Less Carbon Dioxide

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Mini

Continuing Sketching Weakly’s mission to Rule the World. This post follows on from If Sketching Weakly Ruled the World, and precedes More Nature.

I was lucky enough to be part of the Oxford Citizen’s Assembly on Climate Change. It was an amazing and enlightening experience. Often, how to change individual behaviour seemed to be the issue, especially as the majority of emissions were coming from buildings (space heating) and travel.

How do we change behaviour? By making the desired behaviour the easiest option and/or the cheapest option, so that making the right choices is a no-brainer.

To change individual behaviour there needs to be a catalyst for change. Back in June 2007 it was OK to smoke in restaurants and pubs. That seems absolutely unthinkable today. There has been an enormous change in smoking behaviour. And that happened because on July 1st 2007 a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces came into force by government legislation. Before it happened there was huge resistance, but from the perspective of now it was enlightened legislation that changed public health for the better. The ban was simple and clear, and after it had happened it was accepted. It is that kind of legislation we need now, to defeat our twin demons of carbon dioxide and biodiversity loss.

Pricing carbon can make change in behaviour happen. But we know a rise in prices for fuel is unpopular – see President Macron’s struggle with the Gilets Jaunes. So it seems that carbon pricing is avoided as a strategy – it’s a bit of an elephant in the room. Grand Green New Deals are proposed, but they never seem to directly tackle the issue that is essentially free to emit carbon dioxide into our shared atmosphere.

But it is possible to price carbon in a way that is fair, empowering, simple and visible.

Carbon Dioxide is a difficult subject to inspire passion. Unlike plastic, it is invisible. When we emit it, we can’t see it. We can see the plastic trail that we leave, but it’s impossible to grasp what size your own carbon dioxide emissions are. But carbon dioxide is key, because the blanket of greenhouse gases is making Earth warm, melting the arctic and Antarctic and pushing temperatures worldwide out of the range of recorded history, towards a new climate that none of us or other life-forms on earth are adapted for.

But the good thing is, we CAN change this by shutting down the flood of CO2 leaking from humankind into the atmosphere.

HOW can we take action on CO2?

We can take action by putting a meaningful price on carbon, aiming towards $80-$100/tonne.

It is the nudge the world needs. A puny 5p plastic bag charge drastically reduced plastic bag use by 85%. Pricing really changes behaviour.

Our modern economy reflects countless choices, made by billions of people all over the world. A broad-based carbon price influences them all. Nothing else can.” Tim Harford

But what is the best way to price carbon?

I’ve compared different carbon pricing options. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (which is what the UK seems to be modelling its carbon pricing system on, post-Brexit) lets the market control the carbon price (so it ends up ineffectively low) and doesn’t apply to all industries or the general public. It’s a system that is invisible and complicated.

What I’ve discovered is:

A Carbon Fee and Dividend (Climate Income) stands out as the most fair, empowering, simple, and visible way to put a significant price on Carbon.

What is Carbon Fee & Dividend?

The government places a price on CO2 at source.

The revenue is returned equally to all citizens via a monthly/annual lump sum or ‘dividend’

I think it is the only way to make a carbon price that is high enough for effective change to be palatable.

There are a few good things about a carbon fee and dividend plan. Here they are.

It can appeal to people who call for social justice and want to battle inequality

The lump sum system is progressive: it really benefits lower earners most. The richest (and largest users of CO₂-intensive energy) benefit least. Anders Fremstad of Colorado State University and Mark Paul of Duke University calculate that taxing a tonne of CO₂ at $49 would leave 59% of Americans worse off, including 75% of the bottom half, if the revenue were used to lower personal-income taxes. By contrast, recycling the receipts as lump-sum payments (Dividends) would leave 89% of the bottom half with an average net gain of $788.

The 6 lowest income groups all break even or are better off, with the poorest getting the biggest benefits. The wealthiest, highest fuel users, are the worst off.

Compared to tax rebates, it’s demonstrably fair as all get an equal dividend.

