“IMAGINING OTHER…”
Protecting the Planet:
updates
LINKS: Imagining Other Home Page
LINKS TO
NOTES ON PROTECTING THE PLANET:
Week
1: introduction Weeks 2 & 3: some key industries Week 4: different strategies Week 5: some solutions
Week 6: global warming (i) causes Week 7: global warming (i)
effects Week 8: species decline Week 9: energy choices and policies
Week
10: the environment movement
TOPICS HERE,
IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER:
#activists
(including legal actions) #agriculture/farming #agroecology #air quality #animal rights #Antarctica #arctic
#bees #biodiversity
biomass – see ‘trees’ #books #Brexit #Britain's wildlife #buildings
#chickens (eating them better than
beef?) #climate
change and carbon emissions #climate sceptics #Climategate #coral reefs
#dark money #deep time #Deepwater Horizon(oil spill) #divestment from fossil fuel
#electric cars
#emissions
trading schemes #EU
and UK government
#fashion
industry (and climate crisis) #fishing #flying #forests #fracking
#NETs (Negative
Emissions Technologies) #New Zealand #nuclear power
#palm oil #philosophies
(Deep time, The Reality Bubble) #plastics #population (Paul Ehrlich)
#war #wildfires
#wind-power #wolves
#WWF
20th
March 2018, Damian Carrington: Action by 12 UK citizens reaches the high court
today, and tomorrow in San Francisco the science of climate change will
effectively be on trial. The UK group is called Plan B, and has the support of
Prof Sir David King, the government’s former chief scientific advisor. In the
US, the cities of San Francisco and Oakland are suing big oil companies for
damages. There will be a day-long hearing on the science. Other cases have been
brought due to rising seas, and more than 1,000 suits are logged by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, NY.
Others are seeking to block oil drilling in the Arctic. In Colombia, 25 young
plaintiffs are taking to the courts to halt deforestation.
In 2015 in
the Netherlands, the court ruled the Dutch state must increase its cuts to
reduce emissions (the Urgenda case). In Pakistan a
farmer won a judgement against the ‘lethargy’ of the state. In Peru a German
energy company RWE is being sued over the melting of glaciers.
6th
March 2018, Arthur Neslen – officials from 24 Latin
American and Caribbean countries have signed legally binding pacts with
measures to protect land defenders. Two years ago Berta Caceres was killed in
Honduras. Last year almost 200 nature protectors were killed across the world,
60% of them in Latin America.
Most cases
are in the US, including the Juliana case, filed by 21 teenagers in Oregon (Our
Children’s Trust).
The argument
is that these companies (like the tobacco companies in the past) knowingly sold
products that cause damage. Like the tobacco companies, oil companies have
tried to obfuscate and blur the issues.
20th Sep 2019. Beef and
climate change:
NFU says
British farming can become climate neutral by 2040 without cutting beef
production or converting large areas into forest. Their suggestion is growing
fuel for power stations and then capturing the carbon dioxide. Energy plants could them become our biggest crop after wheat.
Agriculture causes about 10% of the UK’s climate-heating emissions, with 90% of
that being methane from livestock and nitrous oxide from fields. Farmers are
seeing the effects of climate change with extreme weather. The plan also
includes feed additives to cut methane, gene editing to improve crops and
livestock, and controlled-release fertilisers. [Good examples of ‘high-tech’ proposals...]
June 14th 2019. Ammonia from farming. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/13/revealed-uk-government-failing-to-tackle-rise-of-ammonia-serious-air-pollutant causes 3,000 deaths a year
April 2019, from Ecowatch,
on beef production: https://www.ecowatch.com/beef-and-climate-change-2634244134.html
25th June 2018. Catherine Bloomfield, who writes on
farming and keeps cattle on a grassland farm in Devon, argues Brexit is an
opportunity to have a national debate about farming.
‘For 40 years Britain has been subject to [the common agricultural policy]’s
perversities, inefficiencies and unintended consequences... creating a
generally dysfunctional relationship between farmers and the public.’
She mentions
the 25 year environment plan, launched earlier this year, and its bold ambition
‘to leave the environment for the next generation in a better state than we
found it.’ But will Gove actually do anything about this? How to keep feeding a
growing population should not be left to Defra – it’s
beyond farming, and there is a battle between NFU and ‘environmental zealots’
who indulge in ‘mutual myopia’!! But they need to work together. The premise of
farming, she says, is to deliver health. The Defra
consultation paper talkss about farming and the
natural environment but not about health... Farming also has to speak less to
itself and more widely with society. Problems also include declining soil
fertility, over-consumption of food water and energy.
26th March 2018, Michael McCarthy: a quite
optimistic assessment, that if we leave the EU’s agricultural policies we will
have a lot of money to spend on ensuring our agriculture is sound for the
environment. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/26/wildlife-modern-farming-insects-birds
17th Feb 2018 (Tom Levitt): Dutch cows are
producing so much waste the
authorities don’t have space to store it! The Netherlands is the fifth-largest
exporter of dairy. It has 1.8 million cows and there are legal restrictions on
where the manure can be deposited. Farmers are dumping it illegally, the
country is breaking EU regulations on phosphates, and the high levels of
ammonia are affecting air quality.
WWF is calling for a 40% reduction in cow numbers over the next decade. Its
Netherlands head says they have the lowest biodiversity in Europe after Malta,
with only 15% of their original biodiversity left. 80% of farms produce more
dung than they can legally use on their farms – the Dutch are already allowed
to spread more manure on the land than the rest of the EU. Some political
parties support restrictions on the number of cows.
8th Feb 2018, Fiona Harvey: level of antibiotic use on US farms is five
times as much as in UK, and nine times in the case of beef cattle, according to
Alliance to Save our Antibiotics. It is three times higher in chicken, twice in
pigs and five times in turkeys. Europe has banned the import of beef from
America, largely owing to growth hormone use. This issue obviously affects
Brexit! The fear is of superbugs developing through the growth of resistance.
Nearly three quarters of the total use of antibiotics worldwide is thought to
be on animals.
Agroecology: https://theconversation.com/three-ways-farms-of-the-future-can-feed-the-planet-and-heal-it-too-
18th Sep. 2019. Air
pollution particles found in foetuses – showing the placental barrier can be penetrated by
particles breathed in by the mother. Damage to foetuses has lifelong
consequences. People should avoid busy roads when possible. Published
in Nature Communications. In the mothers who lived near main roads there
were 20,000 particles per cubic millimetre, while there were 10,000 per cubic
millimetre for those who lived further away.
In 2101
black carbon particles were found in the urine of school children (10 million
per millilitre) – particles go from the lungs all over the body.
More
research is needed to determine the impact of the particles, but research has linked
air pollution with heart and lung disease, diabetes, reduced intelligence,
brittle bones and damaged skin... There are at least 8.8 million early deaths
every year from air pollution. (Damian Carrington)
90% of the
world’s population live in areas where air pollution is above WHO guidelines.
11th Dec 2019. Diesel cars
emit more pollution in hot weather. Research in Paris by the Real Urban Emissions (known as
True) initiative – emissions of NOx rose by 20% - 30%
when temperatures rose above 30C. Emissions were many times higher than those
declared in lab tests – the Dieselgate scandal found
there was 40 times more NOx on the road than in
tests. True uses a beam of light to examine the fumes, together with automatic
number-plate recognition.
31st Aug. 2019. Leeds
plans car-free school. If approved will be in a Climate Innovation District – a zero-carbon
neighbourhood by the river Aire near the Royal
Armouries Museum. Will include hundreds of homes – limited
parking spaces (extra cost on the house) underground, with electric charging
points at every space. Car access is limited. In the 1970s Leeds got a
motorway through the centre – consequently Leeds had a street with the highest
levels of NOx outside London. The school will share a
building with a care home and flats. Communa;l courtyard, intergenerational living (which has
been shown to have positive health benefits). ‘Living Streets’ welcomes the
initiative. (Helen Pidd).
15th April 2019. https://airqualitynews.com/2019/04/15/car-emissions-down-17-since-2008-figures-suggest/ - largely due to developments in manufacture, so there is now a choice
of different types of car, including electric, and emissions are reduced.
April 2019 UNICEF report: www.unicef.uk/healthyairnationalaction
3rd April 2019. Fiona Harvey, Guardian: ‘the State
of Global Air 2019’ reports that, in the world, on average, children born today
will have their lives shortened by 20 months because of air pollution. In 2017
it was a bigger killer than malaria and road accidents, and comparable to
smoking. In south Asia lives are shortened by 30 months and in sub-Saharan
Africa by 24 months – one factor being cooking fires. Alastair Harper of Unicef warns that there is a
relationship between exposure to toxic air and low birth weight, reduced lung
development and childhood asthma.
In China the
situation is improving as there is less reliance on coal, and control over the
number of vehicles in some cities.
Last year’s
study found that more than 90% of people were breathing in dangerous air. Air
pollution has been described as a global emergency. Studies link it to
dementia, miscarriages etc.
2nd April 2019. (G Arthur Neslen). Ryanair is the
first non-coal company to become one of the top 10 carbon emitters, according
to EU figures.
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/arthurneslen
The Irish airline, which transports 130 million people a
year, declared 9.9 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions
in 2018, up 6.9% on last year and 49% over the last five years, according to data in the EU’s latest emissions trading system registry.
Andrew Murphy, the aviation manager at the European
Federation for Transport and Environment, said: “this undertaxed and
under-regulated sector needs to be brought into line, starting with a tax on
kerosene and the introduction of mandates that force airlines to switch to
zero-emission jet fuel.”
Aviation is responsible for about 3% of Europe’s greenhouse
gas emissions, but industry forecasts suggest this could rise by up to 700% by
2050 as the sector grows.
24th
Sep 2018 (James Bridle, author of New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the
Future). Researchers from Beijing and Yale show people living in polluted
cities are losing cognitive functions. High levels of lead cause low scores in
maths and language – equivalent in some cases to losing several years of
education. High levels of CO2 also cloud the mind. Currently atmospheric levels
are over 400 ppm. By 2100 they could be 1,000 ppm – and people could lose 21% of their cognitive
abilities. Outdoors levels often reach 500 ppm, and
sometimes indoors it exceeds 1,000 ppm – in Denmark studies
found over 2,000 ppm.
