It's all too complicated. I'm off to the boozer

George Monbiot writes:

Today, foreign corporations, or the oligarchs who own them, can sue governments for the laws they pass, at offshore tribunals composed of corporate lawyers. The cases are held in secret. Unlike our courts, these tribunals allow no right of appeal or judicial review. You or I cannot take a case to them, nor can our government, or even businesses based in this country. They are open only to corporations based overseas. If a tribunal determines that a law or policy may compromise the corporation’s projected profits, it can award damages of hundreds of millions, even billions. These sums represent not actual losses, but money the arbitrators decide the company might otherwise have made. The government may have to abandon its policy. It will be discouraged from passing future laws along the same lines, for fear of being sued. Record numbers of cases are being brought, as corporations learn from each other, and hedge funds finance suits in return for a share of the takings. The result? Sovereignty and democracy are becoming unaffordable. The process is known as “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS). Hello, foreign oligarchs and corporations! Please come and sue the UK for billions, George Monbiot, 'The Guardian', 1 December 2025

Most of us are unaware of ISDS, and I wonder whether even our politicians know about it and its implications. Maybe they do know, but don't care. Maybe they would care if they knew but, as with most people, are prone to the learned helplessness and demoralisation that afflicts those faced with incomprehensible processes. Perhaps ISDS and similar stratagems are purposely made incomprehensible for that reason. Complexity can be used cynically to deter scrutiny and deflect blame. 

Social Policy Bonds have two essential elements. Injecting market forces into the achievement of our social and environmental goals is one. But perhaps even more important is that the bonds express policy in terms of meaningful, explicit, verifiable outcomes. The ISDS is allowed to override domestic law and the decisions made by parliaments because it has been 'written – without public consent, and often in conditions of extreme secrecy – into trade treaties.' Under a bond regime, people would have incentives to see whether such treaties conform with society's goals, and to veto them if, like the ISDS, they obviously don't. Under the current regime, the only people who understand and participate in the drafting of these treaties are those who are paid to follow the process. Whether the treaties are consistent with society's goals or not has nothing to do with how they are renumerated. 

Expressing policy in terms of outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people would encourage greater public participation in the policymaking process: an end in itself, as well as a likely means to more effective policies. Currently, policy debates focus on institutional structures and funding arrangements; the people who make policy are often chosen on the basis of the campaigning skills of their sponsors; and the policies themselves have only vague ostensible goals, and real goals that can be easily obscured by their  tedium and complexity of policymaking process. The gap between politicians, officials and the wealthy on one side; and ordinary people on the other, grows ever wider. 

Complexity and learned helplessness

When people's wishes clash with vested interests it's the vested interests (aka 'the deep state'; aka the 'elites') that win every time. Our political systems are too complex, arcane or corrupt for ordinary people to stand a chance. One result is obvious: ever-rising income and wealth inequality. Another is learned helplessness. 

Voting makes little difference. And, while we don't really know the intentions of the people in power, I suspect that whoever they are doesn't make much difference. The vested interests are too powerful. They have perpetuated a policymaking process that effectively excludes influence from people outside their exalted circle. They have weaponised the complexity and obscurity of our systems of government for selfish ends.

They can get away with this because our political discourse centres on sound-bites, personality, and image. Actual policymaking is an entirely distinct process: much of it focuses on the structures and funding of government bodies, law and regulation; all of which are opaque to non-professionals - which is to say, ordinary people. The public. The rest of us. The only people who now really understand policymaking are those who are paid to do so, and the only people who influence it are those who have the millions of dollars necessary to pay them.You might even think the system has been specifically designed to keep ordinary citizens out of it. The barriers to entry into the world policymaking are high, and the public is almost totally demoralised.

I suggest that we change this by centering our policymaking discussions on broad outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people. Instead of focusing on funding arrangements, institutional structures, legal manouevres and other arcana, our politicians should articulate society's wishes in ways that we can understand and influence. 

