While the high-tech schemes for reducing climate change might grab many of the media headlines, ideas like this show the environmental movement at its most radical. As I’ve noted before, there are various ways in which we can hope to intervene to reduce the climate dangers inherent in our current level of economic activity. One way is to reduce the carbon emissions required for energy production, through renewable energy; another is to mitigate the effects of carbon emissions, through carbon sinks, harvesters, or, yes, giant space mirrors. These areas are where the science-fiction stuff generally comes in.

But there’s a whole other area of intervention - reducing the actual amount of economic activity involved in modern life. This is the school of thought from which ideas like the one above - from TV pundit Penney Poyzer - stem. Modern life, the argument goes, is just too modern. We have too much stuff, travel too much, do too much. We need to return to simpler times - growing our own food, sourcing goods locally, re-using instead of replacing.

Why is this apparently backward-gazing viewpoint so radical? Because it disputes the central idea of economic and political thought in the last 200 years - the beneficence of material progress and economic growth. Having ever-more, the argument goes - more choice, more gadgets, more convenience - is costing the earth.

Ideas such as these reject principles that form the very foundations of modern economic growth. First, there’s specialisation. This is the idea that, if everyone produces the products they are best suited to provide, and exchanges with others, the result will be more efficient and allow a greater quantity and variety of goods than if everyone caters to their own needs. It began the first time farmers whose land was suited to crops first traded with farmers whose land was suited to tending cattle. Now, it’s the logic that sees goods, from electronics to fruit, shipped from across the world and sold more cheaply than those made locally.

The problem, of course, is that specialisation only increases economic efficiency. A company will build its factories in China, even for goods to be sold in the West, because it’s cheaper to do so. The savings gradually get passed onto consumers, and the standard of living increases. But such arrangements aren’t generally energy efficient, or carbon efficient. Indeed, because of the high CO2 emissions associated with shipping and aviation, they’re often environmentally disastrous. Instead, the argument goes, we must rediscover the merits of doing things ourselves, and doing things locally. “Eating apples from New Zealand, wrapped in clingfilm on a polystyrene tray, when it is apples season in England is crazy,” notes an activist in the report.

The same, the argument applies, goes for the other core principle of modern economics - ever-expanding consumption. For the more than 200 years since the industrial revolution began, if not before, economic growth has been driven primarily by the pursuit, by individuals and families, of ever more complex, useful, attractive or effective devices, tools and accoutrements. Our rising living standards have been driven by this process, but the ecological cost has been vast. As a result, it has become a credo amongst many environmentalists that the paradigm of non-stop material progress is inherently flawed. Writer Annie Leonard’s short film The Story of Stuff neatly makes the point, arguing the constant pursuit of newer, cooler stuff is leading us up an ecological dead-end. Endless material progress, argues this view, is an impossible fantasy - and its pursuit has become slow-motion suicide. We must relearn to repair broken goods, consume less food, get through fewer clothes, share cars, make do with fewer shiny gadgets.

Together, these views add up to a wholesale rejection of the foundations of modern economic thinking as a response to climate change. This viewpoint is clear - implicitly or, often, explicitly - in much modern writing on the environment and climate change. “The old economics is dead,” declared the Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott - a liberal, but hardly radical economist - in 2006, identifying “the impending clash between economic orthodoxy and environmental sustainability.”

Stores now sell jeans at below $10 a pair… According to the present model of economics, this is progress, just as it is to be welcomed that flights costing as little as $4 make possible stag and hen weekends in Tallinn or Prague.

But are these developments really positive? Orthodox economics says they are, because they raise the real incomes of consumers. But, according to [environmental] analysis, they are potentially very bad indeed.

It’s presented as a given that our current level of consumption is simply incompatible with the long-term health of the environment. It’s taken as read that the predicament we’re in makes a nonsense of the idea of ever-greater consumption, enabled by specialisation and trade, as the driver of progress. It’s a compelling argument. But it may be completely wrong.

Think back to a hundred and fifty years ago. City-dwellers were enjoying an unprecedented level of communication and mobility, thanks to the widespread availability of a hugely effective means of personal urban transport - the horse. There was just one problem - shit. Horse shit was piling up everywhere, making already overcrowded and unsanitary cities even more dangerous. Illness spread. Wise men stroked their chins, dwelling on how to solve the problem. Some sort of restrictions were surely necessary. The convenience of easy travel had a terrible cost to the environment. Surely, this was a convenience we couldn’t afford. No doubt, in a Victorian precursor to modern-day SUV-bashing, drivers of two-horse carts were singled out for blame.

But ultimately, of course, horses weren’t banned - they were superseded. By the tram, the tube, the bus and, ultimately, the car. Far from having to sacrifice convenience because of its nasty side-effects, city-dwellers simply found even more convenient systems that didn’t have the same problems. Technology won out.¹

The same may be possible now. As my previous article notes, in order to avoid dangerous climate change, our task is to lower our global carbon emissions to half their current rate. This may sound quite achievable; but bear in mind that, thanks to rapid improvements in standards of living in developing countries, the average level of economic activity per person is likely to quadruple over the next fifty years. Add to that a likely swelling of the planet’s population, from the current six billion to nine billion, and you’re looking at a six-fold increase in economic activity.

The anti-growth position states that this is simply too much. As the world’s poor countries improve their living standards, it argues, we must meet them halfway, lowering ours to a level more commensurate with the planet’s fragile state.

But remember the horse shit. Few would have imagined, as it piled up in the gutters, a mode of transport that could move people around in comfort without depositing faeces onto the street. Are we really so sure that technology doesn’t have the potential, now, to let us keep our current lifestyle while slashing our carbon emissions?

It may sound cavalier. But think about the maths. A six-fold increase in economic activity, and a halving of overall emissions, means we need to slash the carbon cost of a unit of economic activity by one-twelve. Doesn’t that sound plausible?

There are so many different stages at which technology can intervene. Energy efficiency - insulating buildings, energy-saving bulbs; clean energy; carbon capture. Some estimates suggest renewable energy could ultimately provide 100% of our energy needs, and that’s before you even consider nuclear. The transition to low-carbon energy production, and to greater energy efficiency, will be painful and expensive. But it’s by no means certain that the essentials of our current standard of living can’t be maintained, and improved, and extended to more of the world, without busting the carbon budget. To assume otherwise - to declare, without having properly invested in technological solutions, that we must crawl back down the developmental ladder - smacks of hair-shirt wearing martyrdom.

Take for example aviation. It’s become a standard villain of the environmental movement,as demonstrated by the ongoing protests over the expansion of Heathrow. And, in the short term, reducing the number of flights we take would be a quick way to make some impressive carbon emission reductions. But it’s going too far to conclude, as some have, that flying is simply a luxury we will have to learn to live without. Aeronautic technology advanced, in less than 70 years, from putting the Wright brothers in the air to putting Neil Armstrong on the moon. Do we really believe, with a similar level of commitment, that low-carbon flight is beyond our power?

