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e regarding home building the tories green paper on housing suggested incentivising new house building by matching local authorities council tax take for each new house built for six years with special incentives for affordable housing a great idea but sadly no mention of this in the recent budget instead eric pickles the local government secretary has abandoned local council building targets resulting in the reversal of many thousands of planned new homes this will of course have a knock on effect on the construction sector and jobs these non sensical policies have no doubt been made easier to drive through by the demotion of the housing minister the lively grant schnapps from the coalition s cabinet if anyone can find some good news in the new government s plans for housing please do let me know the green investment bank is born 1 july 2010 in future economy tags banking financial reform green investment bank by nef leave a comment tony greenham is head of the finance and business programme at nef big sticks big solutions and the unmentionable funding proposal now don t get me wrong i am a big fan of the proposals launched this week by the green investment bank gib commission let s celebrate a report that explicitly recognises market failures and applies some big brains to how to encourage investment in useful low carbon infrastructure let s hope that george osborne having set up the commission acts quickly to create the gib so why mention big sticks in launching the report to a packed house at the green alliance summer reception commission chairman bob wigley was refreshingly blunt surveying the dismal impact of previous policies to encourage domestic households into energy efficiency and renewables he observed that the old regime was one of grants and advice to really get anywhere what we need is a regime of sticks grants advice and loans the gib can do something about the last three the first requires political guts penalising house owners for not being green enough go bob go however mr wigley was understandably diplomatic when asked his opinion of the fortitude of the government s guts and what of big solutions isn t that what we need well up to a point yes there will be many large scale infrastructure projects to fund but the commission identifies that most investment funds are too big to invest in small scale community energy projects of which we need tens of thousands the solution it seems is to aggregate the small morsels of community energy into a suitably large and appetising dish for the institutional fund managers to feast on instead how about making it easier for people to invest directly in their local energy co operative and not give the cash to the giant institutional funds in the first place oh no hold on how would the city earn its cut best not go down that route and finally what about the unmentionable funding proposal the commission says we need to find 550bn over 10 years to invest in the low carbon transition a questioner from the floor pointed out that the bank of england had pumped 200bn into the economy in as many months to save the financial system this has clearly not caused a zimbabwe style monetary collapse despite the orthodox horror of printing money but now it seems that it is rather impolite to mention it when there is spare productive capacity in the economy why not use green quantitative easing to kick start the gib bob was characteristically blunt in his evasiveness i m afraid as a former member of the court of the bank of england i m going to dodge that question 77 months and counting 1 july 2010 in global interdependence tags climate change one hundred months by andy wimbush leave a comment andrew simms is nef s policy director and head of nef s climate change programme if you want to build a ship don t call together some men just to gather wood prepare tools and distribute tasks proclaimed the french writer antoine de saint exupéry instead teach them the longing for the endless sea the evidence of the recent budget in which the environment was like a salad leaf abandoned to wilt in the june sun suggests that the wrong approach has been taken to building a green economy it s a shame because there is no shortage of tasks and tools to distribute and a long list of patient rational reasons why we should do so for example in the recently published zero carbon britain 2030 both the ample potential of switching in a short period of time to a genuinely clean energy system and the dangers of not doing so are comprehensively examined in these austerity minded times in which the government is acutely concerned about our balance of trade a single figure makes the point based on an oil price of 78 a barrel which could prove far too modest replacing our own north sea oil and gas with like for like imports will add 53 billion to the trade deficit the report estimates even at a time of broader cuts the potential economic social and environmental benefits of spending on a carbon detox for the uk economy have been repeatedly and exhaustively made neither is there any mystery about the necessary conditions needed to make it happen new sources of funding to encourage investment are needed from for example a green investment bank which has been approved but not capitalised and a high price for carbon to make change economically attractive there are the easy reliable no brainer initiatives such as the mass roll out of energy efficiency makeovers for buildings wind wave and solar power which in turn create jobs but there is also no shortage of more exotic less reliable ideas to keep people entertained this month cloud whitening or so called seeding to help reflect heat away from the atmosphere enjoyed a shower of new interest research from the carnegie institution and the indian institute for science suggested the potential for a cooling effect but not without consequences it reduced overall global rainfall and simultaneously created a more extreme pattern of monsoons and yet for all the time that the rational case for action is put and its benefits outlined we are failing not just to leave the harbour on our journey to an economy that operates in balance with the biosphere but our boat lies in pieces by the dockside incomplete and construction barely begun a longing for the adventure in unknown seas in equal parts fearful and exhilarating is yet to be released admittedly at the moment this is made more difficult by the fact that when most people watch pictures of the sea it s typically covered in a vast oil slick in the gulf of mexico courtesy of bp on current trends in 77 months time by the end of 2016 it will no longer be likely that we will be able to stay on the right side of the risks that surround destabilising our climate system yes we need to start building our low carbon energy arks but we need more than that an excited longing for things to be different better the human impulse at the heart of modern society has been brilliantly co opted by the sellers of disposable upgradable consumer goods not to mention by tv makeover shows counter intuitively in some ways we embrace change but we demand it in unambitious ways through novelty redesigned gadgets with extra functions and added apps in this sense we approach the world on the assumption that it is never good enough the impulse may be destructive when harnessed to conspicuous consumption but does it have to be a bad thing innately and can t it be dematerialised