Why economists are bad at recession, grief, climate
Catastrophic grief. Hannah Ritchie: Not the End of the World (podcast interview). why economists are bad at recession.
Catastrophic grief
Hannah Ritchie: Not the End of the World (podcast interview)
Theatre: Climate assembly
Economics: why economists are bad at recession
Theatre: play writing as editing (Mark Ravenhill)
Event: Civic Future, is our schools policy radical enough? London, Feb 5th
Meet-up: EV, Progress, sustainability, arts. Life; London, Feb 8th
ESG book launch: Feb 15th, Will Martindale and me in conversation for his new book
Links: Moon-not-moon of Venus, return to office, global battery sales, Dan wang letter.
The feed back on my death and grief show has been amazing and positive. Thank you. One constructive thought was whether I tinged my stories too rosy given my own experiences. I think it’s true I don’t really cover what I would call catastrophic grief, but it’s important. I judge this type of grief is outside my experience. Instead I give you some thoughts from Rachel Hewitt (who I don’t know and I came across due to textiles from Laos). Her introductory thoughts:
In the last few weeks, I’ve been asked by a couple of friends – on unrelated occasions – if I have any advice for how they might help people who’ve been plunged in sudden, catastrophic grief. I’ve sent messages to those friends with a few thoughts about what helped – and didn’t help – me, and it occurred to me that it might be useful to others too, if I wrote those thoughts down. I’m circulating this with the obvious caveat that this is based purely on my own experience, and it won’t be universally applicable.
A few details about my situation: in January 2022, my husband Pete died very suddenly, unexpectedly and violently, by suicide, at the age of 38. I became a widow, with sole responsibility for our 3 daughters (then aged 9, 7 and 7), and with no family to support us. I was living in a town to which we’d only moved 7 weeks earlier, and I knew only one couple here; and my children were still settling into their new primary school.
I had experienced loss before (and I describe these losses, and their effects, in my book In Her Nature): one of my closest friends had died in 2015, and in 2019, I lost a number of members of my family, including my father and step-father. Those earlier losses were profoundly distressing and painful, and I was particularly shocked and surprised by the physical nature of grief – how it felt like an illness that made it hard to breathe.
But the sudden loss of a spouse has a peculiarly devastating quality because it destroys every single element of one’s day-to-day life. Literally everything changes in an instant. For ages after Pete’s death, I couldn’t bear to sit on the sofa or even go into the sitting room, because it was where Pete and I had watched Netflix every night. (Eighteen months on, I still never sit on that old sofa. I bought a new sofa instead, in a different room, in order to have somewhere comfortable to flop in the house.)
And continues in her substack here.
My podcast with Hannah Ritchie is out. Her book is great on thinking about sustainability, and aside from that there are two other points which echo with me (1) doing something as a way of addressing anxiety; keeping a blog and working in public and (2) writing often (in her case every day).
I think one of the best antidotes to anxiety is to get involved in stuff. I think one of the worst feelings is feeling like you're helpless and there's nothing you can do and nothing works. I think actually getting actively involved in stuff that moves us forward can alleviate some of the anxiety.
And
Even before I started Our World in Data, I had a blog. And I think it was really useful for me getting to work with Max (world in data founder) on World In Data because he could see that I was actively writing,
And
I'd probably write for two to three hours. I think actually, I'm skeptical that if I had more time to write, I would make more progress. I think after two to three hours of really intense focused writing, I think you're done. I think you would start to, or at least I would start to really wane after that.
So I would do that really early in the morning, and then I still had my normal job around data and other stuff. So I'd do that for the rest of the day. But it was like, I tried to like, keep a really like rigorous routine. It's very easy to like skip a day and then skip another day and then skip another day.
So I tried to just take it like really rigorous, like day by day. … it was pretty much every day. I would sometimes take a Saturday off away from writing, but yeah, no, it was pretty much every day.
