The City of London & Broad Street Ward

“Bright Lights, Open Minds, Robust Community”

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Beating The Broad Street Bounds

To the Natives of the Parish of St Margaret Lothbury and the Broad Street Ward Club.  You are desired to meet the rest of your parishioners and club members on Thursday, 23 September 2004 at 18:00 at the Guildhall and from thence to go to your parish bounds afterwards to return to Throgmortons. You are desired as a Wellwisher to the Preservation of this Society to send by the Bearer £15 for your admission.
(as per a 1795 notice for Cripplegate Ward supplied by Claire and John Scott JP)

When parishioners could neither read nor write, how were they to know the boundaries of their village? They held an annual event to familiarise themselves with, and inspect the condition of, markers of the boundaries, frequently bumping parish boys heads at important points to beat in a key point. It was pointed out (not by boys) that Broad Street Ward Club had allowed this tradition to lapse. Realising that, as years ago, it forms the perfect excuse for a pub crawl, we arranged a fun evening and light quiz competition about the ward in 2004 – which naturally had to visit many of the local drinking establishments, 30 people on a pub crawl, ahem, visiting local businesses.  And to avoid getting your head bumped, here are the bounds.  At each establishment they had to have their broom signed and marked with the amount spent, as well as answer trivia questions.  We have a lot of nice establishments in the ward.   We waited a long time for everyone to get back for the scoring and prizegiving.  Ahem.
Beating the Bounds Oct 2004
(from left to right, Michael Mainelli, Reverend Jeremy Crossley – Rector St Margaret Lothbury, Alderman David Lewis – 13 October 2004 – yes a photoshoot after the 23 September event.  We looked a lot better than we did late on the 23rd, but they were the same brooms)

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Broad Street Starts Here

I thought we should start with a campaign photo. When the family took a skiing trip to Jackson Hole earlier this year, I wanted my daughters to see New York City for the first time. Naturally, as my firm, Z/Yen, compiles the Global Financial Centres Index, we had to take the girls to Wall Street, and thus I have my opening picture for the campaign from the land of my birth. There will be some better photos later (the ones without me in them)!
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Broad Street Aldermancy – Nomination Papers Submitted

This morning I went round to the Election Office at the City of London Corporation to submit nomination papers for the Broad Street Ward Aldermanic election. All successfully registered and the campaign is now on.   I am honoured to have the support of our retiring Alderman and former Lord Mayor, Sir David Lewis, and our three Common Councilmen, John Bennett, John Scott JP and Chris Hayward.  To stay up-to-date with the campaign, simply click here.

If you are based in Broad Street as an elector (and if unsure, just ask) please do consider giving me, Michael Mainelli, your vote by postal ballot or by voting in person on Thursday, 4 July 2013, at Carpenters Hall, 1 Throgmorton Avenue, EC2N 2JJ from 08:00 to 20:00 – but whatever you do, please vote, the City needs a vibrant electorate. I walk through the Ward every day to and from work and would be delighted to discuss Ward business. Contact me by telephone 020 7562-9562, or via email michael_mainelli@zyen.com, or by post to Z/Yen Group, 90 Basinghall Street, London EC2V 5AY. For more campaign details see my campaign flyer – Michael Mainelli – Broad Street Ward Aldermancy Campaign 2013 – flyer

BSWC Jade Glass Coat of Arms

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Broad Street Ward Aldermancy

Broad Street sign v3I have decided to submit a nomination form to run for Alderman of Broad Street Ward. The Wardmote is scheduled for 3 July. If there is an election, then the vote will be on 4 July – hopefully auspicious. I am honoured to have the support of our retiring Alderman and former Lord Mayor, Sir David Lewis, and our three Common Councilmen, John Bennett, John Scott JP and Chris Hayward. More on this soon! But for now, some background information and a map.

Posted on Life As We Live It, The City of London & Broad Street Ward, Gresham College & Other Education Interests

Literature and the Arts – Final Dinner For The “Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery Committee”

Chairman, Past Chairman, Aldermen, Ladies & Gentlemen

When John Scott asked me to address this Committee and its many supporters on behalf of the guests in honour of its Past Chairman at this farewell do, I was greatly honoured.  Sidney Joseph (S J) Perlman wrote for the New Yorker and also for the Marx Brothers.  A copy of Perlman’s 1929 book, Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge, was sent to Groucho Marx.  Groucho sent Perlman a letter that said, “From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter.  Someday I intend reading it.”  [quoted in LIFE, 9 February 1962]  John Scott may wind up paraphrasing, “from the moment you stood up till the moment you stood down, we were convulsed.  Someday we’ll get Lisa Jardine.”

