Indirect greenhouse gases: why the 'root causes' approach isn't working

From the current New Scientist:

Of all the global warming that has happened since the pre-industrial era, about 15 per cent has been caused by emissions other than greenhouse gases, mainly carbon monoxide and VOCs [volatile organic chemicals]. ‘Forgotten’ pollutants cause warming, Alec Luhn, 'New Scientist', dated 20 June 2026

Some countries target emissions of these 'indirect greenhouse gases' indirectly, but most efforts aimed at reducing the rate of climate change are focused on carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that more directly affect the composition of the atmosphere. The same article tells us that black carbon (soot) is also excluded from these efforts and from national emissions data.  

The flaw in this approach - and it's a flaw that bedevils much environmental and social policy - is that in targeting a problem we try to identify its root causes and then aim to eliminate or attenuate them. But, as this example shows, when we are dealing with problems that have multiple causes and significant time lags, it's almost impossible to exhaustively identify these root causes. In this example, Mr Luhn points out that these indirect greenhouse gases plus black carbon are estimated to have contributed about  0.3°C of warming, which is quite significant. But there may be even more causes of climate change of which we are not aware. Indeed, a recent article in Nature highlights the hitherto unrecognised climate forcing contribution of micro- and nano-plastic particles. 

Which is why I advocate targeting the outcomes that we wish to see, rather than the supposed means of achieving them. Our knowledge of environmental and social relationships though, is always growing, and it makes more sense (to me) to recognise that we can't identify all the root causes and, rather than assume that we do and legislate accordingly, we should be encouraging people to keep researching into those root causes or to acknowledge that there might be more efficient ways of solving our problems than trying to find them. In the climate change example, we should be very clear about what we want to see: most probably, we'd want to see a range of physical, biological, ecological, social and financial measures of climate impacts to fall within an approved range for a sustained period. Why then, shouldn't we reward people for achieving that goal, rather than the alleged means of achieving it? In this example, again, it might be more efficient to look at solutions other than, or complementary to, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Such approaches are being followed, but there is no coherent way of rewarding the most promising of them; nothing along the lines of the efforts to control emissions of those gases that fossilised science once told us contribute most to climate change. 

A Social Policy Bond regime, applied to climate change, would take that long-term view, and once we have clarified exactly what outcomes we wish to see, reward those who take steps to achieve them. A bond regime would reward the most cost-effective approaches and terminate those that are least promising. The same paradigm applies to other social and environmental approaches, especially those that are so complex that current policies are failing. 

For more about what I think about root causes, see here and here. For more about Social Policy Bonds in general see here; as applied to climate change see here.  

$3768 per second

There can't be many people who'd like to see a nuclear conflict but, with expenditures like this, it's increasingly likely that we'll see one:

In 2025, the nine nuclear-armed states spent just under $119 billion, or $3,768 per second, on their nuclear arsenals. [T]he combined spending of the nuclear armed states – China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, UK and US increased 19% from the previous year....Premeditated: 2025 global nuclear weapons spending, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), June 2026   

In 2025, at least 25 companies working on nuclear weapons development and maintenance held significant contracts for their work. These companies earned at least $38 billion in the year for nuclear weapons related activities and hold at least $394 billion in outstanding contracts. In 2025, new contracts worth around $2.5 billion were awarded to these companies. The companies identified in this report paid lobbyists in France and the United States more than $138 million to represent their interests last year. 2025 Nuclear Weapons Spending Reaches $119 billion, ICAN, June 2026

These sums represent a massive failure on the part of our species. A big part of the problem is that there's no obvious way in which ordinary people - the part of humanity that hopes nuclear weapons will never be used - can channel our wishes into opposing their continued development and deployment. There are bodies, such as ICAN, dedicated to campaigning for the abolition of nuclear weapons, but their resources are pitiful in comparison to the sums wielded by the companies working to develop them. The financial rewards to those companies, and the incentives to acquire them, vastly outweigh organised opposition to t heir deployment and use. Incentives are crucial and we need to offer meaningful and effective incentives for people to do everything they can to deter the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons.     

