Most environmental and social policies are ineffective

New Scientist says it bluntly, but truthfully:

Most climate policies aren't effective

I have been suggesting for many years now that, instead of enacting policies that are entirely focussed on cutting emissions of those gasses thought to contribute to climate change, we should be clear exactly what outcomes we wish to see, and then reward the people who do actually achieve those outcomes. Instead we have an array of divisive, expensive policies, such as subsidising the substitution of one type of car for another, that have done nothing to affect the climate. Even in their own terms - cutting greenhouse gas emissions - they have failed in their ostensible purpose:

 

'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

If we were serious about tackling climate change we'd first answer the fundamental question: do we want to stop the climate changing, or do we want to mitigate adverse events caused by the climate? Then we'd admit that, while we don't really know how best to achieve either of these outcomes, we do know that a multitude of diverse, adaptive approaches will be required. Then we'd put in place incentives for people to research, experiment, refine and then implement these approaches, terminate those that are ineffective, and invest in those that are most promising. 

The problem is a wider one in the public sector: we do not express policy goals in terms of broad outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people. Instead we put resources into existing institutions, which have their own agendas, top of which is usually self-perpetuation. These agendas may have little to do with the institutions' stated purpose, still less to do with bringing about meaningful improvements in environmental and societal well-being.

So we end up with the climate change bandwaggon, on which hordes of well-meaning, hard-working (for the most part), people are working in bodies whose finance depends on their carrying out specified activities, rather than actually improving the environment or society's well-being. Companies in the private sector - those that operate in a competitive market - don't have that luxury. When they fail, they go out of business. A Social Policy Bond approach, applied to the climate or to other goals, would impose such discipline on organisations that work in the public sector. Achieve what society wants you to achieve, and be rewarded. Fail and you disappear. It's not as harsh as it sounds, as everyone ultimately depends on our environmental and social policies being effective.

Avoiding Armageddon - an alternative approach

The Economist asks What if South Korea got a nuclear bomb? 'Public support is high....' and, after all,

North Korea is believed to have dozens of nuclear weapons; its arsenal is already projected to grow into the hundreds by the end of this decade. ...Detractors counter that the [Korean] peninsula will inevitably become a much more dangerous place if South Korea goes nuclear. ....Untested leaders on both sides of the border will have their fingers on the nuclear trigger. The finale of this drama could see them stumbling into Armageddon. What if South Korea got a nuclear bomb?, 'Economist', 17 August

'[T]hem or 'us'? Because a nuclear exchange would be a global catastrophe, even it it did not spark a wider conflict. How are we, that is, the non-existent 'international community', going about reducing the probability of a nuclear conflict? It's a subjective view, but I'd say we're failing. Along with everyone else in the world, I can't see how we could convince those in control of nuclear weapons not to use them. What I can suggest is that we put in place incentives that would reward people who can achieve a sustained period of nuclear peace. If there are such incentives in place today, they're too meagre, because they're not working. We can't yet identify the best approaches to nuclear peace, but we can encourage people to research, experiment and follow such approaches.

Ideally, we'd also channel the market's efficiencies into efforts to bring about nuclear peace. We can do this, I suggest, by issuing Nuclear Peace Bonds. These bonds would be redeemable for a fixed sum only when nobody detonates a nuclear device that immediately kills, say, 100 people; such a period of nuclear peace to be sustained for, say 30 years, before the bonds would be redeemed. Backed by a combination of governments, non-governmental organisations, philanthropists and ordinary people, they would encourage a number of peace-generating approaches. Some would be less promising than others: the way the market for the bonds would work means that these efforts would be terminated and resources diverted into the more promising initiatives. 

A Nuclear Peace Bond regime would reward those who achieve peace, whoever they are and however they do so. It’s an admittedly unconventional approach. In its favour is that the funds used to back the bonds could be payable only if the bonds succeed, and nuclear peace reigns. And, the relevant question is: what is the alternative? The current approach has brought us to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. The taboo against threatening the use of nuclear weapons has already been broken. It now appears inevitable that, unless we actively support and pay for nuclear peace, the taboo against their use will also be broken. It’s now time to encourage and reward diverse, adaptive and successful ways of dealing with the looming nuclear threat.