Meaningful outcomes: they form one essential element of the Social Policy Bond idea. The other is the injection of market incentives into their achievement: rewarding those who achieve our goals according to their efficiency in actually achieving them. The idea might sound outlandish at first hearing: it would entail that politicians contract out the solution of our social and environmental problems to investors. But, under a bond regime, government would help guide and articulate society's wishes - something that democratic governments are quite good at doing, and government would still raise the revenue for their achievement. Only their achievement would be subject to the market, which economic theory and all the evidence suggest is the most efficient way of allocating society's scarce resources. No doubt the Social Policy Bond idea could do with some discussion and refinement. But the real question is: what is the alternative? To continue as we are doing, where the gap between vested interests and ordinary people grows ever wider, risks, in my view, social collapse.

For more about Social Policy Bonds see the Social Policy Bonds homepage

We're all 'fossil fuel interests'

As expected:

The 30th conference of the parties (Cop30), the annual climate summit of all nations party to the UNFCCC, just ended. Stakeholders are out in the media trying spin the outcome as a win. ... But let us be clear. The conference was a failure. Its outcome, the decision text known as the Global Mutirão or Global Collective Effort, is, in essence, a form of climate denial. Another Cop wrecked by fossil fuel interests and our leaders’ cowardice – but there is another way, Genevieve Guenther, 'The Guardian', 24 November 2025

I don't know why we'd expect anything different. Collectively, we have decided that we'd prefer to spend our limited resources on current needs than on reducing the severity of future problems. The concept of trade-offs is rarely mentioned in this context, but it must be: reducing global greenhouse emissions by enough to show a demonstrable impact on the climate means reducing spending on the education, housing and health of our current population. I say reducing greenhouse gas emissions, since that is the main focus of the COPs. It's not just this one that's failed: 

'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?'  From Riding the Climate Toboggan, John Michael Greer, 6 September 2024

Over the decades, I've suggested an alternative approach to addressing climate change. The first priority is to be clear whether we are more concerned about the climate or about its adverse impacts on human, animal and plant life. It would target a wide range of physical, biological, ecological, financial and social indicators, all of which would have to fall within a targeted range for a sustained period for it to succeed. People would be rewarded over the many years it would take to achieve this goal of a (relatively) stable climate. The main thrust of the Climate Stability Bond idea is that would supply incentives, continuously, for people to work towards broad, meaningful targets. Current efforts vaguely mention average temperature increases from pre-industrial levels...1.5, say, or 2.0 degrees Celsius; but (1) these are not actionable targets; and (2) nobody has incentives to achieve them. 

Ms Guenther blames 'fossil fuel interests', for COP's failure, rather than the people (that is, the world's population) who currently buy fossil fuels and the services they provide. I would say that with the climate, as with other environmental depredations, we've chosen as a species to optimise our current quality and quantity of human life to the cost of every other species on the planet. The only way out, in my view, is to channel some of our self-interest into improving our environment rather than destroying it. We should start by setting some meaningful, long-term targets and a system that rewards people for achieving them. 

Let policy evolve

One reason why solutions to our social and environmental problems are slow to appear is that we do not let evolution operate:

The defining features of an evolutionary system are variation generation (e.g., a new cell phone design, a new word), inheritance (characteristics are passed on through time), and differential success (some variants do better than others). It doesn’t matter if some new variants were produced with intent, or of there are no gene-like things involved. (My emphasis.) Mark Vellend on Everything Evolves (interview), 11 August 2025

Our current policymaking regimes do not systematically favour the most efficient policies. One reason is that time horizons are too short; in democracies particularly, any gains from implementing effective policies are likely to be way beyond the time horizons of most politicians. Well-meaning public servants will do their best, but they are unlikely to advocate for policies over which their department has no remit. As well, while they would prefer to see their most effective policies adopted, they typically do not benefit financially when that happens. 

Another reason, is that, as Stephen van Evera writes: 'states widely fail to evaluate their own ideas.' Citing Aaron Wildavsky, van Evera writes:

Evaluation promotes innovation and change. This threatens the jobs and status of incumbent members of the organization. Hence incumbents often seek to hamper or prevent evaluation and to punish evaluators. These incumbents tend to dominate the organization's decision making, so evaluation finds itself with stronger enemies than friends within the organization. Hence self-evaluation is often timid and ineffective. 

