MPs have stepped up the pressure on government Ministers to take responsibility for the UK’s outsourced carbon emissions, in a series of developments today.

This morning, the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) published its report on carbon budgets, calling on government to review its current method of reporting emissions, and instead report on the total emissions resulting from our consumption. The EAC state:

“We do not share the Secretary of State’s reluctance for monitoring consumption emissions. Monitoring UK emissions on a consumption basis would facilitate a more rigorous approach to controlling our contribution to climate change. The Government should request the Committee on Climate Change to review the scope for measuring emissions on such a basis and how that might be worked into the carbon budgets regime, if necessary to complement the continuing production-based reporting needed internationally.”

The EAC’s demands follow a long period of stonewalling by the Government, who have refused to date to request the Committee on Climate Change conduct a formal investigation into outsourced emissions.

Their recommendations raise the pressure on the Government to act, and coincide with a separate enquiry by their sister committee, the Energy and Climate Change Committee (ECC) – chaired by Conservative MP Tim Yeo – which is looking specifically at outsourced emissions and consumption-based emissions accounting. The ECC enquiry’s call for evidence closes on the 25th October.

DECC Minister Greg Barker also appeared to shift ground slightly in an answer he gave yesterday to a Parliamentary Question tabled by Conservative MP Peter Aldous, in which he stated:

“We recognise the importance of tackling outsourced emissions if we are successfully to deliver our climate change objectives…”

But he remained resolutely committed to his stock solution – rely on an international climate agreement to emerge that will tackle emissions wherever they are produced – despite the strong likelihood that the Kyoto Protocol will expire in 2012 with no immediate successor. This in itself necessitates the Government to seriously consider alternative measures in the meantime to reduce the UK’s growing contribution to global emissions.

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Just before Christmas, buried amidst the snow and news about Wikileaks, the Environmental Audit Committee released a report into the future of sustainable development across government, now that the SDC has been scheduled for the chop. Its key recommendation – which could turn the demise of the SDC into a triumph for good governance – is for responsibility for sustainable development to be handed over to the Cabinet Office.

Could the Cabinet Office help green Whitehall?

There is a delicious irony to the idea that the department that ultimately sanctioned the SDC’s abolition, under Francis Maude’s much-criticised ‘bonfire of the quangos‘, should be compelled to take over its duties. But it also makes perfect political sense. The SDC, as the committee’s report notes, has always been out on a limb, whilst its sponsoring department, Defra, “is not in a position to be able to make departments act more sustainably”. (It is even less so now, with its budget cut by 29%.) Defra Minister Caroline Spelman has declared, rather regally, that she will “take a personal lead” in subsuming the SDC’s role, “with an enhanced departmental capability and presence”. But her proposal is both implausible and unworkable. Sustainable development is something that needs to be integrated right the way across government; thus, it makes sense for that task to pass to a department with an overarching mandate, rather than a ‘single-issue’ ministry. The Treasury, perhaps? The EAC consider this option, noting (with some relish at the possibilities) that HMT has the power to

… ensure compliance simply by subtracting the required negotiated savings from department’s budgets at the outset. Defra officials told us that they  have not considered the possibility of applying sanctions on departments for poor performance on sustainable development. The Treasury, however, unlike Defra, is in a position  to apply real sanctions, if it so chose, including financial sanctions.

But a green Treasury? Really? Surely not, given its age-old opposition to ringfencing green taxes, reluctance to hand out much cash to the environment departments, and recent stonewalling of a Green Investment Bank. No, the EAC are right to pass over this option (voicing concern along the way that they wish “to make sure that the whole process isn’t captured by the existing Treasury view [...] of the world”) and instead alight upon the Cabinet Office as the best new home for sustainable development. They recommend a new post be created – for a Minister of Sustainable Development – replete with staff moved across from Defra and new powers to exert pressure over Whitehall. The committee demand the Treasury be “ready to play a more committed supporting role” and note that “the Cabinet Office’s proximity to the Prime Minister would further suit it to the task”.

