Three Charlies
Charlie One,
He got done.
Charlie Two,
Down the loo.
Charlie Turd,
Quite absurd.
<address redacted>
Dear Mr Hunt,
You will no doubt be aware of the recent report “Clean
Air, Dirty Money, Filthy Politics,” written by investigative journalist Ben
Pile for the Together organization, of which I am a member. It documents how a
large, opaque network of funding, originating from four rich billionaires, has
operated to channel resources to many organizations that are active in favour
of “net zero” and other green policies. You will also probably be aware that,
when this report was published, both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail
picked up on parts of its content, and in particular the funding by billionaire
Christopher Hohn of a climate activist network called “C40 Cities” [[1]], which
is chaired by Sadiq Khan.
You may not be aware that last week, Andrea Jenkyns MP
hosted a discussion on this report in parliament: [[2]].
I am taking the liberty of copying this to her, if only to thank her for her
kind words, and to suggest some further climate related areas in which she (and
you, and other MPs) ought to find some interest.
I have heard that, following on from this occasion, a
number of MPs are being asked to sign a pledge whose wording, if I have it
right, is as follows: “The public must have transparency into funding on Net
Zero policies, and a proper cost-benefit analysis of Net Zero.” Naturally, I am
fully in agreement with this idea, and would hope that you would be, too. But
while the first part of the pledge all but goes without saying, on the second
part I am able to supply some further information which should be of interest.
Not just to yourself and Andrea Jenkyns, but to all MPs who are concerned that
their constituents ought to be treated justly, fairly and honestly, and should
receive full value for the vast sums they pay to government.
I do apologize if you find what I have written below rather
long and a bit technical. But I feel it is important to document the back-story
of this issue in as much detail as is needed to enable people to appreciate fully
what is being done to them over this.
The Green Book. As chancellor and thus its current
custodian, you will be aware of the green book [[3]], a
set of procedures meant to guide cost versus benefit analyses carried out by
the UK government. You will also be aware of its history since its inception in
2003.
The Stern Review. You will be aware that green book
procedures were already in place in 2006, when Nicholas Stern issued his Stern
Review, an (apparent) attempt to provide a cost versus benefits analysis for
policy action or inaction on reducing CO2 emissions. You may also be
aware that, as documented in Ben Pile’s report, Stern now chairs two institutes
at the London School of Economics, both active in climate policymaking, and funded
by Jeremy Grantham, another of the green alarmist billionaires identified in
the report.
The social cost of carbon. You may be aware that,
at the time, the green book procedures required cost-benefit analysis of
policies affecting CO2 emissions to use the “social cost of carbon” (SCC)
approach. In the words of the government’s historical web page on valuing CO2
emissions [[4]]: “The SCC matters because it
signals what society should, in theory, be willing to pay now to avoid the
future damage caused by incremental carbon emissions.” And in my view, this is the
right measure to use in assigning monetary value to these emissions.
Stern did, indeed, use an SCC approach in this review. But
you may not be aware that, of the three tools (integrated assessment models,
IAMs) Stern had available to him, he chose the one which gave by far the most
pessimistic estimate of the social cost of CO2 emissions. You may
also not be aware that Stern made other assumptions such as a low discount rate,
that resulted in a grossly exaggerated estimate of the cost of not taking any policy
action.
The climate change bill. The 2008 UK climate change
bill did make a token attempt at a cost-benefit analysis. The numbers were, so
I understand, based on the Stern review. But not only were these numbers
dubious for the reasons outlined above, but they had a huge range of
uncertainty too. I myself actually downloaded and read the 200 or so pages of
supporting data and calculations. If I recall right, there was a factor of 7
uncertainty in the costs, and a factor of 12 uncertainty in the “benefits,” of
taking action to reduce CO2 emissions in order to mitigate some
putative climate change.
On 14th July 2008, I wrote a 9-page letter to
you, Mr Hunt, as my MP, giving you a synopsis of the facts on the matter, and
inviting you to inform yourself fully; and then, when you understood the facts,
to vote against the bill. Yet you failed even to acknowledge my letter, let
alone to respond to it! And, you, along with 400+ other MPs, voted for the
bill.