A Social Policy Bond regime would be different. It would not take existing organisations as given, and it would aim for outcomes that can be achieved only in the long term. (Because they would be tradable, people could benefit by holding the bonds for a short period.) Importantly, bondholders would have the time horizon and incentive to experiment with new approaches, choosing to follow only those that are most promising. For our most urgent national and global challenges, I believe it's essential that we take the long-term view and put in place a regime that encourages diverse policy approaches, and then selects only those that are most promising. 

Ruling the void

Fintan O’Toole, writing in the New York Review of Books, quotes Peter Mair who wrote, in Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy (2013):

The age of party democracy has passed. Although the parties themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form. The Lingering Delusion, Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books, dated 20 November 2025

The reasons for the disconnect have to do with the rise of a self-contained political profession whose participants are expert in just two things: gaining power and retaining it. They might have started out as idealistic, but those who rise to the top rarely do so on merit. Within the pool of potential representatives we make our choices on the basis of their looks, sound-bites, personality, promises, or tribal origins. The consequences - the inability to sustain democracy - are becoming increasingly clear as society becomes more complex and government's role in our lives becomes more significant. 

Much less clear is what to do about it. My suggestion is that we learn to express our long-term social and environmental goals in terms of broad outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people. As a way of closing the gap between people and politicians, a political party could give explicit, verifiable goals: for example: by the end of our term in office crime will have fallen by x percent. 

Under a Social Policy Bond regime, we'd agree on a set of broad outcomes, such as universal literacy, improved general health, reduced crime rates or, on a global scale, the elimination of violent political conflict (war and civil war), or catastrophe, whether natural or man-made. Then government, or a consortium of private-sector bodies, would issue bonds that will reward people for solving these problems, however they do so. In short, target outcomes and don't focus too much on the identity or media performance of people who promise to spend taxpayer revenue on our behalf. Rely, instead, on a motivated coalition of bondholders, who will have every incentive to subordinate all their activities to the achievement of society's targeted goals.

I don't think we can look to the political class to change our politics in such a way, except perhaps by giving grants to bodies that have a long-term vision. Our global problems and many of our national problems are too big, though, for  existing bodies to take on. My thinking is that we should look to alternative sources of funding for our long-term social and environmental goals: enlightened, visionary philanthropists come to mind, perhaps supplying initial funding that could attract funds from other sources, including ordinary citizens. Unfortunately I have no entree into the world of such people. 

Deforestation: there's no good news

From the Economist:

Some 67,000km² of virgin rainforest were destroyed last year [ie 2024], an area roughly the size of Ireland and nearly twice as much as was cleared in 2023. A pledge made by world leaders at the COP climate conference in 2021 to halt deforestation by 2030 is nowhere close to being fulfilled: despite fluctuations, the pace of global deforestation is roughly the same as it was at the beginning of the decade. To save the world’s tropical forests, learn from Brazil, the Economist, 23 October 2025

The article tries to be positive: the rate of deforestation was falling before recent wildfires, and Brazil is making more effort to protect indigenous reserves and establish property rights. But the overall picture is undeniably gloomy, much as it is with almost all of humanity's environmental depredations. 

As well as deforestation, with all its attendant dangers, we are facing biodiversity loss, overfishing, water and air pollution, and the impacts of climate change. But we can't expect policymakers, in Brazil or elsewhere, to weigh up all the impacts of our activities and price or regulate them accordingly, and to do so on a continuous basis to ensure that policy keeps up with scientific advances and the growth of our knowledge about ecological relationships.

So I propose a different method. The current system, at its best, reacts to problems when they become politically unavoidable, and then tries to identify and address their causes. My suggestion would be instead to specify acceptable ranges of indicators of environmental health, including human, animal and plant health, and supply incentives for people to ensure that the targeted indicators remain within those ranges for a sustained period. In short, to target broad environmental goals and reward those who achieve them.

