Readers will no doubt remember climate change psychologist, Stephan Lewandowsky and his attempt to connect climate change denial and scepticism to conspiracy theories.

Lewandowsky et al’s paper, ‘NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science‘ was published on the author’s university web site, though it was presented as ‘in press’, shortly to be published by the Journal of Psychological Science. However, in spite of being ‘in press’, the article never made it to hard copy.

We might reasonably be allowed to speculate what the reasons for the paper not making it to print were. One reason may be that it was, as has been widely observed, utter BS. Even Lewandowsky’s own colleagues pointed out its many flaws in methodology, and its naked attempt to diminish Lewandowsky’s opposites in the climate debate — climate bloggers.

Lewandowsky has returned, apparently with an analysis of the reactions to his unpublished, non-peer-reviewed paper. And it is published, in an ‘open-access’ journal,

Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation
Stephan Lewandowsky1*, John Cook1, 2, Klaus Oberauer1, 3 and Michael Hubble4
1 Psychology, University of Western Australia, Australia
2 Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland, Australia
3 Psychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland
4 Climate Realities Research, Australia
Conspiracist ideation has been repeatedly implicated in the rejection of scientific propositions, although empirical evidence to date has been sparse. A recent study involving visitors to climate blogs found that conspiracist ideation was associated with the rejection of climate science and the rejection of other scientific propositions such as the link between lung cancer and smoking, and between HIV and AIDS (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, in press; LOG12 from here on). This article analyzes the response of the climate blogosphere to the publication of LOG12. We identify and trace the hypotheses that emerged in response to LOG12 and that questioned the validity of the paper’s conclusions. Using established criteria to identify conspiracist ideation, we show that many of the hypotheses exhibited conspiratorial content and counterfactual thinking. For example, whereas hypotheses were initially narrowly focused on LOG12, some ultimately grew in scope to include actors beyond the authors of LOG12, such as university executives, a media organization, and the Australian government. The overall pattern of the blogosphere’s response to LOG12 illustrates the possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science, although alternative scholarly interpretations may be advanced in the future

It’s all the more remarkable that the reaction to the first, unpublished paper (referred to in the new paper as ‘LOG12′) should be the subject of a second paper, published in a journal with arguably far less credibility. Indeed, there is not even a link to LOG12 in the new paper, other than the citation:

Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (in press). NASA faked the moon landing|therefore (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science.

Still ‘in press’. Or is it? Perhaps the journal has decided, wisely, not to let themselves get dragged into Lewandowsky’s political war. Either way, readers of the new journal don’t get to see the substance of Lewandowsky’s earlier paper, nor the substantive criticisms of it — merely those which, on Lewandowsky et al’s view, demonstrate conspiracy theory ‘ideation’.

It’s a bit like comprehensively losing a football match 7-nil, but to only include in your retelling of the game one successful tackle. And that’s being generous to Lewandowsky. Because, not only does his new paper deny its readers a précis of his previous paper, he frames responses to it as ‘conspiracy ideation’, whereas in fact they were largely trying to establish exactly what it was he had done.

For instance, the new paper presents an unfolding story of sceptic’s reactions to the original paper:

“Skeptic” blogs not contacted (2). Initial attention of the blogosphere also focused on the method reported by LOG12, which stated: “Links were posted on 8 blogs (with a pro-science science stance but with a diverse audience); a further 5 `skeptic’ (or`skeptic’-leaning) blogs were approached but none posted the link.” Speculation immediately focused on the identity of the 5 “skeptic” bloggers. Within short order, 25 “skeptical” bloggers had come publicly forward (http://www.webcitation.org/6APs1GdzO) to state that they had not been approached by the researchers. Of those 25 public declarations, 5 were by individuals who were invited to post links to the study by LOG12 in 2010. Two of these bloggers had engaged in correspondence with the research assistant for further clarification.

This apparent failure to locate the “skeptic” bloggers led to allegations of research misconduct by LOG12 in blog posts and comments. Those suspicions were sometimes asserted with considerably {sic} confidence; “Lew made up the `5 skeptical blogs’ bit. That much we know” (http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/8/31/lewandowskys-data.html?currentPage=2#comments). One blog comment airing the suspicion that “skeptic” bloggers had not been contacted also provided the email address to which allegations of research misconduct could be directed at the host institution of LOG12′s first author. This comment was posted by an individual (SMcI; see Table 3) who had been contacted twice by the researchers’ assistant.

But self-evidently, it was the opacity of the first paper (LOG12) and its method that led to the bloggers’ speculation. Had Lewandowsky and his researchers been upfront about which blogs they had approached and when and by whom, there would have been no confusion. But on Lewandowsky’s view, speculation about his methodology counts as ‘conspiracy ideation’, which is to say that wondering out loud about whether or not Lewandowsky had done what he had claimed to have done betrays a similar mode of thought that convinces people that the CIA organised the assassination of JFK.

Blog comments, like blogs, vary in their quality. They can be breath-takingly bad, or conversely, knock you out with insight. But it would be impossible to claim that any ‘side’ of any debate on any subject had the monopoly on low quality conspiracy theories. Indeed, the conspiracy theorising by ‘warmists’ in the climate debate isn’t confined to the blogosphere. You may remember George’ Monbiot’s belief, published in The Guardian that oil interests pay for armies of sceptic drones to undermine his arguments. And respectability and scientific expertise is no barrier to bad ideas, either. The Royal Society itself published an argument in its guide to climate change that,

There are some individuals and organisations, some of which are funded by the US oil industry, that seek to undermine the science of climate change and the work of the IPCC. They appear motivated in their arguments by opposition to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, which seek urgent action to tackle climate change through a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions… Often all these individuals and organisations have in common is their opposition to the growing consensus of the scientific community that urgent action is required through a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. But the opponents are well-organised and well-funded…

I have little interest in parsing the 57 pages of the new paper, to get the measure of the remainder of what Lewandowsky believes are conspiracy theories. It seems sufficient to say that, whether or not the comments in question do betray a tendency of the authors towards conspiracy theorising, they were a response to a poorly-conceived research exercise which was transparently intended to frame the debate as one between science on the one hand, and idology/conspiracy theorists on the other. If the internet has a gutter, in which thrive conspiracy theories and pointless interminable flame wars between people who have little grasp on the real world, Lewandowsky’s work is amongst it.

But what is remarkable, however, is that seemingly academic research should have fallen to this level. Lewandowsky reduces academia to a silly blog comment war. He drags journals, and research organisations into this war, undermining the value of research in general and trust in it. The thrust of Lewandowsky’s paper is ‘I picked a fight on the Internet, and this is what people said about me’, which, of course, omits any criticism of his work that may enable him to develop a better argument.