The shadow price of carbon. Between 2007 and 2009,
steps were taken to move away from the social cost approach. I will quote again
from the valuations page I referenced above. “Carbon valuation for policy
appraisal no longer uses the social cost of carbon.” And: “In December 2007,
the approach to carbon valuation adopted the use of the shadow price of carbon
(SPC) as the basis for incorporating carbon emissions in cost-benefit analysis
and impact assessments. However, it takes more account of uncertainty, and is based
on a stabilisation trajectory.”
This page [[5]]
links to the documentation on the change to using the shadow price of carbon.
It also links to reviews on that change by a number of economists. Some of
these are dated 2007, but others are dated 2009, indicating that they refer to a
further change in that year.
Paul Ekins’ 2007 review [[6]]
said: “The issue is how to arrive at such a price in a way that is both
defensible and supports the Government’s climate change policy.” Ekins goes on
to outline a plan “to seek to estimate the MAC [marginal abasement costs]
required to reduce carbon emissions to achieve the desired UK contribution to a
global goal of stabilising carbon concentrations in the atmosphere at a level
thought to avoid unacceptably dangerous climate change.” So, the climate change
policy required a pricing mechanism that wasn’t defensible? That’s a bit of a
revelation. As is the admission that some “global goal” was seen as more
important than the interests of the people of the supposedly democratic UK.
The 2009 review by Paul Watkiss [[7]]
says: “We now have defined policy targets for the short- and long-term, which
were not set on the basis of the social cost of carbon (SCC), and thus there is
a high risk of under- or over-delivery of these targets if Government continues
to use a SCC value.” I read this as an admission that policy targets had been
set without considering cost-effectiveness from the point of view of the people
who would pay the costs. And here we are, 14 years later, and we still
don’t have a proper cost-benefit analysis on “net zero.”
As an aside, Paul Watkiss had been the chair of the group
that in 2003 produced a feasibility study for what in 2008 became the original London
Low Emissions Zone (LEZ).
Today, there seems to be no longer a link from [[4]] to the detail on the 2009 change. However,
the original page is still available, here: [[8]].
The punch-line is as follows: “The old approach based on estimates of the
social cost of carbon should be replaced with a target-consistent approach,
based on estimates of the abatement costs that will need to be incurred to meet
specific emissions reduction targets. The change will have the effect of
helping to ensure that the policies the government develops are consistent with
the emissions reductions targets that the UK has adopted through carbon
budgets, and also at an EU and UN level.”
If I read that right, it means that the UK government had
abandoned any attempt or pretence at trying to work out how big the CO2
problem really was. Cynically paraphrased, their argument seems to have been:
“We know we can’t do a credible cost-benefit analysis that justifies any
political action on this. But we’re already committed to political action. So,
we’ll make up numbers to match the commitments, and hope that no-one notices.”
On that page, there is also a link to a review by Paul
Johnson [[9]].
The following comment is most revealing: “The problem is, of course, that the
natural response of the economist to some of the arguments put forward here –
that the SCC may be inconsistent with targets and international agreements – is
that this just reveals the incoherence of the targets and agreements. I am not
in that camp, but the paper needs more explicitly to rebut that view.” And, a
little further down: “given a target, the consistent approach is to value
carbon in such a way as to ensure we hit the target.” Again, policy cart before
cost-benefit horse, no?
The 2019 CCC report and “cost-benefit analysis.” On to
the run-up to the Commons declaring a “climate emergency” on 1st
May, 2019, without even taking a vote. For this occasion, the CCC (Climate
Change Committee) had produced a report “Net Zero: The UK’s contribution to
stopping global warming” [[10]].
All I could glean from this report is that they reckoned the cost of “net zero”
measures might be 1-2% of UK GDP in 2050. But as we know, government
projects always cost more and take longer.
More interesting than what the report says, are the mugshots
and bios of eight CCC members at the beginning. One of the eight is an
economist called Paul Johnson.
Somebody high up must have decided that going ahead with
“net zero,” without having published any proper cost-benefit analysis at all,
was going to be a little risky. So, this report was produced: [[11]].
It purported to be a cost-benefit analysis for “net zero” CO2
emission policies. You can note that the chairman of the group that produced
this report, Paul Ekins, was the same economist who drove the 2009 decision to
move away from the use of the social cost of carbon. You can see in action the
MAC approach which replaced it, and you can marvel at how obscure and
counter-intuitive it seems. You can also marvel at the lack of monetary numbers
in the report for the estimated costs of a given level of “climate change!”
