Wednesday, 5 August 2026

Should Andy Burnham allow more North Sea drilling?

One of the first significant choices facing Andy Burnham's government concerns the future of North Sea oil and gas. Initial reports suggested a broad change of direction, which now seems to have been softened to a promised “pragmatic” approach.

Decisions remain outstanding on particular developments and on the treatment of fields connected to existing infrastructure: approval for the nearly completed Jackdaw gas field, whose developer says it could begin producing this autumn, is a different decision from approval for the predominantly oil-producing Rosebank field; and both differ again from issuing licences for fresh exploration that may produce nothing for years.

In this blog I will leave employment, tax revenue, and the distribution of the gains to one side, and consider the case for and against drilling purely through the lens of climate. There are five climate and transition arguments worth taking seriously: one is plainly bad; two provide a genuine case for limited additional production; and two strengthen the case against it.


The stupid case: improving the carbon accounts

The bad argument begins with a correct observation. Producing and transporting a unit of gas from different sources creates different quantities of greenhouse gases. The North Sea Transition Authority estimates that, in 2024, producing and delivering UK gas emitted 28 kgCO₂e per barrel of oil equivalent. The corresponding figure was 85 kg for imported liquefied natural gas (LNG). Liquefaction, shipping and regasification are energy intensive, and methane can leak along the supply chain.

Therefore, using domestically produced gas is “cleaner” and will reduce emissions?

Domestic gas production relative to imports may reduce UK emissions, but the atmosphere is indifferent to the national column of a global emissions spreadsheet in which an emission appears. The relevant question is how a production decision changes total world emissions.

Additional UK supply lowers the market price of gas or oil. Consumers then use more, while some higher-cost production elsewhere is displaced. The split depends on demand and supply elasticities. And while it is perhaps too strong to claim that every additional North Sea barrel becomes an additional barrel of world consumption, it is equally wrong to assume that it displaces an imported barrel one for one. Unless producers elsewhere withdraw their output fully, world fossil-fuel consumption rises.

This is the central insight of the economics of supply-side climate policy. Harstad’s Buy Coal! showed why a climate coalition is likely to need to constrain fossil-fuel supply as well as demand. Fæhn and co-authors found, in a quantitative application to Norway, that supply-side restrictions could form most of a cost-effective unilateral climate policy. More recent empirical work reaches a similar qualitative conclusion while allowing for leakage. Prest and co-authors estimate that permanently curtailing an oil barrel reduces global lifecycle emissions by roughly 40–50% of that barrel’s gross emissions; other producers replace part of the lost supply, but far from all of it. Ahlvik’s estimates likewise show substantial leakage from an OECD-only oil-production tax, alongside a remaining reduction in global emissions.

These estimates dispose of the idea that supply is environmentally irrelevant because demand is fixed. From a climate-only perspective, this creates a strong presumption against expanding production.


The first serious case: the transition itself uses resources

Net zero is an enormous investment programme. It requires renewable generation, networks, storage, new industrial equipment, building renovation, heat pumps and changes to the transport fleet. Producing all that equipment requires labour, materials, capital and energy. During the build-out, resources devoted to investment are unavailable for current consumption.

This trade-off is familiar in growth economics, although it sometimes disappears from political accounts of the transition. In a recent macroeconomic model of net zero, Neil Mehrotra shows how the replacement of fossil capital with clean capital can reduce consumption along the transition path even where the eventual cost of clean energy is small. Premature retirement of usable fossil capital adds another temporary loss. The International Energy Agency’s net-zero scenarios similarly require a rapid increase in energy investment. Comerford and Spiganti show how a negative energy or economic shock can intensify this problem: consumption smoothing reduces aggregate investment and shifts the composition of the remaining investment towards shorter-duration, lower-upfront-cost fossil projects, delaying the clean-energy transition.

Energy itself can therefore be a binding transitional input. If Britain tries simultaneously to construct a new energy system and to contract its available dispatchable supply too quickly, the result may be lower consumption, higher prices or slower construction. Additional gas could ease that constraint and make a rapid transition more tolerable.

This is a genuine argument for production, although it is much narrower than a general case for reopening the North Sea. Three conditions must hold. The energy must arrive while the constraint is binding; it must improve the availability or resilience of energy used in Britain; and the clean investment programme must proceed faster as a result. A generic exploration licence satisfies none of these conditions automatically. The UK is a small participant in integrated European and world markets, so extra North Sea output will have little effect on the market price.

Jackdaw is the strongest possible example for this argument because the project is unusually advanced. Its developer says it could begin production on 1 October and supply around 6% of UK gas at peak. Those are company claims and the appropriate counterfactual still needs independent assessment. Even so, a field capable of producing within months deserves a different analysis from a new licence with a multi-year lead time. Rosebank, which is principally an oil project, cannot borrow an argument about a gas shortage this winter.

