“I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea

Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man

Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand”

From Every Grain of Sand by Bob Dylan © 1981 by Special Rider Music

On October 13^th it was announced that Bob Dylan has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Laureate for Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. He is the first singer songwriter to be awarded the prize for literature since its inception in 1901.

Dylan has lurked on the fringes of Nobel Laureate consideration for some time, although wasn’t actually thought to be a contender for this year where the smart money was on Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and fellow American Philip Roth.

Arguments about whether Dylan, as a songwriter and a lyricist, can even be considered a poet have raged in the past and will undoubtedly continue, especially now. It is an accolade that will sit comfortably with those like the UK’s recent poet laureate, Dylan fan and environmentalist, Andrew Motion, however, and also with Dylan himself, who once said, “I consider myself a poet first and a musician second.”

Dylan’s musical legacy came initially from a folk tradition that was also based in protest. Two singer songwriters that provided early influence were Woody Guthrie, famous for writing This Land Is Your Land, and the Dustbowl Ballads about the dust storms, droughts and the Depression of the 1930s, and folk singer, political activist and active environmentalist Pete Seeger.

It was in the 1960s that Seeger started his crusade for cleaner water on the Hudson River. Going on to raise money for a 106-foot sloop called the Clearwater, this was designed to focus attention on antipollution campaigning and education and was launched in 1969, eight years before Greenpeace launched its Rainbow Warrior. Seven years ago, after decades of activism by the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Seeger’s non-profit environmental organisation, General Electric began dredging the PCB contaminated sediment from the waters of the Hudson.

The 1960s was a time of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, women’s liberation, and a growing environmental movement heralded in part by the publication in 1962 of marine biologist Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring and an emerging social consciousness about the environmental impact of economic progress 

Dylan’s songs of the 1960s tended towards civil rights and anti-war protest rather more than environmental concerns, but were readily adopted as cogent protest anthems. A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall in 1963, allegedly written in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, is one example that sees the linking of social protest to cultural pursuit: Blowin’ in the Wind is another that can be cited, along with Chimes of Freedom and the ever-relevant The Times They Are a-Changin’.

The use of music, to link one generation to another, to provide spokespeople for social change and environmental protest, is an ongoing tradition. Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) is a 1971 classic that has as much meaning today as then, while Jimmy Cliff’s 1989 Save Our Planet Earth, Jamiroquai’s 1993 When You Gonna Learn and Ben Harper’s 1995 Excuse Me Mr, are just three more recent examples of music raising awareness of environmental issues.

The use of art to provoke social change isn’t limited to music either. Picasso’s 1937 masterpiece Guernica, produced in response to the bombing of a Basque village during the Spanish Civil War, set the bar high and nearly 70 years later continues to remind us about the human and environmental horror of war that is played out daily in places like Syria.

Ai Weiwei is probably the contemporary artist who has most closely continued this tradition. Overnight in February 2016, he wrapped Berlin’s Konzerthaus with 14,000 orange life jackets and, while you may dispute its artistic value, it was effective in grabbing public attention to raise the plight of 1 million refugees arriving in Europe via the sea. Banksy is probably the best-known guerrilla street artist, but graffiti is intrinsically an artistic protest using public space to communicate public concerns.

In April 1965, the Guardian newspaper wrote this about a young musician called Bob Dylan: “Predictably he relies often on traditional ballad meters, as the grass roots of oral poetry. Dylan is young, and admits it. He is naive and implies it at stations along his particular line. He is committed; yet what is a poet for these luminous days, when illumination may come from the clash of cobalt and iodine, if not to be committed?” The same was said of Pound, Auden and MacNeice; the same is true today of poets like Christopher Logue, Adrian Mitchell and George MacBeth. The difference is that Dylan is not a readers’ poet: some but by no means all of his verse is able to stand by itself but more commonly it needs musical backing and the strangely dry, bitter quality of his voice to supply the dimension that other poets derive from literal organisation.

Back then, few would probably have imagined that the poet would come of age and win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is in esteemed company; many of them have also been voices for social protest and change, all of whom have borne witness to their life and times.

Previous Nobel Laureates for Literature this millennium.

2016 Bob Dylan, United States

2015 Svetlana Alexievich, Belarus

2014 Patrick Modiano, France

2013 Alice Munro, Canada

2012 Mo Yan, China

2011 Tomas Tranströmer, Sweden

2010 Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru

2009 Herta Müller, Germany

2008 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, France

2007 Doris Lessing, Britain

2006 Orhan Pamuk, Turkey

2005 Harold Pinter, Britain

2004 Elfriede Jelinek, Austria

2003 JM Coetzee, South Africa

2002 Imre Kertesz, Hungary

2001 VS Naipaul, Trinidad-born British

2000 Gao Xingjian, Chinese-born French

WITNESS is our new Blog series

Having once seen an alarming infographic stating that a significant proportion of children in the UK believe pasta comes from a cow, I have become convinced that a holistic approach which deals with educating children, parents and wider society alike on how food is grown and produced is critical for the future of the nation’s health and wellbeing. 

This summer marked the long-awaited publication of the UK government’s Childhood Obesity Strategy policy document, which, though hoped to be a game-changer has evoked a plethora of criticism. The delayed-release document entitled ‘Childhood Obesity: A Plan for Action’ outlines various policies to be implemented, monitored and evaluated over the coming years to reduce childhood obesity whilst respecting consumer choice, economic realities and the obvious biological necessity of regular food consumption. Though it is stated that this plan of action, which includes a soft drinks industry levy, signifies the beginning of a conversation and not the final word critics unanimously claim the action plan is weak, watered down and at worst ultimately bowing to the corporate food industry giants at the expense of public health.  

Confronting, exposing and limiting the effect of food companies who put profit over people is good; excellent in fact, however in thinking about a comprehensive means of tackling childhood obesity and obesity as a whole it is merely one piece of a giant puzzle. After all, let’s imagine for a moment that the food industry was severely prohibited from advertising to children and lowered the amount of sugar in their products – well, the past has shown interesting outcomes. For example, when reducing fat in food products was high on the public health agenda many yogurt companies re-crafted their formulations to low-fat whilst increasing the amounts of sugar and adding obscure thickeners and artificial sweeteners (which studies have shown are linked to obesity and metabolic syndrome).

Similarly, several ‘light’ versions of products were made, sometimes with questionable additives, in order to mimic the original food’s consistency. The point being, eventually these odd innovations call for more even policy interventions to deal with the new problems they end up creating. The overall effects of such policy-led industry reforms are limited because, quite simply, they do not dig deep enough into the root of the issue. 

An ecological perspective, often left out of the conversation is needed to holistically deal with childhood obesity. By this, I mean the adoption of a ‘One Health’ approach, which appreciates the fact that the health of humans, animals and ecosystems alike are inextricably connected. This will involve careful consideration of ourselves as modern humans, our plants and animals which we consume and the environments on which we grow and rear them. 

A heightened knowledge and appreciation of food and the environment in which it is grown can have radical effects in changing consumer behaviour to support more sustainable food and agricultural systems; when we think more about the environment it changes our purchasing patterns and this in turn transforms our health.

There is a vital need for thorough, unbiased, apolitical and scientifically informed health information to be brought through to the mainstream through the means of education. What does this look like in practice?

Actively engaging children to learn about the differences between organic and conventional agriculture, free-range and caged eggs, wild and farmed salmon, why there is often a price-difference between them and what are the consequences of growing and rearing in such ways can be both environmentally and socially healthier?

Basic food education is also needed so that children and parents alike understand what happens to their food from farm-to-table. Let’s take the example of milk. Most milk in your typical outlet today is pasteurised, homogenised and packed in non-biodegradable plastic containers. The diet of cows has also drastically changed in recent years due to intensive farming and the old-fashioned milkman system of delivery (which often involved reusable glass) is almost totally obsolete.

A careful, more thoughtful consideration of our food and the food systems surrounding it lends weight to a more conscientious way of eating, instead of mindless eating solely influenced by marketing. Learning that there are thousands of varieties of tomatoes and that they grow seasonally and purchasing accordingly promotes the consumption of whole, fresh foods, cooking from scratch and enjoying and being satiated by authentic flavours and with accompanying nutrients. Buying higher quality foods instead of the readily available ultra-processed, sugar-laden junk at supermarkets, corner shops and petrol stations radically transforms health from a bottoms-up approach while lessening the need to overly fixate efforts upon an industry, that it seems if left to themselves will have the whole nation fatter and sicker than ever before the turn of the next decade.

The need for change is urgent with almost a third of children aged two to 15 in the UK now classed as obese. However this problem didn’t happen overnight, it came partially through both small- and large-scale changes in farming and industrial processes, in society, consumer behaviour and traditions. Learning what these changes were, why they happened and what disadvantages came alongside their benefits will stand us in good stead in curbing the childhood obesity epidemic and have overarching benefits that extend towards overall human, animal and planetary health.

WITNESS is our new Blog series, which invites new contributors to explore the ecological impact of issues currently on their radar

This Author

Yvonne Adebola is a recent life sciences graduate and Global Health MSc student at King’s College London. She is a freelance writer on health and development issues and also interns as a food anthropology researcher with the NGO ‘Slow Food’ on their Ark of Taste programme, an EU-funded endeavour seeking to document foods with both geographical significance and cultural heritage that are being lost largely to modern processes of industrialisation. An engaged member of the Royal Society of Biology and Royal Society of Public Health, find her on Instagram @simplenaturalliving where she shares all things sustainable.

On October 1, police bullets killed 5 villagers and injured 40 others in a village in central India. Their crime: protecting their fertile lands. The National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) goes over dead bodies to get at the coal lying under the highly productive soil.

This is only one of 48 mapped struggles in India against the fossil fuel industry and one of 231 environmental justice frontlines from which we know enough details to feature in the Atlas of Environmental Justice. That’s the tip of the iceberg. Pushing people off their lands accompanies 80% of these conflicts. The land dispossession has accelerated since 1991, when India decided to adopt the ‘Western way’ of GDP growth at all costs. Saskia Sassen, and Ashish Kothari and Aseem Srivastava describe the speeding up of expulsions in relation to the arrival of neoliberal policymaking in their books (Expulsions and Churning the Earth: The making of Global India). It turns out that as the world’s Cold War ended, a coal war was just getting started in India.

And with India becoming a sweatshop for consumers all over the world, that coal war is also our war. We line up in the Primarks and Zeemans of this world to buy the cheapest possible T-shirt made in the cheapest possible factory in India, which runs on the cheapest source of electricity available. This race to the bottom is resulting in ever more victims.

In Badkagaon, in the state of Jharkhand, the recent police killings were only the latest episode in a struggle of 8,745 families that started back in 2004, when coal blocks worth US$ 5 billion were allotted to NTPC. Even after convincing 2,614 desperate families to sell their land at dumping prices, the vast majority of all families refused to sell and continued to protest. In the past half year, the frontline heated up. Amidst lots of protests, and with heavy security, mining started on May 17, 2016.

On August 14, some 200 villagers temporarily prevented NTPC contractors from building a resettlement colony. The villagers had thrown stones, to which the police had responded with tear gas and 22 rounds of bullets, injuring 6 people, including a journalist (videos are here and here). They were later arrested when they reached a civil hospital in Hazaribagh for treatment. On September 15, some 1,000 villagers started a sit-in protest and on October 1, police opened the fire on them, with lethal effect.

The state terror didn’t stop there. After police and paramilitary forces carried out a violent door-to-door search of houses in the six villages of Chapakala, Chipakhurd, Sonbarsa, Churchur, Arahar and Nagri, hundreds of families fled their homes – making all of them fugitives. While they are running from justice for trying to protect their lands, it’s the coal miners and police chiefs that should be brought to justice.

This is just one recent example of India’s coal war, which is everything but cold. Think it through and the madness of it all is dizzying. India is today a country where almost 1.3 billion people compete for space and access to natural resources that can give them a chance for leading a life in dignity. Whatever coal remains in the ground now is resting under land of high value, either because of an ecosystem or from a livelihood perspective.

So digging coal in India today boils down to destroying very valuable land and evicting ever more people through state violence. As a result, some really desparate but combative people join the ranks of rebel Naxalites. It’s no coincidence that Jharkhant, the Walhalla for coal mining companies, is where their struggle has been most intense, often directed towards the coal mines. India’s former Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, called the Naxalites “India’s gravest security threat”, but he could have said just the same about their chief enemy: the mining companies. Arundhati Roy wrote a by now famous essay about this.

