10 Propositions on economic growth vs climate change

(OK, so I lied. This is a scatter of propositions....)

Andrew Simms of NEF on Newsnight (23 January, 2008)
and a response by Richard D North

Andrew Simms made no economic remarks.

Andrew said growth:
intensified climate change;
didn't produce well-being;
wasn't trickling down to the poor.

He implied that recession may be good on all these scores. He proposed no policy.

What would a Simms policy be?
(1) Exhort people to be less greedy?
(2) Tax carbon?
(3) Tax wealth?
(4) Rig trade rules toward the poor?

These are all in play as a matter of conventional politics and only (2) is pretty uncontroversial.

What RDN would have said:

I am more interested in what we are likely to do than what we ought to do.
We will test some economic and regulatory instruments to test their efficacy.
We will deploy those which we think work and which are cheap and convenient.
It is very unlikely that Westerners will risk denting economic well-being.
Westerners may slightly downsize or reframe their concepts of affluence and its merits.
Severe climate change soon may slightly increase our appetite for measures.
Severe climate change may soon produce the recession which dampens carbon emissions.
It may not.
Economic growth may become largely decoupled from carbon emissions.
It may not.

More generally it isn't clear:
that we need endless economic growth;
how to get economic growth for the poor;
that the poor need the rich to get richer;
that inequality helps the poor;
that only wealth motivates entrepreneurship.

But neither is it all clear that anyone has devised a better system for optimising human well-being.

ends