Exploring mainly Heterodox type Economics, Monetary Reform, Environmental Sustainability, and Climate Change. It is a resource of Internet articles, and also promotes awareness of a futuristic modern universal Paradigm known as TFE, or Transfinancial Economics which is probably the most advanced, and most "scientific" form of Economics in the world .
Making electricity is the single biggest contributor to global warming, responsible for over a third of energy-related carbon emissions in 2021.
So phasing out coal, oil and gas in this sector is seen as critical in helping the world avoid dangerous levels of climate change.
This new study looks at data from countries representing 93% of global electricity demand.
This, the fourth edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review, indicates that significant progress is now being made in reducing the role of fossil fuels in power production.
The major developments are the continuing rise of solar and wind as economically viable sources of electricity. Around the world, solar grew by 24% last year, enough to meet the annual demands of a country as big as South Africa.
Taken together with nuclear and hydropower, clean sources produced 39% of global electricity in 2022. The report finds that electricity produced last year was, in effect, the cleanest ever made.
But despite this, carbon emissions from the sector also continued to rise, as coal use edged up.
According to the report's authors this is because overall demand for electricity rose, and not all of it was met from clean sources.
There were also problems with nuclear and hydro electricity in 2022, with many French reactors offline, and Europe's rivers too low in many places for hydro generation.
However the report says that in 2023, the growth of wind and solar will be greater than the rise in demand - and this will start to turn the tide on warming gases.
"When you stop adding more fossil fuels to generate your electricity, you start seeing a fall in emissions," said Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, the report's lead author.
"This is extremely important in the context of rising electrification, as we have more electric vehicles, more heat pumps, so cleaning the power sector will drive emissions down in other sectors as well."
While the fall in fossil fuel emissions in electricity this year is expected to be small, around 0.3%, the authors believe the drop will continue and accelerate in subsequent years. Key to this is a fall off in the use of gas, which fell slightly last year according to the report, with some countries like Brazil seeing a surge in hydro power which reduced their use of gas by 46% in 2022.
"We now have reached this next turning point of starting to see a new era of falling fossil fuel power sector emissions. We know that wind and solar are the answer and we've just got to get on with a roadmap for building them as quickly as possible," said Dave Jones, from Ember, one of the report's authors.
One significant player impacting the overall trend is China. Around 50% of the global addition of wind power came from China and about 40% of the world's new solar came from from the country that's also the world's biggest use of coal power.
"There is a chance that at the rate that China is building wind and solar and all types of clean generation, that they achieve that peak in coal generation earlier than 2025, which would be significant," said Mr Jones.
Energy experts acknowledge that curbing fossil fuels in power generation could well be a "turning point", but much more remains to be done.
"The earliest peak of coal power generation was in the UK in 1979," said Prof Jessica Jewell from the University of Bergen, who was not involved with the study.
"Nevertheless, it took decades to fully phase out coal power, for example the UK still used a bit of coal in 2022, 43 years past the peak. In order to reach clean energy goals we don't have 40 or even 30 years, we need to fully decarbonize electricity in a much shorter time."
Who's your boss? Peter Day explores how three different companies, in three different countries, do business without managers. Who hires and fires? And how do you get a pay rise? He asks how these radical organisations emerged, and whether other companies may follow their lead.
Last week I wrote about a measure of inequality that had received much coverage in the US.
Research from the Institute for Policy Studies found that in 2014, bonuses paid to Wall Street employees had been double the total annual pay earned by all Americans who worked full-time at the federal minimum wage.
I crunched the numbers and it turned out that the same was true for the UK.
But is this actually a good measure of inequality? If a load of people earning minimum wage suddenly received a pay rise then bonuses would become an even greater multiple of minimum wage salaries.
One of the most commonly used measures of inequality is the Gini Coefficient, which gives countries a score between zero and one. A score of zero would mean that everybody in the country earned the same amount while one would indicate that all of the country's income was earned by one person. It can also be used to measure wealth inequality.
The Gini Coefficient is more than 100 years old now, and attention in inequality has been turning recently to measures that concentrate more on comparing extremes in the population - for example, looking at what proportion of wealth is held by the richest 1% of the population and what proportion is held by the bottom 50%.
Earlier in the year, Oxfam predicted that the combined wealth of the richest 1% would overtake that of the other 99% of people next year. There were problems with the way the charity extrapolated that conclusion from previous years' figures, but the conclusion was not implausible.
The figures were based on some research by Credit Suisse, which estimated the distribution of wealth across global populations.
