This post starts by asking Microsoft Copilot a question on planning. After answering Copilot composes a poem. The poem is passed to ChatGPT for analysis. Amazing results.

—–

Question to Microsoft Copilot: A scheme to build lots of park homes could (in the extreme) drastically cut the £9tn value of UK property. Is this a problem or a bonus?

That depends entirely on whose ledger you’re reading from—and what kind of future you’re trying to build.

Park Homes vs £9tn Property Market: Problem or Bonus?

Dear York Councillor

My previous email used results from the Grok AI chatbot.

I have now used other chatbots about the proposal to add 2000 park homes per year to the housing provision in the York Local Plan.  The results show that this proposal should be given consideration.

Summaries of the chats follow. PDFs of the chats are appended.

Best wishes

Geoff Beacon

—–

Question…

How would the housing market change if York allowed 2000 park homes per year in addition to existing plans? Assume these park homes are on land owned by York Council. Compulsory purchased if necessary. Assume environmentally friendly homes and mostly car free sites. Give environmental impact in addition to other analysis.

Here is Claude AI’s summary of a chat with Claude AI …

This conversation explored the opposing positions of two Oxford professors on methane’s climate impact:

The Core Question: Whether Peter Scarborough and Myles Allen have opposing views – and they do, specifically regarding methane accounting.

Myles Allen’s Position: Developed the GWP* metric that significantly downplays methane’s climate impact, arguing that conventional methods overstate livestock emissions by 300-400%. His approach suggests stable cattle herds cause warming at only one-quarter the rate of standard metrics.

Peter Scarborough’s Position: Uses conventional GWP100 metrics in his dietary emission studies, showing meat-eaters have roughly twice the greenhouse gas emissions of vegans. His work treats methane with its full warming potential under standard accounting.

Key Insights Revealed:

1. Allen’s flaw: His GWP* metric ignores that methane’s intense warming effects persist and cause feedbacks long after the molecule breaks down (despite methane’s 12-year atmospheric lifetime, its warming impact can last centuries).
2. Scarborough’s limitation: While more comprehensive than Allen’s approach, GWP100 still underestimates methane’s immediate dangers by about 3x compared to GWP20 metrics (methane’s 20-year impact is ~84-87 vs. ~28-36 over 100 years).

The Bottom Line: Both approaches have significant flaws, but Allen’s GWP* appears to more severely underestimate methane’s climate impact by focusing only on atmospheric residence time rather than the full warming consequences. This represents a fundamental disagreement about how to measure and communicate the urgency of addressing methane emissions from livestock.

—–

The full chat can be found here.

Dear Councillor,

Under an Optimistic Decarbonisation Scenario, ChatGPT has estimated the emissions from road transport for York in 2030. These alone make York’s target of net-zero emissions by 2030 impossible.

Transport Emissions 2030 (Life-Cycle)

Source of Emissions	Estimate (tCO₂e/year)	Share of Total
Vehicle use (driving)	87,000	41%
Vehicle manufacturing	75,000	35%
Roads, infrastructure & lighting	26,000	12%
Fuel & electricity production	18,000	8%
Tyres, parts, disposal	7,000	3%
Total (transport-related)	213,000	100%

• Per capita emissions: ~1.01 tonnes CO₂e /year

(To York Councillors 4th April 2025)

Dear Councillor,

The rich are getting richer and they buy our houses.

Economist Gary Stevenson notes that as the rich buy houses, their prices rise so the young can no longer afford to be home owners. He argues that the rich have become too rich and have bough up much of the housing stock – a tax on wealth is needed to stop this trend.

Stevenson points to the time after WW2 when marginal tax rates were very high. This made it difficult for the rich to accumulate too much wealth. At this time the working class could own homes.

Economic growth and inequality

The UK is unequal as measured by income [1] and increasingly unequal as measured by wealth [2] but recently the UK has also been getting poorer [3], particularly amongst the poorest [4].
Conventional politics (Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem) want to boost economic growth so that everybody, the including poorest, can have increased standards of living, i.e can consume more.

Only the fringe Green Party rejects the drive for growth. They advocate helping the poorest by a Universal Basic Income [5]. (I have advocated a related policy with some similar effects using labour subsidies paid as tax rebates.[6])

Growth, jobs and productivity

Traditionally the Labour Party has had the most concern for the living standards of the poor but It seems that, for electoral reasons, they have ruled out a wealth tax & increases in income tax [7]. For Labour, improvements in the living standards of the poor are to come from economic growth, which should give the poor better jobs and increase government revenues [8].

Posts on X about the economy, mostly the UK

Posts on X about emission sources

.

Posts on X about ocean heat

Extinction posts on X

Posts on X about famine

Posts on X about energy supply

Posting on X about floods

Posts on X about climate politics

Simon Evans

Sophie Gabrielle

Posts on X about housing

Cardiff University

A list of my failures.

!970: Started in 1970. First published 1976

1972: My evidence to the York Inner Ring Road Inquiry.

1976: Separate developments for non motorists

1992: Founded The Pollution Tax Association

1998: Website Faxfn.org started

2002: Blog about town planning.

2003: Greening the green belt. (It’s not really green)

2003: Planners at the ODPM (Government town planners aren’t good)

2005: Faxfn was retired

2005: Auntie Jayne solves your poem

2006: The Green Ration Book (How bad are bananas did it better)

2008: Cash for (environmental) questions

2008: No miles high club for non flyers

2009:

2010: BrusselsBlog started

2013: Blue poets

2015: DontLookNow (.org) started

2015: DontLookNow (.org) started

Posts about wildfires and biomass loss on X

Posts on X about sea ice

Posts on X about food.

Posts on X about planning

A series of posts on X about the climate crisis.

(See also Tips on climate, planning and economy)

Update 17th March 2024:

The original plan was to build one million new homes, within 20 kilometers of the centre of York. That should accommodate 2.4 million new residents, with lots of open space left.

However, there would not be enough land to feed this population.

In the complex global society we live in, it is unrealistic, as a first step, to expect residents to be fed from food grown within a kilometer or so but when there may not be enough food to feed the global population, this may be a worthwhile objective. I have therefore put a constraint on this plan so that, in theory, enough food could be produced within the plan area to feed the population, with a basic diet.

In Ireland before the famine, potatoes, with some milk and pigs could
support a population density approaching 10 people per hectare (1).

The world now has about 0.5 people per hectare.

Food: Scientists vs amateurs.

A million extra people in the area of the plan would give an overall density of 11 people per hectare. Comparing basic calorie needs with yields shows this may be possible but is a challenge.

Cities in the UK have much higher densities. in people per hectare: London (56), Birmingham (42), Manchester (47), Glasgow (34).

Introduction (26th September 2023)

This is a project to build (one million new homes) homes for one million new residents in the Greater York area – the area within 20 kilometers of the center of York. With very minor exceptions the development will be car free. Housing will become very much cheaper.