Bridle
suggests that since those who grew up between 1965 and 1985 have been found to
have 20 micrograms of lead per decilitre of blood – they are suffering from
cognitive impairment which may explain some of the irrational behaviour we see
now! EPA in US has loosened restrictions on power-plant emissions, so there
will be more mercury in the atmosphere too...
18th Sep 2018, Matthew Taylor: Q Mary Uni has found children are absorbing soot particles – black
carbon – during the school day = more than 60% of the air pollution they take
in each day. On the way to school and in classrooms and
playgrounds. In one school in Holborn levels in the classroom were over
three times above WHO limit for pm10 Swedish firm Blueair can provide air filters that reduce levels by 96%.
Murphy
described aviation as “Europe’s biggest climate failure”. Europe’s airlines pay
about €800m (£680m) a year for their rights to pollute. But some studies suggest this sum is eclipsed by
the €27bn they would have to stump up if their fuel tax and VAT exemptions were
ended.
Despite
increased attention from policymakers, the sector receives up to 85% of its EU
emissions trading allowances free, with Ryanair
consequently saving €96.6m in 2018.
25th
March 2019.
Two letters in Guardian make good points: 1. (From scientific advisor (Dr Robin
Russell-Jones) and chair (Geraint Davies) of APPG on air pollution): particulates
from exhausts are more dangerous than from friction (brakes, tyres etc) –
though government ‘likes to pretend that all particulates are equivalent,
regardless of source.’ (It even brings in agricultural particulates...). 2. On
modern cars, catalysts take time to warm up, so while CO2 will be reduced by
not idling, it could be that more of NOx, unburned fuel, and CO will be emitted.
31st
March 2019.
Two book reviews reveal the ‘shocking damage’ done by atmospheric pollution:
In
1952, with smog, an estimated
8,000 to 12,000 eventually died. “The fog caused more civilian casualties than
any five-day German bombing campaign had managed a few years before,” says Tim Smedley in Clearing the
Air...
Our air
today may not have the look of a peasouper. Nevertheless,
its quality has been worsening relentlessly and is poisoning us as assuredly as
it did in 1952, though the deadly airborne contaminants we now inhale consist
of microscopically tiny particles rather than gobs of carbon. Polluted air used
to stare us in the face. Today, it is an almost invisible threat...
Earlier this
month, scientists put the number of early deaths attributable to this
atmospheric poisoning at an incredible number: 8.8 million a year. Nine out of 10
people round the world now breathe air containing high levels of pollutants. As
a result, nearly 600,000 children die every year from diseases caused or
exacerbated by air pollution.
Of the two books, Gardiner’s is
the more descriptive, following the story of the harrowing impact of air
pollution – from Brooklyn to Poland and Delhi to Berlin – in terms of its
human cost. Smedley, by contrast, is more
prescriptive and ends his book with a detailed blueprint for saving our cities.
Suggested measures include a ban on all petrol and diesel cars in city centres;
the replacement of diesel buses and trains with electric vehicles; and an end
to the use of wood-burning stoves and coal fires. It’s an achievable vision, he
insists. “However, whether it happens in 10 or 100 years is down to public pressure
and political will.”
• Clearing the Air: The Beginning
and the End of Air Pollution by Tim Smedley is published by Blomsbury (£16.99).
• Choked: The Age of Air Pollution and the Fight for a Cleaner
Future by Beth Gardiner is published by Granta (£14.99).
July 13th 2018. ‘Park and stride!’ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/13/uk-schools-move-to-ban-the-school-run-to-protect-pupils-from-air-pollution
14th May 2018. Manchester has a very bad problem of
poor air quality. It costs the regional economy £1bn every year, and is
reducing life expectancy in the region by an average of six months, according
to an IPPR North report. Manchester doesn’t have the powers the mayor of London
has to enforce clean air zones etc. Emergency admissions to hospital for asthma
in Central Manchester are the highest in England, and more than double the
national average. North Manchester is second highest. The bus fleet is one of
the most polluting in the UK (only 15 electric buses, while more than 500 in
London).
28th Feb 2018: German courts have agreed cities can
ban diesels. 13,000 people are estimated to die from NOx
each year. EU threshold is 40 mcg/m3 – it’s often 70
in some cities. There is some opposition, and no-one expects widespread banning
just yet, as so many cars are affected. 15th Feb (Philip Oltermann and agencies): the government is considering
temporarily scrapping fares for public transport in some cities. Berlin is
struggling to meet EU targets and to avoid fines. Cities say they would need
federal funds to make up for the losses. The proposal will be tried in five
cities by the end of the year. Green Party politician Anton Hofreiter
says the idea is vague and the government should concentrate on pressurising
the car industry to free technical upgrades on some diesel cars.
UK taken to
court: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/renewed-calls-for-uk-to-tackle-toxic-air-ahead-of-high-court-hearing
- and found for the third time to be breaking legal requirements! Clean air in
the UK will now be overseen by the courts rather than ministers, in what was
described as a
‘wholly exceptional ruling.’
27th Feb 2018, Matthew Taylor – ClientEarth has found that 60% of parents want traffic diverted
away from schools at the beginning and the end of the day. 63% oppose new
schools being built where pollution is high, 60% are worried about the effects
of air pollution on children, and 70% in favour of the government alerting
schools on high pollution days. British Lung Foundation declares the situation
‘simply unacceptable’. The two organisations are launching Clean Air Parents’
Network to work together on this.
16th Feb 2018, Ian Sample – scientists say that
household cleaners, paints and perfumes have become substantial sources of
urban air pollution, especially now that traffic pollution is being reduced.
These are Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) which react in the air to form
ozone or PM2.5. Ground level ozone is harmful to health, affecting breathing. ‘Between one quarter and a third of all particles are made up
of organic compounds that originate as VOCs’. (A. Lewis, Prof of chemistry Uni of York). The problem is that many of these substances
are not controlled.
Animal rights. Sophie McBain in New Statesman interviews
Steve Wise, founder of the Nonhuman Rights Project. Quotes
Peter Singer. Inda’s supreme
court has ruled all animals should have constitutional and legal rights
(2014), a judge in Argentina ordered a chimpanzee to be released using habeas
corpus (2016), and in 2017 Colombia’s supreme court ordered a bear to be
released under the same principle. Bees and wasps can recognise faces; octupuses use tools; grey parrots have vocabularies with
hundreds of words; elephants can recognise themselves (in a mirror).
https://www.newstatesman.com/.../case-man-vs-beast-fight-nonhuman-rights
14th June 2018. (Matthew Taylor) Ice is melting at a
record-breaking rate, faster than at any previously recorded time, according to
a study in Nature, and another study warns it could contribute to sea-level
rises of 25cm globally, which on top of other factors would lead to more than a
metre rise by 2070. If the entire west Antarctic ice sheet melts, this would
bring around 3.5m of sea-level rise. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/13/antarctic-ice-melting-faster-than-ever-studies-show
The Nature
article shows that before 2012 the loss was 76bn tonnes a year – now it is
219bn (contributing 0.6mm sea-level rise per year).
The second
study looks at different scenarios, and argues there are some changes that can
be prevented.
28th
March, Matthew Taylor: Holland and Barrett has agreed to remove krill-based
products such as Omega 3 from its shelves, after activists sent 40,000 emails
in 24 hours and put protest stickers on products in its shops. Campaigners are
calling for Boots and others to follow suit. Boots say that their brands are in
line with Marine Stewardship Council products from sustainable sources. Last week Greenpeace campaigners boarded a
Ukrainian trawler. (See Facebook https://www.facebook.com/greenpeaceaustraliapacific/videos/10155831450743300/?utm_term=EML2&bucket=Oceans-Antarctic&source=ca_Oceans-Antarctic__
15th
Feb 2018, Matthew Taylor – climate change and industrial fishing together are
threatening the krill population. George Watters, lead scientist for the US
delegation to the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living
Resources (CCAMLR) warns that the penguin population could drop by almost a
third by the end of the century because of changes in the krill biomass.
(Published in Plos One). Some areas of krill could
decrease by 40% in size. Ocean warming is the main problem, but fishing also
affects it. Krill feed on algae and are a food source for whales, penguins and
seals – they also remove CO2 from the atmosphere when they eat near the
surface, and then excrete at lower levels. Krill populations have declined by
80% since the 1970s. Krill is fished for health products, and the industry is
growing by 12% a year.
There is a
campaign to turn 700,000 sq miles into a sanctuary, protecting wildlife and
banning all fishing, in the Weddell Sea. Krill fishing companies say they are
only taking 0.4% of the estimated biomass around the peninsula.
Arctic: 2nd Feb 2018, Oliver Milman - polar bears are sliding towards extinction faster
than previously feared. Research by US Geological Survey and Uni of California Santa Cruz, published in Science, shows
polar bears have a 50% higher metabolism than previously thought, and so
require more prey to meet their energy needs at a time when sea ice is
receding. There are some 26,000 polar bears in the arctic today. They are
leading a feast and famine lifestyle. The arctic is warming at twice the
average global rate, and has declined by about 13% a decade since 1979. In the
past 10 years Greenland has lost two trillion tonnes of its ice mass.
Bees: 25th May 2019, 38Degrees,
some useful references:
[1]
Huffington Post: Recolouring The Countryside - Why We
Need To Put Meadows Back On The Map:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/recolouring-the-countryside-why-we-need-to-put-meadows_uk_5a96d715e4b062df100e865c
ITV News: Wildflowers and insects under threat due to vanishing meadows,
experts warn:
https://www.itv.com/news/2018-07-06/wildflowers-and-insects-under-threat-due-to-vanishing-meadows-experts-warn/
The Guardian: Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature':
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature
[2] The Guardian: World's food supply under 'severe threat' from loss of
biodiversity:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/feb/21/worlds-food-supply-under-severe-threat-from-loss-of-biodiversity
BBC News: UN: Growing threat to food from decline in biodiversity:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47308235
[3] BBC News: Nature crisis: Humans 'threaten 1m species with extinction':
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48169783
New Scientist: Destruction of nature is as big a threat to humanity as climate
change:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2201697-destruction-of-nature-is-as-big-a-threat-to-humanity-as-climate-change/
Books: Will mcCallum:
How to give up plastic; George Monbiot: how did we
get into this mess? Mark Cocker: our place; Simon L Lewis and Mark A Maslin:
The human Planet; Mark Botle: the way home; David
Wallace-wells: the uninhabitable earth; XR: This is not a drill; Thor Hanson:
Buzz; James Lovelock: Novacene; ...
