Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took advantage of a private meeting last week with Barack Obama – their first in 13 months – to raise the possibility of dismembering Syria.

According to Israeli officials, Netanyahu indicated that Washington should give its belated blessing to Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria during the 1967 war.

Sources close to the talks told the Haaretz newspaper that Netanyahu claimed Syria was no longer a functioning state, allowing for “different thinking”. Since 2011 the government of Bashar al-Assad has faced off against rebel factions that include al-Qaeda-affiliated groups and the Islamic State (IS).

On Wednesday an unnamed White House official confirmed that Netanyahu had raised the matter. The official said: “I think the president didn’t think it warranted an answer. It wasn’t clear how serious he [Netanyahu] was about it.”

However, it appears Netanyahu’s comments to Obama are part of a coordinated effort by Israeli officials over several months to shift thinking in Washington.

The day before Netanyahu’s meeting at the White House, Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the US, published a commentary on CNN’s website urging Obama to consider Israeli sovereignty over the Golan.

Had Israel handed back the area to Syria in earlier peace talks, he wrote, it “would today have placed [the Lebanese militia] Hezbollah directly above Israeli cities and villages in northern Galilee” and Islamic State (ISIS) “would be dug in on the Sea of Galilee’s eastern shore.”

‘Billions of barrels’ of oil

Neither Oren nor presumably Netanyahu highlighted another reason why Israel might be anxious to gain US approval of its annexation of the Golan, which it imposed in violation of international law in 1981.

Last month Afek, an Israeli subsidiary of Genie Energy, a US oil company, announced that it had found considerable reserves of oil under the Golan. Genie’s chief geologist in Israel, Yuval Bartov, said the company believed the reservoir had the “potential of billions of barrels”. International law experts say any proceeds from such a find in the Golan should revert to Syria, but Israel has so far indicated it will ignore its legal obligations.

The Israeli energy and water ministry has licensed Afek to drill 10 experimental wells over three years in a 400-square kilometre area, about a third of the Golan’s total territory. Afek claims that the discoveries it has identified in its first year could make Israel energy independent, satisfying Israel’s consumption of 100 million barrels a year for the foreseeable future.

That would be on top of Israel’s recent finds of huge quantities of natural gas off its Mediterranean coast, offering it the chance to become a gas exporter.

Were the US to recognise Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan, it would likely clear the way for Israel to plunder any economically viable reserves located there.

Netanyahu appears to have long harboured an interest in tapping the Golan’s potential for oil. In 1996, in his first term as prime minister, he granted approval for drilling in the Golan by the Israeli National Oil Company. International pressure meant the permit had to be withdrawn soon afterwards.

Resources plundered

Today, 22,000 Syrian Druze live in five villages, alongside a similar number of Jews in 30 illegal settlements.

A 2010 investigation by Haaretz revealed that Israel had carried out systematic expulsions of some 130,000 Syrians in 1967 and destroyed 200 villages. The Druze alone were allowed to stay so as not to upset Israel’s own Druze citizens.

Nizar Ayoub, director of Marsad, a Druze human rights centre based in the Golan, told Middle East Eye that Israel had long taken resources from the Golan: “Israel has always treated the Golan as a territory to be exploited and plundered, from its water to farming and tourism. Israel has simply ignored its obligations under international law.”

Rainwater from the Golan feeds into the Jordan River, supplying a third of Israel’s needs. The fertile volcanic soil allows Israel to cultivate vineyards and orchards, and graze cattle. And the mountain terrain has also made it a magnet for holidaying, including skiing on Mount Hermon. In recent years Israel has also approved the construction of a series of large wind farms (see photo).

Ayoub said Israel had taken advantage of the conflict in Syria to advance oil exploration in the Golan, but such a move was rejected by the local Druze population: “Even if Netanyahu could persuade the Americans to agree [about recognition], it is not their decision to make. The only people who can decide to change the sovereignty of the Golan are the Syrian people.”

Quadrupling Jewish settlers to 100,000

Officials close to Netanyahu have been promoting a change of status in the Golan’s since the early summer.

In June Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settler party Jewish Home and the education minster in Netanyahu’s current coalition, raised the question of the Golan’s future at the Herzliya conference, an annual meeting of Israel’s political, academic and security elites. The conference is also attended by senior US officials.

Bennett urged the international community “to demonstrate their ethics” by recognising Israeli sovereignty in the Golan. He added: “To this day, no state in the world has recognised the Golan as part of Israel, including our friend, the United States of America. It is time the world stand by the right side – Israel’s side.” Israel would try to quadruple the Golan’s settler population to 100,000 using financial incentives, he said.

A month later Zvi Hauser, Netanyahu’s former cabinet secretary, wrote a commentary in Haaretz arguing that Israel should seize its first chance since 1967 “to conduct a constructive dialogue with the international community over a change in Middle Eastern borders.” Recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Heights could, he said, be presented as serving a “global interest in stabilising the region.”

Hauser added that Israel should demand the Golan as “compensation” for Obama’s recent nuclear agreement with Iran. Such a claim could be based, he said, on a 1975 “pledge” from US President Gerald Ford recognising Israel’s “need to remain on the Golan Heights, even in peacetime”.

In his CNN piece last Sunday, Oren, a widely respected figure in Washington, asserted that, without Israeli sovereignty over Golan, Iran and Hezbollah would become a base from which to launch armed attacks on Israel. “For the first time in more than 40 years, the Golan could again become a catalyst for war”, he wrote.

He added that Israel had “transformed this once-barren war zone into a hub of high-tech agriculture, world-class wineries and pristine nature reserves.” He did not mention the recent oil find.

Israel’s ‘solidified grip’

Before fighting took hold in Syria, polls showed between 60% and 70% of Israelis rejected returning the Golan to Syria, even if doing so would secure peace with Damascus. The percentages are likely to be higher now.

The White House official told Haaretz that recognition of Israel’s annexation would disrupt US policy by suggesting that Syrian opposition forces supported by the US were “allies with people who want to give up the Golan”.

However, a recent commentary by Frederic Hof, a Syria expert in the State Department under Hillary Clinton, hinted that US officials might yet change their view. He said US efforts before 2011 and the outbreak of fighting to pressure Israel to give up the Golan, as part of talks over a peace treaty with Assad, had been proven “so wrong”. Instead, the war in Syria had “solidified Israel’s grip” on the Golan.

On its website, Genie’s subsidiary Afek claims that its drilling in the occupied Golan Heights will extract “Israeli oil”. The two companies include figures who have close personal ties to Netanyahu and high-level influence in Washington.

Genie’s founder, Howard Jonas, an American Jewish millionaire, made political contributions to Netanyahu’s recent campaign for the Likud party’s primaries. Its ‘strategic advisory board’ includes Dick Cheney, the US vice-president under George Bush and widely regarded as the architect of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is also an adviser. He controls large sections of the rightwing English-language media, including his most influential outlet, the US TV news station Fox News. In September, Genie added Larry Summers, a senior official under Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama, and James Woolsey, a former CIA director who became a neo-conservative cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq.

The chairman of Afek, Genie’s Israeli subsidiary, is Effi Eitam, a far-right former general and cabinet minister who lives in an illegal settlement in the Golan. His far-right views include demands to expel both Palestinians from the occupied territories and the large minority of Palestinian citizens from Israel.

After Eitam exited the Israeli parliament in 2009, Netanyahu sent him as a “special emissary“ to US campuses as part of a “caravan for democracy”.

International law violated

Hala Khoury Bisharat, an international law professor at Carmel Academic College, near Haifa, said it would be hard to persuade the US to recognise Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan. “International law is clear that it is never admissable to acquire territory through war”, she told MEE. “It would be very problematic for the US to do this.”

She added that Israel, as an occupier, was obliged by the 1907 Hague regulations to “safeguard the capital” of the occupied party’s natural resources and was not entitled to exploit any oil in the Golan for its own benefit.

The prime minister’s office was unavailable to comment about Netanyahu’s discussions with Obama, or respond to accusations that the operations in the Golan were violating international law.

Since its establishment, Israel has drilled some 530 exploratory wells, but none has produced commercially viable quantities of oil. Israel briefly had access to significant quantities of oil after the 1967 war, when fields it occupied in the Sinai supplied two-thirds of domestic needs. Israel was eventually forced to hand the wells back to Egypt.

