The government has made a U-turn on its promise to exclude fracking from Britain’s most important nature sites, arguing that the shale gas industry would be held back if it was excluded from them.

Campaigners accused ministers of putting wildlife at risk and reneging on their pledge earlier this year to ban fracking in sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), which cover about 8% of England and similar proportions of Wales and Scotland.

Amber Rudd, the energy secretary, told MPs in January: “We have agreed an outright ban on fracking in national parks [and] sites of special scientific interest.”

But the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), which laid draft regulations in parliament on Thursday covering which areas fracking would be excluded from, has confirmed that exploration for shale gas will no longer be prevented in SSSIs.

There are 4,000 SSSIs in England, more than 1,000 in Wales and 1,425 in Scotland. They are described by government officials as the “best of our wildlife, geological and physiographical heritage”.

‘Ministers simply cannot be trusted’

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, said: “The government’s U-turn on protecting the UK’s most precious wildlife sites from fracking is outrageous. It’s yet another illustration that ministers simply cannot be trusted when it comes to fracking.”

A Decc spokesman said: “We consider that their [SSSI’s] protections are adequate under the planning system. Developments won’t normally be permitted if they were going to have an adverse impact on a SSSI. The number of them would have an adverse effect on the development of the shale gas industry.”

Fracking will still be excluded from national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, the Broads and world heritage sites under the new plans, though shale companies will be allowed to put a rig outside a national park and drill horizontally underneath it.

Some of the SSSIs will fall within the borders of those other protected areas, but even so the RSPB believes thousands of SSSIs could potentially be affected. Matt Williams, a policy officer at the RSPB, said:

“The government has reneged on its commitment to rule out fracking in some of our most important wildlife sites. Despite promising in January to exclude fracking from SSSIs, today’s announcement ignores any such commitment, leaving some of the UK’s most valuable wildlife sites exposed to risk from future fracking.”

Daisy Sands, head of energy at Greenpeace UK, said: “With a few days before recess, this looks like nothing but a blatant attempt to bypass democracy to sneak this deeply unpopular policy in through the back door while no one is looking.

“Ministers have given concerned citizens up and down the country no opportunity to voice their opposition to the plans that could ruin the countryside, contaminate the water supply and have a devastating impact on the climate.”

Groundwater sources areas also open to fracking

The draft regulations, which will be debated in September, also said that fracking would be allowed under protected groundwater source areas, where drinking water is gathered.

Even under the most sensitive of those groundwater areas (SPZ1s), fracking will be allowed so long as it is at depths of more than 1,200 metres. A limit deeper than that would “hinder the exploitation of potentially valuable shale gas reserves”, the regulations said.

No public consultation was held on either the dropping of SSSIs from the list of protected areas from where fracking would be excluded, or how deep the groundwater limits should be set.

The energy minister Andrea Leadsom said in a statement: “The UK has one of the best track records in the world when it comes to protecting our environment while also developing our industries – and we’ve brought that experience to bear on the shale gas protections.”

On Wednesday, a report from the industry-funded UK shale gas taskforce concluded that it was too early to say whether fracking was good for the UK. It followed the rejection of planning applications for fracking at two sites in Lancashire by the local authority.

Adam Vaughan is editor of the Guardian Environment.

This article was originally published by the Guardian / Environment and is reproduced by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

It was a beautiful Monday morning; the seas were calm and the skies were blue. Approximately 20-30 wonderful creatures – pilot whales – were swimming in the cold Northern waters enjoying life in the company of their small family group.

Though most civilized people in the world would view this as a beautiful thing, watching a pod of these unique creatures swimming gracefully through the sea, a small group of thugs on the shore above Havannasund beach on Vidoy Island gazed over the water with murderous intent.

The dolphins had been quickly spotted and driven with stones and banger poles onto the beach where their killers waited eager to extinguish the lives of these gentle creatures. The police mobilized quickly to block off a tunnel to the island and to set up a restricted zone to keep people away from the killers.

The Sea Shepherd ship Brigitte Bardot was patrolling approximately 25 nautical miles to the south and quickly raced to the site where the whales were spotted. However, the vessel was unable to proceed through the entrance of the fjord, which was being guarded by the Danish Navy vessel Triton.

The call was issued to kill. The thugs were unleashed with huge hooks and sharp knives. Soon the blood colored the water a deep red and the screams of dying dolphins echoed across the beach. Laughing and cheering Faroese whalers splattered themselves with hot blood in a perverse orgy of sadistic lust.

The bodies were hoisted onto the dock by a crane as each animal was disemboweled, unborn fetuses ripped from their mothers’ wombs. The bodies were decapitated one by one. One supporter of the slaughter sent me a message saying, “We could show ISIS a thing or two about decapitation, you whale-loving bastards.”

As the mutilations continued, Sea Shepherd volunteers were surrounded by Faroese police officers charged with the duty of preventing any interference with the slaughter.

Police and Danish Navy actively assisting dolphin killers

The Faroe Islands continue to encourage the barbarity of slaughtering dolphins with the full complicity of the government, the media, the police with new authoritarian ‘special’ laws, and now the Danish government and the Danish Navy.

It appears that many people in the Faroes are so traditionally and morally bankrupt that they can only find identity in the bloody ritualized culture of sadistic slaughter, as if to proclaim to the entire world that they, the Faroese, require blood sacrifices to illustrate their complete lack of empathy and morality.

It is their way of spitting in the face of common human decency by declaring their uniqueness in the only way that has any meaning for them – the deliberate and prideful infliction of suffering and death on innocent, intelligent, self-aware, socially complex and sentient beings.

With the power and force of the Kingdom of Denmark defending their little backwater vassal entity in the Islands of Sheep, the whalers are intent to cowardly continue killing, believing they have God on their side (‘Gud med os’) and knowing they have the politicians in their pockets.

The aftermath of the Hvannasund slaughter

The Danish Navy and the Faroese Police are strict in enforcing the laws that protect the whalers but there seems to be a lack of concern and enforcement in response to the violation of the laws by the killers.