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[http://guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/clockmakers-library-exhibition/]

I learned history in the United States.  Thus I know two big historical facts about libraries.  First, Benjamin Franklin invented the library.  Second, we lost a lot of books during the Civil War when the great library burned down in Alexandria … Virginia.  Imagine my surprise on arriving in London to find that libraries, even lending libraries, pre-date Franklin, who quite probably visited the Guildhall Library.  Imagine my even greater surprise to find that the Virginians have rebuilt their Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

We’re all book addicts.  I read too much, carry a Camomile Street card, even founded and sold a multi-lingual children’s book publishing firm.  I’ve browsed Harvard’s Houghton rare book library for Martin Luther’s thoughts on intellectual property, and toured the wonderful gem of Thomas Plume’s library in Maldon where my children were shown sixteenth century prints of rhinoceri.  Our family checks out talking books from the Barbican while I delve in the Guildhall on Gresham College or the City digital archives on Thames sailing barges.  Yes, we’re all addicts.   Claire Scott and I sympathise with Groucho Marx – “I find television very educational.  Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.”  Though an art philistine, I’m forever telling friends to borrow my visitor’s card to the Guildhall Art Gallery.  A while ago, as one wag put, “the Guildhall Art Gallery was the only public art gallery in London where everyone got a private viewing”.  Today, thanks to this Committee’s work, the Gallery reaches more and more people as the City opens up to visitors, rather than closing in due to the financial crises.

Yet … asking friends about libraries for this lecture elicited immense support, but a paucity of recent visits.  Some years ago I hosted a dinner for a man with a strange accent, Loyd Grossman.  As well as his sauces with a distinctive voice, Loyd is known for his work on museums and questioned whether museums were “Temples of the Muses or Temples of Amusement”.  Everyone loves museums in the abstract, but in practice?  Last year our family added a Kindle and an iPad last year to our menagerie of gadgets.  Both have filled up with our-children-ought-to-read-these books Elisabeth and I treasure.  And this affects libraries.  Libraries and archives are loved in abstract, but attendance and usage drift in these days of “never judge a book by its movie”.  [JW Eagan]

Perhaps libraries and archives are never more loved than as metaphors.  Jorge Luis Borges was director of the Argentine National Library.  He remarked, “if I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father’s library”.  Borges’ famous short story, The Library of Babel, postulated a vast library containing all possible ‘410 page’ books, inspiring numerous philosophical musings, such as how libraries explain Bertrand Russell’s paradox on mathematical sets – where do you catalogue the catalogue of all catalogues that don’t list themselves?

The British statesman Lord Palmerston must have visited many libraries to become an expert on the enigmatic Schleswig-Holstein problem of the mid 19th century.  Palmerston said: “Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business – the Prince Consort, who is dead – a German professor, who has gone mad – and I, who have forgotten all about it.”  In the age of the internet, libraries, archives and art galleries everywhere pose riddles of Schleswig-Holstein complexity.  According to W V Quine, the renowned Harvard philosopher, Borges’ infinite library can be created simply by writing a dot on one side of paper, a dash on the back, and then randomly flipping till the end of eternity.  Bits and bytes are our challenge.  Our pressing paradox is that until some desperately distant time in the future, we need to preserve the past today.

Libraries and archives serve at least three functions – building communities of learning, providing information services, and supporting research.  All of these are important to us, and all are in flux.  But I would like to emphasise a fourth function that this committee exemplifies.  Experimentation.  Notwithstanding our shared fondness for cellulose information storage, this committee’s legacy will be its experiments.  Whether trialling DVDs or internet access, testing new working methods, building European Visual Archives, or striking innovative deals with Ancestry.co.uk, this Committee has shown daring.  And while he or she who dares does not always win, they are remembered.  Libraries and archives will change – and this Committee has helped them learn how.