There is also an implementation problem. Unconditional additional supply may support extra ordinary consumption rather than construction of the clean system. A government relying on the transition-resource argument should be able to identify the bottleneck being relieved and the extra clean investment thereby enabled. Linking any temporary production rents to grids, storage, efficiency and renewable capacity would make the claim more credible.


The second serious case: net zero has a political constraint

Climate policy must survive elections, price shocks and cold winters. Its costs can be immediate and highly visible, while much of its benefit is global and arrives over decades. That asymmetry creates an obvious political vulnerability.

The evidence from carbon taxation is sobering. Douenne and Fabre find that, after the French Yellow Vests protests, voters greatly overestimated their losses from a carbon-tax-and-dividend proposal, perceived it as regressive and doubted its environmental effectiveness. Providing correct information improved support only partially. More broadly, the literature on climate-policy sequencing argues that early clean investment can lower later abatement costs and create constituencies with an economic interest in stronger policy.

Imagine, then, a serious gas shortage this winter after the government has rejected Jackdaw. Opponents of net zero would have an easy story: climate policy left Britain short of energy. The story might be economically false—the shortage could have arisen from international disruption, storage failure or weather—but political attribution rarely waits for a clean counterfactual.

The reverse mechanism is also possible: if Jackdaw is approved and a shortage occurs anyway, the limits of drilling become visible; continued exposure to gas could then be blamed, creating impetus for faster electrification, efficiency and renewable deployment. Europe’s response to the 2022 gas shock illustrates the possibility: governments secured emergency fossil supplies while also cutting gas demand and accelerating parts of the clean-energy programme.

Unfortunately, a crisis arrives without an agreed interpretation. The fossil-fuel industry can use the same shortage to demand another field after the first. Climate advocates can use it to demand release from gas dependence. Political outcomes depend on framing, and the economic interests that policy has already created. Approving drilling may insure the government against one line of attack, while strengthening a constituency that will resist the eventual phase-out.

The political-economy case is therefore real but indeterminate. It supports a transparent energy-security plan, explicit contingency analysis and protection for vulnerable households. It does not, by itself, select a drilling decision.


A weaker case against drilling: crowding out finance

Another concern is that money invested in North Sea projects becomes unavailable for the net-zero build-out. At the level of an individual project, this sounds unconvincing. The investors financing an offshore gas field are unlikely to be choosing between that field and a Scottish heat-pump programme. Britain is also open to international capital, so national saving is not a fixed pot that must be divided mechanically between brown and green investment.

The aggregate cost-of-capital version of the argument is possible, but it needs evidence. Renewable energy is capital intensive and unusually sensitive to financing costs. Work by Calcaterra and co-authors shows that high and unequal costs of capital can materially impede renewable deployment. Yet it does not follow that one additional UK fossil project appreciably raises the financing cost of clean projects. Indeed, Mehrotra’s transition model finds that expected lower consumption growth can lower the equilibrium real interest rate even as clean investment rises.

More specific bottlenecks offer a stronger version of the argument. Banks and developers can have limited risk-bearing capacity. Public guarantees, tax allowances and fiscal headroom are scarce. Offshore engineers, installation vessels, ports, planning expertise and management attention cannot move instantly between sectors. Fossil investment can bid up the price of these inputs and delay clean projects even if the global supply of financial capital is elastic.

So this argument should be quantified rather than asserted. For each proposed field, the government should ask which financing capacity, public support and specialist resources it will use, and what those resources would otherwise have done. Purely private finance with genuinely additional labour and equipment creates little direct crowding out. Subsidised finance or competition for an already constrained offshore supply chain creates much more.


The stronger case against drilling: capital creates its own future

Capital is durable, and investments are often complementary. A gas field raises the value of pipelines and processing hubs. Reliable gas supply raises the prospective value of gas-fired generation and other gas-using equipment. Once those assets exist, their owners have an incentive to resist policies that would strand them. Today’s investment therefore changes tomorrow’s technology, prices, and politics.

This is the economic core of carbon lock-in. Acemoglu and co-authors show how innovation can become path dependent: a larger market for dirty technologies attracts further research towards them, while clean innovation needs policy support to escape the inherited advantage. Rozenberg, Vogt-Schilb and Hallegatte show how irreversible investment in polluting capital creates stranded assets during a later transition and alters the costs and politics of climate instruments.

Harstad and Holtsmark’s new Journal of Political Economy paper, The Gas Trap, applies the point directly to natural gas. Extra gas can displace coal in the short run because existing renewable capacity cannot respond immediately. Once future gas supply is anticipated, however, investors build less renewable capacity. Over the longer run gas then displaces renewables, and emissions can rise. A policy that appears helpful in the immediate energy market changes the capital stock that will govern the next one.

For a single UK field, the effect on the European gas price may be small. The local infrastructure and political effects can still be important. Adura explicitly argues that Jackdaw would keep the Shearwater gas hub operating into the 2030s. That is an economic benefit to the project, and it is also the lock-in mechanism: extending the hub makes nearby tiebacks more valuable and gives workers, firms and asset owners a stake in further production.

