Andrew Simms's Blog

Political economist and author who promoted ideas such as time banks and community sharing

In his 1989 book Building Futures, David Boyle, who has died aged 67 from complications linked to Parkinson’s, argued that mainstream economics was failing cities and a new localism could save them. This emphasis on communities rather than large-scale centralised development tied in with the broad theme that David saw as running through his work: “The importance of human-scale institutions over centralised ones, human imagination over dull rationalism, and the human spirit over technocratic reduction.”

Funny Money: In Search of Alternative Cash (1999) explored local economic systems found mainly on a journey through the US. Exchanging services within community systems run by volunteers can be facilitated through “time banks”. The idea of the “time dollar”, representing one hour of help, whether grocery shopping or preparing a tax return, was popularised by the Washington law professor Edgar Cahn.

My mother, June Simms, who has died aged 92, was one of the first people to benefit from the newly created NHS in 1948, and among the first to give back, contributing as a nurse, theatre sister and midwife.

The only child of Priscilla (nee Goodacre) and Fred Ringe, a carpenter, June was born and brought up in Rugby. She was bought ballet lessons, a rare treat in their working-class household, as a distraction from the second world war she saw overhead, living near heavily bombed Coventry; her parents could not afford the surgery needed when poor teaching deformed her feet. The new NHS came to her rescue.

Parisians have voted to triple parking charges for these behemoths. Let that be the start of a much wider crackdown

Paris has developed a taste for better city living. Its vote to begin pricing sports utility vehicles (SUVs) off its streets by tripling parking charges is part of a diet for reversing autobesity – the trend by car manufacturers towards larger, more dangerous and polluting cars.

It’s not difficult to see what has driven Parisians’ ire: the reasons to dislike SUVs form a tailback so long it’s hard to see the front of the queue.

Andrew Simms is an author, co-director of the New Weather Institute, coordinator of the Badvertising campaign and the Rapid Transition Alliance, assistant director of Scientists for Global Responsibility and a research associate at the University of Sussex

As major retailers rake in huge profits, they are slashing jobs, squeezing suppliers and hollowing out our food industry

Supermarkets can seem as mundane as public utilities, as dull as plumbing – until something goes wrong. If the plumbing goes wrong, the ceiling collapses. But when the supermarket goes wrong, you can’t put food on the table.

The naked vulnerability of the way we produce and sell our food is revealed whenever there is a shock to the system – whether that be fuel protests that disrupt deliveries from distribution warehouses, post-Brexit trade barriers increasing the price of food imported from the EU, or supply crises due to war or climate-related crop failure. In an industry defined by centralisation, concentrated ownership and global supply chains, things go wrong, often, and the problem for us – the shopper, the consumer, the citizen – is our lack of any real alternatives.

Airlines have missed 98% of their previous environmental targets yet they keep pushing to persuade more people to fly

Even with lethal wildfires licking around southern Europe’s holiday hotspots, airlines such as Ryanair are still flying people towards the flames. Aviation, dubbed “the fastest way to fry the planet’ by environmental campaigners, due to its high carbon emissions, is back as our default means of getting away. But our chosen means of transport, flying, incrementally wrecks the climates, prospects and lives of the places being flown to. This is no tragic, unforeseen irony, but a deliberate, heavily promoted act of self-destruction.

At precisely the moment when everything should bend to make less climate-damaging choices easier and more attractive, exactly the opposite is happening. Why?

Overconsumption is inevitable when adverts are so ubiquitous and sophisticated. There must be a pushback

To confront the climate emergency, the amount we consume needs to drop dramatically. Yet every day we’re told to consume more. We all know about air pollution – but there’s a kind of “brain pollution” produced by advertising that, uncontrolled, fuels overconsumption. And the problem is getting worse.

Advertising is everywhere, so prevalent as to be invisible but with an effect no less insidious than air pollution. A few years ago, an individual in the US was estimated to be exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 adverts daily.

Shifting the all-English final from Istanbul would reduce carbon emissions but there is still a lack of long-term thinking from Uefa when it comes to doing the right thing

It was bad enough in 2019 when tens of thousands of football supporters from the United Kingdom traipsed across Europe to watch two English clubs, Tottenham and Liverpool, play the Champions League final at Atlético Madrid’s stadium in Spain. More easily, cheaply and comfortably they could have hopped on a train or coach, or driven to meet each other halfway in Birmingham.

Now, not only are we still in the middle of a pandemic, with Turkey, where this season’s Champions League final between Manchester City and Chelsea was initially scheduled to take place on 29 May, registering an average of 29,000 new coronavirus cases per day, but since 2019 there has been a rising tide of awareness about the climate emergency and the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions.

Related: The climate crisis and football – Football Weekly special

Our global economy should serve rather than dominate people – and that includes factoring in the climate crisis, too

Something is killing conventional economics and it’s probably an inside job. Reliance on abstract mathematics and absurd assumptions has brought the discipline into disrepute, even if politics and policy are guided by the ghosts of its teaching.

Nobody was surprised recently to learn that the price of the overdue and over-budget HS2 high-speed rail project could rise by another £30bn. People were surprised to learn, however, that in the cost-benefit analysis used to justify the original project, planners assumed that no passengers work while on a train. That made the times savings on the new line look more valuable than they really were.

Related: What happens when ordinary people learn economics? | Aditya Chakrabortty

Related: While economic growth continues we’ll never kick our fossil fuels habit | George Monbiot

The big retailers’ business model has made food shortages more likely in the event of a no-deal Brexit

“The shops will be empty” and “the lights will go out” are the staple warnings of commercial interests that have an axe to grind or are looking for public support. But the letter this week from store bosses sounding an alert about the impact of a no-deal Brexithas added irony when delivered by some of Britain’s biggest supermarket retailers, whose centralised business model has done much to hollow out the economy, making it so vulnerable in the first place.

Related: No-deal Brexit would mean shortages and price rises, say retailers

How did government respond to the recent scientific conclusion that only “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” can deliver the globally agreed target for stopping climate breakdown? In the UK, fracking for fossil fuels was given the green light, plans were announced for a huge new road in the south-east, incentives for electric vehicles withered, the expansion of Heathrow airport is still going ahead and Gatwick airport is trying to expand too by bringing a back-up runway into use. It’s like seeing a sign that says “Danger: vertical cliff drop” and pulling on your best running shoes to take a flying leap.

Something isn’t working. The head of the oil company Shell responded to the new climate science warming by clarifying that “Shell’s core business is, and will be for the foreseeable future, very much in oil and gas.” BP announced new North Sea oil projects. Immediate choices are being made with blank disregard to avoiding climate breakdown.

Related: Overwhelmed by climate change? Here's what you can do

Related: As the fracking protesters show, a people’s rebellion is the only way to fight climate breakdown | George Monbiot