Illegal killing techniques are seen in this video, shot by Sea Shepherd in the Faroes yesterday – the use of the knife and the intentional infliction of suffering to the whales. The Faroese say the whales are killed instantly and do not suffer, yet the intense pain experienced can be seen in the long, bloody thrashing of these dying whales.

This video exposes the lie of the two-second kill, the myth that the Faroese constantly parrot in their justification of this horrific slaughter. It is illegal to stress the animals, yet the driving of these whales onto the beach to be killed is intensely stressful.

Last year, Sea Shepherd crew were charged with stressing the whales by interfering with the intent to kill them and this year it is now illegal not to report sighed whales to the whale killers. Sea Shepherd volunteers – or any tourist in the Faroe Islands – can now be charged for not reporting whales to the whalers.

According to Faroese laws that govern the ‘grindadráp’, any person visiting the islands must report all sightings of whales and dolphins to local authorities so that the cetaceans can be targeted for slaughter. Those who do not abide by these laws may face arrest and prosecution, with penalties of 25,000 Faroese króna (just over €3,000) and imprisonment of two years.

Denmark has laws against cruelty to animals, but not in the Faroes. The killing of whales is illegal under European Union regulations, but the Faroes, despite annually receiving millions of Euros in subsidies, are exempted from these laws.

It is illegal to feed toxic meat to the public and especially to children, but despite the dangerously high levels of methyl-mercury found in pilot whale meat, the Faroese do so without investigation or warnings.

Why is Denmark financing and defending this barbarity?

Ripping fetuses from the wombs of the mothers, mutilating the bodies, hacking out the teeth, having children play upon and mutilate the bodies, carving numbers into their flesh, stabbing with knives, ripping their flesh with boat props, decapitating them, stressing the animals with banger poles and forcing these gentle, intelligent, social and sentient beings to witness the slaughter of their family members around them in their own blood before they are slain is viciously barbaric and has no place in any civilized society.

Why does Denmark subsidize this? Why do the Danish Navy and the Danish police defend this? Why do the Danish people tolerate this horrific cruelty and this disgracefully primitive violence that masquerades under the pretense of culture and postures under the justification of tradition?

The world must condemn this crime against nature, and Denmark must say to these killers that as a compassionate nation such an abomination of ecological principles and common decency should be tossed upon the dustbin of history.

Captain Paul Watson is founder of Sea Shepherd.

This article combines three blog postings by Captain Paul Watson on the Sea Shepherd website.

Petition: ‘Stop the Faroe Island Whale Slaughter‘ (Care2).

Visit Sea Shepherd’s Operation Sleppid Grindini site for more information.

News on the GMO and glyphosate ‘war’ under way between citizens and scientists against regulators conspiring with corporations is coming in so fast it’s hard to cover. But here’s a quick attempt.

First, glyphosate. The EU’s European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is shortly to decide whether to re-licence glysophate, the world’s number one herbicide and the main active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, also found in Dow’s ‘Enlist Duo’ along with 2,4D.

Glyphosate was recently determined by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), to be a ‘probable carcinogen‘. Since then Monsanto has been lobbying double time to combat the global fallout and make sure that it does not lose its licence, which would cost the company a large share of its multi-billion dollar revenues.

Now it turns out, as reported in the Guardian, that a key assessment by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessments, using information drawn from unpublished agrochemical industry research documents, “has drawn contrary conclusions from the IARC’s data.”

It therefore appears that the EFSA will re-approve the use of glysophate – based on secret research never subjected to peer review. Documents, moreover, provided to them by the so-called Glyphosate Task Force – no independent arbiter but an industry body dedicated to the herbicide’s relicensing that’s closely connected to Monsanto UK – which even runs their website for them.

Based on this flimsy evidence, the German report found “very limited evidence of carcinogenicity” in mice exposed to the chemical – and even advised that the ‘acceptable daily intake’ should be raised from the already grossly excessive 0.3mg to 0.5 mg per kilogram of bodyweight per day.

By contrast with industry dominated European regulators, IARC has a strict rule that it reviews only published, peer-reviewed studies in forming its judgements on the carcinogenicity of a substance.

More Monsanto tricks

Hot on the heels of this disgraceful news, we hear from GMWatch that Monsanto has hired industry consultancy firm, Intertek (formerly known as Cantox), to review WHO’s verdict on glyphosate as a ‘probable carcinogen’.

Intertek says on its website, “We protect our customers’ interests, helping them successfully meet regulatory obligations and bring products to market in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner.”

In 2000 Intertek / Cantox’s executive VP Ian C. Munro co-authored a reassuring paper, in collaboration with Monsanto employees, that defended the safety of glyphosate herbicides. The paper claims that “glyphosate is non-carcinogenic” and causes no birth defects or other developmental toxicity. It concludes, unsurprisingly, that “under present  and  expected conditions of use, Roundup herbicide does not pose a health risk to humans”.

The paper was published in the chemical industry-sponsored journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology – one of several industry-linked organizations that were investigated by a US Congressional Committee in 2008 over their role in the FDA’s decision allowing the toxic chemical bisphenol A in infant formula and other foods.

“All this would matter less if Munro and his co-authors had cited credible sources in their claims for glyphosate’s reproductive and developmental safety”, says GMWatch. “But they cite unpublished studies from the industry dossier submitted for glyphosate’s approval. Strangely the authors fail to mention other studies from the same dossier which found that glyphosate caused malformations in lab animals.

“Monsanto claims in the article below that the process and findings of the new review will be ‘independent’ and ‘transparent’. But that seems unlikely, since Monsanto will be paying or at least commissioning the authors to carry out the review and they will be reviewing industry studies, which thus far have been kept hidden from the public.”

For more information on Cantox and its defence of glyphosate, see the Earth Open Source report ‘Roundup and birth defects‘ (pp.20-21).

‘Substantial equivalence’ of GMOs under attack

Finally a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Agricultural Sciences has cast doubt on the long-established (also never substantiated and much criticised) principle employed by US regulators of ‘substantial equivalence’, that is, that GMO crops are (by assertion) much the same as non-GMO food and crops.

