastic debris.' In a 2002 report commissioned by the Australian Government into the environmental effects of plastic bags, 'plastic debris' became 'plastic bags.' The report became known as the Nolan-ITU report. In 2006 the report was updated. The same sentence was repeated but 'bags' was changed back to 'debris' with an explanatory note stating that the original article actually referred to 'fishing nets.' The damage to the reputation of the plastic bag was already done.
Read the excellent 8th March Times article, 'Series of blunders turned the plastic bag into global villain' online
or see a pdf version here.
The carrier bag industry is attempting to fight back and swim against the tide using the Carrier Bag Consortium website:
The following myth-busters are copied from 'Useful Soundbites for the Media:'
SPEAK THE SCIENCE
BIN THE SPIN
1: OFFICIAL VIEWS
• A levy on plastic bags in Ireland only made matters worse… people underestimate how many plastic bags are used to put out recycling or are substituted for plastic bin bags. “We have got to remember that taxes and levies can have perverse effects – such as making people use more plastic not less” … Liz Goodwin, Chief Executive WRAP (Government’s Waste Resources Action Programme) The Daily Telegraph 28 Sept 2007
• “This (voluntary) agreement is working - with retailers offering shoppers reusable bags-for-life. We don’t think a ban or levy is the right way to go. In Ireland, people just bought more bin liners to replace free carrier bags, so the volume of waste stayed the same.” … DEFRA, The Guardian, 3 October 2007
• “But until supermarkets reduce the energy used in their stores, minimise food miles and treat farmers better, saving a few plastic bags is just window dressing.”…Tony Juniper, Friends of the Earth, Daily Mail, 28 January 2008
• “There have been unforeseen consequences in the Irish Experience … increase in the use of paper bags which are actually worse for the environment …” … Ben Bradshaw, UK Environment Minister, 4 August 2006
• “A number of unintended consequences appear likely to be connected with the proposed levy … the net environmental impact is an issue of considerable dispute … the Committee therefore recommends that Parliament does not agree to … the Bill” … Unanimous Conclusion (including the Green party) of the Scottish Parliament, Environment and Rural Development Committee, after two years of investigations, 2006
• “0.2% of the average household dustbin is plastic carrier bags … hence a tax on plastic carrier bags alone would be unlikely to have any significant impact on volumes of waste” (Plastic Bag Tax Assessment, HM Treasury, December 2002)
• Because so many plastic bags are re-used for domestic waste disposal, the following increase in bin liners and refuse sacks occurred after the tax in Ireland:
o Tesco – 77% increase in pedal bin liner sales
o SuperQuinn – 84% increase in nappy disposable bag sales
o SuperValue/Centra – 75% increase in swing bin liner sales
Evidence to Scottish Parliament, Environment and Rural Development Committee Hearings 2005
• The use of plastic bags in Ireland (including substitute bin liners) analysed through HM Customs figures shows the amount of plastic bags imported into Ireland has actually gone up after their bag tax from 29,846 tonnes in 2001 to 31,649 tonnes in 2006… HM Customs statistics (analysed by Mike Kidwell Associates/PAFA 2007)
• “They represent a fraction of 1%* of waste going to landfill. Retailers of all types are well on the way to reducing the environmental impacts of bags by 25%. They are doing that with the cooperation of customers by rewarding re-use, giving away sturdier bags-for-life, enabling and encouraging recycling and reducing the amount of plastic in bags” Kevin Hawkins, Director General, British Retail Consortium, 13 July 2007
• *The fraction of landfill represented by plastic shopping bags is 0.05%. This is based on domestic waste being 17% of landfill and plastic bags being 0.2% of the average dustbin. Packaging and Films Association 2007.
• 59% of people re-use ALL their lightweight plastic bags and a FURTHER 16% say they re-use MOST of them. … WRAP Survey 2005
2: THE SCIENCE
• The manufacture of plastic bags uses one third of the energy, results in half the pollution and one eighth of the raw material requirement of paper bag production (Winnipeg University Studies)
• Paper bags weigh 6 times more than plastic on our roads and are 10 times the volume in storage. Switching to paper as result of plastic bag bans or taxes will put an extra 32,000 lorries on London’s roads. Extrapolated by CBC from Simpac Ltd Studies presented to Scottish Parliament ERDC Hearings, 2006
• The average round trip to the supermarket is 12 miles, the petrol equivalent of 210 plastic bags (typically one year’s usage of bags per person in the UK) … Dr Gerard McCrum, Oxford, The Daily Telegraph 24 July 2007
• “(plastic bags) contribution to climate change is miniscule. The average Brit uses 134 bags a year, resulting in just (2.6) kilos of the typical 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide he or she will emit in a year. That is one five thousandth of their overall climate impact.” George Marshall, The Guardian, Thursday September 13 2007
• In Scotland alone, taxing plastic carrier bags would have created an EXTRA 13,500 tonnes of (largely paper) waste going to landfill. (This would mean an EXTRA 150,000 tonnes of waste created in the UK) Extrapolated from Scottish Executive Impact Assessment Studies 2005
• Taxing plastic bags will send more paper to landfill where it will degrade to give off greenhouse gases in direct contravention of the EU Landfill Directive. Plastic remains inert and will not give off CO2 or Methane in landfill. Packaging and Films Association 2002.
• Plastic has a higher calorific value than any other element of waste. The energy released in clean-burn municipal incineration by a single carrier bag keeps a 60 watt light bulb burning for one hour. APME/Plastics Europe 2006
• No other shopping container can carry 2,500 times its own weight and stay strong when wet. CBC 2001
• A typical plastic carrier bag uses 70% less plastic today than 20 years ago. No other industry has a better track record in material reduction. Packaging and Films Association 2003
• Plastic bags do not waste oil, they are derived mainly from oil refining by-products (naptha, ethylene, etc) which would otherwise be flared off. So plastic bags are an excellent use of otherwise waste products. All plastic packaging of all types uses no more than 2% of total oil extraction compared with 29% for transport and 35% for heating/industry. Plastics Europe 2007
3: THE RETAIL EFFECT
• The Irish tax has cost small to medium retailers an estimated €24.3m (after the first year of operation) mostly as a result of theft plus additional theft of €10m in “push out” thefts (where unbagged and unpaid for goods are wheeled through the doors due to absence of carrier bags as evidence of purchase) (Note: This is more than the income “generated for the good of the environment” and includes the theft of trolleys and baskets) … RGDTA - Irish Grocers Association and Irish Trade Journal “Shelf Life” estimates 2003,
• A 10p tax per carrier bag represents a tax level of 1400% on cost price. If applied equally across popular goods, a can of Coke would cost £8 and a packet of crisps £5. Simpac Ltd Study for CBC 2005
Posted by Paul at 02:32 AM | Comments (159) | TrackBack
March 27, 2008
Articles on Australia's Carbon Canutism
THE Rudd Government is prepared to stare down a demand to compensate power producers for the effects of the carbon trading scheme foreshadowed in its review of climate change policy.