What I propose is that we offer incentives for people to explore more ways of reducing the likelihood of nuclear conflict as efficiently as possible. I suggest that we put in place a system that encourages and rewards people for researching, refining and implementing the most promising activities that would ensure sustained nuclear peace. 

Nuclear Peace Bonds would be an ideal application of the Social Policy Bond concept, which is a way of rewarding the more efficient achievement social and environmental outcomes. In this instance, the targeted outcome could be nuclear peace sustained for thirty years. 'Nuclear peace' could be defined as something like 'the detonation of a nuclear device that directly kills more than 50 people' (with added provisos about any electromagnetic pulse effects). The bonds would reward those who achieve such a sustained period of nuclear peace, whoever they are and however they do so: only the outcome would be stipulated. For a short piece on how Nuclear Peace Bonds would work, please click here. For essays about applying the bonds to conflict in general, click here.

As well as pursuing activities the exact nature of which we cannot anticipate, investors in Nuclear Peace Bonds could do things that cannot be done by existing organisations, constrained as they are by precedent, and their perceived need to maintain their existence and so satisfy the bodies that fund them. So, for example, in today's world, nobody would have any incentive to bribe people close to decision makers in politics or the military to advocate nuclear disarmament. Likewise, an existing body is unlikely to try to get religious extremists to tone down their rhetoric, even if it believed that were the most efficient way of reducing the probability of nuclear conflict. The risk and consequences of exposure and backlash are too great for current institutions to bear. Holders of Nuclear Peace Bonds, however, would not be deterred from whatever actions they think most effective: funds to redeem their bonds could be held in escrow. Once nuclear peace had been achieved and sustained, their reward would be guaranteed. Nuclear Peace Bonds could run in parallel with existing efforts. Indeed, it's likely to channel more resources into those existing bodies whose activities are most promising. It would also encourage new approaches, the precise nature of which we cannot and need not know in advance.

A Nuclear Peace Bond regime would reward those who achieve peace, whoever they are and however they do so. It’s an admittedly novel approach, but the relevant question is 'what is the alternative?'. The Doomsday Clock is currently at 85 seconds to midnight....

Outcomes and accountability

George Monbiot writes about the UK:

Our entire political system is premised on the idea of accountability. Brilliant theory: just a shame it bears no relation to reality. Nothing sums up the death of accountability like the prospect of Nigel Farage in No10, 'the Guardian', 20 May 2026

Under the current system, people rarely monitor the distance between what politicians say and what they do. Even less frequently do we identify links between what they say and what actually happens. This is not just because of short attentions spans; it's also because society is far too complex for such relationships to be obvious. Things might have been different in the past, when there were fewer variables, fewer people, and time lags between a politician's statement and its consequences were shorter. Then, choosing between electoral candidates would have felt more meaningful, and politicians could be held more accountable. We became used to the idea of framing policy goals in terms of the ideas and personalities of the people who enunciated them. But those days are over, and people are now far more cynical not only about politicians, but about elections and democracy itself. 

To change this, I suggest that we frame policy in terms of broad outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people, rather than, as now, funding arrangements, institutional structures and legalisms. So, instead of politicians focusing on where society's scarce resources should go, they would instead concentrate on things that, in democratic countries, they are actually good at: articulating society's wishes and raising the revenue for their achievement. Under a Social Policy Bond regime, investors in the bonds who would decide how our goals would be best achieved. They would be constantly motivated to find the most efficient ways of doing so. The bonds, being tradable, could target long-term goals, so that holders need not hold them to redemption to benefit from any increase in value that would arise from their working to make the goals' being achieved more quickly. The bonds would channel the market's incentives and efficiencies into solving our social and environmental problems. By focusing on broad, meaningful outcomes, our policymaking would be more transparent and bring about more public engagement in the process. There'd be more buy-in, less blaming and less cynicism. The role of politicians would change; they'd be more concerned with society's wishes, and less with power: they'd have effectively contracted out the achievement of social goals to bodies beyond their control. As well as the greater efficiency with which our goals would be achieved, the people attracted to politics would be less driven by the possibility of exercising power while overseeing process, and more by representing the informed views of their constituents as to the social and environmental outcomes they wish to see.