I would go one further, and involve the PM himself formally. When David Cameron made his first visit to DECC back in May, he stated boldly, “There is a fourth Minister in this department that cares passionately about this agenda, and that is me.” Great rhetoric, but what has this amounted to so far? Perhaps, though, Cameron’s words should be interpreted literally, and a new title added to his job alongside First Lord of the Treasury . That would certainly be a way to make good on the abolition of the SDC, add substance to the oft-repeated claim of his being ‘the greenest government ever’, and finally embed sustainability at the top of Government agendas.

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A new report released yesterday, Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs): a policy framework for peak oil and climate change, makes a valuable contribution to the debate about how policies affect public values.

We usually think of policies as only influencing surface-level behaviour, such as the taxes we pay. But, as two political scientists point out,

Policies can [also] set political agendas and shape identities and interests. They can influence beliefs about what is possible, desirable, and normal. They can alter conceptions of citizenship and status. (Soss and Schram, 2007, p113).

That’s been understood instinctively by many politicians on both the left and the right for some time. Cognitive linguist George Lakoff has repeatedly pointed out how American neo-conservatives have assiduously set about establishing “their deepest values into the brains of tens of millions of Americans”, through the use of framing and policies that promote their politics. But it’s not just been done on the right: the creation of the welfare state by the postwar Labour government in the UK was also an exercise in promoting socialist values – encouraging popular buy-in to the state provision of a public good through the principle of universal welfare.

Environmentalists, too, are beginning to wake up to the importance of such ‘policy feedback’. The recent report Common Cause, for example – published by a coalition of NGOs including Oxfam, FoE and WWF – discusses how different green policies can unwittingly help or hinder environmental protection through the values they promote. UK planning law, for instance – which was developed, like the welfare state, under the Attlee administration – has the effect of “further embedding the common-interest frame” in public consciousness, and may therefore help to promote respect for common goods like the environment. Policies that foster individualistic ‘green consumerism’, on the other hand, are likely to help promote ‘extrinsic’ or ‘materialistic’ values, which tend to oppose concern for the common good.

This is where the TEQs report comes in. Written by Shaun Chamberlin and David Fleming (who sadly passed away at the end of last year), and commissioned by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil, the paper is first and foremost an account of the TEQs system of personal carbon allowances which David Fleming invented in 1996. But its third chapter incorporates an exploration of the values that a personal carbon allowance system embodies, and the impact this might have on behavioural motivation. “The incentives that motivate people to get results need to be no less well understood than the relevant science and technologies”, they write. “At the heart of this is common purpose, where there is an alignment of individual and collective purpose, so that actions and aims which the individual recognises as in his or her own interests are the same as those of the community as a whole.”

The common purpose pursued by a personal carbon allowance system is, of course, the reduction of carbon emissions on an equitable basis over time. Fleming and Chamberlin argue that existing carbon reduction policies offer inducement through artifical ‘extrinsic’ rewards – financial payments in return for action – whereas, they assert, “To be effective, incentives need to be intrinsic to the task… the motivation needs to be based on the actual benefits of doing the task, rather than on a set of rewards for doing it.” TEQs, the authors propose, offer such an intrinsic set of motivations, by binding citizens into the collective task of emissions reduction, promoting cooperation to achieve this, and offering rewards of reciprocity and energy entitlements rather than money.

I’d make some additions to the authors’ analysis. Whilst clearly familiar with Common Cause and similar recent work on values within policy, their application of the terms ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ seems to be drawn more from the work of Dan Pink looking at self-determination theory. But the authors could have done more to apply the insights of Common Cause in terms of how a TEQs system would impact on ‘intrinsic values’, such as concern for one’s community, a belief in equality and care for nature. It is clear that TEQs would help promote all such values, but this isn’t quite spelled out. And whilst Fleming and Chamberlin are right to point out that financial carrots can be a poor tool to encourage better performance, this has only been demonstrated in the case of intellectual tasks – whereas bonuses work fine on simple, mechanical tasks. Making the transition to a low-carbon world will certainly require creativity, but it will also require the adoption of (mechanical and non-creative) habits, like simple energy-saving measures, for which financial inducements could play an important role.

But a system of personal carbon allowances, were one ever introduced, would clearly have major implications for public values in the UK. If framed in the manner of the TEQs proposal, such a policy would promote collective values and the ‘common good’ in a far stronger way than the current mish-mash of disparate green taxes and climate policies. It could have similar effects to the creation of the universal welfare state – bringing all British citizens into a collective system of carbon reduction, with everyone entitled to a quota of carbon and holding a shared stake in the ‘safety net’ of a stable climate. Personal carbon allowances, therefore, could generate positive ‘policy feedback’ in reinforcing public values that underpin care for common goods like the environment.