Seneca believed in this form of remembrance: “Why do you ask, how long has he lived? He has lived to posterity.” [“Quid quaeris, quamdiu vixit? Vixit ad posteros.”] (Lucius Annaeus Seneca), Epistles (XCIII)  Preservation is key, but your true legacy is what you dared to try for posterity.  Sometimes posterity is high-brow, from new insights on the origins of science to rediscovered musical scores.  Sometimes posterity is low-brow – C J Sansom’s best-selling crime series set in the reign of Henry VIII features a hunchbacked lawyer in Lincoln’s Inn, Matthew Shardlake.  Shardlake has to rely on the Guildhall library to solve cases.  Someone in the 16th century experimented with letting lawyers in.  Now that was daring.

We’ve had a great evening with fantastic food, wonderful music and fine hospitality.  This is not a wake, more a celebration around a blazing phoenix – I expect much to arise from this Committee’s legacy; so I shall end with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt that exhorts your successors to experiment even more – “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

May I ask all guests to be upstanding as I propose a toast to our hosts – “To the Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery Committee – Literature and the Arts.”

Posted on Life As We Live It, Long Finance, The City of London & Broad Street Ward, Gresham College & Other Education Interests

Gresham College – A Short, Personal, Alternative History

Gresham College – A Short, Personal, Alternative History

 Professor Michael Mainelli, Gresham Fellow & Trustee

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[October 2009 – originally written for the Mercers’ Company]

Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579) traded cloth and linens between England and the Low Countries at a time when Cambridge and Oxford had a duopolistic hold on higher education in England.  A Cambridge man himself (Caius College), if Gresham’s skippers had visited an Oxbridge College they would have, at best, had the door of a college opened to them and then been laughed at in Latin for their ignorance before being closed in their face.

If you’re going to backstab some one properly, do it from the front. Gresham did so with money. Sir Thomas died of apoplexy in 1579 bequeathing one moiety to the Corporation of London and the other moiety to the Mercers’ Company, charging them with the nomination of seven Professors to lecture in Astronomy, Divinity, Geometry, Law, Music, Physic and Rhetoric.  He required the lectures to be in Latin and, horror horribilis, English.  In effect, Sir Thomas, who pursued monopolies himself, used his will of 1575 anti-monopolistically to crack the Oxbridge oligopoly by bribing seven professors to give lectures to the public, in English.

Gresham College is about ‘new learning’.  Sir Thomas felt strongly that the ‘new learning’ should be available to those who worked – merchants, tradesmen and ships’ navigators – rather than solely gentlemen scholars.  In the 17th century, the Royal Society was founded to explore “natural philosophy”, new learning through experimentation.  So, it is no surprise that the Royal Society was founded and housed at Gresham College for half a century (1660 to 1710) and numbered among its associates Gresham Professors Petty, Boyle, and Evelyn.

For over 400 years the Gresham Professors have given free public lectures in the City of London.  I had the privilege of four years (2005-2009) in the modern, eighth chair as Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Commerce from 2005 to 2009.  There are some deep footsteps in which we tread.  Early professors at Gresham College included Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, also integral to the Royal Society.  Recent professors include the mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose of Penrose/Hawkings fame and the theoretical physicist John Barrow, who won the Templeton Prize and the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize.

Professorships are awarded for three years with a stipend for six lectures a year, though professors often give more.  Each professor develops his or her own programme.  Academic professors complain that what seems like a sinecure is actually a very demanding post requiring novel, innovative, researched lectures of six to eight thousand words suitable for a global audience.  Business professors, such as I, definitely find it is work.  My estimate is that each lecture takes approximately 100 hours of preparation, thus 600 hours at about £10/hour – you’re not doing it for the money.  In fact, at that rate you should question whether you’re competent to be a professor of commerce.

As my tenure was extended for a year and I had ‘been volunteered’ each year for an additional lecture in the Docklands, I gave 28 lectures.  As a glutton for work, I gave a final synthesis lecture as part of the City of London Festival’s celebration of the 2,000 anniversary of the publication of Ovid’s Metamorphoses with saxophonist John Harle and friend Bill Joseph, “Metamorphoses: The Terrible Beauty of Change“, for 29 formal lectures in four years. The core 28 lectures, around 8,000 words per lecture, 56,000 words per year, some 224,000 words, found their way into the obligatory book – The Price of Fish: A New Approach To Wicked Economics And Better Decisions.  Fortunately for readers, only 100,000 found their way out to the printer.