In their paper ‘Do GMOs Accumulate Formaldehyde and Disrupt Molecular Systems Equilibria? Systems Biology May Provide Answers‘, authors V A Shiva Ayyadurai and Prabhakar Deonikar report on their ‘systems biology’ approach to the question, and find that a small GM alteration in soyabeans may be producing an excess of toxic formaldehyde, also a known carcinogen.

“Proponents of GMOs assert that GMOs are safe since the FDA’s policy of substantial equivalence considers GMOs ‘equivalent’ to their non-GMO counterparts, and argue that genetic modification (GM) is simply an extension of a ‘natural’ process of plant breeding, a form of ‘genetic modification’, though done over longer time scales”, they write.

“Anti-GMO activists counter that GMOs are unsafe since substantial equivalence is unscientific and outdated since it originates in the 1970s to assess safety of medical devices, which are not comparable to the complexity of biological systems, and contend that targeted GM is not plant breeding.”

“Systems biology”, they propose, “which aims to understand complexity of the whole organism, as a system, rather than just studying its parts in a reductionist manner, may provide a framework to determine appropriate criteria, as it recognizes that GM, small or large, may affect emergent properties of the whole system.”

They use a computational (‘in silico’) systems biology method to investigate known perturbations on five biomolecules in the Glycine max L. (soybean) under realistic conditions.

“The results predict significant accumulation of formaldehyde and concomitant depletion of glutathione in the GMO, suggesting how a ‘small’ and single GM creates ‘large’ and systemic perturbations to molecular systems equilibria”, the scientists report.

“Regulatory agencies, currently reviewing rules for GMO safety, may wish to adopt a systems biology approach using a combination of in silico, computational methods used herein, and subsequent targeted experimental in vitro and in vivo designs, to develop a systems understanding of ‘equivalence’ using biomarkers, such as formaldehyde and glutathione, which predict metabolic disruptions, towards modernizing the safety assessment of GMOs.”

Or in ordinary language, regulators should cease to just assume that GMOs are fine, and employ a combination of computional investigation and experimental verification on GMOs before declaring them ‘safe’.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

In 1994, I remember walking nervously into the field of my first Earth First! Gathering. But it was like coming home.

At last, here were people passionate about the planet with not only a plan how to physically stop the destruction but also put into practice the world we want to live in.

There were hundreds of people from all different backgrounds and ages, from politicised to just eco-curios, in a family friendly, low impact camping field for a week.

There were workshops on everything you wanted to know about campaigning : from gender politics, ecology, the latest legal and security issues to tree climbing and using direct action as a tool, team night-navigation and networking with organising space, all with political theory and historical references – and run by intelligent, compassionate and experienced activists.

I now am part of the Gatherings Collective, made up of people who, at the end of each Summer Gathering, volunteer to help put on the next gathering and build up a bank of skilled site crew and organisers – a skill in itself if you are setting up your own protest camps or gatherings.

And in 2015 we are taking to the Peak District

This year we’re in the Peak District from 19th to 21st August. The nearest train station is Derby but the actual location is only given a couple weeks before to ward off the un-invited. The basic set-up will be same as ever: networking, skill-sharing and planning future actions at a not-for-profit, eco-living camp, organised non-hierarchically.

The camp invites groups that have arisen to fight particular campaigns as well as the local community and newcomers. Don’t worry if you can’t camp – there is a hostel near the site for £10 a night. As for transport, coaches being booked from many areas so check the web site, or you are welcome to help organise transport from your area and we can help with that.

Frustrated with constant police presence, the camps now don’t include rampaging off afterwards, and the gatherings are not in squatted but rented fields, making the camp a safe space for everyone to learn and explore new skills and make connections.

The political arena has also changed: the concept of direct action has become acceptable in polite conversation, global warming is talked about seriously and it is widely recognised that governments and multinational corporations are totally screwing us and the planet.

Everyone in the camp is crew. Come expecting to get involved in the everyday running of the site. This is also a great way to get to know folk and maybe pick up a new skill like cooking for quantities or mediation.

If you come early enough, camp set up takes places on Tuesday and Wednesday morning so you can learn how to pitch a marquee or install field plumbing. The site crew rotas will be on the welcome gate as you arrive, so look at the programme, see what workshops you don’t want to miss then put your name down for usually 2-hour slots.

The site kitchens are run by experienced field caterers with crew volunteer choppers and washer-uppers. All food and the bar are vegan and as local as they can get and I think the lovely brew crew are keen to offer some fermentation workshops and to sell their cheap elderflower champagne this year.

Campaigning zeal is burning bright

We have enjoyed a general resurgence in the radical ecological movement for the first time since COP15 in Copenhagen, 2009 – when ‘world leaders’ failure to achieve any worthwhile agreement left environmentalists deeply frustrated – and this is a very exciting year for the EF! gathering.

No, it’s not that we are expecting anything better from this December’s COP21 in Paris. It’s because we know that anything worthwhile is goiing to have to begin with ordinary people like us, determined to take the Earth’s future into their own hands rather than rely on so-called leaders to do it for us.

We have been organising with Frack-Off, the successful and highly respected national anti-fracking campaign group, and the camp will be a skill sharing forum for the numerous communities resisting the threat of fracking around the country to organise tactically together.

We are also supported by the brave and energetic people at Reclaim the Power who have reached out to a new savvy generation of activists.

And as the Government undertakes an unprecedented attack on the environment – pushing ahead with fracking and nuclear power, determined to extract every last drop of oil and gas, doing all it can to undermine renewable energy and energy efficiency, working to weaken the EU’s nature laws – we have more to do than ever.

And we know we can do it – because we have done it before.

23 years of dynamic campaigning since the first Gathering

Already by 1991 EF!ers had been active setting up the first anti-road protest camp, at Twyford Down. Peat-stripping machinery in Yorkshire had been ‘decommissioned’ and there had been shutdowns of timber yards and ports in support of indigenous resistance against wilderness destruction.

‘Carmageddon’ road blockades had reclaimed space from the onslaught of the roads programme and car culture, and there’d been countless smaller actions by day and night, from anti-nuke actions, to climate protest, and ecological defence.