My suggested way of doing this at the national level would be for the government to issue Environmental Policy Bonds. These bonds would not bear interest, but would be redeemable once the specified environmental targets had been achieved and sustained. The bonds would be tradeable and, could have a very long-term focus, encouraging people to research, refine and undertake activities directed toward one or all of the targeted goals. In this, and in other ways, they would have several advantages over current policymaking:

• We'd be targeting outcomes, for which there is more consensus than for the means to achieve them.  
•  People can identify more readily with explicit environmental goals than with the means to achieve them, which means that there would be more engagement with the public when developing environmental policy, which in turns means more buy-in, which I consider to be essential. 
• The target outcomes would be stable and have a very long-term focus: essential if we are to encourage new ways of achieving our environmental goals. 

If national governments successfully implemented Environmental Policy Bonds, they could conceivably collectively issue bonds targeting global environmental objectives, encompassing, for example, the health of the seas and atmospheric pollution as well as climate change and biodiversity loss. I have to admit that that looks extremely unlikely, especially as the concept has been in the public arena now for more than thirty years, and only a non-tradeable variant (Social Impact Bonds) has so far been tried. As I explain here and here tradeability is absolutely necessary if we want to achieve broad, long-term goals. Perhaps, rather than wait for government to change the way it does things, we should try to engage with philanthropists. I have tried to do this, but with no success. 

Fraud and incompetence

In a long and readable blog post Dr Malcolm Kendrick summarises his findings:

The point I am trying to make is that the only certain lesson we can learn from Covid-19 is that science, especially medical science, snapped and broke. My current thinking on Covid-19 – and other important issues, Dr Malcolm Kendrick, 7 October 2025

Incompetence is part of the reason; fraud is another. Dr Kendrick quotes Natalie Rhodes:

If you search for scientific research articles with COVID-19 in the title, you’ll see more than 17,000 articles published since the start of 2020, but this vital research is being undermined by weak or even fraudulent research practices. Perhaps the highest profile example so far is the Surgisphere case which saw a small US company seemingly fabricate a database, the data for which was purportedly from the medical records of nearly 100,000 COVID-19 patients treated in 167 hospitals. Was the Surgisphere case a one-off? Or does it highlight the bigger systemic problem of research fraud?, Natalie Rhodes, Transparency International, 8 July 2020

Confirming this, Vince Bielski writes:

After journals published fake papers, however, the paper mills saw the opening and pounced, accounting for nearly half of new submissions. In a corrupt echo of Moore’s Law, a 2024 study concluded that the number of suspected paper mill articles has been doubling every 18 months, “far outpacing that of legitimate science.” Paper Chase: A Global Industry Fuels Scientific Fraud in the US, Vince Bielski, RealClear Investigations, 8 October 2025

In parallel with our economic system that doesn't do much for well-being, our legal systems that no longer deliver justice, our policing that no longer reduces crime (pdf), there are grounds for believing that our global organisations are similarly dysfunctional: the UN bodies aimed at peace and climate accomplish very little. My thinking is that this is because we fail to reward outcomes. We measure success in the world of medical research by looking at the numbers of papers published or citation indices. We measure success in other areas by the resources devoted to organisations and policies that attempt to achieve what we say we want. So we end up with economic growth that devastates the environment while benefiting only the very rich; we focus on greenhouse gas emissions without actually reducing them, still less doing anything to slow the rate of climate change. 

Surrogate indicators in medicine are measurements or signs used as substitutes for direct clinical outcomes that show how a patient feels, functions, or survives; it is always better to target outcomes directly but it is not always possible in medicine. In policy, though, it is what we need to do, otherwise it's too easy, as we see, for organisations to become corrupted, to swerve away from their original, (stated) intent and to focus almost exclusively on their own goals; pre-eminently self-perpetuation. 

A Social Policy Bond regime would start by specifying exactly which outcomes we need to target. These outcomes should be broad and meaningful to ordinary people. They should themselves be, or be inextricably linked to what we want to achieve. In health, then, rather than tout increased spending on health services as an indicator of how sincere we are in wanting to improve society's health, we should be targeting an array of indicators that actually measure health: longevity, infant mortality, quality-adjusted life years etc. (See my long essay here on applying the Social Policy Bond concept to health.) Similarly with climate change, crime and war - about all of which I have written pieces that are freely available via the Social Policy Bonds home page. 