However, aside from this violent branch of resistance, there is the much broader and bigger resistance to mining that simply consists of a multitude of communities who decide that they don’t want to see their lands turned upside down with them being pushed to some lousy resettlement house with a dirty, underpaid and temporary job in the ‘best case’ scenario, and to the slums in the worst case. 

This ‘multitude’ – those communities that don’t want fossil fuel operations on their doorsteps or their lands – can be found in Lancashire and Dakota as well. When these communities connect and get attention beyond their locality, they become so powerful that in the end they can win.

Two things need to be added to the costs of coal mining and both are of concern to all of us. The first is climate change. Most readers of this piece are likely to care ‘above-average’ for the environment in general and climate change in particular. I assume most of us don’t need an explanation why runaway climate change is a big problem for all of us and why any coal that is dug up adds to the problem, right? The latest climate science just said how much more new digging we can do if we want to do what the Paris Agreement aims to achieve. For coal, it’s zero.

The second cost is air pollution. In Europe alone, effective emission limits could save thousands of lives every year, yet more than half of the coal power stations in Europe are operating with ‘permission to pollute above limits’ as set in EU law. These are the findings of a new report ‘Lifting Europe’s Dark Cloud: How cutting coal saves lives‘. In the much less regulated coal power sector in India a much larger number of Indian lives could be saved by deciding to leave the coal in the hole.

When the people in Kusum Tola and Badkagaon in Jharkhand, India are shouting anti-coal slogans, they echo so many other communities around the globe. For them and for millions of others this struggle is necessary for their survival in the here and now. They don’t fight because some violent storm might wreck them in the future. They don’t fight because some dirty air might one day kill them. But while they are fighting their survival struggle in the present they are also fighting for the future of their compatriots and for the future of us all.

It is important that we pay respect to the real environmental heroes of our times: those at the fossil fuel frontlines.

This Author

Nick Meynen is one of The Ecologist New Voices contributors. He writes blogs and books on topics like environmental justice, globalisation and human-nature relationships.

http://www.epo.be/uitgeverij/boekinfo_auteur.php?isbn=9789064455803

Monsanto is going on trial! Not, alas, in an official legal proceeding but instead a ‘civil society initiative’ that will provide moral judgment only.

The International Monsanto Tribunal will conduct hearings in The Hague beginning tomorrow, 14th October, and continuing over the weekend.

Athough it has no legal force, its organizers believe the opinions its international panel of judges will issue will provide victims and their legal counsel with arguments and legal grounds for further lawsuits in courts of law.

The organizers also see the tribunal as raising awareness of Monsanto Company’s practices and the dangers of industrial and chemical agriculture. The tribunal web site’s Practical Info page summarizes:

“The aim of the Tribunal is to give a legal opinion on the environmental and health damage caused by the multinational Monsanto. This will add to the international debate to include the crime of Ecocide into international criminal law. It will also give people all over the world a well documented legal file to be used in lawsuits against Monsanto and similar chemical companies.”

There certainly is much material on Monsanto, a multi-national corporation that has long sought to control the world’s food and which is able to routinely bend governments to its will.

For example, there was the ‘Monsanto Protection Act‘, quietly slipped into an appropriations bill in 2013 that had to be passed to avoid a US government shutdown, requiring the Department of Agriculture to ignore any court order that would halt the planting of genetically engineered crops even if the department were still conducting a safety investigation, and rubber-stamp an okay.

This past July, a piece of legislation known as the ‘DARK Act‘ was signed into law by US President Barack Obama that, under the guise of setting national standards, nullified state laws that mandate labeling genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food and substituted a standard that makes it almost impossible for any GMO food to be so labeled.

Its reach by no means limited to its home country, Monsanto has pushed to overturn safety standards across Europe, and among the goals of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is to reverse EU laws mandating GMO labeling and eliminate laws banning GMOs in food.

A long-term goal of ending corporate impunity

Because it is not possible to bring criminal charges against Monsanto, tribunal organizers say, it is necessary to initiate civil actions. They write:

“Critics of Monsanto claim that the company has been able to ignore the human and environmental damage caused by its products and pursue its devastating activities through a systematic concealment strategy through lobbying regulators and government authorities, lying, corruption, commissioning bogus scientific studies, putting pressure on independent scientists, and manipulating the press. Our endeavor is based on the observation that only through civic action will we be able to achieve compensation for victims of the American multinational.”

