A very Merry Christmas to both my readers!

Bruges

Long time no post. This is partly because, earlier this week, I went with my wife on a brief city break to Bruges. We were quite lucky with the weather, though it was a bit on the dull side for interesting photography. Here is one of my shots:-

Click on it to enlarge

That's a very standard view of Bruges. I think my favourite shot was this:-

Click on it to enlarge

Almost everywhere I turned in Bruges there seemed to be some sort of delight for the eye. When I first looked at my photographs back home I was quite disappointed - they didn't seem to do justice to the pleasure of actually being there. Never mind - we both enjoyed the trip enormously.

To see more of my photographic efforts in Bruges, click here.

Today's Observer

Today's Observer has a number of articles relevant to recent posts.

Andrew Rawnsley casts a sceptical eye over George Osborne's enthusiasm for gas. Specifically, he says that there is scant evidence that the reserves of shale gas in the UK are economically recoverable. If the "dash for gas" proceeds and the home-grown shale gas bonanza fails to materialise, the UK will find itself dependent on potentially unstable foreign sources of supply. Meanwhile, investment in gas will crowd out investment in renewables and the UK will find itself unable to meet its commitments on emissions reductions.

George Osborne also comes under attack from Will Hutton, who adds his weight to a suspicion I have had  for a long time: that Osborne is economically illiterate. Hutton puts it very succinctly:

Denialism seems to be on the up

I was taken aback recently when an acquaintance of mine unexpectedly revealed him/herself (to make him/her as anonymous as possible) to be a global warming denialist. By "denialist" I mean someone who puts forward the view that the threat of global warming is not on such as scale that it requires serious action to mitigate it. So I include "lukewarmists", like Peter Lilley.

Democracy without growth?

An interesting article by Gillian Tett in today's FT posing the question, mainly in an American context, whether democracy is dependent on economic growth.

I think there are two big issues here: firstly, whether and for how long we can expect economic growth to continue in the developed world and, secondly, whether a sustainably peaceful and democratic society is possible without growth. Around those issues I have in my mind a number of hypotheses. The informal testing of these hypotheses provides some framework to my otherwise haphazard studies of the issues. Here is a bunch of hypotheses:-

Can a dash for gas be justified?

One of the discomforting ideas I found in Dieter Helm's book, Carbon crunch (see my previous post), was his support for a new generation of gas-fired power stations as a "bridge" to clean electricity generation. My starting position is that I want us to move directly to clean energy as quickly as we possibly can, even if this means substantial economic sacrifices. Do I need to shift my position?

Carbon crunch

A couple of weeks ago I read Dieter Helm's new book Carbon crunch.

I thought this was an important book. For a start Dieter Helm appears to be one of our foremost experts on energy policy. What he says matters. I also found it addressed lots of concerns I have about what to do about climate change.