The plan starts with an initial stage of housing surrounding 15 nodes of roughly 18000 homes each. This will provide a quarter more than 60% of the final total.

York is a good place to build a large proportion of the new homes the UK needs. More people want to come to live here. There will be additional need for housing – for refugees from Hull, Goole and Grimsby when sea level rise floods them out.

I have been told that next section is too pessimistic and will stop people from reading further. Also my friend Paul says humans are infinitely adaptable and will overcome the problems (But Carole asks how many billions will perish first. Paul responds “Geoff, your policies will make it worse.”)

So Paul and similar, you keep optimistic and skip the next five paragraphs:

[skip] Here is my vision to show that human life might be compatible with saving the planet. After the past few months of bad climate news, I think this may be a delusion.

[skip] When I started this a few months ago I was just a little bit more optimistic. Now heatwaves, floods, droughts and the renewed threat that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will falter have sapped most of my remaining optimism.

[skip] The news of the slowing AMOC current was the last straw. This current transfers enormous amounts of heat to North Western Europe. This keeps January night time temperatures in the UK averaging 1°C. At the same latitude Labrador averages 15°C below freezing. If the AMOC fails, the UK will get very much colder in winter even in a warming world. The AMOC has failed before.

[skip] Since then we have seen unprecedented floods and wildfires in separate parts of the Earth…. Question: Are wildfires properly accounted for in climate models? I once squeezed an answer from the government department in charge of climate change. It admitted these feedbacks were not in the climate models. Are they now? The fact of these missing feedbacks and the difficulty I had getting this admission increased my skepticism of UK Government. (See Missing feedbacks in climate models below.)

[OK. Paul, resume here] In March, when I started to write, I was less pessimistic. I’m now tempted to give up but I’ve put too much effort in to stop now, so here is my (overly optimistic?) vision.

The links (in red) open appendices to give more detail.

Link: The plan: A vision for a Greater York

Map showing locations of suggested development nodes for this plan. Four additional new developments will surround existing out-of-town shopping centres.

This plan increases the population of York by (10 times) about 4 times with enough food production to fullfil basic food needs. It tries to show it is possible for us to live without destroying life on Earth as we know it. The plan is for (a million extra homes) homes for an extra million people. It …

• Promotes pleasant low carbon living,
• Makes housing much cheaper and
• Radically reduces inequality.

Initial development is planned at nodes near existing settlements to enable their residents to use the facilities of the new greener settlements. All new housing will be car free (with minor exceptions).

The plan will give new residents pleasant environments with shops, pubs, healthcare, schools and good public transport. These “greener” developments will be adjacent to existing settlement to give their existing residents local, sustainable facilities.

Link : Green Urban Extensions

This plan uses Green Urban Extensions – extensions to existing settlements – helping the existing settlements to be ‘greener.’ Ebeneezer Howard’s Garden Cities do not do that. Garden cities need new infrastructure and take decades to build.

Link: Climate is worse than they say

We are exhausting climate budgets and now realising climate change is worse than thought. Scarily, the Earth’s Energy Imbalance has tripled in the past 20 years.

Link: Sea level rise and bigger storms

Sea level rise continues long after ‘net-zero’ – and with bigger storms, An emergency for Hull, Goole and Selby.

Link: Downplaying climate change

‘Official’ sources are downplaying climate change. York Council ignores its declaration of a climate emergency.

Link: Net-zero not good enough

A steady decline in emissions to 2050 will easily exceed carbon budgets for 1.5° C. The Earth will continue to accumulate heat after ‘net-zero’, raising sea levels, melting ice and thawing permafrost.

Net-zero policy also cheats. It allows an undetermined amount of greenhouse emissions up to the date at which ‘net-zero’ is reached. The policy that it eclipsed, Contraction & Convergence, gave a method of constraining emissions by setting limits on the concentrations of gases in the atmosphere.

The switch from C&C to a net-zero policy has enabled the UK Prime Minister to follow policies in the medium term which increase greenhouse emissions but still claim he is still aiming at net-zero in 2050… “Although the changes being considered by the government are pushing back a ban on the sales of petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030 to 2035 and a weakening of plans to phase out gas boilers by 2035, Rishi Sunak says he is still committed to reaching net zero by 2050.”

Link: The politics of growth, inequality and climate

Political parties support economic growth, which makes climate worse. It’s difficult to knock on doors to ask for votes and tell constituents they are destroying the climate.

Link: Sample climate events in year to April 2023

A list of links to worrying climate related events. The events have got much worse since then April 2023.

Link: Missing feedbacks in climate models

In 2016, I extracted an admission form a UK Government Department about missing feedbacks in climate models. I found the effort needed to get this admission disturbing.

Link: New Institutions

New institutions, national and local, are needed to support the Greater York Plan.

• An Institute of Low Carbon Living.
• A new Ministry of Works
• New Green Development Corporations
• An Office of Plotland Development
• A new climate prediction market

Link: What type of homes should be built?

Tall flats suppress neighbourliness. Architects and planners know little of this important aspect of housing. Somehow they have missed Leon Festinger’s important work on ‘propinquity‘. New homes should be low rise and mostly have gardens. Surveys show that most people want gardens.

Link: Plotlands

Plotlands were banned by Aneurin Bevin in 1947. They may be coming back.

Link: An Office of Plotland Development

An institution to promote plotland developments should be established.

Link: Plotlands and prefabs on Progress Online

This is an article I had published in 2017 on plotland development.

Link: Building types and embodied carbon

The construction of buildings usually causes large carbon emissions. Tall buildings are worse.

Link: Heating and cooling

Houses are treated as boxes of size 200 cubic meters to warm people who occupy 2 cubic meters each. Local heating, like (modern) inglenooks or warming furniture should be researched.

Link: Densifying cities and heat waves

Heat waves kill. Densifying cities will make cities hotter. Brownfield sites should become green urban parks.

Link: Visions of planners and architects

Planners, architects – and politicians – have been awful at providing good housing.

Link: Modern planning

Modern planning has capitulated to car culture. Even Sir Peter Hall.

Link: Beauty and prejudice

The urge for sculptural beauty has meant large dramatic buildings, which make unsuitable homes. Low rise housing, mostly with gardens, should be the general rule.

Link: Some other housing examples

Walter Segal homes, plotlands and some new houses in Cambridge.

Link: Prefabrication examples

Prefabrication advantages, prefabs, tower blocks and modern prefabrication. Tower blocks bad, prefabs better. Gardens good.

Link: Changing complex systems

As Oscar Newman told me, choose the best examples. Make small changes … then test the results. I simplify the problem: Remove cars. Grow local food.

Link: Removing cars from housing

Low carbon living is necessary to save the planet from a climate catastrophe but, as a House of Commons committee noted, the mass use of motor cars is incompatible with the low carbon living.