Choked.
Biodiversity:
Jan 2020.
Biodiversity – extraordinary inter-dependence:
The pale
giant oak aphid (stomaphis wojciechowskii)
has only recently been discovered. It is looked after by brown ants (lasius brunneus): The ants build
structures on the trees out of mosses, lichens and the exoskeletons of beetles.
These act as a ‘barn’ to keep the aphids in, where they are milked to extract
sugary water for the ants. If the aphids are disturbed, the ants move them down
the tree to their underground shelters – they carry the little ones in their
jaws. They keep the aphids underground in severe weather, and march the aphids
up the tree when summer comes. The ants are classified as ‘nationally notable’
and the aphids are probably rare, as there have only been a few locations where
they have been found. (Patrick Barkham, 25th
Jan 2020).
11th Dec 2019, Fiona
Harvey. The
Guam rail has been saved by captive breeding from the IUCN red list. It had
been endangered by the brown tree snake, accidentally introduced from US at the
end of WW2. The echo parakeet has gone from critically endangered (10 years
ago) to vulnerable. There are 112,432 species on the list, of which more than
30,000 are on the brink of extinction. 73 species have declined despite
conservation efforts.
In June 2020
the IUCN hold its four-yearly Conservation Congress, and in October the UN
Biodiversity Convention will hold a meeting in China. Climate change is the
main problem according to the head of climate change at WWF.
Aug. 2019.
Story about rats on an Alaskan island (invasive species...): https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-rat-spill/?utm_source=Hakai+Magazine+Weekly&utm_campaign=cdaa5f33e4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_06_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0fc1967411-cdaa5f33e4-121612957
April 20
2019. ‘Deep life’: from ‘Up from the
depths’ – see #deep time below... Last December
scientists revealed their discovery of a vast ‘deep life’ ecosystem in the
Earth’s crust, twice the volume of the world’s oceans, containing a
biodiversity comparable to that of the Amazon, and teeming with 23bn tonnes of
micro-organisms – hundreds of times the combined weight of all living humans.’
Red Squirrels: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150924-how-conservation-is-saving-our-red-squirrels?
2nd
July 2018. Steven Morris. The high brown fritillary, the UK’s most endangered
butterfly, may be getting a boost from the warm dry weather. Over 200 have been
seen, after a harsh winter which has helped knock back the bracken, then a warm
May and June – all of which is ideal for the caterpillars. The butterfly lays
eggs singly on leaf litter on dog violets or among moss growing on limestone
outcrops. The larvae hatch in early spring and bask on dead bracken or in short
sparse vegetation. It is only found at about 50 sites, such as Exmoor, Dartmoor
and Morecambe Bay. The larvae have feathered brown spines which make them look
like dead bracken fronds.
The things
that have worked against the butterfly include the abandonment of coppicing.
Other species which may benefit: heath fritillary, nightjar, Dartford warbler.
But the
swallowtail could become extinct soon...
30th
June 2018. Patrick Barkham.
The
swallowtail, Britain’s biggest butterfly, could become extinct within four decades.
It lives on milk parsley only, and this cannot survive in salty water. Rising
seas will turn much of the Norfolk Broads into salt marshes. With a sea level
rise of 50cm, at least 90% of the current swallowtail breeding sites will
become salt marsh. Tidal surges and ‘salination events’ also cause problems.
The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads contain 1,500 species of conservation concern,
including 66 that rely on the rivers and freshwater lakes.
In Victorian
times, marshes elsewhere in southern England were drained, leaving the Broads
as its only home. It has also become smaller and is now a subspecies.
It was
reintroduced to Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire in the
1990s, but without success. Experts believe it needs a wider area.
14th
June 2018. Some possibly good news: one new species of micro moth is found
every year in the UK. However, their abundance is in decline. There will be a
three-day ‘moth night’ – from 14th to 16th June -
organised by Butterfly Conservation, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and Atropos(
wildlife publisher). Some new moths arrived from Australia and New Zeeland, via
the horticultural trade. Others come here as a result of climate change. 27 of
the new arrivals (out of 125 new species spotted this century) have started to
breed here. (Patrick Barkham, Guardian)
11th
April 2018. UK Butterfly Monitoring scheme reports that 2017
was the 7th worst year, and for 2 species – grayling and grizzled
skipper - the worst ever. (Patrick Barkham)
Long-term falls in population are due to habitat loss, but recently climate
change, pesticides (such as neonics) and nitrogen pollution have been the
causes. UK has 59 native species. Red admiral and comma have increased, and
targeted management plus warm spring has helped the pearl-bordered fritillary.
Food crops of the worst affected are harmed by
increased nitrogen (transport and fertilizers) which helps more vigorous
grasses to grow at expense of their food plants.
Will mcCallum: How to give up plastic;
George Monbiot: how did we get into this mess?
Mark Cocker:
our place;
Simon L
Lewis and Mark A Maslin: The human Planet;
Mark Botle: the way home;
David
Wallace-wells: the uninhabitable earth;
XR: This is
not a drill;
Thor Hanson:
Buzz;
James
Lovelock: Novacene;
Jillian
Ambrose, Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jillian-ambrose
many useful articles
2019. See also DeSmog:
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/11/election-2019-here-are-all-brexit-party-s-climate-science-deniers
12th April 2018. Risk
Assessment by FoE:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/green-brexit-unlikely-despite-government-claims-report-concludes
Main risk is a gap between policy statements and concrete regulations. A
‘non-regression clause’ which means that post-Brexit rules would not be weaker
is asked for, along with a body to oversee environmental standards.
4th April 2018 Michael Jacobs, author of Rethinking
Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth – short
piece 4th April warning of dangers if we do not replace existing EU
legislation on the environment with something at least as good and preferably
stronger. He suggests a new sustainable economy act, with a legal requirement
on government to set environmental limits and to produce economic plans to
achieve them. These should include: air pollution, soil degradation, resource
depletion, plastics pollution and biodiversity loss. Each would need a
long-term goal and shorter term targets and plans. These should be based on the
advice of an independent expert sustainable economy commission, modelled on the
climate change committee.
The Climate
Change Act, he says, does impose limits etc, and in effect puts the UK under a
sustainability constraint. Every five years the government must adopt a legally
binding carbon target, and these must be set fifteen years ahead, and be on the
trajectory to the goal of an 80% reduction by 2050 (relative to 1990 levels).
James Tapper, Observer 21st
Jan 2018 quotes a
coalition of green groups saying there is a significant risk that our
environmental protections will be reduced after Bexit.
Greener UK represents 13 groups including WWF, National Trust, RSPB, FoE, Green
Alliance and the Wildlife Trusts. Chair Shaun Spiers
says there is a lack of willpower to ensure high standards across the UK when
we lose the common frameworks currently provided by the EU. MEP Julie Girling (who had the whip withdrawn when she supported an
EU resolution saying the UK had not made sufficient progress in the talks) said
the UK was no longer working effectively with the EU on environmental issues.
Observer, 15th
April 2018, review by Alex Preston of Britain: Our Place: can we save Britain’s
wildlife before it is too late? By Mark Cocker. Argues
that despite the British love of the countryside etc, we are destroying our
wildlife: quoting the 2013 State of Nature report (by 25 British environmental
organisations), of the 3,148 species studied, 60% had declined in the last 50
years; 31% had declined badly and 600 were threatened with extinction. We lost
44m birds between 1996 and 2008. We have lost 99% of our wildflower meadows,
half of our ancient woodland, three-quarters of our heathland,
three-quarters of our ponds. Yet there are 5m members of the National Trust,
1.2m in the RSPB, 800,000 in various wildlife trusts. These organisations are
afraid to campaign (and the NT placates the landed aristocracy). The villains
of the story are industrial agri-business, moneyed landowners, and the
politicians who defend their interest (mostly conservative of course).
Monocultures and grouse moors are destroying the natural countryside.
June 2019: Buildings: (letters 18/6/19) modern buildings
are lightweight, unshaded, with overglazed
walls, reliant on mechanical heating, cooling and ventilation systems, with no
internal mass to absorb or release excess heat. (Susan Roaf,
Oxford)
Carbon Taxes: Phillip Inman, 23/12/18, has an
interesting slant: we need supranational bodies to get involved, as national
governments have failed. The biggest emitters are the major steelmakers,
smelters, and energy firms. In 2015, excluding road transport, 81% of emissions
were untaxed. (According to OECD).
The riots in France have shown that you can’t just slap a tax on fuel. Taxes on
carbon will put up the price of .e.g. petrol and diesel. How to find a policy
that encourages car-drivers to support it?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/22/war-fuel-tax-cant-be-won-no-green-alternative
Chickens: farming contributes to destruction of forests: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/is-eating-chicken-better-for-the-environment-than-beef/?
Around the
world, the amount of chicken being eaten has rocketed, almost doubling in the
last 30 years. Today, more chicken is eaten than beef, and there are billions
of chickens being reared for eggs and meat.
All these chickens need feeding.
Most are kept in intensive factory farms, where they’re provided with
processed, concentrated feed made largely from soya. Much of this soya comes
from South America, grown in areas which, not long ago, were forests or
savannahs. Now, they’re huge soya bean plantations.
There are now 30 chickens for
every 10 people on the planet. There are so many chickens,
the balance of nature has shifted. Farmed
chickens and other poultry make up 70% of all birds on Earth (measured by
biomass, or the weight of living organisms). Rearing animals for food is
literally squeezing out nature, leaving no space for wild animals.
As things stand, chicken
consumption is only going to increase. Eating habits across the world are
changing, and more people are eating more meat. Influenced by modern western
diets, China, India and other countries are shifting from traditional balanced
diets to ones heavy in meat and dairy.