Some complementarities could run in the other direction. Offshore skills, ports and pipelines may support wind, carbon storage or hydrogen. Existing infrastructure could be repurposed. These possibilities reduce lock-in only where conversion is technically realistic and backed by enforceable plans. The mere possibility of later repurposing cannot be counted as a delivered climate benefit.


So what should Burnham do?

The five arguments do not carry equal weight.

The higher imported emissions case fails by ignoring the effect of supply on the world market. The transitional-resource and political-economy cases are serious, particularly for gas that can arrive quickly during a genuine security constraint. Financial crowding out is plausible through specific bottlenecks, although the broad claim about a fixed pool of capital is weak. Path dependence is the strongest additional reason for caution because it affects future investment and future political choices.

The conclusion must be against a general return to North Sea exploration or an open-ended programme of new drilling. But the possible case for Jackdaw is much closer and should be judged separately: its near-completion gives it a credible short-run security value that Rosebank and new exploration do not share. Approval would nevertheless carry a global emissions cost and extend the life of gas infrastructure.

If Burnham approves a narrowly transitional gas project, the word “transitional” needs policy follow-through: a binding production horizon or cumulative cap; no expectation of repeated follow-on approvals; a climate royalty reflecting the carbon released when the gas is eventually burned; no public subsidy; and a specified clean-investment programme large enough to relax the constraint used to justify the gas. Prest and Stock show how such a royalty can incorporate downstream climate damages into a supply-side fiscal instrument. Without those commitments, the bridge has no defined destination and every temporary exception becomes the argument for the next one.


References and further reading

Data and context: BBC reporting on Burnham’s proposed North Sea plans; Office for National Statistics guide to UK emissions measures; North Sea Transition Authority gas-emissions factsheet; Carbon Brief’s lifecycle comparison of North Sea gas and LNG; the International Energy Agency’s net-zero pathway; and Adura’s description of the Jackdaw project.

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Monday, 9 March 2026

Glasgow Transport Emergency

As oil prices rise to more than $100/barrel, with consequences for the cost of moving around by car, Glasgow's lack of resilience in its public transport system is laid bare by the devastating fire at Glasgow Central Station. Since everything to the south of the Clyde comes in to Glasgow Central, the whole network is essentially shut down by the loss of this single node.


This wake up call should lead to change. Even the short term response here can be positive. Glasgow has a rail network, not simply a single station, it's time to use it. Temporary platforms and stations have to be built on this network, with trains continuing in to Glasgow Central without passengers in order to turn etc so that logistics can be managed. Further, rail tickets need to be made valid on the Subway - integrated ticketing now!


Inverclyde & Ayr via Paisley

Currently trains from the south west coming in through Paisley have a final stop prior to Glasgow Central at Cardonald. This needs to go further so that trains can still usefully come in from the south west. Temporary platforms need to be built either at Shields Road or at West Street so that the south side of the city centre can still be accessed, with passengers easily changing on to the Subway. It may be that despite the apparent convenience of access to the Subway from West Street, Shields Road is a better bet with space provided at the Shields Depot - this may be a necessary terminus for trains coming from the east from Newton and Motherwell via Rutherglen.


Southside

The Carthcart Circle trains (and trains joining it from Kings Park and Muirend) currently don't stop north of Pollokshields (East or West) until they get to Glasgow Central. Ideally there should be 3 temporary stops built for this line: Eglington Toll for an interchange with trains running east-west between Cardonald and Rutherglen (and beyond to Newton and Motherwell); Lauriston for an interchange with trains coming south over the Clyde via the Union Bridge from Bellgrove (and heading west either to Paisley Canal or Paisley Gilmore Street); and Bridge Street for access to the city centre and to the Subway.


Kilmarnock & East Kilbride

Trains come in from Kilmarnock and East Kilbride via Pollokshaws West and Crossmyloof. Perhaps a temporary Platform can be built for this line at Pollokshields East to allow for changes on to the other Southside lines, but otherwise these trains should continue to Dalmarnock and on to Glasgow Central low level.


ClydeMetro

These temporary stations and interchanges should be aimed to be made permanent under the ClydeMetro project, which should prioritise the resilience characteristics of a city-wide network, rather than a system of spokes which all lead in to one or two vulnerable nodes (despite the demands that people will likely make for a direct link to either Glasgow Central or Queen Street). The major development beyond making these temporary stations permanent, should be a new city centre station at Glasgow Cross, providing an interchange with the line running through Glasgow Central low level, and providing city centre access to the line running south over the Union Bridge (since otherwise this line would only be accessible from Bellgrove).


London

Trains to England are the big intercity loss with Glasgow Central, and there are two ways to deal with this:

1) Use Motherwell as the main station for journeys to England, with frequent local services from Motherwell to Glasgow: south of the river via Newton and Rutherglen, to the temporary terminus at Shields Depot; and north of the river via Coatbridge Central, Gartcosh, Robroyston, and Queen Street.
2) Run direct trains south from Glasgow Queen St, either via the line through Coatbridge Central and Motherwell (not necessarily stopping at Motherwell), or via Edinburgh.