Reducing car use in existing neighbourhoods may become necessary but will be politically difficult. (But it will be helped by a policy of Green Urban Extensions.)

Banning cars from new housing will make the housing much cheaper because people with cars won’t bid for the houses. If enough car free housing is built, it will enable younger generations to afford houses again.

Car free housing will be much pleasanter with more local facilities.

Link: Housing and inequality

The planning system is increasing inequality by restricting the supply of new houses. The UK is not short of land. Greenbelts protect the visual surroundings of the upper middle classes. The UK should grow more food locally, avoiding animal agriculture.

Link: The national economy

Friday 8th September. On BBC World at One, Tom McTague, Political Editor of the website Unherd.com was interviewed. He said we were no longer the wealthy nation that we were before the 2007/2008 financial crisis. The period before that was probably the last time we felt comfortable and quite wealthy as a country. Kate Andrews of the Spectator agreed.

It seems sensible that we should plan for cheaper, simpler lives. For example by saving on the enormous expense car culture causes. See Cheaper cities without cars in the appendix Removing cars from housing.

Before the 2007/2008 crisis there was a rising trend in UK greenhouse gas emissions. The reduction in economic activity corrected this trend.

Link: Affordable housing, social housing and owned housing

York’s affordable housing policy. There is no a good definition of ‘affordable housing’.

This plan claims that it is possible to reduce the cost of new housing by a very large amount so that the demographic that has replaced the ‘aspirational working class’ of the years after the second world was will be able to own their own homes and enjoy the security that Keir Starmer says he experienced as a child.

Link: Degrowth needed

The necessary fall in greenhouse emissions cannot be achieved, without a fall in economic activity.

It is possible to create jobs and cut economic activity. See next section.

Link: Jobs and Productivity

Work is good for society (in addition to its role of providing income) but as robots replace more of the workforce, the owners of the robots will receive a greater share of the rewards of production. Jobs must be supported by Universal Basic Income and Labour Subsidies.

Economists have rediscovered happiness since Robbins, Hayek and von Mises ousted it from economics. Professor David Blanchflower said “The biggest result that emerges is that unemployed people are unbelievably unhappy even controlling for their income”

In discussing unemployment and inflation he has written”We also discover that unemployment depresses well being more than inflation”. Fortunately there are schemes that address both. For example, a “labour subsidy” scheme to modify VAT to give tax rebates for every worker employed can create jobs without inflation. The scheme does not increase government expenditure because it uses tax rebates which are not expenditure but tax cuts.

“The term “subsidise” was perhaps unfortunate. The “subsidy” in the scheme is a tax rebate paid to employers. It is a reduction in their tax bill and therefore not government expenditure. This point has been accepted by the UK Treasury.“. A macroprudential proposal for employment, 2014

Are one million new residents too many?

I chose for this plan to have a million new residents (million new homes) because, as my friend Dennis Martin said, York is an excellent place to build them. This plan shows that it is possible to locate these homes and encourage a greener way of living – and help existing settlements be less polluting.

This highlights one worry. If York is made greener with a million new homes by Green Urban Extensions, will there be enough green development to help the polluters in rest of the country?

However, as Dennis noted, York is a very good place to start.

Epilogue: Electric cars won’t help much

Since writing the first section above, I have become more pessimistic, having watched Reality Roundtable #1:Electric Vehicles on Youtube.

The host, Nate Hagens, introduces three experts Arthur Berman, Pedro Prieto, & Simon Michaux. (OK, I’ve had my fill of ‘experts’ too but watch the video and decide for yourself.)

The discussion started with a discussion of the proposed change over to electric cars. The points I took from this discussion were:

Stop here?

Dear reader, if you agree with the above points and know the reasons for them, you might stop here and skip the linked appendices. You may consider them a bit nerdy and have a bit too much ‘Geoff Beacon was right’.

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This is my comment on an interesting post by Tara Garnet on her FRCN blog, Has veganism become a dirty word? There are different views on the effects of methane on climate.

Comment on ‘Has veganism become a dirty word?’ by Geoff Beacon

Actually, methane’s not the problem we thought it was; methane’s temporary, actually methane’s natural.

Tara, this seems to be the view of Myles Allen and Richard Millar  of your Oxford Martin School. As I understand it, their picture is this:

Emissions of methane heat the Earth’s surface for a decade or so before decaying. The rise in the Earth’s temperature causes net heat emissions to space. The long term effect on temperature is small. If keeping Earth’s temperature below a certain threshold is a target, then unless the target is likely in the next decade or so the temporary rise in surface temperature is not important.

There are others that disagree. Continue reading How bad is beef for the climate? →

(York Plotlands Association is now defunct)

Background

There are few (if any) examples of lifestyles in Britain which are sustainable. For example, at the new ‘sustainable’ development at Derwenthorpe, York, the carbon footprints of the residents are several times greater than the footprint necessary to avoid dangerous climate change. The York Plotlands Association  promotes action and research into achieving lifestyles that are more sustainable.

Continue reading York Plotlands Association (From 2016) →

(York Plotlands Association is now defunct.)

“Home buyers are forced into unaffordable, car based lifestyles.”

A plot of land big enough for a house costs roughly £500 at agricultural prices. In the York area, for example, a plot’s value becomes £50,000 once the planners’ give building the go ahead. There is no difference in the land: just its name on a certificate in a council office. This is an unearned bonus to the land owner, which starts the process of building expensive dwellings designed for unsustainable lifestyles.

More often than not, new houses are built with little regard to public transport links or cycle routes to town and with little in the way of local facilities, such as corner shops or local greengrocers, home buyers are forced into un-affordable, car based lifestyles.

A new low-impact affordable economy

Continue reading £20K housing – a lifestyle revolution (From 2016) →

UK Carbon Emissions

Dr Anne Owen and Professor John Barratt calculate the UK’s carbon footprint for the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) every year. The latest figure is for 2016 : There is a lag because of data collection and modelling issues. They have an interesting article on Carbon Brief, The UK’s carbon footprint is at its lowest level for 20 years . Continue reading UK Carbon Emissions, GDP and Emissions Intensity →

It’s not very mature of me but I get irritated when my comments are rejected by moderators, particularly when I have put more than 5mins effort in. So rather than waste the effort I am posting my comment to Myles Allen’s article The Green New Deal: One climate scientist’s view, from the other side of the Atlantic here.

OK, a high carbon price but cars must go.

Continue reading Rejected by thebulletin.org →

I watched this a few month ago. Took up the offer of sending in questions.  No answer yet.

Q1: What is a reasonable remaining carbon budget (in CO2e) to keep within 1.5°C (or 2°C)?

On a per capita basis, how does it compare with average world yearly emissions?

How much more than this are average European emissions?