Meanwhile, Israel has discovered large natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean, stoking tensions with neighbouring countries, especially Lebanon, which has claimed that Israel is drilling in areas where maritime borders are disputed.

The Israeli courts are unlikely to place any obstacles in the way of drilling operations in the Golan. In a ruling in late 2011, Israel’s supreme court created a new principle of “prolonged occupation” to justify the theft of Palestinian resources, such as quarried stone, in the West Bank. The precedent could be extended to the Golan.

The only opposition so far has come from Israeli environmental groups. They have expressed concern that extraction of the oil, especially if fracking is used, could pollute aquifers or trigger earthquakes in a seismically unstable region.

Yuval Arbel, a ground water expert with Friends of the Earth Israel, said the Golan’s deposits were likely to be in the form of ‘tight oil’, making it difficult to extract. Israel would probably have to set up a grid of drills every half kilometre. He told MEE that would increase the chances of oil spillages that could leak into the nearby Sea of Galilee, threatening Israel’s main source of drinking water.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. A former Guardian reporter, he now writes for Middle East Eye, CounterPunch and other media. In 2011 Jonathan was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

This article was originally published on Middle East Eye (MEE) and on Jonathan Cook’s website.

The first thing to be said about the terrorist attacks on Paris yesterday is that they are a dreadful crime that deserves only the most fervent condemnation.

The attackers showed a total contempt for human life and chose soft, civilian targets where their victims were unable to put up any defence against military grade weaponry.

But we must also ask: Why Paris? And why now?

Yes, France has been especially active in its air strikes against ISIS in Syria. And yes, there there is a huge reservoir of discontent among the socially excluded youth of the banlieue, the concrete jungle of impoverished outer suburbs that surround Paris and other big cities – where ISIS can perhaps find willing recruits to its ranks.

But is that all? In just a few weeks time, the COP21 climate conference will take place, in Paris, the biggest such event since COP15 in Copenhagen six years ago. The event offers the world a desperately needed opportunity to reduce its carbon emissions and limit global warming to 2C.

And that’s surely something the attackers, or at least their (presumably) ISIS commanders, must know all about.

Could the attacks and COP21 possibly be related?

To answer that question we should first ask, what do the attacks mean for COP21?

For a start, the negotiations taking place at the conference centre at Le Bourget will surely be even more isolated from Paris itself, and civil society, than they were already going to be. Le Bourget is home to one of Paris’s main international airports – perfect for VIPs to fly in and out without ever leaving the airport and conference complex.

Undoubtedly France already had a high level of security planned for Le Bourget. But now, whatever those plans are, they will be redoubled. Expect a ring of steel and concrete to go up.

Expect it to be far harder for accredited journalists, campaigners, activists, even businessmen to gain access to the conference, with stringent searches, long queues, and arbitrary refusals to people who may have travelled thousands of miles to be there.

Expect leaders, politicians, negotiators present at the conference to remain more firmly ensconced in their secure surroundings at Le Bourget – instead of travelling into central Paris to enjoy the city’s many charms.

And as for civil society …

It’s estimated that ten thousand or more climate activists from around the world may be planning to stay in Paris for the duration of the conference, both to demand a strong and effective agreement, and to develop their own agenda, alliances and plans for climate action.

There is certain to be a far larger and more repressive security presence around them than previously planned – not just at Le Bourget but in central Paris where most of the events, conferences and demonstrations are due to take place.

Police surely fear the presence of terrorists taking shelter among the climate activists – and in many a policeman’s world view, there may be no huge difference between murderous terrorists and (generally) peaceful demonstrators anyway. Both are likely to be seen as the ‘enemy’.

Meanwhile the activists could reasonably fear terrorism themselves. What yesterday’s attacks tell us is that any target will do. Climate campaigners have no reason to feel any safer than anyone else. And a demonstration of tens of thousands densely packed on the streets of Paris would offer a highly vulnerable target.

So the effect of the attacks on COP21 is likely to be a chilling one. Faced with a combination of terrorist threat, and likely heavy-handed policing, their numbers – and their political impact – are likely to fall.

Eyes off the climate ball?

Another outcome that will surely be felt at the highest levels in the conference itself is a loss of focus on the climate, and a refocussing among world leaders present in Paris on terrorism and security.

Yes, negotiators will still be arguing over square brackets in texts as they always do. But the potential of important ‘big picture’ climate deals cemented between presidents and prime ministers now look less likely than before – for the simple reason that world leaders are likely to take the opportunity of COP21 to talk about more immediately pressing security matters.

So with world leaders distracted from questions of climate, the prospects of serious inter-governmental agreement on the key issues at stake in the talks – from climate finance to the legal status of any agreement reached – have just receded.

Of course, this may all be accidental. Maybe Paris was just hit because of French attacks on ISIS. And maybe the now more likely failure of COP21 to achieve its aims is mere collateral damage in the increasingly savage ‘great game’ of global power politics.

ISIS Inc defending its corporate interests?

But it may not be. As the FT put it last week in an article titled ‘Isis Inc: how oil fuels the jihadi terrorists‘, “Oil is the black gold that funds Isis’ black flag – it fuels its war machine, provides electricity and gives the fanatical jihadis critical leverage against their neighbours …

“Estimates by local traders and engineers put crude production in Isis-held territory at about 34,000-40,000 bpd. The oil is sold at the wellhead for between $20 and $45 a barrel, earning the militants an average of $1.5m a day …

“While al-Qaeda, the global terrorist network, depended on donations from wealthy foreign sponsors, Isis has derived its financial strength from its status as monopoly producer of an essential commodity consumed in vast quantities throughout the area it controls. Even without being able to export, it can thrive because it has a huge captive market in Syria and Iraq.”

But ISIS’s ambitions surely don’t stop there. Its aim is to consolidate its hold of the regions it already occupies, extend its empire to new regions and countries, and establish a Caliphate whose power and income will largely derive from oil. So the last thing it needs is a global climate agreement that will, over time, limit global consumption of fossil fuels.

Oil prices are low at around $50 per barrel. The IEA estimates that OPEC states have lost half a trillion dollars a year in revenues since the oil price fell from over $100 a barrel in 2011-2014 to current levels. And this is causing deep tensions among OPEC members – due to meet on 4th December in Vienna to thrash out solutions.

The main problem is that Saudi Arabia is over-producing oil in order to suppress investment in and production of high cost oil in the the US, Canada, UK and other countries – and so capture the lion’s share of an oil market it thinks will keep on growing for decades to come.

Thus OPEC scenarios foresee oil demand increasing from 111 to 132 million barrels per day (mb/d) by 2040. However the International Energy Agency thinks that even modest carbon constraints will see demand for oil slump to around 100 mb/d by 2040 – and considerably lower with tough climate policies.

And that is surely an outcome that not just ISIS but all major oil exporters fear and wish to avoid.

Was it or wasn’t it?

So, assuming – as seems probable at this stage – that the Paris outrage was carried out by or for ISIS, was it in any way motivated by a desire to scupper a strong climate agreement at COP21? And so maintain high demand for oil long into the future, together with a high oil price?

Let’s just say that it could have been a factor, one of several, in the choice of target and of their timing. And of course ISIS was not necessarily acting entirely on its own. While not alleging direct collusion between ISIS and other oil producing nations and companies, it’s not hard to see a coincidence of interests.

So if that is the case, or even if might be the case, there’s an important message in it for us all. The effort to shrink the importance of fossil fuels in the global energy landscape – and oil in particular – just took on a whole new dimension.

Yes, it’s still about the climate, very much so. But there are also immediate and compelling reasons of national and global security to reduce the world’s demand for oil even faster than the IEA’s projections.

And an important part of achieving that is to reach a strong agreement in Paris next month, sending a clear message to energy corporations and investors that oil and other fossil fuels are no longer a smart investment – and instead to put their resources into the clean, green, renewable energy technologies of the future.

So as well as standing with France in at this time of horror, we must also take a poweful resolve – and communicate it it ceaselessly to our leaders – for a strong, effective climate agreement: the Paris Treaty.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

In twists and turns, efforts are mounting to protect the Americas’ biggest wild cat.