Shadow price versus social cost. In a 2022 report
by economics consultancy Cebr for Fair Fuel UK, accessible via [[12]],
it was revealed that the number the UK government used to calculate the
benefits of reducing CO2 emissions by a tonne (£255.40) – based on
the shadow price of carbon – was more than five times the sterling equivalent
of the US government’s published value of the “social cost of carbon” per tonne
(£48.54). The replacement of social cost by shadow price made a very big
difference to any costs or benefits calculated using it!
Costs and feasibility of net zero. All this does
not take into account the steeply rising costs of the “renewable” energy, which
net zero policies mandate. We have been repeatedly told by the media that
renewable energy is cheap. But that has never been completely true, and is
becoming less so by the day. Offshore wind “maximum strike” prices have recently
gone up by 66%: [[13]].
The corresponding prices for tidal, geothermal and solar power have also gone
up significantly. It is hard to imagine that these rises will not be passed on,
and sooner rather than later, to hard-hit consumers.
And that doesn’t take into account the huge re-configurations
of the electricity grid, that will be needed to support these new renewables.
Nor does it cover the need to provide conventional back-up energy, for the
times when the wind doesn’t blow, or the sun doesn’t shine; or both, as in a
cold, windless anticyclone in February. Nor does it cover such aspects as global
supply problems, for example of lithium for EV batteries; of likely non-delivery
of technologies required for net zero, such as cost-effective hydrogen
production; or of the level of safety of these new technologies, relative to conventional
ones.
It looks very much to me as if “net zero” and related
projects have not been properly planned, or their consequences thought through.
I sense rising now a tide of very real concern, over the question: Can “net zero”
actually be achieved, in any timescale? And that is on top of the
question: Even if it was feasible, would it be worth doing? (My answer to that
is a strong No.)
Green Book update of 2020. In 2020, there was an
update to the Green Book, described here: [[14]].
It says at the outset: “As ultimate decision makers, ministers are not bound by
recommendations arising from green book appraisals.” That seems rather concerning to me. Why bother to do them, then?
Of its history, it says: “In March 2020, the Government
announced a review of the approach, to improve how the Green Book supports
strategic priorities such as its ‘levelling up’ agenda and the transition to
net zero greenhouse gas emissions.” Later, it says: “The 2020 review of the
Green Book concluded that it failed to support the Government’s objectives in
areas such as ‘levelling up’ the regions and reaching net zero. The review said
this was because the process relied too heavily on cost-benefit analysis, also
known as the benefit-cost ratio (BCR).” And there was “insufficient weight
given to whether the proposed project addressed strategic policy priorities.”
Further, under the new Green Book, “a project with a low BCR could go ahead if
it were the best option to achieve a particular objective.”
This seems to imply that policies that politicians deem to
be “strategic,” including “net zero,” are to be exempt from cost-benefit
analysis! No matter how damaging those policies will be to the people the
government is supposed to be serving. Let that sink in.
And the timing of this update was very, very interesting.
In mid-February 2020, chancellor Sajid Javid resigned, refusing to bow to
pressure from prime minister Boris Johnson to change his advisors. Rishi Sunak
– now prime minister! – took over as chancellor. It is probably no coincidence
that the review of the Green Book began in March.
“Clean Air, Dirty Money, Filthy Politics.” To
justify the main conclusions of his report, Ben Pile cites the following. Large
grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to, among others, the United
Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO), Imperial College London, at the
centre of controversy over both COVID and ULEZ, and the BBC and other media
that take the climate activist side. Funding of climate change campaigns by
billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Christopher Hohn. Involvement of C40 Cities and
UK 100 [[15]],
“a network of local leaders who have pledged to lead a rapid transition to Net
Zero with Clean Air in their communities ahead of the government’s legal
target,” in both net zero and air quality campaigns. And funding of UK
university departments active in the climate change and air pollution arenas,
not only by the Gates foundation, but also by Jeremy Grantham.
I can thoroughly recommend a read of this most eye-opening
report. But for those without sufficient time to fully digest the original, I
have made my own summary, here: [[16]].
The Conservative Environment Network. One series of
most interesting grants from Christopher Hohn, via the “Clean Air Fund,” which
have totalled $160k over three years, is to the Conservative Environment
Network (CEN). This organization includes many MPs [[17]]:
indeed, half or perhaps even more of current Tory MPs, including yourself, Mr
Hunt. Other names on the list include:
·
George Eustice, a former secretary of state for
the environment.