The first British Earth First! gathering was on a beautiful squatted site near Brighton in February 1992. In early days there was usually a police presence outside the camp, expecting that on the Monday after the event we would all amble off en mass to blockade an open-cast mine or shut some unsuspecting arms dealer’s office.

After all, our motto is ‘No compromise in defence of Earth!’. And as we say, “the Earth is not dying, it’s being killed and the killers have names and addresses!”

The police were disappointed on that occasion, but many actions, and victories, were to follow. At EF! gatherings, many of the major ecological direct action campaigns or one-offs have been dreamed up or developed. The anti-roads movement of the ’90s stopped at least six projects that had already been initiated.

The Newbury Bypass campaign was the biggest protest, successfully stopping work starting anywhere on the route for three days, and with over 30 camps a huge ‘eco-tax’ was slapped on the project. The No M11 Campaign blended the defence of urban human communities into the equation, with squatted streets and innovative lock-on towers and washing machines taking weeks to evict.

And while this and  many other sites were ‘lost’, the movement as a whole resulted in over 300 road schemes being axed. The expectation of protest was officially factored in to the economic equation around whether to go ahead with road schemes.

Lessons from the past – the personal bonds matter

In our modern age of ‘clicktivism’ we must not forget that to work together as community we need to know each other and build the personal bonds that come out of joining in campaigns and sharing alternative ways of living.

That’s something that came naturally in the 1990s when organising was done between people – and it worked, camps sprung up against quarries, airports, roads and other major infrastructure projects. And through all this, EF! individuals and groups played an important role as part of camps, providing support and going on the offensive.

Actions around the country had a huge range and ferocity – contractors, subsidiaries, small service providers and corporations intending to bid were occupied, sabotaged and generally hindered at every opportunity.

This was being done by people from all ages, backgrounds and dress senses. Some had been a part of a green student group or mildly political background, frustrated at the slowness of progress and speed of destruction and plunder of Earth’s resources. And now, boosted by a new generation of campaigners and activists, it’s happening again.

The general principles behind Earth First! are: “A non-hierarchical organisation and the use of direct action to confront, stop and eventually reverse the forces that are responsible for the destruction of the Earth and its inhabitants. EF! is not a cohesive group or campaign, but a convenient banner for people who share similar philosophies to work under.”

If you agree with the above and you are not racist or otherwise a discriminatory fuckwit, if you believe action speaks louder than words, then Earth First! Camp is for you!

More information on directions, workshops, transport, hostel, safe space policy, dogs or how to get involved please check Earth First! Gathering. See also Earth First! UK.

Indra donFrancesco has been arrested over 18 times as an environmental activist in the UK over 23 years since visiting Twyford Down anti-roads protest in Winchester. She stayed with the ‘roads protest’ movement from camp to camp until after Newbury and the collapse of the roads programme, working on many campaigns since. She has always had a passion for putting on Earth First! gatherings to bring people together, and started a housing coop in Derbyshire. She is now involved once again in the new anti-‘new roads’ campaign with the ‘Coombe Haven Defenders’ in Hastings.

A new front has opened in the epic battle to block projects that threaten to turn the Pacific Northwest into a hub for fossil fuel exports.

While citizens and regulators have been duking it out over environmental reviews and compliance with laws like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, the Lummi Indian Nation has invoked a very different source of law – a 160-year-old treaty – to block a massive coal port near Bellingham.  

In 1855, decades before Washington even became a state, Washington Territory Governor Isaac Stevens and the leaders of a number of Salish Sea tribes signed the Treaty of Point Elliot.

In it, the tribes ceded title to a portion of their ancestral lands in exchange for reservations, payments and – most importantly – a commitment that they’d be able to fish, hunt and gather at all of their “usual and accustomed” places in perpetuity. 

To say that the salmon, shellfish and other gifts of the landscape are central to the economies and cultures of the signatory tribes doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story. In one 1906 case, the US Supreme Court tried to capture the centrality of reserved fishing rights to Northwest tribes: they were

“not much less necessary to the existence of the Indians than the atmosphere they breathed.”

Coal export terminal an existential threat to the Lummi People

The current fossil fuel export proposals – which would put dangerous and toxic materials into the heart of the tribes’ treaty-reserved fishing areas – are nothing less than an existential threat to the people who have depended on this landscape since time immemorial.

The Treaty of Point Elliot represents both a legal and a moral obligation on the part of the US government – and the American people – to protect that way of life. In January of this year, the Lummi, a signatory tribe to the treaty, called in that debt. The Lummi formally asked the United States government to deny permits for a massive, 48 million ton per year coal terminal adjacent to their reservation just north of Bellingham.

The proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal would sit on Lummi sacred land, and hundreds of the largest vessels on the planet would thread through prime fishing areas on their way to load up on coal. Lummi members made their feelings about the project – that no amount of money could buy their support – clear in October 2012 when they burned a symbolic check for limitless dollars (see photo).

The law is quite clear: the only way for the government to honor this longstanding obligation is to deny the coal port permit. Federal court precedent says that where a tribe opposes a project based on its impacts on treaty-reserved fishing, a federal agency cannot authorize anything more than a ‘de minimis’ impact. (That’s legalese for ‘practically nothing’.)

The proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal, which would transform a pristine site in one of the Salish Sea’s most productive and cherished coastal waters into a polluted industrial zone, is anything but ‘de minimis’.

First Nations on the front line in the US and Canada

The Lummi’s stand against Big Coal is not isolated. Throughout the region, First Nations and Native American tribes are standing strong against more fossil fuel development. For example, Earthjustice represents four US tribes in an effort to block a massive tar sands pipeline in Canada that would put treaty fishing areas at risk of catastrophic oil spills.

Tribal opposition and impacts to fishing helped convince the state of Oregon to deny a permit for another coal port on the Columbia River. And a small First Nation in British Columbia stunned the world with a unanimous vote to reject more than a billion dollars to allow a liquefied natural gas terminal to be built on its traditional lands. 

