Biography

Michael Jacobs is an academic, writer and commentator on international climate change and energy policy, British politics and social democratic and green political thought. 

A Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and at University College London, he was for six years Special Adviser to former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and before that head of the think tank and political association the Fabian Society. 

He is the author of a number of books on environmental economics and progressive politics, including The Green Economy (1991), The Politics of the Real World (1996) and Paying for Progress: A New Politics of Tax for Public Spending (2000). 

Born in London in 1960, Michel Jacobs was educated in state schools in Barnet and at Wadham College, Oxford, where he gained a First in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.  After leaving university he worked as coordinator for Tools for Self Reliance, a charity which refurbishes unwanted hand tools and ships them to artisans and co-operatives in developing countries.  In 1984-85 he took a postgraduate diploma in local employment planning at Middlesex Polytechnic and spent the next five years as a community worker and adult educator in Southampton, working with unemployed adults. 

From 1985-92 he was also a freelance foreign correspondent on British politics for a number of overseas current affairs magazines, including Australian Society, Economic and Political Weekly (India) and Perception (Canada).  

In 1990 Michael joined CAG Consultants, a small employee-owned consultancy firm specialising in local economic development and public and voluntary sector management.  In 1992 he was made Managing Director.  With CAG he worked in a number of inner-city areas in the UK advising on community-based economic development strategies and community enterprise.  He then took CAG into the environmental field, advising and training over 40 local authorities, several statutory agencies and non-governmental organisations and the Department of the Environment on environmental auditing and management and the implementation of sustainable development principles, particularly in land use planning.  He wrote a number of publications in these fields.

From around 1987 Michael began to do academic and policy work in environmental economics and philosophy.  His book The Green Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future, applying the concept of sustainability and principles of thermodynamics to economic policy, was published by Pluto Press in 1991. In 1994 he won an Economic and Social Research Council Fellowship and joined the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change at Lancaster University.  He later moved to the Department of Geography at the London School of Economics, where he taught a masters course in ecological economics.  His academic research focused on the meaning and policy application of sustainable development; environmental valuation; the design of environmental taxation and other instruments of environmental policy; environmental innovation and growth; and the philosophy and politics of 'quality of life'.  Along with a number of academic papers and book chapters, he wrote a series of policy reports and pamphlets in this period, including a Fabian pamphlet, Environmental Modernisation: The New Labour Agenda (Fabian Society 1999).  He also edited a book of essays for the Political Quarterly, Greening the Millennium? The New Politics of the Environment (Blackwell 1997).

From 1993-6 Michael helped to found and coordinate the Real World Coalition, which brought together NGOs in the environment, development, poverty and democracy fields.   He wrote a short book setting out an alternative agenda for British politics, The Politics of the Real World (Earthscan 1996). 

In 1997, just after the formation of the new Labour Government, Michael Jacobs became General Secretary of the Fabian Society, the UK’s longstanding left of centre think tank and political association.  Expanding the Society’s publications, events, membership and media profile, his work there covered the full range of social and political issues.  He established a major Commission on Taxation and Citizenship, for which he wrote the report and book, Paying for Progress: A New Politics of Tax for Public Spending (Fabian Society 2000).  His other writing at the Fabians included Progressive Globalisation: Towards an International Social Democracy (Fabian Society 2003) and (with Adrian Harvey) the report of the Fabian Commission on The Future of the Monarchy (Fabian Society 2003).  During his six years at the Fabians Michael Jacobs became a frequent contributor to the press and broadcast media and a regular public speaker. 

From October 2003 to January 2004 Michael was Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University, in Melbourne, Australia, where he did research on public service reform. 

In January 2004 Michael was appointed a member of the Council of Economic Advisers at the UK Treasury, responsible for advising the Chancellor of the Exchequer on environmental, health and public services policy and spending.  He also took responsibility for the development of a number of policy initiatives in relation to the third sector, including the establishment of ‘V’, the national youth volunteering service, and the creation of the Office of the Third Sector.  While at the Treasury he originated and oversaw the Stern Review on the economics of climate change, which resulted in the influential Stern Report.  He also oversaw a series of environmental tax and spending measures in seven Budgets and Pre-Budget Reports, along with the development of policy on emissions trading and regulation. 

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007 Michael moved to 10 Downing St as Special Adviser.  At No 10 he was responsible for the development and coordination of the government’s strategy on international climate change policy and negotiations, and the development, coordination and delivery of domestic energy, climate change, environment and agriculture policy.  He provided personal political and strategy advice and speech writing for the Prime Minister.

At the Treasury and No 10 Michael was closely involved in a radical overhaul of the UK’s climate and energy policy, including the Climate Change Act, Low Carbon Transition Plan, Low Carbon Industrial Strategy and the creation of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.  He played a central role in directing the UK’s international climate strategy, including negotiation of the European climate and energy package in December 2008 and Prime Minister Brown’s interventions in the run up to and during (and after) the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. 

Since leaving 10 Downing St in May 2010, Michael has been appointed Visiting Professor at both the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, and the Department of Political Science / School of Public Policy at University College London.   He is currently doing academic research and consulting on international and UK climate and energy policy, and work on social democratic and green political economy and theory.  He writes regularly for Inside Story and the Huffington Post and provides occasional political commentary on radio and television and in the print media.

Among Michael Jacobs’ other appointments and positions he has been a trustee of ActionAid, is a member of the Editorial Board of the Political Quarterly and the Supervisory Board of the European Climate Foundation, is on the Advisory Board of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the International Advisory Board of Climate Strategies, and the Steering Board of the Sussex University  Energy Policy Group.  He is a governor of his local primary school.  He is married with three children and lives in Hackney, east London.