And that’s the point. Lewandowsky’s research is intended to reduce the phenomenon of ‘scepticism’ and ‘denial’ without taking any notice of what sceptics say, except when it confirms to the stereotype Lewandowsky wants to demonstrate the existence of. No doubt that’s a ‘conspiracy theory’ on his view, but the truth is much simpler: either his mediocre talents aren’t sufficient for the critical self-reflection necessary to produce robust research, or an inflated ego precludes critical self-reflection.

There might well be some value — though I doubt it very much — in seeing what motivates online discussion. But this would involve a far less partisan, nudge-nudge-wink-wink smear on the researcher’s own enemies. Ultimately, ‘research’ of this kind will bring the academy down with it, because drawing attention to, and publishing Lewandowsky’s work means demonstrating to the world the fact that quite often, academic researchers are as petty-minded, ‘idologically-motivated’, and pig ignorant as the worst of online commentary. That was something that Academia could exclude. But no longer. It is as if research departments — especially those that have made a name for themselves by emphasising climate — have opened their doors to an army of pub bores, never mind climate activists. Half-baked, and cock-eyed theories about society, individuals, politics and economics and so on proliferate, and don’t do anything like as much to advance their own arguments as they do diminish the faculties of those outwith the faculty. It backfires, to take the university with them. Picture this…

BBC Radio 4 show, Thinking Allowed had a feature on the psychoanalysts perspective on climate change this week. Bishop Hill picked up the story. Thinking Allowed is one of my favourite programmes, so I was a tad disappointed to hear that thinking isn’t allowed if it’s thinking that contradicts climate orthodoxy. Here’s my letter to the programme.

I refer to your section on climate change and psychoanalysis in your most recent programme.

Your feature frames the problem as a failure to recognise what one of your guests called ‘the reality of climate change’, which moved on to a discussion about ‘types of denial’. However, if psychoanalysis has anything to say in the climate debate, it must speak to climate sceptics as much as their counterparts.

Sally Weintrobe lets the cat out of the bag when she claims that we are ‘increasingly aware’ of ‘weird weather’, citing hurricane Sandy and the UK’s recent wet weather. Yet there was nothing remarkable about the weather last year. The IPCC’s recent special report on extreme weather found that there is no evidence of increased frequency or intensity of storms, floods or droughts, or losses caused by them attributable to anthropogenic climate change.

So psychoanalysis must have something to say about Sally Weintrobe’s misconception of the ‘reality’ of climate change represented by the IPCC. Her views on climate seem to be as far out of kilter with the scientific consensus as any “denier’s”.

Further to her misconception of the reality of climate change is Weintrobe’s misconception of climate sceptics’ arguments. There are many forms of climate scepticism. Some sceptics object to environmental ethical or political philosophy. Some object to environmental economics. Some object to the attempt to mobilise political action through the use of fear. And of course, some sceptics object to some of the claims that seem to emerge from climate science. Your guests would have us believe that sceptics contest the claim that ‘global warming is happening’, whereas the question that most sceptics of climate science ask is about the role of feedback mechanisms that are believed to amplify the global warming effect — a subject on which there is far less consensus that your guests will admit.

For a programme with the title, ‘thinking allowed’, this is a problem. Rather than doing justice to the debate, a psychopathology of climate scepticism is proposed. Thus thinking is not allowed: to think differently about climate change is to have a broken mind, requiring the intervention of psychoanalysts.

There is a dark history of psychoanalysts and psychiatrists being recruited by the state to elicit the obedience of the public. Your guests seem to want to continue that tradition. That desire for control is what this climate sceptic objects to.

The recruitment of headshrinkers to a political campaign is a far more concerning phenomenon than people living in ‘denial’ of ‘the reality of climate change’. Your guests would rather construct elaborate theories about the pathology of climate sceptics than speak to them. Thus, their theories stand as a demonstration of only what is happening inside their own heads, rather than in society at large. This in turn speaks about the nature of environmental politics and the anti-democratic tendency of environmentalism.

Typically, cold weather such as the UK is experiencing — an inch or so of snow that brings the country to a grinding halt — is used as the background to stories which challenge climate change orthodoxy. The tale needs barely any retelling: the milder winters and warmer summers we were promised simply haven’t materialised. As incautious as such arguments (like Boris Jonson’s) are, they are nothing compared to the absurdities of the argument they are countering. It was the extravagation in the first place which gives the ground to people who then ask, ‘where is this climate change, then?’ After all, the weather seems much as it was decades ago.

But today, it wasn’t as much the ‘deniers’ taking advantage of the cold weather, as the ‘Energy Bill Revolution‘ campaign. They got themselves an article on the front page of the Times, in the Daily Mail, and on Sky News. According to The Times,

More than 100 energy companies, charities and businesses have joined forces to warn David Cameron that Britain is heading for a fuel poverty crisis owing to a failure of government policy.

The group of 100 companies’ demands are simple enough:

An unprecedented alliance, including Npower, the Co-operative, Age UK and Barnardo’s, urges Mr Cameron to use money raised from the “carbon tax” to be levied from April to tackle the “national disgrace” of cold homes. A programme to fit houses with proper insulation would, they say, protect the vulnerable, help the environment and boost the economy.

But this is opportunism. The research in question was produced back in November. As this blog reported back then, the plan is to spend the £60 billion revenue from carbon taxes over the next 15 years on fitting the poorest 9 million homes in the UK with ‘energy efficiency’ measures.

But £60 billion is a lot of money. And I didn’t think that such a vast sum of money was worth it. Indeed, it would be enough money to buy 16GW of nuclear power plant. This would make it possible to reduce bills for all domestic energy consumers, and/or, if it was necessary or desirable, subsidise energy bills for the poor:

So how will this benefit people living in fuel poverty? Well, the ongoing plant costs under my scheme cost £1,099,180,017 — roughly a £ billion per year for the entire domestic sector. Between 25 million homes, that is about £43 per home per year, not including the cost of develiery. We’ve met the upfront capital cost of £55 billion through carbon taxes over 13 years. Now we can sit back and enjoy the cheap energy. According to OFGEM, 54% of a £470 electricity bill is ‘wholesale cost’. So that’s £253. And since we’re no longer producing any nasty CO2, we can remove the £47 charge for ‘environmental costs’ the government add to bills. The average bill now looks like this: £43 wholesale electricity cost, £84.6 for distribution, £23.5 transmission charges, £9.2 VAT, and £32.9 ‘other costs’, coming to a total of £193.2 per year. We’ve reduced the average electricity bill by £276.8 for everyone, not just the fuel poor. That’s taken many people out of fuel poverty — especially if they use electricity rather than gas to heat their homes. But if we’re still feeling generous, perhaps we could give some extra relief to the remaining fuel poor.