The tribunal organizers also recognize that a company like Monsanto does not exist in a vacuum, but rather is part of a larger system that is imperiling the world’s environment:

“Monsanto’s history is a paradigm for the impunity of transnational corporations and their management, who contribute to climate change and the depletion of the biosphere and threaten the security of the planet.

Monsanto is not the only focus of our efforts. Monsanto will serve as an example for the entire agro-industrial system whereby putting on trial all multinationals and companies that employ entrepreneurial behavior that ignore the damage wrecked on health and the environment by their actions.”

Tribunal will follow customary international law

Lawyers and judges from five continents will be involved in hearing evidence and handing down findings in December. Customary international law will be followed in all proceedings, tribunal organizers say:

“The Tribunal will employ as its legal guidelines: the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted by the Council of the UN Human Rights June 2011; the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) giving it jurisdiction to try alleged perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is the international authority on the responsibilities of business with regard to human rights. The guidelines state that companies must respect all human rights, including the right to life, the right to health and the right to a healthy environment. They define society’s expectations vis-à-vis businesses. They will serve as the basis on which plaintiffs will build their case for demanding compensation from Monsanto for damage caused by the company’s activities.

The Court will consider whether Monsanto’s conduct could be considered criminal pursuant to existing international criminal law, or under the law of ecocide, which is gaining support for consideration as an offence.”

Using international treaties as a basis for adjudicating these questions, the tribunal will focus on six topics:

• The right to a healthy environment.
• The right to health.
• The right to food.
• Freedom of expression and academic research.
• Complicity in war crimes.
• The crime of ecocide.

Monsanto has been invited to present a defense and supporting documents against any evidence presented against it. The company is not likely to be participating, and a search of its web site finds not a single mention of the tribunal. In announcing its latest financial results, it did predict “continued strong penetration of key soybean traits, global corn germplasm upgrades and spend discipline” for 2017. So no change in its behavior should be expected.

Monsanto wants to tell you what to eat

Monsanto’s march toward control of the world’s food supply is focused on proprietary seeds and genetically modified organisms. Standard contracts with seed companies forbid farmers from saving seeds, requiring them to buy new genetically engineered seeds from the company every year and the herbicide to which the seed has been engineered to be resistant.

The US environmental group Food & Water Watch, in its report Monsanto: A Corporate Profile, summarizes the corporation’s power:

“Monsanto is a global agricultural biotechnology company that specializes in genetically engineered (GE) seeds and herbicides, most notably Roundup herbicide and GE Roundup Ready seed. GE seeds have been altered with inserted genetic material to exhibit traits that repel pests or withstand the application of herbicides.

“In 2009, in the United States alone, nearly all (93%) of soybeans and four-fifths (80%) of corn were grown with seeds containing Monsanto-patented genetics. The company’s power and influence affects not only the US agricultural industry, but also political campaigns, regulatory processes and the structure of agriculture systems all over the world …

“Because of Monsanto’s market dominance, its products are changing the face of farming, from the use of Monsanto’s pesticides and herbicides, to the genetic makeup of the food we eat. … Monsanto has a close relationship with the US government, which helps it to find loopholes or simply create regulations that benefit its bottom line. Monsanto and other corporations have increasingly funded academic research from public universities, which they use to justify their latest products.

“Monsanto’s international power has grown at an alarming rate, much to the dismay of developing countries that have inadvertently been exposed to its relentless business strategy. For all of these reasons, Monsanto has become a company that farmers and consumers around the world should fear.”

India has no laws Monsanto is bound to respect

Vandana Shiva, a member of the International Monsanto Tribunal’s steering committee, last year provided a case study in Monsanto’s practices with an examination of how it forced its way into India.

The introduction of corporate agriculture has been so catastrophic in India that more than 300,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1995, with Dr. Shiva reporting that 84% of farmer suicides have been attributed to Monsanto’s genetically engineered cotton.