A third way to think about inequality is in terms of poverty measured by relative incomes.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) had figures out on Wednesday based on the definition that people were in poverty if their income was below 60% of the median level (to find the median income, line up all the people in the country in order of income and take the middle one).
It found that almost a third of the UK population had experienced poverty in at least one of the years between 2010 and 2013, which is very high by European standards.
The OECD sets out a summary of what has happened to examples of all three of these measures. Across its 34 member countries, the Gini Coefficient rose gradually from 1996, fell slightly for the financial crisis and then resumed its upward path.
Relative-income poverty grew steadily over the period and a comparison of the top 10% and bottom 10% showed growing inequality that paused briefly for the financial crisis before accelerating.
So while there are a number of different ways of calculating inequality, each of which have their own strengths and weaknesses, they seem to agree that inequality has been growing in recent years.
But these measures tell us little about other inequalities such as health, education or opportunities.
A student at university would be expected to have a low income and indeed negative wealth because of student debt, but would not necessarily be in poverty.
In health, the ONS found a gap of 18 or 19 years in the life expectancy of people in the most and least deprived areas.
And the OECD talks about how wealth and income inequality cause overall economic problems because they affect access to education for the next generation.
Mervyn King and Ben Bernanke have known each other
for 30 years
Ben Bernanke, the former chairman of
the US Federal Reserve, tells former Bank of England governor, Lord King, how he
faced up to the 2008 global financial crisis.
Thirty years ago two young economists found themselves in adjacent offices as
visiting professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
What then, were the chances that the pair, Ben Bernanke and Mervyn King,
would confront the challenge of the 2008 global economic crisis, not just as old
friends but as, respectively, chairman of the US Federal Reserve and governor of
the Bank of England?
"I'd say zero or less chance," explains Bernanke to Lord King, who is guest
editing the Today programme.
Looking back at their time at MIT, Bernanke recalls he and King "established
a relationship even then, talking about policy issues".
Speaking from his office in Washington, where Lord King visited him, Bernanke
says: "It was good because when we were working together during the crisis we
had the basis of a personal relationship which was useful."
As two of the world's most important central bankers, Bernanke and King were
members of an exclusive group of economic paladins, whose policies and even
personal pronouncements could sway the world's financial markets in seconds.
Both men agree their personal relationship and shared intellectual values
played an important role in dealing with the crisis.
The lives of the two men have some intriguing parallels. Both grew up far
from the centre of decision making - Bernanke in Georgia and King in
Wolverhampton; both attended prestigious universities - Bernanke at Harvard and
King at Cambridge; and both are avid sports fans - Bernanke following baseball
and King enjoying cricket.
As Bernanke points out, monetary policy "is not an area that you can learn on
the job".
"It's one that having that academic background is very helpful. There is very
much a community of people interested in these issues."
Ben Bernanke's time at the Fed saw him lead the US
response to the 2008 global economic crisis
But, he adds, the existence of such a small group creates the danger of group
think, and so decisions are often made by committees, not individuals.
"Monetary policy clearly has attracted a lot of academic thinkers and
provided an intellectual and personal basis for people to work together," he
says.
Meetings involving central bankers get a lot of attention, he says, though
most of them are deadly boring and scripted in advance by bank staff. But a few
are exciting.
The October 2008 meeting of G7 finance ministers in Washington, which threw
the script out of the window by agreeing to pour billions of dollars of
taxpayers' money into shoring up the global banking system and unblocking the
global flow of credit, is a case in point.
At the time Bernanke would get into the office very early in the morning, and
immediately go into a series of conference calls.
"There was in my office a red phone sitting on a coffee table, and every
morning there would be six or eight people sitting around that phone with the
loudspeaker talking about market conditions, what was going on, what we needed
to be doing," he recalls.
"And there was a certain emergency feeling obviously to
what was happening every day," he adds.
His work during the crisis was a mixture of dealing with unanticipated events
plus more regular fare like delivering testimonies, speeches and hosting
visiting dignitaries. Much of the time, he says, he was squeezing things in.
How, asks Lord King, did Bernanke cope with pressure or stress and what
coping strategies does he recommend?
The answer is clear: take time off, do some exercise and do something
different. And, most importantly, be focused on the task in hand.
Bernanke wanted to emphasise the Fed was "not just about one person". He says
he encouraged "blue sky thinking" and would often brainstorm new ideas and
approaches with his staff.
"I remain incredibly impressed by the quality of the work and the length and
effort of time that the professionals at the Fed and the other central banks put
into this," he adds.
Bernanke points to the increased transparency of the Fed as one important
outcome of the crisis.