Discounting our future

When people say that the Social Policy Bond idea is unrealistic and I think of the decades that I've been trying to promote it with little success, I need only remind myself of the grotesque, disastrous ways in which policy is currently made to remind myself that the bonds do actually have a contribution to make. 

For example: discount rates. Geoff Mann writes:

The rates at which we currently practice discounting mean that the long-term future of humanity, the living world, and the planet itself is not metaphorically but literally valueless. The price of tomorrow, Geoff Mann, reviewing Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology by Liliana Doganova, 'New York Review of Books', issue dated 23 October 2025

As Mr Mann writes, the choice of discount rate that policymakers use can hardly be overstated.

The 7 percent discount rate - commonly used by the Trump administration...- means that our welfare today should be valued at six times that of people in 2050. ... We have unilaterally indebted future generations (and the rest of life on earth) to the present, and the discount rate is the interest we make them pay on a debt we have fabricated out of nothing but our own narcissistic accounting. 

'Motivated reasoning' is 'a cognitive bias that influences people to favor their existing beliefs, affects decision-making and critical thinking.' It seems to me that using a discount rate to evaluate the long-term impact of policies, and which discount rate to use, are a form of motivated reasoning. If people in government or elsewhere wants a project to go ahead, they'll choose a high discount rate; if not, a low discount rate. 

Most democratic governments have a short time horizon, so that long-term goals, such as the survival of humanity can optionally be valued at almost nothing when it suits their purpose. A high discount rate is one way in which policies are made that would be unpopular if people knew the facts. The opacity and sheer length and tedium of the policymaking process are others. All this means that only powerful and already-wealthy interests can afford to follow and influence the process. Currently, policies that have long-term implications are a by-product of politicians' numerous short-term calculations. The results are plain to see: at the global and national levels, a despoiled physical and social environment and a growing potential for military conflict. I don't believe that most people would choose these outcomes, and that is why I advocate that our long-term goals need to be expressed in terms that ordinary people can understand so that we can, if we wish, participate in choosing and prioritising them.

A Social Policy Bond regime would begin with broad goals that are meaningful to ordinary people: the over-riding goal would be the survival of humanity. Precise definitions would be the subject of debate and discussion between experts and the public. National goals could include a healthy population, a cleaner environment and reduced crime. All would have to be sustained before people would be rewarded for achieving them: the goals would all be long term in nature - a contrast to the wild and deadly short-term thinking that permeates the current policymaking environment. 

Why we must target outcomes

Madeleine Cuff writes:

Levels of hydrogen in the atmosphere have jumped by 60 per cent since pre-industrial times, underscoring the dramatic impact fossil fuel burning has had on the planet's atmospheric composition. Although hydrogen isn't a greenhouse gas, it has an indirect warming effect through reactions with other molecules. Atmospheric hydrogen is rising, which may be a problem for the climate, Madeleine Cuff, New Scientist, 19 September 2025 (my emphasis)

'[H]ydrogen isn't a greenhouse gas' means that it's not been targeted for reduction, as have carbon dioxide, methane and others - and that is exactly why we need to be targeting outcomes, rather than ways that we currently think might help achieve them. Our scientific knowledge is expanding rapidly: we didn't know that hydrogen has a warming effect, and still less do we know which are - and which will be - the best ways to address climate change. To repeat: we need to be targeting outcomes. I suggest that our desired outcome should be a combination of physical, biological, financial and social variables, all of which will have to fall within approved ranges for a sustained period before we can say that we've achieved our climate goal. The focus must be on the desired outcome; current policies are incapable of adapting to our growing knowledge of the climate and its impacts on human, animal and plant life. 

Climate Stability Bonds would be one way of encouraging approaches that adapt to our growing scientific knowledge about the causes, and effects of climate change on our environment. A wide array of approaches will be necessary, and the focus will need to be on more than gas emissions, more than the composition of the atmosphere. By targeting desired outcomes, the bonds would stimulate diverse approaches, and reward people for achieving them. Many of our environmental and social problems are too complex and long term to be targeted by policies that depend on ossified science. Social Policy Bonds, by targeting outcomes, would stimulate the diverse, adaptive approaches that we need to achieve them. 