A Mexican initiative, the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation, unites non-governmental and governmental organizations in a new and “ambitious” program aimed at saving an emblematic creature.

“We think we will have a strong impact on jaguar conservation”, says Dr. Gerardo Ceballos, Alliance member and coordinator of the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) Ecology Institute.

The campaign’s centerpiece is an Alliance proposal for two long biological corridors dedicated to jaguar conservation. Contouring jaguar habitats of about 10 million acres, the first corridor is envisioned to run between the state of Tamaulipas and the Yucatan Peninsula in eastern Mexico. The second would extend from Sonora to Chiapas in the western side of the country.

According to Ceballos, Mexico’s jaguar population plunged from an estimated 20,000 animals at the beginning of the 20th century to 4,000 calculated during a 2009-2011 census. Accordingly, the Mexican Senate is reviewing the Alliance proposal to classify the biological corridors as natural protected areas.

An updated Mexican jaguar census is planned for 2016 while a hemispheric one is in the works for 2017, he says, while a Latin American symposium devoted to the creature of legend and lore will held in Mexico City next May.

Jaguar conservation means protecting the wider ecosystems

In addition to UNAM’s Ecology Institute, members of the Alliance include the World Wildlife Fund, Mexican mobile network provider Telcel, and the federal government’s National Commission of Protected Areas.

And a key supporter of the Alliance’s mission is the 6,600 acre private El Eden Ecology Reserve, located in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula near Cancun. Nearly half of Mexico’s jaguar population is found in the Yucatan, says the Reserve’s director, Marco Antonio Lazcano Barrero, so the region is crucial for preserving the endangered species.

Outstanding threats to Quintana Roo’s jaguars include poaching, habitat loss from touristic and urban development, rampant deforestation and climate change. But Lazcano says the indigenous Maya communities are vital allies in protecting El Eden’s jaguars from poachers. “This has cut (poaching) down to almost zero”, he says.

For Lazcano, protecting jaguars means protecting larger ecosystems. In a short paper, he terms the predatory animal a “keystone” or a “flag” species, positing that saving the Yucatan jaguar will translate into the survival of forests, wetlands, caves and underground river systems.

These underground rivers and their clean, lime-rich waters are are in turn “essential for the maintenance of the northernmost portion of the second largest barrier reef in the world” – a reference to the beautiful coral reef shelf that extends from near Cancun south to Honduras in the western Caribbean.

Speaking last month at a public event in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Lazcano explained how protecting the land of the jaguar in the Yucatan benefits the habitat of migratory birds from Canada, the US and northern Mexico. Citing studies, he calculates that more than 215 species of migratory birds can be found in the Yucatan at one time or another.

Given that jaguars cross borders, protecting the big cats in Mexico involves the United States and Central America, where the Alliance would like to connect land corridors that are viewed by experts as essential for the species’ genetic health.

Returning to the US after decades of persecution

Once native to the US, jaguars were the target of an official federal government extermination campaign and widely considered extinct in this country; the last documented female jaguar in the US was killed in Arizona in 1963.

However, several male animals have been spotted and/or photographed in the southern border areas of Arizona and New Mexico since 1996. The presence of females, which would imply the reestablishment of a breeding population, cannot be discounted. Balam, the sacred symbol of the Mayas, is back in its northern haunts.

Experts trace the contemporary presence of jaguars in the US Southwest to the wanderings of males from across the border in the Mexican state of Sonora. Oscar Moctezuma, founder and director of Naturalia, a Mexican NGO that operates a large jaguar reserve in Sonora, estimates that 150 jaguars live in the northern state.

But protecting the few jaguars that may be in the United States has proven a thorny issue. In 2014, as a result of successful litigation pursued by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Defenders of Wildlife, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), designated last year nearly 1,200 square miles of combined critical jaguar habitat in the southern borderlands of Arizona and New Mexico.

The court victory notwithstanding, the CBD’s Michael Robinson contends that the critical habitat designation didn’t go far enough, and should have included more areas near the border as well as farther into the interior. “The big area that should have been protected and wasn’t, was the Gila area of New Mexico where I live and the Mogollon Rim of Arizona”, he says.

According to Steve Spangle, Arizona field supervisor for the USFWS, his agency based its geographic designation on evidence of recent jaguar presence, not “rumors”, identifying the area south of Interstate 10 as the suitable zone for critical habitat. The USFWS is developing a final jaguar recovery plan, which will be published in the Federal Register for public comment.

Jeff Humphrey, public affairs specialist for the USFWS in Arizona, adds that the agency does not have a “solid target date” yet for the publication of the plan, but anticipates the spring of 2016.

Yes, this is America. New Mexico Ranchers sue …

Differences with the USFWS aside, the CBD and Defenders of Wildlife have intervened on the side of the federal government in a pending New Mexico court case challenging the critical habitat designation.

Last May, the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association and the New Mexico Federal Lands Council filed suit in US District Court in Albuquerque seeking to overturn the USFWS’ critical jaguar habitat designation of 170 square miles in New Mexico.

According to plaintiffs’ attorneys, tens of thousands of acres have been “illegally” impacted for a “phantom” animal that has not been sighted in the specific area in question for years. The suit asserts the USFWS violated the Endangered Species Act when the jaguar was listed in 1972, because the area in dispute was not occupied by the animal at the time and is “not essential for jaguar conservation.”

Although conceding that the there have been some sightings of jaguars in southern Arizona and New Mexico’s Hidalgo County since 1972, the lawsuit is based on the premise that the jaguar is mainly a tropical animal with a marginal presence in the US Southwest at best.

The New Mexico plaintiffs contend that not only would their livelihoods and economic pursuits be disturbed by the critical habitat designation, but that fire control in area forests could be impacted. “The determination that designated critical habitat in New Mexico is essential for species conservation is arbitrary and capricious”, the lawsuit states.

While not commenting directly on the lawsuit, Spangle says the critical habitat designation has minimal impact on landowner and farming interests since it does not affect hunting or grazing. The main effect is to force federal agencies that might have activities within the zone to first consult with the USFWS on jaguar concerns.

The good news? No litigation challenging the larger Arizona jaguar critical habitat zone has surfaced – so far.

400 years ago, jaguars roamed from California to North Carolina

According to Robinson, evidence exists that jaguars actually evolved in the upper parts of North America and then spread south to their present range. Four centuries ago, they even roamed the future continental US between the modern states of California and North Carolina.

And a strong US jaguar population remains essential to the species’ long term survival, say jaguar advocates. In a declaration filed in the New Mexico lawsuit, the Defenders of Wildlife’s Craig Miller argues that the small jaguar population in northern Sonora must expand to Arizona and New Mexico to remain viable.

Naturalia’s Oscar Moctezuma strongly backs international cooperation as critical for the jaguar’s survival, saying his organization maintains relationships with Defenders of Wildlife and like-minded US organizations.

Though few in number, Sonora’s jaguars enjoy certain advantages over their southern counterparts, benefiting from isolated ranges and lower human population densities, Moctezuma says.

To curb poaching, Naturalia has implemented a program of installing cameras in jaguar habitat and paying ranchers approximately $300 for each picture snapped of a jaguar, in return for agreements that the predators won’t be killed.

Saving jaguars, he insists, is not only important on its own merits, but also crucial for preserving the complexity and richness of “biodiversity in the country.” Indeed, the charisma – even sexiness – of jaguars, captures the public’s imagination and focuses attention on larger environmental questions, he believes.

Despite the myriad challenges, jaguar defenders are firmly committed to the big and elusive cat, says Moctezuma: “This is a long and complex arena that will take time, but we are in it.”

“It’s heartening that efforts are being made on a continental scale”, Robinson adds. “We need to look at how this original (Southwestern) range of the jaguar can contribute to the continental efforts.”

Kent Paterson writes for Frontera NorteSur.

This article was originally published on CounterPunch.

On a daily basis, I now seem to look at Britain’s newspaper headlines and am reminded of Longfellow’s lines in The Masque of Pandora: “Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

It isn’t just that the Conservative government has so quickly reverted to being the Ugly Party; dominated by values that are mean, divisive, short-term and vindictive. It is Britain’s descent into the stupid and suicidal that I find most painful.