Huge amounts of soya from Brazil end
up in the EU, which is the second biggest importer of soya in the world. Most
of this is used for animal feed, and half of that is fed to chickens. The UK
alone imports over 3 million tonnes of soya per year.
The animal feed industry is doing
untold damage to many of Brazil’s natural landscapes, including the Cerrado. This vast savannah, characterised by dry
grasslands dotted with trees, contains a bewildering variety of plants and
animals. It’s also known as the “cradle of waters” as it feeds most of Brazil’s
major rivers, including the Amazon.
South America’s second largest
forest, the Gran Chaco, is also being devastated by soya, as well as cattle
ranching. Jaguars, armadillos and giant anteaters roam among the thorny shrubs
of this dry tropical forest. However, the Gran Chaco is disappearing faster
than any other forest as industrial agriculture expands into the region.
The Amazon rainforest is
currently protected from being turned into soya plantations. In 2006, a
ground-breaking deal ended the destruction of the Amazon by soya companies. The
deal is still in place, but those same companies who signed up are now
destroying the Cerrado and the Gran Chaco.
And wildlife: 27th Dec 2019. Volatile weather led to an
influx of migrant species in 2019, but also put pressure on other species.
Painted ladies arrived in large numbers for the first time in a decade, also
the Clifden nonpareil moth and dragnonflies
such as the red-veined darter and vagrant emperor. Grey seals were thriving,
and orchids did well.
But fires on the moors damaged
habitat for curlew and twite. It was also a bad year
for natterjack toads (where pools dried up) and water
voles (because of flooding resulting in the loss of young). Arctic terns,
guillemots and shags suffered significant losses because of rain in
Northumberland. Other examples in article by Steven Morris).
10th Sep 2019. Climate change and Rivers in Australia:
In
Australia, New South Wales government will move native fish from the Lower
Darling river to safe havens, before temperatures rise in the summer. Last year
there were mass fish killings. River mussels were in decline, and the river red
gum trees were under severe stress. ‘If the river red gums die, and some are
hundreds of years old, there will be a domino effect. Banks will collapse,
there will be massive erosion and it will send sediments down the river’ said
Prof Fran Seldon of Griffith University.
Last
December and January fish began dying in their hundreds of thousands in the far
west of the state, carpeting weirs and water holes with dead fish. Part of the
problem is a lack of flow in the river because of drought and irrigation.
Temperatures reached 40C.
Some Murray
cod are at least 25 years old. Critics say it is a photo-op rather than a real
solution.
Note there
have been serious bushfires in Australia this year...
July 2019, brilliant summary from Aewa Mahdawi (Life and Arts
24/7/19):
every day seems to bring new record-breaking temperatures or
extreme conditions. June was the hottest month recorded on Earth; July is on course to break that record. The Arctic is having a
sweltering summer that has sparked
unprecedented wildfires. According to the World Meteorological
Organization, these fires emitted as much carbon
dioxide in one month as the whole of Sweden does in a year.
As large sections of the Arctic
burn, major cities sizzle. New York, where I live, has just emerged from a
heatwave that the mayor declared a “local emergency”.
The city’s infrastructure, which is held together by chewing gum and rat
droppings at the best of times, buckled under the strain of millions of heaving
air conditioners, leaving more than 46,000 New Yorkers without power on Sunday.
Now it is Europe’s turn to swelter; the Met Office says temperatures could
reach 37C (99F) in London on Thursday.
What makes this extreme weather
even more uncomfortable is the grim realisation that we have done this to
ourselves. The climate crisis has made heatwaves the
new normal. You can’t turn to a colleague and remark: “Hot, isn’t it?” without
thinking about the fact that, unless something drastic is done, it is going to
get hotter and hotter. According to scientists at the Crowther
Lab in Switzerland, nearly 80% of cities will undergo dramatic climate changes
by 2050; London, for example, will feel like Barcelona does today.
Residents of cities such as Jakarta and Singapore, meanwhile, will experience
“unprecedented climate conditions” characterised by extreme rainfall and severe
droughts.
As the implications of the
climate crisis become impossible to ignore, many of us are growing increasingly
terrified. The climate emergency isn’t just damaging the planet; it is also
harming our mental health – a phenomenon called “eco-anxiety”. As Alexandria Harris
wrote in her 2015 book Weatherland,
“small alterations in familiar places can disturb us more than dystopian
visions”.
We need to
significantly change our behaviour and, even more importantly, overhaul our
economic system. After all, only 100 companies are responsible for 71% of
global emissions. You know all this already; we all do. But our politicians
still are not taking meaningful action. Capitalism is carrying on with business
as usual. The world is literally on fire – and it feels as though we are
fiddling with paper straws while it burns.
June 2019, vicious circle as changing climate
causes more demand for energy: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/11/energy-industry-carbon-emissions-bp-report-fossil-fuels
Carbon
emissions climbed by 2% in 2018, faster than any year since 2011, because the
demand for energy easily outstripped the rapid rollout of renewable energy.
China accounted for a third of the world's energy
growth in 2018
%
China 34.4
US 20
India 15.1
Other
developing Asia 9.8
Russia 6.8
Middle East 5.4
Africa 3.3
Rest of
world 5.2
20th
April 2019 (Daniel Grossman, Brazil, Guardian). Experiments are being carried
out to see how the Amazon rainforest reacts to increased levels of CO2. The
last time levels were as high as now was in the Pliocene, and then beech trees
grew at the South Pole... Will the extra CO2 harm the trees or protect them? It
seems to depend on other factors... Chambers are being built round some of the
trees, and CO2 is pumped into the chambers, to the level predicted for 2050
(50% higher than now, and when temperatures are predicted to be up to 3.5 above
now).
19 April,
AP: polar bears are prowling in Kamchatka peninsula, hundreds of miles from
their usual habitat. The ice is receding and the bears are looking for new
sources of food. Ice off the coast of Greenland, normally frozen even in
summer, has been melting – twice last year. The bears are sedated and removed
to their normal habitat. The oldest ice has melted by 95% over the past 30
years according to the Arctic Report Card last year.
April 2019.
Link to Ecowatch article on letter to Guardian,
signed by George Monbiot, Bill McKibben,
Naomi Klein and others on restoring nature to capture carbon:
https://www.ecowatch.com/natural-climate-change-solutions-2633669096.html
30th
March 2019. Ice cores: Beyond Epica project aims to
extract samples from a 1.7 mile think ice sheet in Antarctica, which will
reveal temperatures as far back as 1.5m years ago. In 2004 they drilled a
two-mile long core that was 800,000 years old. We know from this that today’s
CO2 concentrations are much higher than anything that has been seen in the past
800,000 years. ‘We are on the way to push the climate system outside its
natural boundaries.’
11th
March 2019. Greta Thunberg and school strikes for climate:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/11/greta-thunberg-schoolgirl-climate-change-warrior-some-people-can-let-things-go-i-cant
- interview by Jonathan Watts.
27th
Feb 2019. Guardian editorial: Recent survey data shows that while 93% of
British people know climate change is happening, only 36% believe that humans
are mainly responsible, and only 25% describe
themselves as very worried. UK’s target is to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by
2050, which is more ambitious than many comparable countries.
Dec 2018:
COP24 at
Katowice, 2018:
18th
Sep 2018. Adam Vaughan coal-fired power stations are being used more now that
gas prices have risen. In Sep. Coal-burning increased by15% = 1,000 extra tonnes of CO2 per
hour. If the trend continues the sector’s emissions will rise by 1.2m tonnes
this year – report by Imperial College London. We need a
80% cut by 2050 to meet target set by Committee on Climate Change. Coal could
account for 10.5% of electricity generation this winter, up from 10% last year.
In 1990 energy sector produced 200m tonnes. Now roughly 75m?
[Diagram in article]
12th
April 2018. Changes to the Gulf Stream are more dramatic than first thought:
‘The new research shows the current is now 15% weaker than
around 400AD, an exceptionally large deviation, and that human-caused global
warming is responsible for at least a significant part of the weakening.
The current, known as the Atlantic Meridional
Overturning Circulation (Amoc), carries warm water
northwards towards the north pole. There it cools, becomes
denser and sinks, and then flows back southwards. But global warming hampers
the cooling of the water, while melting ice in the Arctic, particularly from
Greenland, floods the area with less dense freshwater, weakening the Amoc current.
Two studies have been carried out, [both published in Nature
– see links in original article] and ‘both studies found that Amoc today is about 15% weaker than 1,600 years ago, but
there were also differences in their conclusions. The first study found
significant Amoc weakening after the end of the
little ice age in about 1850, the result of natural climate variability, with
further weakening caused later by global warming.
The second study suggests most of the weakening came later,
and can be squarely blamed on the burning of fossil fuels. Further research is
now being undertaken to understand the reasons for the differences.
However,
it is already clear that human-caused climate change will continue to slow Amoc, with potentially severe consequences. “If we do not
rapidly stop global warming, we must expect a further long-term slowdown of the
Atlantic overturning,” said Alexander Robinson, at the University of Madrid,
and one of the team that conducted the second study. He warned: “We are only
beginning to understand the consequences of this unprecedented process – but
they might be disruptive.”
A
2004 disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow, envisaged a rapid
shutdown of Amoc and a devastating freeze. The basics
of the science were portrayed correctly, said Thornalley:
“Obviously it was exaggerated – the changes happened in a few days or weeks and
were much more extreme. But it is true that in the past this weakening of Amoc happened very rapidly and caused big changes.”’
27th
Jan 2018, New Scientist, Michael Le Page – scientists do not agree how much
warming will result from a given increase in CO2, known as the equilibrium
climate sensitivity (equilibrium because there is a time-lag before the temperature
settles). The consensus is that if we double the amount, the rise would be
between 1.5 and 4.5C. But Peter Cox has narrowed this down to between 2.2 and
3.4 (Nature, doi.org/gcsmn4). Other studies put it higher (e.g. between 3 and
4.2C). There is agreement that the low values are unlikely, but the higher
values may be wrong since it takes thousands of years for temperatures to
stabilise. In the long run the true figure could be 6C or more. If we continue
to emit CO2 at current levels, it is agreed the world will heat by 4C by 2100 –
this is a projection of the actual warming, not a measure of sensitivity
Jan. 2018,
Damian Carrington: At current rates of tree planting it would take a century to
plant the 70,000 hectares of trees promised for 2025.