·
George Freeman, current under-secretary of state
for science, research and innovation. And custodian of the “Strategic
Priorities Fund,” which funds the government’s “Strategic Priorities Fund Clean
Air Programme.”
·
Chris Grayling, a former secretary of state for transport.
·
Matt Hancock.
·
Mark Harper, current minister of state for transport.
Who claimed that he “did not have the power” to stop the recent ULEZ expansion.
·
Robert Jenrick, who was involved in Michael
Gove’s meeting with Extinction Rebellion in April 2019.
·
Kwasi Kwarteng, former chancellor.
·
Alok Sharma, chair of the CoP26 meeting in
Glasgow, and keeper of two diesel SUVs at the time.
It is hard to avoid the thought that some of these at
least may have been influenced, in ways not in the best interests of those they
are supposed to serve, by activist ideas such as Hohn’s.
The case against a climate crisis. For Andrea Jenkyns’
benefit, I would like to close by giving a link to the following article, which
I wrote earlier in the year, and which was re-published at wattsupwiththat.com,
“the world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change.” It is
here: [[18]].
(Mr Hunt, I sent you this article back in April.) I will quote from my
conclusions: “Whatever alarmists may say, I for one don’t see any evidence for
a ‘climate crisis.’ Still less is there any hard evidence that emissions of CO2
from human civilization are causing any climate problems at all. Nor is it at
all certain that any amount of reduction in CO2 emissions would
achieve any improvement in the climate.”
In a nutshell, when you disregard the hype and look only
at hard evidence, and when you require a high standard of proof – as you would,
for example, if on the jury at a criminal trial – then there is no case for any
action at all to limit CO2 emissions, or to implement any of the
other associated policies.
To conclude. I hope that what I have had to say on
this occasion may have given you some pause, and may set you thinking about the
conduct, over these matters, of the UK government towards the people it is
supposed to serve. I do not think that the sorry tale I have related – with its
supporting links, many of which come from the government’s own web pages – gives
any reason to be complacent about the situation. You will no doubt be aware
that many people, even very many people, have become extremely unhappy about
the way that, in many policy areas, all the main political parties have essentially the same policies, all of
which are harmful to the people. That is not a situation that can long be
tenable in a democracy. Something has got to slip.
If the case for “net zero” policies is fatally flawed, as
I and many other “ordinary” people strongly believe it is, then government
should be taking extremely prompt action to reverse these policies. For a large
group of MPs to pledge to get a proper, objective, unbiased cost-benefit
analysis done and published before any further policy action is taken on any of
these fronts, would be an encouraging start. If this does not happen, that would
increasingly call into question whether today’s politicians have any interest
in democracy, or in the people they are supposed to serve.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Lock
[[1]] https://www.c40.org/
[[3]] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-green-book-appraisal-and-evaluation-in-central-governent/the-green-book-2020
[[5]] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/shadow-price-of-carbon-economic-appraisal-in-the-uk
[[6]] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/243828/paul-ekins.pdf
[[7]] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/243823/1_20090714193626_e____pwatkiss__1_.pdf
[[8]] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/carbon-valuation-in-uk-policy-appraisal-a-revised-approach
[[9]] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c19e640f0b645ba3c6b31/1_20090714193549_e____pauljohnson.pdf
[[10]] https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Net-Zero-The-UKs-contribution-to-stopping-global-warming.pdf
[[11]] https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Advisory-Group-on-Costs-and-Benefits-of-Net-Zero.pdf
[[13]] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/boost-for-offshore-wind-as-government-raises-maximum-prices-in-renewable-energy-auction
[[15]] https://www.uk100.org/
[[18]] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/15/climate-crisis-what-climate-crisis-part-one-the-evidence/
Last week, I was sent a link [[1]] to a report entitled “Clean Air, Dirty Money, Filthy Politics.” It was written by investigative journalist Ben Pile for Together Declaration (of which I am a member) and Climate Debate UK [[2]]. The title of the report is “Clean Air, Dirty Money, Filthy Politics.”
What Ben Pile has done is “follow the money” from four very
rich men, through various intermediaries, to a slew of green activist and
supporter organizations, that are promoting policies hostile to us ordinary
human beings. These policies are being carried out particularly in the areas of
climate change and “net zero,” and “clean air” and ULEZ. The report is, to put
it mildly, an interesting read.