She explains what she calls Monsanto’s “outright illegality” in India as based on Monsanto claiming patent rights to its products even though patents on life forms are illegal in India; that its collections of royalties on unpatenable products have led to a wave of bankruptcies by farmers who struggle to survive in the best of times; and its “smuggling” of unapproved genetically modified organisms into India that “pose grave risks” to health. Dr. Shiva writes:

“India’s laws do not permit patents on seeds and in agriculture. But that hasn’t stopped Monsanto from collecting close to USD 900 million from small farmers in India, pushing them into crushing debt. This is roughly the same amount of money Monsanto spent buying The Climate Corporation – a weather big data company – in a bid to control climate data access in the future. … [L]ocal seeds used to cost [a tiny fraction of the cost of Monsanto’s seeds] before Monsanto destroyed alternatives, including local hybrid seed supply, through licensing arrangements and acquisitions.”

Local pests developed resistance to Monsanto’s GMO cotton, which releases toxins, forcing farmers to use more pesticides – an extra expense and environmentally destructive. Although this is bad for farmers, consumers and the environment, it is highly profitable for Monsanto. Dr. Shiva writes:

“Genetic engineering has not been able to deliver on its promises – it is just a tool of ownership. [Monsanto’s genetically modified] Bt Cotton is not resistant to Bollworm, RoundUp Resistant varieties have only given rise to super weeds, and the new promises being made by biotech corporations of bio-fortification are laughable.

“There is no benefit to things like Golden Rice. By adding one new gene to the cell of a plant, corporations claimed they had invented and created the seed, the plant, and all future seeds, which were now their property.

“Monsanto does not care if your cotton field has Bollworm infestations, just so long as the crop can be identified as theirs and royalty payments keep flowing in. This is why the failure of Bt Cotton as a reflection of bad science does not bother them – the cash is still coming into St Louis. At its core, genetic modification is about ownership.”

Farmers become Monsanto’s hired hands

Seeds containing genes patented by Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, account for more than 90% of soybeans grown in the US and 80% of US-grown corn, according to Food & Watch Watch.

Standard contracts with seed companies forbid farmers from saving seeds, requiring them to buy new genetically engineered seeds from the company every year and the herbicide to which the seed has been engineered to be resistant. Farmers have become hired hands on their own farms under the control of Monsanto.

Worse, Monsanto has agreed to sell itself to Bayer A.G., the German chemical conglomerate with its own history of abuse. Should regulators allow these two corporations to merge, it would create the world’s largest supplier of seeds and pesticides.

Bayer’s chief executive officer, Werner Baumann, enthused that the proposed deal would “deliver substantial value to shareholders, our customers, employees and society at large.” That ‘value’ for shareholders was mentioned first is all you need to know that profits and control are what this deal is really about.

What better monopoly could a corporation achieve than a monopoly in food? That has long been Monsanto’s goal, and a merger with Bayer would only tighten its grip.

The unacceptable face of capitalism

This is not reducible, however, to simple greed or evilness. Grow or die is the ever-present mandate of capitalism and one result of that tendency is the drive toward monopolization – a small number of enterprises controlling an industry. Just because food is a necessity does not mean it is exempt from capitalism’s relentless competitive pressures.

When markets are allowed to dictate social outcomes, actions like those of Monsanto are inevitable. Capitalist markets are nothing more than the aggregate interests of the most powerful industrialists and financiers.

And they have no interest in you knowing what is in your food, or even that it is safe.

Action: Ask Monsanto a question.

Pete Dolack is an activist, writer, poet and photographer, and writes on Systemic Disorder. His book ‘It’s Not Over: Lessons from the Socialist Experiment‘, a study of attempts to create societies on a basis other than capitalism, has just been published by Zero Books.

This article was originally published on Systemic Disorder.

On her first day as Prime Minister, Theresa May stood outside 10 Downing Street and said: “When we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful, but you.”

But the Government broke that promise last week.

Lancashire has clearly said ‘no’ to fracking. It has been opposed by parish councils, district councils – and finally, Lancashire County Councillors, who concluded that it would cause unacceptable local impacts.

Fully 98% of the Lancashire residents who responded to Cuadrilla’s planning application were against it going ahead. But on Thursday, the Government overruled the people and their democratically-elected representatives.

This is starkly different to applications for wind turbines where a handful of local objections almost always results in planning permission being refused.

Unsurprisingly, the Government’s overturning of this locally-made decision didn’t go down well with local council leaders. The Local Government Association commented that “It should be up to local communities to decide, through their locally democratic planning systems, whether or not to host fracking operations in their areas.”