Climate sceptics: see DeSmog
on the Brexit party: https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/11/election-2019-here-are-all-brexit-party-s-climate-science-deniers
also on
funding to the Tories: https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/19/election-2019-boris-johnson-conservative-party-climate-science-denial-funding
Climategate, 2009. Article by Brendan Montague of Desmog and Resurgence:
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/18/how-climategate-laid-foundations-fake-news-era
Links
between Nigel Lawson, Christopher Monckton, S Fred Singer, Heartland Institute,
GWPF
The target of the hack attack
had been Pennsylvania State University Professor Michael Mann, the author of the first ‘Hockey Stick’ graph which showed a dramatic uptick in
average global temperatures following hundreds of years of a fairly stable
climate. Professor Phil Jones was collateral damage: accused of
academic dishonesty, hauled in front of a powerful Parliamentary committee to
answer these trumped up charges, his life’s work unfairly called into question.
He considered suicide.
Climategate should have been a storm in a
teacup. The emails revealed nothing new. A few choice phrases were taken out of
context, twisted, and presented as damning evidence. It was Lord Lawson who
turned it into a crisis for climate science.
He launched the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in Parliament just in time to make
best use of the faux scandal, toured the newspaper offices using his reputation
as Thatcher’s one time chancellor to persuade editors to take the event
seriously, and called on his Tory friends to open their cheque-books to fund his opaque
think tank.
Singer worked with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (now
Atlas Network) in the United States. The foundation was
primarily concerned with promoting free market, neoliberal economics. Friedrich
von Hayek was the intellectual inspiration. He argued that any regulation would
distort the market, leading to hardship.
Singer... had previously worked with the tobacco industry deliberately creating
smoke and mirrors around the increasing scientific consensus that smoking
caused cancer. The foundation received money from the oil industry, including Koch
Industries and ExxonMobil, and was instrumental in founding
the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in the
UK. It was a trustee of the IEA —
David Henderson — who first approached Lord Lawson at an event
hosted by the London School of Economics and persuaded him to take up
the cause of climate denial.
Lawson did not advise fake news,
but it encouraged a distortion of reality that has seriously undermined our
politics. It opened the floodgates.
Along the way, the GWPF has gotten into bed with the wildest of right-wing
neoliberal think tanks, becoming intimately
entwined (*) with those responsible for serious spin and corporate
lobbying around Brexit.
Lawson himself was instrumental
in the Vote Leave campaign (before applying for residency in France). He was happy to appeal to reactionary
populism to settle scores within the Tory party.
One consequence of this is that Nigel Farage long ago adopted the tactics of his namesake. Farage has dabbled in climate denial. He has gone further
in stirring up populism. He is the master of scapegoating.
And he is forever throwing “dead cats” into the political arena, keeping us
constantly focused on our relationship with the EU. And
in doing so, his Brexit Party — a party riddled
with a Lawsonian brand of climate science denial
— came close to destroying Lawson’s Tory party while continuing to push the UK towards the hardest of Brexits.
See also, on funding of
Conservative \party MPs: https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/19/election-2019-boris-johnson-conservative-party-climate-science-denial-funding
Johnson, Hancock, Mitchell, Hunt
and Fox all received between £20,000 and £30,000 from climate change
deniers....
The Brexit Party, and the Spiked
connection https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/11/election-2019-here-are-all-brexit-party-s-climate-science-deniers
:
The Spiked group of academics and writers
who regularly publish articles attacking efforts to tackle climate change
are well-represented in the Brexit Party’s candidate list. DeSmog
previously
revealed that the group was funded by Charles and David Koch, billionaire
American industrialists and infamous
funders of climate science denial.
James Woudhuysen (Carshalton and Wallington), a professor at London South Bank
University, has written extensively on the issue. He acknowledges its existence
but opposes what he considers the “misanthropic green ideology
of restraint”, backing high-carbon projects like Heathrow expansion and dismissing renewables as “nowhere near viable”.
Stuart Waiton (Dundee West), a sociology professor at Abertay
University who has been writing for Spiked since 2001, has described supporters of Greta Thunberg as a “cult”. He told
DeSmog he accepted that “mankind is having an impact
on the environment” but dislikes environmentalists’ “culture of limits”
Kevin Yuill (Houghton and Sunderland South), a history professor, has cast
doubt on the impacts of climate change, decrying
“eco-doomsayers”, while Paddy Hannam (Islington South) has described
achieving “net zero” emissions as a “waste of money”.
Dr Alka Cuthbert (East Ham), another regular contributor to Spiked, does not appear to have
made any public comments on climate change.
James Heartfield, who has blamed the Grenfell tragedy on climate targets and written
a book arguing that attempts to “green” the economy are about
“manufacturing scarcity to boost prices”, is no longer standing in Islington
North for the Brexit Party. He did not know who he had been replaced by
when asked.
(*) 55 Tufton
Street: https://www.desmog.co.uk/55-tufton-street
The Global Warming
Policy Foundation (GWPF) exists to combat what it describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies”
designed to mitigate climate change and regularly publishes reports rejecting
the scientific consensus on the issue. It was founded in the run-up to the
Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 by former Conservative Chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson. Several of the GWPF's members and funders are affiliated
with other groups located at 55 Tufton Street. [1], [3]
Civitas is an educational charity and publisher specializing in health,
education, welfare, and economics. The think tank has published reports arguing
against policies to tackle climate change, including a 2013 report by current Energy Editor of the GWPF John
Constable. It claimed a shift to renewable energy would mean “more people
would be working for lower wages in the energy sector, energy costs would rise,
the economy would stagnate, and there would be a significant decline in the
standard of living”. Sir Alan Rudge, an
advisor to the GWPF, and Lord Nigel Vinson, a GWPF funder, are both trustees. The group has been criticised
by Transparify for its “opaque” operations. [4], [45], [5], [6], [3], [7]
The TaxPayers’ Alliance is a pressure
group and think tank formed in 2004 by Matthew Elliott to campaign
for a low tax society and advocates the removal of various measures designed to
reduce emissions, including the Climate Change Levy. In 2016 the TaxPayers’ Alliance, along with U.S.
climate science denying lobby groups the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)
and the Heritage
Foundation, held a
free trade event at the Conservative Party Conference. The group was, as of
November 2015, a member of the Cooler
Heads Coalition, a climate science denial umbrella group run by the CEI, but is no longer listed on its website. The Taxpayers'
Alliance belongs to an international coalition of anti-tax, free-market campaign
groups called the World Taxpayers Associations. Other members include the Australian
Taxpayers' Alliance, Americans
for Tax Reform, the Austrian
Economics Center and the Canadian Taxpayers'
Federation. [8], [9], [10], [35]
Business for
Britain is a
pro-Brexit campaign group for business leaders founded in 2013 by Matthew Elliott to push for
a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. In 2014, it released a briefing paper on ‘Energy Policy and
the EU’, claiming that EU
regulations and policy had driven up the cost of energy in the UK and recommending that the government should consider
opting out of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. Matt Ridley, an advisor to the GWPF,
launched the Business for Britain North East branch, and
Lord Vinson has acted as an advisor to the group.
The
European Foundation is a high-profile think tank formed in 1993 to oppose
the Maastricht Treaty and chaired by Conservative MP Bill Cash. The group
published a report in 2009 during the Copenhagen climate summit, entitled ‘100
reasons why global warming is natural’ ... Members of the group’s advisory
board in clued Matthew Elliott, Richard Smith, owner of 55 Tufton
St, Roger Helmer (former UKIP member), David Davis
(Cons. MP), Oliver Lewtwin, Bernard Jenkin, John Whittingdale, Graham
Brady and iain Duncan-Smith. Owen Paterson, former environment
secretary is also on the advisory board.
Leave Means
Leave is a pro-Brexit campaign group formed following the 2016 EU referendum to
“ensure the UK makes a swift, clean exit from the EU”. It backs a
“hard” Brexit, with the UK leaving the
European Single Market, the Customs Union and the European Court of Justice,
and supports the UK reverting to
World Trade Organisation rules. The group was co-founded by Richard Tice,
a property developer and now Chair of the Brexit Party, and John Longworth,
former Director-General of the British Chamber of Commerce and now Chair of
Leave Means Leave. Its advisory board includes MPs Sammy Wilson, Owen Paterson,
Graham Stringer, Kate Hoey and Peter Bone.
On a now-deleted page on the group's website, Nigel Farage
was listed as its Vice-Chair, along with Tice.
Global
Vision is a Eurosceptic campaign group launched in
2007 by the Conservative peer Lord Blackwell, Chair of Lloyds Banking Group and
a former Board Member of the Centre for Policy Studies, and Ruth Lea, Trustee of the Global Warming
Policy Foundation and an advisor to the TaxPayers’ Alliance. According to its website, the group “promotes a constructive new relationship
between the UK and Europe based on free trade and mutually
beneficial cooperation, whilst opting out of the process of political and
economic integration”. Its Economic Advisory Panel includes Neil Record,
Patrick Minford (Chair of Economists
for Free Trade) and Eamonn Butler
(Founder/Director of the Adam Smith
Institute). A now deleted webpage listed MPs and peers
belonging to the “Parliamentary Friends of Global Vision”, which included Bill
Cash, Christopher
Chope, Philip Davies,
Peter Lilley and Lord Vinson. Its “Business Supporters” include oil and minerals businessman Algy Cluff, GWPF donor Michael Hintze, and Leader
of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg.
UK2020 is a
right-wing think tank which has been compared to the American “Tea Party” movement and was set up
by Owen Paterson in 2014.
Among the policy recommendations the group calls for is “a robust,
common sense energy policy that would encourage the market to choose affordable
technologies to reduce emissions.” These technologies include shale gas and
small modular nuclear reactors. It seeks to strip back regulations and subsidies in the energy
sector designed to combat climate change. Matt Ridley of the GWPF is a policy advisor for UK2020
and Tim Montgomerie, founder of the ConservativeHome website and a
former senior fellow at the Legatum Institute, is
their political adviser.