In any case, there are options: Glasgow has a network, it's time to use it!

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Sunday, 8 June 2025

The New Right’s Climate Scepticism Lacks a Coherent Ideology

According to David McWilliams, "The Right Wing vs Net Zero is a big big political debtate ... gaining more currency in more countries [including] the US, UK, Spain, everywhere. Basically [the claim is that] Net-Zero is a 'woke target' that has been created to cripple the working man through high energy prices."


Prominent New Right movements – from MAGA supporters in the US to Europe’s Reform UK, France’s National Rally and Germany’s AfD – often portray climate change policy as a plot by shadowy “elites” to foist hardships on ordinary people. Nigel Farage, for example, has dismissed anthropogenic climate change as a “scam”, even while admitting he hasn’t “got a clue” about the science. Reform UK’s manifesto baldly claims “Net zero…can’t [stop climate change]. Climate change has happened for millions of years… We are better to adapt to warming, rather than pretend we can stop it.” Such rhetoric frames decarbonisation as a technocratic folly at best, or a deliberate elite conspiracy at worst – an expensive crusade that punishes working folk for negligible benefit. This conspiratorial bent echoes across the New Right. In the US, some Republican figures increasingly echo theories that global warming is a “hoax” by world leaders to control and impoverish populations. Prof Robert Lawrence claims that climate policies are an ideal target for populists because they “rely on expert knowledge, entail globalist thinking” and offer “ample fodder for conspiracy theories” given their preventive (and thus less visible) benefits. 


To be sure, there are real distributional issues in climate policy. Poorly designed green taxes or regulations can hit lower-income and rural communities hard. France’s gilets jaunes protests in 2018 – “explosive anger at fuel prices and inequality… fired up by a carbon tax on petrol” after other tax cuts for the wealthy – vividly demonstrated how not to implement climate policy. Across Europe, observers note a “21st-century alliance” of right-wing populists with groups like disgruntled farmers against environmental measures (from fertiliser rules to emissions targets). This has fuelled backlashes to policies perceived as ignoring the little guy. Such grievances cannot be dismissed outright: climate action does bring social costs that must be shared fairly. However, abandoning climate action altogether is not justifiable. The evidence of climate risk is robust, and the long-term costs of inaction dwarf the upfront costs of mitigation. Nicholas Stern responded to the recent interventional by Tony Blair, warning that delaying cuts to carbon emissions will only exacerbate “climate change impacts that are already hurting households and businesses across the world… Delay is dangerous”. Indeed, the science is unequivocal that only reaching net zero greenhouse emissions will halt further warming – and the public, by and large, does not “want climate extremes of flooding, wildfires and crop failures” to worsen. In Britain, for example, about 61% of people support the net-zero-by-2050 goal (including a majority of 2019 Conservative voters), whereas barely a quarter oppose it. These realities undercut the New Right’s narrative that “ordinary people” reject climate action en masse. Yes, climate policy can impose near-term costs, but the answer is to design just transitions – not to indulge conspiracy theories or ignore a mounting crisis for the sake of short-term populism.



Anti-intellectualism and “Common Sense” Climate Denial


The New Right’s hostility to climate policy hinges on a broader anti-intellectual streak and deep suspicion of experts. Climate change mitigation, by its nature, involves scientific data, complex modelling and global coordination – everything populists love to sneer at. Populist leaders often dismiss scientific consensus as alarmism or even fabrication (despite the data and modelling being freely accessible to anyone with the time, inclination, and nous to look at it). They recast their anti-science stance as “common sense”. For instance, Germany’s AfD derides EU climate plans as “eco-socialist redistribution” and extols fossil fuels as the “basis of our prosperity”. In the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom rails against “hysterical reduction of CO2” and “wasting billions on pointless climate hobbies”. The clear message is that “real people” need not trust elite scientists or international agreements; instead, they should trust gut instinct that the climate fuss is overblown. This anti-intellectual posture also means evidence and expert warnings are easily waved away as part of the supposed conspiracy. Every heatwave, flood or wildfire can be rhetorically hand-waved – either denied outright, or attributed to sinister forces (as seen in wild online theories blaming deliberate weather manipulation by global elites). By nurturing a narrative that climate science is just another elitist orthodoxy – like “woke” culture or other bugbears – the New Right enables its followers to ignore inconvenient facts. The movement’s distrust of “experts” and multilateral institutions (e.g. the UN climate panel, or the Paris Agreement) provides a ready-made filter to interpret climate action as something nefarious or foolish. In short, climate change gets folded into the populist culture war, where loyalty to the cause often means proudly dismissing expert opinion as propaganda.