The COP21 Paris Summit looms. The Met Office warns that we have already produced over 1C of global warming. The World Bank predicts that the lives of over 100m people will be devastated by climate crises unless we radically cut carbon emissions. And American military advisors warn that climate change will become ‘the Mother of all crises’.

So what does Britain do? It cuts ‘clean’, subsidises ‘dirty’, and then blames ‘clean’ for causing the crisis. We live in a country that is inhaling the wrong stuff.

Faced with a failure to meet European air quality standards, the British government asked for the standards to be lowered. Faced with a failure to meet the UK’s 2020 (legally binding) renewable energy targets, the government prefers to pay fines or look for loopholes.

Faced with an exaggerated / manufactured ‘crisis’ in electricity supply, the Government takes it as an opportunity to throw more subsidies at the most polluting energy sources. And faced with a collapse in the domestic steel industry, the government tries to blame it on ‘green’ energy rather than crap industrial policy.

This is the heady terrain of insanity.

Last Tango in Paris?

Jeremy Corbyn found himself elected as Labour Leader on a tidal wave of support that was looking for a new politics. This is what Britain should be taking to the Paris Summit – a politics looking for new answers to old problems, not old answers to new ones.

Paris will do its best to be constructive, but is already being sabotaged. US Secretary of State, John Kerry, laid bare the limitations America will impose: “It’s definitely not going to be a Treaty … There are not going to be legally binding reductions targets like Kyoto.”

So, Paris will be reduced to a Santa’s wish-list. Those looking for a more meaningful ‘tango’ will have to find more willing partners to dance with. The COP21 Summit will have to be constructively disrupted if it is to stand a chance of saving us from ourselves.

In one form or another, global carbon-budgeting must be put on the table. Then we must work out how to share this budget equitably. It will involve tearing up (and re-writing) most of today’s global trade agreements. This won’t go down well with the WTO (or the locust interests that feed off it), but the only worthwhile remit that can be given to the organisation now must involve putting the interests of ‘World’ before those of ‘Trade’.

In essence, this means internalising all of the ecological and human costs currently sidelined as ‘externalities’ in trade agreements. These include the costs of pollution, shipping, aviation and environmental degradation – in carbon emissions, water depletion, biodiversity loss and health damage.

A carbon tax on shipping and aviation, if collected by (or paid across to) the World Bank / UN, would provide the funds needed to for climate mitigation and reparation, already urgently needed in the most vulnerable parts of the planet. If Paris is not to be allowed to talk of binding carbon obligations, let it at least engage with binding carbon taxes

Paris will only succeed in keeping the Earth within 2C warming if it can work backwards from the target to reduce atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to 350ppm. And if the world is to lighten its ecological ‘footprint’ in this way, we need a new approach to both sustainable production and sustainable trade.

One element will inevitably include the ‘domestication’ of carbon responsibilities – that is, taking responsibility for the carbon emissions right through the supply chain that sustains us. For the UK, understanding this could usefully begin with its current crisis in steel.

The making of things

David Cameron sounded less like a Prime Minister and more like a braying seaside donkey when he implied that investments in UK clean technologies (such as wind turbines and solar farms) were responsible for pushing up bills for the steel industry and small business owners.

“We have to have a balance here”, he told the CBI. “What do we need to secure green safe clean energy supplies and a proper balance in our electricity generation and what to we need to make sure our businesses are competitive. I might get a question later on from the steel industry and the problems they’ve had in dealing with high energy bills.”

Europe’s biggest ‘producer’ economy – Germany – worked out how to avoid this trap, but the UK government intentionally walked into it. No one can consume steel (or anything else) without there being a carbon price to be paid for it, somewhere. Germany exempts heavy industry from clean energy levies, accepts the carbon consequences of producing goods, but still sets (and meets) carbon reduction targets. And their domestic industries have to play a part in this.

Britain’s deregulated economics will not entertain this. It’s pretend economics prefers to let industries close, see goods imported, and hide the carbon impact under the rug of trade ‘liberalisation’.

Today’s free-trade agreements ignore carbon emissions completely, both in production and shipment. Britain’s slide into an economics of consumption and speculation has even enshrined this into the remit of its Climate Change Committee. The ‘offshore’ carbon footprint of imported goods does not even count in UK carbon emissions.

The problem is rooted, not in a global glut of steel production, but that none of it – notably including shipping – come within carbon budgets that have to be accounted for (and reduced). Britain could make a case for the ‘domestication’ of the entirety of these responsibilities.

Suppose the UK government decided it was actually going to meet its EU 2020 renewable energy commitments. This would probably need an extra 5.5GW of onshore wind and 3.5GW of offshore. That, on its own, would require around 1.5m tonnes of steel over the next five years. Add to this the iron and steel needed for rail infrastructure improvements and the introduction of new fleets of electric / hydrogen / biofuel busses, and you have the basis of a healthy domestic order book.

None of this reduces carbon emissions per se. It just brings the responsibility back home. Then, as in Germany, you can challenge industry to come up with less carbon-intensive production methods, to devise innovative ‘storage’ schemes, and use surplus ‘heat’ to reduce carbon emissions coming from heating our own homes.

Industries with a future can come up with answers to how we live more lightly. Dead industries (and import dependence) cannot.

One Planet Osborne?

However unlikely it may seem, this could even define an ecological space in which Labour met Osborne.

The Chancellor’s obsession with austerity and ‘living within our means’ needs re-focusing. He is just chasing the wrong ‘budget’ to balance. Labour’s olive branch to Osborne should be the commitment to a balanced UK ‘carbon’ budget. First and foremost this means reducing energy consumption – rather than benefits.

In 2006, Germany began a 20 year programme to raise all its housing stock to ‘near-zero’ carbon standards. Their KfW bank offers long-term, low interest loans to do so (and writes off up to 17.5% if improvement is to the highest energy efficiency standards). In the process, it delivers shed-loads of jobs. In fact, the majority of jobs in Germany’s Energiewende programme are now in energy saving rather than energy generating. Others are following suit.

The Netherlands has its own Energiesprong (energy leap) programme delivering a 10-day (minimally intrusive) transformation programme for existing buildings – wrapping them with external insulation, installing better roofs, and including solar panels. With 50% of domestic carbon emissions coming from heating needs, this is a smart place to start.

But ‘smart’ is also becoming a whole lot smarter. In Europe alone. There are some 6,500 towns, cities and regions en route to transforming themselves into more sustainable entities. This involves localising energy grids, developing new networks for energy storage, using surpluses (or wastes) to deliver low carbon transport, and using smart technologies, turning cities into their own ‘virtual’ power stations.

In the UK, such an exciting approach could put the Chancellor back on the planet we must all live on. But would he want to go there? The evidence suggests not.

The semantics of self-delusion

Along with other Member States, Britain is expected to comply with the 2010 EU Energy Efficiency Directive. This Directive requires that, by the end of 2020, “all new buildings are nearly zero-energy buildings”. For all new buildings owned or occupied by the public sector the compliance date is even earlier (2018).

Following that, there are duties to set targets for the refurbishment of existing buildings to the same near-zero energy standards. It is a world full of excitement, innovation … and jobs. Britain’s response, however, seems to be more off-planet than off-message.

The Chancellor has cancelled Britain’s Zero Carbon Homes commitment for new homes, and now has no programme for refurbishment. Asked about compliance with the Energy Efficiency Directive, UK house-builders drag their feet, saying merely that they are in discussions with the government about the meaning of the word ‘nearly’. You can see where this is going.

This, in essence, is the problem that bedevils British politics. Faced with the prospects of transformation, Britain invariably opts for evasion. Faced with the challenge of living within ecological limits, we always pretend they can be ignored or deferred. But the time for prevarication has gone.

Climate crises can no longer be avoided, but catastrophe still can. Living better is still within our reach, but only if it is ‘lighter’ … and only if stripped of delusions that the Masque of Pandora presents as reality.

If the Paris Summit cannot discard the madness, then society will have to do so for itself. Survival now depends on it. To borrow the words of Prometheus in Longfellow’s Masque:

“Assert thyself; rise up to thy full height;
Shake from thy soul these dreams effeminate,
These passions born of indolence and ease.
Resolve, and thou art free. But breathe the air
Of mountains, and their unapproachable summits
Will lift thee to the level of themselves.”

