The Queensland government has abandoned the idea of piping water from the Burdekin to the Southeast corner. A $350 000 study by GHD concluded that the proposal would be ruinously (as in $14 billion) expensive. I could have told them that for free, just by looking at the studies on Colin’s canal. Still, the Beatty government originally announced plans to spend $3 million on a feasibility study, so the GHD study is a bargain. And the big news is that the proposal is dead, once and for all.
Category: Environment
RSMG blog back on air
After a period of quiescence, the Risk and Sustainable Management Group blog is back on the air. Some recent posts:
David on Monopoly Buyers and Market Based Instruments looks at the buyback of water from irrigators
David on Aus gets bigger but has funding increased? asks whether the expansion of our territorial waters will be matched by an increase in management capacity. (JQ notes:Certainly the responsible minister, Martin Ferguson, seems concerned only with the possibility of striking oil).
Peggy reports on the International salinity forum
Wander over, read and discuss!
Guest post from John Mashey
I got a very long comment from John Mashey caught in moderation, so I’ve decided to put it up as a guest post. John makes a number of important points, but doesn’t convince me that oil is essential to economic activity, for reasons I hope to spell out in a reply. In the meantime, readers are invited to chew on this. As always, but particularly for guest posts, civilised and courteous discussion please.
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Food
The big increase in food prices over the last six months or so raises lots of issues, of which I’ll try to cover a few.
The first arises from the fact that prices for commodities, including oil as well as most ag commodities, are typically quoted in $US. In a situation where, for obvious reasons, the value of the $US is declining against all major currencies, this can be quite misleading. Measured against the euro, the currency of the world’s largest unified economy, the increase looks a lot less steep. The declining usefulness of the $US as a unit of account is another step in the process of transition away from a world in which the $US is a reserve currency. More on what will replace it soon, I hope.
In substantive terms, the increase in $US commodity prices is a big problem for the many Asian economies that have pursued some kind of peg to the $US as a means of maintaining export competitiveness. The adverse impact on domestic consumers is now becoming obvious, and the only solution is to abandon the dollar peg and allow an appreciation. China is already moving in this direction.
A second important point is the impact of demand from the biofuel sector, particularly for corn in the US. The idea of making biofuels from food crops was always problematic and the subsidy regime in the US makes it more so. The current food crisis should make subsidies for food-based biofuels politically and economically untenable, pushing the industry away from this easy short term solution and in the direction of sources such as switch grass, grown on marginal or non-arable land.
Finally, the biggest increases have been in wheat prices, reflecting the drought in Australia and in some other wheat producing countries (Kazakstan?). It seems likely, though it’s still impossible to prove, that human-induced climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of drought. So, it’s important not to regard climate change as a problem for the future. In all probability, adverse effects are already here.
The sustainability of improving living standards
I’ve been a bit under the weather for the last few days, so I thought I’d get my readers to do the work for me. Here’s a piece I’ve been working on for the Fin. Comments and criticism much appreciated.
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Lomborg on the mythical DDT ban
One of the great themes (or maybe memes) of rightwing delusionism in recent years has been the alleged ban on the antimalarial use of DDT, supposed to have cost millions (or, on some accounts, billions) of lives. It’s not hard to prove that this ban is totally mythical and that the failure of DDT to eradicate malaria, evident well before the 1972 ban on agricultural use in the US, was primarily due to resistance and cost factors. It’s also possible to trace the myth to its roots in rightwing fringe movements like the LaRouchites and the John Birch Society, and document its popularisation by tobacco lobbyists like Roger Bate and Steve Milloy, who used it to attack WHO. (Search on DDT here or over at Tim Lambert’s site for the details) But it’s harder to tell when this fringe conspiracy theory became part of rightwing orthodoxy.
This 2001 debate between Bjorn Lomborg and Tom Burke in Prospect is unfortunately paywalled, but you can read much of the text here. The money quote from Lomborg
DDT has helped wipe out endemic malaria in both Europe and north America, and its cheap protection still works wonders for third world malaria
It’s unsurprising that Lomborg takes a favorable view of DDT. What’s notable here is that, as of 2001, he hadn’t got the memo about evil environmentalists banning it. On the other hand, as this old post of mine shows, the myth had made it into more general rightwing circulation by 2003, and it was taken as incontestable truth by most rightwingers a year or two later.
