Cardinal sins

The French statesman Charles Talleyrand famously lamented of the Bourbons: "They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing."

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
Diplomat. Fan of cravats.

For a modern (if less grandiose) parallel, we have this curious insistence by many Austrians that mainstream economists cling to a flawed concept of cardinal -- rather than ordinal -- utility.[*] To this, the mainstream economists respond: "Huh?"

UPDATE: More of the same here.
UPDATE 2: Daniel Kuehn gives us the in-depth treatment here.

[*] No doubt the eyes of my non-economist readers have already glazed over, but the difference between the two concepts is explained here. In brief, cardinal utility refers to a utility level that can be precisely measured and compared in common units. While useful for teaching purposes, needless to say this is pretty unrealistic; let alone measurable. (E.g. An ice-creams is 1.5 times as good as a chocolate bar, and 2.5 times better than a hamburger.) Ordinal utility, on the other hand, simply allows you to rank the utility that you get from these different goods. (My favourite foods in order of preference are: 1) ice-cream, 2) chocolate and 3) hamburgers.)

Quote of the day - A priori reasoning

"The a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won't fit in, why so much the worse for the facts."

- Erasmus Darwin, writing to his brother Charles upon reading the Origin of Species in 1859.

Erasmus Darwin

Then, to temper things somewhat, read this wonderful little essay[*] by Nicholas Humphrey on why we should still be suspicious whenever an elegant explanation comes our way, much as our brains want us to believe.
___

[*] Part of a most interesting collection of responses to the question: "What is your favourite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?" Other respondents include Richard Dawkins ("Redundancy Reduction and Pattern Recognition"), Richard Thaler ("Commitment"), Steven Pinker ("Evolutionary Genetics Explains The Conflicts of Human Social Life") and many, many others.

The Meters - Ain't No use

Because it's Sunday and you deserve it.



Tragically unappreciated by the public at large. Spread the funky word..

Walk Off The Earth - "Somebody that I used to know"

It may not be Thursday and the opening guitar riff is uncannily reminiscent of Baa Baa Black Sheep, but this is one of coolest covers I've heard/seen in ages.


.

Low-cost lighting from used plastic bottles

As a general rule, bottled water is not particularly good for the environment. If I were the judgmental type, I might even chime in that buying bottled water is pretty dumb -- at least in the circles that I move in -- given that it is typically of no better quality than tap water. But each to their own.[*]

Regardless, this is very cool:

(via WIMP)

UPDATE: The GF points out that I perhaps shouldn't emphasise the bottled water angle so much, since any beverage bottle would do (fizzy drinks, etc).

[*] Okay, I'm being a bit facetious here. I actually agree with David Zetland that bottled water is probably best viewed as a consumer product much like any other.

Irony

From the Wikipedia page on Agricultural Policy:

Some argue that nations have an interest in assuring there is sufficient domestic production capability to meet domestic needs in the event of a global supply disruption. Significant dependence on foreign food producers makes a country strategically vulnerable in the event of war, blockade or embargo. Maintaining adequate domestic capability allows for food self-sufficiency that lessens the risk of supply shocks due to geopolitical events. Agricultural policies[...] may be an ongoing subsidy designed to allow a product to compete with or undercut foreign competition.

Could this possibly backfire? Hmmm, let me think... This week in Scandinavia:

Danish dairies say no to Norway

Dairy producers in Denmark have said they won’t export butter to neighbouring Norway, despite moves by Oslo to cut tariffs as the country battles to get the product back on supermarket shelves.

Norway, like Sweden and Finland, has been hit by a major butter shortage in recent months. The Nordic trio have seen less raw milk available annually amid soaring demand for high-fat dairy products such as creams, butters and milk. 

[snip] 

But while the Danes are happy to help out the Swedes and the Finns, Norwegian shoppers look set to be left in the lurch with Christmas looming. 

Oslo has slashed import tariffs on butter for the month of December in an attempt to attract foreign producers, but leading Danish dairies remain unimpressed. 

“We’ve been bashing our head against an excise wall in Norway for more than ten years, so we don’t have enough faith in a little hole in the wall to start sending butter via that route,” said Mogens Poulsen from dairy Thise Andelsmejeri to news website foodculture.dk. 

Danish news reports said the country’s other main dairy producers were similarly disinclined to make a beeline for the Norwegian market. 

“We can’t start building something up only to dismantle it again three weeks from now,” said Arla spokesperson Theis Brøgger to foodculture.dk.

It may only be butter, but still a telling example. On a general level, I don't know which I find more impressive: The fact that so many people are in agreement about the need to drastically scale down agricultural subsidies... Or that these subsidies somehow remain as entrenched throughout the world as they do.

UPDATES: (1) Norway is a great place to live in many ways, but their protectionist trade policies suck. Most of the Norwegians that I speak to are pretty happy to echo these sentiments, although that might not be a representative sample. (2) Damn. Butter futures would have been a good investment. Black market bids currently going around $500 per half kilo!

Economics > Doing the right thing

Drowning in university work here, so no time for any blog posts. In the meantime, read this article by Gernot Wagner, who has a new book out explaining why economic forces and policies -- not individual acts of environmental goodwill or heroism -- are the only way to ensure meaningful action against climate change... and to resolve environmental problems generally.[*]

Cold, Hard Economics

Global warming is happening faster and with more intensity than anyone expected, yet the fossil-fueled right has succeeded in removing the issue almost entirely from the agenda through a false pretense of defending "free markets." In response, environmentalists have tended to retreat further into their own organically padded corners, when what's needed is to get back to economic basics: Markets cannot be free when benefits are privatized and enormous costs are being socialized. The only way out of this environmental crisis is to align citizens' economic self-interest with the planet's health.[...]

You can also watch a video of Gernot here.

[*] Lest it be unclear, economic policies also include "let prices and the market mechanism run their course". Environmental economics is not simply about knee-jerk, top-down regulation. Although, you already knew that. Right?

Facts vs Beliefs (George Monbiot edition)

When the facts, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? 

- Apocryphally attributed to John Maynard Keynes

A criticism often leveled at environmentalists is that they are far too wedded to their own ideological agendas to ever partake in rational debate.

Ignore, for the moment, that such criticisms are usually dripping in hypocrisy. (My experience is that extremists on both side of the aisle not only deserve each other, but have a remarkable gift for pointing out their own flaws in their opponents.) The unfortunate truth is that such characterisations of blinkered "green" thinking does hit the mark in many cases. While it's hard to fault someone's sincerity in arguing passionately for the environment, too often reason is thrust aside at the alter of Gaia.

All this points towards why I enjoy reading George Monbiot. His essays often provoke, but they always make you think. Alongside his ability to construct compelling arguments using detailed lines of evidence, his honesty makes him a rare commodity in the world of "opinion" columnists. He is not scared to challenge power or orthodoxy, but is also prepared to admit when gets something wrong.

Now, I've praised Monbiot along these lines before (e.g. here). However, he provides some deeper insight into this admirable trait in today's column. [Background: New data made available by a UK researchers show that resource use (at least in the UK) is diminishing with, and may even be caused by, GDP growth.]

Is the 'peak consumption' hypothesis correct?

I won't deny it: my first reaction on seeing the results of Chris Goodall's research into our use of resources was: "I don't want this to be true." Obviously, I'd like to see our environmental impacts reduced, as swiftly and painlessly as possible. But if his hypothesis is right – that economic growth has been accompanied by a reduction in our consumption of stuff and might even have driven it – this would put me in the wrong. I'm among those who have argued that a decline in our use of resources requires less economic activity, or at least a transition to a steady-state economy. 

[snip]

That was what the available research suggested at the time. But if Goodall's findings are correct, they put a coach and horses through something I strongly believed to be true. 

So, for a few minutes, I engaged in what psychologists call protective cognition. I started scouring his findings for reasons to reject them. It took an effort of will to shake myself out of it and remember that the intellectually honest response to new information is to adjust our beliefs to the evidence, rather than adjust the evidence to our beliefs. We must question and test new findings of course, but we must do so as dispassionately as possible. Otherwise we are in danger of doing more harm than good, and of wasting our lives promoting the wrong causes. Anti-vaccine campaigners please take note. 

Starting again, this time reading it as objectively as I could, I saw that Goodall's report appears to be rigorous and unbiased. It answered many of the questions and objections I raised as I read it. People like me have to step back and consider the possibility that Chris Goodall could be right when he states:

"Absolute decoupling of resource use from economic growth may possibly have occurred … GDP growth, because it brings technological progress which is correlated with more efficient use of resources, may help reduce environmental damage."

[...] 

Monbiot does go on to ask some legitimate questions that might challenge the extent to which we can generalise Goodhall's findings. (For instance, by pointing out that declining resource use in the UK is a relatively new phenomenon with much uncertainty over the longer term.) However, the principle is worth repeating: "The intellectually honest response to new information is to adjust our beliefs to the evidence, rather than adjust the evidence to our beliefs."

Homeopathic A&E

Following Monday's post, which touched on the murky world of alternative medicine... South African comedian, Warren Robertson links to a brilliant Mitchell and Webb skit, "Homeopathic A&E":

Quote of the day - Consensus

Reading through the comments on a YouTube video is normally enough to make you despair for humanity. Every now and again, however, you come across some gold. Like this:

"It's a personal opinion, which I feel should become popular consensus."

[Note to self: Claim as own.]