A Slogan in Search of an Ideology


Notably, this anti-climate stance often seems less a coherent ideology than a politically expedient slogan. It is a rallying cry that taps into anger about energy prices, taxes or remote bureaucrats, rather than a well-argued alternative philosophy on environmental stewardship. Unlike traditional political ideologies that offer systematic principles, the New Right’s climate scepticism is riddled with contradictions. It champions fossil fuels under the banner of nationalism and prosperity, yet ignoring that continued reliance on oil and gas can leave nations vulnerable (as Europe’s gas crisis showed) and dependent on volatile global markets. It claims to stand for the “little guy” while downplaying or denying climate threats that, in reality, hit the vulnerable hardest (through extreme weather, crop failures, etc.). And as a policy agenda, “scrapping net zero” or slashing green regulations amounts to a negation, not a vision.


Could one argue that an ideology underpins this stance? Perhaps. My preferred theory is that there is simply electoral advantage in promising low information and low education voters reduced short term costs, knowing full well that the long term costs that will hit them further down the line will be someone else's political problem. But perhaps I'm being uncharitable? One coherent political philosophy that could fit the New Right's positioning here is related to their stance on global economic integration: they're agin it. Perhaps this principle overrides all, even the cost benefit analysis that shows climate action to be a no brainer? They prioritise national sovereignty, and define possible climate action purely in national terms (and as a global externality, the cost benefit analysis does indeed change if you think only of the economic benefits to you, and the climate harms to you, of your own carbon emissions, ignoring reciprocal actions across the world). This would lead to a preference for adaptation measures over mitigation, and would allow climate mitigation to be framed as an extension of unpopular "globalism". 


However, whether this amounts to a coherent ideology is questionable. It often looks more like a reactive collage of talking points – anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-expert – rather than a principled worldview. And in practice, simply ignoring climate change is not a tenable governing strategy – as droughts, floods or energy disruptions mount, any government is forced to respond. So the New Right’s climate posture looks like more performative populism than a serious long-term program. It is a stance that rallies opposition but offers no realistic alternative.


Ironically, threads of traditional right-wing ideology could support robust climate action if reinterpreted. Conservatives typically prize Order, stability and security – all of which are threatened by unchecked climate change. Military and security experts (many with conservative credentials) have long warned that global warming poses “a significant risk to…national security”, acting as a “threat multiplier” by stoking conflicts, mass migration and disasters. A true law-and-order mindset might view rising seas or megadroughts as akin to invasions or crime waves: existential threats to the nation’s welfare requiring a strong response. Likewise, the right’s patriotic duty to safeguard the homeland could encompass protecting communities from climate havoc and investing in resilience. Even the ideal of preserving social order for future generations aligns with curbing runaway climate disruption. In this sense, one could imagine a right-wing environmentalism that treats climate stability as a conservative cause – conserving the nation’s landscapes, livelihoods and continuity against a destructive force.


On the other hand, the libertarian strain of right-wing thought – emphasising individual freedom and market solutions – can clash with prescriptive government climate interventions. Populists often invoke personal liberty to oppose measures like bans on petrol and diesel cars, painting them as green authoritarianism. Yet even here, there is room for synergy. Free-market libertarians do typically value the ability to protect private property. All carbon pricing does is charge the external damage (that is, to others' private property) as an additional cost for fossil fuels. In fact, proposals to price or tax carbon have deep conservative roots: free-market icons from William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman championed pollution taxes as the economically efficient way to address externalities. Harnessing market forces to reduce emissions – via carbon tax-and-dividend system – arguably fits squarely within a right-wing preference for minimal government micromanagement, using incentives rather than mandates. Moreover, innovation-led approaches (promoting nuclear energy, carbon capture, etc.) can appeal to pro-business, tech-positive conservatives. Thus, while the anti-collectivism of some traditional right-wing values may conflict with specific climate policies, they do not inherently reject all climate action. The divide is more about means than ends: whether to allow government intervention versus trusting the market and individuals. It is noteworthy that several centre-right governments and leaders (such as Thatcher and Merkel) have acknowledged climate change and pursued solutions in line with their ideological bent. This underscores that rejecting climate science is not a prerequisite of conservative ideology, but rather a feature of this current populist moment.



Populist Climate Rhetoric vs. Reality


In the end, the New Right’s fiery rhetoric on climate change represents a stark departure from both the prudential “order-keeping” and the pro-market strands of conservative tradition. The populist framing – climate policy as elitist overreach – might resonate in the short term, especially during cost-of-living crises, but its sustainability is very much in doubt. It relies on the simultaneous discontent and lack of engagement of low information and low education voters. As evidence of climate disruption mounts year by year (with record heat, fires and floods becoming hard to ignore), outright denialism and obstruction may steadily lose public patience. Already, large majorities across many countries accept the reality of climate change and want action. While populist leaders can rally support by tapping into grievances, they have not demonstrated a credible path forward on climate itself – a fact that may become apparent to voters when impacts hit home. If and when the New Right’s champions find themselves in positions of power, they may be forced into an awkward reckoning with physics and economics. Climate change will not conform to political messaging. As one climate commentator put it, “Net zero…[means] stopping temperatures spiralling out of control…bringing drastically increased risk of…civilisation-level disaster. There is no happy medium… There is only action that is fast enough or not, and political decisions that distribute the cost fairly or not.” In other words, railing against “green elites” will not stop the floods or wildfires.

