The BBC appears to be caught in a net of its own making. Given that it spends some £3b of public money, should there be statutory access by the National Audit Office to its accounts? The BBC argues that what presenters are paid should be secret…particularly if they are paid a lot.
But would transparency over how much people are paid really infringe their rights? Let’s remember that the income and tax paid of the entire Norweigan adult population is on the internet. Or is it (as the BBC also claims) that it cannot reveal the salaries of its presenters because this would tend to drive up the amounts they are paid? It doesn’t seem to occur to them that transparency could be used to drive down the salaries of the higher paid.
This is beginning to look a bit like the MP’s expenses scandal. Whether
it is within the rules or not, it is too outrageous and shameful to be made public.
adrian CSR, economics, transparency
Some key Dutch unions have produced an ‘anti-report’ for Unilever, called ‘Adding Insecurity to Life - the Erratum Report and Accounts’, it describes some of the things which they feel should have been covered in Unilever’s sustainability report, but weren’t. And what Unilever should have said about them. It makes strong reading. But it reminds us that sustainabilty reporting is not about looking good, but about openness.
Is this the way of the future? If companies aren’t truly transparent, will others have to ‘help them’?
adrian CSR, Social Impact, transparency
The film ‘The Age of Stupid’ has been enjoying the patronage of Ed Miliband. Apart from the inconvenient fact that the government’s policies don’t square with the message of the film, this is a good thing.
But perhaps Ed Milliband could answer this question: ’since you are so aware of the drastic nature of the problem with climate change, why are you not telling it like it is?’
In other words, why is there no serious attempt to alert the public to the scale of the climate change problem?
This is dangerous because most people reason that, if there were a serious problem, the government would tell them about it. But since the government is silent (other than saying ‘please insulate your roof’) the problem can’t be all that bad…
Most people aren’t stupid. So, Ed Miliband, what about some leadership from the government?
adrian politics, sustainability government, politicians, sustainability
George Monbiot thinks that population growth is only part of the ecological problem - actually 1/3, with the remainder due to increasing consumption. As a result he thinks that ‘cutting consumption is more important than limiting population’. He also attacks those who raise the issue as older, white middle class men picking on the one problem for which they are not the cause. Presumably, on that reasoning, they shouldn’t really worry about child labour either.
But on his main point, he is just concentrating on the marginal effect, like an economist: if it were in your gift to reduce the population by one (or refrain from adding to it) then that will be only half as effective as reducing the rate of consumption of one person to zero. But of course you can’t reduce your consumption to zero, without committing suicide. You might be able to reduce your consumption by half, which - wouldya believe it? - happens to be the same as not adding to the population by one.
The real issue is that the problem is not just at the margin: it is the result of the absolute numbers of people consuming at too high a rate. The solution must not only be to reduce the rate of growth of consumption, as he suggests, but also its absolute level - and one sure route to that is to reduce population. To support his argument for concentrating on the margin, Monbiot quotes the comforting statistics of the UN which predict that global population is in the process of levelling off anyway. If only we were so lucky: it is far more likely to crash. James Lovelock’s prediction is that there will be only 1 billion people by the end of the century, which is in line with the forecasts of The Limits to Growth. So the key question is whether we reduce it voluntarily…or whether nature does it for us.
adrian sustainability limits to growth, population
Apparently it is a good idea to have a recession if that means you can focus on making money at the expense of everything else. Stefan Stern thinks that “now the recession’s here we can forget all that nonsense about corporate social responsibility (CSR) and get back to trying to make some money”. This seems to me precisely the attitude of the bankers that got us into this mess in the first place.
He may be right to point out that doing good doesn’t necessarily have to be good for business, at least in the short run. Yet isn’t it such short run thinking that is responsible for the long term problems we now face?
And he may be right that much CSR is ‘babies, dolphins and forests’. A lot of CSR reporting does indeed suffer from smiling baby syndrome. But then, that is just poor CSR.
So if the consequences of corporate activity really don’t matter beyond making money, perhaps he should explain whether he thinks it necessary to have a planet around to make money on.
adrian CSR, economics, sustainability CSR, recession, reporting