Indeed, in general, the end-of-growth environmental school is based on a fallacy - that because technological innovation got us into this mess, further innovation can only make things worse. In fact, the exact opposite is the case. Every year, technology brings us new ways to generate clean energy and reduce our need for energy, all without significantly impairing our lifestyles; from energy saving light bulbs to the IT revolution, from hybrid cars to videoconferencing, which is slashing the need for business travel.

Of course, there are excesses in our modern lifestyle - in packaging, for example, and lazy waste disposal - that we should curb, and help developing countries avoid from the start. But the view that climate change requires the end of material progress, and a return to some imagined “natural” past, is one based less on a detailed understanding of the science and more on a general disdain for all things modern. Indeed, its proponents tend to resort to other arguments as well as the environmental - that modern life is making us miserable, stressed, sick and lonely. Fair enough: its proponents may have a point, although I doubt it. But climate change is too important to be used as an argument for the latest lifestyle fad.

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Those who know me will be surprised to hear I’ve been reading a Policy Exchange report recently. PE, for those who don’t keep up with the ever-growing roster of UK think-tanks, is the leading centrist (read: sane) entity amongst the conservative ‘tanks. Unlike its crazier cousins, such as Civitas and Politeia, Policy Exchange serves as more than a mouthpiece for bored minor ex-ministers and a peddler of slightly silly state-the-obvious reports.¹ Despite the concerns of the Fourth International, PE is essentially a serious enterprise. And, determined to be taken as seriously as lefties such as IPPR, PE has taken the radical step of commissioning and publishing actual academic research by actual academics.

This report, into the history of Britain’s urban policy, makes depressing, if fascinating reading. Five or six decades of urban policy, it argues, have essentially failed. Attempts to encourage, or even compel, businesses to open new factories in depressed areas simply prevented investment and may have cost the country jobs overall. Despite the interference of more than 30 different government agencies in the last 20 years, Liverpool remains plagued by poverty and crime. And while they may enhance quality of life, it’s by no means clear that cultural institutions - the current regeneration fad - bring meaningful long-term economic benefits.

Ultimately, the report argues, to try to artificially kickstart the economies of Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds and other depressed northern towns is to miss the point. The cities are poor for a serious economic reason. Not just the collapse of manufacturing, which could theoretically be replaced by other industries. Quite simply, they’re in the wrong place. Northern towns developed in most cases because of their access to the sea, through harbours, rivers and canals, which made them ideally placed for international trade when most goods were carried by sea. Now that goods are increasingly carried by road, and trade is more than ever with continental Europe, it’s the South that reaps the benefits. While the Northern cities languish, one of the fastest growing towns in the UK is Milton Keynes, the former laughing stock now invaluable for distribution owing to its central location and hub-like place in the road network.

The implication of this - and the failure of government policy to transform Northern cities in a lasting way - is a radical and scary one: that any attempt to rescue Northern towns as serious cities should be abandoned. Depopulation and migration to the South should be accepted as inevitable. Rather than spending billions trying to make these economies viable sources of employment for hundreds of thousands, we should let them shrink to a more sustainable size. Once, it made sense for cities like York and Durham to be the largest in the country; no-one tried desperately to sustain their importance as the industrial giants developed. Markets made these cities large, the report seems to suggest, and markets must be allowed to shrink them again.

The government rejects the report’s findings, of course. But assuming the report - prepared by an economic historian at LSE as well as Policy Exchange’s staff - are correct, the ramifications of this are faintly frightening. The South can barely squeeze in enough houses as it is, especially in the face of local opposition. And the tasks of managing such population decline would be hugely difficult, with badly underpopulated built-up areas having to be cleared and demolished to prevent them becoming hotbeds of crime. But the vision of a topsy-turvy UK, with the South an extended mega-conurbation of London and the North a largely reclaimed rural zone, is a fascinating one.

It may also be something to consider for other countries. Detroit has struggled to cling onto its population in the face of the collapse of its manufacturing industry; its current population of just over 900,000 is around half that of the city in 1940, when it was known as the “Arsenal of Democracy.” But perhaps it has to get much smaller before its population meets equilibrium with the jobs realistically available. And what about New Orleans? As the city rushed to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, few stopped to ask if a city in the path of regular hurricanes might be better off abandoned.

As people become ever more mobile, it’s possible cities might grow and shrink in response to economic trends faster than ever before. This could mean a revolution in building, with cheap temporary buildings replacing grand civic projects. The implications of this for the quality of the built are environment are, obviously, pretty unpleasant. But it might be better than the alternative: the endless, desperate struggle to artificially inflate economies; the vast swathes of leftover and abandoned buildings, built to last generations but no longer needed.

Even if we were prepared to face the turmoil of essentially abandoning the idea of the Northern city, it’s hard to see the idea gaining political traction under Labour, with its dependence on Northern votes. And the Conservatives, too, couldn’t afford the fury massive influxes of Northern migrants would create in the South. But political opposition might not make any difference. Just as government intervention has failed to stem the economic decline of Northern cities, nor can it stem their depopulation. Manchester and Liverpool have both lost almost half their populations since 1930. Whatever the government thinks, it seems the fifty-year battle to rescue the economies of the North may have been lost.

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But switch we must. Ask anybody about the steps needed to combat climate change, you’ll hear guilt over obvious infractions like cheap flights, but no real sense of roadmap to change. Or, you’ll hear politocultural prejudices mapped onto climate change: the crisis as evidence that globalisation / meat consumption / global inequality is unsustainable. In short, most people either don’t grasp the magnitude of the task in hand, or want to use it as a platform for radical changes in lifestyle which, however attractive they may be, can hardly form the core of an international governmental consensus on what to do next.

Part of the problem is that, for such a scientific issue, the climate change discussion has been discussed in the media in an almost entirely unquantified way. Do you know how many centigrades the climate is expected to increase by? How much our carbon emissions need to decrease? Without these numbers in the public debate, it’s impossible to fully grasp the scale and shape of the challenge, and therefore to be able to visualise a solution.

So let’s see if we can crunch the numbers a little, just to get a sense of the task ahead of us. Jeffrey Sachs, in his recent speech at St. Paul’s and again in his recent Reith Lectures on the BBC, offers some useful UN statistics.

Right now, the world population is just over 6 billion. By 2050, UN estimates predict an increase of 50% to 9 billion. If the level of energy consumption per person remains static, therefore, that’s a 50% increase in our energy needs by 2050.

But energy consumption is unlikely to stay static. Economies all over the world are growing fast. The average income of people on Earth is expected to increase by four times by 2050, fuelled largely by massive increases in China and India. This is wonderful news for those enjoying increased quality of life, but obviously compounds the climate problem. 1.5x the population times 4x the income equals 6 times more economic activity on Earth in 2050 than now. Assuming the amount of energy required increases with income - that each dollar of income costs the same in energy consumption in 2050 - we’re looking at a six-fold increase in our energy needs. Assuming energy production produces the same amount of carbon as it does now, we’re looking at - you guessed it - a sixfold increase in our carbon emissions.

Scared yet? Let’s really put ourselves on the ghost train. How much over safe limits is our current carbon use? It depends partly on how much hotter we’re prepared for things to get. The European Union has accepted as its climate change goal limiting change to a 2-degree (centigrade) increase. 2 degrees is still pretty scary, but it’s liveable without mass death in developing countries. Crucially, it should avoid triggering ‘vicious circle’ effects where climate change becomes self-reinforcing.

The IPCC estimates that, to keep the increase down to 2 degrees, atmospheric carbon must stabilise at around 450 parts per million. Right now, it’s about 425 parts per million. So the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, right now, is within the zone of acceptability. But, of course, it’s increasing. It’s increasing because emissions are too high. The fact that the atmospheric level is currently acceptable doesn’t mean that current levels of emissions are.

Let’s say the atmosphere is like a sink, and it’s filing with water - carbon. There’s a safe level of water - the capacity of the sink. And there’s a plughole, where the water drains away, and there’s a tap, pouring water in. But the tap is putting water in faster than it can drain away. And the sink has been filling up, slowly, and you know in a few minutes it’s going to be full and water is going to start spilling over the sides and flooding the room. But here’s the thing: somebody keeps turning the tap on, opening it more and more.

So first of all, we need to stop the guy who’s opening the tap more. But that’s not enough: the tap’s current flow is still too much. We need to start moving the tap towards “closed”. So what’s the acceptable level to aim for? Here’s realclimate.org:

Humankind is releasing CO2 at a rate of about 7 Gton C per year from fossil fuel combustion, with a further 2 Gton C per year from deforestation. Because the atmospheric CO2 concentration is higher than normal, the natural world is absorbing CO2 at a rate of about 2 or 2.5 Gton C per year into the land biosphere and into the oceans, for a total of about 5 Gton C per year. The CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is rising because of the 4 Gton C imbalance. If we were to cut emissions by about half, from a total of 9 down to about 4 Gton C per year, the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere would stop rising for awhile.

OK. So that’s the target: half of current emissions. Half of current emissions times six times the energy consumption (see above) means we’ve got to get the level of emissions associated with each unit of human economic activity down to one-twelth its current level.

Yeesh.

And yet, while the task sounds massive, it also sounds at least theoretically achievable. The problem can be tackled in several ways.

1. Reduce population growth. 9 billion is prediction, not a prophecy. Mass provision of contraception in poor countries could speed the demographic transition from a high-birth, high-mortality society to a low-birth, low-mortality society. This happens naturally with economic growth, but factors like disease have stalled the trend in parts of the developing world, like Africa.

2. Reduce economic growth. This is essentially the response of those who say we need to turn our back on many aspects of ‘progress’ and return to some kind of more agricultural lifestyle. However, it’s not limited to hippies: even the economics editor of the Guardian believes climate change may mean the end of economic growth as the world’s governing paradigm. The problem is that while we in developed countries have a standard of living where we could probably stop growing quite happily, developing countries do not. Growth-stoppers suggest promoting alternative ideas of development without the focus on industrialisation, based on local trade and subsistence. However, there is no evidence that life expectancy, nutrition and democracy can develop to Western levels without economic growth; in practice, it’s widely believed this vague ideal of rural living amounts to telling developing countries not to develop.

3. Reduce the energy requirements of economic growth. This is where insulating your roof comes in. Increasing economic activity can be mitigated if the energy use for each dollar made is reduced. This covers most energy efficiency drives, like buying local produce, taxing cheap flights, or encouraging public transport. It also covers some technological improvements, like TVs that don’t have a standby mode or decreases in petrol consumption.

4. Reduce the carbon emissions involved in energy production. This is the other key role of technology. Renewable energy, coal sequestering, nuclear, and even the humble Toyota Prius all fit into this category.

Idea one, while attractive, is difficult technically and politically (the chances of the Bush administration sponsoring a mass drop of condom kits on Africa is, go figure, not high). Idea two is radical and attractive on paper, but, in practice, very problematic. There’s a blurry line between points two and three, too - if I work from home instead of travelling to the office, I’m reducing the energy cost of my earnings, but am I also reducing my total economic activity by eschewing the transport industry? Maybe I am, but it’s still a far cry from us all running off to live in mud huts. We don’t need to grow less, I think, just better.

Either way, most mainstream suggestions for tackling climate change, from public transport to nuclear power, come under points three or four. It’s worth thinking about which category ideas fit into when you consider them. There’s a tendency to see them as mutually exclusive, which is just crazy. “We need cleaner energy!” “No, we need to use less energy!” Shut up, idiots. Patently, we need both.

These ideas are all about reducing emissions, that is to say, the flow of the tap. But there are other options.

What about climate change mitigation? The likes of Bjorn Lomberg think we need to focus less on reducing carbon emmissions, and more on reducing its effects. In the sink scenario, this is the equivalent of thinking about how much water spillage we can manage to mop up. The point, though, is of course that we need to do both. The 2 degree target still brings with it some pretty nasty effects, including sea level rises deadly heatwaves across Europe every summer - some water on the kitchen floor, as it were. We’re still looking at big changes - and this is pretty much the best case scenario, emissions-wise. So it’s hard to take seriously the idea that improving the emissions situation isn’t a big part of the solution.

And, what about planting trees? “Offsetting” has become a key part of the climate-change response of well-off liberals, as it’s one of the few ways you can simply buy off climate guilt. In our climate change kitchen, this is the equivalent of unblocking the sink - undoing some of the damage we’ve done to nature’s ability to absorb the carbon we produce.

The central challenge - to reduce the carbon emissions associated with each dollar of economic activity on Earth by one-twelfth - is indeed scary. But it doesn’t sound infeasible. Neither energy efficiency nor cleaner energy alone can do it; neither can mitigation or offsetting alone make it unnecessary. But if we do it all - the electric car and more public transport, more renewable energy and more energy efficient homes and workplaces, we might, i reckon, have a chance. Let’s run a quick thought experiment, as economists say (”wild speculation” to you and me”):

Let’s say we do manage to shower Africa with condoms, and instead of 9 billion, we get the Earth’s population stabilised at 7.5 billion. I have no idea if this is considered possible, but hey, impossible is nothing, as those annoying mountaineering boys point out in the Adidas advert. That takes us from a 1.5x population increase to a 1.25x increase. That means instead of a 12x decrease in carbon emissions per dollar economic activity, we now just need a 10x decrease.

Next let’s assume that by a combination of energy efficiency technology and lifestyle changes, we can reduce the energy required to produce a dollar’s economic activity by two-thirds. Sounds ambitious? I know. But think about it: cut all those extra flights, work from home, more multiple accomodations, more locally produced food where it’s clearly more energy efficient. It’s imaginable, at least. One-third the energy needs takes us from needing a 10x decrease in emissions per dollar of activity to needing a 3.33x decrease.