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The rise of Reform

This feels like an almost revolutionary moment. With MAGA in power, and with Reform, AfD, Rassemblement National, etc on the rise across the "western" world, something is clearly happening.


What is the common ideology? What is this in response to? Does it make any sense and how can we understand it all? The next several blogs are my attempts to answer these questions. But to introduce them, I'll say that I think there are four policy pillars of this "movement". These are:

1) Anti NetZero

2) Anti DEI

3) Low tax

4) Nationalism


I think the first is easiest to think about and dismiss: it makes no sense! There is no ideology here, just wilful stupidity. I'll have a look at this in more detail in the next blog, and follow up blogs will cover each of these four items, followed by another looking at why this feels like an almost revolutionary moment. First of all though, it's helpful to define what I mean by ideology here. It's nothing to do with agreed upon facts! Rather ideology is about values: equity vs opportunity; importance of tradition vs openness to change; communitarianism vs individualism; valorising the perspective of workers/producers, or consumers/service users; etc. We can agree on facts but propose different policy based on ideological differences. And none of these ideological differences play a role in this Anti NetZero position.


The revolutions of the 17th, 18th, & 19th centuries were against the absolutism of the divine right of kings, and for rights of the individual, equality before the law, and protections from the predations of the state. The further revolutions of 19th & 20th centuries were against the unequal distribution of wealth and power, and for a communal system of economics and governance. This coming revolution is against something (it is absolutely the case that society is not working well, and we still have those unequal distributions of wealth and power) but it doesn't seem to be for anything other than "common sense", which as I'll show over the next few blogs, seems to almost equate to wilful stupidity. 


Previous revolutions started from high principle, had some success, and then failed when they got stupid. For example, the great liberal French Revolution went off the rails when it started to give in to the demands of the Sans Culotte for price controls on essentials that meant the producers and distributors of these essentials had no incentive to produce or distribute - all the Revolution could do instead of successfully satisfying these demands, was execute anyone who raised their head against them in the Terror. And the great social Russian Revolution took a dark turn when any disagreement with Lenin, in particular that of the SRs, was deemed to be a factional split from the leadership that was to be purged. This current "revolution" however has little principle, and starts from stupid... 


One optimistic point about this though is that this stupidity becomes obvious quickly. So Trump's popularity is fast declining as he oscillates his tariff madness. Perhaps the best thing ever to happen to Reform is to get elected to local government in various parts of England in May 25, maybe they will quickly become hated when it becomes obvious they have no idea how to help people justifiably scunnered with the status quo?

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Location: Scotland, UK

Tuesday, 6 May 2025

I hate lawyers

Of course, that's not true, but there is a legal style of thought - often framing policy issues requiring the use of scarce resources (and hence unavoidable trade-offs in terms of the uses of those resources) as “rights” that trump any consideration of trade-offs - that I really object to. This objection has been highlighted recently in the area of climate policy. Climate change is, I believe, the number one policy issue facing human society over the next 50 years, so you might have thought that I would welcome any means by which to get action on this issue...

Legal action against fossil fuel companies, such as the RWE case in Germany, represent a shift toward courts becoming arbiters of climate policy. On the surface, the case for litigation against carbon majors, as clearly articulated in recent research by Callahan and Mankin, seems compelling. They argue that companies like Chevron have caused trillions in economic losses due to their emissions, and that attribution science can directly link specific emitters to particular damages.

And the science is fine - we can (in a probabilistic sense anyway) attribute damages to a given quantity of emissions. However, I would argue that fining specific companies for their share of given damages that can be attributed to climate change is highly problematic.

Let’s entirely accept the premise that fossil fuels caused damages with accurately calculated valuations. Should a given fossil fuel supplier be charged this amount, years after the fuels they supplied were burnt? These damages were the product of commercial activities, involving both suppliers and consumers, that were perfectly legal at the time. Why, then, are only the suppliers being held accountable? Should consumers bear responsibility too? And even if we decide to target only suppliers for liability, most profits made from fossil fuel sales have already been distributed to shareholders, possibly decades ago. The current shareholders, some of whom might be activist shareholders using their positions to advocate for more responsible climate policies, are hardly the responsible parties.

Some argue that these companies bear responsibility because they knowingly concealed information about the damages of climate change. But a company itself cannot "hide" information: individual people within that company did. If those actions were illegal, the responsible individuals should face prosecution. If they weren’t illegal at the time, perhaps laws should be revised rather than retrospectively holding entire corporations responsible for actions driven by a few individuals.