Q2: What’s the current thinking on the radiative forcing index for aircraft emissions?

Is there a Hansen’s Faustian bargain with aircraft emissions because in the first few decades air flights cool the Earth?

CF: Unger et.al. Attribution of climate forcing to economic sectors

Q3: Can the global carbon intensity of production be reduced fast enough to save the climate and avoid de-growth?

If GDP needs to be constrained there is full employment, labour productivity must be constrained. This means wages are constrained. How can the incomes of the low poor be supported?

Q4: In reference to BECCS (and more generally), has anyndetailed work been done on the albedo effect of biomass planting?

CF. Bala et al. Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation

e.g. Has there been work to find crops with “good” albedo?

Q5: What do the panel think of solving fuel poverty by taking from the rich to give to the poor?

Has anybody considered that to heat houses requires heating hundreds of cubic metres of space to warm people that occupy a few metres each?

Q6: Would the panel demand high profile governmental campaigns to tell the public the effects of their everyday actions?

Would a more detailed version of How bad are bananas? by Mike Berners-Lee help?

Q7: Is mass car ownership compatible with saving the climate?

Q8: In assessing green house gas emissions what is the appropriate weighting for methane compared to CO2?

A recent article by Carbon Brief  Analysis: Why the UK’s CO2 emissions have fallen 38% since 1990 has generated headlines:

Energy Voice: Carbon emissions down nearly two-fifths since 1990
Business Green:  UK carbon emissions down 38 per cent since 1990
Engineering and Tech: UK’s carbon emissions dropped by 30 per cent since 1990

Continue reading “Carbon emissions down nearly two-fifths since 1990.” – or not. →

Occasionally I have a comment on another blog rejected. This will be a list of those I want to follow up.

London Economic 11th January 2019

Working people shouldn’t pay price for political failures of Conservative politicians

My comment:

To save the climate degrowth is needed.
(Kaya identity & etc.)
http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/is-green-growth-a-fantasy/

Subsidise the wages of the low paid.
http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/a-macroprudental-proposal-for-employment/

Take from the rich to give to the poor.
(It’s the right thing to do.)
http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/thomas-piketty-or-robin-hood/

The rich most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.
(So fine them and give to the poor.)
http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/commission-on-the-future-of-work/

Question: does London Economic reject

1. Degrowth

2. Labour subsidies

3. Robbing the rich

4. Tax rich polluters

Or did I overdo the links to one of my own blogs?

I’m keen to find out – I rather like London Economic.

#barmyidea4climate

An idea for capturing CO₂ & storing
heat under your new house

Question: “Is it a good idea or barmy?”

A heat store to capture CO₂

P1. Store 50+ tonnes of rock that absorbs CO₂ under (or near) a new house.

The mineral olivine is taken as the example for this note. It absorbs CO₂ slowly at ambient temperature (25°C) but much faster at a temperature of 186°C. Continue reading Capture CO2 under your new house →

#barmyidea4climate

‘An idea for storing renewable energy’
was first posted on ccq.org.uk, 25th March 2012

Question “Is it a good idea or barmy?”

Points:

1. There are times when renewable energy cannot be used. Sources tell me that 20% or more of wind energy is grounded (i.e. thrown away) because sometimes the generated energy cannot be used. Other renewable sources (solar, wave power) are also intermittent. Biomass is an exception. Continue reading An idea for storing renewable energy (2012) →

This was an appendix to Garden Cities and Green Evolutionary Settlements but that’s buried too deep to casually reference. It is reproduced here to show that lifestyles can be affected by a different structure of local finances. I look forward to the Butlins designing Green Evolutionary Settlements to begin the transformation towards more sustainable ways of living.

Appendix 5: An example: Butlin’s holiday camps.

Continue reading Ideas for sustainable living: Butlin’s Holidays →

Inconvenient information: Page not found

Have you found that interesting page on a UK government website is missing? Do you suspect that it contained information inconvenient to present government?

Looking up a previous post on the effect of climate change on the safety of coastal nuclear power stations, I found :

Missing climate feedbacks

The report relies on the HadRM3 Regional Climate Model. This may underestimate or omit the effects of certain climate feedbacks which are mentioned on the NERC website:

– reduced sea ice cover – reflecting less of the sun’s heat back out to space, changing ocean circulation patterns
– less carbon dioxide absorption by the oceans
– increased soil respiration
– more forest fires
– melting permafrost
– increased decomposition of wetlands

I thought I might refresh my memory but the NERC link gives Continue reading Inconvenient information: Page not found →

Auntie Jayne solves your poem started in the magazine Mapping Awareness in 1994. Auntie Jane is an agony aunt who responds to poetic enquiries. Some will be published here.

Spot the Iambic hexameter.

A Poem
by
B. Carter Smith

Dear Lord

Make us

Eat our beef to melt the Arctic ice caps
Heat our homes to wipe the mid west farmers off the map

Give us

Cash fly to Spain and torch the Russian forests
… gas to fill our cars to shop at Tescos
… bricks and steel to conjure new tornadoes

Help us

Drown as many Bangladeshis as we can

Auntie Jayne writes: Continue reading Auntie Jayne solves your poem →

16th September 2018: At Last…

Another journalist has discovered some bad news about Universal Credit, that the MSM ignored years ago: Universal credit ‘costs the self-employed thousands of pounds a year’

I read about this in 2015 on Making Workers Pay.

30th August 2018: Nonsense on Land Values

The Guardian and the Telegraph misunderstood ONS figures on land values.  The New Statesman was much better.

3rh August 2018: Population is a planet emergency but the MSM get it wrong.

The Independent, The Guardian and The Telegraph all miss the point that it is the children of the affluent that are the problem. Even then they get it wrong. See  Population is a planet emergency but …

Continuing to be shocked by the poor quality of the Main Stream Media, I’m starting this page. I will update it from time to time.

I’ve missed the boat again. The consultation period for the new design for the front of York Station has passed. However, I looked at this video when I was in York Council’s West Offices:

A 3D virtual tour of proposals for
York Railway Station

This video made me remember the Agitating Cyclist twitter account. Sadly. No. Very, very sadly, Victoria Buckley has died.  She ran Agitating Cyclist. She also ran a brilliant twitter account, @DaintyBallerina, with well over six thousand followers. Continue reading From an Agitating Cyclist. Pollution outside York Station. →

A NEW Ministry of Works

The previous post argued for a new Ministry of Works to create new settlements that are cheap, green and friendly. The aim is to find ways of life that are pleasant and won’t screw the world up. For these settlements, my first suggestion is for estates of car-free, wooden prefabs with inbuilt market gardens, which also have more localised economies and are built around transport hubs. I arrived at this solution by a process of eliminating alternatives. There will be others. Continue reading Housing – part 18: A NEW Ministry of Works →

New economies for new estates

Car-free estates of prefabs with market gardens

Written for a housing policy forum – part 17

Improve these prefabs with modern cross-ply timber…

and add market gardens.