Then, imagine we reduce the carbon emissions involved in producing a block of energy - a kilowatt hour, say - by two-thirds as well. This is not too hard to imagine - a bit of nuclear there, a bit of renewable there, a bit of carbon sequestration there - it’s doable. That gets us to 1.11x - within a sliver of the target.

I’m not saying these numbers are achievable now. And they’re all subject to disagreement. But they demonstrate that’s it’s at least possible to imagine a solution. And the great thing is, these numbers take into account all the common objections. What about China and India? These numbers have accounted for that. What about the melting of the ice caps reducing light reflection? The 2-degree target bears that in mind.

Climate change has become a chorus of misery, with new problems popping up all the time. And the result has been an equally messy chorus of solutions. Nuclear is the answer! Energy-saving lightbulbs are the answer! Banning cheap flights is the answer! We badly need to start thinking about the problem as a whole, and putting together plans for solutions that encompass the categories we’ve outlined here. Despite the scariness of the challenge, knowing these figures makes me feel more, not less, confident that we can, actually, get through this. Sachs keeps quoting Kennedy, and it does seem appropriate in the current climate of fear:

Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again.

UPDATE 28/05/07: George Monbiot crunches the numbers slightly differently and comes to a more pessimistic conclusion.

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on the whole, as the first year of the new tuition-fee regime draws to a close, not much has gone wrong. Applications have continued to rise. Fears that universities with large numbers of places to fill would slash their prices have proved to be unfounded. And thousands more students now have financial help. Kirsty Jones, from the finance directorate of Sheffield Hallam University, says: “Overall we feel that this year has gone well.”

Much of this stems from the 6% increase in UCAS applications last year. The chief argument of critics - that the reforms, which introduced much higher fees in exchange for the reintroduction of maintenance grants for the poorest students - would put poor students off University by threatening them with massive debt.

I’ll admit I was surprised by the rise in applications. But of course, a rise in applications alone tells us little. Was the cohort of people of UCAS application age larger this year? And, crucially, how has the socioeconomic background of applicants shifted, if at all? It’s no secret that A-level grades are improving, that the ranks of people with the qualifications for University is increasing; an increase in applications overall doesn’t mean those from poorer backgrounds are any more likely to apply. And, of course, we’ll have to wait several years before we see the effects of the increased debt burden as this generation of students enters the workplace with over one year’s salary’s worth of debt.

But all this ignores the central objection to the Government’s new model: that, like the previous model with reduced fees, it simply doesn’t supply students with enough money. My year at University (1999-2002) was one of the first under the initial reforms, and there was an Alice in Wonderland quality to the mathematics under which our living budgets were decided. A student from the poorest background, whose parents were expected to make no contribution to their education costs, would pay no fees and be able to receive £3,600 a year towards their living costs. I recall sitting down at some point in my first year - probably around the same time my cashcard first got declined - and working out my situation. Halls rent, including some meals, was £2450 a year. That left £1150, or £32 for each of the 35 termtime weeks, spending money. This is at a time when friends at home who hadn’t stayed at University were earning £150 temping - and recieving a similar level of feeding from their parents as I was getting in halls. In the second year, things were even worse - because it was paid over the full 52 weeks, rent at £45 a week came to £2340 - almost as much as halls. Now, I had £36 a week - and I had to eat, too. To eat, travel, pay bills, buy books, clothes, phone home, and - naughty! - perhaps actually go out every now and then. A ticket home for the weekend could leave me unable to eat for the next week.

How did anyone in the Government ever think this was workable? Universities desperately tried to discourage us from getting part-time jobs, while banks and credit card companies swooped in to fill the gap - in addition to, in several friend’s cases, hardship loans. Is it really a coincidence that, a few years on, we’re seeing record number of redundancies from credit card debt? Of course, we were all supported by our parents, too - even those whose parents the Government had decreed not required to contribute to our living costs, often because they were paying our fees. And if you could get to the front of the mile-long queue at the temp agency, you might just manage to get a holiday job. Still, the gap between the money available and the real costs of living - to even a pale impersonation of the lifestlye of our working friends - seems so stupidly large, it’s astonishing this arrangement was ever implemented. And what’s so astonishing - what made me really angry - was that this penury stemmed from the tight upper limits on our loans. We weren’t saying the Government had to give us money. We accepted we were going to borrow. Why limit the interest-free borrowing to such ludicrously low levels, and effectively force us into the hands of commercial lenders?

So with the Government bleating proudly at the bursaries and grants built into its new system, I naturally wanted to look at the actual numbers. Fortunately, the NUS - who we demonised in my day for their cosying up to the Government over funding reform - have done the number-crunching for me.

Let’s accept the default figures, which seem reasonable in their estimate of student spending. As much as horrified ministers like to pretend otherwise, the truth is that students do wear clothes, and use mobile phones, and get trains to visit each other in their parent’s houses in the holidays. Accept the default numbers, click the little ‘OK’ at the bottom, and you get the result: a £725 surplus! Great! Off to Spain for the holidays!

Now look back at those income numbers. £3000 to cover fees, good. £3205 loan to cover living costs, OK. Family contribution or grant, £2700, fine*. Bursary, £300, yep - that’s the statutory minimum for Universities to provide to students recieving full maintenance grants. But what’s this? Part-time / vacation work, £2500.

Hmm. Let’s see. There are, at most Universities, 17 non-term weeks in the year: 4 at Christmas, 4 at Easter, and 11 in Summer. It’s hard to obtain temp work at Christmas, although those with longstanding arrangements with supermarkets or shops might have a better chance. And of course, it’s assumed you’ll be working heavily on revision and essays. Let’s say you manage to get two weeks’ full-time work (37.5 hours a week) at Christmas, and three weeks’ at Easter. And let’s be really optimistic, and assume you get to work 10 of your 11 summer weeks. No lazy summer afternoons in the park for you, youngster. And let’s - realistically - assume you do all of this at the minimum wage, currently £4.45 an hour for 18-21 yr-olds. 4.45 x 37.5 x 15 = £2503.

My God! It actually works. If everything goes to plan - your parents pay up, you get work, the loans, grant and bursary all come through on time, and you stick to reasonable spending limits, you can get by without accruing a huge overdraft or working part-time in term-time. And if your University is one of those that provides more than the minimum bursary, you could work less.

This doesn’t invalidate some of the wider criticisms of the system: the deterrent effect of heavy debts, which we still aren’t sure about; the risk of serious problems if one of the above factors, notable parental contribution, falls through. Still, I’ll stand up and admit it: I was wrong to argue that the latest reforms would make a bad situation worse. While the debt burden is worse now, the ludicrous penury of student life in the early noughties - and the bank and credit card debt that too often went along with it - should be heavily reduced. I’d still rather see education funded through progressive taxation, or failing that, a graduate tax. And I’m certainly still horrified to hear elite Universities lobbying for the removal or raising of the fee cap, and right-wingers for the end of interest-free loans. But I will admit that this time, it appears, the Government’s sums do add up.

