Large UK retailers' initiatives to reduce consumers' emissions: a systematic assessment

In the interest of climate change mitigation, policy makers, businesses and non-governmental organisations have devised initiatives designed to reduce in-use emissions whilst, at the same time, the number of energy-consuming products in homes, and household energy consumption, is increasing. Retailers are important because they are at the interface between manufacturers of products and consumers and they supply the vast majority of consumer goods in developed countries like the UK, including energy using products. Large retailers have a consistent history of corporate responsibility reporting and have included plans and actions to influence consumer emissions within them. This paper adapts two frameworks to use them for systematically assessing large retailers’ initiatives aimed at reducing consumers’ carbon emissions. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) is adapted and used to analyse the strategic scope and coherence of these initiatives in relation to the businesses’ sustainability strategies. The ISM ‘Individual Social Material’ framework is adapted and used to analyse how consumer behaviour change mechanisms are framed by retailers. These frameworks are used to analyse eighteen initiatives designed to reduce consumer emissions from eight of the largest UK retail businesses, identified from publicly available data. The results of the eighteen initiatives analysed show that the vast majority were not well planned nor were they strategically coherent. Secondly, most of these specific initiatives relied solely on providing information to consumers and thus deployed a rather narrow range of consumer behaviour change mechanisms. The research concludes that leaders of retail businesses and policy makers could use the FSSD to ensure processes, and measurements are comprehensive and integrated, in order to increase the materiality and impact of their initiatives to reduce consumer emissions in use. Furthermore, retailers could benefit from exploring different models of behaviour change from the ISM framework in order to access a wider set of tools for transformative system change

Quantifying the potential for improved management of weather risk using subseasonal forecasting: the case of UK telecommunications infrastructure

Reliable and affordable telecommunications are an integral part of service-based economies but the nature of the associated physical infrastructure leads to considerable exposure to weather. With unique access to observational records of the UK fixed-line telecommunications infrastructure, an end-to-end demonstration of how extended range forecasts can be used to improve the management of weather risk is presented, assessing forecast value on both short term ‘operational’ (weeks) and longer term ‘planning’ timeframes (months/years). A robust long-term weather-related fault-rate climatology is first constructed at weekly resolution, based on the ERA-Interim reanalysis. A clear dependence of winter fault rates on large-scale atmospheric circulation indices is demonstrated. The ECMWF subseasonal forecast system is subsequently shown to produce skilful forecast of winter-time weekly fault-rates at lead times of 3-4 weeks ahead (i.e., days 14-20 and 21-28). Forecast skill at a given lead-time is, however, a necessary rather than sufficient condition for improved risk management. It is shown that practical decision-making leads to dependencies across multiple forecasts times that cannot be modelled using traditional “cost-loss matrix” methods as errors in previous forecasts influence the value of subsequent forecasts. A parsimonious model representing operational decision-making for fault repair scheduling is therefore constructed to show that fault-rate forecast skill does improve both short-term and long-term management outcomes (in this case meeting performance targets more often in the short-term, or reducing the resources required to achieve these targets in the long-term). Consequently, it is argued that new methods are needed for forecast skill assessment in complex decision environments

Can participatory emissions budgeting help local authorities to tackle climate change?

A lack of concerted action on the part of local authorities and their citizens to respond to climate change is argued to arise partly from a poor relationship between the two. Meanwhile, local authorities could have a significant impact on community-wide levels of greenhouse gas emissions because of their influence over many other actors, but have had limited success with orthodox voluntary behaviour change methods and hold back from stricter behaviour change interventions. Citizen participation may offer an effective means of improving understanding between citizens and government concerning climate change and, because it is inherently a dialogue, avoids many of the pitfalls of more orthodox attempts to effect behaviour change. Participatory budgeting is a form of citizen participation which seems well suited to the task in being quantitative, drawing a diverse audience and, when successfully run, engendering confidence amongst authority stakeholders. A variant of it, participatory emissions budgeting, would introduce the issue of climate change in a way that required citizens to trade off greenhouse gas emissions with wider policy goals. It may help citizens to appreciate the nature of the challenge and the role of local government in responding; this may in turn provide authority stakeholders with increased confidence in the scope to implement pro-environmental agendas without meeting significant resistance

Literacy and numeracy are more heritable than intelligence in primary school.