Alan Simpson is an advisor and campaigner on energy and climate policies. For 18 years he was a Labour MP and was the architect of Feed-in-Tariff amendments in the Energy Act 2008. Alan lives in an Eco-house in Nottingham and is a member of two energy co-ops. He is a net supplier of electricity to the grid.

On a daily basis, I now seem to look at Britain’s newspaper headlines and am reminded of Longfellow’s lines in The Masque of Pandora: “Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

It isn’t just that the Conservative government has so quickly reverted to being the Ugly Party; dominated by values that are mean, divisive, short-term and vindictive. It is Britain’s descent into the stupid and suicidal that I find most painful.

The COP21 Paris Summit looms. The Met Office warns that we have already produced over 1C of global warming. The World Bank predicts that the lives of over 100m people will be devastated by climate crises unless we radically cut carbon emissions. And American military advisors warn that climate change will become ‘the Mother of all crises’.

So what does Britain do? It cuts ‘clean’, subsidises ‘dirty’, and then blames ‘clean’ for causing the crisis. We live in a country that is inhaling the wrong stuff.

Faced with a failure to meet European air quality standards, the British government asked for the standards to be lowered. Faced with a failure to meet the UK’s 2020 (legally binding) renewable energy targets, the government prefers to pay fines or look for loopholes.

Faced with an exaggerated / manufactured ‘crisis’ in electricity supply, the Government takes it as an opportunity to throw more subsidies at the most polluting energy sources. And faced with a collapse in the domestic steel industry, the government tries to blame it on ‘green’ energy rather than crap industrial policy.

This is the heady terrain of insanity.

Last Tango in Paris?

Jeremy Corbyn found himself elected as Labour Leader on a tidal wave of support that was looking for a new politics. This is what Britain should be taking to the Paris Summit – a politics looking for new answers to old problems, not old answers to new ones.

Paris will do its best to be constructive, but is already being sabotaged. US Secretary of State, John Kerry, laid bare the limitations America will impose: “It’s definitely not going to be a Treaty … There are not going to be legally binding reductions targets like Kyoto.”

So, Paris will be reduced to a Santa’s wish-list. Those looking for a more meaningful ‘tango’ will have to find more willing partners to dance with. The COP21 Summit will have to be constructively disrupted if it is to stand a chance of saving us from ourselves.

In one form or another, global carbon-budgeting must be put on the table. Then we must work out how to share this budget equitably. It will involve tearing up (and re-writing) most of today’s global trade agreements. This won’t go down well with the WTO (or the locust interests that feed off it), but the only worthwhile remit that can be given to the organisation now must involve putting the interests of ‘World’ before those of ‘Trade’.

In essence, this means internalising all of the ecological and human costs currently sidelined as ‘externalities’ in trade agreements. These include the costs of pollution, shipping, aviation and environmental degradation – in carbon emissions, water depletion, biodiversity loss and health damage.

A carbon tax on shipping and aviation, if collected by (or paid across to) the World Bank / UN, would provide the funds needed to for climate mitigation and reparation, already urgently needed in the most vulnerable parts of the planet. If Paris is not to be allowed to talk of binding carbon obligations, let it at least engage with binding carbon taxes

Paris will only succeed in keeping the Earth within 2C warming if it can work backwards from the target to reduce atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to 350ppm. And if the world is to lighten its ecological ‘footprint’ in this way, we need a new approach to both sustainable production and sustainable trade.

One element will inevitably include the ‘domestication’ of carbon responsibilities – that is, taking responsibility for the carbon emissions right through the supply chain that sustains us. For the UK, understanding this could usefully begin with its current crisis in steel.

The making of things

David Cameron sounded less like a Prime Minister and more like a braying seaside donkey when he implied that investments in UK clean technologies (such as wind turbines and solar farms) were responsible for pushing up bills for the steel industry and small business owners.

“We have to have a balance here”, he told the CBI. “What do we need to secure green safe clean energy supplies and a proper balance in our electricity generation and what to we need to make sure our businesses are competitive. I might get a question later on from the steel industry and the problems they’ve had in dealing with high energy bills.”

Europe’s biggest ‘producer’ economy – Germany – worked out how to avoid this trap, but the UK government intentionally walked into it. No one can consume steel (or anything else) without there being a carbon price to be paid for it, somewhere. Germany exempts heavy industry from clean energy levies, accepts the carbon consequences of producing goods, but still sets (and meets) carbon reduction targets. And their domestic industries have to play a part in this.

Britain’s deregulated economics will not entertain this. It’s pretend economics prefers to let industries close, see goods imported, and hide the carbon impact under the rug of trade ‘liberalisation’.

Today’s free-trade agreements ignore carbon emissions completely, both in production and shipment. Britain’s slide into an economics of consumption and speculation has even enshrined this into the remit of its Climate Change Committee. The ‘offshore’ carbon footprint of imported goods does not even count in UK carbon emissions.

The problem is rooted, not in a global glut of steel production, but that none of it – notably including shipping – come within carbon budgets that have to be accounted for (and reduced). Britain could make a case for the ‘domestication’ of the entirety of these responsibilities.

Suppose the UK government decided it was actually going to meet its EU 2020 renewable energy commitments. This would probably need an extra 5.5GW of onshore wind and 3.5GW of offshore. That, on its own, would require around 1.5m tonnes of steel over the next five years. Add to this the iron and steel needed for rail infrastructure improvements and the introduction of new fleets of electric / hydrogen / biofuel busses, and you have the basis of a healthy domestic order book.

None of this reduces carbon emissions per se. It just brings the responsibility back home. Then, as in Germany, you can challenge industry to come up with less carbon-intensive production methods, to devise innovative ‘storage’ schemes, and use surplus ‘heat’ to reduce carbon emissions coming from heating our own homes.

Industries with a future can come up with answers to how we live more lightly. Dead industries (and import dependence) cannot.

One Planet Osborne?

However unlikely it may seem, this could even define an ecological space in which Labour met Osborne.

The Chancellor’s obsession with austerity and ‘living within our means’ needs re-focusing. He is just chasing the wrong ‘budget’ to balance. Labour’s olive branch to Osborne should be the commitment to a balanced UK ‘carbon’ budget. First and foremost this means reducing energy consumption – rather than benefits.

In 2006, Germany began a 20 year programme to raise all its housing stock to ‘near-zero’ carbon standards. Their KfW bank offers long-term, low interest loans to do so (and writes off up to 17.5% if improvement is to the highest energy efficiency standards). In the process, it delivers shed-loads of jobs. In fact, the majority of jobs in Germany’s Energiewende programme are now in energy saving rather than energy generating. Others are following suit.

The Netherlands has its own Energiesprong (energy leap) programme delivering a 10-day (minimally intrusive) transformation programme for existing buildings – wrapping them with external insulation, installing better roofs, and including solar panels. With 50% of domestic carbon emissions coming from heating needs, this is a smart place to start.

But ‘smart’ is also becoming a whole lot smarter. In Europe alone. There are some 6,500 towns, cities and regions en route to transforming themselves into more sustainable entities. This involves localising energy grids, developing new networks for energy storage, using surpluses (or wastes) to deliver low carbon transport, and using smart technologies, turning cities into their own ‘virtual’ power stations.

In the UK, such an exciting approach could put the Chancellor back on the planet we must all live on. But would he want to go there? The evidence suggests not.

The semantics of self-delusion

Along with other Member States, Britain is expected to comply with the 2010 EU Energy Efficiency Directive. This Directive requires that, by the end of 2020, “all new buildings are nearly zero-energy buildings”. For all new buildings owned or occupied by the public sector the compliance date is even earlier (2018).

Following that, there are duties to set targets for the refurbishment of existing buildings to the same near-zero energy standards. It is a world full of excitement, innovation … and jobs. Britain’s response, however, seems to be more off-planet than off-message.

The Chancellor has cancelled Britain’s Zero Carbon Homes commitment for new homes, and now has no programme for refurbishment. Asked about compliance with the Energy Efficiency Directive, UK house-builders drag their feet, saying merely that they are in discussions with the government about the meaning of the word ‘nearly’. You can see where this is going.

This, in essence, is the problem that bedevils British politics. Faced with the prospects of transformation, Britain invariably opts for evasion. Faced with the challenge of living within ecological limits, we always pretend they can be ignored or deferred. But the time for prevarication has gone.