The previous post showed that estates of wooden prefabs with inbuilt market gardens, could provide cheap, green and neighbourly housing. Continue reading Housing – part 17: New economies for new estates →

Cheap, neighbourly and doesn’t screw the world up
or
Wooden prefabs with market gardens

Written for a housing policy forum – part 16

We need housing that is cheap, neighbourly and doesn’t screw the world up. (Taking a suggestion from thesaurus.com the word ‘green’ will be used in place of “doesn’t screw the world up”.) Here is a summary of housing-related issues from earlier posts:

Issue 1. No high buildings.

Continue reading Housing – part 16: Cheap, neighbourly and doesn’t screw the world up →

Five planning policies

Written for a housing policy forum

Video of Corbusier’s vision for downtown Paris…

Mark Tuttle, the video’s author, says:

Made this for an architecture class I took in
college using SketchUp. Corbusier wanted to
gut downtown Paris and put in giant cruciform
towers. This is how he saw the future.

This post examines five planning policies:

Continue reading Housing – part 15: Five planning policies →

Look, learn and improve

Written for a housing policy forum

Look, learn and improve

Continue reading Housing – Part 14: Look, Learn And Improve →

No more high buildings

Written for a housing policy forum

Embodied carbon in high buildings

Continue reading Housing – part 13: No more high buildings →

Housing – part 12: Friends, neighbours and architectural determinism

Written for a housing policy forum

Brutalist housing disasters

Brutalist buildings are typically massive sculptures, fortress-like, using exposed concrete construction – like the imposing and inpenetrable building of the National Theatre on London’s South Bank:

Continue reading Housing – part 12: Friends, neighbours and architectural determinism →

Housing – part 11: No cars in the city

Written for a housing forum

The Carbon Budget Morality Index

In the following sections, I assume a rule of thumb that a decent, morally justified lifestyle must keep with a total budget of 100 tonnes CO2e for the next 50 years. This is the basis for the Carbon Budget Morality Index (CBMI) discussed in Are you evil or very, evil?. The 100 tonnes 50 year budget is classed by the CBMI  as ‘shameful’ but at least it’s morality index is below the CBMI  ‘evil’ level. In this post the ‘shameful’ level will be referred to as CMBI-s level.

Mass car ownership cannot be sustainable or fair

Continue reading Housing – part 11: No cars in the city →

Housing – part 10: A reprise.

Written for a housing forum

Previous parts can be grouped into three sections:

Section 1. The biggest global issue – climate change

1: Embodied carbon and climate
The way we build and the materials used damage the climate.

2: Food and the remaining carbon budget
Modern agriculture and our consumption damage the environment.

3: Carbon budgets and transport
Our travel patterns and means of transport are unsustainable.

Section 2. Planning policies burden the poor

4: We are not short of land
A very small portion of the UK is built-up.

5: Construction costs
Modern methods are reducing construction costs.

9: Greenbelts
Greenbelts protect privilege – at the expense of the majority.

Section 3. Public health & public safety

6: Pollution in the countryside
The countryside is being polluted.

7: Pollution in towns
Towns are being polluted.

8: Density and disease
Good public health allows denser settlements.

Continue reading Housing – part 10: A reprise. →

Greenbelts

#PoisionousGreenBelt

Written for a housing policy forum. Part 9

Also see: Housing – part 4: We are not short of land

City of York ‘greenbelt’

Traditionally green belts were seen to stop urban sprawl and were the ‘green lungs’ of the city. This emphasised public health issues such as slum clearance. The policy is seen as a major instrument in terms of protecting the environment against environmental damage as a result of overdevelopment. It is a policy which is believed will to ‘protect the countryside’.

Continue reading Housing – part 9: Greenbelts →

Population density and disease

Written for a housing policy forum. Part 8

Sanitation in Shakespeare’s London
Woodcut from ShakespearesEngland.co.uk.

The advantages of high population densities

Continue reading Housing – part 8: Density and disease →

Pollution in Towns

In the old days coal pollution killed

I grew up in Kent some 30 miles from the great London Smog of 1952, which killed 4,000 Londoners in less than a week and, eventually contributed to 100,000 deaths. When we came to York in 1970, pollution from coal fires was still a problem – I clearly remember walking through the Groves and seeing sooty particles land on the bright yellow baby suit of our year-old daughter.

With coal pollution receding, York’s air improved and so did the look of the inner city terraced houses. Since the 1970s they have gradually lightened in colour and their value has risen. Houses that 1948 Plan for York described as “worn out houses” costing a thousand or so pounds in 1970, now sell for over £200,000. That’s a 20 fold increase in real terms.

Now traffic pollution kills

Continue reading Housing – part 7: Pollution in towns →

#PoisonousGreenBelt

Written for a housing policy forum. Part 6

We pollute  the countryside

The countryside is not as clean and green as it seems. In part 2, I noted the large carbon footprint of modern non-organic agriculture, particularly the methane emitted by ruminants (cows, sheep, goats &etc.) and the use of nitrogen compounds derived from the energy intensive Harber Bosh process. I also discussed the carbon footprint of “modern”, non-organic, food production but there are other unwelcome impacts. Three of these:

• Loss of soil fertility
• Insectageddon
• The nitrate time bomb

Soil fertility

Continue reading Housing – part 6: Pollution in the countryside →

Written for a housing policy forum. Part 5

Construction is a fraction of the cost

The cost of building a traditional house is a modest part of the cost of a new home: In York it is less than the cost of the land when it has planning permission. Not long ago it has been possible to build an individual 3 bed roomed house for about £50,000. I know someone had one built for £50,000 – on land they already owned.

Bricks and mortar houses built in the conventional style

Regional prices for new houses

Continue reading Housing – part 5: Construction and prefabrication →

A note for a housing policy forum. Part 4

#ObscenePlanningGain

We are not short of land

Key point: Planning permission adds enormous value to land

A plot of land big enough for a house costs less than £1,000 at agricultural prices.

In places like York, that becomes £50,000, sometimes much more, once the planners give building the go ahead. Planning permission makes no immediate difference to the land: but its name on a certificate in a council office gives an enormous unearned bonus to the land owner. Continue reading Housing – part 4: We are not short of land →

More planet destroying stuff is produced if we have full employment and greater productivity

stuff =workers * productivity

We must cut planet destroying stuff.  A top planet destroyer is the car. As Car-free cities pointed out, a city without cars is pleasant and much cheaper. So stop the polluting production lines and have more local market gardens

Then… Continue reading Just a reminder: Productivity destroys the climate →

“the car-free city costs between two and five times less”

#PedestrianApartheid

An excerpt from a press release from the European Commission in 1992:

   Based   on  these  observations,  Carlo RIPA  di  MEANA,   the   European
   Environment Commissioner, has had a study carried out on car-free  cities
   in  an  attempt  to find the answer to  the  following  question:  Is  it
   possible,  and  if so to what extent, to conceive of a  city  which  will
   operate  more  efficiently than the type of cities we  have  at  present,
   using alternative means of transport to the private car?