Power producers say that without structural assistance the value of their assets will fall sharply and investors will be reluctant to commit to new plants, causing power shortages.
The Australian, 'No to carbon payout claims'
SINCE May 2002, when interest rates again started to rise, home loans in Australia have grown to about a trillion dollars today. Business borrowing has now passed $700 billion.
Were interest rates 3 per cent lower today, as they were in 2002, the national annual interest bill would be about $50 billion less. And although there may now be signs of changing buyer behaviours, such sustained lifts in interest costs have had little observable impact upon the appetites of households and businesses for debt, so far.
In the same period, petrol costs have increased by about 10 cents a litre per year. Were petrol prices the same today as in 2002, the national fuel bill would be $25 billion lower each year. Yet we are buying more cars, travelling further and using more petrol than ever before even as petrol prices continue to lift.
The Australian, 'Helping neighbours is key to cuts'
STRIKING greenhouse gas reduction deals with big developing countries, particularly our trading partners, might be a better method of dealing with climate change than pursuing a plan focused on imposing increasing costs on domestic energy users.
Writing in the opinion page of The Australian today, leading corporate figure Ziggy Switkowski questions whether relying solely on a gradual build-up of energy costs is the most effective strategy for achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr Switkowski's entry into the debate comes as the Rudd Government formulates Canberra's response to climate change, with its adviser Ross Garnaut arguing that the planned carbon-trading scheme should not compensate coal-fired power stations.
The Australian, Greenhouse deals 'beat carbon trading'
Reminder: New Paper from the Virtual World: Stabilizing Climate Requires Near-Zero Emissions
Posted by Paul at 04:04 AM | Comments (29) | TrackBack
March 05, 2008
Breakfast with Czech President Vaclav Klaus
The 500-strong contingent of skeptics currently in New York for The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change were up early for a second day. Breakfast was again at 7am and the first speaker was given a standing ovation – a man who had travelled all the way from Prague, the President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus.
Vaclav Klaus is a well know global warming skeptic and was re-elected President just two weeks ago.
In his speech President Klaus talked about the “robust relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth” and went on to suggest there are three types of countries in Europe based on their emissions profile and level of economic growth. He described the less developed countries of the European Union (EU), including Greece, has trying to “catch-up” since the signing of Kyoto and in the process increasing their level of carbon emissions by 53 percent. The post communist countries were described as seeing their heavy industry disappear and experiencing a decline in GDP and a drop in emissions of 33 percent Then there are countries like France and Germany which have seen their emissions increase on average by 4 percent.
The President said that “the dream” to reduce emissions in the EU by 70 percent in the next 30 years could only be achieved if there was a dramatic de-industrialization of Europe (likely associated with a dramatic drop in GDP), a dramatic drop in population or a technological revolution.
President Klaus outlined previous attempts in Europe, for example the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, to impose radical economic change and the “innocence of climate alarmists” to currently mastermind society including their belief in their own omnipotence.
The President concluded with comment that “uncompromising lessons about the collapse of communism” need to be re-learnt:
“We have to restart the discussion about the very nature of government and about the relationship between the individual and society. Now it concerns the whole of mankind, not just the citizens of one particular country. To discuss this means to look at the canonically structured theoretical discussions about socialism (or communism) and to learn the uncompromising lessons from the inevitable collapse of communism 18 years ago. It is not about climatology. It is about freedom. This should be the main message from our conference.”
Standing ovation, including from London-based Kendra Okonski and former advisor to Russian President Putin Andrei Illarionov . New York based Statistician William M Briggs is the tall guy in the background to the immediate left of Dr Illarionov.
Thanks again to conference sponsor’s The Heartland Institute .
More on day 3 soon.
----------------
You can read a perspective on day 3 of the conference from William M Briggs here: http://wmbriggs.com/blog/2008/03/04/heartland-conference-day-3-and-wrap-up/.
You can read my perspective on day 1 of the conference here http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002809.html and day 2 here http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002813.html .
Posted by jennifer at 06:50 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
March 04, 2008
Economic Implications of Climate Change Measures: Alan Moran
A matter that has received less attention than it should is what are the energy consumption and cost implications of the measures proposed to abate carbon dioxide and what would be the economic consequences of success in this.
There are many emission abatement goals that have been floated. Perhaps the two most conservative are an emission stabilisation goal and a 20 per cent reduction goal. In Australia and England the respective Garnaut and Stern reports have envisaged much deeper cuts than these.
The first chart show business-as-usual – with emissions in 2030 projected forward at the 1990-2004 rates of 1.3 per cent for the OECD and 5.7 per cent for the developing countries; the former Soviet bloc is held constant. This shows emissions at an aggregate 43 billion tonnes, almost 50 per cent higher than 2004.
Chart 1
Even though emissions in the developing world probably overtook those of the OECD in 2007, their per capita emissions were very much lower 2.4 tonnes compared with 11.5 tonnes (with the former CPEs at 7.9 tonnes). Notwithstanding the fast growth of the developing country emissions in business-as-usual 2030 they remain little more than a quarter of those of the OECD.
If now we were to call for a 20 per cent reduction on 2004 levels and apportion that equally in per capita terms, the outcome is a standard 2.5 tonnes per capita. For the OECD countries this is a dramatic reduction. The OECD’s aggregate 16 billion tonnes under BaU (12 tonnes per capita) becomes 3.3 billion tonnes. Developing countries, though above their 2004 levels are well below their BAU on a per capita basis, as are the former soviet bloc countries. Chart 2 illustrates this.
Chart 2
The most recent Australian report on the emission control measures, by Professor Garnaut, acknowledges that the easy gains in emission reductions have been made, especially with the dismantling of the command economies of the Soviet bloc and China. Those countries’ CO2 intensities have now stopped falling, in fact are rising. Indeed, China has already surpassed the magic 4 tonnes per capita which would be the level required for stabilisation of emissions and has only pulled a fifth of its population out of poverty.