Given 48 professorial lectures a year, along with honorary professors, former professors, fellows and numerous guest lecturers, Gresham College provides around 140 intellectual events a year for business people, retired people, mature students, university students, schools and the general public.  Each year over 20,000 people physically attend Gresham College’s 140 lectures.  In an age concerned with making money from intellectual property, Gresham College encourages the free exchange of ideas and is one of the most potent intellectual houses on the net and podcasts.  To quote Jefferson, “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me”. The Gresham community worldwide downloads lectures over a million times each year from a library of now thousands of recorded lectures, many of which find their way into syllabi from the USA to China.  My strapline for Gresham College today is, “Gresham College: The Modern Tudor Open University”, a “Tudor TED” even.

At Gresham College, we seek to reinterpret the ‘new learning’ of Sir Thomas’s time in contemporary terms.  Our emphasis is on sharing knowledge, exchanging ideas, fusing old views and generating new insights.  Gresham College is increasingly important for those living and working in London as the traditional universities and colleges focus on qualifications and are less able to offer the extra-mural activities they once did.  We have no conscripts: we have a community of people who come because they want to, because they find the lectures and seminars topical, informative and enjoyable. Gresham College is about personal, higher education from dipping into one lecture to completing a series.  I often lord over my academic friends that our current Registrar continues a long tradition of Registrary excellence – in over 400 years no registrar has admitted a single student.

Yes, I am a Gresham Groupie. I found the four years at Gresham College extremely rewarding and remain a Trustee and Fellow, and my firm continues to work on Long Finance and the London Accord with Gresham College.  Sir Thomas Gresham is synonymous with Gresham’s Law, best expressed as “good money drives out bad”.  I often think that the best people in the world come to work in one of the best cities in the world because Gresham College has a part in helping good discussion drive out bad.  Our 16th century Open University is going strong in the 21st.

[I continued to give talks and run symposia to the point that I ultimately became involved in over 120 events.]

To view all Michael’s Gresham lectures.

Posted on Life As We Live It, Long Finance, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

The City Debate: In This Current Financial Environment, More Financial Regulation Is A Major Part Of The Solution

Securities & Investment Institute
Annual Debate
Mansion House, London
Wednesday, 14 January 2009

“In this current financial environment, more financial regulation is a major part of the solution”


For the motion:
Dr Vince Cable MP
Mr Alan Yarrow FSI

Against the motion:
Professor Michael Mainelli FSI
Mr David Bennett FSI
Chairman – My Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Chairman:
Mr Christopher Jones-Warner FSI

Continue reading →
Posted on Long Finance, The City of London & Broad Street Ward, Gresham College & Other Education Interests

London Accord – Sharing Research To Save The Planet

After two years of hard work led by Jan-Peter Onstwedder and me, we finally launch the London Accord at Mansion House on the evening of 19 December.

Grainy but true – l to r: Rt Honourable Lord Mayor David Lewis, Rt Honourable John Sutton MP, Sir Michael Snyder, Professor Michael Mainelli

My Lord Mayor, Your Excellencies, My Lords, Secretary of State, Alderman, Sheriffs, [Councillors, Distinguished Guests,] Ladies and Gentlemen… – it is my great pleasure to have this opportunity to tell you tonight about the London Accord.

The London Accord’s theme is “cash in, carbon out”. The London Accord provides informed views about climate change investment and sets out a methodology for evaluating those investments. The London Accord began in 2005 at almost the same time as the Stern Review. Sir Nicholas said last year that “climate change is the greatest market failure the world has seen”. While I admire many aspects of the Stern Report, I beg to differ with this specific point.

Markets haven’t failed. Markets have done what markets do, set prices and transfer resources and risks. In the case of climate change, what we have is an absence of a market. Markets and investors have acted accordingly. Events in Bali last week change all that. Henceforth, society will turn greenhouse gas emissions into a property that can be capped, traded, and reduced – and we must factor these emission costs into all investment decisions.

Why does the London Accord matter? Well, for a start, the publication of the London Accord matters to us because we have been working on it for over two years, but the London Accord should matter to everyone. The comedian Jay Leno once quipped, “According to a new UN report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet.” The London Accord matters because the financial services community says, if society is prepared to pay, commerce can stop global warming.