   The  answer provided by the study is positive, even in  purely  financial
   terms:  the  car-free  city costs between two and five  times  less  (the
   costs  varying  depending on the population density  of  the  city). 

Anybody know what happened to the study ?

P.S. See also Mixed communities, car-free cities and pedestrian apartheid

Postscript: I now have the study – In French.

Anyone willing to translate?

Carbon budgets, housing and transport

Written for a housing policy forum. Part 3

Some readers may have heard about a recent scientific paper
Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.

This paper estimated the remaining carbon budget to keep below a 1.5°C
temperature rise since pre-industrial times. It’s estimate is much larger than
that outlined in the IPCCs fifth report (AR5). Fact checks about this paper on
Carbon Brief and RealClimate show it should not be taken seriously.

UK Carbon budgets

The Climate Change Act of 2008 aimed to cut UK greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 in relation to emissions in 1990. Thes are measured in Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (CO2e), which also takes account of non-CO2 greenhouse gasses, such as methane. The  starting figure in 1990 was 799 million tonnes CO2e. Roughly 12 tonnes CO2e per person per year. This gives the target for 2050 as 2.5 tonnes CO2e per person.

According to 2016 UK GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, PROVISIONAL FIGURES from the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, emissions for UK  in 2016 had fallen to 466 million tonnes of CO2e or 7.28 tonnes per person.

The  Carbon Budget 2016  from the Global Carbon Project gave the remaining carbon budget to keep the global temperature below 2°C as 816 billion tonnes of CO2. Adjustments and accounting for non-CO2 gasses means that averaged over the world’s population the budget is roughly 120 tonnes CO2e per person.

MORE… Continue reading Housing – part 3: Carbon budgets and transport →

Representative consumption pathways needed

Representative concentration pathways (RCPs) are hypothetical emissions of greenhouse gasses and other climate pollutants.  They are actually specified as atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses but have been converted into tables of emissions by The Potsdam Institute.

The RCPs specify individual climate pollutants, such as CO2, CH4, N2O and black carbon for each year from 2000 until 2100. The RCPs were introduced in IPCC Assessment Report Five (AR5) in 2014. After a selection process four of these pathways – tables of numbers specifying the yearly emissions of each pollutant were chosen as representatives of possible future climate forcing over the century.

Four RCP’s were chosen as standard: RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP 6 and RCP8.5.  RCP2.6 specifies the lowest concentrations of climate pollutants was specified in RCP2.6.  According to climate models, RCP2.6 is the only RCP that keeps the rise in global average temperature since pre-industrial to below 2°C.  The others have worse outcomes i.e. higher average global temperatures.

Different climate pollutants have different warming and cooling effects on the Earth but the effects of different pollutants are often combined into a figure that would equal the effect of carbon dioxide alone. This measure is called carbon dioxide equivalent or CO2e. Combining the effects of the pollutants for the RCPs give this graph

Continue reading What can climate modellers tell us about flying and eating beef? →

Housing 2: Food and the
remaining carbon budget

Written for a housing policy forum. Part 2

To recap on the topic carbon budgets mentioned in the first note:

“The fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5 – in 2013) was the first to include an assessment of a “remaining carbon budget” – a finite amount of carbon that can be burnt before it becomes unlikely we can avoid more than 2°C of global warming. Later they issued a budget for 1.5°C, which Carbon Brief updated in Six years worth of current emissions would blow the carbon budget for 1.5 degrees. – according to these calculations this is now five years.” Continue reading Housing – part 2: Food and the remaining carbon budget →

Housing: embodied carbon and climate

Written for a housing policy forum. Part 1

0

1

There are many ways for looking at housing: climate change, local environmental impact, community spirit, security, affordability, asset values &etc. However, finding a political narrative to address these issues is difficult because public awareness is low – I blame the ‘don’t inform and educate just entertain‘ BBC for that. The topic is also biased by self-interest, creating beliefs that cannot easily be shifted by facts. One of the most difficult issues is climate change, which is not given the importance it demands, in particular the greenhouse gases emitted as a result of construction – the embodied carbon – is rarely mentioned. This first note is about embodied carbon.

2

Climate change

Green growth, inclusive growth and de-growth

The OECD say green growth is

“… economic growth and development while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which  our well-being relies.”

One corollary of this must be that world economic activity should increase but the consequent greenhouse gas emissions do not cause dangerous climate change. This means emissions should remain within certain limits until greenhouse gasses can be extracted from the atmosphere. This extraction is thought to become possible in the second half of this century. Some rough calculations are presented below to explore the meaning of ‘green growth’.

The OECD say inclusive growth is

“… economic growth that creates opportunity for all segments of the population and distributes the dividends of increased prosperity, both in monetary and non-monetary terms, fairly across society.”

Continue reading Interest in green, inclusive and de-growth →

A note for LBC radio’s James O’Brien

Council house building stopped by Thatcher

On LBC radio this morning, James O’Brien discussed the housing crisis. He had a “penny drop” moment:

In 1971, Maggie Thatcher banned councils from borrowing to build houses. This has meant that private landlords have taken over much of the rental market and are making a killing through rents, many of which are paid through housing benefit. Private landlords are being paid increasing amounts from government expenditure

Subsequent governments haven’t changed the restrictions on councils – even the Labour governments of Blair and Brown.

Rents rise as house prices rise

Continue reading The racket in housing →

It’s time to work out organisation and electoral algorithms to make an electoral pact work if the Labour Party splits.

I’ve been a Labour Party member since 1964. Never liked “the Party” much but have liked many fellow members. I still pay my dues because the alternatives are worse.

What abut a split?

Then both sides won’t be so dogged by the sins of the past. Like …

• Blair’s academy schools

• Browns PFI’s

• Milliband’s failure to oppose Universal Credit that is impoverishing section of the poor. (Labour Party Lord: ” They knew. As useful as chocolate teapots”)

• Limp action on climate change. (Blair sacked Michael Meacher remember.)

Apart from ‘that war’ the Labour Party’s record is still the best and that leads many party members to want the Corbynites to hand over to the old Blairites – without Blair of course – in order to regain power and relieve so some of the pressure on the poor and the environment. Continue reading Let’s think of a plan for Labour to split →

The Baby Boomers housing bonanza

House price inflation has loaded enormous costs on the poor and the young and has been a bonanza for the affluent and the old. This realisation has had increasing coverage in the posh media. The coverage has greater emphasis on intergenerational effects rather than the effects on rich and poor because even the affluent classes are worried about housing for their children, who don’t want their children to rely on their parents.