Climate crises can no longer be avoided, but catastrophe still can. Living better is still within our reach, but only if it is ‘lighter’ … and only if stripped of delusions that the Masque of Pandora presents as reality.

If the Paris Summit cannot discard the madness, then society will have to do so for itself. Survival now depends on it. To borrow the words of Prometheus in Longfellow’s Masque:

“Assert thyself; rise up to thy full height;
Shake from thy soul these dreams effeminate,
These passions born of indolence and ease.
Resolve, and thou art free. But breathe the air
Of mountains, and their unapproachable summits
Will lift thee to the level of themselves.”

Alan Simpson is an advisor and campaigner on energy and climate policies. For 18 years he was a Labour MP and was the architect of Feed-in-Tariff amendments in the Energy Act 2008. Alan lives in an Eco-house in Nottingham and is a member of two energy co-ops. He is a net supplier of electricity to the grid.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published its conclusion on the safety of glyphosate and whether its EU approval should be renewed.

And their answer is … glyphosate “is  unlikely to be genotoxic  (i.e. damaging to DNA) or to pose a carcinogenic threat to humans.”

This contrasts with the finding of the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans“ and the statement of IARC expert Prof Chris Portier that it is “definitely genotoxic”.

EFSA also proposes to raise the maximum safe daily dose of glyphosate from 0.3 to 0.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.

But food campaigners are adamant that the EFSA reached the wrong decision. Greenpeace EU food policy director Franziska Achterberg commented: “EFSA’s safety assurances on glyphosate raise serious questions about its scientific independence.

“Much of its report is taken directly from unpublished studies commissioned by glyphosate producers. The evidence of harm is irrefutable but EFSA has defied the world’s most authoritative cancer agency in order to please corporations like Monsanto.”

Under EU law, a presumed link to cancer means a pesticide cannot be used, unless human exposure can be shown to be ‘negligible’. So the EFSA finding opens the door for the European Commission to recommend that glyphosate should still be used in the EU after its current approval runs out on 30th June 2016.

EFSA considered ‘more studies’ than IARC

EFSA says it considered more studies than the IARC, claiming that this additional evidence made its report more authoritative. And it’s true – EFSA evaluated six industry-sponsored animal experiments that the WHO did not include in its review.

However the IARC omitted these studies because neither the studies, nor the data on which they are based, have been published or subjected to peer review. IARC policy is to consider only studies published in the scientific literature in order to ensures transparency for the public and the scientific community.

The contradiction between IARC’s report and EU Authorities on glyphosate classification was examined by toxicologist Dr Peter Clausing of Pesticides Action Network (PAN) Germany, who detected major flaws in the assessment of glyphosate by the German regulator BfR.

In his critical review, Dr Clausing highlights that even without considering independent academic literature, significant tumour incidences were found in five mice studies and at least two rat studies of the regulatory animal experiments produced by the industry. However BfR and EFSA dismissed these findings by

• cheating on the use of the control groups;
• overlooking statistically significant results;
• considering cancer incidences from human epidemiology studies as inconsistent;
• dismissing genotoxicity data as ierelevant due to the claimed lack of carcinogenic effects.

PAN Europe’s Chemicals Officer Hans Muilerman said: “EFSA’s opinion violates the precautionary principle; BfR and EFSA only conclude to adverse effects in case of overwhelming evidence; in case of doubt they give the advantage of the doubt to industry instead of giving priority to the protection of human health and the environment.”

Glyphosate is only a single ingredient in herbicide products

Another difference in approach is, as EFSA comments, “The IARC report looked at both glyphosate – an  active  substance – and glyphosate-based formulations, grouping all formulations regardless of their composition. The EU  assessment, on the other hand, considered only glyphosate.”

So although several of these industry studies support the IARC classification by showing increased cancer rates in animals following exposure to glyposate herbicides such as Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ formulations, EFSA claims these cannot be attributed to glyphosate as a single ingredient.

According to EFSA it is “likely” that the “genotoxic effects observed in some glyphosate-based formulations are related to the other constituents or ‘co-formulants’ …certain glyphosate-based formulations display higher toxicity than that of the active ingredient, presumably because of the presence of co-formulants.”

But EFSA insists that it’s not its job to consider the glyphosate products and formulations that are actually used – that’s down to national regulators: “Member states are responsible for evaluating each plant protection product that is marketed in their territories.”

Technically EFSA is right. EU-wide pesticide regulation, which EFSA opinions feed into, only considers the isolated active ingredient in a pesticide – glyphosate, in the case of Roundup. But as Claire Robinson of GMWatch observes: “Anyone who thinks the member states will save us from glyphosate herbicide toxicity probably has not looked at the current state of national member state expertise.

“In addition, the public interest work to unravel the web of secrecy surrounding national pesticide regulators of member states and to uncover their potential conflicts of interest with industry has barely begun. If we leave it to member states to regulate formulations, it will never happen. The real battle against glyphosate herbicides and similar toxic products will likely be fought and won between consumers and retailers.”

The final hurdle for glyphosate – the European Chemicals Agency

Health risks associated with the use of glyphosate, including the link to cancer, will also be investigated by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), which will begin consulting on their findings at the end of this month.

According to Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, the ECHA “may still condemn glyphosate and prevent the weed killer being re-approved under EU law.”

However, ECHA is not expected to release its report until 2017. And the danger is that the Commission could pre-empt the ECHA’s findings by granting a 10-year licence for glyphosate in 2016, before the ECHA publishes its conclusions – and potential outcome that Achterberg describes as “senseless”.

“The EFSA decision is absolutely no surprise”, said Melchett. “Given that this review of glyphosate relies almost entirely on industry funded, unpublished studies, it would be unthinkable for the EFSA to come to any conclusion other than that glyphosate is safe to use.

“The reason that other eminent international scientists advising the WHO have already come to different conclusions is, as the EFSA themselves admit, purely because the other scientists are considering a much wider range of evidence than just industry studies, and they are looking at the impacts of glyphosate as it is actually used.
 
Although glyphosate is always used in combination with a range of other often toxic chemicals, and although researchers have found that glyphosate mixes as sold to farmers and gardeners can be 1,000 times more toxic than glyphosate acting on its own, the EFSA insists on looking at the impact of glyphosate alone.

“It is blindingly obvious that the WHO approach is right from the perspective of public safety, and that the EFSA approach simply serves the interests of the pesticide companies.”

Principal source: GMWatch.

Also on The Ecologist

• ‘Glyphosate – EFSA must make a full and open scientific assessment‘ by Jorgo Riss, K. Jensen & F. Veillerette.
• ‘Don’t let Monsanto deny glyphosate carcinogenicity!‘ by Professor Peter Saunders.
• ‘IARC: Glyphosate probably carcinogenic‘ by Oliver Tickell.
• ‘Ruthless power and deleterious politics: from DDT to Roundup‘ by Evaggelos Vallianatos.
• ‘Roundup – a converging pattern of toxicity from farm to clinic to laboratory‘ by Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji / ISIS.
• ‘Toxic glyphosate herbicides fly under the EU’s regulatory radar‘ by Pete Farrer & Marianne Falck.

A sudden, unannounced, change to the third reading of the Finance Bill at the end of October will have a devastating impact on community energy schemes in the UK.

The Treasury has stated that community energy projects will be excluded from the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) tax reliefs as soon as the 30th November 2015.

They have further stated that community energy schemes will be excluded from Social Investment Tax Relief (or SITR), reversing the Government’s previous statement in March 2015.

This leaves only a small window of opportunity for community energy organisations to raise investment for projects in the pipeline under EIS and SEIS tax reliefs. Many are now moving fast to raise funds while they still can.

But a number of projects have already folded, some at an advanced stage, with hundreds of thousands of pounds invested. One such is Abingdon Hydro, which was set to install twin Archides screw turbines on the Thames in Oxfordshire, and had raised £815,000 for the project from local supporters. As the group explains:

“This was a true community project, offering something for everyone – not just sustainable electricity, but a place to view the river and see water power up close, a fish pass designed as a natural flowing stream, an area that was formerly overgrown with brambles replanted for people and wildlife, better provision of white water for the canoe clubs, an educational resource, a tourist attraction, and a community fund to support other environmental projects.