The problem is one created by making ‘efficiency’ an end of energy policy — a good, in and of itself. But efficiency is not necessarily a virtue. It might be (indeed, it clearly is) the case that energy inefficient homes could be better cared for by reducing the cost of energy, than by plugging up the gaps. If it costs 10 times as much to fill the gaps than it does to double the amount of energy used to heat the home, then clearly the greater virtue is in lowering the cost of energy.

But that’s not how the Energy Bill Revolution see it. Their call today is intended to put pressure on the government to use the Carbon Tax on their preferred measures, no matter what a cost-benefit calculation shows. So, then, it is not a surprise to see that the Energy Bill Revolution campaign counts a number of organisations and companies with an interest in energy efficiency. They include:

Anglian Home Improvements
Association for the Conservation of Energy
Carrillion PLC
Climate Bonds Initiative
Decarbonize consultants
EON
Gentoo
Good Energy
HIS Energy group
Home Heating Solutions Ltd.
Instagroup
Isothane
Jablite
Kingfisher PLC
Kingspan PLC
Knauf Insulation
The Mark Group
The Mears Group
The Mineral Wool Manufacturers Association
Nationwide Energy Services
National Insulation Association
N Power
Parity Projects
Passive Systems
Places for People
Red Roof Energy
Rockwool
Saint-Gobain
SSE Energy
SIG Energy Management
STO ltd.
USwitch.com
Willmott Dixon Group
Worcester-Bosch
WSP Group
YouGen

So a full 36 of the 100 organisations behind the campaign are in fact companies, with a direct interest in the government diverting £60 billion towards energy efficiency measures. What company wouldn’t get behind a campaign that would unlock such a vast sum of cash?

Then there are the NGOs. I won’t list the usual suspects — the Greenpeaces and FoEs. What is surprising is the number of organisations who claim to be protecting the interests of the elderly, the young, the homeless and the poor. The category of ‘fuel poverty’ that will include 9 million households in just a year’s time would be reduced substantially, were energy bills more affordable. But rather than campaigning for ways to make energy cheaper, leaving more money in the pockets of those people, these organisations have put their names to a campaign that will put money in the bank accounts of energy, construction materials and services companies. And we’re not talking small money here — we’re talkign about £6,666 for each of those 9 million households. In 2004, there were only 1.2 million households in ‘fuel poverty’. Sharing £60 billion between them would amount to £50,000 each — not inconceivably the value of an entire house, never mind a refitting of an old house. Why weren’t these organisations calling for that, in 2004? Why is it only energy that warrants the attention of this coalitions of companies and NGOs? Why not food poverty, clothing poverty, if there’s a category called ‘fuel poverty’? And if 9 million people really are living in inadequate accommodation, why campaign only on the basis of their homes ‘energy efficiency’ ratings? And why now?

Well, the Energy Bill Revolution website informs that

The Energy Bill Revolution is an alliance campaign coordinated by Transform UK, a programme of the sustainable development organisation E3G. Transform UK works to build alliances to accelerate investment into the low carbon economy in the most socially just way.

Transform UK, turns out to be ‘The alliance that campaigns to accelerate investment into the low carbon economy.’ It’s about page explains further:

Transform UK was set up in January 2009 to identify and deliver transformational solutions for accelerating investment into the low carbon economy to help build climate, energy and economic security.

A steering group was set up which included a broad range of stakeholders representing civil society, unions, academics, think tanks, business and finance.

In February 2009, in a collaboration between three members of the steering group, E3G, Climate Change Capital and Friends of the Earth, the first paper proposing the establishment of a UK Green Investment Bank was written and promoted. Subsequent analysis was undertaken by other key stakeholders including the Aldersgate Group, Green Alliance, Policy Exchange and the Institute of Civil Engineers.

This inspirational idea to set up a dedicated institution to leverage billions of private capital into the low carbon economy was agreed as the first campaign priority of the Transform UK alliance.

Transform UK operates as the national hub for the Green Investment Bank campaign and helped to get cross party political support for it in the lead up to the 2010 General Election. The Government subsequently confirmed in its coalition agreement that it would set up the Green Investment Bank.

The Transform UK alliance is committed to supporting the development of the Green Investment Bank, Green Bonds and other solutions for accelerating investment into the low carbon economy.

So Energy Bill Revolution is a project of Transform UK, which is itself a project of E3G, Climate Change Capital (bankers), and Friends of the Earth. The financiers clearly have something to gain, as do Friends of the Earth, who, as the public record shows, are the beneficiaries of many millions of EU and UK public money. But who are E3G? Their about page says,

E3G is an independent not-for-profit organisation, established in 2004, that works in the public interest to accelerate the global transition to sustainable development.

We build coalitions to achieve carefully defined outcomes, chosen for their capacity to leverage change. E3G founders had been working together and developing their shared thinking for several years before the organisation was constituted in 2004.
Initially undertaking high-level diplomatic activities linked to the personal experience and influence of its founders, E3G has since been gently growing its portfolio of activities. E3G now has four strategic programmes, twelve additional members of staff, and an extensive network of aligned individuals and organisations.

I always wonder about these ‘about’ pages. They say nothing. No who, where, or how, and with what. The organisation’s ‘governance and funding page’ doesn’t give much more away…

E3G is constituted as a private company limited by guaranteed. Our constitution commits us to work in the public interest, and to reinvest any surplus profits in the further pursuit of our stated objectives. E3G is registered as a company (5158916) in England and Wales.

E3G — aka Third Generation Environmentalism Ltd — maintains full independence in all its activities, and is funded by a mix of foundations, government bodies and NGOs. To date, E3G has received funding from:
Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Department for International Development
Environmental Defense
Esmee Fairbairn Foundation
European Climate Foundation
Italian Ministry for Environment and Territory
Natural Resources Defense Council
Shell Foundation
WWF

So, again, we see high finance, powerful NGOs, and government departments. It’s amazing to see the doublespeak: ‘Independently funded by foundations, governments and NGOs’.

A very helpful person at E3G told me by telephone that the largest part (~80%) of their funding comes from The European Climate Foundation. The ECF say,

The ECF was established in early 2008 as a major philanthropic initiative to promote climate and energy policies that greatly reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions and to help Europe play an even stronger international leadership role to mitigate climate change.