Here is the summary:
In this in-depth conversation, data scientist and researcher Hannah Ritchie delves into key insights from her new book 'Not The End of The World', which challenges the pervasive idea that human society is doomed due to environmental degradation. She explores various environmental problems, including climate change and plastic pollution, and emphasizes the potential for progress in tackling these critical issues. Hannah also discusses the essential role of technology and outlines the importance of lifting people out of poverty as a measure against climate change. Her argument centers around the balance of environmental change and human impact in achieving a sustainable planet. Furthermore, she provides advice on dealing with climate anxiety, career progression, and essential work ethics.
Approach: Hannah's work is primarily driven by data, focusing on the interplay between sustainability, climate change, and patterns of global development. Her new book, "Not the End of the World," addresses one of the most significant challenges of our time - environmental sustainability.
In the book, Hannah dispels a range of myths associated with environmental issues. She counters the prevailing narrative which claims we are doomed and there's nothing left to do about our environmental crisis. Instead, she believes we can change the narrative and become the first generation to build a sustainable planet.
Tackling Climate Change:
Hannah's optimism for combating climate change stems from the significant strides made in technology, especially renewable energy technologies. These technologies are no longer mere futuristic imaginings. They are realistic, economical, and deployable on a large scale.
However, she acknowledges the difficulty of the task at hand. The world is on track for 2 and a half to 3 degrees of warming which puts us in challenging terrain. We need rapid technological change coupled with significant societal transformation to alter our trajectory.
Addressing Biodiversity Loss:
Biodiversity loss, according to Hannah, is among the most challenging problems explored in her book. The manifestation of this crisis is nuanced as it involves intricate geo-political and economic dynamics. While technology can help, solving the biodiversity crisis will require simultaneous action on many fronts, from controlling deforestation to addressing climate change and overfishing.
The Question of Plastics:
Plastics are universally ubiquitous, presenting a significant sustainability challenge, especially concerning disposal. The key lies in addressing waste management infrastructures in low-middle-income countries where plastic waste management is weak.
Moving Forward:
The path to sustainability is riddled with challenges. Two significant policy levers that Hannah identifies are transitioning to electric vehicles and investing in electricity grids. Electric vehicles can play a crucial role in reducing environmental impact, and improvements to electricity grids have the potential to facilitate the swift build-out of renewable technology.
Debunking Environmental Myths
Sustainability: A Dual Perspective
Population and Degrowth: A Skeptical View
Technological Optimism vs Realism
The Dangers of Doomsday Narratives
Climate Change: Challenges and Solutions
The Role of Technology in Sustainability
Addressing Biodiversity Loss
The Plastic Problem: A Practical Approach
Investing in Conservation and Restoration
The Challenges of Heat Pumps
The Potential of Meat Alternatives
The Writing Process and Charity Contributions
The Importance of Lifting People Out of Poverty
The Writing Process and Research
The Importance of Transition Metals in Technology
The Role of Small, Richer Nations in Climate Change
The Controversies and Challenges of Cobalt
The Future of Energy Transition
Advice for Dealing with Climate Anxiety and Career Paths
Link to transcript/video etc is here
Also on theatre, climate and assembly we have this coming round the UK with Andy Smith and Lynsey O’Sullivan.
We are the citizens'. This is our Assembly. We are the actors in this story.
What are we doing about the climate emergency? What are we not doing? What more could we be doing? What more should we be doing?
A collaboration with applied arts practitioner Lynsey O'Sullivan, A CITIZENS' ASSEMBLY is the latest and most ambitious work in the PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE project.
The play tells a story of some people in a room who have met to discuss this issue. The assembled audience play the people in the play. The set is the room they are in. Through three acts opinions and positions are offered. Conversations and arguments around the themes and ideas take place. In the third act a discussion happens concerning what might happen next. Lancaster, York, Glasgow, Manchester, London so far in 2024. More here.
I’m interested in these forms of theatre and participation theatre and Andy Smith has been creating interesting work for along while.
Why are economists wrong about recession? Investor people chat about this from time to time and I’m forever explaining why predictions about recession are often not really about recession (all models are wrong, some are useful; the map is not the land). It’s in part for similar reasons to why in the middle of recessions, stock markets often start to go up. Some of us think it’s to do with expectations.
Now so called “rational expectations” has got a bad name - mainly because of the (definition of) rational part. But there seems to be a property of making decision about the future where you are influenced by what you think will happen.