For years, he says, central banks were opaque, following the dictum of a
former Bank of England governor, Montague Norman: "Never apologise, never
explain."
Nowadays, he contends, it is very important to explain to the public and
politicians how and why they were doing things. Plus why it's important. This
adds to public confidence and is good for the economy.
Mervyn King served as governor of the Bank of England
from 2003 to 2013
During the crisis, he says, the Fed was doing "complex and scary things" amid
much uncertainty and fear.
It was hard, he adds, to explain to the public that things were bad but could
be much worse.
"In the US, I think the understanding is much greater today than in 2008," he
says.
Now at the Brookings Institution, a US think tank, Bernanke says life is much
quieter after eight years of excitement. He is currently working on a book and
reflecting on his 12 years in government "and things I didn't have time to fully
work through" while at the Fed.
In addition, he is giving talks and reconnecting with the academic world as
"a very small club of post-Fed chairmen," along with Paul Volcker and Alan
Greenspan.
And, asked by Lord King to list the most important qualities a public leader
needs to tackle a crisis, Bernanke points to:
The intellectual framework to understand what's happening and devise
solutions. Having a great team.
Being calm under fire and projecting confidence.
Being very collegial. More heads are better than one.
Mervyn King guest edits BBC Radio 4's Today programme on
Monday 29 December, 06:00-09:00 GMT - or listen again online.
Global consumption of meat needs to fall - to ensure future demand for food can be met and to help protect the environment - a study says.
Research from Cambridge and Aberdeen universities estimates greenhouse gases from food production will go up 80% if meat and dairy consumption continues to rise at its current rate.
That will make it harder to meet global targets on limiting emissions.
The study urges eating two portions of red meat and seven of poultry per week.
However that call comes as the world's cities are seeing a boom in burger restaurants.
The research highlights that more and more people from around the world are adopting American-style diets, leading to a sizeable increase in meat and dairy consumption.
It says if this continues, more and more forest land or fields currently used for arable crops will be converted for use by livestock as the world's farmers battle to keep up with demand.
Deforestation will increase carbon emissions, and increased livestock production will raise methane levels and wider fertiliser use will further accelerate climate change.
The lead researcher, Bojana Bajzelj from the University of Cambridge, said: "There are basic laws of biophysics that we cannot evade."
"The average efficiency of livestock converting plant feed to meat is less than 3%, and as we eat more meat, more arable cultivation is turned over to producing feedstock for animals that provide meat for humans.
"The losses at each stage are large, and as humans globally eat more and more meat, conversion from plants to food becomes less and less efficient, driving agricultural expansion and releasing more greenhouse gases. Agricultural practices are not necessarily at fault here - but our choice of food is." Yield gaps The report says the situation can be radically improved if farmers in developing countries are helped to achieve the best possible yields from their land.
Another big improvement will come if the world's population learns to stop wasting food.
The researchers say if people could also be persuaded to eat healthier diets, those three measures alone could halve agricultural greenhouse gas levels from their 2009 level.
The study is the latest to warn of the planetary risks of eating intensively-produced meat and dairy produce. Scientists worried about climate change are increasingly making common cause with health experts concerned about the obesity pandemic.
But many people are voting with their wallets and their bellies - as burger bars expand, mushroom burgers are not yet top-selling items.
Bitcoin is a new type of money that is completely virtual.
It's like an online version of cash. You can use it to buy products and
services, but not many shops accept Bitcoin yet.
Physical Bitcoins are a bit of a novelty
The physical Bitcoins you see in photos are a novelty. They would be
worthless without the private codes printed inside them.
How does Bitcoin work?
A Bitcoin wallet app on a smartphone
Each Bitcoin is basically a computer file which is stored in a 'digital
wallet' app on a smartphone or computer.
People can send Bitcoins (or part of one) to your digital wallet, and you can
send Bitcoins to other people.
Every single transaction is recorded in a public list called the blockchain.
This makes it possible to trace the history of Bitcoins so people can't spend
coins they do not own, make copies or undo transactions.
How do people get Bitcoins?
There are three main ways people get Bitcoins.
You can buy Bitcoins using 'real' money. At the moment one
Bitcoin costs about £500.
You can sell things and let people pay you with
Bitcoins.
Or they can be created using a computer.
How are new Bitcoins created?
People build special computers to generate
Bitcoins
In order for the Bitcoin system to work, people can make their computer
process transactions for everybody.
The computers are made to work out incredibly difficult sums. Occasionally
they are rewarded with a Bitcoin for the owner to keep.
People set up powerful computers just to try and get Bitcoins. This is called
mining.