It’s also possible to get dividends to the poorest and most marginalised sections of society, by, for example “investigating inventive ways of paying the dividend to ensure that the most vulnerable receive it. Linking the dividend to national insurance numbers would be one way to pay the dividend, but this may mean that the most vulnerable miss out. The Government should investigate whether new technology can be used to pay the dividend securely through a mobile app to ensure as many eligible people as possible receive it.” The Future of Carbon Pricing, policyexchange.org.uk

It is motivating and empowering

Through their dividend the public can support renewables in their choice of what energy to buy. The dividend is a visible sign of your purchasing power, and the public is trusted to choose how to spend it; wise choices bring a win-win virtuous spiral of energy-source-change away from fossil fuels. The dividend also gives voters an immediate interest in the fight against climate change – a lump sum arriving in your bank account is a very interesting event. All green energy sources benefit by becoming comparatively cheaper.

It sends a signal to industry that the carbon price will be a permanent policy

The Dividend, once people are used to it, is hard to withdraw by future governments (see what’s happened with UK Winter Fuel Payments) – and so acts as a pledge to industry that the carbon price will endure.

These three aspects of carbon fee and dividend mean is can appeal to: groups who want action on climate change but also social justice; the general public who will find higher fuel prices unacceptable; businesses who want a clear steer to what the carbon future will be.

Carbon is infused in all our lives and all our choices. We need to tackle climate change with a way that involves and empowers everybody, is fair and acceptable and progressive, and that also is able to set a high enough price for carbon to bring about change, in a way industry can see will not be overturned by a change of government.

Carbon Fee & Dividend: fair, empowering, simple, visible.

If Sketching Weakly ruled the world…

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Mini

…well, it would be a disaster, wouldn’t it? But every now and then, a bit like daydreaming about what one’s Desert Island Disc choices would be, it’s nice to imagine what one would do if unwisely left in charge of things. So here are Sketching Weakly’s ruminations….

Making the visible invisible, is the usual magic trick. But making the Invisible visible, is the magic trick we need.

What can we learn from lockdown? What have we discovered from this strange experience of imposed isolation? To me, two things have emerged:

People will step up to a Big Ask

If people are given a clear fair rule they will follow it, accept it and be prepared to make reasonable sacrifices.

People have been willing to completely change their way of living in order to prevent the Covid19 virus rampaging through the population.

People love Nature.

To most people, nature is really important and a source of joy and wonder.

People have been treasuring their daily walks, getting to know their local patches of nature, and watching the small changes as Spring 2020 has been coming in, and transforming into Summer.

Can we use these two lessons to tackle climate change?

It often seems like the issues the world faces are endless, and to address the world’s problems we have to change everything. But it can help to concentrate on the two biggest existential threats to life (as we know it) on Earth. Those two threats are: loss of biodiversity, and carbon dioxide.

CO₂ is invisible. When we emit it, we can’t see it. We can see the plastic trail that we leave, but it’s impossible to grasp what size your own carbon dioxide emissions are. But carbon dioxide is key, because the blanket of greenhouse gases is making the Earth warm, melting the Arctic and Antarctic and pushing temperatures worldwide out of the range of recorded history, towards a new climate that none of us or other life-forms on Earth are adapted for.

But the good thing is, we CAN change this by shutting down the flood of CO₂ leaking from humankind into the atmosphere.

Action on Climate Change for me boils down to two main asks:

Less CO₂ and more nature.

Can we use the magic trick of making the INVISIBLE VISIBLE, to make less CO₂ and more nature?

Yes we can and here’s how. I’m going to do carbon dioxide first. Then I’m going to do nature. You can do them in any order you like.

WHAT DO WE WANT MORE OF? AND WHAT DO WE NEED LESS OF?

Lost in Picture Book Maps

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Mini

This post first appeared on Picture Book Den’s Blogspot My First Maps
My first map-love as a child was my grandfather’s Reader’s Digest Atlas of the World. Now I own it, but I used to just visit it at my Grandpa’s house. It was really big, big enough for a small child to be lost in, and my grandpa Noel Grey had inscribed his initials NWG on all the places he had visited, prospecting for oil I suspect. Here he is at large around South America.

Here’s a photo he took of Ernest Hemingway with an enormous marlin – apparently they went fishing together. On one map he has urgently written GOLD, somewhere along the Amazon, in Peru.
There’s a bit of a diagram too.