Whether or not you agree with TEQs or personal carbon trading more generally, the debate about the interplay between policies and values is a vital one. It’s good to see that policy papers – like the one released today – are starting to take values into account, and it’s to be hoped this example will be the first of many. Scrutinising how policies affect public values is vital for ensuring transparency in governance, and for designing policies that will be both consistent and effective.

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Over the last year, we’ve been hearing references to Martin Luther King in the sustainability debate with increasing regularity.  King, we are told, didn’t inspire change by saying “I have a nightmare”; the implication being that the environmental movement needs to stop being so down in the dumps and instead describe the promised land if ‘it’ wants to motivate change…

This isn’t a new notion.  It was first put forward by Ted Schellenberger and Michael Nordhaus in their essay The Death Of Environmentalism (well worth a read) back in 2004.  Since then it has been picked up by Jonathon Porritt in Capitalism As If The World Matters (2005), regularly by the sustainability communications agency Futerra, and most recently called out by Nick Marks in his TED talk to frame his discussion of the link between the environment and wellbeing economics.

When I first wrote about this idea, I was highly critical.  I think it is important to recognise, however, that the approach has achieved major successes.  Although it has for now gone relatively unnoticed, David Camfetyeron’s decision to brief the Office of National Statistics to investigate the means to measure happiness in our society represents a considerable victory for Marks in particular, and could well lead to very interesting developments in the future.

As the innovative economic thinker Hazel Henderson puts it, though, nothing breeds failure like success, and there are dangers ahead down this path.

Referring back to the full text of King’s speech brings some useful lessons.  If you do, you find that it’s not quite as uniformly positive a vision as is often made out.  You can check it out here as a film, or here as transcript.

The speech begins with a searing indictment of the current state of affairs, of the “bad cheque” of the Emancipation Proclamation.  I think this is the fundamental that we’re lacking in our discussions today.  The danger of focusing too wholeheartedly on “selling the sizzle” (as dream disciples Futerra put it) is that you can easily be too accepting, and allow fundamental barriers to remain in place.  King by contrast is very clear indeed that the situation is wrong.  He is not afraid of context.

The second phase is even more telling.  King now describes the task ahead, leaving no one in any doubt as to just how hard the work will be to right the situation.  He respects the intelligence of his audience, and gives it to them straight – “There will be neither rest nor tranquillity in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights…”

Perhaps the point that has most resonance for the present, though, comes when he invokes “the fierce urgency of Now” (a phrase most do not even realise comes from the same speech).  “This is no time,” he says, “to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquillizing drug of gradualism.”  The tranquillizing drug of gradualism?  How many of us are taking that right now?

I do not argue here that we should not paint a vision of the future that is positive and inspiring.  That work is important, and is making headway.  But as we do it, we must not shy away from just how difficult this situation is, and we must not take that tranquillizing drug.

As we do it, we must understand that the truly motivating vision of the future is not saccharine.  It lies the other side of full engagement with the realities of the fundamental inequities we have created, the other side of global inequalities, climate change, and species extinction, the other side – and here I stand with Nic Marks – of consumerism, the social system that has engendered all these things.

The truth from a proper engagement with psychology (or even a session with a two-bit sports psychologist) is not simply that a positive vision is inspiring and a negative vision is disempowering.  It is that the most motivating situation is created by a shared challenge that is difficult yet possible to overcome.  It is this that King recognised (and indeed, that Cameron and Osborne have thus far successfully harnessed with the communication of their economic strategy here at home), and that the current crop of environmental ‘visionaries’ – and here I include Marks – risk overlooking.

What does this mean in practice?  Well, as the measures of happiness in our society start to gain meaning, we must make sure we’re looking at the things that affect them negatively, not just positively.  In particular, I believe advertising needs to come under the microscope.  We will have to recognise that the 1600 (or 3000, or 5000, depending on who you talk to) commercial messages a day we all see, that all as a foundation tell us that consumption is the route to happiness, are engineering our society.  If we want to give ourselves the real space to think differently, something will need to be done here.  And it will not be easy.