But the sums are becoming more and more difficult to stop too many Bitcoins
being generated.
If you started mining now it could be years before you got a single
Bitcoin.
You could end up spending more money on electricity for your computer than
the Bitcoin would be worth.
Why are Bitcoins valuable?
Bitcoins are valuable simply because people believe
they are
There are lots of things other than money which we consider valuable like
gold and diamonds. The Aztecs used cocoa beans as money!
Bitcoins are valuable because people are willing to exchange them for real
goods and services, and even cash.
Why do people want Bitcoins?
Some people like the fact that Bitcoin is not controlled by the government or
banks.
That means there are no taxes or bank fees to pay, at least for now.
People can also spend their Bitcoins fairly anonymously. Although all
transactions are recorded, nobody would know which 'account number' was yours
unless you told them.
Is it secure?
Every transaction is recorded publicly so it's very difficult to copy
Bitcoins, make fake ones or spend ones you don't own.
It is possible to lose your Bitcoin wallet or delete your Bitcoins and lose
them forever. There have also been thefts from websites that let you store your
Bitcoins remotely.
At the moment the value of Bitcoins goes up and down a lot, so it's
impossible to say whether it's safe to turn your 'real' money into Bitcoins.
From 1992: BBC News report on Blue Arrow convictions being
overturned
The City has been no stranger to financial scandals over
the past two decades - but some think there have been too few prosecutions. Can
the reason be traced back to one trial in 1992?
The Blue Arrow case went down in history as Britain's most expensive criminal
trial, costing an estimated £40m (roughly £70m adjusting for inflation)......
Blue Arrow timeline
4 August 1987: Blue Arrow Ltd. unveils its bid to take over
Manpower
September 1987: County Natwest and UBS Phillips and Drew
begin selling shares in Blue Arrow to raise funds for the takeover
29 September 1987: Rights issue finishes. County and
Phillips and Drew announce the placing has been successful.
18 October 1987: Stock markets crash around the world in
what is later called "Black Monday". In London shares fall by £50bn. County
later admit to losing £69m in the collapse, of which £49m came from the Blue
Arrow holding.
November 1989: Ten merchant bankers and a lawyer arrested
and charged by the Serious Fraud Office with conspiring to defraud by misleading
the markets.
11 February 1991: The Blue Arrow trial begins in a
purpose-built court off Chancery Lane after waiting 14 months for the matter to
come to the head of court lists.
14 February 1992: Jonathan Cohen, David Reed, Nicholas
Wells and Martin Gibbs are convicted of conspiracy to defraud and given
suspended jail sentences.
29 July 1992: The Appeal Court overturns the convictions
ruling that the length of the trial and the complexity of the subject matter
meant the jury could not have reached a fair verdict.
.....A year-long trial, which began in February 1991 at a
purpose-built court off Chancery Lane, resulted in the conviction of four high
profile bankers - but the prosecution's joy turned out to be short-lived.
The convictions were overturned a few months later when the Appeal Court
ruled that due to the length of the trial and the complexity of the subject
matter the jury could not have reached a fair verdict.
It was labelled a "costly disaster" that must never be repeated, by Appeal
Court judge Lord Justice Mann.
Some believe this ruling led to the Serious Fraud Office deciding to never
again pursue a similar prosecution of a big City institution or its senior
executives - that it views some cases as being so complex that they are simply
"untriable".
"The truth of the matter is [the SFO] are frightened to take these cases on,"
says Rowan Bosworth-Davies, a financial crime consultant and former Scotland
Yard detective.
"If Blue Arrow had any impact it was that the SFO knew they were never going
to get close to the City establishment ever again."
Lord Phillips of Sudbury, a legal expert and Liberal Democrat peer, says the
Blue Arrow affair has remained in the "institutional memory of the prosecutorial
authorities and regulators".
David Green, the current director of the Serious Fraud Office, admits the
watchdog may have held back from pursuing convictions over fears the trials
might collapse.
But he adds: "That might have been the case on occasions in the past, but it
isn't now."
In the mid-1980s a roaring bull-market was being fuelled by a boom in mergers
and acquisitions. Banks were earning large profits from aiding companies take
each other over in a bid to build larger and more profitable organisations.
London Stock Exchange boomed in the mid-1980s, with
huge deals being done
Deals were being closed, using the concept of 'leverage' - buying assets with
borrowed funds - and it seemed that virtually anything was possible.
At the height of this boom an upwardly mobile employment company, Blue Arrow
Ltd, made a bid to take over the world's largest recruitment agency Manpower.