Furthermore, the use of courts to essentially dictate climate policy raises crucial issues of democratic legitimacy. Climate change, with its far-reaching impacts and trade-offs, demands collective societal decisions. These decisions should ideally come through our political processes, where priorities like poverty alleviation, healthcare, education, and, climate action, can be openly debated and democratically weighed.

Legal shortcuts risk circumventing these necessary debates. Courts operate within a framework defined by legal precedent and statutory interpretation, not democratic consensus. When a judge determines that "the law" mandates a society's resources be committed to climate mitigation or compensation, it bypasses a vital step: collective agreement and prioritisation.

Take poverty alleviation as a competing priority. Arguably, the resources needed to tackle climate change might be seen as more urgently required elsewhere, at least temporarily. Advocates for judicial intervention tend to gloss over these difficult trade-offs, saying that those damaged by climate change have a right to these resources such that potential trade-offs do not need to be considered. However, rights are easily created, and without considering the overall budget constraint at the aggregate level, we can easily legally engineer a situation in which each of 11 people are all entitled to 10% of society’s resources. But just because we can legally do it, doesn’t mean we can mathematically do it.

The imperatives of “rights” is a kind of moral absolutism, and this rarely persuades. Instead, it risks fuelling backlash among those who feel their voices aren't heard, potentially undermining broad societal support necessary for sustained climate action. Courts typically aren't accountable to the public in the same way elected representatives are. Judges don't stand for re-election on the strength of their climate policies; they aren’t directly answerable to voters angry about rising taxes or restricted services due to diverted resources. Entrusting climate decisions to the judiciary thus places them beyond the reach of democratic debate and correction.

Burdening systems with statutory responsibilities i.e. giving the service users of a system legal rights, is fine in the context of an ever-growing resources environment. But in the context of limited resources, and even declining resource availability, rights and responsibilities can engender system fragility and collapse. In the context of climate change, when we will see real resource constraints, we need robust and capable systems of government and decision making, with high levels of state capacity. Loading legal rights and statutory responsibilities onto such systems is entirely the wrong course of action.

So, while Callahan and Mankin make an airtight scientific case for attributing specific climate harms to specific quantities of emissions that can be mapped to the Scope 3 emissions of specific corporate entities, the leap from science to policy via litigation and rights-based frameworks is troubling. It represents a shortcut that seems attractive precisely because of political gridlock and inertia. Yet shortcuts in politics often lead to dead ends.

Climate policy achieved via courtroom victories rather than through collective societal consensus-building might gain short-term wins but could lose long-term legitimacy and support. And with the election of Paris Accord exiting Trump in the US, the rise of the Net Zero denying Reform in the UK, and its equivalents in France, Germany etc, the loss of democratic legitimacy for climate action seems frighteningly close at this juncture.
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Sunday, 13 April 2025

That tariff formula

I really want to get back to blogging. And what a time to do so, as the world collapses around us! So I'll start with a take on the (now partially suspended) Trump tariffs and in particular, that formula...


The formula through which Trump set his "reciprocal" tariffs has been roundly ridiculed, and as a determination for a tariff rate that other countries are charging the USA, it rightly deserves to be. But the administration's technical justification does not claim that it is the tariff that other countries are charging the US. Rather, it mislabels "reciprocal tariffs" as the tariff required to be levied by the USA on its trading partners in order to achieve bilateral trade balance. Does it make sense on this basis?

Kind of... They claim the trade elasticity $\epsilon=-4$ [reasonable], and the pass-through rate $\phi=0.25$ [seems very low to me] (conveniently cancelling each other out, but let's take them at their word). So let's consider the case where $x_i=75$ and $m_i=100$ so that $\Delta \tau_i=25\%$ and consider what this formula would predict happens:

Firstly, the formula assumes that there is no exchange rate adjustment, which is a fairly heroic assumption. And the formula also assumes no impact on exports, which is again questionable (though perhaps follows from no exchange rate adjustment in the absence of retaliation).

Secondly, the low pass-through rate implies that prices rise by 6.25% (25% tariff times 0.25 pass-through), meaning foreign producers accept a price cut of 18.75% (since the consumer price has to cover payment to the foreign producers and the tariff payment).

And thirdly, the 6.25% price rise combined with the trade elasticity of -4 means that imports fall by 25.

So what is the outcome of this? Well there is bilateral trade balance with exports and imports now both 75. But in income flow terms between the countries this is an overreaction, as the foreign producers are only paid 56.25 of this with the 25% tariff raising 18.75 for the US government. And US consumers won't be too happy: a 6.25% price increase, combined with a 25% drop in the nominal value, means they are enjoying 29.4% fewer imported goods.

Overall then, this formula may be an answer to the question: "what tariff should we charge to eliminate the trade deficit?"; but it relies on some heroic assumptions, and even taking it at face value its imposition implies some unpleasant outcomes.