I want to finish this post by quoting the author and multi-issue activist Alice Walker.  “I have a theory that Martin Luther King, had he lived, would have become a violent revolutionary rather than a non-violent one simply because he would have perceived that he had met an object, this country, that is not going to be changed non-violently.  I think his dedication was so intense that he would have tried other strategies.  I talk about his love in front and his necessary fist behind.”

Martin Luther King was a great man.  Let’s not take his memory lightly.

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A few points emerge from the document:

• The Government will “improve efficiency of renewable support… on more cost-effective technologies”; possibly code for cutting spending on less advanced renewable technology types like wave and tidal. Chris Huhne yesterday confirmed that plans for the Severn Tidal Barrage had been dropped – though it would have generated 5% of the UK’s electricity from 2020.
• The UK “will contribute £2.9bn in international climate finance”. The section in the document that states over what time period this will be spent is illegible; if it’s over the next 3-4 years, that will be something of a victory, and may exceed previous pledges; if it’s spread over a longer time period, or conflated with existing Official Development Assistance, it may be less good.
• A bracketed sentence suggests that the Coalition will “Increase the proportion of revenue coming from environmental taxes”, with a caveat “Do n0t use if no tax announcement”. In an interview back in the summer Alexander stated the Government would “In due course [be]  looking at other ways to rebalance, looking at green taxes. It is about rebalancing.”
• Lastly, the document claims that “The Spending Review is fair: environmental spending is relatively protected to ensure sustainability for future generations. Over the SR [Spending Review] period, environmental spending will increase [30%] in real terms.” There is no evidence provided in the document to back up this claim.

The proof of the pudding, of course, will come in the eating – and that’s set to come in the next couple of hours as George Osborne unveils the Spending Review proper at 12.30, and over the coming days as more details emerge. I’ll be back with more analysis later today.

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In fact, McCandless’ beautiful infographic shows only two agencies dedicated to cutting emissions – the Carbon Trust and the Energy Savings Trust. That’s because most of DECC’s agencies receive only tiny amounts of funding – and bodies with budgets less than £25m are excluded from the diagram. Much climate spending is, in McCandless’ diagram, invisible to the naked eye.

The smallness of public spending on climate change hasn’t stopped recent decisions to axe a whole range of green bodies – like the Sustainable Development Commission, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and Renewables Advisory Board – all of whose budgets are too small to be seen on McCandless’ infographic.

Look, the heart of the issue is this: the UK is not yet spending nearly enough on decarbonisation to meet our 2020 emissions targets. Yet so far all debate about public expenditure has focused on penny-pinching on a much shorter term time horizon – not 2020 but October 20th. It’s time to get some perspective and for the Government to outline how it will spend money to achieve its longer-term objectives.

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Cutting by 40%… but these campaigners wanted to cut emissions, not spending

I’m at the Labour party conference in Manchester this week, doing the rounds of the climate fringe events and asking whether ‘Red Ed’ will rediscover his previous persona as ‘Green Ed’. Expect a number of posts reporting back over the next few days.

First up, the future of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) itself. This emerged as a key concern at this morning’s Fabians discussion on green jobs, with speakers Emily Thornberry MP (Shadow Energy & Climate team), Michael Jacobs (former environment advisor to Gordon Brown),  Alan Whitehead MP, and Tony Hawkhead (CEO of environmental charity Groundwork).

The panel expressed great disquiet about the impact of the looming spending cuts on DECC. The department’s current budget is some £3.2bn; cutting its spend by 40% – as the Treasury asked all departments to model earlier this year – would leave it with just £1.92bn to spearhead the low-carbon transition. But it was pointed out that £1.7bn of DECC’s existing budget is spent on nuclear clean-up: liabilities that have to be taken care of and that Government can hardly divest themselves of. Assuming DECC would still be saddled with this responsibility, a 40% budget cut would leave the department with a paltry £220m to support renewables, energy efficiency, low-carbon cars and all the rest. DECC would effectively cease to function as a meaningful department – and it’s understood that DECC officials have said as much to the Treasury.