Mr Garnaut suggests that Indonesia and PNG could become vast sinks to offset other countries’ emission levels. This is a pipe dream. It may allow for a windfall gain for the two economies but there are not enough trees for this to offer anything but a pinprick.
Ominously, Garnaut hints strongly about the necessity of trade pressures on developing countries to reinforce their sense of public spirit. That in itself would destroy the world trading regime and retard all countries’ living standards. And, the process is already underway with the EU negotiations of bilateral “Free Trade Agreements” with developing countries. As Rasheed Sally points out, “The EU is also increasingly interested in linking trade policy to climate change. New FTAs will likely contain trade-and-sustainable-development chapters, which could house climate-change provisions in the future.”
If targets for reduced carbon dioxide emissions could be met by replacing baseload power stations with nuclear power, the cost increases for most countries would be relatively small. For countries like Australia, where coal is cheap and massively abundant, a premium on existing prices of perhaps 30-40 per cent would be expected. Many European countries would face no cost increases since nuclear is already the cheapest option.
However, several of these countries have already gone a good way to a nuclear power based electricity industry. And this illustrates the difficulties in making the required level of cuts. Even France with over 70 per cent nuclear emits 6 tonnes per capita. France is therefore way above the magical 2.5 tonnes of CO2 per capita and has already used up its scope to make the cuts by substituting out of carboniferous fuels.
And France, like many other European economies has outsourced many of its energy intensive industries like smelting to areas like Eastern Europe and the Gulf where energy is cheap but greenhouse emissions are no less than if the production was left at home.
Chart 3 Emissions and GDP per Capita
The impossibility of meeting emission reductions by replacing coal with nuclear, in itself the least fearsome solution, is illustrated by the relative shares of electricity and gas in the emission profile.
All OECD countries are a bit different but the magnitudes are similar. For Australia, electricity is only 35 per cent of emissions and this starts to define the maximum that can be achieved by making the use of coal prohibitively expensive.
Chart 4
The report to the former Australian government examined the switch to emission levels at 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020 . This estimated the CO2 equivalent trajectories were as follows.
Chart 5
Noting that a 37 per cent reduction was required, it argued, “To illustrate the magnitude involved, this is equivalent to, for example, replacing Australia’s entire existing fossil fuel–fired electricity generation capacity with electricity from nuclear energy while at the same time removing all existing vehicles from our roads.”
Moreover, these measures are not taking place in a vacuum. A great many greenhouse mitigating regulatory programs are in place even in those Kyoto recalcitrants which used to comprise Australia as well as the US. For Australia:
• There is a vast number of subsidies for emission management renewable energy technology and installations,
• We have regulatory impositions on electrical equipment and most importantly on new houses which have to meet a “5 Star” energy efficiency standard; this is a convenient means by which those that presently have their own homes can shift costs onto those looking to buy them and salve their consciences without incurring any expense – indeed profiting since the higher costs of new houses is automatically transmitted to the value of the existing stock,
• There are obligations on electricity retailers to use a specific and growing share of renewables in their mix of energy sources. These renewables, as well as requiring costly additional management expenditures to deal with their intermittency, are about twice the cost of conventional coal fired electricity. By 2020, 20 per cent of electricity is to be from renewables, less than 6 per cent of which will come from commercially viable hydro sources.
These existing measures are the equivalent of a tax on stationary sources of electricity of about $10 per tonne, or 30 per cent of the ex-generator cost.
A carbon tax or auction of permits would come in over and above this. Early work on the level of such a tax that would be required put the level on $10. That is a distant dream. Stern put the number at US$100 but also had a lot of persuasion and education to assist – calling upon what the economist Lionel Robbins famously referred to as “that very scarce commodity, human love”. And by bending the rules of finance and allocating very low discount rates to the net present value estimates of costs, he managed to argue that the costs would be minor and swamped by the benefits.
Energy costs have already risen strongly in OECD countries in the light of self-inflicted measures to reduce CO2 emissions. To do the task that is sought by those promoting the notion that catastrophic human induced global warming will take place in the absence of rigorous control measures will result in massive industrial disruption and loss of income as investment is diverted to energy resources that offer poor productivity and as industries and consumers reduce and restructure their demand.
The emission reductions required are much greater than the previously horrific calls like 20 per cent below 1990. For OECD countries, we are talking about emission levels of a quarter and less of current levels. Moreover, none of this will do very much for emission controls if Developing Countries are not also forced into making emission reductions or holding them at current levels. In the absence of this we would see emissions of developed countries being largely transferred to developing countries and the emission intensive goods being imported.
To combat this requires a comprehensive new form of currency in the form of carbon ratings. All goods would need to be rated and their producers would be required to demonstrate the required credits. In the case of imports that did not meet these stipulations, the importer would be required to meet the deficit. Pretty soon we would see a world trading economy unrecognisable from that we now have.
At the very least this will create tensions as developing countries will maintain that they are being denied the opportunity to reach the levels of economic wellbeing that the OECD countries have achieved.
In addition, developed countries themselves, aside from denying themselves cheaper goods from the third world, will be incurring inefficient expenditures on investments in green energy (an especially favoured approach by the two Democrat candidates for the US Presidency). This reduces the overall productivity of investment thereby reducing income levels over and above the transitional costs incurred in economic reconstruction.
This is a copy of the address by Alan Moran, Institute of Public Affairs,
to the The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change , New York, March 3, 2008
Posted by jennifer at 02:56 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
January 31, 2008
Weblog Cost-Recovery
Do you see what I see? There is a new ‘Donate’ feature on the home-page of The Politics & Environment Blog. Its purpose is self-evident and it is hoped that members of our weblog community will consider availing themselves of the facility to help share the load, as it were.
Since the 14th April 2005, when the site was first launched, over 1,515 entries have been published eliciting some 41,440 comments. It has become quite the gathering place for our community of interest. Whilst we are often conflicted by ideology on issues raised, we also embrace strong environmental values, which for many would include sustainability and ‘user-pays’. It could be said that expenditure and environment often make for strange bedfellows, but the fact is, there is a growing cost to the maintenance and operation of the weblog.