To finance this, Blue Arrow launched a record-breaking £837m rights issue,
offering existing shareholders the right to buy additional shares in the
company.
Few of the new shares were wanted by Blue Arrow's shareholders so County
NatWest, the now defunct investment banking arm of NatWest, and stockbrokers UBS
Philips and Drew were tasked with finding buyers for the left over shares -
roughly 51% of the new issue worth around £472m.
They were only able to find buyers for roughly half of this and hid a
remaining 19% stake in Blue Arrow in subsidiary companies in order to allow the
takeover of Manpower and protect their reputations.
Spreading their stake throughout the subsidiaries meant the banks avoided
Section 209 of the Companies Act which requires all holdings over 5% to be
disclosed to the Stock Exchange.
The plan was to dribble the excess stock back on to the market over a period
of months and had it not been for the stock market crash of October 19, 1987,
the plan may have worked.
A man reads about the stock market fall in London in
1987
In hiding the stocks County had become hopelessly exposed and incurred huge
losses during the crash. County NatWest, which was left with a £157m stake in
Blue Arrow's shares, was to see £87m wiped off its holding.
Eleven executives in total from County and UBS Philips and Drew were arrested
and charged by the Serious Fraud Office for their part in the scandal. The 11
were whittled down to five, four of whom were convicted after a 13-month
trial.
Jonathan Cohen, David Reed, and Nicholas Wells, all senior executives of
County NatWest, were given 18-month suspended prison sentences after being
convicted of misleading financial markets.
A fourth, Martin Gibbs, a stockbroker and former director of UBS Phillips and
Drew, was given a 12-month suspended sentence for his part in the conspiracy.
All the convictions were overturned on appeal.
The Blue Arrow case was one of a group of corporate bank fraud cases that
were being heard at the time. Two years earlier the Guinness share trading fraud
trial saw four men jailed for trying to artificially raise the share price of
the brewing giant during the 1986 takeover of Distillers.
Former Guinness chief executive Ernest Saunders was
convicted in 1990 with three others in 1990 for his part in a conspiracy to
drive up the price of Guinness shares during the takeover of drinks giant
Distillers
Since then individuals such as Abbas Gokal - a shipping magnate sentenced to
14 years in prison in 1997 - have been given jail terms for their roles in bank
frauds but no wide scale bank frauds have resulted in bankers being jailed.
It is a situation Lord Phillips believes is "deeply damaging" the country:
"It's a scandal that not one director from the board of a mainstream bank has
gone to jail."
Other Serious Fraud Office directors may have taken a more "civil" approach
to prosecuting bank fraud, doling out fines rather than securing convictions,
but Mr Green maintains he is committed to using his position to pursue criminal
charges against "the very top most level, of really serious fraud, bribery and
corruption".
The Serious Fraud Office is currently investigating Barclays, Rolls-Royce and
the Libor rate fixing scandal - an example, says Mr Green, that it is not scared
to take on big City institutions.
"I've got well over 60 people working on [the Libor investigation] using
additional 'blockbuster funding' from the Treasury to help cover costs and we've
charged a number of people.
David Green says the court system has improved since
1992
"Are we willing to take tough cases on anymore? The answer is very much so,
yes," Mr Green says, adding: "We have 14 trials of 44 defendants awaiting
trial."
The ability of lay juries to understand serious fraud trials has been a
subject for debate since a 1986 report, by Lord Roskill, advocated abolishing
juries in complex fraud trials to make the process more "expeditious". Bu for the time being this view has fallen out of favour.........
"This idea that ordinary juries can't understand, is the first mistake that
all these clever people make. But actually the truth is [they] understand only
too well " says Mr Bosworth Davies.
"That's why juries are so good are dealing with dishonesty cases, because
they get it."
A view both Lord Phillips and Mr Green agree with.
"The facts might be quite complicated, that tends not to bother a jury
normally," says Mr Green.
"Very often these cases will come down to a very simple question - whether or
not certain conduct was dishonest, and you know what dishonesty is, and so do
I."
Institutional problems still remain though, according to some.
In March this year the SFO was blamed for the collapse of a bribery trial
against Victor Dahdaleh, businessman and Labour party donor, after the SFO's key
witness changed evidence and it was revealed that one of the SFO's lawyers had
delegated parts of its investigations to a US law firm.
While in 2012 investigations into the flamboyant property developing Tchenguiz brothers, who
are currently in the process of suing the SFO, were dropped after being labelled
"sheer incompetence" by a senior High Court judge.