Opinions varied amongst speakers as to whether this level of cuts were likely. The average cut requested by Treasury across Whitehall is 25% – and whilst some departments may be forced to cut up to 40%, others will escape with shallower wounds. (Although PIRC understands that some departments have offered in excess of even 40% – naming no names, but young Conservative Ministers tend to be more ‘ambitious’ in this regard.)

Even if DECC emerges from the Spending Review with three-quarters of its budget intact, questions remain over how much power it will continue to wield, with a resurgent Treasury extending its mandate across Whitehall. The Guardian reported recently that the Treasury was considering absorbing DECC into its own fold – somewhat overblown rumours, as it turned out; but as the future of climate policy in the UK becomes increasingly bound up in finding sufficient low-carbon finance (notably for the Green Investment Bank), the role of the Treasury will only grow. A member of the audience, who identified himself as a former civil servant, worried that BIS or Treasury would take an increasing control over climate policy, with DECC emasculated just two years since its creation. It would take strong Ministers to resist this trend, said one of the speakers. Today’s Morning Star carries an article on this by former MP Alan Simpson, under the headline, ‘All hands on DECC’ [although they seem to have put up the wrong article at present - 1.30pm]

Looking at the figures, it’s worth highlighting again how much of DECC’s current responsibilities lie in the realm of managing liabilities – both nuclear and fossil. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, one of the bodies that will survive the Coalition’s ‘bonfire of the quangos’ – as revealed in a Cabinet Office document leaked last week – swallows up £880m on its own. Clearly no-one is arguing we should stop cleaning up nuclear waste. But it does underline how the full price of a nuclear-powered energy system isn’t confined to set-up costs; something that should always be borne in mind when people balk at the high up-front costs of renewables, which do not, however, incur costs for either fuel or waste processing.

Separately, in conversations after the workshop with staff working in local government, it appears that the low-carbon agenda isn’t just under threat from cuts to DECC. The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has also staged a full-scale retreat from all things climate since the Coalition government coming to power, with Minister Eric Pickles appearing to pursue a ‘back to basics’ approach and hiving off his low-carbon teams to DECC. Sustainable development used to be understood as something that had to be embedded across government, not just in one department. But that was in the days when we had a Sustainable Development Commission scrutinising all of Whitehall – and now that’s been axed, too.

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Green wood is not meant to burn well. But it appears that the Government is stoking its ‘bonfire of the quangos’ with over 15 environmental bodies, and considering the abolition of many more, blowing another hole in its claim to be ‘the greenest government ever’. At the same time, the confirmed abolition of the Regional Development Agencies will lead to £40m being cut from low-carbon investment programmes.

In Cabinet Office papers leaked to the Telegraph yesterday, it was revealed that 177 non-departmental public bodies (‘quangos’) are set to be abolished, with a further 94 currently under review. Examination of the list reveals that environmental regulatory and advisory bodies constitute a significant proportion of those being culled – despite only saving an estimated £6.75m in public spending, and with many of the bodies operating at no cost to the public purse.

Amongst the bodies for the chop include the Renewables Advisory Board – an expert panel drawn from industry that advises on renewable energy policy; the Commission for Integrated Transport, which researches how to reduce transport emissions and congestion; and the Regional Development Agencies, responsible for £40m of low-carbon research & development over the past financial year, according to recent analysis by the Committee on Climate Change.

Incredibly, bodies as central to the Government climate programme as the Carbon Trust and the Forestry Commission are not yet off the ‘endangered list’ of “Bodies still under review”.

The privatisation of the Forestry Commission has been mooted before, but what this would mean in terms of retaining a national forest stock is unknown. It is possible that the Carbon Trust is being eyed up for assimilation into the proposed Green Investment Bank – as suggested by the Green Investment Bank Commission earlier this year – but simply moving funds around, rather than earmarking new money, will be insufficient to stimulate private sector green investment.

Nor is this the last of it. As the Telegraph reports, “Other bodies that are likely to survive but face significant budget cuts are the Environment Agency, the Energy Savings Trust and the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group.” The revelations follow hot on the heels of the announced abolition of the Sustainable Development Commission, and recent concerns that the promised £60m Ports Fund – for developing ports into manufacturing hubs for wind turbines – is under threat.