In order to get some idea of the different effects of the housing market on the affluent and the poor, I downloaded, house price data from the Land Registry for the years 2000 and 2010. I then looked at the changes in house prices for the most affluent areas compared to the least affluent areas. (I used the P2 People and Places Demographic Classification for this exercise).

Adjusting for inflation between 2000 and 2010, I found that property of the most affluent areas increased by just over eight times the average income in 2010. Property prices in the least affluent are rose by a factor of two. However, according to the 2011 census, only 20% of households in the least affluent areas own their homes. In the most affluent areas this rises to 90%.

Summary: House price inflation has given most households in the most affluent areas large increases in their net wealth, at the same time most households in the least affluent areas will have paid increased rents.

from Brussels Blog: Will the government restart plotlands?

To the Labour Party’s Policy Commission on Economy, Business and Trade who asks “How do we create the high-skill, high-wage, secure jobs of the future?”.

My submission : “Don’t try. That’s the wrong place to start. Before a living strategy we should have a strategy about how we should live.”

There are three limits to higher wages

1. The AI Revolution and machine learning
2. Competition from workers on the other side of the world
3. Climate change and limits to growth

We must create a vision of a society able which can show the world how to live in a way that does not ruin our world and share wealth fairly. The evidence points to a way of living that does not use much steel, glass, concrete, planes or cars, with lower waged, less-productive jobs, supplemented by a basic income.

The macroeconomic lever to achieve this could be a very high carbon tax (e.g £1,000 per tonne CO2e) using the proceeds for a universal income. Industrial strategy should consider how to shut down the redundant industries in an orderly fashion.

Lifestyle planning strategy should be to design ways of living on the local neighbourhood scale which are truly sustainable. (In the UK we have nothing close.)

See

http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/jobs-and-climate-change/
http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/three-failed-eco-towns/

From The TED Talk, “The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn”, by Jeremy Howard. Note: “What doesn’t work – better education, more incentives”

More forest fires

A post from Neven’s Arctic Forum by contributor AbruptSLR says

The linked Scribbler article is entitled: ‘“Surreal” U.S. Wildfires Should Not be Burning in Mid-November’.

https://robertscribbler.com/2016/11/17/surreal-u-s-wildfires-should-not-be-burning-in-mid-november/

Extract: “In Dallas, on November 16, the thermometer hit 88 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking a 95 year old record. In Ada, Oklahoma the mercury struck 85 degrees F. Further north in high-elevation Denver, temperatures soared to 78 F — punching through a 75 year old record.

Meanwhile, strange, out-of-season wildfires continued to burn from the U.S. South to North Dakota and New England. In Atlanta, smoke streaming out of nearby wildfires blanketed the city. Red-eyed residents were increasingly forced to don protective masks beneath the choking late-fall pallor. In Chattanooga, over 200 residents were hospitalized from smoke inhalation and shortness of breath.

Wildfires are missing from the climate models

Just before they were abolished the UK Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change said

the [climate] models  used vary in what they include, and some feedbacks are absent as the understanding and modelling of these is not yet advanced enough to include. From those you raise, this applies to melting permafrost emissions, forest fires and wetlands decomposition.

Thawing permafrost isn’t in the models either

Scientific American warns about thawing permafrost

This is my comment on an article by Carbon Brief
“Highlights: Day one at the 1.5C conference on climate change in Oxford“

The website related to the conference can be found at “1.5 degrees“

My comment on Carbon Brief:

Thanks to Carbon Brief and Rosamund Pearce for an excellent report.

There are a few points I will make.

[1] In the embedded  video, Professor Corrinne Le Quere says

“[to keep within 1.5°C] it is necessary to be “completely de-carbonising the economy in just a few decades.”

Earlier this year Carbon Brief said

“Analysis: Only five years left before 1.5C carbon budget is blown”.

There is a big difference between “a few decades” and five years.

[2] Corrine also says “Global emissions have stalled in the past few years”. Apart from the fact that “stalled” is nowhere good enough to keep within 1.5°C , this reduction is not yet seen in the increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Continue reading 1.5 Degrees: Meeting the challenges of the Paris Agreement →

Not much to say except…

Don’t drive cars & Don’t eat beef because…

In simulations of future warming we find that the permafrost carbon feedback increases global mean temperature by 10–40% relative to simulations without this feedback, with the magnitude of the increase dependent on the evolution of anthropogenic carbon emissions.

From Anthony et al. Methane emissions proportional to permafrost carbon thawed in Arctic lakes since the 1950s. And these feedbacks aren’t in the IPCC climate models. Conformation: A last message from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Will the new government department sideline climate warnings?

I expect it will.

What upset Jeff Selingo (@jselingo) ?

Yesterday morning I made a comment to a posting on LinkedIn. The posting was “What Happens When Millions of Jobs Are Lost Because of Automation?” by Jeff Selingo author of the bestseller, “There Is Life After College”.

My comment referenced my other blog. Yesterday this several more hits than usual. However, the comment has disappeared from LinkedIn in normal viewing mode – although I can find it through this “deeplink“. The deeplink address contains “hb_ntf_MEGAPHONE_LIKE_TOP_LEVEL_COMMENT”. The comment had 19 “likes”.

I don’t use LinkedIn very often but I have just learned two things. (1) LinkedIn has a larger reach than I knew and (2) comments can be deleted on slim grounds. (A friend tells me that authors can delete comments they don’t like.)  If Jeff Selingo did delete the comment, I would like to know what he didn’t like.  I do wonder if there were any comments, other than

Geoff Beacon I have not see such a moronic conversation since the democratic convention. De-growth… I think there is a cup of Kool-Aid with your name on it and it’s empty.

My comment?

As we stand at the present, enough market generated jobs can only happen if we have economic growth that will destroy the planet. (“The job apocalypse and climate change”, http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/the-job-apocalypse-and-climate-change/ ) In the short to medium term we need degrowth, lower productivity, nicer jobs, less consumption and a universal basic income.

That doesn’t sound very “megaphone” to me. In fact it’s rather boring for such an important topic.

Nearly a century ago economist Lionel Robbins read Percy Bridgman. Neither understood science.

Bridgman thought anything that could not be directly measured was not scientific.
That would have meant “electron” was unscientific as philosophers of science soon realised.

Operationalism, however, has continued to seduce psychology  more than half a century after it was repudiated by philosophers of science, including the very Logical Positivists who had first taken it seriously.

Operationalism still seduces economics. Continue reading Operationalism was stupid. Economists are still operationalists. It follows that … →

The Social Democratic Party was founded in March 1981 by four senior Labour Party ‘moderates’, Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams.

