Climate change, again

I posed this question before but it bears repeating: are we more concerned about climate change, or about the impacts of climate change on human, animal and plant life? The popular assumption is that the most efficient way of mitigating the negative impacts of climate change is to reduce that which current science suggests are one of its major causes: greenhouse gas emissions. But we don't know that for certain, and we don't know the degree to which we can do anything about it. And we'll never know whether any of the costly policies suggested in this article will have had any impact whatsoever. It would seem preferable to spend our scarce resources on dealing with the impacts of adverse climatic events - whether they're caused by greenhouse gases or not. Floods are just as devastating whether caused by greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions or not. Climate Stability Bonds would, in fact, encourage ghg emission cuts if they are found to be the most efficient way of dealing with the adverse impacts of climate change on human, animal and plant life.

When I wrote along the above lines to an internet comment forum, one respondent said: 'What you don't do is cause a problem, then ignore it while you "fix" the symptoms.' My response is that we should not be dogmatic about whether we tackle causes or symptoms. The 'cause' of a large proportion of the crime problem is 'young men': we don't force all boys to undergo a sex change just so we can save money on a justice system.

There are undoubtedly symptoms whose root causes we can identify readily and address. There are others whose root causes are currently unknown or too expensive to tackle. We could still, with Social Policy Bonds, target the symptoms for solution and motivate bondholders to work out whether or not the best way of dealing with them is to go after possible root causes. There are problems whose root causes might never be unambiguously identified. But if we issue Conflict Reduction Bonds, for instance, there's no need to resign ourselves to living on a planet wracked by war.

The bias against unglamorous diseases

From a letter to the editor of the Economist:

[R]oughly speaking, mental health receives only about half the research funding it should in America, based on its health burden. The problem is that many interest groups lobby Congress vigorously for research funding for their disease. Patients with mental illness do not yet exert that kind of political pressure. letter from Michael Hanna of Mercury Medical Research & Writing, 'the Economist' dated 21 November

It's striking how unrelated is healthcare funding to need. Medical experts have little capacity or incentive to see beyond their own institution or speciality. Government - and not only in the US - responds to pressure from interest groups and allocates funds accordingly. Slipping through the cracks are unglamorous diseases including mental illness. Even within a class of diseases, such as cancer, funding discrepancies are stark: this paper looks at the UK. I think government here is failing in its purpose. It should target for improvement the broad health of all its citizens rather than merely respond to lobbyists, however dedicated, sincere and hard working. It should, as far as possible, be impartial as to the causes of ill health, and direct resources to where they can return the biggest health benefit per dollar spent. Applying the Social Policy Bond principle to health could do this. For more, see my short paper on Health Bonds.

Terror: too much too late

There is one simple solution to the problem of terrorism: kill lots of people, of which some are certain to be terrorists. Choose a terrorist-rich area, and if you kill everybody within it, then you can be sure no terrorists will originate from there ever again. It's a cruel policy and also a stupid one, in that it's likely to create resentment outside the killing zone, which will generate more terror later. Of course you can enlarge the killing zone, create a desert, and call it peace, but you cannot do that indefinitely, and the costs to everybody rise hugely as your killing zone expands. Unfortunately, politicians, the military and the public want a simple solution, and the Tacitean desert approach seems to be the policy of choice in today's world. It's the 'too much, too late' option, which, arguably, has led to numerous devastating wars.


I have another idea. Let's recognise that there is no simple solution. That it's likely that only a combination of different approaches, varying with time and over geographical area, will work, and that our goal is a sustained period during which terror will not occur. There are initiatives now that can help achieve that goal, But they're not co-ordinated and are heavily outweighed by the reactive policies of governments under pressure to 'do something' when an outrage occurs. Almost all the incentives on offer are to those with a strong interest, conscious or not, in keeping conflict going. This means the military, the men of religion, the ideologues on all sides, and the millions of intimidated and frightened ordinary citizens.

We need to put in place a system of countervailing incentives; one that encourages diverse, adaptive approaches, and one that will reward people who oppose or undermine the interests that generate conflict. We should focus on the long term, so that our goal would not be undermined by policy changes or unconsidered reactions to outrages. One way of doing this would be by issuing Conflict Reduction Bonds. These could be backed by any combination of governments, non-governmental organizations, philanthropists and ordinary citizens, whose funds would reward the achievement of a sustained period of global (or regional) peace. Incentives under a bond regime would cascade down into all sorts of initiatives, glamorous or not, high level or low level, bottom up or top down, old-fashioned or innovative: efficiency in reducing the prospects of conflict would be the sole criterion for the allocation of funds. For more see this previous post, or my papers on applying the Social Policy Bond concept to conflict reduction.

"There's no money in health..."

Suzanne Beachy talks to Dr Peter Breggin about the loss of her son 'due to psychiatry's failure to offer beneficial, caring human services, and indeed due to psychiatry's opposition to them.':

There's no money in health; there's only money in managing illness. Suzanne Beachy, Dr Peter Breggin Hour, 4 November

Ms Beachy is relating her experiences in the US, but the same applies to most western countries. The concept of 'health' is not one that can be readily addressed by our existing institutions. It suffers because it results from a huge number of influences, and because our institutions have grown up during times when that number of influences was much smaller. So these institutions and the systems they embrace aren't as good a fit in today's complex society's as they used to be. Curing short-term illnesses is a relatively visible and quantifiable activity. Treating or managing poor health can also be reduced to a series of procedures that can be performed by our current health care providers. Sure, clinical trials are performed, pills and equipment sold, and a whole array of indicators is measured and targeted. But much about the clinical trials - who performs them, how they're performed and which ones are quietly ignored - is questionable, and many of the targeted indicators are Mickey Mouse at best. They have evolved to measure highly specific rates of activity, rather than outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people, healthy or sick. The result is exactly what Suzanne Beachy experienced: a system that motivates people and institutions to manage illness rather than optimise health. 

Here's another approach: measure the broad health of society, and target that for improvement. Society is so complex, and our knowledge about society and science is growing so rapidly that no government, however altruistic, generous, or far-sighted, can know how best to maximise our physical and mental well-being. But what a government can do is put in place a system that gives people incentives to find the most efficient ways to maximise society's health continuously. In short, government  can apply the Social Policy Bond principle to society's physical and mental well-being and issue Health Bonds.