“But finances and the clock were against us. We had deadlines to meet, and the sheer complexity of the regulations was slowing progress. Then over the last few months the incentives that were designed to encourage groups like ours have been cut drastically.”

The cost of EIS to community energy? Just £11 million

It’s hard to understand Treasury’s rationale for the switch. Last year community energy raised £36m for 75 schemes, and has been the fastest growing area of community investment.

Those schemes have cost the Treasury £11 million in tax relief – hardly a great sum in the scheme of things. But even then that has to be balanced against jobs created, VAT, income tax and National Insurance collected, and carbon saved.

The Community Energy England survey, published in October, found that 38 of the community energy groups surveyed had received £7.4 million in Feed-in Tariff subsidies since the scheme began in 2010. Together with the EIS relief, that has brought in £50 million of private investment and generated £45 million for local economies.

The tax reliefs are important to community energy projects as the risks are often higher than commercial projects as returns to investors are capped to maximise the community benefit they generate.

Coupled with previous changes to planning law and proposed reduction to the Feed-in Tariffs, these changes will put massive strains on the community energy sector. Most investment into community renewables comes from local people who want to back renewable energy schemes in their area and see the community benefit.

Community energy schemes result in an extraordinary range of benefits beyond reduction of carbon emissions: support for fuel poverty, free energy provision in schools, improvements to community buildings, computers for low income schools, improving wildlife areas and providing local healthcare services.

As Emma Bridge, CEO of Community Energy England, explains: “Community energy enables people to take greater control over how energy is generated as well as ensuring wider benefits are fed back to the local area. Schemes offer a range of benefits from reducing energy bills and developing skills to generating revenue in the local economy, as well as the more obvious benefit of encouraging the production of cleaner energy.”

Imposed at the last moment with no consultation

The change in legislation applies to community energy organisations that are registered as community benefit societies (IPSs) or community interest companies (CICs) and have community benefit embedded in their rules or articles of association.

These community benefits had, until now, been supported by individual investors encouraged by the 30% tax relief. Many of these schemes may not go ahead and the carbon reduction and all the community benefits will be lost.

This policy change has not been consulted on and goes back on previous promises to allow community energy schemes to benefit from the new Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR). And, what’s more, there hasn’t been adequate warning of the closure of the current tax relief mechanisms, which undermines investment in the sector.

Community energy schemes are currently eligible for Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) relief. This was to be removed but a six-month transition period SITR was to be permitted in order to allow all schemes to make advance applications for relief to HMRC and then to have time to complete their offers.

However, EIS and SEIS relief is now to be withdrawn with no prospect of SITR being made available.

Many community energy organisations have responded by launching sooner rather than later to take advantage of EIS tax relief while it’s still available to their investors. This has triggered a surge in community energy share offers launching on Ethex, the positive investment and savings platform.

These include: Bristol Energy Cooperative; Wolverton Community Energy in Milton Keynes; Meadow Blue Community Energy in Merston, West Sussex; Bath and West Community Energy; Wiltshire Wildlife Community Energy in Wroughton, Wiltshire); and Nottinghamshire Community Energy in Colton Basset.

Osborne must withdraw this inexplicable measure

One hundred and fourteen organisations – including Ethex and Community Energy England – have now signed a letter to the Chancellor, the Rt Hon George Osborne MP, to ask him to reconsider the proposed amendments to the Finance Bill. As the letter states:

“The proposal to deny community energy investors access to both Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) tax relief and Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) is seen by many in the sector as the final nail in the coffin for future projects; especially given numerous recent assurances on admissibility and coming on top of proposals to significantly reduce Feed-in Tariff rates, remove access to pre-accreditation and remove Climate Change Levy exemptions.”

This is perhaps the largest mobilization of community energy groups yet, and reflects the outrage felt in the sector. There has been no prior warning of this policy change and no explanation of why the government has decided to take this step. Indeed the Conservative Manifesto for the 2015 election states that the party would “give more people the power and support to … start their own social enterprise.”

Given the potential that community investment has shown to deliver strong social and environmental benefit to society, at little or no cost to the tax payer, it is surprising that Government shows so little inclination to support it.

I, and my colleagues in the sector, call on George Osborne to withdraw this wholly unnecessary measure which will save so little, and cost so much.

Georgina Matthews is marketing executive at Ethex, the not-for-profit positive investment platform that offers potential investors the opportunity to invest online in a wide range of savings and investment products – offering strong social and environmental benefits, as well as a financial return. 

Ethex has raised nearly £20 million into 40+ social businesses and won Investment Deal of the Year at the 2014 Social Enterprise Awards, the Finance Award at the 2014 PEA Awards, the Sustainable Finance Award at the 2015 Sustainable City Awards and, most recently, the Community Energy Funding Award in the 2015 Community Energy Awards.See Ethex’s Positive Investing Report 2015.

Polling by the Department of Energy and Climate Change shows that over three quarters of people – 76% – support renewable energy in the UK.

Solar energy is the most popular of all energy generation technologies with 80% support. Even onshore wind, widely attacked in the UK’s right-wing media, enjoys the support of two thirds of respondents.

“Support for renewable energy has been consistently high during the tracker at around 75-80%”, the survey found. “Opposition to renewables was very low at 5%, with only 1% strongly opposed.

“Support for onshore wind has also increased slightly since it was last included in polling 6 months ago, rising from 65% to 66%, despite the Government’s decision to end financial support for future onshore wind projects.”

Leonie Greene, Head of External Affairs at the Solar Trade Association said: “These very high levels of public support for solar show yet again that this sunshine technology is the nation’s favourite source of energy.

“No other technology empowers consumers and communities to take charge of their energy bill and act on climate change like solar power. By cutting support for solar the government is taking power away from people, organisations and communities all over the UK – and they don’t like it one bit.”

Meanwhile, Government admits renewables policy fail

But news of the popularity of renewables comes at an awkward time for Amber Rudd, Energy Secretary. She has pushed through a series of huge cuts aimed at renewables, targetting onshore wind and solar in particular.

And yesterday The Ecologist published a leaked letter from Rudd in which she admitted that the UK was set to miss its EU renewable energy target of sourcing 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020 by 25%, a gap of 50 TWh (terawatt hours) per year.

Questioned by the the Energy and Climate Change Committee today Rudd at first faced a stinging rebuke from its chairman: “We have looked at the leaked material and your previous statements to the House and our assessment is that whether or not it was your intention to mislead, there was indeed some misleading use of language … so can we begin by bringing some clarity?”

She then admitted the UK does not have the right policies in place to meet its EU target. The letter published by The Ecologist, stating that the UK was on track to get just 11.5% of energy from renewables by 2020, was accurate, she conceded.

But she astonished MPs by denying that the cuts to solar and wind power had contributed to the UK’s trajectory to miss its EU renewable energy target, and insisting that the shortfall must be filled by renewable heat, and by more biofuels in petrol and diesel:

“It’s my aim we should meet the 2020 target. I recognise we don’t have the right policies, particularly in transport and heat, but we have four to five years and I remain committed to making the target.”

And she refused to consider any reversal of the cuts to renewable electricity from solar and onshore wind that she has already pushed through: “I think it would be a mistake to abandon heat and transport, they need to make their contribution on the renewable targets.”

Friends of the Earth warns of legal challenge

Meanwhile the government faces a legal challenge from Friends of the Earth if it fails to put in place a credible plan for meeting its 2020 renewables targets.

The UK got 20% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2014, but will need much more if it is to reach its overall energy targets, said Friends of the Earth energy campaigner Alasdair Cameron:

“Without serious additional action the UK is on course to miss its legally binding renewable energy targets for 2020 – and recently proposed cuts to support for wind and solar technologies will make matters worse. 

“We will be writing to the Government to set out our concerns and warn of the potential legal consequences if its renewable energy action plan is inadequate. Renewable energy is the future – the Government must get on board and help build the low carbon, affordable economy we so urgently need.”

The Green Party MP Caroline Lucas MP said the government’s energy policies were “in tatters”, adding: “To create jobs and tackle climate change, the UK should be leading the way on clean home-grown energy. Ministers must get a grip and urgently act to ensure we meet all of our renewable energy targets.”

RenewableUK’s Deputy Chief Executive Maf Smith said: “We hope that ministers will look at these figures carefully and listen to what the thousands of voters who took part in this official Government poll are telling them.
 
