OK – so Mark’s gone off skiing, leaving me fumbling around in the dark to sort out Project Dirt updates on my own. Well, it’s quite dark anyway as the lightbulb’s gone in our living room. It went a couple of days ago and I swore I’d replace it with an energy efficient one. I’ve already done most of the bulbs in the flat, but the more specialist ones I couldn’t find anywhere. I looked in my local Sainsbury’s and various other shops, and the selection was rubbish.

After asking around, apparently it’s pretty easy to get energy efficient lightbulbs (even freely) from your council. However, mine (Wandsworth) only seems to do it for council tenants. It’s relatively easy to get ‘regular’ energy efficient lightbulbs, but I wanted ones that didn’t look out of place as my old flat has a few old light fittings which are recessed, but leaves you seeing the bulb (like the one below). Let the hunt commence!

Let me take you into our lounge to compare it to the uplighter in there… two things struck me immediately: a) there’s a big (aesthetic) difference in what type of bulb people might actually want to install for these lamps (i.e. one size doesn’t fit all), and b) (on a more positive note) I noted (with a warm glow) the ‘regular’ energy efficient lightbulb actually gives off a really warm and decent light!

So I looked online, and I was genuinely shocked to see how expensive some of these bulbs can be! Depending on what you’re after, you can spend up to £18 for a bulb! I ended up buying mine through BLT Direct (and spent nearly £35 on just 5 bulbs!). Despite that, I know the economics will all stack up in the end – a happy Christmas present to my flat from me (what a geek!).

Nick

Whilst Mark’s jet-set lifestyle has left him confused, I too faced a massive dilemma this week. A girlfriend with a penchant for the Norwegian Spruce (a tree, thankfully, rather than a Scandinavian gigolo), and an environmental conscience that inherently thinks a tree should be for life, not just for christmas.

I didn’t really have time to look too much into it, as shopping days are now few and far between. I was keen to look for a potted variety that we could plant up later on in our (shared) garden. I don’t have a car, so I thought I’d check out our local area, but there were none available in our high street (and even the cut ones were a real rip-off!). In the end I ran out of time and bought a cut tree when on a trip to Essex to sell my little dinghy (a nice little ebay number), and dragged it back home using 3 methods of public transport: the train, tube and a bus! It was certainly a good conversation starter.

So what’s the impact of my tree choice? A bit of digging tells me that most of our Christmas trees are specially grown in plantations over a 6-12 year period, specifically for harvest as Christmas trees. FSC certified would have been the best, but again I was low on options, and the 16-year old spotty dimwit in Homebase hadn’t a clue what I was on about. (Hippyshopper does a good run-down of the arguments between plastic and real, and, whilst I’m reasonably content with my decision, next year I’ll go for one from the Forestry Commission if I can). I’ll blog again when it comes to ‘tree recycling’!

As for decorations, I went for a small string of lights and decided that, for the rest, the homemade route was the best option, giving a more ‘personal’ touch! We’ve changed them around a bit, but here’s one of my favourites to date: empty camembert boxes!

Nick

Economics demands action on climate change

“IT DOESN’T matter a damn what ethical assumptions you use,” says
Michael Grubb, an expert on climate change policy at the University of
Cambridge, cold financial arguments are enough to decide what to do
about global warming. Spend now and reap the benefits later.

As arguments over the science behind climate change have cooled
,
the question of how much nations should be willing to pay has come to
dominate the debate. Now Martin Weitzman of Harvard University has
developed the first thorough method for including unlikely but extreme
events, such as widespread crop failures, in cost-benefit analyses. When
you take into account extreme temperature rises of more than around 6
°C, he says, they dominate all other options and effectively demand that
investment aimed at stopping them be made now. “This tells us that we
should take the problem much more seriously that normal cost-benefit
analyses suggest,” says Weitzman, who has submitted his paper to /The
Review of Economics and Statistics/.

“Extreme temperature rises of more than 6 °C demand investment aimed at
stopping them be made now”

Economists have generally ignored extreme events when doing cost-benefit
calculations. Such events are theoretically possible, they say, but are
so unlikely and lie so far in the future that it is not cost-effective
to spend money to prevent them. Computer models also suggest that using
more renewable energy and reducing emissions in other ways would almost
certainly avoid extreme temperature increases. But Weitzman’s results
are so dramatic that some economists, many of whom argued in favour of
caution, are shifting their position.

Environment groups argue that the risk of extreme events justifies large
investment now, but other groups, notably industry-orientated think
tanks and many Republican politicians, have resisted such calls. “In the
United States, cost-benefit analyses have been used to back up questions
about whether [investment] is worth much now,” says Grubb. “This throws
a pretty fundamental spanner in the works.”

Richard Tol of the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin,
Ireland, is one economist who used to argue for investment levels that
fall short of what green groups say is needed. Investment choices are
often measured in the amount of money that should be spent on preventing
the emission of one tonne of carbon dioxide. Before reading Weitzman’s
paper, *Tol had that figure at $5 - now he thinks it should be $50*. He
is also developing a cost-benefit analysis for the US Environmental
Protection Agency. “This work shows that we’re simply doing it wrong,”
says Tol.

The new method also backs up the conclusions of the Stern Review on the
Economics of Climate Change, albeit via different methods. Stern’s
cost-benefit analysis, which was published in October 2006, did not
consider extreme events. Even so, he found that the benefit of investing
now would be enormous: the world could save $2.5 trillion a year if the
rise in CO_2 was halted at levels around 50 per cent greater than today.
But when Stern put a price on the damages that rising temperatures could
cause, he valued future costs in today’s money. Many economists,
including Weitzman, criticised that assumption, arguing that it ignores
the fact that investments made now are expected to be worth more in the
future.

The debate remains unresolved, as ethical arguments continue to rage
about how to value future generations. But Weitzman’s study shows that
once extreme events are included, the argument becomes irrelevant. This
is because the potential cost of extreme events is so great that they
come to dominate the assessment of risk, whatever method is used to
compare the value of present and future generations. “[Weitzman’s work]
would have received substantial attention in the Stern report. He would
have used it as supporting evidence,” says Grubb.

Weitzman could also create a headache for policy-makers
.
The analysis shows that traditional cost-benefit calculations are
getting it wrong, but it does so only by proving that extreme events
dominate the costs when included in the calculations. It cannot put a
figure on how much should be spent now, unlike the old techniques. “The
big picture is not as clear as economists had thought,” says Weitzman.
“This probably means we should spend more money now, but it doesn’t tell
us how much.”

From issue 2632 of New Scientist magazine, 01 December 2007, page 14