In another popular gathering place, visitors to the Daintree rainforest consistently express strong expectations that the destination will reveal sightings of some of Australia’s most unique wildlife in natural habitat. Unfortunately, the majority are unsuccessful and not because the ecological values of the landscape fall short of the mark, but that the travel-style is so completely contradictory.
Three-quarters of the half-million (or so) travellers per year are bound to the travel-intensive itineraries of day-visitation out of Cairns or Port Douglas; only a quarter stay overnight. There is also a significant destination bias, with summer holidays from the northern hemisphere and escapees from the winter chill of southern states, supplying the largest numbers of overnight visitors to the winter rainforest at is most dormant.
Elusive encounters with rainforest beauties, like the (above) male Orange-thighed tree-frog (Litoroia xanthomera), are few and far between. Visitors would be well-advised to travel into the rainforest at the hottest, wettest time of the year and to engage the expertise of a local inhabitant, to maximise prospects for successful sightings. However, to do so they would need to stridently go against the flow and direct their travel dollars more purposefully.
Perhaps the same could be said of the weblog; a purposeful direction of economic support might bolster the vitality of the forum even more substantially than the rigour of free comment.
Posted by neil at 07:07 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 25, 2008
Stern Report Reviewed
Dear Jennifer,
Australia's Productivity Commission has finally reviewed the Stern Report [the report commissioned by the British government on the economics of climate change] and according to newspaper reports has attacked it for its advocacy and dubious costings.
The Productivity Commission document is available via http://www.pc.gov.au/research/staffworkingpaper/sternreview
Reports in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian are available at the following links
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23105165-11949,00.html
The ABC is currently silent on the matter.
Cheers
John McLean
Posted by jennifer at 08:24 AM | Comments (32) | TrackBack
December 05, 2007
Protecting the integrity of Eco-accreditation
In what has been described as an important victory, Ecotourism Australia has been granted a number of interlocutory court orders by the Queensland Supreme Court, to protect both intellectual property and also the public from potentially misleading environmental marketing.
Ecotourism Australia found that an uncertified operator was using its ECO Certification Logo, without permission. The Eco Certification Program provides accreditation to successful eco and nature tourism applicants in Australia and is now being exported as the International Ecotourism Standard.
Posted by neil at 09:09 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
November 07, 2007
Conservation Values in the Daintree
The Australian Rainforest Foundation (ARF) has recently distributed an explanation of its position and the work it has been tasked to do, particularly where it applies to the rainforest areas between the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation.
Much of what it describes as ‘always controversial’ is all too frequently rationalised against a series of subdivisions that were registered by the Queensland Government in the early eighties. What is rarely offered, by way of qualification, is that this decision was made in favour of competing interests that sought substantive removal of rainforest for sugar-cane cropping, on lands that had been held under freehold title for much of the preceding century. With a full disclosure of historical fact, the decision to oppose the expansion of sugar-cane was remarkably enlightened in its protection of an extraordinary rainforest habitat.
Not that the significant number of residential properties, with existing-use-rights, was without concern; indeed, if all twelve-hundred properties were developed to capacity, there would have been significant habitat losses. In recognition of these concerns, $23million was allocated in the mid-nineties for voluntary acquisition and conversion to National Park.
For resolution of outstanding concerns at the conclusion of this program, the Daintree Futures Study was undertaken and submitted to the Wet Tropics Ministerial Council. Three spheres of government were to sign a Memorandum Of Agreement to endorse its recommendations, including the package of financial contributions from Commonwealth and Queensland Governments and the Douglas Shire Council.
The Queensland Government was to allocate $16.1million to Ergon to supply grid electricity, but the Queensland Minister for Mines and Energy effectively circumvented the requirement by authorising an amended policy that prohibited the supply of electricity using a network and excised the Daintree region from Ergon’s distribution area.
The Douglas Shire Council was to collect an extra $1million from the Daintree River ferry over five years, but its specific purpose tourism/conservation levy was ultimately ruled illegal by the Queensland Supreme Court.
The Commonwealth government was to underwrite a $10million Daintree Land Trust, however, the Ministerial Council rather agreed to fund $300,000 each from Commonwealth and Queensland governments and an additional $400,000 outstanding from the previous $23million, to establish a $1million seeding grant for the ARF, as described in the above-mentioned explanation.
Tens of millions of dollars have been poured into ‘Daintree Conservation’ over the years, with changing names on title, covenants, property boundaries being reconfigured and development rights expropriated. There is little debate that this area of outstanding conservation value should be protected and to the greatest possible extent. To this end, its resident community has been regulated into a conservation land-use function, but what it requires, more than anything else, is an appropriate economy and one that is not contingent upon development. So far, none of the ‘rescue programs’ have managed to provide this requirement.
As a relatively recent land-holder, the ARF is grappling with the same conservation challenges as all landholders within the Daintree; its application for compensation for loss of development rights is an expression of an economic lack of choice.
Posted by neil at 04:44 PM | TrackBack
October 23, 2007
A Sunspot Correlation?
An unusual paper has appeared in the journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change:
Sunspots, GDP and the stock market
Theodore Modis
Abstract
A correlation has been observed between the US GDP and the number of sunspots as well as between the Dow
Jones Industrial Average and the number of sunspots. The data cover 80 years of history. The observed correlations permit forecasts for the GDP and for the stock market in America with a future horizon of 10 years. Both being above their long-term trend they are forecasted to go over a peak around Jun-2008.
The paper concludes:
.....If one accepts that there must be some correlation between GDP growth and stock-market growth as
displayed in Fig. 5, then one cannot use the lack of scientific proof as an argument against the existence of
correlation between the stock market and sunspots (Fig. 2), or between GDP and sunspots (Fig. 4). On the
other hand, if these correlations are real, then we can venture long-range forecasts for the DJIA and the GDP....
....The levels forecasted here for the DJIA of 13908 in mid 2008 and 7919 in early 2014....
Well, we won't have to wait too long to test the mid 2008 prediction. There's time enough for Lockwood & Frohlich to debunk The Great GDP Sunspot Swindle, and for James Hansen to make several adjustments.
Posted by Paul at 06:12 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
May 29, 2007
Queensland Scrub Sold for Carbon: A Note from Tom Marland
Hi Jennifer,
You may have read on the front page of Courier Mail on Saturday the article about Queensland’s First Carbon Farmer, Peter Allen.
Here is the link:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,20797,21794589-952,00.html?from=public_rss
The project was the first avoided deforestation project of its kind in Australia and one of the biggest in the world.