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Soon, a seemingly endless parade of lucky nobodies filled our screens. They made it any way they could: flirting on Big Brother, masturbating pigs, marrying stars – or better still, sleeping with stars who were already married. They got drunk, got dumped, and got divorced. They were snapped with lines up their nose and their pants round their ankles. And we lapped it up, every last column inch of it.

But the humiliation of Jade Goody was the beginning of the end. Our girl next door, who had won over the nation just five years before, was undone by the very things we’d grown fond of: her stupidity, her insecurity, and her big, loud mouth. Now, the tragic, sordid death of Anna Nicole Smith, just months after the birth of her daughter, has slammed the final nail into the diamante-encrusted Versace coffin. This joke isn’t funny any more.

Celebrity culture was the creation of a society that was peaceful, prosperous – and bored. After 9/11, in the midst of a bloody and seemingly never-ending war, a bunch of gobby boys and girls having sex and falling over doesn’t seem so entertaining any more.

Don’t get me wrong. When the first reality TV stars came along, they were like a breath of fresh air. Chubby, shy, skint, with crap clothes, they were just like us. It seemed like ordinary people deserved to be famous too.

But sooner or later, fame reveals your true nature. Like stars, ordinary people, aren’t always funny or loveable. We’re often boring, plain, and stupid, and sometimes racist and nasty. But unlike the stars, we don’t have talent or looks to hide behind. Hold us up to the glare of the spotlight, and we just look dirty.

So bye-bye, kiss-n-tell culture. It’s time to start celebrating real star quality – from the beauty of Penelope Cruz to the raw talent of Forest Whitaker. Fame is a precious thing, and we control who gets it. Let’s use that power a bit more wisely in future.

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I got a posh new phone last week. It plays music, it does email, and it takes pictures, just like iPhone. But because it can play software made by other companies, it can do lots more besides, like play recorded TV or tell me where the traffic jams are. It can even tell me all 99 names of Allah!

Apple’s iPhone won’t do any of this, because it only runs the software Apple provides for it. Unlike other phones, it’ll only work on one network. And it looks like it’s going to be extremely expensive. And yet, it’ll fly off the shelves. After all, look at the iPod. It can’t play songs downloaded from some of the most popular music stores, only from Apple’s, and it costs far more than many rivals. But still, a whopping 70% of the mp3 players sold worldwide are iPods. Why? Because it’s so easy to use, your granny would love one.

Business is supposed to be all about choice. More ranges. More options. And the Government has got in on the act, saying that letting us choose our hospital will help fix the NHS.

But choice just makes things complicated. Apple’s products are easy to use precisely because they don’t give you a choice of software, or music store. It all works together because it’s all made by one company. Just ask Apple’s arch-rival Microsoft – after spending years making software that works with the biggest range of mp3 players possible, now they’ve given up and made a device of their own.

The more choice you have, the more confusing life becomes. Remember when, to call directory enquiries, you just picked up the phone and dialled? Now, you have to choose from hundreds of competing services, each with different charges and gimmicks. Now, fewer people use directory enquiries than ever before.

So, before the government thrusts any more “choice” down our throats, they should take a lesson from Apple. Make it simple, make it a pleasure to use, and we don’t give a damn about choice. If it works for phones, why not for the NHS?

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This Christmas, 2006, I am boycotting “Fairytale of New York.”

I told you you’d be shocked. Allow me to make myself very clear: I take this action not through boredom, sickness or dislike of said heart-of-gold drunken yuletide anthem. Quite the opposite. I’m doing this because I like it far too much to see it meet the fate of every other Christmas song: overplayed, irritating, redolent of tired, forced fun.

I remember when “Fairytale” first came out. The first time I heard it, I hated it. I was eight, for heaven’s sake; I wanted synths, beats, and preferably a little mini-rap for the middle eight. I really wasn’t ready for MacGowan’s lazily anguished snarl, or MacColl’s lilt for that matter. And yet, after my first listen, something stayed with me. By the next day I’d listened to it several times, learned the words, and put it on a tape I was making for a friend (along, if I remember correctly, with “Pump Up The Volume” by M/A/R/R/S, which must imply something).

For a long time, “Fairytale” remained, if not a secret passion, at least a pretty cliquey one. In the oh-so-ironic 90s, unashamed party ‘classics’ like Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody!” went down better than dark old “Fairytale.” I heard that it was kept from video appearances on Christmas Top of the Pops specials by the word “faggot,” but I’ve no idea if that’s true. Certainly, it was a badge of honour to admire the song over the array of Christmas crap out there. This, after all, was the decade when the coveted slot of Christmas number one was competed for almost entirely by novelty acts - from Mr. Blobby to Bob the Builder. I’m not saying that liking “Fairytale” made you some sort of musical guru, but it was a marker of discrimination. Like Radiohead, nobody who was really interested in music would dismiss it, and nobody who was basically more interested in football could really enjoy it.

I remember exactly when I realised that things had started to change: when, in 2000, I heard that likeable-but-dull Irish warbler Ronan Keating* was recording the song as a B-side to his single “The Way You Make Me Feel” - not, regrettably, a Michael Jackson cover, but a cliche with lyrics so mind-meltingly clichéd I’ve often wondered if they were the product of some drunken songwriter dare. Although I’ve never heard Keating’s actual version (with Clannad harp-n-vocalist** Maire Brennan), just the news of its existence made me sad to my core. The one genuinely meaningful Christmas record - the only one that portrays the contrived optimism of the festival in its true context, the misery and bitterness of winter - softened, made saccharine, safe, granny-friendly. Never mind that it’s about an elderly, drug-addicted couple whose dreams have been crushed into dust. It’s about Christmas! Let’s turn the violins up in the mix!

Then, even as Ronan’s cover was bothering the charts - and the ears of Radio 2 listeners - Kirsty MacColl died. Amidst the heartfelt (and well-deserved) tributes that flooded in from fans who’d long loved Kirsty for her tragic sensibility, unique voice, and sometimes biting wit, there were many who talked as if all she’d ever done was “Fairytale” (I’m talking about you, Duncan Connors). From that moment, the song began a quick ascent towards national treasure status. It topped a VH1 poll of the greatest Christmas song in 2004, and has done so every year since. When a colleague in my office recently started a poll on a popular gay networking website about the best Christmas song, it shot to the top. It’s just been re-released for the second time, and is currently at no. 10 in the charts. There are 64 versions of the song on YouTube, ranging from the official video (starring, incredibly, Matt Dillon) to a version by the parents of someone called Sam.