They were joined by 20 or so Labour MPs. Wikipedia says

“The four left the Labour Party as a result of the January 1981 Wembley  conference which committed the party to unilateral nuclear disarmament  and withdrawal from the European Economic Community. They also believed  that Labour had become too left-wing, and had been infiltrated at  constituency party level by Trotskyist factions whose views and behaviour  they considered to be at odds with the Parliamentary Labour Party and  Labour voters.”

The current situation is not a direct parallel. The Labour Party’s  membership and MPs are pro Europe and the party is not infiltrated by  Trotskyist factions. However, the current leader, Jeremy Corbyn, does support nuclear disarmament but it is not party policy. Continue reading SDP2: Can the Labour party start afresh? →

The European Commission has asked if one of my other websites uses cookies.

My answer:  I’ve no idea.

Please advise.

P.S. Since the EU chickened out on banning cookies altogether and really protecting our privacy, we are left with the nonsense of clicking boxes to use essential services.

A public institution to inform and educate ?

Over the past week or so there have been events and talks at the York Festival of Ideas. Two of the speakers presented interesting graphs. László Andor, who was he was Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion in the European Commission showed the sources of immigration into the UK. His graph showed that the actual figures on immigration were completely different to what the (cliché alert) “Great British Public” had be led to believe by the mainstream media.

It’s obvious that we, the Great British Public, are ill-informed and ill-educated. This was emphasised further by a second graph presented in a “Chatham House rules” session, in which we are asked not to attribute any views expressed. This fingered the Daily Mail, The Daily Express and the Sun as major sources of mis-information and although they have falling circulation, they set the agendas for the “mainstream media”, with much emphasis on the dangers of refugees.

Then someone, who under the rules cannot be named, came up with an idea I rather like. Why don’t we have a public media institution with the responsibility to inform and educate us so that we can resist this deluge of misinformation. An institution that could check the “facts” and challenge the mis-informers directly with, say, daily news slots like “Daily X has published incorrect facts today. The correct ones are…”

Just think of it: a publicly funded media organisation that we could fund to present the truth with the mission to

1) Inform

2) Educate

3) Anything else?

The legislation should set performance targets. Testing their knowledge of basic information. Ipos Mori might help…

POSTSCRIPT: British Ignorance Measured

Continue reading Brexit with ignorance →

My very low electric bill

In three years with Co-operative Energy, I have never read the electric meter – or even bothered to look at their on-line bills.

This isn’t a complaint about Co-operative Energy but they want to increase my standing order because they think I am in arrears by £1,161. Now thatI have read the meter, I find I have used 1179 kilowatt-hours of electricity. This should cost about £140.

After deducting standing charges, the Co-operative Energy estimate for my electricity is roughly £1800. That is just about the average electricity cost for the time they have supplied me.

I have used less than one tenth of the average household electricity use. How did this happen?

Bath with a friend Continue reading Save electricity. Bath with a friend. →

Here are two different cases concerning universal credit and work. Both prove the point extremely well that universal credit and the  work conditionionality contract linked with this is comple…

Source: You cannot serve two masters.. Universal credit and your employer.

Updating the remaining carbon budgets for 1.5˚C and 2.0˚C

More than a year has passed since Carbon Brief’s Carbon Brief’s Six years worth of current emissions would blow the carbon budget for 1.5 degrees  which, in November 2014, recalculated the IPCC’s remaining carbon budget for a global temperature rise of 1.5˚C.

Continue reading Carbon budget shock: 4 years remaining →

Higher labour productivity means higher production. Higher production means higher consumption, which almost certainly means more greenhouse gas emissions, which will bring on climate disaster. To support the poor redistribution is needed – from the polluters (the affluent) to those that pollute less (the poor).
More detail…

Continue reading Lower productivity for the sake of the climate →

Sadiq Khan’s housing policies may be strong
but they are not strong enough.

This piece follows a very moving article on Left Foot Forward…

The article is excellent but below is a response to this sentence …

“Thankfully, Labour’s London mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan is tackling this issue head on with a whole suite of policies to enable the u-turn on housing that is needed, so that ordinary Londoners, vulnerable Londoners, every Londoner can access the basics: food, water, shelter.”

My response…

Are Sadiq’s policies radical enough? Isn’t it true that

1) It is possible to create homes for about £20,000 if the land is provided just a bit more than agricultural prices (i.e. £1,000 per housing plot). Then cheap a starter homes can be delivered to the plots. (See https://t.co/Wr080mdSaL ) Unlike Sadiq’s policies, a properly planned plotland development could happen very quickly.

2) We are facing a real climate disaster. Traditional bricks and mortar houses (as shown in Sadiq’s “Homes for Londoners”) have such large embodied carbon that they swamp personal carbon budgets and help screw the climate. (See https://t.co/dGld1fiPUo )

P.S. The affluent cause much more carbon pollution than the poor. We should be taxing the affluent, the polluters, and giving to the poor, who pollute less.

P.P.S Why do most on the left push economic growth, which the climate can’t afford (http://ow.ly/ZuMI1 ) rather than redistribution. We don’t need to ruin the Earth just to give to the poor.

The London Housing Commission have just produced a report Building a new deal for London. They should be supported in its aim “to identify sufficient land to deliver at least 50,000 homes per year for the next decade”. This 500,000 homes may be a reasonable target.

The commission also identifies problems with planning permission: “There are too few new planning permissions” and speed of delivery could be increased on sites where planning permission has been granted. Their suggestion to allow the boroughs to levy developers who have failed to meet agreed building targets may be helpful.  However, they may be missing bigger pictures.

First, at 51.3 people per hectare, London is over ten times as dense as the rest of the South East Region. There is plenty of land outside London with served by railway lines. Room for a population the size of London by taking only 10% of land in the South East Region. Continue reading London Housing Commission misses bigger pictures →

This is a reply to Dan Miller’s comment on RealClimate.org

Dan Miller #50

EXCELLENT BUT OPTIMISTIC

Your comments are excellent and your TEDx talk is very excellent.  I shall do my best to get others to watch it.

However (as Mona Lisa Vito said in My cousin Vinny), you are too optimistic to claim that “Fee and Dividend” alone can “fix climate change”. I guess that your talk was fashioned for the political scene in the USA and you may be restrained by political reality. These constraints should not hold in discussions here.

THE TIMESCALE IS TOO SLOW

Your timescale for cutting emissions is too slow. Let us assume a new US government will introduce a Fee&Dividend like you describe by the autumn of 2017 and CO2 emissions are initially charged at 1¢ per Kg and rising to 10¢ per Kg in ten years. Can this cut emissions fast enough?

Carbon Brief did their calculation “Six years worth of current emissions would blow the carbon budget for 1.5 degrees” in autumn 2014. By now it will be “Three years current emissions”. To keep below 2°C there seems to be 20 years or so but with the “lack of feedbacks” – that you mention – means it is difficult to get reliable estimates. Continue reading Don’t nuke Brazil →