So, who are these philanthropists? They are:

Nationale Postcode Loterij – which is, as far as I can tell, the Dutch National Lottery.
The Arcadia Fund – a fund set up by Lisbet Rausing to protect nature.
The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation - which ‘aims to demonstrably improve the lives of children living in poverty in developing countries by achieving large-scale, sustainable impact’.
The ClimateWorks Foundation - which ‘supports public policies that prevent dangerous climate change and promote global prosperity’, with money from the Hewlett-Packard and McKnight families.
The McCall MacBain Foundation - which ‘exists to improve the welfare of humanity through focused grants in areas of health, education and the environment’ with ‘the proceeds of the sale of Trader Classified Media, the world’s leading company in classified advertising’.
The Oak Foundation - which ‘commits its resources to address issues of global, social and environmental concern, particularly those that have a major impact on the lives of the disadvantaged’.
The Stordalen Foundation - who ‘step into the breach to finance and build companies that are to offer people the greatest number of options to current solutions’, whatever that means.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation – who ‘solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world’ with their money.

And there the follow-the-money trail ends.

There may not be anything nefarious going on in any one part of this bizarre network of relationships, which started off as a letter to David Cameron, and now turns out to extend all the way back to the people who made a rubbish printer I once owned. But there is something that should make us uneasy about public policy being dictated by a cabal of super-rich (1% of the 1% of the 1% kind of rich) philanthropists, through transnational campaigning organisations which serve no obvious constituency, but who fund in turn, not-for-profit campaigning companies, in partnership with NGOs, financiers, government departments, and big firms, who in turn finance campaigning front-organisations like Energy Bill Revolution. EBR is passed off as a coalition of civil society organisations concerned with the plight of the poor. But once we exclude the commercial interests, state agencies, and those who are nakedly making instrumental use of the poor for political ends, there are no organisations left to sign the letter to Cameron, except perhaps for the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts.

The reason this stinks is not simply the misleading claims of ‘civil society’. Call me old fashioned, but I believe public policy should be determined by the public, through democratic processes, not by mysterious benefactors through strange networks of organisations, none of which are democratic, none of which are accountable, and none of which are transparent about their aims.

Even if, at the end, the letter to Cameron from the Energy Bill Revolution campaign parters bears the names of organisations with a genuine desire to help the poor, there is no mistaking the weirdness that belies such a straightforward, noble aim. Even if they aren’t self-serving, the day I’ve spent trying to get them to answer my criticisms of their preferred policies certainly makes me suspicious. What the state does with sums as large as £60 million ought to be the subject of debate, not decided by cosy relationships between the privileged, moneyed and powerful, seemingly for the benefit of the poor. Civil society, then, shows itself to be as intransigent, ignorant and indifferent to the poor as it is to democracy.

Jo Nova reports that  Prof Richard Parncutt, who suggested that climate change sceptics could face the death penalty for their crime, has taken down the original text of his argument and has apologised.

Though I would have preferred a more convincing reflection on his mistake, all’s well that ends well. So what follows is not intended to browbeat the professor at the University of Graz — of music, after all, not a discipline that typically reflects on the rights and wrong of killing people. Nonetheless, one doesn’t get to the position of professor (I used to think) without some broad acquaintance with ideas and their histories and some capacity for reflection on one’s own perspective. The mistakes he makes demonstrate the problem with many arguments that put the environment at the centre of their perspective, even those who do not call for the execution of sceptics. I hope to point out those mistakes — which are broader and deeper than just calling for your political opponents to face the death penalty — below.

Parncutt states his objection to the death penalty…

I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases, and I have always supported the clear and consistent stand of Amnesty International on this issue. [...] Even mass murderers should not be executed, in my opinion. Consider the politically motivated murder of 77 people in Norway in 2011. Of course the murderer does not deserve to live, and there is not the slightest doubt that he is guilty. But if the Norwegian government killed him, that would just increase the number of dead to 78. It would not bring the dead back to life. In fact, it would not achieve anything positive at all. I respect the families and friends of the victims if they feel differently about that. I am simply presenting what seems to me to be a logical argument.

… But then he finds an exception to his objection…

I don’t think that mass murderers of the usual kind, such Breivik, should face the death penalty. Nor do I think tobacco denialists are guilty enough to warrant the death penalty, in spite of the enormous number of deaths that resulted more or less directly from tobacco denialism. GW is different. With high probability it will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers. More generally, I propose that we limit the death penalty to people whose actions will with a high probability cause millions of future deaths.

Parncutt claims that his idea has been produced by thinking ‘logically’ and ‘objectively’ about the problem of what to do about all those pesky climate change deniers.  I don’t find that claim at all plausible. The argument I make on this blog is that what appears as self-evident to the environmentalist owes much more to environmentalism than to facts unambiguously presented to the environmentalist by the environment. The environmentalist’s thinking is littered with his own prejudices.

Indulging Parncutt’s incautious rant allows us to bring out environmentalism’s ‘ideology’ — it’s presuppositions, prejudices and logic — more starkly than is typically possible with more guarded environmental waffle.

For instance, Parncutt asks us to think about doing something wrong (executing people who deny climate change) to correct a greater wrong (preventing the deaths of people from climate change). But how does one get to such a position using ‘logic’, per his claim?

It’s certainly true that killing people who disagree with you prevents dissent. Similarly, we could claim that all crime, no matter how petty, should be punishable by death. Suddenly crime rates would plummet. What’s not to like?

It turns out that we prefer justice to be proportionate. And that is a trickier metric to get to grips with than ‘logic’ or ‘objectivity’can help us with. There simply isn’t an objective or logical measure of proportionality — it’s a complex idea, which different cultures and different ideologies form different perspectives on, for historical reasons. And so it is with the Parncutt’s blood lust.

The passages of Parncutt’s text are an example of a knot that moral consequentialists find themselves tied up in fairly often. When trying to weigh up the rights and wrongs of doing wrong to do right, consequentialists find themselves committed to some unpleasant ideas, as the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

A well-worn example of this over-permissiveness of consequentialism is that of a case standardly called, Transplant. A surgeon has five patients dying of organ failure and one healthy patient whose organs can save the five. In the right circumstances, surgeon will be permitted (and indeed required) by consequentialism to kill the healthy patient to obtain his organs, assuming there are no relevant consequences other than the saving of the five and the death of the one.

Even if we grant — for the sake of argument — that Parncutt’s argument proceeds logically, it proceeds from a basis where something like consequentialism has been presupposed. Another view might be that even if the consequences of allowing people to speak freely is an environmental disaster of the magnitude he predicts, it is nonetheless incumbent on environmentalists to make the persuasive argument. So there are now at least two views — with very different consequences — that ‘logic’ and ‘objectivity’ can proceed from. The problem being that logic and objectivity have little to say about the right way to navigate the between allowing free speech on the one hand, and terminating interlocutors on the other. Ending up at such an extreme speaks about something else that’s going on inside the professor’s head. ‘I am simply presenting what seems to me to be a logical argument‘, he says. But we can see as plain as day his self-deception. Rather than admitting that his argument is based on something like consequentialism — or more crudely, the ’24′ defence of torture — Parncutt tries to use the weight of the consequences to make the argument.