"There is an utter failure of our prosecutorial authorities to implement the
laws that lie on the statute book," says Lord Phillips, a problem he attributes
to the SFO being "criminally understaffed".
"The SFO and HM Revenues and Customs are good people but can't get near the
big boys. It's David without his sling against Goliath." Pool of jurors
Mr Bosworth-Davies, who was previously head of enforcement at the Financial
Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association (FIMBRA) - now part
of the Financial Conduct Authority - believes there is a wider problem.
"It's all to do with class. The people who you're going up against are the
people from the upper socio economic echelon."
Invoking the spirit of Edwin Sutherland, the American sociologist that coined
the term "White Collar crime", he says: "Society has a difficulty in treating
these people as criminals and there is a consistent bias in applying criminal
justice under laws that apply to business and the professions."
Mr Green admits that all of the SFO's cases are high risk as "the other side
is always very well lawyered up and very well supplied".
He is, however, optimistic about the prospect of securing convictions,
pointing to improvements in the court system since the days of Blue Arrow.
Judges now take a more active role on the management of trials - and the pool
of potential jurors has been widened.
Despite the many difficulties posed by complex fraud cases, Mr Green argues
that changes in the legal process would at least "allow us to manage a trial of
the Blue Arrow scale these days".
The world needs a Plan B on climate
change because politicians are failing to reduce carbon emissions, according to
a UN report.
It warns governments if they overshoot their short-term carbon targets they
will have to cut CO2 even faster in the second half of the century to keep
climate change manageable.
If they fail again, they will have to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.
This could be achieved by burning wood and capturing the CO2 emissions.
The gas could then be stored in rocks underground.
But a leaked draft of the UN report also says that the technology for carbon
dioxide removal is untested at such a scale.
The authors warn that carbon removal systems may encounter resistance from
the public - and if the policy goes wrong, it could damage forests and
ecosystems..........
Government responses
Some comments on the draft text of the forthcoming UN report
Russia: "There are no CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal)
technologies by now. In the best case, they are pilot projects and small-scale
experiments. [The idea] looks unrealistic.
UK: "[The] technologies [are] not proven and may not be
available. There is a significant risk that the [summary document] misleads
policy-makers into thinking that mitigation action (cutting emissions) could be
delayed with little increased climate risk.
Germany: "Please indicate that CDR technologies are not
currently available and would be associated with high risks and adverse
side-effects."
..........The final draft report to the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) adopts a new tone of realism in the face of repeated
failures by governments to meet their rhetoric on climate change with action.
It warns that governments are set to crash through the global CO2 safety
threshold by 2030. Humans have tripled CO2 emissions since 1970, it says - and
emissions have been accelerating rather than slowing.
The experts advise governments that it will be cheaper overall to cut the
greenhouse gas before 2030 if they want to hold emissions at 430-480ppm CO2 - a
level that's calculated to bring a 66% chance of staying within a desired 2C
threshold of warming by the end of the century.
These are not recommendations - the IPCC isn't allowed to make them - but
they are an acknowledgement that many countries appear to lack the will or the
ability to cut emissions.
A Greenpeace spokesman said: "This new report captures the choices we face.
It's not too late; we can still avoid the worst impacts of global warming but
only if the clean energy technologies that can slash carbon pollution are given
the green light.
"The more we wait, the more it will cost. The sooner we act, the cheaper it
will be."
But Bob Ward, from the LSE's Grantham Institute, said it was crucial to reach
safe levels by 2100.
"We are in a much worse situation politically than we were seven years ago,"
he said.
"The current lack of action means that we may have to consider overshoot
scenarios, which would be better than abandoning our temperature target
threshold of 2 degrees. Some people think there's a degree of political
dishonesty in allowing governments to claim they will keep to their targets in
the short term."
The report says emissions are running at the high end of projections.
Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are likely to break the 450ppm threshold
by 2030. It adds that current pledges by governments made at climate summits in
Copenhagen and Cancun currently exceed this cautionary limit.
The share of clean energy sources needs to triple or even quadruple by 2050,
relative to 2010, the final draft explains. Delaying emissions reductions beyond
2030 will increase the challenge of bringing down CO2 to a safe level by the end
of the century.
The report will be discussed by government representatives and experts
through the week.
The small guys are taking the challenge to the big
banks
Big banks beware - innovative technology challengers are
coming to eat your lunch.That was the key message emerging last week from FinTech City London, a series of events
for financial services technology professionals organised by the CEO Agenda and
Icon Corporate Finance.
Fintech, as financial services technology is modishly called, is enabling
nimbler, hi-tech companies to re-engineer most financial activities, from
payments processing to personal loan applications, and cut out the
middleman.