Videoconferencing news
I’m doing my first videoconference presentation for the year on Friday, appropriately enough at a University of Sydney one-day seminar on the economics of sustainability. My talk will be on “Uncertainty, awareness and the precautionary principle”. Anyone interested can get details from Michael Harris M.Harris@usyd.edu.au. I’ve lined up two more videoconferences for the first half of this year, and I hope to do some more in the second half. Having been invited to the 2020 Summit in a few weeks time, and with some more bookings already in place, I don’t plan to accept any more invitations for physical travel this year.
The other part of my plan to reduce my carbon footprint and the amount of time I spend travelling is to make one trip cover multiple events. I’m in Melbourne right now, for a visit that includes three presentations and several meetings.
With all this, I’m still travelling a fair bit more than I would like. But I think there is a network effect here. The more people get used to videoconferencing as an alternative, the better it will work, and the more demand there will be for technical improvements.
Update I’ve just given the presentation and I thought it went pretty smoothly, certainly a lot easier than a trip to Sydney. The picture quality for my presentation was fine, and the computer link (using BridgIt) went well. The video and sound quality from the other end (a large lecture room as opposed to a talking head studio presentation) was adequate, but that’s certainly an area of potential improvement. Here’s the presentation in PDF format
The truth will set you free?
There’s been a lot of discussion here about genetically modified foods and related issues. My view has been that the current state of scientific evidence does not support a general ban on GM foods but that consumers may reasonably want to be informed about whether the food they are consuming has been produced using technologies they may object to, either on ethical grounds, or because they are unconvinced about the safety of GM technology. In this respect, I’ve been very critical of Monsanto, which pushed hard to get GM foods onto the US market without any labelling requirement. Among other things, I thought this likely to be a counterproductive strategy, intensifying hostility to GM technology.
Some of my more free-market readers have argued against me on labelling suggesting that, if consumers want this information, market processes will ensure the emergence of a GM-free label. Thinking about it in the abstract, this will be true if the consumer preference for non-GM food is strong enough. And if consumers don’t care at all, then labelling won’t make any difference. There’s an intermediate zone where the choice of labelling regime might make a difference, and this has led me to support compulsory labelling.
These speculations can now be confronted with some real-world experience, with some very interesting results. As well as GM foods, Monsanto markets Posilac, a synthetic version of bovine growth hormone for cows that increases milk yields. Farmers producing milk without Posilac have advertised the fact, and have been very successful in capturing market share.
As a result, Monsanto, through a front group, Afact, is now lobbying legislatures to ban the advertising of non-BST milk. Their argument is that, since there is no scientifically demosntrable difference between the two products, advertising the way in which they are produced can only mislead consumers. So now it’s the pro-GM side who are arguing for intervention to suppress information they think consumers can’t handle.
Buying back water
My Fin column last Thursday was on the Rudd government’s announcement of a tender to buy irrigation water rights, with the resulting water to be managed for environmental flows. This is a long overdue step
Videopresentation invitation
With the release of the Garnaut report, it’s time for me to look again at ways to reduce my carbon footprint. I’ve been trying to reduce air travel, turning down invitations and offering to do videoconferences instead. That’s had some success, but mostly people aren’t set up to handle video, and, by the time invitations are made, there are often arrangements in place that make it difficult.
So, I’m going to take the initiative, and announce that I’m available to offer video presentations on a wide range of topics (climate change, water, infrastructure, digital economy & culture, employment and macro policy in general, among others). It’s easiest for me in business hours (9-5 pm, Mon-Fri, AEST) as that’s when I can use the UQ facilities, but I’m willing to look at alternatives at other times, if there’s someone who can handle the setup.
Obviously, I can only do a finite number of presentations, either in person or by video, so get in with your request.
John Quiggin 