There are plenty of good reasons to oppose plans to build coal and oil transportation depots throughout our region: oil trains derail and cause disasters, crowds of tankers would threaten spills in the Salish Sea and communities would be bisected by staggering increases in rail traffic – all so we can lock in even more dependence on polluting fossil fuels.

Communities across the Pacific Northwest have built a passionate and effective movement to stop these projects, and they are winning.

Yet another reason to oppose fossil fuel development in the Pacific Northwest is that it perpetuates the centuries-old legacy of exploitation of native peoples and their lands, fish and cultures. Lummi tribal member Jewell James has likened the explosion of coal, oil and gas projects to a 21st century version of the ‘Trail of Tears’.

But the region’s tribes are writing a new ending to that tragic story, standing in firm opposition to projects that threaten their homes, their way of life, their sacred landscapes and their treaty rights.

The question now is whether our government will keep the 160-year-old promise embodied in the Treaty of Point Elliot by rejecting the coal port. We expect a decision this fall. Stay tuned.

Jan Hasselman is Staff Attorney in EarthJustice’s Northwest regional office in Seattle, Washington. He has successfully litigated on a number of regional and national issues including listings of salmon under the Endangered Species Act, stormwater pollution, coal-fired power plants, and forestry.

This article was originally published by EarthJustice.

Last week was a bad one for UK prime minister David Cameron’s credibility. You may wonder why I say this – have the papers and media been full of speculation about his downfall or plots to unseat him?

No. But they’re not looking very closely at the future of the planet and Cameron’s credibility on climate.

At the end of this year most of the world’s countries will be represented in Paris for talks on tackling climate change. It will be the biggest international moment on this agenda for six years, after the failure of the Copenhagen conference in 2009.

Cameron has said this is an important moment, and that his Government will commit to a fair strong and binding agreement, and even making claims to leadership by “thinking long-term“ and pushing the EU further.

That kind of leadership can only be credible if it’s not only about making grand speeches, but if it’s backed up by getting a grip on emissions domestically. The UK cannot have others making the accusation that UK wants everyone else to ‘do as I say, not do as I do.’

The Government’s war on renewable energy

The start of the new Government hasn’t been great. There has been the stupid and illogical decision to block onshore wind. There was the additional tax on renewable energy by applying climate change levy to it – which as our mates at Friends of the Earth described it, is “like making apple juice pay an alcohol tax.”

Although these are decisions are a bit daft, they could be defended by arguing that the onshore wind blockage had been in their manifesto (although that makes the manifesto stupid and illogical – and contradictory).

And that the extra tax from applying climate change levy to renewables is necessary for a state under financial pressure – although this would also appear to be retrospective legislation which UK government has traditionally argued against because of the impact on the investment climate.

But then, in times of budget difficulty, politics is a tough business. So not helpful from a climate point of view, but there were excuses, even if they weren’t particularly good ones.

The two decisions which reveal how poor this Government has been are less high profile ones, but really indicate that UK is developing a deeper climate credibility problem. In other words, it talks a good game, but actually is going backwards.

Three moves to a high-carbon economy

The first was in the Budget, where unexpectedly the Chancellor changed the Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) – colloquially known as ‘car tax’ – away from a graduated tax based on CO₂ emissions towards a flat tax after the first year. The money from VED will all go to a new ‘Roads fund’.

There are several problems with this. First, is that there is now very little tax incentive to buy low-CO₂ vehicles including hybrid and plug in hybrids that are a good option for people who don’t feel able to use pure electric vehicles.

Secondly, it is ring-fencing money for road building – ‘hypothecating’ is the technical term for ring-fencing money like this. Not hypothecating tax has been described as ‘The Treasury’s sacred rule‘ – but it has been overwritten for this destructive activity, which we largely don’t need because demand for roads has been consistently overestimated by government since the 1980s.

Thirdly, and the point of this blog, is that manufacturers of a productive UK export industry were not consulted, and actually thought the changes would damage the low-carbon vehicle sector that the UK is a global leader in, saying that it “[threatened] the ability of the UK and the UK automotive sector to meet ever stricter CO₂ targets.”

The second decision is the one to abandon zero-carbon homes as part of the government’s ‘Productivity Plan’. There are some similarities with the VED decision. Contrary to Cameron’s promise to think long-term, it is short-termism of the worst kind as it locks in emissions from future housing that will be hugely expensive to fix.

The additional costs of building zero-carbon homes will be around £3,500 whilst the energy bill savings of implementing them would be around £250 per year for the occupants according to REA. Retrofitting to a very low carbon standard after a house is built would be very expensive, in the tens of thousands of pounds.

Industry joins greens to condemn ‘short-sighted’ policies

Meanwhile, also like the VED changes, plenty in the industry were unhappy. It is perhaps unsurprising that Greenpeace, and even the Green Building Council attacked it. But building developers like Lendlease Europe were “extremely disappointed“ and British Property Federation called it “short-sighted” and said it undermined the certainty needed for investment.

The theme in these two was that they were both backward steps on climate, both shifted signals on long-term investment away from low carbon, and so both potentially lock in carbon emissions in the long term. And both were completely unnecessary.

In neither case was there compelling political pressure to make changes in the way government did. It was not a situation where the greens were on one side and major industry lined up on the other – in fact, quite the reverse.

If changes were required on say, VED, they could have been made, if at all, in a much less damaging way. In other words this government had choice – it could have easily done the right thing, but it didn’t.

Cameron’s true colours … searching in vain for green

When governments have real choice it reveals their true values. In both cases they made choices based on ideology that says it isn’t really that bothered about climate change or resource efficiency.

Of course this government is relatively new and I may be surprised by a slew of good announcements over the Summer and Autumn. But I’m not holding my breath, and it’s a rubbish start.

And whenever one hears David Cameron talk about (I’ll not use the word ‘pontificate’ yet) the importance of climate change action over the next few months, remember this is the guy who oversaw a government unnecessarily roll back much-needed policy.

In politics credibility is a difficult resource to reclaim once it’s lost. And on climate change, Cameron is losing it.

Dr Doug Parr is Scientific Director of Greenpeace UK.

This article was originally published on Greenpeace EnergyDesk.