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Tuesday, 20 August 2024

ClydeMetro (part 3)

In this last blog post in the series, I propose expanding Glasgow’s rail network by adding new lines. The opportunities for expansion are numerous, but here I’ll focus on a couple of specific proposals in areas I know well. Other expansion possibilities exist, see for example the fantastic map by Angus Doyle.

My expansion suggestions involve the reinstatement of old track and the use of city roads that are currently dual carriageway, as opportunities to convert to single carriageway for cars plus tram tracks for the metro. You can see my expanded network vision in the following map:


Here are the line expansions (dotted lines on the map) I propose:

  • Connecting the Allander Line with a new loop of rail track from High Street round to Glasgow Cross, joining up the two parts of the Allander Line. This area is currently vacant, mostly used as a car park, making it a feasible location for new rail infrastructure:

  • Then we want to extend the Allander Line further on in its route: using the (currently unused) branch from Cardonald to Braehead, and then extending on new track to Renfrew (one of the biggest towns with no rail connection), Erskine, and Glasgow Airport, rejoining the existing track at Paisley St James.
  • This would make the Allander Line: Light Green: Allander Line - Milngavie to Cardonald (for 2nd time) via Queen St Low Level, Glasgow Cross, Paisley Gilmore St, Glasgow Airport, & Braehead; and vice versa
  • Reinstating the Track from Govan to Bellahouston so that the Southside Line links to the Subway Line - again this track bed can be easily seen in current photos and its reinstatement should not be difficult:


  • This would make the Southside Line into a route from Govan to Uddingston via Mount Florida, Newton, Hamilton Central, and Motherwell.
  • Reinstate the Kelvin Line from Lambhill on the Northern Circle Line, through the old Maryhill station, across the Kelvin, and through the Botanic Gardens, connecting with the Subway at Kelvinbridge and continuing through Kelvingrove Park to join the existing track at Exhibition Centre. The line would also extend from Bridgeton to Celtic Park and through Tollcross along tram tacks on the A74, rejoining existing track at Carmyle.
  • This would make the Kelvin Line into a route from Lambhill to Whifflet, via Glasgow Central Low Level, and vice versa
  • The WestEnd Line would use the reinstated tracks from Lambhill through Maryhill, but then extend westwards, taking the old branch west under Cleveden to the old station near Gartnavel at Great Western Rd (currently the 1051 GWR restaurant) to intersect existing track at Hyndland. The line would then continue to head west (probably need to compulsory purchase and bulldoze the houses in Clarence Gardens - but this is one of the few such land use changes in this proposal) through the (currently infilled) tunnel under Thornwood. The line then turns west along one of the carriageways of the Clydeside Expressway between Thornwood Roundabout, and Scotstoun, turning north along reinstated track (currently Victoria Park's Nature Walk) and joining existing track along the north side of Scotstoun Stadium. It should then leave the existing track at Scotstounhill and provide rail access to the current public transport desert of Knightswood, intersecting existing lines at GWR Retail Park, before continuing westwards to the towns of Hardgate and Duntocher.
  • This makes the (Sky Blue on the map) WestEnd Line: Duntocher to Lambhill, via Scotstoun & Hyndland, and vice versa.
  • The Clyde Tunnel Line would run from Canniesburn using a carriageway of Switchback Rd (serving the West of Scotland Science Park) before joining existing track at Temple (perhaps using a wee bit of Dawsholm Park to make this link). Then it leaves the existing track again at Jordanhill (perhaps making use of the land currently occupied by the BP garage and the Three Craws pub) running on tram tracks down one carriageway of the approach to the Clyde Tunnel (linking with the WestEnd Line at Whiteinch as it does so). Once south of the river, this line serves the QEUH hospital, links to many lines at Cardonald, links to the Canal Line at Corkerhill, serves the Silverburn shopping centre, before skirting the southern side of Pollok Park as it continues to meet the Argyll Line at Kennishead and the South Lanarkshire Line at Pollokshaws West.
  • This makes the (Pinky on the map) Clyde Tunnel Line: Canniesburn to Pollokshaws West, via Whiteinch, QEUH, Cardonald, & Silverburn, and vice versa

While these proposals represent a significant expansion of Glasgow’s rail network, there are other potential projects, not shown on my map, that could be considered, especially to better serve peripheral towns:

  • Completing the outer circle line anticlockwise from Greenock Esplanade through Port Glasgow High, Kilmacolm, Bridge of Weir, Kilbarchan, Barrhead, Newton Mearns, Eaglesham, Strathaven, and Lanark; and then rerouting anticlockwise from Coatbridge through Moodiesburn, Kirkintilloch, Milton of Campsie, Lennoxtown, and Strathblane
  • Extending the Kelvin Line northwards from Lambhill through Summerston North, Bardowie, Balmore, Torrance, Milton of Campsie, & Kilsyth
  • Extending the Canal Line westwards from Paisley Canal to Linwood and Houston.


Possibilities!


The above map can be viewed and edited at https://metromapmaker.com/map/edz5YKo1

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