Perhaps I should be happy to see such a great song so popular. But I’m not. “Fairytale” was an aquired taste for a reason: it’s dark. It’s difficult; it contains a vision of Christmas that isn’t dominated by food and things.

He’s an alcoholic shambles, who spends Christmas Eve in a police station. She’s a bedridden junkie. The only hope on the horizon comes from his recent gambling victory (”Got on a lucky one / Came in eighteen to one / I’ve got a feeling / This year’s for me and you”). We all know he’s going to piss it away; that his cheerful Christmas optimism (”I can see a better time / when all our dreams come true”) is a grotesque annual ritual. And the song’s final verse, while it initially seems to bring resolution, in fact offers the protagonists only a weary resignation:

I could have been someone
(Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you)
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you

In the end, their complete dependence on each other is all that holds them together: their dreams may be dead, but they huddle, shivering, warming themselves over the ashes.

This is an odd candidate for a feel-good Christmas anthem. And yet, in the words of one EMI staffer,

Fairytale Of New York is an adult answer to Jingle Bells. It’s difficult to remember a Christmas party without a drunken singalong with The Pogues.

Is it too elitist to suspect the millions of people who round off every Christmas party with a “drunken singalong” haven’t fully appreciated the dark bitterness of the story? And of course, there’s the depressing irony of watching drunk people imitate MacGowan’s alcoholic drawl.

And the Pogues aren’t helping, cheerfully performing the song with any passing female singer, not to mention Shane’s mum. And, of course, re-releasing the song any time they’re short of beer money. Think I’m being harsh? Note that Warner encouraged the single’s current re-release “because a whole new generation of fans have heard Shane through his association with Kate Moss and Pete Doherty.”

Now look, I’m not unrealistic. I understand that when fine things become hugely popular, a little of their meaning is inevitably lost; and to stand in the way of it is not only Canute-style arrogance, but pretty close to snobbishness. But that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it, and it doesn’t mean I have to take part. Hence, the boycott. Before I’ve heard it once too many; before it conjures up images, not of postwar Manhattan with its dazzling lights and freezing tenements, but of work colleagues puking on my shoes; before I learn to associate it with that heady mix of plastic packaging, junk food, cheap wine and lazy nostalgia that is Christmas for childless adults. Before I see it on a bloody advert for holidays in New York, I’m having this Christmas without “Fairytale.”

It hasn’t been easy so far. It was mercifully forgotten at the work Christmas party, but when we had people round for an early festive dinner on Sunday, I had to smilingly ignore several requests. Several times, when Christmas shopping on Saturday, I felt myself bolting a shop without my planned purchases when I sensed the festive soundtrack CD was drifting Pogues-wards. Just today, a colleague put it on on his computer towards the end of the day, minus headphones, so the whole office could enjoy it crackling out of tinny, tiny speakers. I quickly stuck in my earphones and shoved on anything else.

I don’t, to be honest, know how much longer I can last. But I’m going to keep trying. “Fairytale” is a disarming, mature, evocative story, a real adult Christmas song, not to mention one of the most eloquent ever portrayals by an Anglo-Irish writer of the Irish-American urban immigrant experience. It deserves better than to be a drunken singalong, an afterthought, “even better than Slade.”

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We think of the internet mostly as consumers - we read sites, use them, buy from them. But the internet started off as a community. The first websites were bulletin boards, designed to let academics share information. They didn’t have staff or managers, and they certainly wouldn’t get sold for millions of dollars. They belonged to the people who use them: they were democratic.

Wikipedia is the biggest democracy on the internet. It’s the 15th most-visited site on the web, and every one of its millions of users can take part in its decisions. Not only can anyone edit pages, but anyone can vote – or stand – in elections to its managing boards. One American academic thinks it might even be “the greatest effort in voluntary collaboration the world has ever known.”

But as Iraq is finding out, it isn’t easy maintaining order in a democracy of equals. Wikipedia has its own insurgents: vandals. It suffers thousands of vandal attacks every day – entries are deleted, defaced, or altered for political or personal reasons. “George W. Bush” is its most frequently edited pages. Politicians have admitted having campaign staff edit their pages to cover up criticism. And workers campaigning for better conditions have been known to alter their employer’s entries to put their points across.

In the early years of the project, such insurgencies plunged Wikipedia into civil war – between its co-founder and “chief organizer,” Larry Sanger, and a mysterious anarchist called “The Cunctator.” Sanger wanted a certain amount of authority to ensure the site’s quality; “Cunc” was in favour of total equality. After months of deleting each other’s edits to pages and sparring in the sites’ talk pages, the war ended with Sanger leaving the project.

Since then, Wikipedia’s reputation has been tested by the consequences of its democratic approach. In 2005, the American journalist John Seigenthaler, Sr. laid into the site, calling it “a flawed and irresponsible research tool,” after taking objection to a paragraph of his biography on the site, that said he had briefly been linked to the murders of John and Robert Kennedy. Siegenthaler almost certainly overreacted - who hasn’t been linked to the Kennedy murders? - but a chorus of political and media concern blew up, alleging that Wikipedia was riddled with errors and unsafe. A study in the Journal Nature later in the year found that Wikipedia’s scientific articles were nearly as accurate as those in the professionally-edited Encyclopaedia Britannica, but Britannica hit back, calling the study “so error-laden that it was completely without merit.” (Nature’s response)

Is Wikipedia laden with errors and lies? It’s hard to tell, but Larry Sanger thinks it might be. And he’s proposing an alternative, Citizendium - a carbon-copy of Wikipedia’s database, but with expert editors who will have some authority to override regular users’ changes. Editors will appoint themselves, but be required to meet certain standards of expertise. And vandals and troublemakers will be barred from the site by “constables.” The aim, Sanger says, is to create a site that “John Siegenthaler could be comfortable with… not only enormous and free, but reliable.”

Sanger’s announcement has generated a mixture of delight and horror, with some Wikipedia users calling it “treason” (hey, if you thought Wikipedia was part of “the emergence of a new kind of person,” you’d take it pretty seriously too). But lovers of Wikipedia’s democratic ethos shouldn’t worry - this is a natural process for democracies to go through. In fact, it’s striking how internet history is mirroring real-world history when it comes to the development of democracy. After all, the first democracies - in Ancient Greece - were small city-states where every citizen - at least, every free male citizen - had a direct say in the affairs of state - not unlike Wikipedia’s founding all-are-equal ethos. As democracies have grown from cities to nations, populations have become too large for direct votes on every issue, and representative democracy has developed, with elected leaders making most decisions. Wikipedia has begun the same process - just like in growing democracies, pressure of numbers of participants has made ways of arbitrating disagreements essential.

As democracies have grown and the issues facing them have become more complex, their governments have needed to find ways to understand their tasks. But if the people won’t always vote for the most expert people, what to do? All democracies create ways of appointing experts to advise and even shape government, even if they’re not elected. In Britain, it’s the House of Lords. Of course, as Government gets further away from the people, the chance increases of people feeling free to disobey its laws. So democracies developed police forces, who are granted authority by the community to act against members of the community in ways regular members can’t.