and redirected from simply having more stuff towards a better way of being the thinker zygmunt bauman makes the point that the the good society is the society that is convinced it is not good enough he calls gardeners obsessive compulsive utopians always trying to improve the world around them in a job that is never complete as we try to ensure a world fit for future generations have a look around and ask yourselves is this the best that we can do what would it take and what could we achieve if we were able to harness our transformative impulse for good instead of tying ourselves into a bloodless technocratic exercise what if we were able to find a longing for the endless sea a surplus of technology 1 july 2010 in general by stephen whitehead leave a comment stephen whitehead is a project manager in the democracy and participation team at nef this week i was lucky enough to see american social media evangelist clay shirky talking about his latest book the cognitive surplus shirky argued that the new creative and collaborative possibilities unlocked by the internet will allow us to unleash this surplus the vast reserves of time skills and enthusiasm that we currently fritter away in front of the television to solve some of society s biggest problems but while i liked much of what he had to say it struck me that shirky is being both too too ambitious and too cautious too ambitious that is about technology and too cautious about human potential to begin with i have a problem with shirky s idea of an untapped cognitive surplus although many of us may spend a large amount of time passively consuming media right now this has hardly been the case througout human history the so called cognitive surplus is a product of the hollowing out of social life through increasing atomisation the decline in social networks chronicled by observers like robert putnam and rooted in a labour market which demands increased flexibility mass migration both domestic and international and the erosion of traditional class identities is what has robbed us of ways to use our energies in ways which are both productive and social and just as once upon a time we had institutions which offered us outlets for our time enthusiasm and creativity from evening classes to amateur sports to churches there s no reason why we can t do so again the internet is one place where we can spend our cognitive surplus but it s by no means the only place and there are reasons why it might not be the best place in his first book shirky talked about how ridiculously easy group formation enabled by the internet let us find people who shared our interests and collaborate with them but this is not the only way to find people the most vibrant cities and towns create spaces parks libraries cafes even pavements where we can mix with people who are very different to us and yet who we share something important with that they are our neighbours by keeping us away from what jane jacobs called the serendipity of sidewalk contacts online spaces filter our social networks to people just like us potentially making us less tolerant and more extreme in our views there are other problems too online collaboration is very good at certain kinds of tasks shirky drew on three different examples the first liftshare is an american site which lets people find others to share long roadtrips with the second patients like me lets patients log their condition symptoms and medication and then aggregates and anonymises that information to share it with researchers and the third wikipedia needs no introduction but all of these sites have something in common they are about bringing together information and presenting it in a useful way and all three approach that task by crowdsourcing getting lots of people to make small easy contributions which by virtue of their sheer number add up to something very big that s a powerful tool but it s only one sort of tool that s a powerful tool but it s only one sort of tool if crowdsourcing is a hammer it doesn t mean that all the problems we face are nails what s more crowdsourcing by reducing the work of individuals to bitesize contextless contributions offers a hollowed out idea of what it means to create things in essence it s a new form of assembly line which transforms intellectual work into deskilled mechanical processes it may be extremely effective but maybe that s not the only criteria by which we should judge it creation is important not just because of the things that we create but also and perhaps more importantly because of the way that it effects the creator making art music software code or even blog posts has value not just because of it s capacity to change the world but also because of its capacity to make us feel inspired valuable and powerful working with other people in close collaboration at a human scale creates a sense of community which can t be reproduced by making tiny contributions to a project that s vast beyond our capacity to imagine the inconvenient friction of working together with sometimes difficult other people in a shared space is not just an obstacle to creating wonderful things it s also a way in which creating them makes us better people shirky then is too ambitious in that he argues that online collaboration is the tool which will allow us to solve the problems of the 21st century it s powerful true but it s only one of the tools that we need but he s also too cautious in that he asks too little of people he offers them easy participation without perhaps reflecting that there might be a value to doing difficult things reporting back from the steady state economy conference 29 june 2010 in future economy global interdependence tags alternative indicators climate change economic growth financial crisis gdp measures of progress steady state by nef 1 comment our guest blogger lucy glynn is a writer and activist based in leeds the global financial crisis climate change poverty and bp the extent of the problem is clear but what is the best way to solve it this was the question asked at the first steady state economy conference held in leeds on june 19 the conference was organised by economic justice for all ejfa a leeds economics and sustainability debating group and the center for the advancement of the steady state economy casse with the aim of coming up with some concrete policy recommendations if the leaders of the main political parties in the uk are not thinking seriously about an alternative to economic growth then we the people must urgently start and develop the discussion dr lorna arblaster of ejfa explained it was a discussion that was urgently needed the conference attracted over 250 academics economists community organisations activists ngos and business people who played as much a part in making the day a resounding success as the keynote speakers peter victor author of managing without growth and professor in environmental studies york university canada andrew simms policy director at nef dan o neill european director of casse and tim jackson author of prosperity without growth and professor of sustainable development university of surrey peter victor opened the conference by challenging our fear of a no growth disaster and reminding us that until 1950 there was no discussion of economic growth as something to strive for can we have full employment no poverty fiscal balance and reduced greenhouse gas emissions without relying on economic growth he asked you bet was his resoundin...