The project secured 12,000 hectares of vegetation which was eligible to be cleared under the Stat Governments 500,000 hectare clearing ballot process.
It was estimated (both ground truthed and reconciled with the AGO) that the project prevented 1,200,000 tonnes of C02 emission being released into the atmosphere.
The cut off date for clearing permits to be acted upon was the 31 December 2006 which brought an end to broad scale land clearing of remnant vegetation in Queensland
It is amazing to read some of the responses in the article and also on the blog entries linked to the project.
Instead of being supportive of a project to protect vegetation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions many people were critical of the project.
One response was:
“I thought Peter Beattie past a law a couple of years ago that said no established forest of natural growth could be bulldozed. This farmer appears to have pulled a good one to me, He's turned a few baron and unusable acres of scrub into a million bucks”
Another response:
‘How come the farmer, was in a position to destroy all those trees in the first place? There's no moral here, merely a financial decision! Such thinking has created the problem in the first place and that by a shear a 'twist of circumstances' makes the farmer look ethical.’
Green groups have come on board to say the voluntary market is open to exploitation, with no controls on who can sell carbon and no checks on the work carried out.
However, to eligible under the scheme vegetation had to be approved by the Australian Greenhouse Office under the Greenhouse Friendly initiative.
To secure the carbon, landholders had to agree to enter into ‘carbon rights’ agreements.
Briefly, the ‘carbon rights’ agreement consists of:
- A 120 year agreement not to clear the vegetation which binds to title for future owners;
- On-going grazing and management is allowed to reduce bush fires, weed outbreaks and feral animal infestations;
- The agreement areas are surveyed and added to the survey plan.
To account for fire and carbon loss a 20% buffer was added to area eligible to be sold for credits.
In the future, there are further ‘avoided deforestation’ projects planned for eligible vegetation in Queensland and Northern New South Wales.
This eligible vegetation must meet the requirements set down under the Kyoto Protocol definition of forest and enforced by the Australian Greenhouse Office.
Landholders are already skeptical of the merits of reduced land clearing after the way in which Premier Beattie and the Queensland State Government have enacted and enforced the Vegetation Management Act.
Now the job will be even harder to convince eligible landholders to enter into the project because of the criticism that the project may attract.
The Allen’s (who were interviewed for the article) did not want the media attention but where interested in the diversification of income potential in selling the rights to carbon held in their vegetation on their own land and also the opportunity to contribute something back to the environment.
However, the attitude from many (mostly urban) is that it should be an ‘ethical’ decision rather than financial.
People want the benefits but no one wants to pay for it. We (the farmers) cant win.
For more information on the project go to www.carbonpool.com.au .
Cheers,
Tom Marland
Posted by jennifer at 06:25 PM | Comments (38) | TrackBack
April 24, 2007
The disposal of our heritage
Douglas Shire Council (DSC) has authorised the public release of its Blue Hole Reserve draft Management Plan, which aims to create a reserve for community purposes at a site of global environmental and cultural heritage significance, at the centre of the Daintree Cape Tribulation rainforest.
The underlying objective, it would seem, is to commandeer a designated area for public swimming and other associated recreational activities.
The draft applies to a portion of land known colloquially as the ‘Blue Hole’ incorporating property on a diversity of tenures surrounding a deep pool situated on a bend in Cooper Creek. It is inextricably connected to Cooper Creek Wilderness within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, which is a pre-existing authorized provider of regulated public access to World Heritage goods and services, including recreational access to Cooper Creek on a user-pays basis.
Interestingly, Queensland’s Parks and Wildlife Service (the State's principle land manager with over ninety-percent of the area) has opposed the formal sanctioning of such a facility on National Park, because of environmental sensitivities, cultural heritage values and legal liability.
Surely if the Queensland Government wants a venue for unrestricted public swimming in the Daintree Cape Tribulation region, then it should develop one or more, BUT PLEASE on its own lands; National Park in particular, declared for that very purpose and manageable under the provisions of the Nature Conservation Act 1992 and its various regulations.
Cooper Creek Wilderness is a working-model of private-sector management through best-practice ecotourism. It does not have the statutory authority that would allow for management of the public at large. Indeed, having signed a conservation agreement with the Minister for Environment, it is not permitted to allow the public at large to enter its Nature Refuge.
The site is also unsuitable for the proposed use because of its extremely important cultural heritage values to its traditional custodians as a birthing site and spiritual resting place for the unborn, since a time immemorial. As a requirement of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003, the proponent has a duty of care to take all reasonable and practical measures to ensure their activities do not harm cultural heritage.
The Cultural Heritage Report, prepared by Dr. Nicky Horsfall in November 2005, recommends that,
"The proposed reserve should be made to protect the natural and cultural values; it should not become a recreational reserve."
The environmental report for the draft, prepared by consultant biologist Dr. Robyn Wilson, states;
Dr Wilson observed during her site inspection that a large tree (Ristantia pachysperma) on the northern bank near the tributary, that was helping to stabilize part of the bank, had collapsed and was filling the northern end of the Blue Hole. Dr Wilson surmises that a fact that may have contributed to its collapse was people climbing this tree to access a rope swing. Access to this tree would have compacted the soil at the base, which was eventually eroded and washed away by floodwater.
This proposal to provide unrestricted pedestrian access for recreation will devastate Cooper Creek Wilderness, which was effectively expropriated of development capability when it was compulsorily inscribed within Australia’s Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, except for the highly regulated provision of public access to World Heritage goods and services on a user-pays basis.
For years Cooper Creek Wilderness has formally requested a seat at the negotiating table to develop a cooperative solution to a complex management issue across multiple tenures, but has hitherto been denied such an invitation. Providing free-entry, unrestricted public access to that which Cooper Creek Wilderness has been compulsorily regulated to provide on a user-pays basis, is unconscionable.
There is a very acceptable solution to this matter that doesn’t involve the destruction of Cooper Creek Wilderness, but it would seem the proponents of this draft are resolutely disinterested.
Posted by neil at 06:09 AM | Comments (115) | TrackBack
October 31, 2006
Sir Nicholas Stern’s Report: First Impressions
Some British economist puts out a report on the economics of climate change for her majesty the Queen and the Australian media and the Left go gag-gag. Fran Kelly from your ABC announced it as The Report the world has been waiting for.