One finding of this report, the funding of C40 Cities [[3]],
a climate and “clean air” activist network chaired by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, by
a UK billionaire named Christopher Hohn who also funds Extinction Rebellion,
was taken up by the Daily Telegraph: [[4]].
The Daily Mail also covered the same story: [[5]].
Since then, the mainstream media seem to have been silent
about the report. This is not, perhaps, unsurprising. The message this report conveys
is not the kind that the establishment would want to reach ordinary people in
large numbers. At least it means that, since no-one has complained about any of
the facts in the report, we can go ahead and assume that everything in it is
true!
The report is 45 pages long. To someone like me, accustomed
to reading hundreds of pages at a time of turgid government reports, this is a
short document. But, in order to digest the import of this report more fully, I
thought I would paraphrase some of the things Ben Pile has found, and what he
has concluded. As well as adding a couple of tidbits I already knew from other
sources. By publishing this, I hope I will save a few people a few hours’ work!
The main conclusions of the report are presented on the
first page. Ben Pile puts these as:
·
Philanthropy has vastly exceeded any reasonable
definition of ‘charitable giving.’
·
The green movement follows this movement of big
global political philanthropy.
·
Air pollution policies such as ULEZ are proxy
battles of the climate war.
·
Philanthropy shapes academic research
priorities.
·
The public has been excluded from politics.
For the first four conclusions, he cites: Large grants
from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to, among others, the United
Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) and to Imperial College London, at the
centre of controversy over both COVID and ULEZ. Funding of climate change
campaigns by billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Christopher Hohn. The
involvement of C40 and UK 100 [[6]],
“a network of local leaders who have pledged to lead a rapid transition to Net
Zero with Clean Air in their communities ahead of the government’s legal target,”
in both net zero and air quality campaigns. And the funding of UK university
departments active in the climate change and air pollution arenas, not only by
the Gates foundation, but also by rich climate crusader Jeremy Grantham.
For the last, I will quote directly from the report. “Politicians’
own statements show that the green policy agenda represents a compact between
government, ‘civil society,’ academia and big business. Experts that depart
from the policy agenda are routinely excluded from the public debate by
research agendas, editorial policy and cancel culture, depriving the public of
debate about the costs and trade-offs of far-reaching policies. Green
organisations have worked to form a cross-party consensus at all levels of
government, pushing the public interest and democratic representation out of
politics.” These are serious claims. And to those of us, like me, who ignore
hype and simply look at the evidence, they are hard to disbelieve.
I will add here one personal comment. I find the use of
the word “philanthropy” to be over-generous. These supposed philanthropists
are using their wealth, not for the benefit of all members of the human
species, but to foster political agendas like net zero and ULEZ, which are not
only unjustified by honest science, but also hostile to the interests of
ordinary human beings. And, most of all, to the interests of older and poorer
people.
Ben Pile goes on to make some good general points about the
situation we find ourselves in.
Page 4: “Rather than opening discussions with local
populations, objections have been ignored on the basis of arguments and
evidence provided to them by lobbying and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs)
and academic researchers, many of whom have been active in policy design,
implementation and campaigning.”
Page 6: He shows, from historical data, “very reliable
evidence that claims about an ‘air pollution crisis’ are unfounded.”
Page 17: “A longstanding and extremely cosy and undemocratic
relationship between CSOs and policymakers.” In which, “the public’s views on
the far-reaching policies that will be imposed on them are rarely a
consideration for technocrats, CSOs and politicians.”
But it is when, starting around page 10, he begins to
document some of the specific money flows, that Ben Pile shows his true skills
as an investigator.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has made “substantial
grants to media organisations and CSOs, and to organisations acting under the
pretext of ‘countering misinformation’.” It has made large grants (£54m total)
to BBC Media Action, formerly the BBC World Service Trust. As well as to the BBC
as a whole, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Financial Times and others. Not
all of these recipients are objective or unbiased! (Understatement of the day).
Michael Bloomberg, as well as being a former chair of C40,
has been very active in pushing “Environmental, Social and Governance” policies
in the USA. And he has been a big funder of the WHO. An agency of the UN, the
main driver of the green agenda. And one which, given its seeming desire to
eliminate air pollution regardless of the costs, and its desire to force its
own centralized views on health and pandemic strategy on to everyone in the
world, clearly does not have at heart the interests of us human beings.
