The 2023 state of the climate report: economists must justify their actions
The global scientific community calls for a total rethink of how we manage our economy. Every economist must answer the central charge: justify this economic paradigm or help us shift to a new one. The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory was released in October. You can, and you really should read the full paper. The report says: We must shift our perspective on the climate emergency from being just an isolated environmental issue to a systemic, existential threat. Read that again: existential threat. The authors put our current economic paradigm in the dock. In summary, they say [...]
Losing out on tax revenue is not the risk
Thankfully it doesn't happen that often. You find a tweet that seems to be specifically designed just to totally piss you off. Like someone knew you were having a good day and decided to puncture it. Thanks Robert Peston. There is a risk for sure. But it is not from losing a few billion in tax. There are three issues in this one tweet. Which I will take in turn. First is Robert's role as a huge figure in the UK mainstream media and should allow him to rise above "cut and paste" reporting. There is no [...]
The UK Government’s Green Savings Bond
There are a whole host of ways that a government can take to encourage a shift to a greener economy. The Green Savings Bond, the latest idea from the Westminster Government, is not one of them. Over the summer UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a plan to direct £15B of funding towards green projects to help decarbonize the UK economy. To achieve this he has chosen the good old Bond market, but with a wee twist, rather than using the traditional bond market where institutional investors look to hedge their riskier investments, by buying risk-free bonds from the [...]