So if all the experts, or people you trust, are strongly suggesting a recession is about to happen then many people might think I am going to plan more carefully for the next few months as I don’t want to be caught out. But those decisions to plan more carefully impact the economic system enough such that recession doesn’t actually happen. Economists joke that stock markets predict 9 out of the last 5 recessions. Investors joke that economists can never predict recessions. Tyler Cowen has a column on this a few weeks ago (behind firewall if you’ve already read a lot of Bloomberg, but I can send you).
“Last year at this time, 85% of economists in one poll predicted a recession this year — and that was an optimistic take compared to the 100% probability of a recession forecast two months earlier. Meanwhile US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, drawing upon the work of his highly able staff, expressed fear in March that bringing down the rate of inflation would cost millions of American jobs.
And yet none of this has happened. Both inflation and unemployment are headed in the right direction, and most economists expect the US to avoid a recession in 2024. Economists have yet to figure out why things went so well, but it is already clear that a reckoning is due.”
So, in some ways the decline in recession forecasts should perhaps be actually worrying!
Mark Ravenhill on plays. Big dose of truth for me in this.
“The majority of writing a play is revising, editing, reshaping. Oddly, for me, this is the most personal bit. I pull the play in close and consider, chew over every word, cut severely, find new moments, new arrangements - like being inside a chrysalis with the play.”
Some writers seem to edit as they go, though I hear this more in novelists. Most play writers I’ve spoke to spend a lot of time revising and shaping the script of a play. Poets also.
Some events you can catch me at:
Civic Future: Is our schools policy radical enough? Education policies currently promoted by the main parties include tackling school exclusions, supervised teeth brushing for children and extending maths lessons until 18. But is our schools policy radical enough?
I’m on the panel, very loosely representing “radical ideas” like home education whereas Rachel Wolf and Daisy Christodoulou know what they are talking about in terms of mainstream policy.
Tickets are free but places are limited. Register for tickets via Partiful here. London, Feb 5th 6.30pm
Then on Feb 8th, I’m having my Q1 winter-spring party meet-up.
Meet-up for EV, arts, investing, sustainability, progress etc folk to mingle and chat.
My own interests are broad but range across: progress, sustainability, creative arts, theatre, investing, economics, philosophy, education, food, autism and everything that makes humans human.
Logistics Address Details: Theatre Deli, 107 Leadenhall Street, EC3A 4AF. It's a corporate looking entrance, go past the first guard reception on the ground floor through to the back where there is the Deli reception. Then wind your way round to the bar! Time: 6pm-ish to 9pm-ish (but OK to be late).
And then on Feb 15th, Join Will Martindale and Ben Yeoh for the book launch of "Responsible Investment: An Insider's Account".
You need to message me for invite but if you are reading this, you are invited. 6pm, London.
The book traces the history of ESG thinking.
Links:
Dan Wang Letter: My annual letter: https://danwang.co/2023-letter/ This year I discuss a walk-and-talk; Crumb; running and tangping; Knausgaard; Elon as Palmer Eldritch; quantity has a quality all its own; Chicago as a megacity; memelords; Norton; food as physical pleasure; hunching; and a pause.
Thoughts you don’t really get anywhere else.
IEA electricity report: It expects clean power – nuclear and renewables – to cover all extra electricity demand over the next 3 years.
Global battery sales
Nick Bloom: New paper studying the impact of 137 Return to Office mandates on S&P500 firms from 2020-2023. Three key results: 1) RTO mandates are more likely in firms with poor recent stock performance, and in those with powerful male CEOs. 2) Glassdoor data finds RTO mandates significantly reduce employee ratings for job satisfaction, work-life balance and senior management. 3) There is no significant impact of RTO mandates on either firm profitability or firm stock-returns. My interpretation is that RTO mandates are often a response to poor recent company performance, perhaps adopted by under-pressure CEOs. These RTO mandates upset employees, but do not appear to yield performance benefits in return.
The moon-not-moon of Venus. A fun thread (X). Where I learnt about quasi-moons; shows we barely understand the structures of the universe.