Why bother with the root causes of anaesthesia - or war?

Saying that we need to find the 'root causes' of our social and environmental problems, in the belief that doing so is necessary to solve them, can be a sincere and necessary position. It can also be a distraction, unnecessary, or a cynical excuse for inaction.

Despite the widespread presence of clinical anesthesiology in medical practice, the mechanism by which diverse inhalational agents result in the state of general anesthesia remains unknown. Mechanisms of general anesthesia: from molecules to mind, George A Mashour, Stuart A Forman, Jason A Campagna, Best Pract Res Clin Anaesthesiol 2005 Sep;19(3):349-64.

And even when identifying root causes turns out to be a necessary condition for solving our problems, it needn't be carried out by government. Social Policy Bonds work by rewarding the achievement of a targeted goal; how this is done, and by whom, are not specified - they don't need to be. Even the people who help achieve the goal need not necessarily know why exactly their methods work.

Take violent political conflict. It's still going on, killing, maiming and making homeless millions of people every year. We could spend years analysing past outbreaks of war, but still never get close to identifying root causes in ways that could be usefully be deployed to forestall future outbreaks. Society is just too complex, diverse and fast-changing. Policymakers should begin by specifying society's desired outcomes, and then put in place ways of rewarding those who achieve them, rather try to identify any root causes. Society and the environment are not like simple chemistry or physics. The entities and their relationships are not static. 

A bond regime wouldn't try to identify the root causes of war, which are a moving target anyway. Instead it would start by specifying exactly the outcomes we want to achieve, and then injecting market incentives into achieving those outcomes. The Social Policy Bond principle, applied to conflict, are the means by which I propose we begin to end all war for all time. There are many organisations, staffed by hard-working, dedicated people, already aimed at ending conflict. But their resources and influence are pitiful compared to the scale of the problem. We should acknowledge that our current ways of trying to bring about world peace are insufficient at the global level, and that we need to encourage new approaches. In economic theory, and on all the evidence, competitive markets, of the sort in which Social Policy Bonds would be bought and sold, are the most efficient way of allocating society's scarce resources. Conflict Reduction Bonds would channel the market's incentives and efficiencies into finding cost-effective solutions. They would would increase people's motivation and attract more resources into solving the problem of conflict, and the principle could be deployed to solve our other social and environmental problems. This is not idealism, of the sort that can be put into a box and hence ignored: it's giving incentives to motivated people to find solutions and rewarding only those who succeed in doing so.

Funding drug trials

Monika Odermatt writes about the possibility of issuing Social Impact Bonds to fund certain drug trials: 

I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Rick Thompson, CEO [of Reboot Rx]... [I asked] him about the drug repurposing social impact bond (SIB), the challenges he has encountered, and his perspective on the future of SIBs. According to Rick, the following ingredients are key to a successful SIB: flexibility, imagination, and funding. There is a need for flexibility in order to have an open mind and learn from the experiences of other organizations who have worked with SIBs before; imagination in order to overcome hurdles one encounters when trying to implement a SIB, and to find ways to collaborate with other countries and partners; and impact investors to fund the SIB and trials. Social impact bonds could fund drug repurposing clinical trials, Monika Odermatt

I agree, and intend to contact Reboot Rx, along these lines: The flexibility I'd like to see is the sort that would make the bonds tradeable. Finding cures for the rare diseases mentioned is inevitably going to be a long-term endeavour. The incentives on offer should encourage efficient new approaches, and terminate failing approaches. Funds should be channelled into organisations that are most efficient at achieving goals along the way to success; likely to be a multi-step process, in which each step is best taken by organisations with specific strengths. The cast of actors should be flexible enough to encourage efficiency at every stage of the path to success, which means that those who succeed at one step should be able to benefit from the incentives without having to proceed to the next step, in which they may have little expertise. 

I've written elsewhere about the need to make the bonds tradeable for long-term goals such as those of Reboot Rx, and other goals that will inevitably take decades to realise. These include nuclear peace and other forms of conflict reduction, climate stability and other environmental goals.