The irrelevance of vague goals

I have my own ideas about how best to tackle climate change, and they don't necessarily entail cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions but, accepting that such cutbacks have become almost the sole focus of our climate change activity, the gap between rhetoric and reality is spectacular:

Despite all the disasters, all the models, and all the conferences, in 2022 there were at least 119 oil pipelines in development around the world, plus 447 gas pipelines, 300 gas terminals, 432 new coal mines, and 485 new coal power plants. As the historian of science Jean-Baptiste Fressoz showed in his recent book More and More and More, despite the vast quantities of talk and money invested in producing a technological “energy transition,” last year the world burned more coal and more wood than ever before. Trevor Jackson, How to blow up a planet, New York Review of Books, dated 25 September 2025

Sadly, there are parallels in other concerns of great importance to humanity.   

Tong Zhao, writes in the Economist:

China’s silence about the ultimate size and purposes of its nuclear forces feeds fears of a doctrinal shift from pure deterrence towards a willingness to consider the first use of nuclear weapons. American strategists feel compelled to map detailed nuclear-war scenarios between the two countries—ranging from limited regional exchanges to all-out homeland strikes. This, in turn, is likely to push China towards more advanced nuclear-warfighting preparations. Even if deterrence never fails and luck never runs out, the process ensures an unwinnable arms race. Tong Zhao, China should not fuel an arms race, says a close watcher of its nuclear policy, the Economist, 3 September 2025 

The common theme is our utter incapacity to solve these huge, urgent threats to our existence, despite the myriad conferences, agreements, national and supranational bodies, philanthropic and non-governmental organisations whose sole remit is to ensure that we don't blow up the planet. Our institutions and so-called leaders can get away with failing us in this way because there's no accountability. They are good at dreaming up lofty, superficially attractive goals, such as limiting world temperature increases; and the US can spend 1.5 trillion dollars (over 30 years) to maintain its nuclear arsenal so that it can 'field a credible deterrent that can deter, and, if necessary, defeat, adversary aggression and nuclear coercion.' But there is no mechanism or incentive to convert pledges to reduce greenhouse gases (let alone, deal with climate change) or to deter nuclear aggression into their actual fulfilment.

My suggestion is that we have broad, meaningful targets, and reward people for achieving them. Most people don't care about greenhouse gas emissions. We care a little more about the composition of the atmosphere, and much more about the climate's impact on human, animal and plant life. It is those impacts that we need to target for reduction, not the alleged means of reducing them. Similarly, we are paying people - extravagantly - to play around with their nuclear warfare scenarios and to build ever more nuclear weapons, rather than rewarding people to ensure nuclear peace. In both cases there is a mismatch between what our bureaucracies do with our money, and our real wishes and needs.

A Social Policy Bond regime would be different. It would start by identifying those real needs, expressing them in explicit, transparent, verifiable terms. So, rather than target climate change by focusing almost exclusively on greenhouse gas emissions, we'd identify exactly what outcomes we trying to achieve. These would probably be an array of physical, biological, social and monetary targets, all of which would have to fall within a specified range for a sustained period before people would be rewarded for achieving them. And our goal with nuclear weapons is to ensure that none of them are ever used. It is sustained peace that we should be rewarding; probably all of the 51 peace-building think-tanks and relevant committees in the United Nations and elsewhere are staffed by dedicated, hard-working employees and do some useful work, but there is no system in place to reward them in ways linked to their success or otherwise in ensuring peace. The issue is not (only) about raising their salaries, but about giving efficient bodies more resources for their most promising and successful approaches. Identification of clear, verifiable and meaningful outcomes is the essential first step in a Social Policy Bond regime. Channeling the market's incentives and efficiencies into achieving these outcomes is the next step. 

For more about Climate Stability Bonds, see here. For more about applying the Social Policy Bond idea to conflict reduction, see here. To read or buy my recent short book about World Peace Bonds, see here.