The Brazilian Congress is currently considering a change to its constitution that would be a major blow for the recognition of indigenous rights in the country.

Proposal of Constitutional Amendment 215 (PEC 215) would transfer the power to demarcate indigenous peoples’ land, conservation units, and Quilombola territories from FUNAI, Brazil’s indigenous affairs department, to Congress.

PEC 215 was proposed in 2012, as the 215th amendment to Brazil’s 1988 Constitution. The Constitution came after the end of 20 years of military dictatorship in Brazil. It was known as the ‘social constitution’.

In December 2014, indigenous peoples won an important victory, when PEC 2015 was shelved, after months of protests. But there was always a danger that the proposal would be revived. And now it has been.

Brazil’s minister of agriculture: Indigenous Peoples are ‘obstacles’

Brazil’s Congress has a large block of anti-indigenous politicians, the ruralistas, that campaigned for the weakening of Brazil’s forest code and maintain close ties to the agri-business sector.

In December 2014, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s President, appointed a leading figure in the ruralista lobby, Tocantins Senator Kátia Abreu, as minster of agriculture. Her nickname is the ‘Chainsaw Queen’.

In a recent interview with the Guardian Abreu explains her anti-environmentalist views: “Criticism from radical environmentalists is the best form of endorsement. It gives me satisfaction. It shows I am on the right track and playing the right role.”

She attacks any group that attempts to slow the expansion of Brazil’s agriculture sector. She claims that environmentalists, indigenous groups and landless peasants are working for foreign interests. Of course she provides no evidence for this, but says that she gets “a very strong impression that this is the case”:

“For many years, environmentalism reached an extreme pitch and we in the agribusiness sector were treated like criminals. [But now] our agribusiness sector can influence the choice of kings and queens in Brazil. In the past, we only exercised economic influence. Now we also have political power.”

For Abreu, environmental issues and indigenous peoples are ‘obstacles’: “There are many things holding back progress – the environmental issue, the Indian issue and more. But even with these problems we keep producing high levels of productivity. Imagine how high it might be without those obstacles.”

Not surprisingly, the rate of deforestation in Brazil is increasing.

Resistance is growing

Resistance against PEC 215 continues. In April 2015, more than 1,500 indigenous people travelled to Brasilia and camped outside Congress for four days and three nights in a protest camp against PEC 215 organised by Coordinating Body of Brazil’s indigenous people (APIB).

Francisco da Silva, an indigenous Kapinawá leader from the state of Pernambuco, told Truth Out of Dilma Rousseff that, “During her presidential campaign, she committed to demarcating indigenous territory in Brazil. Today, we see that indigenous people are moving toward complete disappearance.

“If she herself does not honor her own words and the constitution, the only thing left for us to do is for us to demarcate our own territories and to defend our ancestral lands ourselves, because if we do nothing, this law will leave us in the hands of the multinational corporations.”

In May 2015, 48 senators signed a statement against PEC 215, which describes the proposed amendment as “inapplicable”. The statement adds that the proposal “brings to the sphere of the Congress a political and legal error” and represents an “attack on the rights of Indigenous Peoples”.

The fact that more than half of all senators signed the statement suggests that if the proposal to amend the constitution reached the Senate, there is a good chance that it would be rejected.

The triumph of capitalism? Not on our watch

Last month Indigenous Peoples, parliamentarians, organisations and social movements delivered a manifesto opposing PEC 215 to Congress. The manifesto states that

“PEC 215 and its appended action are intended to paralyze the demarcation of indigenous lands, the titling of Quilombola Territories and the creation of Units of Conservation, as well as to permit the approval of large-scale projects within these protected areas, such as: hydroelectric dams, mining, extensive agribusiness, the building of highways, waterways for industrial transport, ports and railways.”

In an interview with the Real News last year, anthropologist Antonio Carlos De Souza Lima, president of the Brazilian Anthropological Association, said of PEC 215:

“We have to consider that we live in a country of rights, that the Brazilian Constitution established a set of rights that took into consideration the ethnic differences of this country.

“Those rights cannot be trapped by an argument of a development model visibly committed to profit at the expense of the welfare of the majority, not just indigenous, but the welfare of all of us … This is the capitalistic world, the triumph of the interests of a small group.”

Chis Lang edits REDD Monitor, where this article was originally published.

Twitter: #pec215nao

Petition: ‘Contra a PEC 215, que transfere para o Congresso Nacional a competência de demarcar terras indígenas, quilombolas e unidades de conservação‘ (in Portuguese). Note – the FB sign in does not seem to work, Just enter your name, email and city.

Email action: Survival International has set up an email action, urging the President of the Federal Senate, Senator Renan Calheiros and the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Deputy Eduardo Cunha to reject PEC 215.

Dear Gary Smith (GMB National Secretary for Energy),

The undersigned are scientists, academics and energy policy analysts who read with concern your Press Release objecting to the Austrian Government’s appeal against the UK Government’s proposed subsidies to the planned Hinkley Point C (HPC) nuclear station. Your statement contains several misconceptions, unsupported assertions and inaccuracies.

Let’s start with your view that HPC is “much needed”. It isn’t: UK electricity demand is steadily declining. In fact it has declined 14% since 2000, while GDP has increased 18% in the same period.

It’s true that some coal-fired stations will be closing over the next few years, some of which may need replacing by quick-to-build gas-fired stations and an array of renewable sources. But there’s no way new nuclear could make any contribution in the next decade.

Maybe you should seek another legal opinion?

Second, you allege the Austrian appeal is “almost certainly doomed to fail”. The opposite is the case: the Austrian Government has retained a team of about a dozen European lawyers – experts in EC Competition Law.

They have been assessing this case since November last year and consider the appeal to be very robust and likely to succeed: the EC’s decision flies in the face of several European Directives, Policy statements, and previous EC decisions. And it is not just Austria: Luxembourg will be joining shortly, and several European renewable energy utilities also launched their appeal today.

You state Austria’s appeal is “more about playing to a domestic audience rather than a serious challenge to stop new nuclear in the UK.” On the contrary, Austrian Government’s press statement of July 6 is clearly serious in opposing nuclear – not just in the UK but in the rest of Europe.