So with its experts and constables, Citizendium, too, is just responding to the pressures of growth as many democracies have. In time, these safeguards may well see it overtake Wikipedia in popularity. But will self-appointing experts be reliable? Or will Citizendium have its own Cunctator, its own insurgents? There’s also a lot of fuzziness in Wikipedia’s system, with articles “generally recognized” to be reliable or neutral. Will Citizendium develop more specific processes? Will it need to? In real-world democracies, such fuzzy ideas tend to get sharpened by being tested in courts of law - think of phrases such as “cruel and unusual punishment,” incredibly vague at first, but gradually refined by the courts. Will our twin web democracies be forced to go through a similar process, in order to clarify their own procedures?

It’s too soon to tell, of course. But Citizendium needs to be recognised for what it is - not a threat to Wikipedia’s principles of democracy, but a refinement of them, just as real-world democracy has been refined over thousands of years. These kind of changes aren’t a sign of weakness, but of the flexibility needed to survive. Democracy was never easy, after all. Just ask the people of Iraq.

A nice backgrounder to the Wikipedia debate

Citizendium founding essay

UPDATE: eBay is undergoing a similar process.

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Dear Jeff Jacoby,

I’m going to have to take a little umbrage at your article, “The tall and short of it,” in today’s Globe.

You ask of Deval Patrick, “is there anything there?” Were you watching the same debate as I was? Maybe it’s because from my seat in the JFK Jr Forum I could only see the candidates on TV, but I heard Patrick make a range of numerated, precise policy statements.

On the Marie St. Fleur issue, he avoided getting embroiled in the heated debate, made the point that matters to voters - that Reilly appears to have lied - and then moved on - a pragmatic and sensible response, not that of a firebrand or dreamer.

He didn’t just blather about fraud cuts - he pointed to a quantified plan for $735 million of savings. You can disagree with his numbers, but you can’t say he hasn’t crunched them.

Gabrieli’s position is to work towards a cut in the future; Patrick’s is to aspire for one in the slightly longer-term future. This is hardly the chasm you make out. Yes, the 5% rate was approved by the voters. But Patrick has been clear about his position and, if elected, will have been so on the basis of it - just as democratic, just as much a moral mandate. He’s done this not because he wants to spend and spend, but because he believes relieving pressure on property taxes should be the state’s priority, and thousands of us believe he’s right.

You flag up Hiller’s question, “is there anyone you’ve just said no to?” - and Patrick’s answer, which you don’t feel the need to discuss, was clear. He’s taken a pragmatic, measured approach to the needs and demands of his core constituencies to balance their needs with those of the state’s taxpayers.

On the Big Dig, he didn’t just gripe, he made a clear policy proposal - for an independent review.

And Patrick did more than just ask not to be labelled. He made it clear he fully expected to be - “everything but a child of God,” if you recall. But he demonstrated that for all the brickbats thrown at him, his program combines traditional liberal and conservative thinking - more rehabilitation, and more police, to use one example.

Look at the stem cell section of the debate. Reilly’s position - all power to UMass - predictably silly. Gabrieli’s - let the whole market compete for the funding - very market-oriented, and it has some merits. And Patrick’s - a long-sighted position between the two extremes: fund stem cell research, sure, but see this in the big picture: out underfunding of public higher ed, right across the board.

Again and again, while Gabrieli and Reilly bickered, Patrick came through with a thought-out, moderate, practical proposal - and, unlike Gabrieli, he can place those proposals in the context of a wider vision - for funding public higher ed better, in this case.

You’re not so keen on Patrick’s long-grass timetable for the income tax cut. But who was the only candidate promoting a timetable for healthcare reform? Reilly: sometime. Gabrieli: sometime. Patrick: six months to a year.

Granted, Patrick made mistakes. It was a mistake for him to seem to be defending Ameriquest, and going after Fleet. But to say there’s no substance behind the vision isn’t true. The “vision stuff” is the velvet glove in which the - if not iron then at least hard- fist of detail lies.

Gabrieli offers a bunch of scattershot schemes, and a lot of numbers, but I don’t see a coherent vision for government. And contrary to popular fear amongst the national DNC, that’s what voters respond to.

Remember how Gore lost in 2000 - by seeming like a grey policy wonk. There’s the real electoral risk.

Sincerely,

Rav Casley Gera

***UPDATE!***

Very prompt and polite response:

Thanks very much for your response. It sounds as though Deval Patrick has a strong supporter in you, and I recognize that there are qualities in him many voters are attracted to. I don’t happen to be one of those voters, though, and last night’s debate only confirmed that feeling for me.

Fortunately, there’s room for all of us in the marketplace of ideas — and we all get a vote on Election Day.

All the best,

Jeff Jacoby

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, as a UK citizen, I actually don’t.

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It’s certainly true that, under the current taxation model and class makeup of HE students, government subsidy to Universities overwhelmingly benefits the middle class. But this is the result of the grotesque over-representation of middle-class students (including, of course, myself and almost all of my friends, colleagues and associates). Like all universal benefits, higher education funding gains its political support from its benefits to the middle class, but its moral value from its benefits to the poor. The solution is progressive taxation, to reorient the tax burden towards the best-off, and further measures to increase working-class participation in Universities. But Jackson’s policy prescriptions promise the opposite.

Jackson asserts that the answer to middle-class domination of HE is not to lower the financial barriers to participation, but “to raise the intellectual aspirations of secondary schools.” That schools in poor areas offer poor results is well known. But what is equally well known is: not only are you far less likely to obtain top A-level grades in a comprehensive school in a predominantly working-class area than in a comp in a middle-class area; but even if you do obtain such grades, you are still substiantially less likely to attend a University, and if you do, you will attend a less prestigious one than someone from a better-off background. Jacksons’ blithe assertion that the need for financial support “is being met by grants from government and by bursary schemes run by the universities” is deeply complacent.

Jackson pays lip service to the idea of a transformation of access, and even calls for a “paradigm shift” in remodelling the sector towards mass participation. But the key plank of his proposal for making this possible - raising or removing the incoming GBP3,000 fee ceiling - spells disaster for participation. And not content with removing the cap, he also wishes to impose interest on student loans through privatising the service, a system which has been shown again and again in the US to lead to graduate penury and often bankruptcy - not to mention exacerbating the nation’s already huge debt problem. Jackon’s other sop to the poor - that their “future… lies in part-time study as a mature student” has a nasty ring of “let them eat cake.”

Indeed, a quick read between the lines of the article makes it clear that Jackson sees the idea of a massive reorienting of HE attendance towards the less well-off unachievable and undesirable. As I’ve said, his criticism of government funding for HE as regressive depends on students being overwhelmingly middle class - the more poor people attend university, the more progressive government funding becomes.