Lying in bed this morning listening to Fran, I was wishing, yet again, that Australia was a republic.
I’ve since made it to my computer, opened the report and discovered the Executive Summary, at least, isn’t too bad.
Sir Nicholas Stern begins by repeating that the scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response.
Sir Nicholas Stern then explains the methodology used to determine the global economic cost of climate: “a number of different techniques to assess costs and risks.”
I am impressed that the report acknowledges that climate change is a global issue and therefore stresses the need for an international response. Contrast this with Kyoto where the expectation is that only the developed world needs to actually do anything. The Executive Summary suggests a key element of any future international framework should be the expansion and linking of the growing number of emissions trading schemes to promote cost-effective reductions in emissions and bring forward action in developing countries.
The Executive Summary also acknowledges the importance of adapting to climate change with reference to the importance of building resilience because it is no longer possible to prevent climate change. Building on this theme the Executive Summary finishes with comment about the importance of research into new crop varieties that will be more resilient to drought and flood. On this point I assume Sir Nicholas Stern would support the lifting of the ban on GM food crops which limit the commercialization of new crop varieties in Australia.
Interestingly the Executive Summary states that coal will continue to be an important source of energy into the future and advocates carbon capture and storage to allow the continued use of fossil fuels without damage to the atmosphere. This could be interpreted as an endorsement of the Australian Government’s approach with money pledged just yesterday for a carbon capture project in central Queensland.
The report appears to be based on at least one very flawed assumption. The Executive Summary repeats and repeats the misconception that we can some how stabilize atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. If what Sir Stern is trying to say, is that we should endeavor to not add any more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere then he should be clearer in his language. Even Al Gore, in his movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, acknowledged that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have always fluctuated. Does anybody seriously think they could be stabilized in the future?
The Executive Summary is as misleading as Al Gore’s movie when it states that the cost of extreme weather, including floods, droughts and storms is already rising. Why yes, because there are more people building more expensive houses in places like Florida. But this does not mean that the number of extreme weather events has increased, a mistake both Gore and Sir Stern appear to make.
I haven’t yet read beyond the Executive Summary, but I note that according to today’s The Australian in a piece entitled ‘Bell tolls down under on warming’ in the detail of the report, it is claimed the east coast of Australia already has longer droughts and declining rainfall. Surely Sir Stern checked the charts at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology which don't show any long term decline in rainfall. I hope he didn't base his analysis on media headlines or modelled output?
I am also concerned that the economic analysis fails to mention any of the benefits of living in a warmer world. Then again the report does state up front that it is based on "costs and risks". But, hang on, there will be some benefits. For example, there are significant potential benefits from the likely longer growing season for agriculture in Europe and North America.
It is also a bit annoying that the Executive Summary of such an evidently important report, apparently based on “costs and risks”, fails to explain what the biggest costs are going to be. According to the report, global warming is going to cost trillions, but I guess I am going to have to read 700 pages if I am to understand exactly why. Is the biggest cost the potential displacement of people now living in cities beside the sea?
The Queen of England’s House of Lords brought down a very large report on this same topic just last year and it came to a very different conclusion. Interestingly that report was pretty much ignored by the Australian media. What is it about Sir Nicholas Stern, that the Fran Kelly’s of this world so like? Does Sir Stern have a good publicist, or is it all in his name?
You can read the full stern report by clicking here.
You can read the House of Lords' report by clicking here.
Posted by jennifer at 09:28 AM | Comments (85)
July 04, 2006
Kyoto Won't Help Poor People Much: Bjorn Lomborg
It is often claimed by environmentalists that 'stopping climate change' is an obligation the world's so-called rich and developed nations have to the poorer developing nations.
Thus the Kyoto protocol is all about 'developed nations' reducing carbon emissions, while countries like China and India are exempt.
If the Kyoto Protocol was really about the environment, then surely everyone would be expected to reduced emissions, particularly the really big emitters like China and India.
Yet according to Bjorn Lomborg, the Copenhagen Consensus, and Ambassadors from the United Nations, combating climate change through the Kyoto Protocol is a poor investment for humanity.
Lomborg begins a recent opinion piece in The Observer titled 'Climate Change Can Wait, World Health Can't' by making the point that combating climate change through the Kyoto Protocol has a social value of less than a dollar for each dollar spent.
He goes on to repeat the findings from the Copenhagen Consensus that:
"The economists found that spending $27bn on an HIV/Aids prevention programme would be the best possible investment for humanity. It would save more than 28 million lives within six years and have massive flow-on effects, including increased productivity.Providing micronutrient-rich dietary supplements to the malnourished was their second-highest priority. More than half the world suffers from deficiencies of iron, iodine, zinc or vitamin A, so cheap solutions such as nutrient fortification have an exceptionally high ratio of benefits to costs.
Third on the list was trade liberalisation. Although this would require politically difficult decisions, it would be remarkably cheap and would benefit the entire world, not least the developing world. A staggering GDP increase of $2,400bn annually would accrue equally to developed and developing countries with free trade."
I understand that neither the European Union nor the United States are showing any real commitment to trade liberalisation at this current final Doha Round of World Trade Organisation negotiations in Geneva.
Posted by jennifer at 10:16 AM | Comments (33) | TrackBack
April 30, 2006
Good News, Price of Carbon Falls
The price of emitting one tonne of CO2 in Europe fell from €30 last Monday to €16.50 on Thursday. This followed news that France, Estonia, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and the Walloon region of Belgium all had a surplus of carbon credit, pulling down the price.
The carbon trading scheme was launched in Europe in January 2005 to limit total carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.
It is good news for the environment if countries are coming in under target - it means they are emitting less carbon dioxide than predicted.
However, some countries are expected to not have enough carbon credits including Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal. These countries have to report by the 15th May.
Will they push the price back up?
You can read more at Reuters, click here.