As the Austrian Chancellor stated: “Nuclear power plants are dangerous, expensive, and compared with the technologies of the future like wind and solar energy, are neither economically nor ecologically competitive.”

Technical failures, reluctant investors

But it’s not just the Austrian appeal. Hinkley suffers from a phalanx of financial and technical problems as well. The financial, legal and technical situations at the two EPRs under construction in Finland and France are simply disastrous.

In addition, AREVA is effectively bankrupt and EDF is €34 billion in debt: their share prices have plummeted to near zero and their bonds have junk status. See the many technical and regulatory problems facing Hinkley C.

But the acid test is the actions of Areva and EDF. EDF has halted site preparation at Hinkley C, dismissed the workers and closed its offices there. And Areva recently decided to test to destruction a steel pressure vessel dome already constructed and destined for Hinkley.

This means a new dome would have to be recast adding another two to three years and even more uncertainty to the project. In reality, it’s an implicit acknowledgement by Areva that Hinkley C is unlikely to be built. It looks as if this is less a case of the UK deciding to abandon HPC – and more a case of it being unable to be built at all.

You state: “Of course the anti-nuclear lobby in the UK will welcome the challenge hoping it will help their policy of trying to ‘suffocate’ investment.” But there isn’t an anti-nuclear ‘lobby’ in the UK, unlike the massive pro-nuclear lobby. Your notion that several local groups stopped nuclear investment is far-fetched.

What is true is that UK banks, international funding agencies, other UK energy companies, and foreign governments (apart perhaps from China) have all steered well clear of the HPC project, but that’s because in their view new nuclear is grossly uneconomic. As regards the possible involvement of China, many independent observers, including yourselves, have objected to the inherent dangers here.

Don’t nail your members’ future to a sinking ship

Nuclear is in decline not just in the UK but in the rest of the world. It’s shedding employment by the cartload, eg the recent loss of a quarter of Magnox Electric jobs. We feel sorry for those who lose their jobs but your members would be better served by GMB joining union-academic initiatives which seek to steer unions towards the undoubted jobs bonanza among the renewables.

Your union should also look at Germany whose non-nuclear energy policies have resulted in 440,000 direct jobs in its burgeoning renewable energy (RE) industries. And there are about 7.7 million RE jobs worldwide. It’s about time the unions looked to the future than the past on energy policy, and the Labour Party too.

We are former union officials, or have worked closely with unions, or are broadly sympathetic to the aims of unions and their members.

Yours sincerely,

Dr David Elliott, Emeritus Professor, Open University

Dr Ian Fairlie, Independent Consultant

Jonathon Porritt, Author and Activist

Ian Ralls, Joint Co-ordinator, Friends of the Earth Nuclear Network

Peter Roche, Edinburgh Energy & Environment Consultancy

Alan Simpson, Energy Policy Advisor: former Labour MP (1992-2010)

Peter Wilkinson, Director, Wilkinson Environmental Consulting.

GMB responds: ‘Hinkley Point C Should Go Ahead‘.

The Brazilian Congress is currently considering a change to its constitution that would be a major blow for the recognition of indigenous rights in the country.

Proposal of Constitutional Amendment 215 (PEC 215) would transfer the power to demarcate indigenous peoples’ land, conservation units, and Quilombola territories from FUNAI, Brazil’s indigenous affairs department, to Congress.

PEC 215 was proposed in 2012, as the 215th amendment to Brazil’s 1988 Constitution. The Constitution came after the end of 20 years of military dictatorship in Brazil. It was known as the ‘social constitution’.

In December 2014, indigenous peoples won an important victory, when PEC 2015 was shelved, after months of protests. But there was always a danger that the proposal would be revived. And now it has been.

Brazil’s minister of agriculture: Indigenous Peoples are ‘obstacles’

Brazil’s Congress has a large block of anti-indigenous politicians, the ruralistas, that campaigned for the weakening of Brazil’s forest code and maintain close ties to the agri-business sector.

In December 2014, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s President, appointed a leading figure in the ruralista lobby, Tocantins Senator Kátia Abreu, as minster of agriculture. Her nickname is the ‘Chainsaw Queen’.

In a recent interview with the Guardian Abreu explains her anti-environmentalist views: “Criticism from radical environmentalists is the best form of endorsement. It gives me satisfaction. It shows I am on the right track and playing the right role.”

She attacks any group that attempts to slow the expansion of Brazil’s agriculture sector. She claims that environmentalists, indigenous groups and landless peasants are working for foreign interests. Of course she provides no evidence for this, but says that she gets “a very strong impression that this is the case”:

“For many years, environmentalism reached an extreme pitch and we in the agribusiness sector were treated like criminals. [But now] our agribusiness sector can influence the choice of kings and queens in Brazil. In the past, we only exercised economic influence. Now we also have political power.”

For Abreu, environmental issues and indigenous peoples are ‘obstacles’: “There are many things holding back progress – the environmental issue, the Indian issue and more. But even with these problems we keep producing high levels of productivity. Imagine how high it might be without those obstacles.”

Not surprisingly, the rate of deforestation in Brazil is increasing.

Resistance is growing

Resistance against PEC 215 continues. In April 2015, more than 1,500 indigenous people travelled to Brasilia and camped outside Congress for four days and three nights in a protest camp against PEC 215 organised by Coordinating Body of Brazil’s indigenous people (APIB).

Francisco da Silva, an indigenous Kapinawá leader from the state of Pernambuco, told Truth Out of Dilma Rousseff that, “During her presidential campaign, she committed to demarcating indigenous territory in Brazil. Today, we see that indigenous people are moving toward complete disappearance.

“If she herself does not honor her own words and the constitution, the only thing left for us to do is for us to demarcate our own territories and to defend our ancestral lands ourselves, because if we do nothing, this law will leave us in the hands of the multinational corporations.”

In May 2015, 48 senators signed a statement against PEC 215, which describes the proposed amendment as “inapplicable”. The statement adds that the proposal “brings to the sphere of the Congress a political and legal error” and represents an “attack on the rights of Indigenous Peoples”.