Objectivity aside, the argument fails on logic, too, though. Consider this passage:

GW deniers fall into a completely different category from Behring Breivik. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.

Deniers ‘are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people‘. In Parncutt’s logic, the future is the present. There are two problems with this.

First, the linguistic sleight of hand is something looked at previously on this blog:

It would all be so much easier for everyone concerned if we could just linguistically lump the present in with the conditional future from the word go. Something like ‘Climate change is will being responsible for [insert climatological ravage here]‘ should cover it.

How can an action in the present ‘already’ have caused a consequence in the future?

Parncutt might well be right, and us ‘deniers’ will have campaigned against action to stop climate change, leading to the deaths of millions or billions of people. But it might also be the case that he is wrong. And there are many other possibilities. Climate change may continue at any degree between benign and something worse than even Parncutt has considered. But even then, such changes in the environment may not cause a single death, because — as is argued on this blog — human society is less sensitive to climate than Parncutt estimates, or because we are capable of organising ourselves against such problems as they happen. After all, we have thousands of years to cope with sea level rise. The migration away from, and the loss of the twentieth century’s great cities may cause people in the thirty-first or forty-first centuries no more anguish than the loss of Anglo-Saxon villages causes the average Briton. The human race might well prosper in the future, even without ice caps.

Second, a moral perspective premised on bringing the future victims of our carbon profligacy to the present is fraught with problems, as has also been discussed here before. Nearly five years ago, I reviewed James Garvey’s attempt to set out ‘The Ethics of Climate Change’:

Producing carbon dioxide – that is to say, using more than our fair share of carbon sinks – is not simply a moral wrong in the present, according to Garvey. What we do now carries consequences into the future. Accordingly, he challenges us to consider that moral responsibility isn’t limited by any kind of proximity. We have as much a duty to reduce our carbon emissions for the sake of the starving child on the other side of the planet as we do the starving child a thousand years into the future.

But Garvey’s moral calculations are easily challenged. How might the same starving child, were he standing right in front of us, be helped by us reducing our CO2? To suggest that it would help would seem entirely uncaring, and not at all ‘ethical’. Garvey might answer that CO2 emissions are what have caused hunger and injury. But this would seem to forget that famine, drought, and disease have historically always been part of life for individuals and communities living at the edge of society. Such forms of poverty are not new, but they are ‘natural’. If we can’t say that reducing CO2 emissions would help this child, it is hard to see how Garvey’s argument against proximity can be sustained. If, in a wealthy country, we were to stumble across some case of poverty, we would not say that the conditions people were living in were the result of climate change. We would not, as Garvey does, say that it was a consequence of our ‘moral failure’ to consider the connection between our CO2-producing actions, and their consequences. We would instead suggest that it was a social problem, arising out of material inequality. So why aren’t the problems faced by Garvey’s victims, thousands of miles away, not also problems of material inequality? Why are our responsibilities to people thousands of miles away different to our responsibilities to people right in front of us?

[...]Garvey’s portrayal of the remote, poverty-stricken victims makes use of the environmentalist’s maxim that ‘climate change will be worse for the poor’. But the sense of responsibility that Garvey appears to wish us to understand is not responsibility in the sense of commitment, or duty, but culpability. We are asked to engage with Garvey’s view of the world as culprits. And as culprits, we are asked to stop what we are doing, and ‘give’ back to the poor what is theirs by some kind of right. In this relationship, the poor are like puppets that Garvey uses to act out a kind of morality play to elicit our sympathy – or guilt – for his cause. And just as Garvey needs distance and poverty on this stage, he also needs victims to make his case. After all, where is this system of ethics, if there are no victims? He does not allow us to consider how we might begin to change things so that people are not poor – to make things better – but how we can avoid being responsible for making things worse.

The imperatives of ‘sustainable development’ demand that we consider the interests of ‘future generations’ — people who do not exist yet, but who are represented by the likes of Garvey and now Parncutt. It’s an interesting paradox: people who aren’t yet alive have some kind of rights in the present, whereas people in the present who speak in public about the daftness of giving non-existent people rights in the present deserve to be put to death.

What strange ‘ethics’: killing today’s sceptics so that tomorrow’s sceptics may live. But again putting its more egregious consequences to one side reveals the broader problem with environmental ethics.

An eco-centric perspective means robbing people in the present and the future of the thing that makes them different — being alive rather than merely being a life. Being alive means (for humans) being aware of oneself, and a sense of your own desires, will, ambitions and future. But the desire to protect ‘future generations’ denies people in the present and the future a right to express their own ideas about their own interests. After all, how can people in the future express themselves in the present? They can’t; they can only exist as statistical quantities, with statistical approximations of ‘interests’… so much water, air, and carbon. The remainder — things that make life worth living — is thrown out. Humans are not moral agents on this view; the concept of agency doesn’t exist at all, except in the sense of blame. Hence, the consequence of putting so much emphasis on life as a metabolic process, rather than on the experience of being alive. Environmentalism’s ‘ethics’ are as cold as spreadsheets.

This very limited view of humanity causes environmentalism to conceive of people as helpless without it: unable to adapt to changing environmental conditions, incapable of overcoming their dependency on natural processes, and driven by material instincts to consume until everything is gone or the waste overwhelms the consumer.

For instance, Parncutt claims:

When the earth’s temperature rises on average by more than two degrees, interactions between different consequences of global warming (reduction in the area of arable land, unexpected crop failures, extinction of diverse plant and animal species) combined with increasing populations mean that hundreds of millions of people may die from starvation or disease in future famines. Moreover, an unknown number may die from wars over diminishing resources (more). Even if that does not happen, thousands of plants and animals will become extinct. Islands, shorelines and coastal communities will disappear.

Parcutt’s claim to objectivity and logic weakens even more here. There is no scientific basis for the two degree limit. ‘Two degrees’ is a horizon of uncertainty, not a threshold of the environment’s functioning. And the consequences of exceeding two degrees that he lists are equally mere speculation. Previously, this blog has argued that global warming and its consequences can be divided into first and Nth-order effects. While we can be more sure of first order effects, Nth order effects such as feedback mechanisms are far less understood — climate sensitivity remains a controversy, not a matter of fact. And we have barely got into the discussion of ‘interactions between different consequences of global warming’. These interactions and their sensitivity to climate change are presupposed by environmentalism — they have not been detected by science. But much worse than this is the way in which Parncutt imagines that human society is sensitive to these speculative Nth order effects.