Our future scenarios for greenhouse gas emission prices are double today’s €20 per tonne of CO2, more like €40 per tonne of CO2. In rough terms, we need to reduce the CO2 emissions per Briton from 10 tonnes to one or two tonnes. At around €40/tonne that’s about €300 per person or about €1,200 per family per year. It’s going to be quite a different world.

Private sector investment is crucial to climate change investment (86% of capital investment in energy supply must be from the private sector – UNFCCC). Much of that investment will be funded through large pension funds and asset managers who rely on analysis by the financial services sector for investment decisions. So what did the London Accord team conclude?
• Energy investment is going to become much, much riskier;
• Investors should invest now. At prices per tonne of CO2 over €30, investment portfolios can constructed that produce both attractive financial and ‘carbon returns’.
• Forestry is a big unknown – there is a need to narrow the range of credible estimates for abatement and costs of forestry projects, as well as solidify carbon offset markets for forestry.
• Efficiency gains continue to show great potential for financial and carbon returns but may need behavioural incentives such as regulation.
• Carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS) seems an unrealistic investment today.

Moreover, financial services leaders understand the need to collaborate or collapse. The London Accord is a great ‘open source’ research project – the largest-ever private-sector investment collaboration into climate change, representing work valued at £7million ($15million). Buy-side firms such as Universities Superannuation Scheme, Insight, and Legal & General helped sell-side firms and analysts shape the project to ensure its outcomes would be useful to investors. Observers from the EU, the International Energy Agency, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and others have been involved.

In the time available, I must turn to thanks, and there are far too many. The London Accord has truly been a cooperative effort. Jan-Peter Onstwedder and I recorded nearly 500 thanks in the CD-ROM you will receive tonight, and still we missed people. However, on such a special evening there are a few I must single out. First, I would thank my team at Z/Yen, including Ian Harris, Linda Cook, Mark Yeandle, Kevin Parker, Liz Bailey and Alexander Knapp, who put up with two years of stress. BP staff worked throughout on the London Accord, and here I would single out Tessa Marwick, Andrew Vivian, James Palmer and Sanet Phillips. Gresham College’s Lord Sutherland and Barbara Anderson helped to kick things off and generously provided facilities, including a technical seminar at Gresham College we’re having on 30 January 2008 to which all of you are welcome. Henry Thoresby and Sir Howard Davies gave us excellent support from the LSE community pulling the threads together.

The best way to thank the contributors, the important people who did all the work, is to enumerate their reports:

First we had two papers setting the context:
• Alexander Evans, Center on International Cooperation at New York University & David Steven, River Path Associates, wrote “Climate Change: the State of the Debate”, examining how climate change rose above other global issues;
• Nick Butler, Cambridge Centre for Energy Studies set out “The Forces of Change in the Energy Market”.

Then, the heavyweights analysed the investment opportunities:
• Solar Energy – Eckhard Plinke and Matthias Fawer, Bank Sarasin
• Investing in Biofuels – Conor O’Prey, ABN AMRO
• Investing in Renewable Energy – Mark Thompson, Canaccord Adams
• The Global Case for Efficiency Gains – Miroslav Durana, Tanya Monga and Hervé Prettre, Credit Suisse
• Energy Efficiency – Asari Efiong, Merrill Lynch
• Carbon Capture and Sequestration – Marc Levinson, JPMorgan Chase
• Emissions Trading – Andrew Humphrey and Luciano Diana, Morgan Stanley
• Forest Assets – Stephane Voisin and Mikael Jafs, Cheuvreux

A number of us examined the wider impacts:
• Credit Risk – Christopher Bray and Dr Richenda Connell, Barclays and Acclimatise
• Carbon Intensity – Valéry Lucas-Leclin, Société Générale
• Sustainable Investment Solutions – Alice Chapple, Vedant Walia and Will Dawson, Forum for the Future
• The Legal Issues – Lewis McDonald, Herbert Smith
• Climate Change Investment and Policy Portfolios – James Palmer

Finally, some of us considered the policy implications
• Technological Development – J Doyne Farmer & Dr Jessika Trancik, The Santa Fe Institute
• Emission Standards – Steven Davis, The Climate Conservancy
• Product-Level Standards – Hendrik Garz: WestLB
• Philanthropy – Davida Herzl, NextEarth Foundation
• Carbon Markets and Forests – Eric Bettelheim, Gregory Janetos and Jennifer Henman, Sustainable Forestry Management
• Cap-and-Trade Versus Carbon Tax – Alexander Knapp, Z/Yen, Jan-Peter Onstwedder

The full publication, The London Accord: Making Investment Work For The Climate, contains 25 reports in 780 pages.