Posted by jennifer at 11:22 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
April 25, 2006
Political Reform Driven by Pollution in China
I am fascinated by China's growth and wonder about the impact of all this development on the local and global environment. The '2006 Index of Leading Environmental Indicators: The Nature and Sources of Ecological Progress in the US and the World' by Steven Hayward at the Pacific Research Institute has an interesting section on China as a case study with some data on air quality and land reserved. The study also suggests that environmental concern is driving political reform:
"Environmental calamities may have become the principal source of political unrest and turbulence in China. In April the New York Times reported on a major riot in the southeastern province of Zhejiang where a crowd of up to 60,000, burned police cars, smashed windows, and injured more than 30 government workers in protest of pollution from nearby chemical plants. The Washington Post followed up on the story in June, reporting that the violent protest, which apparently routed the Chinese government authorities in the region, was at least partially successful: six chemical facilities were shut down or relocated.This protest is reportedly just one of many occurring frequently in China in the last few years. In July, the New York Times reported another environmental protest in Xinchang, a city 180 miles south of Shanghai, where an estimated 15,000 people rioted for three days “in a pitched battle with authorities, overturning police cars and throwing stones for hours, undeterred by thick clouds of tear gas.”
The object of their ire was a 10-year-old pharmaceutical plant, which the protestors wanted closed or relocated. News of environmental protests spread rapidly across the Internet, spawning imitators throughout the nation on a large—perhaps massive—scale. The Times reported that there are “government figures” showing 74,000 incidents of mass protest in China in 2004 (not all of them necessarily environmentally related). In early December, a protest against a proposed wind-power project turned deadly as Chinese security forces fired on a crowd, killing 10 people.
Hayward goes on to suggest that environmental catastrophies have driven political reform in other parts of the world:
"The Songhua River spill [in China] might be likened to the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969, which was one of the galvanizing events in the rise of the modern environmental movement in the U.S.. In a nutshell, the public outcry over the Cuyahoga River (which had experienced fires several times before with little public fanfare) showed that the affluent society no longer wished to be the effluent society. Certainly rising middle-class consciousness is involved with the popular protests about environmental calamity in China.Perhaps the better comparison is with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union, which helped galvanize political liberalization under Mikhail Gorbachev. As has been demonstrated in numerous transnational studies, there is a strong correlation between various indices of political freedom and environmental performance.24 If China responds to its environmental challenges with administrative decentralization and greater use of market mechanisms and property rights, who knows where it might lead."
I am interested in reliable sources of information on the state of the environment in China, particularly information on surface and ground water. Is there a best reference?
Posted by jennifer at 02:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 21, 2006
West Papua Is Resource Rich: Esther Pan
Ms. Marohasy,
I am writing from the Council on Foreign Relations, in New York. We wanted to alert you to a piece we recently published which might be of interest to your readership.
It is on the recent protests over natural resources in Papua -- a topic of reasonable significance to Australians. You can find the piece at:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10484/
Thank you for your time.
Lee Hudson Teslik
Council on Foreign Relations
Posted by jennifer at 02:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 03, 2006
Auditing of Environmental Policies: Request from Victorian Farmers
I received the following note from a policy officer at the Victorian Farmers Federation:
"This may be of interest as it relates directly to your work regarding the importance of scientific accountability. It's an extract from the Victorian Farmers Federation's 2006-07 Pre-Budget Submission to the Victorian State Government. It can be found at www.vff.org.au.2.4 Expansion of the Auditor-General's Office
Environmental policies which are adopted, implemented and funded by government should always be based on credible scientific data. Unfortunately, all too often, government decisions in relation to environmental issues are made on the basis of political imperatives, rather than substantiated scientific evidence.
The Victorian farm community is extremely concerned with this changing trend in government decision making, as we believe it is a nationwide phenomenon which is affecting governments of all political persuasions. While this disquiet was initially founded upon concerns about poor policy development, we are now becoming more worried about the increasing cost of implementing and maintaining questionable environmental policies based on limited scientific justification.
A recent example of this problem in practice is the current situation facing farmers in Victorian in regards to our State's native vegetation regulations. To date, neither the policies nor the regulations have ever been thoroughly audited by any notable authority. Despite the government's insistence on enforcing the regulations implementation, the farm community has never been informed of what the true cost of this policy is, and if there has been any genuine attempt to quantify the environmental benefits which are supposedly to have resulted from its implementation.
It is the view of the VFF that environmental policies such as this should be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis which would investigate the true price of maintaining such a policy, with comparisons made to the expected community value attributed to its ongoing enforcement. Unfortunately, while the farm community would warmly welcome such an initiative, no organisation within government is currently equipped or empowered to undertake such a task.
As a result, the VFF would like the State Government to expand the functions, mandate and powers of the Auditor-Generals Office so that it can conduct regular audits of the scientific environmental advice and outcomes provided to and overseen by Government departments, agencies and statutory authorities.
The Auditor-Generals Office currently reports 'to parliament and the community on the efficient and effective management of public sector resources, and provides assurance on the financial integrity of Victoria's system of government[1]'. We believe that with adequate funding, support and direction, such an organisation would be ideally suited to conduct this important task.
Recommendation:
That the State Government expand the functions, mandate and powers of the Auditor-General's Office to include regular audits of:
1. The scientific environmental advice provided to Government by various agencies and statutory authorities, and;
2. The environmental outcomes achieved by Department initiated programs."
This submission seems rather relevant in the context of the following recent blog posts:
1. Exaggerated salinity predictions and absence of auditing of spending on salinity.
2. Spending on environmental flows to the Macquarie marshes given the levies on private land preventing water getting to the southern and northern nature reserves.
Posted by jennifer at 06:40 PM | Comments (3)
March 18, 2006
Phil Done on 'Gross National Happiness'
Following is a note from Phil Done, a reader and regular commentator at this blog:
"A recurrent theme on the blog in the great battles of good versus evil is that that free markets are wonderful efficient mechanisms and economic growth is a good thing. But is a big fat Gross National Product the meaning to life.Does the GNP represent the environment, our heritage, our culture and our true happiness?
The New Economist reports:
"The hippies, the Greens, the road protesters, the downshifters, the slow-food movement - all are having their quiet revenge. Routinely derided, the ideas of these down-to-earth philosophers are being confirmed by new statistical work by psychologists and economists.
First, surveys show that the industrialised nations have not become happier over time. Random samples of UK citizens today report the same degree of psychological well-being and satisfaction with their lives as did their (poorer) parents and grandparents. In the US, happiness has fallen over time. White American females are markedly less happy than were their mothers.
Second, using more formal measures of mental health, rates of depression in countries such as the UK have increased. Third, measured levels of stress at work have gone up.
Fourth, suicide statistics paint a picture that is often consistent with such patterns. In the US, even though real income levels have risen sixfold, the per-capita suicide rate is the same as in the year 1900. In the UK, more encouragingly, the suicide rate has fallen in the last century, although among young men it is far greater than decades ago.
