Bishop Hill Carbon criminals
May 27, 2014 Climate: Parliament Crime Greens The Commons Environmental Audit Committee has been holding an inquiry into "sustainability in the Home Office". I kid you not. There were hearings at the end of last month that somehow eluded my attention, but thanks to the transcription service at the Palace of Westminster we can now enjoy the wit and wisdom of the committee members and the witnesses they invited to enlighten them.
For example, the commitee invited Ken Pease, professor of crime science at University College London, to take part. Why professor Pease? Well, the suspicious minded among you might draw conclusions from the fact that he has been a Green Party member for 30 years. But what a witness though! Take a look at this:
If you Google climate change, then crime does not tend to come up, and if you Google crime then climate change does not come up.
No s**t Sherlock. But undeterred by this inexplicable lacuna, the good Professor has apparently been devoting his no doubt considerable grey matter to filling it:
I thought it would be nice just to change the vocabulary of crime costs so as to include carbon costs and wrote a pretty basic and crude — because I am not an economist — costing of crime in the hope that people will take up the battle...
Now you would think that the MPs would be rolling in the aisles by this point, but not a bit of it. For example, Mike Kane, the Labour MP for Wythenshawe and Sale East, seemed quite taken with the idea:
I was reading a Secured by Design report that said that a conservative estimate of the carbon cost of crime would be around about 6 million tonnes per annum. I suppose my question is: carbon costing of crime, is it in the zeitgeist of crime reduction agencies?
Are the police worrying enough about the carbon cost of crime? I know readers here have been losing sleep over this tricky little question. But fear not! As Mary Calam, the director general of the Crime and Policing Group at the Home Office made clear, the mandarinate is already hard at work:
Perhaps it would be helpful if I just pointed to the Home Office, alongside Secured by Design, we are sponsoring a research project around the carbon cost of crime, which began in April last year. This is quite a difficult issue. How far do you take the parameters when you are trying to calculate the carbon cost? We think that piece of research is really important and when it reaches its conclusions I would very much expect us to use those findings and those judgments to inform future impact assessment.
Really important eh? I can't help but wonder if some people might think that it's not actually very important at all, but it's probably just those who are on the big-oil payroll, who can safely be ignored.
Meanwhile, committee members had moved on to the nitty-gritty details of which crimes have the biggest carbon footprint. Here's Mike Kane again:
In terms of crime itself, I think what they are getting at in the carbon cost of particular crimes is that murder is by far the top of the list, serious wounding second. Serious wounding there is a lot more of so it generates a much bigger carbon footprint. Do you think we will ever get to the day, for instance, where police response times will be analysed not just on the physical and emotional nature of the crime but the carbon nature of the crime? What I am thinking is that the analysis showed that the carbon footprint of crime by non-dwelling is higher than crime by dwelling itself. Do you think we would ever make crime in a non-dwelling a higher response?
Mary Calam subsequently seemed a bit unsure about what the police might do with this information, but suggested that it might lead to changes to operational priorities. Reading between the lines, it might be possible to give a higher priority to high-carbon crimes rather than low-carbon ones.
I think what this would mean is that if you want to get away with murder you should attack your victim in a dwelling: the lower carbon footprint would place it lower down the list of police priorities.
Alternatively you could build yourself a windfarm, of course. But that's another story.
(Tip of the hat to Chairman Al)
Reader Comments (64)
"the global warming impact of the victim"
Is that 1:7,236,173,969 th of 1.5 degrees C over 100 years ?
I have gone to sleep, and woken up in the asylum.
John Gibson
Like several other posters, I assumed that this was a spoof.
However, unless the hoaxers have succeeded in replicating the UK parliamentary site, there it is in B&W:-
"Purpose of Session
This is the second in a series of sessions examining sustainable development in particular departments (the Committee previously examined BIS). It will examine the governance of sustainable development in the Home Office, including its oversight of sustainability in police forces in the context of Police & Crime Commissioners; its performance on Greening Government Commitments targets; and sustainable procurement practice (for example for asylum seeker accommodation) and supply chains. It will also examine particular policy areas, including crime prevention and tackling wildlife crime."
WTF???
It's good to know where our tax pounds are going.
Reduce the carbon footprint of the police - get them out of their cars and on to bicycles - or boots. Mr Plod is low carbon.
Alex Cull,
The transcript also provides this justification for abolishing government:
Professor Pease seems to see crimes and the causes of crimes *everywhere*.
Climate Change Grant Envy at work:
So, the Professor of Crime Science continues:
This, and the subsequent post on Myles Allen, add to my convictions that:
(a) there are far too many 'professors' nowadays
(b) the title of 'professor' is no longer an indication of a substantial mind at work
Some thoughts for Professor Pease to ponder (grant aided of course):
Does "thought crime" have a hypothetical "carbon footprint"?
Should a convicted one legged burglar should get a lighter sentence as he/she has a lesser carbon footprint?
John Shade @ 12:52pm
Regarding the use of the title professor, the situation is much worse outside the UK where, as I understand, lecturers are still called lecturers. Here in Hong Kong everyone from teaching assistants up have the magic word in front of their name, sometimes qualified with assistant etc, but more often not. I believe the rot started in the USA where grade inflation has gone so far as to require full professors to be "Distinguished" even though they are plainly not. (yes,Mann comes to mind)
Norman Stanley Fletcher, you are an habitual criminal who has repeatedly sought to evade the police using older 6 and 8 cylinder petrol cars emmitting over 265 grammes per kilometre of CO2. These days the kind of theft and burglary you commit would attract a community based sentance. But in the light of your excessive carbon footprint I have no option but to sentance you to a term of 5 years in prison without the prospect of early release. On release your driving licence will be restricted to the use of electric cars only.
@ Gareth, I hadn't noticed that bit. Well, I think that clinches it - the course is clear. Close down the private sector and the public sector, thereby bringing all human activity to a complete standstill - voilà, an end to crime and possibly a Nobel "Pease" Prize for the Professor? :-)
If the carbon costs of crime are determined to be significant
then
who/what decides how significant a person's carbon activity/cost is
before it becomes a punishable criminal act?
What about those who incite such acts
by undermining the reasoning behind carbon costs?
And, of course, if you bought carbon credits then your crime would be completely dismissed.
Like Al Gore -- it doesn't matter how big his carbon footprint is as long as he buys the carbon credits to cover it.
So murder will have a carbon credit price. It will only be necessary to buy X tons of carbon credits if you want to off that neighbor who plays the bag pipes late at night.
Eugene WR Gallun
Demonstrates the value of tenure. You need that kind of independence and security to explore the outer regions of intellectual endeavour. Fantastic stuff.
As ludicrous as this "criminal" element (for want of a more appropriate expression) might seem, I'm sure that those who've been following the twists and turns within the UNEP's maze will have noticed (or perhaps not ... it is buried somewhat deeply within their documentation) that they've got it covered, so to speak.
A few years ago, I had encountered the following while I was mousing through the ECOSOC arm of this ever-expanding maze. As I had noted at the time:
Furthermore, although I can't put my mouse on the exact text at the moment, the draft of the Rio+20 outcome document did include a clause which incorporated this "intent". However, it did not make the final cut.
Nonetheless, there was a subsequent "event" in November 2013. "INTERPOL-UNEP International Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Conference":
YMMV, but I find these ... uh ... activities in support of "Biodiversity" to be just a touch on the scary-side!