The New Culture Forum is a
right-wing think tank working to change cultural debates it believes are
dominated by “the left”. According to the ConservativeHome blog, Matthew
Elliott serves as an advisor to the forum, while Michael
Gove, former UK Environment
Secretary, has spoken at its events. Its founder and director is Peter
Whittle, former UKIP leader in the London Assembly and Culture and
Communities Spokesperson for the party.
*****************************
Coral Reefs see also plastics.
Ecowatch,
Jan 2020: https://www.ecowatch.com/coral-reef-replanting-2644924347.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
A study published in
Nature Wednesday found that the death of corals in 2016 and 2017 has
significantly decreased the ability of new corals to grow and thrive. In 2018,
there has been an 89 percent decline in the number of new corals on the reef
compared to the historic record.
Bleaching occurs when warm water
forces corals to expel the algae that gives them color and nutrients. Reefs can recover from such events,
but it takes about a decade. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered four since
1998 and, if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current levels, there could
be two bleaching events every decade beginning in 2035.
The extent of the most recent
bleaching events — covering 900 miles of reef — also made it harder for baby
corals to replenish impacted coral populations, BBC News explained.
Koch brothers – see DeSmog: https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/11/11/election-2019-here-are-all-brexit-party-s-climate-science-deniers
April 2019 link to Left Foot Forward article on
Taxpayers’ Alliance working against
Southampton clean air plan:
The TPA though regarded these
penalties as a “stealth tax” and claims it campaigned
against the charges by taking volunteers to Southampton and telling visiting
football fans that their coach tickets would be more expensive.
The TPA’s campaign was supported
by Royston Smith, the Tory MP for Southampton Itchen who said the clean air
plans were anti-business.
Labour-controlled Southampton
City Council eventually backed down on plans to charge vehicles. Instead, they
opted to make the buses greener and allow taxi drivers to try electric vehicles
before they buy them.
Deforestation: booklist: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/17/further-reading-the-best-books-about-deforestation?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0Jvb2ttYXJrcy0xODExMTg%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Bookmarks&CMP=bookmarks_email
Electric vehicles: letter from Sustrans points out ‘building a battery pack for an EV is
incredibly energy-intensive, and it takes significant mileage before the EV has
worked off the CO2 released during its manufacture. Also particulate matter
(45% of it) comes from tyre and brake wear in London. We should be doing all we can to promote walking and cycling.
Emissions Trading schemes: https://leftfootforward.org/2019/04/brexit-is-an-opportunity-to-improve-on-the-eus-failed-emissions-trading-system-but-the-tories-arent-taking-it/?mc_cid=06e3915a5d&mc_eid=dea8023bf6
Environmental Performance Indicators: link: https://epi.envirocenter.yale.edu/epi-country-report/USA
EU: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/10/eu-priorities-climate-buzzwords-critics
Fashion (and climate crisis): https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/jun/18/ministers-reject-charge-of-1p-an-item-to-clean-up-fast-fashion
Some astonishing figures here:
fast fashion, which sees 300,000 tonnes of clothing burned or buried in the UK
every year. textile production contributes more
emissions to the climate crisis than international aviation and shipping
combined, consumes lake-sized volumes of fresh water and creates chemical and microplastic
pollution. Report
by cross-party group of MPs: Environment Audit Committee.
Fishing: worried by the pro-Brexit anger of
our fishermen, I’m not sure what the best view is of the common fisheries policy
etc, but here is a charity/NGO that seems to me to have the best line: http://www.bluemarinefoundation.com/about/what-we-do/
Flying: generated 7% of Britain’s greenhouse
gases in 2017 Number of flights expected to double in next 20 years - while IPCC
has recommended net zero emissions by 2050. Aviation contributes about 2% of
emissions overall... (Jasper jolly, on electric planes, 15th June
2019)
Forests: frightening piece by Simon
Jenkins Guardian 27th April 2018:
Forestry Commission
has a partnership with a commercial body Forest Holidays, which has been
allowed to build chalets in Mortimer Forest outside Ludlow. The agreement
allows the company to expand as much as it wishes, and there are clauses which
stop publicity. The chalets are very expensive to rent, and part of the profit
goes to the Forestry Commission.
And Network
Rail is cutting down up to 10million trees alongside railway lines... during
the nesting season!
15th June 2019, Jillian Ambrose: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/15/climate-crisis-coal-asia-power-generation-fossil-fuels.
The world’s largest sovereign
wealth fund is preparing to leave fossil fuels behind. Last week, Norway’s
parliament confirmed by unanimous vote that its $1tn sovereign wealth fund
would dump $13bn of fossil fuel investments. Wind and solar renewable power is
the world’s fastest-growing energy source: it grew by 14.5% last year, led by a
surge of investment in China. But the strides do not go far enough, fast
enough. “You have to run very fast just to stand still,” Dale says.
22nd
Jan 2018: Lloyds of London plans to stop investing in coal companies. Insurance
is one of the industries worst affected by
hurricanes, wildfires and flooding in recent years. Lloyds offers a marketplace
for almost 90 syndicates of other insurers (it doesn’t underwrite operations
directly). Big insurance companies have moved £15bn away from coal in the past
two years, says the Unfriend Coal network (NGOs,
Greenpeace, 380.org). AXA has dropped companies with at least 30% coal, and
Church of England uses 10% as criterion. Analysis by ClimateWise
shows that the ‘protection gap’ – the difference between the costs of natural
disasters and the amount insured had quadrupled to $100bn a year since the
1980s.
11th
Dec 2019. Greenland’s ice loss greater than thought (Fiona
Harvey). Ice is being lost 7 times faster now than in the 1990s – much
faster and at greater scale than predicted by IPCC. Sea level rises are likely
to reach 67cm by 2100 (7cm more than IPCC predicted). 400 million people would
be at risk of flooding every year (instead of 360 million) by 2100. Sea-level
rises add to risk of storm surges. Andrew Shepherd (Leeds university)
is a lead author of the new study, in Nature. Comparisons are made between
measurements taken by the UK, Nasa
and European Space Agency.
Greenland
has lost 3.8tn tonnes of ice since 1992. In the past decade it lost 254bn
tonnes a year (33bn in 1990s). There has been a slowing since 2013, after a
peak in 2011, but this summer showed more ice melting. Ice from on top of land
contributes to sea-level rise, whereas floating ice doesn’t (as in Arctic).
Warming seas also expand.
Ian Sample adds: Arctic sea ice shrank to the second lowest level on
record this summer, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports. Averge temperatures were 1.9C above the long-term average –
second highest since 1900. Sea ice was at its lowest extent in 41 years.
19th
July 2018, Ashifa Kassam,
Toronto (Guardian): Hundreds of glaciers in Canada’s high Arctic are shrinking
– using satellite imagery in new research 1,700 glaciers on Ellesmere Island
were examined. Journal of Glaciology last month showed they had shrunk about
650 sq miles over 16 years – i.e. a loss of about 6%. A previous study showed
slower rate of loss. Average temperature in Ellesmere Island rose by 3.6C
between 1948 and 2016. Between 1995 and 2016 there was a ‘sudden increase in
warming’ with temperatures rising about 0.78C per decade.
14th June 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/14/africa-global-heating-more-droughts-and-flooding-threat (Robin McKie) - “Essentially we have found that both ends of Africa’s weather extremes will get more severe,” ... Last month levels of carbon dioxide reached 415 parts per million, their highest level since Homo sapiens first appeared on Earth –
3rd April 2019. Guardian, Leyland Cecco,
Toronto: Canada is warming faster than the rest of the world (apart from the
Arctic): Global temperatures have increased by 0.8C since 1948,
Caanada has seen an increase of 1.7C (more than
double the global average). In the Arctic, temperatures are up by 2.3C. Melting
ice (sea ice and glaciers) is leading to positive feedback – which may be
affecting Canada too. The country is mired in political battle over climate:
Trudeau tried to put taxes on fossil fuels, but four provinces have refused to
co-operate, so he may impose taxes. Conservatives say they will reverse the
policy if they win the next election.
The global impacts of rising temperatures—including more hurricanes,
sea-level rise and drought—will probably sound familiar. But a temperature
change of just a couple of degrees can also have dramatic effects locally.
Studies have shown that a single-degree rise in temperature can increase local
levels of air pollution, allow disease-carrying ticks to expand into an area, cause the local extinction of native species and even cause enough
heat stress to increase rates of mental illness. (Ecowatch Sep 2018)
Category 6 superstorms
–highest category now is 5, but now there is from 5% - 8% more water vapour in
the atmosphere than a generation ago, and warmer global temperatures and warmer
oceans, and dry conditions in the parts of the world where superstorms
originate means it is only a matter of time before one hits the US. Jeff
Nesbit, Guardian 17th Sep 2018. Author of ‘This is the Way the World
Ends’ (pub 25th Sep.)
Unearthed
reveals lobbying by farmers is funded by ‘Red Flag Consulting’
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/10/17/monsanto-red-flag-glyphosate-roundup-eu/
GM: Nov 2018 worrying article on GM potatoes:
https://www.ecowatch.com/gmo-potato-simplot-health-fears-2618087647.html
Insects: (Damian Carrington G 2nd April 2019):
Woodlands
and open grasslands are both affected – woodlands could have protected insects
from rising temperatures. Aphids are emerging a month earlier, and birds are
laying eggs a week earlier. Animals then become ‘out of synch’ with their prey.
On farms, aphids are attacking younger plants because they come earlier, and
young plants have not developed immunity.
In farmland,
however, insects and birds were emerging later in the spring – perhaps because
of changes to habitat: loss of wild areas, and changing crop types, along with
declining food availability.
Populations
of birds that rely on insects fell by 13% across Europe from 1990-2015, and by
28% in Denmark (which was a case study).
Researchers
are increasingly concerned about dramatic drops in populations of insects,
which underpin much of nature. In February it was said that these falls could
lead to a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems
”, and in March there was further evidence of widespread loss
of pollinating insects in recent decades in Britain.
