If global energy consumption returns to its pre-pandemic growth rate, it will be almost impossible to transition to a zero-emission or net-zero-emission energy system by 2050 in the absence of large-scale CO2 removal. Since relying on unproven technologies for CO2 removal is speculative and risky, this paper considers an energy descent scenario for reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions from energy by 2050. To drive the rapid transition from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources and ensure demand reduction, funding is needed urgently in order to implement four strategies: (i) technology change, i.e., implementing the growth of zero-carbon energy production, end-use energy efficiency and ‘green’ energy carriers, together with ongoing R&D on CO2 removal; (ii) reducing climate impacts; (iii) reducing energy consumption by social and behavioural changes; and (iv) improving human wellbeing while increasing social justice. Modern monetary theory explains how monetary sovereign governments, with their own fiat currencies, can create the necessary funding without financial constraints, although constraints do result from the productive capacities of their economies. The energy transition could be part-funded by a significant transfer of resources from monetary sovereign countries of the global North to the global South, financed by currency issuance.
Katy's InTray
At the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP), we are committed to three things: public debate around new ideas; sustainable investment in social infrastructures; and public policy aimed at improving the quality of people’s lives. We have been inspired by experiments in universal basic income (UBI) around the world, and by a series of discussions about how to rethink economies, both local and global. In this report, we lay out some ideas about how to deliver quality of life for the UK, improve public services in ways that are affordable, and link radical policy initiatves to improved social integration and cohesion. These are ideas for debate across the broadest spectrum in the UK, including local communities. We call this set of ideas Universal Basic Services.
Australia’s system has long been designed in a deficit paradigm, underpinned by two flawed theories. Firstly, that unemployment is always an individual failing (ignoring structural and major barriers like ageism, racism, a lack of suitable work and thin labour markets, health, and disability). This drives the belief that if you only beat disadvantaged people hard enough to do the same things over and over they’ll somehow magically get a job, and if they don’t they’re lazy—the pernicious myth of the ‘dole-bludger’. Secondly, that more choice and competition in human services in every place, as well as harsh performance management, will inevitably result in better services and employment outcomes—especially for vulnerable and long-term unemployed people. Both theories have been proven to be rubbish, yet we have persisted in designing the entire system around them. The system designed for the few who cheat–around the worst people in society and the worst providers.
Consistent with the findings of previous reviews, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of unemployed people want to work. But the current rigid approach to mutual obligations is killing unemployed people’s intrinsic motivations and efforts to seek work, by drowning them and those paid to help them in a mountain of red tape, compliance requirements and pointless mandatory activities. People are made to do silly things that don’t help them get a job—such as pointless training courses or applying for jobs they won’t get—and are then harshly and repeatedly sanctioned for trivial or inadvertent breaches of prescriptive rules. It is ridiculous that over 70per cent of people with providers have been subject to payment suspensions despite zero evidence that 70per cent of people are cheating the system. The Robodebt Royal Commission’s finding that fraud in the welfare system is minuscule is apt. The nature and extent of mutual obligations is like using a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito.