• World population is expected to increase from 7 billion today to over 9 billion in 2050.
• World GDP is projected to almost quadruple by 2050, despite the recent recession.
• Cities are likely to absorb the total world population growth between 2010 and 2050. By 2050, nearly 70% of the world population is projected to be living in urban areas.
• By 2050, without new policies a world economy four times larger than today is projected to need 80% more energy in 2050 without new policy action.
• By 2050, without new policies greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by 50%, primarily due to a 70% growth in energy-related CO2 emissions.
• The atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases could reach 685 parts per million (ppm) CO2-equivalents by 2050. As a result, global average temperature is projected to be 3°C to 6°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
• The greenhouse gas mitigation actions pledged by countries in the Cancún Agreements at the United Nations Climate Change Conference will not be enough to prevent the global average temperature from exceeding the 2°C threshold, unless very rapid and costly emission reductions are realised after 2020. They are more in line with a 3°C increase.
• The Outlook suggests that global carbon pricing sufficient to lower greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 70% in 2050 compared to the Baseline scenario and limit greenhouse gas concentrations to 450 ppm would slow economic growth by only 0.2 percentage points per year on average. This would cost roughly 5.5% of global GDP in 2050. This pales alongside the potential cost of inaction on climate change.
• Delaying action is costly. Delayed or only moderate action up to 2020 (such as implementing the Copenhagen/Cancún pledges only, or waiting for better technologies to come on stream) would increase the pace and scale of efforts needed after 2020. It would lead to 50% higher costs in 2050 compared to timely action, and potentially entail higher environmental risk.
• Support to fossil fuel production and use amounted to between US$45-75 billion per annum in recent years in OECD countries. Developing and emerging economies provided over US$400 billion in fossil fuel consumer subsidies in 2010 according to International Energy Agency estimates.
• By 2050, without new policies freshwater availability will be further strained, with 2.3 billion more people than today (in total over 40% of the global population) projected to be living in river basins under severe water stress especially in North and South Africa, and South and Central Asia.
• Global water demand is projected to increase by some 55%, due to growing demand from manufacturing (+400%), thermal electricity generation (+140%) and domestic use (+130%). In the face of these competing demands, there will be little scope for expanding irrigation water use under this scenario. The main increases in water demand will be in the emerging economies and developing countries.
• The MDG for sanitation will not be met by 2015; by 2050 1.4 billion people are projected to be still without access to basic sanitation.

It is good to see the OECD focussing more on the costs of inaction – particularly on climate change. Our policy debates among politicians in Australia focus overwhelmingly on the costs of action, without taking seriously enough the potentially catastrophic and irreversible costs of inaction. It’s like letting your house burn down because you’re only thinking about the cost of the water that’s needed to put out the fire.

The OECD report is described as an ‘environmental outlook’, but anyone interested in the social and economic implications should take a good look at this report. The social consequences, particularly for the poor, of failing to arrest climate change and other forms of environmental degradation will be  … well, ‘severe’ hardly begins to describe it.

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Spirituality and religion is also deeply personal of course, and it was also a core part of my own journey, having studied theology in my 20s. Over the past few years that importance had been fading for me for various reasons, but now, to my great surprise, it has surged back into my consciousness, both for my own personal journey and also its relevance and importance for eradicating poverty, and shifting to an ecologically sustainable economic path.

So I’ve added a new static page on Spirituality, which I’ll update periodically. I welcome suggestions for resources and links. I’ll also start making my posts a bit more diverse than the purely ‘professional’ stuff on economics, climate change etc, which, let’s be honest, can be a bit dry at times. Hopefully this broader approach will make this site a bit more reflective of a truly integrated development policy research agenda.

It’s been a terrific week, with presentations on everything from bees, to finance to the Mayan civilization. Oh – and the snorkelling has been spectacular. This morning’s sitings were a bunch of sea turtles, a reef shark, a gazillion tropical fish and a half dozen manta rays. Brilliant.

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This week I attended a terrific talk by John Christensen who is the founder of the Tax Justice Network. Around half of the finance for world trade passes through tax havens to avoid taxation. Tax havens hide and facilitate the laundering of trillions of dollars on behalf of dictators, organised crime, high-wealth individuals and multinationals. Some $11 trillion in assets are held offshore, which deprives governments of around $250 billion annually.

Why are they a problem? (From http://www.tackletaxhavens.com/ )

1. Tax havens help rich people hide money that should be spent on schools, hospitals, roads and other public services

2. Tax havens force poor people to pay the taxes of the rich

3. Tax havens help criminals hide their loot

4. Tax havens help dictators and their cronies plunder the resources of developing countries

5. Tax havens allow banks to dodge financial rules and regulations

6. Tax havens corrupt markets, concealing insider dealing and supporting aggressive tax dodging by multinational companies

7. Tax havens create a private world of secrecy, impunity and power for rich elites

8. Tax havens widen the gap between rich and poor people

9. Tax havens make laws in secret which affect us all

10. Tax havens degrade our faith in democracy

The Tax Justice Network  also publishes a financial secrecy index which is a monumental amount of work and well worth checking out. Follow them on twitter at @TackleTaxHavens

Nicholas Shaxon’s book ‘Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World’ is also a terrific overview.

UPDATE: Check out the great article in The Age by Ben Butler on ‘Counting the Cost of Tax Havens’

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From Torresol’s website:

Gemasolar is the first commercial-scale plant in the world to apply central tower receiver and molten salt heat storage technology. The relevance of this plant lies in its technological uniqueness, since it opens up the way for new thermosolar electrical generation technology.

Characteristics of Gemasolar:

• Rated electrical power: 19.9 MW
• Net electrical production expected: 110 GWh/year
• Solar field: 2,650 heliostats on 185 hectares
• Heat storage system: the molten salt storage tank permits independent electrical generation for up to 15 hours without any solar feed.

The seminar was hosted by Beyond Zero Emisisons and the slides and more information are available here. Well worth a look.

Another Melbourne University seminar that looks interesting this Wednesday is on ‘The Future of Solar Power in Australia‘.  There’s a bit of a theme here!

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• Ms Fiona Calvert, Director Strategy and Resource Efficiency Policy, Policy and Communications Division at the Department of Transport, Victoria;
• Prof Nicholas Low,Professor of Environmental Planning, Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, and Associate Director and Founder of GAMUT  – The Australasian Centre for the Governance and Management of Urban Transport;
• Mr Patrick Hearps, Research Fellow, Melbourne Energy Institute, University of Melbourne;
• Mr William McDougall, Principal, Public Transport, Practice Leader, Sinclair Knight Merz.

There was a live webcast, but I’m not sure if the footage is being uploaded somewhere. I hope so.

UPDATE: The webcast has been uploaded here.

One point I’d missed was a fascinating Guardian article by John Vidal on information from Wikileaks that cables from the US embassy in Riyadh “urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom’s crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.” If true, and few seem to believe that official Saudi reserve statements are accurate, the economic implications are serious.

MEI’s next seminar is on November 16 on ‘The Future of Solar Power’ - should be interesting.

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So to break the silence, here’s a clip of a talk I gave on the 10th of August at an event organised by Lighter Footprints. Thanks guys for organising a terrific night and for uploading the clip. The slides I’m referring to can be found here.

To see the other speakers, Alan Pears from RMIT University and the Federal MP for Chisolm Anna Burke, click here and scroll down to the entry for 10th August.

Alan and I gave similar talks this week at a Community Forum that Anna organised. My slightly updated slides can be found here.

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Thanks for visiting. Well this site is very clearly under construction – including the colour schemes. I’ll gradually migrate much of the content over from my previous site which can be found here.

Regards,

Brett