Because literacy and numeracy are the focus of teaching in schools, whereas general cognitive ability (g, intelligence) is not, it would be reasonable to expect that literacy and numeracy are less heritable than g. Here, we directly compare heritabilities of multiple measures of literacy, numeracy, and g in a United Kingdom sample of 7,500 pairs of twins assessed longitudinally at ages 7, 9, and 12. We show that differences between children are significantly and substantially more heritable for literacy and numeracy than for g at ages 7 and 9, but not 12. We suggest that the reason for this counterintuitive result is that universal education in the early school years reduces environmental disparities so that individual differences that remain are to a greater extent due to genetic differences. In contrast, the heritability of g increases during development as individuals select and create their own environments correlated with their genetic propensities

The Big Drink Debate: perceptions of the impact of price on alcohol consumption from a large scale cross-sectional convenience survey in north west England

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A large-scale survey was conducted in 2008 in north west England, a region with high levels of alcohol-related harm, during a regional 'Big Drink Debate' campaign. The aim of this paper is to explore perceptions of how alcohol consumption would change if alcohol prices were to increase or decrease.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A convenience survey of residents (≥ 18 years) of north west England measured demographics, income, alcohol consumption in previous week, and opinions on drinking behaviour under two pricing conditions: low prices and discounts and increased alcohol prices (either 'decrease', 'no change' or 'increase'). Multinomial logistic regression used three outcomes: 'completely elastic' (consider that lower prices increase drinking and higher prices decrease drinking); 'lower price elastic' (lower prices increase drinking, higher prices have no effect); and 'price inelastic' (no change for either).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of 22,780 drinkers surveyed, 80.3% considered lower alcohol prices and discounts would increase alcohol consumption, while 22.1% thought raising prices would decrease consumption, making lower price elasticity only (i.e. lower prices increase drinking, higher prices have no effect) the most common outcome (62%). Compared to a high income/high drinking category, the lightest drinkers with a low income (adjusted odds ratio AOR = 1.78, 95% confidence intervals CI 1.38-2.30) or medium income (AOR = 1.88, CI 1.47-2.41) were most likely to be lower price elastic. Females were more likely than males to be lower price elastic (65% vs 57%) while the reverse was true for complete elasticity (20% vs 26%, P < 0.001).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Lower pricing increases alcohol consumption, and the alcohol industry's continued focus on discounting sales encourages higher drinking levels. International evidence suggests increasing the price of alcohol reduces consumption, and one in five of the surveyed population agreed; more work is required to increase this agreement to achieve public support for policy change. Such policy should also recognise that alcohol is an addictive drug, and the population may be prepared to pay more to drink the amount they now feel they need.</p

The genesis of gold mineralisation hosted by orogenic belts: A lead isotope investigation of Irish gold deposits

Lead isotope analyses have been performed on 109 gold and 23 sulphide samples from 34 Irish gold occurrences, including 27 placers, and used to shed light on the sources of mineralising fluids and metals associated with gold mineralisation hosted by orogenic belts. The Pb isotope ratios of lode and placer gold range from 206Pb/204Pb=17.287-18.679, 207Pb/204Pb=15.382-15.661, and 208Pb/204Pb=37.517-38.635, consistent with the Pb isotopic data on previously reported Irish sulphide mineralisation. There is no evidence that gold mineralisation is associated with distinctive source regions, and it appears to have been derived from similar sources to those responsible for the widespread sulphide mineralisation in Ireland. It is inferred that the principal controls on the Au mineralisation are structural and not related to the distribution of Au in their source rocks. The range of Pb isotope ratios favours the interaction of multiple source reservoirs predominantly during the Caledonian Orogeny (c. 475-380Ma). Underlying basement was the primary control on two key sources of Pb. Gold occurrences located to the south-east of the Iapetus Suture are characterised by Pb compositions that derive predominantly from the Late Proterozoic crustal basement or overlying Lower Palaeozoic sediments, whilst those located north-west of the Iapetus Suture are characterised by less radiogenic Pb signatures derived predominantly from Late Proterozoic or older crustal basement. A third source, relatively enriched in radiogenic Pb, also played a role in the formation of a number of Irish gold occurrences, and may have been associated with syn- to post-orogenic intrusives. Magmatic processes may therefore have played an important role in the formation of some orogenic gold occurrences

Corporate Social Responsibility at African mines: Linking the past to the present

This paper traces the origins of the 'brand' of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)employed at large-scale mines across sub-Saharan Africa. Conceived within fortified resource enclaves, the policies adopted and actions taken in the area of CSR at many of the region's large-scale mines today have had had minimal effect on community wellbeing. Further examination reveals that contemporary CSR strategy in the region's mining sector is often a 'repackaging' and 'rebranding' of moves made by major operators during the colonial period and early years of country independence to pacify and engage local communities. Today, this work is being championed as CSR but failing to deliver much change, its impact minimized by the economic and political forces at work in an era of globalization, during which extractive industry enclaves that are disconnected from local economies have been able to flourish. As case study of Ghana, long one of the largest gold mining economies in sub-Saharan Africa, is used to illustrate these points. © 201