Other
studies, from Germany and Puerto Rico, have shown falling numbers in
the last 25 to 35 years. Another showed butterflies in
the Netherlands had declined by at
least 84% over the last 130 years.
In February,
when the weather was unusually warm, rooks were nesting, ladybirds mating and
migratory swallows appearing all a month ahead of schedule.
Kenya, 15th Feb, Jonathan Watts: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/14/kenyas-erin-brockovich-defies-harassment-to-bring-anti-pollution-case-to-courts
problem of lead pollution from a metal
plant – the Center for Justice, Governance, and
Environmental Action has forced closure of the plant in Mombasa, and is now
seeking compensation and a clean-up. This could be a landmark case for
environmental groups across Africa. Led by Phyllis Omido who was co-winner of the Goldman environmental prize
in 2015 with Berta Caceres, a Honduran activist who was murdered a year later.
The EPZ refinery was closed, and two other companies are being pursued in a
class action.
Meat production and global warming.
Increasing
awareness of veganism, some of which is based on research led by Joseph Poore, Oxford Uni, published in
May 2018: ‘A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your
impact on planet earth. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or
buying an electric car.’
Monbiot, George:
(See also
activism: Extinction Rebellion, and climate change)
‘Only one of the life support systems on which we depend – soils, aquifers,
rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological
abundance and diversity – need fail for everything else to slide.’ Radical
change can be brought about quickly, as when the US joined WWII in 1941.
Control by oligarchs is the main problem – says prof.
Kevin MacKay. Even the IPPR wants ‘growth’! As Jason Hickel
points out: while 50bn tonnes of resources used per year is roughly the limit
the earth’s systems can tolerate, the world is already consuming 70bn tonnes –
and at current rates of growth this will rise to 180bn tonnes by 2050.
New Zealand: not the pristine environment we
might think!
Oceans: Sep. 2019,
from sumofus and earthworks: - 220 million tonnes.
That’s the appalling amount of toxic
waste that mining companies dump directly into our oceans, rivers
and lakes every year.
A Credit Suisse-financed mining
company is about to dump 30 million tonnes of toxic heavy metals - Chrome. Nickel. Copper -and chemicals into a beautiful Norwegian protected fjörd -- a natural reserve for many salmon.
27th Jan 2020. Total: 14 French local authorities and
several NGOs will take court action to order Total to reduce its greenhouse gas
emissions. They will act under a French
law the ‘duty of vigilance’ – large corporations must set out measures to
prevent human rights violations or environmental damage arising from their activities.
(Angelique Chrisafis)
Oil, war, climate change. Sep 18th 2019. Bill
McKibben writes of the link between oil and war, after missiles struck Saudi
oil facilities over the weekend. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/18/climate-crisis-oil-war-iraq-saudi-attack-green-energy
He Includes
this: ‘Thanks to great investigative reporting, we now know that the oil industry knew all about climate change decades ago, but
instead of acknowledging it and helping us move to a new energy future, they
instead spent billions building the scaffolding of deceit and denial and
disinformation that kept us locked in the present paradigm. Just as they have
profited from sea-level rise and Arctic melt, so they will profit from the war
now starting to unfold. (Right on schedule, the share prices of fracking firms
and oil majors all jumped perkily northwards on Monday morning.)
Deepwater Horizon.
17th
Jan 2018: BP has had to make another payout of $1.7bn for the Deepwater Horizon
disaster. The total compensation is likely to be $65bn (£47bn). The total for
2017 is $3bn (it expected only $2bn). Eight years after the disaster, BP has
processed nearly all the 390,000 claims made under the court-supervised
settlement, and hopes to complete the process in coming months.
The spill,
at the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11
people and affected fishing and tourism.
Philosophy:
Timothy Morton:
Being Ecological.
(1) Review by
PD Smith:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/20/being-ecological-timothy-morton-review
Calls for a
paradigm shift in our relation to the world, saying it is counterproductive to
deluge readers with scary facts about global warming – it’s ‘guilt-inducing’…
Our scientific age is characterized by an epistemological gulf between objects
and data. Critical of a scientistic approach - the world can be grasped only by
moving to a viewpoint that is experiential and reflexive. ‘being
ecological includes a sense of my weird inclusion in what I’m experiencing.’
(2) And from
another book (Humankind) reviewed by Stuart Jeffries; our thinking became
binary (especially when we developed agriculture) and this led to ‘a Severing.’
‘Our
task is to become haunted beings again, possessed by a spectral sense of our
connectedness to everything on this planet.’ He adheres to
‘object-oriented ontology, the argument that nothing has privileged status’.(*) We must learn to have solidarity with non-humans – but
how? One way, Morton suggests, is to abandon the anthropocentric idea that
thinking is the leading communication mode. “Brushing against, licking or
irradiating are access modes as valid (or as invalid) as thinking,” he writes.
He draws on Buddhism, and anarchism (especially Kropotkin). He writes of the importance of ‘kindness’
(though it seems more like the co-operation of ants etc which is instinctive
rather than an ethical position).
(*) object-oriented
ontology, or OOO, which holds that every being, including humans, can only ever
grasp the world in its own limited ways. (In other words, we will never know
what flies know, and vice versa).
(3) An earlier
book was ‘Dark Ecology’ and perhaps his ‘most discussed book’: ‘Ecology Without Nature’…
See an earlier article on Morton, dealing especially with anthropocentrism:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/15/timothy-morton-anthropocene-philosopher by Alex Blasdel
The
Anthropocene idea is generally attributed to the Nobel prize-winning
atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and the biologist
Eugene Stoermer, who started popularising the term in
2000. Crutzen set out the idea in Nature in
2002.
In the
Anthropocene, Morton says, we must wake up to the fact that we never stood
apart from or controlled the non-human things on the planet, but have always
been thoroughly bound up with them. We can’t even burn, throw or flush things
away without them coming back to us in some form, such as harmful pollution.
Our most cherished ideas about nature and the environment – that they are
separate from us, and relatively stable – have been
destroyed.
The
chief reason that we are waking up to our entanglement with the world we have
been destroying, Morton says, is our encounter with the reality of hyperobjects – the term he coined to describe things such
as ecosystems and black holes, which are “massively distributed in time and
space” compared to individual humans. Hyperobjects
might not seem to be objects in the way that, say, billiard balls are, but they
are equally real, and we are now bumping up against them consciously for the
first time. Global warming might have first appeared to us as a bit of funny
local weather, then as a series of independent manifestations (an unusually
torrential flood here, a deadly heatwave there), but now we see it as a unified
phenomenon, of which extreme weather events and the disruption of the old
seasons are only elements.
See another book of his: Hyperobjects… hyperobjects, in their unwieldy enormity, alert us to the absolute
boundaries of science, and therefore the limits of human mastery. Science can
only take us so far. This means changing our relationship with the other
entities in the universe – whether animal, vegetable or mineral – from one of
exploitation through science to one of solidarity in ignorance… we can’t
transcend our limitations or our reliance on other beings. We can only live
with them.
If we
give up the delusion of controlling everything around us, we might refocus
ourselves on the pleasure we take in other beings and life itself. Enjoyment,
Morton believes, might be the thing that turns us on to a new kind of politics.
“You think ecologically tuned life means being all efficient and pure,” the
tweet pinned to the top of his Twitter
timeline reads. “Wrong. It means you can have a disco in every
room of your house.”
“Don’t
hide under a rock, for heaven’s sake,” Morton had said to me at one point. “Go
out in the street and start making any and as many kinds of political
affiliations with as many kinds of beings, human or otherwise, that you
possibly can, with a view to creating a more non-violent and just, for
everybody, ecological world.”
Critics
say he doesn’t understand contemporary science (and is mis-using
ideas from quantum physics etc – not the only one?), that his philosophy
wouldn’t be taken seriously in an academic context (is that a criticism?!), or
from the left that he talks about ‘humans’ damaging the planet, while the main
problem is with the wealthy white western capitalists (there’s a point!).
And:
His PhD thesis, which is recognised as an important contribution to the study
of Romanticism, showed that the vegetarianism of Percy and Mary Shelley was
intimately entwined with their politics and art.
Environmental
groups want a company removed from the London Stock Exchange’s investment index
of environmentally friendly companies – because of tis
environmental damage, plus a string of allegations of corruption and
unsustainable business practices. Golden Agri-Resources
(GAR) is on the FTSE4Good indices. Two of its senior executives have been
arrested, and it has been accused of polluting a lake in Indonesia. It also
produces palm oil and therefore causes deforestation
Deep time. Taken from
‘Up from the depths’ by Robert Macfarlane, Guardian 20 April 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/20/what-lies-beneath-robert-macfarlane
‘This is a phrase coined by John McPhee in 1981’ – deep time is measured in units of
millennia, epochs and aeons, as with geology – deep time is kept by rock, ice,
stalactites, seabed sediments and the drift of tectonic plates. It is ‘the catalysing context of
intergenerational justice; it is what frames the inspiring activism of Greta
Thunberg and the school climate-strikers, and the Sunrise campaigners pushing
for a Green New Deal in America. [It] requires us to consider not only how we
will imagine the future, but how the future will imagine us. It asks a version
of Jons Slk’s arresting
question: “Are we being good ancestors?”’
Other thoughts from this
fantastic article:
(i)
William Gibson: ‘the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed’ –
because our toxic legacies are being imposed on some of today’s people already.. ‘the affluent experience the
future in terms of technology, while the poor experience the future in terms of
calamity’
(ii) the
challenges of the anthropocene (from Ghosh: The Great
Derangement):
- how to
represent unfolding of actions and consequences in deep time
- how to
recognise the aliveness of the more-than-human
- how to
come to terms with the profound decentring of human presence
Note that Macarlane
also refers to the Deepwater Horizon disaster (and the Eyjafjallajokull
volcano, the entrapment of 33 Chilean miners and of the boy footballers in
Thailand... These stories carry with them all sorts of resonance for us and
always have – see Gilgamesh etc!).