Starvation, disease, famine, and war over diminishing resources are as inevitable consequences, it would seem, as the melting of ice. You heat ice, it melts. You heat the planet, you get wars. Parncutts denial of human agency in his ethical framework is matched by a denial of human agency in the real world. The limited, metabolic view of humanity in his eco-centric ethics corresponds to his highly deterministic view of society’s relationship with the environment. This deterministic framework allows him to prophesize: ‘interactions between different consequences of global warming [...] combined with increasing populations mean that hundreds of millions of people may die’. Looking to the future is just a matter of doing the math.

Were it not for the seemingly shocking argument that climate sceptics should be executed, Parncutt’s hollow argument would have gone unnoticed. It would have been a run-of-the-mill, boring whinge about people who don’t agree with him. We’ve seen thousands of them. Arguments such as Parncutts pour out of government departments and organisations that have sought to identify themselves with the climate issue in recent years. But nobody was listening. The environmental movement failed to achieve any momentum. Nobody believes people who dress up as planet-saving superheroes. In order to explain their failure, environmentalists had to invent a demon — the denier… An all powerful being who could manipulate the public. Says Parncutt…

Much more would have happened by now if not for the GW deniers. An amazing number of people still believe that GW is a story made up by scientists with ulterior motives. For a long list of climate change deniers and their stories see desmogblog. The opinions of everyday GW deniers are evidently being driven by influential GW deniers who have a lot to lose if GW is taken seriously, such as executives in transnational oil corporations.

This is why intellectually weak arguments like Parncutt’s tend to alarmism and to shrill, shocking, and sensational statements. ‘GW deniers’ were never powerful, influential, or well-funded. Environmental alarmism was born out of a growing isolation of the political class from the wider public. Terrifying stories about the immanent deaths of millions of people was not intended to engage the public as much as it was to arm organisations and governments with a sense of legitimacy and purpose in spite of public opinion. Efforts to turn environmental alarmism into international treaties and organisations was never set back by public opinion — they were never vulnerable to democratic control. Meanwhile, radical organisations that attempted to use environmental crisis to engage with the public merely secured their own isolation. And as environmentalists isolation from reality and the wider public increased, so they sealed themselves away from criticism of their ideas. Nobody would challenge the logic of arguments such as Parncutt’s, they would merely say ‘yes, logic and objectivity, hurrah’. Consequently, the quality of the arguments offered by environmentalists has diminished as their tone has grown ever more shrill.

Parncutt’s essay, far from being logical and objective, reflects environmentalism’s failure to make logical and objective arguments, much less persuade anyone with them. In his frustration, Parncutt escalates his claims against those he blames for environmentalism’s failure. Along the way, he reveals the ideological nature of environmentalism, and betrays his own inability to reflect on his failures, and to take responsibility for them. It wasn’t deniers who held up environmentalism’s progress; it was environmentalists.

One of the most persistent and peculiar ideas that has been given life by environmental thinking is its conception of ‘efficiency’. Environmentalists like to believe that nobody has ever thought of efficiency before, and that it cannot be found without them. One problem with ‘efficiency’ is of course that once you reach a certain level of it, there are no more gains to be had. Greens discover that something is only X% efficient, and imagine that it had never occurred to anybody — least of all engineers and designers — to make X as close to 100% as possible. ‘Look!’, they urge,’we can reduce the energy use of this object by 100-X%’. But there’s efficiency and there’s efficiency. Efficiency is determined by our priorities. ‘Efficiency’ appears to be a straightforward and objective idea, but it turns out that our priorities are ideologically loaded. Environmentalism takes common sense, and by a sleight of hand, produces a nonsense.

Consumer Focus, says their website,  ’is the statutory consumer champion for England, Wales, Scotland and (for postal consumers) Northern Ireland. We were formed by The Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress (CEAR) Act 2007.’ Which is to say they are a QUANGO: they look like an independent organisation, but they are doing a job the state wants them to do. In the case of Consumer Focus, their remit is to ‘operate across the whole of the economy, persuading businesses, public services and policy makers to put consumers at the heart of what they do’. Well, we’ll see about that.

Consumer Focus (CF) have just published a report, in which they say ‘Energy efficiency investment is one of best ways to boost the economy – new research reveals‘.

 A new report from Consumer Focus shows that investing money raised through carbon taxes in a major energy efficiency programme is one of the best ways to create jobs and boost the economy, while also tackling fuel poverty.¹ The report² – ‘Jobs, growth and warmer homes’ – is published today (Friday 9 Nov).

The research shows that significant Government energy efficiency infrastructure investment could:

• Generate up to 71,000 jobs and boost GDP by 0.2 per cent³ by 2015 and create up to 130,000 jobs by 2027.
  
• Lift up to nine out of ten households out of fuel poverty, reducing energy bills in all treated homes by at least £200 per year
  
• Cut household energy consumption by 5.4 per cent by 2027 and quadruple the impact of the government’s energy savings schemes – Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation
  
• Cut overall carbon emissions by 1.1 per cent, including household emissions reduced by around 5.6% by 2027

You can download the entire report here. It expands on these claims about CF’s research:

• Economic benefits: Investing the money in improving the homes of fuel poor households has a better outcome on growth and employment than the alternative options modelled.
• Social benefits: Between 75% and 87% of the households that would have otherwise been in fuel poverty are removed from fuel poverty, improving the quality of millions of lives of some of the most vulnerable members of society and reducing health care costs.
•  Environmental benefits: UK CO2 emissions fall by more than 5% compared to baseline by 2027, contributing to the UK’s legal commitment to reduce GHG emissions by 2050.

These are some big claims. 130,000 is a lot of jobs. And £200 is a lot of money to the 9.1 million households that CF believe will be living in fuel poverty in the near future thanks to rising bills. CF’s solution — this miracle — is to take the increasing carbon taxes that will be paid on top of bills, to subsidise the improvement of those 9.1 million households with 95% of this revenue. This is the preferred scenario of three considered by the CF’s report. 

We are interested in the EE-All scenario. Here are the projections for 2015:

And here are the projections for 2027:

So far, this is all seems fairly innocuous… You take a little bit of money from the consumer at the point of purchase — the polluter pays, after all — and you give it to the people who can’t afford the commodity that the consumer purchased, to make their lives a bit nicer. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Let’s take the easiest claim to deal with first — that the fuel poor  will be £200 a year better off as a result of their homes being made more efficient. As you can see from the above tables, the revenue taken from carbon taxes rises from £2.8 billion in 2015 to £6.8 billion by 2027. Interpolating between these points gives us the following result.

So the Treasury will be taking £57.4 billion in carbon taxes between 2015 and 2027, and CF want to spend 95% of that (£54.9 billion) on doing up poor people’s houses, to save them £200 a year on bills.