I started writing this post before the fires in the Amazon had beome the terrifying news they are now. From this perspective my Grandfather’s charting of ‘GOLD’ is a bit bitterly ironic; anyone with any sense now knows that the most precious treasure to be found in the Amazon is the rainforest itself

Maps of Discovery, Power and Plunder

A map is a place to roam about in the imagination. A map is a record of the discovered and the undiscovered – terra incognita. A map is a plan for plundering, or a diagram of how to carve the world up, a record of ownership.

Here is the Carta marina, a wallmap of Scandinavia, by Olaus Magnus. It is the first map of the Nordic countries to give details and place names, initially published in 1539.

It seems to be awash with splendid mythical beasts. Did the map-maker think they were real, or was drawing the map of the far-away giving them permission to invent the most bizarre creatures they could concoct? Creatures include a literal sea-cow and sea-unicorn, whales with flowing tresses, a sea-elephant or Rosmarus and a Polypus which looks like a giant lobster. But it looks like Magnus was trying to depict what was really there – the land animals are fairly realistic, and many of the sea-creatures could be reinventions of existing ones: the sea unicorn: a narwhal, the Rosmarus: a walrus, the Polypus perhaps an octopus. Because they’re water beasts they are hard to get the measure of without diving equipment. Here are a selection of map-beasts:

Probably a whale but quite boar-like

a Polypus, allegedly

This has everything

a Belena – whale – with an orca

You can explore the monsters here:

Mulling with a Map

‘I wisely started with a map and made the story fit,’ JRR Tolkien once wrote.

In older children’s books, a map may well be the only illustration. The map is often a charting of the story journey.
When inventing the Hobbit story JRR Tolkein started with drawing Thror’s map.
Drawing the map was part of the process of creating the story.

Here’s the map from Winnie the Pooh, drawn by Christopher Robin, with a bit of help from Ernest Shepard,
and the map from the beginning of the Narnia book of the Horse and his Boy, mostly desert (by Pauline Baynes.)

As it was sometimes the only picture in the book I would return to the map again and again, and trace my protagonist’s journey and mull over the places on the way.
And maps lend a touch of reality – a promise that the story may take you to real places.

When Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift was published in 1726 it was a roaring success but some did not realise it was fantasy.
“It is full of improbable lies, and, for my part, I hardly believe a word of it” exclaimed an eminent bishop. The Duchess of Marlborough was said to be ‘in raptures at it; she says she can dream of nothing else since she read it.’ A tale circulated about one old gentleman who, after reading the book, was alleged to have gone immediately to his atlas to search for Lilliput.

Here’s my map for Money Go Round by Roger McGough – as this book is deep in Wind in the Willows territory I had to start with communing with EH Shepard’s Willows map.

Picture Book Story Maps
Moving to more picture book territory, a map can be a journey or a map of characters or events.
Here’s Dixie O’Day’s Map from Dixie O’Day in the Fast Lane by Shirley Hughes and Clara Vulliamy.

It is used by Dixie in the story and we can find where every event happens in an extremely satisfying way

.From a map of events to a map of characters: here is the map from Very Little Red Riding Hood by Teresa Heapy and Sue Heap – the places are the people.
I can’t resist putting in these fresh and lovely animated spreads of the poor wolf getting more than it can deal with from Very Little Red.

In The Cat Who Got Carried Away by Allan Ahlberg and Katharine McEwen there are three very important maps.
Here’s the first one.
And, oh, how delicious – we can see the cars and the characters and the shady old geezer with the suspicious pram and Horace the cat. This is a useful map of a particular moment, which shows exactly where the pram is, and white van skulduggery, and the impending fate of Horace the cat.

When I was making the book of Jim, the cautionary tale by Hilaire Belloc, I wanted to put in a map of the zoo where Jim meets his lion.
Jim has a yearning to run away, and when I was making the book there seemed to be more and more health and safety rules appearing everywhere and children seemed to be getting less and less freedom. So the Zoo Map is a map of the Safest Zoo in the World, one where everything is either shut or off-limits or prohibited.
To make sure everything is completely safe, there are Zoo Rules on the back of the map.