On 20 April, 41 miles off the
Louisiana coast, the borehole of a semi-submersible oil rig called Deepwater
Horizon burst. The rig-level blowout killed 11 crewmen and ignited a fireball
that could be seen on shore. The rig sank two days later, leaving oil gushing
from the seabed at a water depth of around 1,500 metres. More than 200m gallons
of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, rising as a slick on the ocean that was
visible from space. It would take until the autumn to cap and seal the well
successfully so that it could be declared “effectively dead”. The consequences
for the ecosystems and coastal communities of the gulf persist today.
Jan
2020. ‘The Reality Bubble’ by Ziya
Tong – (review Nesrine Malik
4th Jan 2020). Our blind spots are responsible for the destruction
of our habitat. 95% of all animal
species are smaller than the human thumb. 0.2kg of body weight is bacterial
cells. One handful of soil contains more microbes than there are people on
Earth. One of our biological blind spots is meat slaughter and processed food:
‘anywhere from 700,000 to 1 million chickens a year are
still conscious when they are scalded to death in the scalder.’
The drive for efficiency and more profit has swallowed up time, space,
ownership, leisure...
Population growth – Paul Ehrlich strikes again! https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich
- ‘perpetual growth
is the creed of the cancer cell’ – to start with we must: ‘make modern contraception and back-up abortion
available to all and give women full equal rights, pay and opportunities with
men.’ This will take a long time to reduce the world’s population, which
he estimates should be 1.5 – 2 billion, or 5.6 billion fewer than at present...
However, a
letter 28th March, from Prof. John MacInnes
argues Ehrlich’s views are ‘discredited’ – ‘the birth rate in the developing
world is now lower than it was in rich countries a few decades ago. ... the carrying capacity of our planet ... is almost certainly
well above the likely peak of population that will be reached in the second
half of this century. Reducing the vast global inequalities in energy
consumption will do far more for the environment than the ultimately racist
idea that the poor have too many children.’
18th June 2019: Example of city where there is
maximum recycling: Eskilstuna, Sweden – article by Ammar
Kalia
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/07/is-the-future-compostable-scotland-greens-argue-as-sales-soar Vegware
has been doing very well from compostable food cups and biodegradable food
boxes, but questions have been raised by Scottish Greens about the practicality
of composting coffee cups etc: they need to be disposed of in specialist
composting plants, or in council food composting bins at home... The CEO of Vegware retorts that there are many other sources of
single-use plastic such as sandwich packaging, home takeaway deliveries, lids
and stirrers on coffee cups: it would be better to increase the cost of
landfill. Supermarkets pay £91.35 a tonne (in Scotland?).High costs would make
producers avoid waste.
Vegware is
proposing closed loop contracts, where it supplies its products to businesses
and then disposes of them. But this only covers Scotland and south-west
England. Commercial composting covers only 38% of UK postcodes. FoE Scotland
chief executive Richard Dixon suggests a lower ‘latte levy’ for disposable
cups.
FROM CPRE EMAIL APPEAL FOR FUNDS 31ST
March 2019
At this late stage, powerful vested interests are fighting to
derail the deposit return system and water it down. They want the government to
agree to the option of a restricted system, limited to smaller drinks
containers of 750ml or less – even though recent research suggests that larger
bottles could make up as much as 58% of littered drinks containers.
We must make sure the government does not bow to
industry pressure for a restricted system. It would mean that billions of
bottles will continue polluting our rivers, beaches, fields, parks and
hedgerows for years to come. And industry would once again be able to
avoid taking responsibility for the mess they create.
Nothing less than an
ALL-IN system, that includes drinks containers of ALL sizes and materials, will
truly combat the growing problem of litter in our countryside.
Dec 2019: planting trees must be done in the right way:
If the 350m hectares of
reforestation are all natural forest, they can capture as much as 42 petagrams of carbon. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change believes that to keep global warming below 1.5C 199 petagrams must be
removed from the atmosphere this century, so that is a significant contribution
from the world’s forests. However, if the trajectory of the plans already
submitted carries on, at least 45% of that cover will be commercial plantation.
If our natural forests are protected under that scenario, the storage potential
will be 16 petagrams. But if we continue to chop into
them in the same way that we do at present, the storage potential will dwindle
to just three petagrams. One possible attempt to
staunch some of the flow that is being seriously considered in the EU is a due diligence law. France already has a law that places a
civil liability on large companies that fail to monitor their supply chains for
human rights and environment issues, and support for Europe-wide regulation –
although not necessarily in that form – is coming from the oddest quarters such
as Nestlé and Mondelez.
9th July 2019 letters on tree-planting and climate
crisis:
Storing
carbon in vegetation is OK but it must not be burned, but stored e.g. in
products made of wood; also composting is good.
1.7bn
hectares of new land would be needed to remove one third of CO2 - = 1.2tn trees
and = 11% of all land, and equivalent to the size of US and China combined. But what about the albedo effect? (Reflecting heat from bright surfaces). Wouldn’t forest
cover be dark and absorb heat rather than reflect it?
Must not be planted on bogs, which better at absorbing CO2. Is the cost quoted unrealistically
cheap? What about local knowledge?
Cost quoted
(£240bn) is only marginally more than Trident replacement (£205bn)...
The plan
will take 50 – 100 years: we only have 11!
Closed
canopy forests will destroy biodiversity. Savannah/steppe also absorb carbon, and are more ‘natural’ (i.e. how the land has
been in the past).
Mature
forests stop absorbing CO2, as when their leaves fall and rot it is released.
Forests need to be grown the cut down and used (for timber) so that new natural
tree-cover springs up, and not the ‘serried rows’ favoured by the Forestry
Commission. (Dr David Corke, Director, Organic
Countryside CIC.
1st July 2019: FoE
analysis of how to double tree cover in England: https://policy.friendsoftheearth.uk/insight/finding-land-double-tree-cover?
14th June 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/13/tree-planting-in-england-falls-72-short-of-government-target
The total
tree cover of the UK is unchanged at 10% in England, 15% in Wales, 19% in
Scotland and 8% in Northern Ireland. To avoid climate breakdown, we have to
act. If the framework is in place, meeting the ambition of 17% tree cover [for
the UK] is achievable.” (Abi Bunker, director of
conservation at the Woodland Trust).
25th May 2019, from
Ecologist:
https://theecologist.org/2019/may/24/climate-smart-forestry
31st Dec 2018. Willow
trees and flood mitigation, also biomass:
Network Rail and tree-felling (from
Change.org petition).
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2013/biomass-faq-2/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/31/biomass-burning-misguided-say-climate-experts
[1] http://www.stobartgroup.co.uk/stobart-group/stobart-energy
[2]
https://theenergyst.com/stobart-track-deliver-2-million-tonnes-biomass-per-year/
[3] Biofuel/Biomass – Stobartrail http://www.stobartrail.com/item/network-rail-s-vegetation-management-specialists-2
Network Rail 5G - 'Ministers now looking at “future proofing”
rail connectivity to help pave the way for a 5G rollout'.https://www.gov.uk/government/news/better-mobile-and-wi-fi-connectivity-for-rail-passengers
Trees in Sheffield:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/25/for-the-chop-the-battle-to-save-sheffields-trees
War and its impact on the
environment:
1st
Nov 2018, Michael McCarthy, author of The Moth Snowstorm – Nature and Joy:
damage to nature is usually a secondary consideration – except for agent orange spread on 12,000 sq miles of forest in the
Vietnam war, or the mass oil pollution from the Sea Island terminal in Kuwait
during the Gulf war 1991. In the second world war 60 million people or 3% of
the world population (2.3 billion at the time) died... but the amount of
shipping sunk in the battle of the Atlantic was the equivalent of about 250
Brent Spar oil rigs (Greenpeace forced Shell not to sink it but move it for
breaking up). Professor Tim Birkenhead of Sheffield University, in the journal
British Birds, suggests the war badly affected breeding of guillemots on Skomer Island off the west coast of Wales. He estimates
there were 100,000 individuals in 1934, but only 4,856 in 1963, a reduction of
95%. Now the numbers have gone up to 23,746. The worst decline was between 1940
and 1946, and oil pollution is the most likely cause. The ocean is far less
resilient than we have thought.
Waste and recycling:
31st
Dec 2018. Food waste: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/31/food-waste-chief-to-target-scandal-of-250m-binned-uk-meals
250m meals a
year = 100,000 tonnes of food is sent to generate electricity from waste, for
anaerobic digestion, or for animal feed – even though it is still edible...
43,000
tonnes of surplus food is redistributed from retailers and food manufacturers.
19th
Dec. 2018: government has come up with new rules on waste etc.:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/resources-and-waste-strategy-for-england
Fires are
burning on the moors near Manchester, and hundreds of fire-fighters are trying
to deal with them. Experts are warning that more fires are likely in future as the
climate warms. Guillermo Rein, prof
of fire science at Imperial College says fires will be more frequent and more
severe, especially in northern Europe, including the UK and Ireland. Dr Richard
Payne of Uni of York agrees, and warns that such
fires will exacerbate climate change as peat stores masses of CO2.
Prof Susan
Page of Uni of Leicester says the peat fires release
toxic chemicals and small particulates with long-term health implications,
especially for children. (Matthew Taylor).
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/08/wolves-scotland-reintroduction-lister-alladale
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/26/harmless-or-vicious-hunter-the-uneasy-return-of-europes-wolves
WWF. (Guardian 30th Dec
2019). Tanya Steele is the first female chief executive. The organisations
support base grew by 23% last year – partly because of XR. Aims: decarbonising
the worlds, ending deforestation, reforming the food system. They have 7,662
staff across 83 offices, and 3,000 projects underway
at any one time. Covers advocacy, campaigning, research,
fundraising and communication. UK HQ is in Woking. ‘We still have to
show milestones or it could be disheartening.’
They recently added Tesco to their portfolio of commercial partners,
aiming to halve the environmental footprint of the average shopper’s basket.
They also work with John West to reduce the environmental impacts of fishing,
and have been criticised for working with Coca Cola on usage of water.
In 2019 it spent £54.5m on charitable activities – members and donations provide £34.9m of its £66.3m income. Corporate donations and sponsorships: £9.4m ‘Fundamentally this is about protecting both these businesses’ supply chains in the future and much of the planet beyond their lifetime.’