Not all the homes are treated at once. This is a 13 year programme, as you can see in table 3.8 above. This is shown in the following graph:

So totting up the million or so households that save £200 in 2015, 2016… 2027, all the way up to the 9.1 million households who don’t get to enjoy their £200/saving until 2027, we get the following:

So as we can see, the £55 billion that CF want to spend between now and 2027 is only worth £12 billion over the same time. The remainder is £42.9 billion.

Of course, the likely response here is that the efficiencies created will persist. This is true, but those 9.1 million households saving £200 a year each, or £1.8 between them won’t have realised the benefit of the remaining £42.9 billion for another 23 and a half years — 2050. This doesn’t seem like a good deal to me, if the intention is to improve people’s living conditions and make their money go further. More to the point, energy bills have risen substantially more than £200 in the last decade, as they are predicted to continue. Should they double again — as seems to be a possibility — a £200 benefit may not be sufficient to take people out of ‘fuel poverty’.

But CF claim that their idea will bring other benefits, such as jobs. A whopping 130,000 jobs. These 130,000 jobs grow as follows:

Over the course of the 13 years, 1.3 million full time years are worked. So the benefits are equivalent to 100,200 full time positions over 13 years. At a cost of £424, 390 per job. Or, if we take the 13 year equivalent jobs, £548,064 per job, or £42,159 per year. Each job treats 90.8 homes over the period, or 7 homes per year — one home per job every 52 days.

Although the Christmas of 2027 will be a snug and cosy time for the 9.1 million homes who’ve had all that work done for free, with £12 billion saved up for presents, it will be a less happy time for 130,000 workers who will, just a week later, lose their jobs. Because, while it may be true that the insulation on the homes may persist (but won’t yield a net benefit for another 23 years) jobs do not last in the same way.

The green understanding of jobs is as peculiar as its understanding of ‘efficiency’. The jobs that are created are understood by CF to produce extra GDP — to produce wealth. But they don’t, they produce a big transfer of wealth, certainly. But they only marginally increase the efficiency of the UK’s energy supply by a tiny fraction for a comparatively huge workforce. These benefits are, according to CF:

• Cut household energy consumption by 5.4 per cent by 2027 and quadruple the impact of the government’s energy savings schemes – Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation
  
• Cut overall carbon emissions by 1.1 per cent, including household emissions reduced by around 5.6% by 2027

Here we see green ideology at work. Cutting household energy consumption by 5.4% by 2027 is seen as a worthwhile end — the real priority in the environmentalists’ conception of efficiency. But there is no real good served by reducing consumption for its own sake outside of the environmental perspective. As I point out on this blog, in order to take environmental imperatives like ‘reducing consumption’ at face value, you have to presuppose a great deal. Most people in the world would not regard cutting their consumption as a Good Thing. On the green view, walking is more ‘efficient’ than using a car. But if we take ourselves and our needs seriously, walking for the sake of reducing consumption is highly inefficient: I can get to where I want to be in minutes in a car, but it might take all day to walk there.

So let’s find a compromise with the greens. They will abandon their asceticism if we can find a way of reducing CO2 emissions from consumption. In other words, we have to find a way of reducing energy bills for 9.1 million people by £200 a year, and cut the UK’s carbon emissions by 1.1% for the £55 billion they want to spend on improving people’s houses. Can it be done?

Well, according to DECC, the UK emitted greenhouse gasses equivalent of 590.4 million tonnes of CO2 in 2010. So we’re looking to cut 5.9 million tonnes. This should be easy enough, because 204.3 million tonnes of the UK’s GHG emissions come from the electricity supply. If we assume a kilowatt hour (kWh) produces a kilogramme of  CO2, we would need to cut 5.9 billion kWh from our CO2-emitting energy supply, and produce it from zero-carbon generators. There are 8,760 hours in a year, so 5.9 billion divided by 8,760  equals 673,516. We’re looking to replace 673,516 kW of CO2-emitting electricity generating capacity with non CO2 emitting capacity. 673,516 kW is 0.67 GW. So we need to find a .67 GW generator. My choice is nuclear.

Prices of nuclear power stations in the UK are hard to come by. There weren’t any for sale on eBay. But the US Energy Information Administration has some info on costs. (I will not apologise for the inaccuracies that will necessarily follow from merely converting the costs of US nuclear power to £UK, because, as will become apparent, the CF took far less care in making their argument.) Clicking on Table 1 of this US EIA’s page  takes you to an Excel file, which says that the ‘overnight cost’ of a nuclear power plant is US$5,335 (2010) per kW. At today’s exchange rate, that’s £3,354.5. So .67GW of capacity would cost us £2.3 billion. But that isn’t quite enough, in fact, because no power station produces energy 100% of the time, and we need to ensure that we find 5.9 billion kWh a year. So let’s assume that our nuclear plant only produces 80% of its capacity. We need to add another 25% to the price… £2.8 billion.

The cost/benefit analysis of buying a nuclear power station vs following CF’s report is not looking good for them. But something which might tip the balance in their favour are the ongoing costs of operating the nuclear power station. Again, the US EIA has the answer. The fixed ongoing costs for nuclear are $88.75 (2010) per kWh and the variable costs were $2.04. So that’s £55.8 per kW and £1.28 per MWh. £55.8 x 841,895kW = £46,977,741. £1.28 x 842 x 24 x 365 = £9,440,000. So, the annual cost is £56,417,741.

We’re now in a position to compare the two strategies: the CF’s programme of taking carbon tax revenue from the rich, and using it to make poor peoples’ homes more efficient and produce less carbon vs my idea of building a nuclear power station.

The CF want £55 billion over 13 years, or £4.23 billion a year.

I want £2.8 billion capital cost, and £56.4 million a year thereafter.

Who wins?

Let’s make the point more clearly. In the first year, my idea costs £1.43 billion less. For the remaining 12 years, my idea costs $4.17 billion a year less. The difference over the entire 13 years is £51.5 billion. That’s enough to give those 9.1 million households £200 a year for decades. But if we’re in the business of giving stuff away, there’s a better idea. Why not spend that entire £55 billion on nuclear power stations and give the electricity away? According to the US EIA’s prices, that would buy us 16GW of nuclear generating capacity, or 140 TWh (assuming 100% load factor) — which would lower bills substantially. According to DECC In 2011, the UK consumed 365 TWh of electricity, 108 TWh of which came from coal.  So our new nuclear plants could completely replace all coal! Why aren’t CF jumping up and down for nuclear?!

There’s a catch, though. CF wanted to create 130,000 new jobs. Would 16GW of nuclear generating capacity do the same?

According to the UK’s Nuclear industry Association, there are 60,000 workers in the UK’s nuclear sector. Let’s imagine that they are all working in electricity generation. Last year they produced 69 TWh of electricity from 10.5 GW of net capacity. Assuming the same capacity factor (75%) for our new nuclear plant, that would give us 105 TWh and 91,304 jobs. (Less the jobs it took away from the other generating sectors, of course.)