Very early on we formed a governance team consisting of the early supporters, each of whom gave freely of their time and whom I would like to thank personally:
• Alice Chapple from Forum for the Future
• Simon Mills from the City of London Corporation
• Chris Mottershead from BP plc
• Alexander Evans from New York University’s Center on International Cooperation

Before closing, I would like to move on to three special thanks. The first is a personal and corporate thank you to the City of London Corporation. Without the Corporation’s resources this project would be a pale shadow of what it is tonight. The personal part is to thank Michael Snyder, Chairman of the Policy & Resources Committee, for putting his drive, intellect and charisma behind the London Accord so early on. People remark that it seems harder and harder for government and commerce to work together. That may be true, but when you see the City of London accomplishing so much globally, it’s hard to remember it’s just our local council.

Second, my heartfelt thanks must go to Jan-Peter Onstwedder and all the support we had from BP and, in particular, Vivienne Cox. Jan-Peter was the Project Director from last year, well before formally joining the project. Jan-Peter has diplomatic and organisational skills of which I can only dream. Jan-Peter should be giving this talk, but is, as ever, too modest. Jan-Peter applied his intellectual, social and organisational skills with the determination to show that financial services can make difference to climate change. It was a privilege to work with Jan-Peter this year.

Finally, I would like to especially thank you, my Lord Mayor. Two years ago you had the foresight and courage to lend this crazy idea your valuable support. Two years later you have the generosity and kindness to lend us your home for this magnificent event. You have been stalwart throughout and I hope that the London Accord publication is a fitting tribute to your concern, your passion and your vision of London’s financial services industry at the front of the fight against climate change. In your year in office, which has started so brilliantly, I wish you the highest success in all of your endeavours in office, from the ceremonial to the commercial to the charitable.

The London Accord demonstrates that the financial services sector understands well the future implications of climate change. A man once reproached William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek: “On your show, you had Russians, Chinese, Africans, and many others – why did you never have a character of my nationality?” Shatner supposedly replied, “You must understand that Star Trek is set in the future.” The London Accord is about our future and we would like to make sure that all nationalities are there, tropical, temperate or arctic; mountain top or sea-side.

Financial services is stereotyped as a selfish, self-centred industry. Over the past two years the collaboration and sharing of the London Accord has proved that stereotype wrong. The London Accord makes me proud to work in financial services. You should all be proud too.

Thank you.

Posted on Life As We Live It, Long Finance, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

The City Debate: Are Economic Advancement & A Clean Environment Incompatible?

The City Debate 2007 at Mansion House, 29 January 2007

[left to right]

Chris Huhne MP (Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Environment Food and Rural Affairs Secretary), Emma Duncan (Deputy Editor, The Economist), Rt Hon Michael Portillo, Richard D North (Fellow, Insitute of Economic Affairs), Professor Michael Mainelli (Executive Chairman, Z/Yen Group)

The somewhat awkward motion was “Green and Growth Don’t Go” (together implied) though the invitation was “Are Economic Advancement and a Clean Environment Incompatible?”. The audience was over 300 people from finance.

Professor Michael Mainelli’s opening statement to engage the audience was:

Chairman – My Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Anyone with a waistcoat like mine knows that Green and growth don’t go together. Tonight I am that kid who told you that Santa Claus didn’t exist. Green and growth is a lie-for-children alongside Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Nessie, immaculate conception, intelligent design and honours-on-merit.

Let’s face one inconvenient truth – this spinning rock we live on is currently over-run by a bunch of trumped-up naked apes who have three primate imperatives:

  1. find bright, shiny fruit;
  2. avoid snakes;
  3. if you see someone attractive, let them know in a totally satisfying way that you find them attractive.

Three simple imperatives have led to 6.5 billion of the pests monkeying with the world’s thermostat. Way up in the white ivory trees, some brainy apes don’t fulfil imperative three very often. These apes sublimate their urges by dreaming up theories. Their current brainy theory: the moist fringe of this spinning rock is getting all steamy.