It's what Clayton Christensen, professor of business administration at
Harvard Business School, calls "disruptive
innovation".
While the things we do with money - save, borrow, invest, spend - have not
changed much over the centuries, the way we interact with financial institutions
is "drastically changing", said Alex Scandurra, director of innovation strategy
and business development at Barclays. 'The micro
multinational'
And that's largely to do with mobile, open-source databases and cloud
computing. About three-quarters of the UK population owns a smartphone, and
there are more than five billion mobile phones globally.
Funding Circle provides a direct link between
investors and small firms
"As a result of the proliferation of technology, digital, and now mobile with
it, the barriers to entry have significantly decreased," said Mr Scandurra. "Now
we're seeing that teams of 10 to 15 people can actually take on the large
incumbents all around the world."
Whereas big financial institutions have to cater for a mass market and try to
please everybody, small fintech companies can focus on niche markets, globally
spread. They can form what futurist and writer Alvin Toffler called "the micro
multinational".
One such company is Funding Circle, the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending service
launched in 2010, which aims to provide businesses with access to loan funding
while providing investors with a decent return on their money. Its 65,000-plus
investors have lent over £208m to UK businesses so far.
In March 2013, the UK government began lending £20m to British businesses
through Funding Circle as part of its Business
Finance Partnership scheme.
Co-founder and chief executive Samir Desai said that while his company had
certainly benefited from the 2008-13 banking crisis and the consequent collapse
of trust in High Street banks, it is new open-source technologies and databases
that have enabled P2P lending companies to grow.
"Every loan that goes through Funding Circle is funded on average by 700
different people," he said "Those loans can then be bought and sold by other
investors through a secondary market. So we have as many mini-loans going
through our system as any bank, and thousands of secondary market transactions
going through each day.
"We couldn't have done that without these new open-source technologies."
New credit scoring system?
Open-source databases that anyone can access and adapt, such as Hadoop and
Cassandra, can process and structure vast amounts of data from a wide and
growing range of sources, including social media, helping P2P lenders and other
financial companies assess creditworthiness to much higher degrees of accuracy
than before.
Mobile payment companies like Square offer new
technology to merchants
"Banks haven't started to embrace these new types of technology," said Mr
Desai. "So we can lend to businesses they wouldn't even consider."
So now even your Twitter comments could affect whether or not you're granted
a loan, and companies like Facebook could end up displacing old-fashioned credit
reference agencies.
Giles Andrews, chief executive and co-founder of Zopa, a more established P2P
lender founded in 2005 that has lent more than £455m to individuals and sole
traders, agrees that customer data - its efficient collection and analysis - is
key to success these days.
"The business is not a bank and I'm not a banker," he added. "We're more of a
data company."
"Corporates and small businesses are going to be able to
pick and choose their niche service providers”
Alex McCrackenSilicon Valley Bank UK
This is why Zopa has just hired its first ever chief
data scientist, he said, who comes not from a bank, but from Amazon, the online
retailer.
Legacy issue
Newer fintech companies are not encumbered by old technology, the so-called
legacy systems that traditional banks struggle to integrate with newer software
and hardware.
The Lloyds Banking
Group IT glitch, which affected debit card and cash machine transactions at
the weekend, is the latest in a long line of big bank technology problems.
"It's an opportunity for the new challengers who don't have that legacy
issue," said Sue Langley, chief executive of UK Trade & Investment's
Financial Services Organisation, "because it's much easier with a blank sheet of
paper to.... come up with something new."
The Currency Cloud provides technology to
international payments companies
"The banks have an increasing need for technology," said Mark Boleat, chair
of the City of London's policy and resources committee. "Some of that comes from
their huge IT departments, but an awful lot of it is coming from new and
start-up businesses."
Alex McCracken, director of ventures groups at Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm,
believes we will see a polarisation in financial services, with global
all-you-can-eat banks serving multinationals at one end, and small,
technology-driven niche players serving local needs at the other.
"Corporates and small businesses are going to be able to pick and choose
their niche service providers," he said. The mouse
that roared
Mobile payment companies like Square, simpler direct debit providers like
GoCardless, and foreign currency specialists like The Currency Cloud, all are
offering financial services at lower cost and greater convenience through clever
use of the latest technologies.
That is the wrong approach, argues Barclays' Alex Scandurra. His bank is
collaborating more with tech entrepreneurs and start-ups, as well as offering
non-banking products such as Cloud It, an online data storage service.
He calls the approach "amplification through collaboration".