The fact that more than half of all senators signed the statement suggests that if the proposal to amend the constitution reached the Senate, there is a good chance that it would be rejected.

The triumph of capitalism? Not on our watch

Last month Indigenous Peoples, parliamentarians, organisations and social movements delivered a manifesto opposing PEC 215 to Congress. The manifesto states that

“PEC 215 and its appended action are intended to paralyze the demarcation of indigenous lands, the titling of Quilombola Territories and the creation of Units of Conservation, as well as to permit the approval of large-scale projects within these protected areas, such as: hydroelectric dams, mining, extensive agribusiness, the building of highways, waterways for industrial transport, ports and railways.”

In an interview with the Real News last year, anthropologist Antonio Carlos De Souza Lima, president of the Brazilian Anthropological Association, said of PEC 215:

“We have to consider that we live in a country of rights, that the Brazilian Constitution established a set of rights that took into consideration the ethnic differences of this country.

“Those rights cannot be trapped by an argument of a development model visibly committed to profit at the expense of the welfare of the majority, not just indigenous, but the welfare of all of us … This is the capitalistic world, the triumph of the interests of a small group.”

Chis Lang edits REDD Monitor, where this article was originally published.

Twitter: #pec215nao

Petition: ‘Contra a PEC 215, que transfere para o Congresso Nacional a competência de demarcar terras indígenas, quilombolas e unidades de conservação‘ (in Portuguese). Note – the FB sign in does not seem to work, Just enter your name, email and city.

Email action: Survival International has set up an email action, urging the President of the Federal Senate, Senator Renan Calheiros and the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Deputy Eduardo Cunha to reject PEC 215.

Dear Gary Smith (GMB National Secretary for Energy),

The undersigned are scientists, academics and energy policy analysts who read with concern your Press Release objecting to the Austrian Government’s appeal against the UK Government’s proposed subsidies to the planned Hinkley Point C (HPC) nuclear station. Your statement contains several misconceptions, unsupported assertions and inaccuracies.

Let’s start with your view that HPC is “much needed”. It isn’t: UK electricity demand is steadily declining. In fact it has declined 14% since 2000, while GDP has increased 18% in the same period.

It’s true that some coal-fired stations will be closing over the next few years, some of which may need replacing by quick-to-build gas-fired stations and an array of renewable sources. But there’s no way new nuclear could make any contribution in the next decade.

Maybe you should seek another legal opinion?

Second, you allege the Austrian appeal is “almost certainly doomed to fail”. The opposite is the case: the Austrian Government has retained a team of about a dozen European lawyers – experts in EC Competition Law.

They have been assessing this case since November last year and consider the appeal to be very robust and likely to succeed: the EC’s decision flies in the face of several European Directives, Policy statements, and previous EC decisions. And it is not just Austria: Luxembourg will be joining shortly, and several European renewable energy utilities also launched their appeal today.

You state Austria’s appeal is “more about playing to a domestic audience rather than a serious challenge to stop new nuclear in the UK.” On the contrary, Austrian Government’s press statement of July 6 is clearly serious in opposing nuclear – not just in the UK but in the rest of Europe.

As the Austrian Chancellor stated: “Nuclear power plants are dangerous, expensive, and compared with the technologies of the future like wind and solar energy, are neither economically nor ecologically competitive.”

Technical failures, reluctant investors

But it’s not just the Austrian appeal. Hinkley suffers from a phalanx of financial and technical problems as well. The financial, legal and technical situations at the two EPRs under construction in Finland and France are simply disastrous.

In addition, AREVA is effectively bankrupt and EDF is €34 billion in debt: their share prices have plummeted to near zero and their bonds have junk status. See the many technical and regulatory problems facing Hinkley C.

But the acid test is the actions of Areva and EDF. EDF has halted site preparation at Hinkley C, dismissed the workers and closed its offices there. And Areva recently decided to test to destruction a steel pressure vessel dome already constructed and destined for Hinkley.

This means a new dome would have to be recast adding another two to three years and even more uncertainty to the project. In reality, it’s an implicit acknowledgement by Areva that Hinkley C is unlikely to be built. It looks as if this is less a case of the UK deciding to abandon HPC – and more a case of it being unable to be built at all.

You state: “Of course the anti-nuclear lobby in the UK will welcome the challenge hoping it will help their policy of trying to ‘suffocate’ investment.” But there isn’t an anti-nuclear ‘lobby’ in the UK, unlike the massive pro-nuclear lobby. Your notion that several local groups stopped nuclear investment is far-fetched.

What is true is that UK banks, international funding agencies, other UK energy companies, and foreign governments (apart perhaps from China) have all steered well clear of the HPC project, but that’s because in their view new nuclear is grossly uneconomic. As regards the possible involvement of China, many independent observers, including yourselves, have objected to the inherent dangers here.

Don’t nail your members’ future to a sinking ship

Nuclear is in decline not just in the UK but in the rest of the world. It’s shedding employment by the cartload, eg the recent loss of a quarter of Magnox Electric jobs. We feel sorry for those who lose their jobs but your members would be better served by GMB joining union-academic initiatives which seek to steer unions towards the undoubted jobs bonanza among the renewables.

Your union should also look at Germany whose non-nuclear energy policies have resulted in 440,000 direct jobs in its burgeoning renewable energy (RE) industries. And there are about 7.7 million RE jobs worldwide. It’s about time the unions looked to the future than the past on energy policy, and the Labour Party too.

We are former union officials, or have worked closely with unions, or are broadly sympathetic to the aims of unions and their members.

Yours sincerely,

Dr David Elliott, Emeritus Professor, Open University

Dr Ian Fairlie, Independent Consultant

Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director, Forum for the Future: Chair, Sustainable Development Commission (2000-2009): Chancellor, Keele University

Ian Ralls, Joint Co-ordinator, Friends of the Earth Nuclear Network

Peter Roche, Edinburgh Energy & Environment Consultancy

Alan Simpson, Energy Policy Advisor: former Labour MP (1992-2010)

Peter Wilkinson, Director, Wilkinson Environmental Consulting.