The cull of public bodies follows a worryingly ideological pattern. It is no secret that the hard-right Taxpayers’ Alliance has been lobbying for years to squash environmental regulation and spending. As I highlighted in July, Caroline Spelman’s decision to abolish the Sustainable Development Commission had been presaged with repeated lobbying by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, who called it “…a Government-sponsored campaign for an increase in green and environmentally aware policy”. The TPA’s Policy Director Matthew Sinclair boasted on Twitter that it was a ‘#tpapolicywin’. In a blog piece posted yesterday, the TPA revealed its desire to see even more green government bodies swept away, stating: “Whilst the news is initially encouraging… the Telegraph also lists a number of bodies still under review. It names the Carbon Trust, The Advisory Council on Public Records and the Energy Savings Trust among others whose future is yet undecided. This shows that there are still lots more quangos that can be added to this growing bonfire.”

Others on the right are clearly rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of rolling back bodies that attempt – heaven forbid – to tackle global warming. Andrew Porter, the Telegraph’s political editor, wrote yesterday: “The abolition of the British Council would be welcomed by many… Critics have accused it of being hijacked and used to promote such causes as climate change.” Imagine!

The irony of such small-statist antagonism towards green quangos is how little they cost the taxpayer, despite their value in providing expert advice to government. By the admission of the Taxpayers’ Alliance themselves, the Renewables Advisory Board cost precisely £0 in 2008-9. The same was true of the Advisory Committee on Carbon Abatement Technologies, and many other similar bodies earmarked for abolition. Interestingly, six quangos that deal with nuclear liabilities appear to have escaped the guillotine, despite eating up over £800m of public funds – and despite the Coalition pledge to remove public subsidy for nuclear.

Nick Clegg claims he did not enter politics to cut public spending, and I am not interested in politics because of some bizarre wish to defend unelected civil servants. But taking an axe to dozens of environmental regulators and funds threatens to choke off the green economy just as it is coming to life. It is quite some irony that, on the same day as the Energy Secretary sings the praises of the nascent British offshore wind industry, the Renewables Advisory Board is abolished and £40m cut from low-carbon funding. If only it were a laughing matter.

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Those few who spotted the announcement reacted with shock and exclamation. Green MP Caroline Lucas branded the move an “absolute disaster”. George Monbiot called it “irrational and counter-productive”.  Jonathan Porritt, former chair of the SDC, bitterly lamented its axing as being “dogma-driven and brazenly cynical”.

But the demise of the SDC is in many ways no surprise. One need only consult the auguries – that is to say, the small-statist think tanks whose position papers have prefigured much of the Coalition’s programme of spending cuts.

Ample warning of the threat to the SDC was given in a paper jointly authored by the Taxpayers’ Alliance and the Institute of Directors last October, as I highlighted in a blog post at the time. Their report recommended, amongst other things, the SDC’s abolition, castigating it for being “…a Government-sponsored campaign for an increase in green and environmentally aware policy. It is not an expert advisor but a political campaign, and whatever its merits may be, such campaigns should not be paid for through public funds.” This same stance was reiterated again by the TA earlier this year in a wish-list of quangos to cut after the General Election.

Whilst at the time appearing to be just kite-flying on the part of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, their words have clearly been heeded.

This has not been the only time the Taxpayers’ Alliance has agitated against green bodies. Responding to suggestions for the creation of new green regulatory bodies in the Conservative’s Quality of Life Review back in 2007, the TA fumed: “These quangos are unlikely to come cheap and some, like the Climate Change Committee, place policy decisions in the hands of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.” Of course, this was – and is – utter nonsense: the Committee on Climate Change, as it has since been constituted, makes no decisions, but simply – and effectively – scrutinises policy and makes recommendations. (Not that the Government necessarily heeds good advice. The Committee’s latest report, published last week, warned that current levels of UK spending on low-carbon innovation “should be regarded as a minimum, and cuts would be detrimental to the achievement of our climate goals” – just as the Coalition revealed it was cutting £34m from low-carbon investment.)

A similar lack of understanding of the functions of environmental regulators pervades any discussion of them by rightwing pundits. Dennis Sewell, writing in the Spectator last Autumn, called on David Cameron to slash the number of environmental public bodies: “If we have an Environment Agency, why do we also need an Energy Savings Trust, environmental campaigns, Environwise [sic] and an Air Quality Standards?”. It seemed not to matter to Sewell that they do entirely different things.