From the Tesco Clubcard to the Large Hadron Collider, from internet searches
to genetic science, from social networks to government services - these days
they all generate data, huge quantities of it.
The greatest intellectual challenge faced by many organisations today is how
not to be overwhelmed by data, and instead how to select and analyse the data
that matters.
Future intellectual history may well regard the period we're in now as the
'data decade'. Timandra Harkness explores the challenges and the opportunities
through talking to those in a variety of fields who are seeking to tackle them.
Shortly before his death, over fifty years ago, Clifford Hugh Douglas surveyed the landscape near Aberfeldy in Scotland, turned to a close colleague and said:
“You know, T.J., I think the time is approaching when we shall have to challenge this monstrous and fantastic overgrowth of industrial expansion – fundamentally. Really, you know, I personally can see nothing particularly sinful about a small dynamo; but this thing we’ve got is past a joke. If it isn’t a joke, it is Satanic.”
CONTENTS
1. Audio transcript of Douglas' philosophy on the causes of war. Click here.
2. 'The Douglas Manual' by Philip Mairet- an introduction to Douglas' new economic principles for the general reader. Click here.
6. Douglas' Evidence to the Canadian House of Commons Select Standing Committee on Banking and Commerce, 1923 Click here(Please note that owing to its size, the file may take a few minutes to download.)
THE CAUSES OF WAR:IS OUR FINANCIAL SYSTEM TO BLAME?C H DouglasText of a BBC broadcast delivered in November 1934,
published in The Listener5 December 1934
and reprinted in the 1937 edition of THE MONOPOLY OF CREDIT(originally published 1931)
AUDIO & TRANSCRIPTION
Listen to Douglas outlining his philosophy on war and its causes
Audio: C.H Douglas - "The Causes of War"
Part 1 of 2
Part 2 of 2
For a transcript of this audio, please click here.
Writing by C.H. Douglas
Douglas' Earliest Articles
The English Review, (December 1918) The Delusion of Super-ProductionC. H Douglas 'It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the insistence with which we are told that in order to pay for the war we must produce more manufactured goods than ever before...' Read more
The English Review, XXVIII (1919): 49-58 The Pyramid of PowerC. H. Douglas 'At various well-defined epochs in the history of civilisation there has occurred such a clash of apparently irreconcilable ideas as has at this time most definitely come upon us.....[there] is a clear indication that a general re-arrangement is imminent...' Read more
The English Review, XXIV (1919): 166-69 What is Capitalism?C.H. Douglas 'When two opposing forces of sufficient magnitude push transversely at either end of a plank--or problem--it revolves: there is Revolution...' Read more
The English Review, XXVIII (1919): 368-70 Exchange and ExportsC.H. Douglas 'In the welter of economic propoganda served up to us, like the powder in the jam, with our morning and evening prize-fight , murder and motor-bandit thrills, and labelled the news...a certain group of features recur and are inter-connected...'Read more
The New Age, No. 1373, XXIV, No. 9 (1919) A Mechanical View of EconomicsC. H. Douglas Read more
The New Age, (June 1920)4305 wordsThese Present DiscontentsC. H. Douglas Read more
The New Age, (22/29 January 1925)A + B and the Bankers C. H. Douglas "Whatever may be the case on other matters, compromise in arithmetic seems singularly out of place." Read more
The Fig Tree Vol 2 (1936):139-147Money: An Historical Survey "The Fig Tree" Vol 2 September 1936 pages 139-147 3425 words. (Notes for Major Douglas's speech on july 26 at the Social Credit study course for Consrvatives at the Bonar Law College, Ashridge)
C. H. Douglas Read more
Social Credit (1936) 4 pages Tyranny: Taxation SystemC H Douglas Read more
Major Douglas Analyzes 'Social Credit' in Alberta: What went wrong This document includes three articles: The Social CrediterAugust-Septmenber 1948 Social Credit in Alberta, C H Douglas The Social Crediter8 February 1947 An Act for the Better Management of Alberta, C H Douglas The Western Producer4 March 1948 'Rumblings in Alberta'
This report, submitted by Major Douglas to His Majesty's Premier and Legislative Council of Alberta in 1935, also includes the correspondance which followed the report, between Douglas and the Premier and also the Attorney General
The Tragedy of Human Effort, (Notes for the address Douglas delivered at the Central Hall, Liverpool, October 30th, 1936)
'The Birmingham Debate,' a major debate between Mr. R. G. Hawtrey and Major Douglas on Douglas' Social Credit versus orthodox economics, was published in its entirety in the April edition of "The New Age" of 1933.