Metaphorical Maps, Maps of the Soul

Here is Jonny Hannah’s Dark Town map from Greetings from Dark Town – complete with leviathans, Island of Profound Quotes, Sea of Impossibilities and beasts and more beasts.

The first metaphorical map may have been for Pilgrim’s Progress, which also may have been one of the first novels (fictional prose narrative) in English. (Interestingly, other early novels include Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels, both map-centred-adventure territory.) In Pilgrim we encounter unforgettable fictional places: the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, the House Beautiful, The Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Here’s the Map of Ghastly Gorm Hall from Goth Girl, by Chris Riddell.
Note the Hall has an East Wing and a West Wing, but also a Broken Wing. As well as a Kitchen Garden, the Hall is complete with Bedroom Garden and Living Room Garden.
I’m planning my garden improvement already.
One can meander round Metaphorical Smith’s Hobby-Horse Racecourse – with its Hill of Ambition, Gravel Path of Conceit, and Pond of Introspection.

In Sara Fanelli’s My Map Book –we find a Map of my Heart, a Map of my Day.

We’re wandering into maps that are states of mind, a map of how you feel, a map of time.
One of my absolutely favourite picture books is Emily Gravett’s Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears. Mouse battles his terrors with the power of drawing. The book is extremely nibbled and so is Mouse’s pencil.
Here is the Map of the Isle of Fright, where the visitor can travel from Twitching Whiskers to Loose Bottom.

And now – Exclusive to Picture Book Den:
Cut Out & Keep: Make Your Own Metaphorical Landscape Generator.

Simply cut out, combine randomly from column A and B and use the places created to make your own Metaphorical Landscape.

Impossible Maps

Making a map gives you freedom to map the impossible, to lose yourself in your scale of choice.
In A Boy & Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton – here’s a map of nowhere. It’s almost not a map at all.

Here’s the map on the cover of the book (from the original hardback version)
No features at all. Except a mug ring. But then, look again….squinting closely– there are two black splots.

Focus in on one and it’s – yup, just a squashed fly.
Then let’s pull right in on the other splot – I definitely see oars there.

The scale of the bleak emptiness is immense, and I feel like I am falling through infinity.

My book Space Dog started with thinking about making a space map. My son Herbie had a brilliant rocket toy. It came from the Early Learning Centre.

It was shaped a bit like a kettle with a handle, and you could fly it all round your home, exploring the Cistern System, the Pastaroid Belt and the Outer Spooniverse.
I wondered – what would space look like if the whole of the universe was actually everything in your house, in disguise. So here we have some Space Map Planetoids:
FryUp42 with its ketchup volcanoes, the steamy planet of Bathtime 37 and Cornflake 5 and Bottleopolis which are in the Breakfast Cluster.

The Space Map was Space Dog’s endpapers, but, alas, they only appeared in the hardback version.

Download your own space map bits here, and make your own Space Map.

Maps and the Imagination

Take some words, maybe these ones which are a list of some things you might forget:
Take a diagram of some islands, maybe these ones:
Put them both together, and what have you got?
The Isles of Forgetfulness.

This page comes from The Atlas of Experience by Louise van Swaaij and Jean Klare, which charts the human journey through life, with maps drawn in Subjective Projection and reproduced in Unimaginable Scale.

Maps demonstrate the alchemy of words and pictures, that magic picture book double act. Words & Pictures and your imagination are doing the work of together creating a whole new thing. And because your imagination helped make it, it’s unique. So the map is words and pictures glued all together with a tremendous projection of imagination.

Falling into a Map, endless Maps

My dream is to be able to actually fall into a map and find myself in another world that I can explore. Or to find a map that I can zoom into or out of forever…from the microscopic atomic scale to the intergalactic.

In Tiny by Korky Paul and Paul Rogers, Tiny is a flea on the back of a dog called Cleopatra living at No 72 Hilltop Road.
Korky Paul’s marvellously detailed pictures pan out from hairs to streets to islands to planets.
But every time I can still spot the dog, find the house still recognisable at a smaller scale.
I know if I zoom back in I’ll be able to find EVERYTHING there, every bird, fish, person, dog, insect, molecule. (I love that giant octopus.)