The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) [[7]],
the main vehicle for Christopher Hohn’s apparent philanthropy, is not only of
note as a major funder of C40. It also used to employ Rishi Sunak, current
prime minister. And Shirley Rodrigues, Sadiq Khan’s deputy mayor of London, who
has tried to suppress, or to get changed the conclusions of, scientific
reports, used to work at a very senior level in CIFF.
Moreover, Ben Goldsmith, Tory candidate for Mayor of London
in the 2016 election, is a Trustee of CIFF. There was no choice at all at that
“election” for those opposed to green policies, since both main candidates were
rabid greens! (As were Boris Johnson, the previous Mayor, and Ken Livingstone,
his predecessor). Democracy? Not.
Ben Pile also documents “pass-through” organizations, such
as the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and the Clean Air Fund (CAF). In both
cases, the largest single funder is Christopher Hohn.
One series of most interesting grants from the Clean Air
Fund, totalling $160k over three years, is to the Conservative Environment
Network (CEN). This organization includes many MPs [[8]]:
indeed, half or perhaps even more of current Tory MPs. Names on the list
include:
·
George Eustice, a former secretary of state for
the Environment.
·
George Freeman, current under-secretary of state
for Science, Research and Innovation. And custodian of the “Strategic
Priorities Fund,” which funds the government’s “Strategic Priorities Fund Clean
Air Programme.”
·
Chris Grayling, a former secretary of state for
Transport.
·
Matt Hancock.
·
Mark Harper, current minister of state for
Transport. Who claimed that he “did not have the power” to stop the recent ULEZ
expansion.
·
Jeremy Hunt, current Chancellor.
·
Robert Jenrick, who was involved in Michael
Gove’s meeting with Extinction Rebellion in April 2019.
·
Kwasi Kwarteng, former Chancellor.
·
Alok Sharma, chair of the CoP26 meeting in
Glasgow, and keeper of two diesel SUVs at the time.
Jeremy Grantham founded the Grantham Institute at Imperial
College, London, well known as a hotbed of climate activism.
Another part of Imperial, the Environmental Research Group
(ERG) [[9]],
while seemingly separated from the Grantham Institute, hosts several academics
who are, and have been for some years, involved with COMEAP (Committee on the
Medical Effects of Air Pollution), the government’s supposedly independent
advisors on air pollution and health. And its director and former COMEAP chair,
Frank Kelly, has been very active in the cause of ULEZ, even going so far as to
help Shirley Rodrigues doctor the narrative over a scientific paper.
Another Grantham funded institute at the London School of
Economics is chaired by Nicholas Stern, author of the 2006 report that
attempted (and, objectively, failed) to justify UK action on climate change,
yet was still used to push forward the climate change bill.
Ben Pile concludes his report by making the following
points:
·
It is clear from our survey of philanthropic
foundations that very few of the very many CSOs active in climate change would
exist at all were it not for grants by a very small number of billionaires.
·
Air pollution campaigning in the UK represents
just a small part of that enterprise but is entirely dominated by the same
philanthropic foundations and CSOs.
·
The sudden development of interest in air
pollution in the 2010s is better explained by the coordinated strategy of
global CSOs being driven by philanthropic organisations, than by a spontaneous
change in public opinion or in science.
I will repeat once more what I said near the beginning: The message this report conveys is not the kind that the establishment would want to reach ordinary people in large numbers.
This is a follow-up
to my “COVID post-mortem” post of 27th September.
I realized that, having
assessed average excess mortality against vaccine take-up and cumulative deaths
per case in each country, I could use a similar technique to assess average excess
mortality against the severity of different types of lockdown interventions
through the course of the epidemic.
The sample of
countries was necessarily small, since only 35 out of 50 countries had reported
excess mortality figures within the 90 days prior to the last date covered by
the data I took.
In my “magic
spreadsheets,” I kept track of the Blavatnik School of Government “stringency”
measure, a percentage which gives a measure of how far a country was locked
down overall on a particular day. I also kept detailed track of how far each
country was locked down each day, under each of nine headings: schools,
workplaces, events, gatherings, public transport, stay at home, travel
restrictions, international travel restrictions and face coverings.
When I came to do
this assessment, I found that I could not use the official stringency measure
for comparison, because the detailed data behind it, on which I based my own
metrics, has not been reported since late 2022. Fortunately, I had already
worked out my own alternative measures, both derived from the stringency.