So, CF might now say, ‘ahh, but Ben’s idea creates 40,000 fewer jobs than ours’. This may be true, but look at what those jobs create. The CF’s 130,000 jobs create a negative amount of electricity — 5.9 TW hours. My first plan produces the same amount of positive electricity for a fraction of the price, and the second produces nearly 20 times as much for the same price. Moreover, whereas the CF’s plan produces 130,000 low-skilled, low-paid, jobs for 13 years, my nuclear power plan creates 91,304 of the most highly skilled jobs on first-world salaries. In labour efficiency terms, then, the CF’s plan dilutes the overall efficiency of the electricity generating sector by adding 130,000 jobs. If the search for efficiency wasn’t subject to the law of diminishing returns, household electricity demand could be reduced by 100% by a workforce of 2.4 million. Meanwhile, under my plan, my 90,000 jobs, which create 105 TWh, almost supplies the entire domestic sector, which has an annual consumption of 112.8 TWh. My 90,000 jobs are infinitely more productive than the CF’s 130,000 jobs.

It gets worse for the CF now we come to examine the environmental benefits. Their plan displaces 5.6% of household emissions by making 9.1 million homes energy efficient. As you will remember, this is equivalent to 5.9 million tonnes of CO2, because a kilowatt hour produces a kilogramme of  CO2. My plan therefore reduces UK emissions by 105 million tonnes of CO2. That reduction effectively completely decarbonises the entire UK domestic electricity supply.

So how will this benefit people living in fuel poverty? Well, the ongoing plant costs under my scheme cost £1,099,180,017 — roughly a £ billion per year for the entire domestic sector. Between 25 million homes, that is about £43 per home per year, not including the cost of develiery. We’ve met the upfront capital cost of £55 billion through carbon taxes over 13 years. Now we can sit back and enjoy the cheap energy. According to OFGEM, 54% of a £470 electricity bill is ‘wholesale cost’. So that’s £253. And since we’re no longer producing any nasty CO2, we can remove the £47 charge for ‘environmental costs’ the government add to bills. The average bill now looks like this: £43 wholesale electricity cost, £84.6 for distribution, £23.5 transmission charges, £9.2 VAT, and £32.9 ‘other costs’, coming to a total of £193.2 per year. We’ve reduced the average electricity bill by £276.8 for everyone, not just the fuel poor. That’s taken many people out of fuel poverty — especially if they use electricity rather than gas to heat their homes. But if we’re still feeling generous, perhaps we could give some extra relief to the remaining fuel poor.

So, in summary, by focusing our efforts on production, rather than on the green conception of ‘efficiency’, we could substantially reduce or even eliminate fuel poverty, reduce bills for everyone, eliminate CO2 emissions from the domestic sector, produce 91 thousand very high quality permanent and productive jobs for the same money that CF want to use to reduce CO2 emissions by just 1.5%, reduce bills only for 9.1 million homes by only £200 a year, and to create 130,000 13-year full time, low-skilled jobs.

Of course, the real test of whether I win or not would depend on a much more careful treatment of more accurate numbers. I offer the above only to offer a sketch of ball-park figures from the data I have available. I would be grateful for any ideas about how to improve it. I do not offer the above as an argument for a particular choice of technique. Instead, the intention was to show how ‘efficiency’ is highly sensitive to what we focus on. ‘Efficiency’ is not always a worthwhile end in itself, and much more good might be done by other policies. What I believe the above does do, is raise a question about Consumer Focus.

Why are ‘reducing demand’ and ‘improving efficiency’ in the consumer’s interest? The argument above is that the parameters of ‘efficiency’ have been narrowed to these measures of performance at the expense of arguments that might better improve people’s conditions. These parameters of the policy discussion have been narrowed by the government, and by the party-political consensus on climate and energy policies. The idea of producing more electricity more cheaply is anathema to that consensus. Consumer Focus, being an organisation mandated to act in the consumer’s interest by statute in fact serves the interests of the government, and its preferred policy agenda. And indeed, when we look at the staff of the organisation, we see that it is filled with people who guarantee that the parameters of any research this superficially ‘autonomous’ organisation produces will remain narrow enough to prevent any criticism of government policy. Take CF Board member, Sharon Darcy, for instance…

Sharon is a Board member of the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) and housing association The Hyde Group. She is a member of the Ofgem’s Low Carbon Network Fund Expert Panel and Consumer Challenge Group for monopoly price controls.  She is a member of the Ofwat Customer Advisory Panel and Future Regulation Advisory Panel.  Previous roles include Member of the Council of energywatch, Chair of Sutton Borough Citizens Advice Bureaux and member of the London and Southern Committee for the Consumer Council for Water. Sharon Darcy – Declaration of Interest – Feb 12 (PDF 116KB)

And it turns out that her declaration of interests include the fact that she campaigns for the Liberal Democrats, and is a consultant to other quangos. That’s not to say Darcy had any hand in this report, nor in specifying a brief in such a way as to deliberately set out to find in favour of a certain agenda. But what it does ask, is where does the CF consider the consumer’s argument for more, and for cheaper energy? It doesn’t. It can’t. The idea that there are better things in the world than ‘efficiency’ doesn’t occur to Consumer Focus, who nonetheless claim to champion the consumer’s interests — it decides them for the consumer.

This demonstrates the danger of political consensus. Not just between parties, but between all political institutions and civil society. Consumer Focus’s press release said, for instance:

Consumer Focus, and a coalition of organisations (The Energy Bill Revolution), argue that a proportion of funds generated by carbon taxes, should be used for targeted energy efficiency schemes. The new report details a range of funding options from using 35 per cent of carbon tax revenue to 95 per cent and how this could cut fuel poverty by 75 per cent to 87 per cent depending on the level of investment.

A look at the Energy Bill Revolution’s ‘who’s behind it’ page shows a vast constellation of NGOs, think tanks, companies, Quangos, and other organisations, who seem to have put their collective name behind this research in the name of ‘Warm Homes, Lower Bills’ — their slogan. Yet it would seem that through their narrow vision, they fail to consider better ways of delivering it than blowing £55 billion on a nonsense scheme with highly dubious benefits. You can guarantee that the research suits them though.

If civil society cannot challenge political consensuses and cannot interrogate the thinking behind policies, it becomes a mere echo chamber for the government. It is hard not to draw the conclusion that, indeed, rather than championing the public’s interest, statutory and independent organisations are nothing more than outsourced PR agencies for Number 10 and government departments. The consequence of this hollow political arrangement is inevitably colder homes and higher bills. There is no surprise that those are the two effects of the last two governments’ policies.