8 February 2010

Politics for the people?

 

But for many engaged, passionate people, politics seems like a dead end. The individualistic,  impotent tools that we are offered to hold government to account – intermittent elections where most votes are wasted and the choice is between parties competing to represent the same narrow set of floating voters – simply doesn’t seem worth the time it takes. But we shouldn’t let that fool us into thinking that people don’t care.

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8 February 2010

HuffPo on HPI

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The piece usefully reflects on the “intuitive” sense that money doesn’t buy happiness, an intuition reflected in the findings of well-being research. Even so, it doesn’t  get the interpretation of the Index quite right. It says:

“the United States ranks as low as most of sub-Saharan Africa. In other words, consuming more than our share of resources doesn’t make us happier, despite the fact that we live almost twice as long than those in sub-Saharan Africa who consume very little.”

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8 February 2010

Denying the evidence

. The main opponents were those who continue to deny the existence of human powered climate change. Let’s call them climate deniers (the use of this contested term, I realise, is worthy of a blog in and of itself but that will have to wait for another day).

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8 February 2010

How to make an economist squirm

 The kind of thing you hear radical economists and think tanks saying more and more nowadays. But here the context was a very different. A conference organised by the environment ministry of a European nation (Austria), and sponsored and supported by seven other ministries including the Federal Chancellery, and the Federal Ministry for Finance, the nation’s leading banks, main supermarket chain and the Chamber of Commerce.

Tags: economic growth, measures of progress

Programme Area: Business, Finance and Economics

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8 February 2010

82 months and counting . . .

 

Tags: banking, climate change, economic growth, economics, evidence, one hundred months, science

Programme Area: Climate Change and Energy

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8 February 2010

Andrew Simms at the LSE : the new economics

Our policy director, Andrew Simms gave a lecture to the London School of Economics last night introducing the kind of economics we do here at nef

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Listen now (mp3; 38 MB; approx 82 minutes)

Tags: lectures, podcasts

Programme Area: Climate Change and Energy

8 February 2010

Cut the bad habits

 

Tags: energy, fossil fuels, oil, pollution, tax

Programme Area: Climate Change and Energy

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8 February 2010

Tobin Tax

The Tobin Tax is back in the headlines again, with Gordon Brown now insisting that support for a levy on financial transactions is growing. I’ve also noticed that our friends at the World Development Movement are starting to campaign in this area.

Tags: financial reform, public services, tobin tax

Programme Area: Business, Finance and Economics

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8 February 2010

Football, floodlights and well-being

 Of course, such a change would require greater working flexibility, so that typical working hours don’t get in the way of spectators getting to the match, but we needn’t expect primary school children to get into these details…

Tags: carbon emissions, children and young people, sport, well-being

Programme Area: Well-being

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8 February 2010

Growth is good ... isn't it?


 

 

Tags: measures of progress, GDP, environmental limits, economic growth, climate change

Programme Area: Climate Change and Energy

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