To end with I’m going to tell you about one of the very first picture book maps I ever made.

Heres the flying island of Laputa

It was for a student project, adapting Gulliver’s Travels.
The first page opens out to show Gulliver’s desk and his map.
In the map you can make out Gulliver abandoned in a rowing boat, and the flying Island of Laputa about to come over and pick him up.
What I really really wanted was for you to be able to zoom in enough to for you to be able to see the waves rippling the water, to smell a bit of spray and hear some seabirds. I did (sort of, badly) manage to do this when I animated my book and falling into the map became the beginning of Gulliver’s adventures on the crazy island of Laputa.

Here’s the flying island of Laputa

A map is a place to roam about in the imagination. A map is a record of the discovered and the undiscovered. A map is a plan for plundering, or a diagram of how to carve up the world. A map is a journey, a story, a cast of characters, a portal.

I’ve always been obsessed with the small world. Small worlds are where we are animators as children: the doll’s house, the micro city you made among tree roots, the box of plastic dinosaurs and farm animals ready to journey down the garden. A map is a model world, and in picture books maps can come alive, using the power of words and pictures and your imagination and mine, in yet another feat of picture book magic.

PS: Interested in maps and in Oxford? There’s an wonderful exhibition – Talking Maps – at the Bodleian Library you might like to visit. Details here.

Carbon Pricing – Be Careful What You Ask For – or: Why All Ways of Pricing Carbon Are Not The Same…..

Posted on May 2, 2019 by Mini

“Why do fossil fuels continue to provide most of our energy? The reason is simple. Fossil fuels are the cheapest energy.” – James Hansen, leading climate scientist and former director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

This piece was inspired by an article by Tim Harford for the Financial Times:

“A carbon tax is the nudge the world needs.”

Tim gives his thoughts on a Green New Deal, as advocated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US, and also Ed Miliband, the UK Labour Party, and Caroline Lucas of the Green Party.

So what is a Green New Deal? “An emergency of this magnitude requires large-scale government intervention to kickstart industries, to direct investment and to boost research and development in the green technologies of the future.” (Jeremy Corbyn)It’s an ambitious programme of government investment and regulation. It’s a huge centrally planned response to climate change: the government sets regulations on industry and decides who to subsidise through general taxation. The idea is to tackle everything: social justice, equity, biodiversity loss, CO2 emissions; to reinvigorate left-behind communities, create new jobs and guarantee everyone has them.

But without a clear price on carbon, signals to industry may be mixed. Do you win the lottery of government support? The government may not be the best judge of which industries to support. It may be vulnerable to corruption. Good causes may not be supported due to lack of knowledge.

A Green New Deal may have approval from the ‘left’ as action is seen to be taken, but increasing government control & spending may be unpopular on the ‘right’. Support will be split on partisan lines. And where will the money come from? There doesn’t seem to be a clear mechanism for real change in everyone’s behaviour.

And what would be an effective mechanism?

Tim Harford says: “Our modern economy reflects countless choices, made by billions of people all over the world. A broad-based carbon price influences them all. Nothing else can.”

Now – a carbon price cannot be the only measure for tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, our twin existential threats – but it could be really effective at changing all of our energy use. And it NEVER EVER gets talked about in the media or by politicians. (except for Layla Moran!)

So I thought I would have a look at different methods of carbon pricing – does the way you implement a carbon tax have an effect on its outcomes?

There are a lot of different iterations of carbon pricing, so I’ve whittled down the options to these: (and my apologies if I’ve left out your favourite…)

Cap & Trade (which is the status quo right now)
Carbon Tax & Government spends revenue
Carbon tax & rebate through income tax
Carbon Fee & Dividend

So here we go!

Status Quo: Cap & Trade

What happens here is the Government sets a limit on Carbon to be emitted – the ‘CAP’. CO₂-intensive industries bid for permits, and so the CO₂ price is set by the market. This is our present system in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), with an additional UK Carbon Price Floor added. This has actually had a big effect, driving our energy mix away from coal and oil and towards gas, nuclear and renewables, which is a good thing. But there are failures in this system. One is that 58% of EU emissions come from sectors outside the EU ETS, such as transport, buildings, waste management and agriculture. So lots of industries are not included. Also not included is us, the general public – we are all fuel users, but we are unable to have any effect on this system. The price set on carbon at the moment is too low to have much meaningful effect. High fuel prices passed on to the public would be unacceptable without some sort of compensation plan.