What I call “average
lockdown” was calculated in the same way as the official stringency, but using the
detailed data, excluding “public information” status and including face
covering restrictions instead.
I had also defined a
“harshness” metric, which was intended to give an idea of how subjectively
unpleasant a given level of lockdown was. This included only mandatory
measures, and gave more weight to intrusive and inflexible measures than the
official stringency calculation did.
Both of these
averaged the values day-by-day up to the cut-off date, at which I had decided that
COVID was no longer a serious threat, so stopped collecting the Blavatnik data.
That date was 17th August 2022.
What I found was
that, for both my metrics, excess mortality since the start of the pandemic
tended to increase as the average severity of the interventions (from the start
of the epidemic up to the cut-off date) went up. But the slope of the trend
line for the harshness metric was steeper than that for the lockdown metric.
Over the full ranges
of both metrics, the trend line for the harshness metric ran from about 7% to
11% excess mortality, whereas that for the lockdown metric went only from about
8% to 10.5%. This suggests that the psychological effects of mandatory, harsh
lockdowns may have been responsible for a significant proportion of the excess
deaths seen.
Rather than show all
the individual graphs, I will give the slopes of the trend lines for the
various different types of lockdown interventions, and for the two metrics graphed
above, in the form of a table.
Lockdown
type |
Slope |
Schools |
+0.2189 |
Face Coverings |
+0.1550 |
Average Harshness |
+0.1130 |
Gatherings |
+0.0848 |
Workplaces |
+0.0830 |
Events |
+0.0827 |
Average
Lockdown |
+0.0629 |
Travel
Restrictions |
+0.0587 |
Stay at Home |
+0.0427 |
Public
Transport |
-0.0411 |
International
Travel Restrictions |
-0.2150 |
Lockdowns on gatherings, workplaces and events are all very comparable in the size of their effects on excess mortality. All three of these types of lockdowns seriously detract from the quality of life by restricting people’s social contacts, or even taking them away altogether. Workplace closures have also a very negative economic impact, most of all on small businesses.
Travel restrictions and stay at home mandates have had a similar, but smaller, effect to lockdowns on gatherings, workplaces and events. This may be because they were not generally used until less intrusive means had already been tried without success. But the trend still suggests that they have increased excess mortality rather than decreasing it.
The only two of these interventions which appear, on this evidence, actually to have saved any lives since the epidemic began are public transport closures and international travel restrictions. As I worked out some time ago, they also seem to have been the two most effective among the measures tried, in terms of controlling the spread of the virus.
This seems to me to be simple common sense, in both cases. After all, the safest way to get around in an epidemic of an airborne infectious disease is in your own car, without passengers. For those who don’t have their own cars, a taxi is the next best option. Moreover, screening or more stringent measures at borders can protect a country – for a time – from large-scale incursions of the virus.
To give an idea of the magnitudes involved, the graph for school lockdowns is at the head of the article. Across the range of average lockdowns used in Europe, excess mortality roughly doubles, from about 6.5% to about 13.5%, from the lowest to the highest locked down. Very significant! At the other end of the scale, here is the graph for international travel restrictions:
Here, the trend is even more spectacular, falling from 15% to only just over 5% excess mortality from the lightest international lock-down to the harshest.
The technique I have
used to assess average excess mortalities in Europe against average lockdown
levels of different types is, of course, rudimentary. And the sample size is
small, with only 35 countries reporting up-to-date excess mortality figures.
Nevertheless, the trends in my scatterplots do suggest that average excess mortality since the beginning of the epidemic may well have been made worse by many types of lockdown interventions.
School lockdowns have been the worst, with excess mortality roughly doubling from one end of the lockdown scale to the other. Face mask mandates are second. Restrictions on gatherings, workplaces and events have had a lesser effect. Travel restrictions and stay-at-home mandates have had less effect still. But all these correlations between higher lockdown levels and higher excess mortalities are still positive. Of all the types of lockdowns, only public transport closures and restrictions at national borders show any evidence of having saved lives since the epidemic began.
Furthermore, when the different degrees and types of lockdowns are weighted in such a way that mandatory measures and subjectively harsher lockdowns have more weight, the positive trend between average excess mortality and average lockdown severity increases. This suggests that the psychological effects of lockdowns may be at least a contributor to the recent surges in excess mortality in many European countries, including the UK.