“If the Government is worried about meeting its renewable energy targets, wind can help make up the shortfall. It makes sense to reduce our dependence on imports and to tackle climate change using our superb home-grown resources.” 

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Petition: Debate a vote of no confidence in Rt Hon Amber Rudd Sec of State (DECC).

This story begins back in 1998 when a friend and I, being young and naïve, bought some land in the Nuimi district of The Gambia in West Africa.

I had only meant to have a quick adventure, get some headspace and learn some traditional African drumming. Anyway, we teamed up with some local Gambians and started working together on this four-acre plot of semi wild scrub.

The land lies on the estuary of the river Gambia and it supports an amazing array of birdlife, as well as some huge baobab trees, a giant teak, lots of palms, and an area of rice field.

I fell in love with this place, where life felt very simple and where we were able to work without the sense of bureaucracy that I was used to in the UK. At that time, aged 23, I knew little and learned a lot.

On and off, I spent seven years visiting, digging wells, drumming, planting trees and inviting visitors to camp with me over the winter months. We helped to support the maintenance of the project through our humble means. Then came studies, two children, and life. I left my Gambian friend Kabiro and his family living there, I didn’t visit for a long time, and lost touch.

Transformed – into a flourishing community garden

When I returned earlier this year after a seven-year absence, I had no idea what to expect. What I found was that the place has now become a community garden and is used by several local families.

Although many of the wells have fallen in, and the fence has half disappeared, the trees we planted fifteen years ago are now producing coconuts, mangoes, cashews, and other fruits. There is a sense of both dilapidation, and vibrant growth, and I hope and believe, that a crowd funding campaign can help to create a sustainable sense of growth within this small community.

I enjoy getting my hands in the earth, and I am also a musician. One of the things that I love about working in West Africa, is that instead of taking a break to collapse into a chair, people often drum, dance and sing to generate energy.

Now that I’ve grown up a bit, I feel that I have an opportunity to do something really positive, and to give my energy to a place and to people who don’t have the same benefits and opportunities as we have in the ‘West’. If I can keep drumming and dancing I’m sure it will all work out.

I don’t feel that it’s about ‘us’ helping ‘them’. I feel it’s about helping each other. There’s a lot we can learn from Africa; how to smile in the face of adversity, how to work to a rhythm instead of to a deadline, how to make do with little and how to be in community.

Visions of a green, productive, joyous future

I’m now hatching plans, not just to maintain this wonderful resource, but to grow it and help to make new and exciting things happen. We are raising money through a crowd funding campaign to set up accommodation on site and a borehole for clean drinking water.

With these two things, we can improve both the quality of life for the Gambians involved, and create opportunities for visitors from abroad to come and support and experience the joys and challenges of Gambian life.

From the amazing birdlife, to the goats that roam and destroy the gardens … From the traditional Mandinka drumming and dancing to the fixation of the youth of living in Europe … From the battle to stave off the Sahara desert, to the peace and tranquility of the nearby Atlantic Ocean, there is a lot to be experienced.

Some of the things we want to bring to the project in the future are to facilitate and encourage organic vegetable growing, develop the forest garden, start a community tree nursery, explore alternative technologies, and support local musicians and craftspeople.

Support the ‘Kinkeling Community Garden – Sound of the Gambia project’ through the crowd funding campaign until 7th December 2015. Every little helps, and you needn’t go away empty handed either. We are offering loads of great perks including a range of drums made by our favorite wood carver in The Gambia, kinkeling calendars full of bright images from the garden, music downloads to keep you dancing, and much more.

Allan Kerr is a musician based in Devon, UK. He performs with the band Ombiviolum who have played at the Resurgence Summer camp.

The traditional fox hunting season began at the start of this month, and the hunts no doubt hope this is the last year their cruel pastime will be hampered by the restrictions of the Hunting Act.

With the Conservative government still proclaiming its commitment to a vote on hunting, and a government Order proposing changes to the Act still on the table, it is important to understand what these changes would mean.

Earlier this year the Westminster government attempted to seriously weaken the Hunting Act in England and Wales under the guise of bringing parity with Scottish legislation.

What were described as ‘minor tweaks’ needed to iron out anomalies between the two laws were actually substantial changes that would have made the Act unenforceable and led to a dramatic increase in animal suffering.

How many dogs does it take to flush out a fox?

Both anti-hunting laws currently include exemptions to permit the ‘control’ of mammals in certain specific circumstances. In both England and Scotland dogs can be used to flush a wild mammal out of cover to be shot by waiting guns if undertaken for the purpose of reducing serious damage to livestock, game birds, crops, property or biodiversity.

Only two dogs may be used for this purpose in England whereas in Scotland there is no limit on the number of dogs.

The Government’s proposed changes would remove the limit on the number of dogs used for flushing to guns in England, seemingly bringing parity with Scotland.

However, Scotland has only ten hunts yet enforcement of the exemption has proven difficult as demonstrated by a League investigation last year, which showed half of the hunts claiming to be flushing to guns – but without a single gun in sight. With 300 hunts in England and Wales enforcement would be nearly impossible.

But there are also serious welfare problems with allowing the use of more dogs. While it may be more efficient at flushing animals from cover, it makes the dogs much more difficult to control, especially in dense cover. A pack of dogs is much more likely to catch and kill a fox, hare or even deer before it breaks from cover and can be shot. It is also difficult to get a clean shot with 30-40 dogs running around the animal.

Earlier this year League investigators filmed a Welsh fox hunt flushing a fox to waiting guns using a full pack of hounds (in contravention of the Hunting Act). However, the hounds caught and killed the fox while the men with guns were out of sight.

Our investigators returned the next day and collected the dead fox. An autopsy revealed the fox had been shot and wounded before it was killed by the hounds. This demonstrates the difficulty in a) controlling a pack of dogs and b) taking a clean shot when a pack of dogs is present.

These welfare concerns are confirmed in a new report by world fox expert Professor Stephen Harris at the University of Bristol. He believes that using two dogs to flush foxes is likely to ensure higher levels of welfare since the dogs are easier to control and the fox is flushed more slowly, reducing the risk that it will be wounded rather than killed by the waiting guns.

This report has been submitted to the Scottish government which has committed to review the hunting legislation (Protection of Wild Mammals Act) in Scotland this year with a view to strengthening it if necessary.

Dogs as binoculars for observation and study?

But there were more alarming changes proposed as part of the Government’s attempt to weaken the Act. The England and Wales legislation already contains one exemption that is not allowed in Scotland: two dogs can be used for the purpose of, or in connection with, the observation or study of a wild mammal.

The exemption states the dogs must be kept under sufficiently close control as not to harm the animal. The proposed amendment was to lift the restriction on the number of dogs so a full pack of dogs could chase a mammal for observation purposes.

It is the widening of this exemption that would make the Act unenforceable. No guns need to be present for research and observation, so any hunt could claim they were using a full pack to flush a fox, hare or deer simply to observe it and whoops, the hounds accidentally killed it.

As hunting has to be an intentional activity under the English law – that is they had to set out with the intention of hunting a mammal – they could not be prosecuted for an accidental kill. And as highlighted above, keeping a full pack of dogs ‘under sufficiently close control as not to harm the animal’ is virtually impossible.

Furthermore, little mention has been made of the areas where Scotland’s anti-hunt law is clearly stronger than England’s, and no effort has been made to bring parity in these areas. In England and Wales, a High Court ruling states that hunting does not include searching for a mammal. It only becomes hunting once there is an identifiable mammal.

The law in Scotland explicitly states that to ‘hunt’ includes to search for a mammal. More importantly, in Scotland you can go to prison for up to six months for illegal hunting. In England and Wales the maximum penalty is a £5,000 fine.

So the Westminster Government clearly ‘cherry picked’ bits of the Scottish legislation that favour hunters, without also taking on the related obligations that come with greater freedom. They cynically used national tensions to try and sneak in a return to pre-ban hunting.

It will be poetic justice if their underhand action ultimately results in the strengthening of Scotland’s hunting legislation. I doubt the pro-hunt lobby will be so keen on ‘parity’ between nations then.

Dr Toni Shephard is Head of Policy and Research at the League Against Cruel Sports.