Carbon Tax & Government spends revenue So now, rather than setting a limit on carbon to be emitted & letting the market price the carbon, the Government puts a direct tax on carbon, setting the price. If the price is high enough it drives a change away from carbon-intensive fuels, and makes clean energy comparatively much more affordable.

So now you have a price on carbon at source. What to do with the revenue?

In this model, the government spends the revenue on green energy projects and infrastructure, and any other projects they decide will help the battle against climate change.

But this approach brings higher prices to consumers without any compensation. It also does not involve or empower the public in any clearly visible way. Will the government make the best choices? We don’t know. Looking at the Gilets Jaunes protesters in France, imposing higher prices with no compensation looks extremely unpopular.

Carbon tax & rebate through income taxHere we have the same instrument to collect revenue – a fee on carbon at source. But now the revenue is returned to the public via the income tax system through tax rebates. (Some ideas are for a mix of this and the government allocating some of the revenue to clean energy projects, but to keep things simple I’m going to say all the revenue is being returned.) So our tax is revenue neutral, and people can see a benefit on their decreased tax bills.

But there’s a fairness problem here: as far as I can tell, this form of compensation is regressive – higher earners get proportionally more tax compensation, so the poorest have higher fuel prices, less compensation, and are worse off. And what happens to those who don’t earn enough to pay tax or have fallen off the edges of the system? Also – how motivating is it to have less income tax? It seems to be less of a bad thing, rather than a positive symbol of climate action.

Carbon Fee & Dividend

(Ok this could be called Carbon Tax & Lump Sum, but to make it sound more upbeat we’re calling it a fee rather than a tax.)

Again, the government sets a price on carbon at source. This price rises over time at a rate set by an independent body. The revenue is returned equally to the public through a weekly/monthly/annual lump sum, ie a ‘DIVIDEND’.

So what’s different here?

The lump sum system is progressive: it really benefits lower earners most. The richest (and largest users of CO2-intensive energy) benefit least. Anders Fremstad of Colorado State University and Mark Paul of Duke University calculate that taxing a tonne of CO₂ at $49 would leave 59% of Americans worse off, including 75% of the bottom half, if the revenue were used to lower personal-income taxes. By contrast, recycling the receipts as lump-sum payments (Dividends) would leave 89% of the bottom half with an average net gain of $788.

Here’s a graph adapted from The Future of Carbon Pricing by Policy Exchange. Dividend to each income group is in green. Increased fuel costs are in red. You can see the 6 lowest income groups all break even or are better off, with the poorest getting the biggest benefits. The wealthiest, highest fuel users, are the worst off.

Compared to tax rebates, it’s demonstrably fair as all get an equal dividend.

It’s also possible to get dividends to the poorest most marginalised sections of society, by…. “Investigating inventive ways of paying the dividend to ensure that the most vulnerable receive it. Linking the dividend to national insurance numbers would be one a way to pay the dividend, but this may mean that the most vulnerable miss out. The Government should investigate whether new technology can be used to pay the dividend securely through a mobile app to ensure as many eligible people as possible receive it.” policyexchange.org.uk | 15Carbon Pricing

Through their dividend the public can support renewables in their choice of what energy to buy. The dividend is a visible sign of your purchasing power, and the public is trusted to choose how to spend it; wise choices bring a win-win virtuous spiral of energy choices. The dividend also gives voters an immediate interest in the fight against climate change –a lump sum arriving in your bank account is a very interesting event. All green energy sources benefit by becoming comparatively cheaper.

But another fantastic effect is that the Dividend, once people are used to it, is hard to withdraw by future governments (see what’s happened with UK Winter Fuel Payments) – and so acts as a pledge to industry that the carbon price will endure.

The equal dividend appeals to sense of fairness. Middle and lower earners break even or are better off.