Fifth, global warming means that growth has long-term consequences few could have imagined in their undergraduate tutorials.
None of these points is immune from counter-argument. But most commentators who argue against such evidence appear to do so out of intellectual habit or an unshakeable faith in conventional thinking.
Some of the world's most innovative academics have come up with strong evidence about why growth does not work. One reason is that humans are creatures of comparison. Research last year showed that happiness levels depend inversely on the earnings levels of a person's neighbours. Prosperity next door makes you dissatisfied. It is relative income that matters: when everyone in a society gets wealthier, average well-being stays the same.
A further reason is habituation. Experiences wear off. ...Those who become disabled recover 80 per cent of their happiness by three years after an accident. Yet economics textbooks still ignore adaptation.
A final reason is that human beings are bad at forecasting what will make them happy. In laboratory settings, people systematically choose the wrong things for themselves."
Economic theory has a concept called utility. If I give you $1M you'll be really happy. $2M even happier. But as you go up with incremental millions your happiness does not keep increasing linearly. It tails off (except for Joe).
Most people of course don't get off the linear part of the curve -like me!
But it's more than that - our decisions need other values than economics built in.
Like http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/bank/idea.php?ideaId=3257.
Led by its young king, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the kingdom of Bhutan is the only country in the world to measure its wellbeing by Gross National Happiness (GNH) instead of Gross National Product (GNP). This unorthodox approach is a serious attempt to question the values of unbridled economic progress, and foreground the importance of maintaining a balance between tradition and modernisation. Bhutan has followed a cautious path of development since the 1960s, with the intention of preserving its heritage and culture and protecting its environment.
GNH is an official policy of the kingdom, having been passed in parliament, and it is perhaps best illustrated by some examples from Bhutan which prove that happiness really does take precedence over economic prosperity there. The country limits the number of tourists that are able to visit it, because the Bhutanese had complained that the environment was being affected and sacred lands were being spoiled. The limiting was therefore aimed at increasing the 'happiness' of these people. Similarly, demonstrating that the concept of GNH is inextricably connected to accountability, anyone with a grievance can go to the king himself and get a hearing.
The policy of GNH, as well as focusing on cultural promotion and good governance, also aims to put an end to 'spiritual hunger'. Material and technological progress is not rejected or banned, but it must not be to the detriment of the value of human life, and humanity's soul. So the new policy has a spiritual aspect to it, as well as an eminently sensible accountability aspect. Mental and psychological wealth are genuine considerations in Bhutan. Happiness is more important than monetary wealth.
Should we in Australia replace the GNP with the GNH?
Or even better Ian Mott should enshrine the GNH as the prime statistic for the new happy state of Tropicana.
I reckon this blog being the innovative forum that it is (this obsequious grovelling should stop me getting deleted for a week) could lead a national revolution on use of the GNH. We could use it as a mediating concept in environmental disputes. No more taking greenies to court or chaining yourself in front of bulldozers - we would simply use a GHM (global happiness model) to optimise a mutually compatible and happy solution using multiple ensemble runs to explore the happiness chaos space under a variety of future happiness growth scenarios using a model of appropriate happiness sensitivity.
We would ask Ian Castles as the special envoy representing the stats office as a post-retirement fellow (having sorted out those SRES chappies and feeling very happy) to conduct a "basket of goods" type survey on happy indicators. You wouldn't ask the Land and Water Audit or the IPCC as happiness might be going up when they tell you it's going down?
Maybe happiness is affected urban heat islands? Would Warwick Hughes be happy with our happiness measurements? Would Louis insist there was an abiotic theory of happiness? Could Motty define happiness on the back of envelope. Would Ender insist on renewable happiness. And would Thinksy explore the inner semantic nature of happiness. Joe would be happy trading derivatives in higher happiness. If all else fails - Detribe could implant us with genetically engineered happiness.
And you would have to compensate for Rog being happy to be unhappy.
Be happy!"
--------------------------
Thanks Phil.
Posted by jennifer at 08:11 AM | Comments (29) | TrackBack
February 06, 2006
Michael Duffy on Property Rights
Michael Duffy wrote about 'property rights' in his regular column for the Sydney Morning Herald on 7th January 2006.
Michael Duffy began:
I've been surprised in the past year by how many stories I've come across that have involved property rights. It's a subject I've always regarded - to the extent I did regard it - as dusty, indeed boring. Yet from the devaluing of thousands of Sydney homes in the name of heritage preservation, to arguments over Aboriginal land rights, to major problems with foreign aid and tsunami relief in Indonesia, flawed property rights have emerged as a common thread.
He did include some comment about property rights and vegetation management, an issue that has come up in comments following my recent blog post on salt.
Michael Duffy wrote:
The rural equivalent of heritage is native vegetation legislation. Again it sounds innocuous, even noble in its intentions, but its effect on the many individuals involved has been devastating. It is now illegal for a farmer to remove even a branch from a (native) tree. As long-term land use flexibility is essential to many farms, this has had huge financial consequences.One example: a study by the University of New England estimates that in Moree Plains Shire, land values have been reduced by 20 per cent on average. Incomes on many farms have plummeted.
As with heritage listings, there is no compensation to those whose assets have been attacked. This has been criticised by the Productivity Commission, in a report into native vegetation laws some years ago, and in its draft report Conservation of Australia's Historic Heritage Places, released last month. The commission's chairman, Gary Banks, says: "It's important in regulation to look at the costs and who should bear them. Both native vegetation and heritage are wider community values, but these laws intrude on the property rights of individuals."
State governments have decided they can appease environmental and heritage lobby groups with solutions Banks tactfully describes as "off budget" (that is, daylight robbery).
Michael Duffy goes on to suggest that people should be compensated when their property rights are reduced by government, and concludes,
Property rights have been inherent in Western society for so long we have forgotten how important they are. This is causing a lot of harm for a lot of people. It's time we re-acquainted ourselves with the poetry of property.
A good book on the subject is 'The Mystery of Capital' by Hernando de Soto. It was given to me a few years ago - but I must admit I haven't read it cover to cover. The chapters I did read where a bit tedious, but informative.
By-the-way, I will be on Michael Duffy's radio national program Counterpoint this afternoon at 4pm, talking about my review of Jared Diamond's chapter on Australia in his book 'Collapse'.
Posted by jennifer at 01:20 PM | Comments (87) | TrackBack