Is this a sign of trouble ahead?

Hypocrisy on climate change

Last Wednesday, the Paris Climate Change agreement was ratified by the EU. This agreement commits world leaders to keep world temperatures below 1.5C of global warming – which means that the majority of known fossil fuels must stay in the ground. How did the UK mark this hugely significant event? By giving the green light to fracking. Depressing isn’t the word.

The day of the Lancashire decision was full of inaccurate claims from the industry and its supporters. But the prize for the most ridiculous statement must go to Sajid Javid himself. The Secretary of State believes that shale gas could help to meet the Government’s climate target and that fracking represents “a positive contribution towards the reduction of carbon”.

In what Alice-in-Wonderland world is saying yes to a new source of fossil fuels a positive contribution towards tackling climate change?

Kevin Anderson, Professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester, said: “Let’s be absolutely clear. The development of a UK shale gas industry is incompatible with the UK Government’s climate change obligations as enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

“No amount of eloquent political spin, legal obfuscation or pseudo-scientific camouflage can reconcile the Government’s clamour for shale gas with the carbon budgets underpinning the Paris 2°C and 1.5°C commitments. Instead of clinging to the last vestiges of a fossil fuel industry, we need a genuine low carbon transformation, and fast.”

The Secretary of State also said that the Paris Climate Agreement should not be counted in this decision – but we will never deal with climate change if it is always left to another decision, taken somewhere else, by someone else.

Health concerns ignored

The Secretary of State also failed to adequately deal with the health risks of fracking. Emerging evidence shows that fracking does pose risks to public health. Analysis of health data from Pennsylvania shows that living in the areas with the most shale gas drilling is associated with a 40% increase in the risk of a woman having a premature birth. Also asthma sufferers are up to four times more likely to have an attack if they live in these areas.

Despite this, the Government said “there would be no health impacts arising from potential exposure to air and water pollutants”. This cannot be assumed to be the case for production level activities.

Compare this to the conclusion of the New York State public health inquiry, which found fracking could pose “significant” risks to public health. It’s almost as if the damage has to be done and proven in communities in this country before it will matter to the Government.

Questionable faith in regulation

One of the problems with the English planning system is that it has to assume that all the other regulatory systems are up to scratch and that the regulators are doing their jobs properly.

In the planning inquiry, Friends of the Earth pointed out that Cuadrilla had got their figures wrong on how much waste water would be generated. The figure given to the Environment Agency was four times that given to Lancashire County Council.

Yet this critical point was summarily dismissed by the inquiry inspector and the Government on the grounds that it was up to Cuadrilla to deal with the waste water.

This is a risky approach. What happens if there is no capacity to deal with the waste water? What if there is more waste water than anticipated? Will that mean more trucks, more transport, more storage, and more waste water capacity required? Apparently we shouldn’t worry about all that, because Cuadrilla will be taking care of it.

Sajid Javid didn’t take a final decision about fracking at the other site in Lancashire, Roseacre Wood. There were still outstanding highways issues, he said, and he wanted Cuadrilla to sort them out. If they did, he was minded to allow fracking there too. How much more time do they need? Cuadrilla have had two and a half years to sort out these issues. When do we say ‘enough is enough’?

It’s like a football referee telling a team taking a penalty: “don’t worry if you miss first time – I’ll allow you to carry on taking it until you score.” That approach might help the England team, but it’s terrible for the country.

It’s also very unfair on the people defending their communities – they have already put forward experts and information in the inquiry and now they have to spend more time and money defending themselves.

Our government is increasingly out on a limb

Last week’s decision confirmed that Theresa May is continuing her predecessor’s support for fracking. But her Government is looking increasingly isolated. France, Holland, Bulgaria, Scotland and Wales all have bans or moratoriums on fracking, motivated by concerns about risks to the environment and health. England is the industry’s last big hope in Europe.

The Cuadrilla decision wasn’t the only significant move last week on unconventional gas. The Scottish government also banned underground coal gasification (UCG), which involves setting alight to coal seams and collecting the gas this produces. The rationale behind the decision was that UCG posed ‘numerous and serious’ risks for the environment and the climate.

If only Sajid Javid had stood up to the industry, listened to the people not the powerful, and adopted the same sensible approach!