To just measure up again these different ways of pricing Carbon, here’s is my Over-Elaborate & Subjective Table of Questions, to compare all the taxes. I’ve traffic-light colour-coded it: Green is what I see as GOOD outcomes, Yellow is maybe/unsure, Orange is POOR Outcomes (but remember, this is very subjective).

In the words of Tim Harford again: “We’re all involved….Our modern economy reflects countless choices, made by billions of people all over the world. A broad-based carbon price influences them all. Nothing else can.”

I’ve tried to look here at the different ways of implementing a broad-based carbon price. To me it looks like all ways of Carbon Pricing are not the same. Carbon is infused in all our lives and all our choices. We need to tackle climate change with a way that involves and empowers everybody, is fair and acceptable and progressive, and that also is able to set a high enough price for carbon to bring about change, in a way industry can see will not be overturned by a change of government. I think there is one clear policy winner here, one that does all those things.

What do you think?

What to do if you lose your favourite toy

Posted on January 10, 2018 by Mini

You’d think it would be tricky to lose a blue whale, wouldn’t you? But my son Herbie and I managed it.

The whale had been a favourite Christmas present from Herbie’s Auntie Mavis, who had found him at the Natural History Museum Shop in London. He was furry, blue with whitish spots, had kind eyes, and was a good simple shape to hold. He was called Whaley, and as Herbie was only four and usually needed daily backup at school with a cuddly toy from home, Whaley often did support duties. However, one day in January, we arrived home from school and the whale was gone from the bag he’d been resting in. We retraced our steps back to school, sure we’d find Whaley stranded on the roadside somewhere along the way. But not a whisker. We retraced again back home, squinting under cars, behind garden walls, increasingly desperate. Still no sign of a furry cetacean.

But a whale can’t just disappear. Someone must have retrieved our whale. Maybe some small child had picked him up. But they’d need to know who to return him to, so we made posters. They looked like this:

We put our posters up on the streets and in the school, quite hopeful that boy and whale would soon be reunited. But a week went by, and no whales came out of the woodwork. The trail was going cold. We had to start giving up hope.

Then, two weeks after Whaley’s disappearance, there was a muffled whump on the front door.

Two whales, wearing scarves, with a suitcase! In the suitcase were a few pictures. Here they are:

Two whales at the Natural History Museum. Two whales leaving the museum . . . having some refreshments . . . and riding on the bus back to Oxford.

We had to piece together what must have happened: Whaley, growing a bit restless and needing more whale company, must have travelled back to London, to the Museum where he’d come from. There he’d found a sperm whale friend, wandered round the museum, had the odd snack, and then found the bus back to Oxford with his new chum.

The Sperm Whale was named Sperm Whaley. (Herbie was going through a state-the-obvious phase when inventing names.) And since then, Whaley has been roaming no more…

..that we know about.

P.S.: If you are ever unfortunate/careless enough to lose your whale, it may be helpful to know that the Natural History Museum Shop in London has an extremely efficient online delivery service. . . .

Here are some toys at large in a Natural History Museum at night….

PS If you like hearing about lost toys, you may like this:

Some useful advice:

WHAT TO DO IF YOU LOSE YOUR FAVOURITE TOY

1. Don’t panic.

2. Go back and check all the places you may have left it—e.g., (a) the garden, (b) the bus, (c) the moon, (d) Jupiter.

3. Don’t panic.

4. Put up posters in prominent places. Remember to include identifying features, like number of eyes, legs, and tentacles, like this:
5. DON’T PANIC.

6. ~~Abduct all the toys you can find and see if they’re yours.~~ NO! NO! NO! Don’t you know that stealing toys is WRONG?

7. Panic?

8. No, don’t panic. It will be in the last place you look. Things always are.

Catsized

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Mini

A handy guide to cat sleeping positions.

The Global Marshmallow Test

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Mini

(Or: Can you eat your planet and have it too?…)

Here’s a delicious planet, perfectly formed and heaving with life. We’ve had three billion years of pretty good weather, give or take an ice age and the odd mass extinction. But big changes have been happening in the last 10 000 years. The graph of wild animal numbers has gone into free fall. There’s been a huge change in land use to grow food for humans, and the Earth’s settings have been adjusted to new and experimental levels due to extra carbon dioxide in the atmospheric mix. Carbon dioxide is a Good Thing – we’d be too cold for life without it. But a little too much has a big effect on climate. The Earth is a huge old system and the more you find out about past climates the more you wonder what long wild ride is being unleashed right now.