In fact, the UK’s total spending on bodies to regulate and enforce environmental protection is tiny, as I calculated last year. Axing the SDC and RCEP will save the taxpayer barely £5 million; and only half the SDC’s funding comes from Westminster, with the rest being funded by the Welsh and Scottish governments. The ultimate irony is that energy efficiency measures promoted and regulated by the SDC save the Government about £60-70 million annually. As George Monbiot writes, cutting the SDC will cost the state more money in the long term.

But going beyond the cost-cutting rhetoric that is de rigeur, what about assigning value to the central tasks these bodies actually performed?

On two counts, the merits of the SDC and RCEP ought to have seen them remain:

Firstly, both bodies held a mandate to examine a broad, complex and essential policy area, sustainable development. It appears the Government fails to understand what this term encompasses beyond climate change. Who now takes on responsibility for ensuring joined-up Government when considering biodiversity loss, resource use, oil depletion, GM crops, or any of the huge host of issues that the SDC and RCEP worked on? Defra’s Secretary of State Caroline Spelman claims that “times have changed since many of these bodies were set up, and much of what they do is now everyday Government business.” Times have indeed changed; since the SDC was founded, we have moved still further into ecological debt as a nation; yet Government business remains focused on accounting for merely fiscal debt.

Secondly, and more worryingly still, is the Coalition’s disdain for the watchdog role these bodies performed within Government. The SDC was set up under Tony Blair’s first administration (and prefigured by a similar body under the Major government) in an acknowledgement that scrutiny makes for better decision-making and balanced government. Certainly, it riled civil servants in the main Whitehall departments, who saw it as a thorn in their side. But that, after all, was its purpose. Now, in a frenzy of slash-and-burn, Westminster has rid itself of one of its overseers. Who watches now?

This piece was originally published on Left Foot Forward

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Anthony Watts’ latest source of information is none other than the British National Party – yes, those known to the rest of us as the British Nazi Party.

Garman continues:

Anthony Watts blogged today at 15.30 GMT about how “climate scepticism could become a criminal offence in UK” – and his source? BNP leader, Nick Griffin. Unsurprisingly, by 16.11, the page had disappeared. No doubt, after one of his friends in the UK pointed out it doesn’t look great when you post Nazi propaganda on your blog and twitter feed.

But Left Foot Forward caught screen grabs here, here – and here.

Ouch.

You may remember Watts Up With That from such hilarious climate science fails as:

• Wrongly claiming Arctic sea ice was growing 50,000km² per year. (To their credit, they did correct this obvious error, but it didn’t stop them coming out with other howlers like suggesting the ‘Arctic ice looks generally healthier than 20 years ago’ or that sea ice has returned to ‘normal‘. Both completely wrong.)
• Once claiming anyone wanting a price on carbon was ‘criminal’, the same as ‘murdering people’.
• Painstakingly asserting that global warming is due to the ‘Urban Heat Island’ effect, something scientists are already aware of and correct for. And then in arguing their case, providing data scientists used to show they were completely wrong: temperature stations they argued were causing a warming bias in the temperature record were actually causing a cooling bias!
• Not understanding basic statistics
• Falsely claiming that the Antarctic ice sheet can’t and won’t lose mass, because air temperatures are below 0°C. Unfortunately they failed to look at any ice mass data to see what was actually happening. If you don’t like the data, just ignore it!
• And finally, they recently concluded that the Greenland ice sheet can’t be melting. Their evidence? Temperature data from a single weather station and some photos taken while flying over the ice sheet! They conveniently failed to mention the ice mass data which pretty conclusively shows that Greenland IS losing mass. Again, if you don’t like the data…

We thought Watts up With That had reached as low as they could go with shoddy fact-checking, but citing the BNP plunges them to new depths.

On the other hand, at least Anthony Watts had the decency to take the story down when he realised where it came from. Monckton’s outfit, the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), hasn’t even done that. So while Monckton is happy to dish out words like ‘fascist’ willy-nilly, at the same time he apparently has no qualms about using genuine fascists as a source of material.

Certainly brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘grey literature’.

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