Tag: Treasury

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Australia

June 8, 1973 – Australian Treasury forced to acknowledge carbon dioxide…

Fifty years ago, on this day, June 8, 1973, the Australian Treasury, in a paper about the environment, even mentioned climate change.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 332ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was this – Australia and the climate issue – it goes back to 1969, MacFarlane Burnett, Nugget Coombs and so forth. By 1970 the issue was popping up in newspapers and in books. Coombs was looking at Steady state economy.

What I think we can learn from this. 

The. Problem. Is. Not. Information. The. Problem. Is. Power.

What happened next

Treasury kept pretty schtum, as best I can tell. By the late 1980s they were muttering about potential carbon pricing. This morphed into emissions trading in the mid-late 1990s. And we all know how THAT ended…

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Economics of mitigation United Kingdom

October 30, 2006 – Stern Review publshed.

On this day, October 30 in 2006 the Stern Review was published. This had been commissioned by Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom “Chancellor of the Exchequer” (Treasurer) a year previously (see this blog post).

Nick Stern, a World Bank economist who could hardly be accused of being a swivel-eyed Luddite, argued that 

“This Review has assessed a wide range of evidence on the impacts of climate change and on the economic costs, and has used a number of different techniques to assess costs and risks. From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by the Review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.”

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 379.33ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Why this matters. 

We knew. And we knew there was a “business case” for saving life on earth (the very words are bizarre, aren’t they?)

What happened next?

Oh, arguments about the “discount rate” (i.e. Stern was too optimistic)

A variety of “mini-Stern” reports, and for a while everyone using the language. Then nothing.

Fun fact – when Stern visited Australia, Prime Minister John Howard basically dismissed him as “English.”