We know we have to do something about this. But the Something we have to do has to be quite a big thing, to really make an impact. Maybe it means treating CO2 as if it is an amazingly expensive and rare resource, to be used very sparingly, as if we’re completely running out of the stuff. And maybe it involves setting some limits: setting aside some sea to be no fishing zones, setting aside our forest to stay forest, and realising that as a species we are the only one that can try to regulate our population to a level that our planet can accommodate. But all these things are givey-uppy things: someone has to not fish, someone has to find another living, someone has to decide to have less children than they might like. Nature is really messy and inconvenient and eats our crops and probably us too if we let it. We might decide to make carbon really expensive so we use it more carefully – but then someone has to find life is more expensive. Like you. And me.

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Does a struggle have to happen – can Now-Us take a hit for Future-Us?

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So that’s the Global Marshmallow Test facing us; do we have the power to imagine how extremely grateful future beings will be to us if we leave the wondrous carboniferous fossil fuels buried for now. (They might even need them in a few hundred years time if there’s an unexpected ice age.) And how grateful they might be to us for having put up with the inconvenience of animals and their habitats so they could inherit some of the bizarre treasure of the extraordinary beings that evolution has produced that share the world with us.

PS: Here’s the proper fabulous picture of the Plumb-Pudding in Danger by Gillray in case you were missing it:PPS: How? Here’s James Hansen on the idea of a Carbon Fee and Dividend (payable to all taxpayers) (on page 5)

Here’s Hansen’s Ted Talk.

PPPS: Here’s a brilliant lecture by Dr Scott Wing about how the climate of 55 million years ago can tell us a lot about now.

The Marshmallow Test

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Mini

Here’s a yummy marshmallow. You know you want it. Of course you want it. But if you can resist its charms for 20 minutes, I will give you double marshmallow. Or something even more delicious that you actually like. Can you wait?

This was the Marshmallow Test, an experiment administered to 4 year old children by Walter Mischel. Many gave in almost immediately, the lure of the mallow was too strong. But some prevailed. They did things like not looking at the mallow, or giving themselves quiet peptalks, or distracting themselves from thoughts of the mallow by singing or making funny faces. And they got through. They followed the tested children’s progress for 40 years, and it seemed that children who were more successful at the Marshmallow Test were more sucessful in later life.

Whatever the validity of the research, the Marshmallow Test highlights the inner struggle we all have to face between the interests of our present selves and the happiness of our future self. Now-Me wants a triple gin and tonic, but Future-Me tomorrow is going to wish Now-Me hadn’t had it. How can the faint calls of Future-Me from tomorrow win against Now-Me’s intense desire for gin? The same goes with late night cheese eating, pensions, and procrastination. How can Future-Me reach into the past, grab Now-Me by the shoulders, and convince Now-Me that going to bed before 1.30am will make everyone happier all round? (And put down that Gruyère, Now-Me!)

Either Future-Me needs a top-notch time machine, or Now-Me needs a more conscientious imagination to make poor Future-Me more tangible.

But we’ll leave Now-Me and Future-Me locked in their eternal struggle and turn instead to The Global Marshmallow Test.

To Be Continued: coming next: The Global Marshmallow Test – watch out for it, Future-You!

Cookery Corner with Rod the Roach

Posted on September 19, 2015 by Mini

Today’s recipe: cook up an Earth-like planet.

The Wild Verges Award

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Mini

You’re perambulating along, by foot or bike or car (or whatever your preference), and you see a particularly lovely patch of roadside wilderness that has been allowed to grow untrimmed, and now it’s waving gently in the breeze. You may want to say “Well done!” And now you can, with the Sketching Weakly Wild Verges Award. Simply cut out & nominate the stretch of road where your lovely verge was, and send to your local county council strimming department.

Personally I’d nominate the top of the A4144 where it meets the A423 in Oxford.

And this bit of Regent’s Park for nice Cow Parsley:

Sketching Weakly

The sketch-blog of Mini Grey

Category Archives: Slightly useful