Do we know that CO2 levels are rising? Yes. Is there is a credible theory of global warming? Yes. Does this imply big changes over the next century? Yes. So what’s to debate? Well, other brainy apes down on the jungle floor sublimate their urges playing trading games and inventing theories about alpha returns. Jungle-floor apes have a theory: global warming can be stopped if everyone changes their economics a little bit. However, preventing global warming requires massive changes in economics and human nature within this decade, and human nature won’t change in time.

At Mansion House we can debate with real numbers. This is the City, not Westminster.

In 2004, gross worldwide emissions were about 7bn tons of carbon. Emissions are projected to grow to 14bn tons by 2054. For long-term stability, emissions in 2054 must be at or below today’s 7bn tons, and decreasing. Green and growth fans need a 7bn ton cut from “business as usual” by 2054. Socolow at Princeton identified 15 reasonable opportunities, called “wedges”, that would each cut 1bn tons by 2054. One wedge – convert 250 million hectares to biofuels, 1/6th of the world’s cropland. Another wedge – 2 million wind turbines on 30 million hectares, a Germany of wind turbines. Remember we need at least seven of these megaprojects in the next 47 years. They’re very realistic plans. Each wedge costs more than the GDP of China.

Global GDP was $44 trillion in 2005. Stern expects people to pay $440 billion each year to prevent climate change, $125 billion in the USA, $20 billion per annum in the UK. Starting this year. And the CO2 will still exceed 500 ppm. This is incredible, by which I mean it’s not believable. I don’t want a repeat of my Westminster experience on Nuclear Electric decommissioning. “Yes Minister, that number is possible, but certainly not probable!”

The UK has 1% of world population, but emits 2.2% of greenhouse gases. The FTSE 100 alone produce 1.6% of global greenhouse gases. The average person in the UK produced as much CO2 by 6 January as the average person in the world’s poorest countries will all year. You really think this will change?

We are natural optimists in the City. We want to believe that we can do good; we can be green; the bad are punished and the good are rewarded; every story has a happy ending. We fixed the ozone layer; we handled sulphur dioxide well. But these weren’t 50-year, $22 trillion problems. You’ll point to emerging carbon markets we’d all love, but right now carbon credits are little different than the Catholic Church selling indulgences. And that leads us to human nature – sex, greed, fear and apathy.

We breed. By 2054, there will be 9.5 billion of us. Even if Britain stopped all GHG emissions, within two years China’s growth makes that effort worthless. What’s the point if Brazil, India, Russia and China just keep going?

Sure people care but CO2 is tasteless and odourless, while I must have missed seeing us stop a million children a year dying of preventable HIV and measles, 1 million of malaria, 1.5 million of diarrhoea? We are going to solve global warming, yet let 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a day? Even Stern had to cook the discount rate to make global warming a better investment than the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

If you believe that green and growth go together:

  • you believe that population will painlessly stop growing;
  • every Briton will pay at least $333 each year forever to prevent global warming, or perhaps $850 or more;
  • two centuries of high latitude infrastructure will be replaced, we will transform the UK’s £4 trillion housing stock – you’ve mothballed listed buildings such as this magnificent house;
  • you’ve stopped funding all oil exploration projects – what’s the point? If we burn what we already have we exceed 1,000ppm;
  • you’ve shorted most of the FTSE;
  • you’ve given up skiing and holiday in Croydon.

Our distinguished journalist will be erudite and persuasive, coming from a magazine with a readership determined to make money out of any investment fashion, a magazine that thinks invading Iraq was a good idea

After her you’ll hear from a gifted Westminster speaker who loves another excuse for them to raise taxes from us. Our speaker’s party peddles a real whopper for children – more tax is good for you and good for the country.

Human nature means that green and growth don’t go together, whatever lies for children politicians and journalists want to sell. Let’s be The City and tell it like it is. You must vote for the motion.

Thank you.

Result:

Debate This House believes that Green and Growth Don’t Go

Pre Vote

  • Yes 32
  • No 65
  • Undecided 3

Final Vote

  • Yes 41
  • No 58
  • Undecided 1

Yes, Michael and Richard won.

Additional Motions:

This House believes that the answer to climate change is technology and not restraining consumer demand

  • Yes 54
  • No 40
  • Undecided 6

This House believes that going nuclear is the answer to going green

  • Yes 57
  • No 35
  • Undecided 8

This House believes that US policy is the biggest single problem to combating climate change

  • Yes 63
  • No 36
  • Undecided 1