Jackson’s own predictions undermine his argument. He argues that, over the next decade, demographic shifts will see the number of British students begin to fall, increasing competition between universities. And he makes a cursory mention that reforms to schools might help students from disadvantaged backgrounds fill the gap. But his “paradigm shift” - with its supposed massive expansion of vocational training through part-time courses and American-style community colleges - does not appear to get a look in here.

Ultimately Jackson’s scheme, just like the Government’s reforms to HE funding so far, attempt to reconcile two competing aspirations. On the one hand, the talk is always of a massive expansion of HE - not just to 50% but beyond, as better comprehensive education brings greater numbers of working-class students into the scope of the system. Greater flexibility, with more part-time courses, vocationally-focused options, and distance learning options are all to be welcomed. But the magic wand Jackson hopes to wave to achieve this - the same one as always, deregulation and the invisible hand of the market - simply cannot be compatible with an increase in access. Privatisation can achieve quality, if competition is present, and it can often achieve cost efficiencies. But if the privatisation process takes financial responsibility away from the state and onto individuals, an accompanying reduction in working-class access is inevitable.

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The mantras go round and round. The Government is in the pocket of industry. Methane is the answer. Biomass is the answer. In a beautiful illustration of the complete confusion of the general public, one of the most-reccomended reader comments on the BBC website called for us to get our energy for free from Tesla coils. Of course, the post that politely explained why this is pie-in-the-sky impossible got far fewer recommendations.

And yet, this isn’t like other issues. There is no fundamental ideological divide here. Nobody taking part in this debate seriously questions the existence of man-made climate change, and the need for serious reductions in carbon emissions; indeed, the conversation about this provides another example of just how strong in the public imagination the consensus on that issue has become, in Europe if not in America. And nobody seriously disputes the idea that energy is needed, or that it must come from a mix of sources. There are some political issues over how energy independent we need to be, but otherwise the issues are essentially factual. How much can we reduce our electricity needs? How much can renewables produce? How much can gas and new clean coal technologies produce?

Add up the potential of all the technologies, subtract that from our needs, and there you go. If there’s a gap, we need nuclear.

So why the furore?

Well, to figure out, I took a look at the Energy Review, which concludes that we need nuclear, and Friends of the Earth’s report “A Bright Future,” which concludes that we don’t.

Friends of the Earth’s most pessimistic model, what it calls its “slow coal” model, makes conservative assumptions about the progress of Government efforts to reduce emissions. It also makes pessimistic assumptions about progress in switching from coal to gas. The differences between FOE’s estimates and the Government’s are striking.

The table below shows the Government’s estimates for our energy mix in 2020, if no major shifts in policies take place; Friends of the Earth’s most pessimistic model in line with no new nuclear stations; and the eventual nuclear-free mix in 2020.

Energy type —- Govt estimate 2020 —- FOE plan 2020 —– FOE Plan 2030
Coal —————-102 ———————151 ———————124
Oil ——————0 ————————0 ————————0
Gas —————–202 ———————135 ———————117
Nuclear ————22 ———————–27 ———————–0
Renewable ——–62 ———————–80 ———————-137
Imports ————12————————20 ———————-22
Total —————400 ———————-407 ——————–400

The single most striking figure is not a difference but a similarity – the totals figues.

The FOE is not imagining a society of mud huts here; this most pessimistic estimate recognizes the Government’s usage estimate, 400 terawatt/hrs. It also allows for a 48% reduction in emissions by 2020. It should be stressed that the gas and coal figures in FOE’s plans involve an array of new techniques to clean up these fuels, techniques which have their own costs and disadvantages.

The next obvious large figure is the reliance on gas in the Government prediction. Indeed, it’s this that the Government seeks to avoid: as the Energy Review points out, over 50% reliance on gas “would reduce the diversity of the UK’s generation mix, with more than half of the UK’s electricity supply dependent on a single fuel type. This increased dependency on gas for electricity generation would also be happening at the very time the UK becomes increasingly reliant on imports for its gas supplies.” In other words, we’d be hostage to Russia, or more likely Norway, our biggest supplier.

The next big figure is no shock - FOE’s eventual goals for renewable are way beyond the Government’s. The Government does express hope for 20% generation by renewables by 2020, which would match FOE’s 2020 goal. But the continuation of renewable growth to provide a third of needs by 2030 might strike the Government as decidedly optimistic.

Ultimately, then, the question is – what is the potential of renewables? I’ll be investigating that in the next instalment.

*I’ve fiddled the figures a little for simplicity. Most particularly, I’ve split a
curious single FOE figure for CCGT, an advanced gas technique, and imported solar power, equally.

For the source figures, see

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/evidence/bright_future_data.pdf

http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file32007.pdf

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I’m pleased to see general enthusiasm for the deal, with less of the obvious carping about it all being a face-saving or reputation-growing gesture than you might expect. Claims of self-aggrandizement are neatly sidestepped by the fact that Buffet has eschewed establishing his own foundation in favour of giving to Gates, ensuring the minimum credit once memories of the contribution fade.

The complexities of the deal have, in most cases, slipped through the media net. They don’t really matter, except to note that it’s not money Buffet has given, but shares - rather, a promise of a certain number of shares in Buffet’s empire, Berkshire Hathaway, each year. In fact, the number decreases every year, with the expected increase in BH’s value intended to make up the difference.

The implications of this “new golden age of philanthropy” for consumers are substantial. Ethical consuming has, until now, been focussed on damage control - on choosing the least-worst option, be it less harmful farming, better wages for manufacturers and farmers, or minimising packaging. Now, is there a chance for a more positive, charity-based ethical consumer movement?

For some time I’ve objected to the smugness of Macintosh users. Tales of Microsoft’s aggressive pursuit of patents and squeezing-out of rivals have just increased the sense that Macs are ethically, as well as aesthetically, better than Windows PCs. And the open-source movement, from Mozilla to Linux, has always portrayed Microsoft as the bad guy. But there’s a problem. Bill Gates still owns the lion’s share of Microsoft stock; money made by Microsoft is money made by him, and that means money that goes to the Foundation. The same, now, can be said of Berkshire Hathaway’s range of financial products. Indeed, because it’s the shares of BH that the Foundation will own, it’s a direct boost to the Foundation if the shares value rises. So essentially, Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway products are now like a promotional chocolate bar or newspaper - a portion of the profits goes to help the world’s poorest people.

Is this, as it sounds, too good to be true? There are obviously questions over the sheer power the Foundation will have over AIDS policy, and the criticisms currently coming from the anti-abortion lobby are probably just the beginning. It will take careful PR strategy for Gates and Buffett to maintain their current halo. And the ethical spending of fortunes doesn’t take away concerns about the inequity illustrated by the existence of those fortunes, or - in Microsoft’s case - widespread concern about the business tactics that helped amass them. Nevertheless, the new philanthropy is to be welcomed.

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