But if the shale gas industry think they are now home and dry, then they couldn’t be more wrong. What Cuadrilla got last week was the Government’s permission to frack in Lancashire. What they have not got, and never will get, is the permission of the people of Lancashire to frack in their county.

And, of course, it’s not just Lancashire. Wherever fracking is proposed, it is facing strong community opposition. That opposition isn’t going away. If anything, the resolve of people to fight fracking has been strengthened.

And if the Government is going to overturn local decisions and raise concerns about democracy, then it might well have just made the fracking industry’s job even harder.

Tony Bosworth is energy campaigner with Friends of the Earth.

Major investors have warned the automotive industry it needs to accelerate its readiness for a low-carbon world if it is to retain their support and prosper.

Vehicle makers must put climate change specialists on their boards, engage better with policy-makers, and invest more heavily in low-emission cars, says a network of 250 global investors with assets of more than $24trillion.

The demands come in a new report, Investor Expectations of Automotive Companies, published this week by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC).

“Long-term investors want to ensure that automotive companies are prepared for the challenges stemming from climate change, new technologies, changing policies and shifts in demand caused by global trends”, says Dr Hans-Christoph Hirt, co-head of investment house Hermes EOS, a member of the IGCC.

“Investors expect the industry to embark upon a smoother route to future prosperity by developing and implementing long-term business strategies that are resilient to climate change and resulting regulatory shifts.”

Sustainable returns

Chris Davis, senior programme director of the Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk, another IIGCC member, agrees. “A growing number of institutional investors recognise that climate change will impact their holdings, portfolios, and asset values in the short and long-term,” he says.

“To achieve sustainable returns for clients and beneficiaries, investors in the automotive sector must engage to ensure companies are prepared to thrive in a carbon-constrained environment and support robust policy action sufficient to drive the transition to clean vehicles.”

The traditional car industry has gradually been increasing its output of pure electric and hybrid diesel / electric models, but in small numbers. It has failed to shrug off its image as a foot-dragger in the fight against climate change – similar to the way most big oil companies are seen.

The recent Volkswagen emissions scandal, in which the German car manufacturer used ‘cheat devices’ that underplayed pollution on its cars, has further tarnished the industry’s image over the last 12 months. And critics have long claimed that few vehicles live up to the fuel consumption levels claimed of them.

Making sure the industry has “closed the gap between real world and emissions testing” is highlighted by the IIGCC as one of the key issue that must be fixed.

But the finance houses also want car and truck makers to set more meaningful targets and metrics to reduce greenhouse gases in their own supply chain. And car companies need to engage more meaningfully with international policy-makers and their own investors on climate change.

Big investors point out that large car companies face serious threats inside their own sector from innovators such as the California-based automaker Tesla, evangelists for climate change and producers of low-carbon electric vehicles.

Climate agreement

And the finance houses say the move towards driverless vehicles, being pioneered by the likes of Google, poses a threat of even more severe potential new competition for the traditional car firms. They points to a recent study by the Moody’s credit agency that highlighted the potential dangers of tighter regulations for vehicles.

Last year’s Paris climate change agreement has increased the urgency for the big manufacturers such as Ford, VW and Toyota to move more quickly, the report warns. And the new IIGCC report warns that the automotive industry is already exposed to “a plethora of CO₂ and pollutant emission reduction targets in all major markets”.

It says that tougher vehicle standards have already been implemented or are on their way in Australia, Brazil, China and India, as well as the US and Europe.

And it stresses that governments are increasingly incentivising the use of electric vehicles in countries such as Norway and Holland.

Terry Macalister, an award-winning journalist and author of a book on the Arctic, is former energy editor of the Guardian newspaper. He now writes for Climate News Network.

This article was originally published by Climate News Network (CC BY-ND).

Major investors have warned the automotive industry it needs to accelerate its readiness for a low-carbon world if it is to retain their support and prosper.

Vehicle makers must put climate change specialists on their boards, engage better with policy-makers, and invest more heavily in low-emission cars, says a network of 250 global investors with assets of more than $24trillion.

The demands come in a new report, Investor Expectations of Automotive Companies, published this week by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC).

“Long-term investors want to ensure that automotive companies are prepared for the challenges stemming from climate change, new technologies, changing policies and shifts in demand caused by global trends”, says Dr Hans-Christoph Hirt, co-head of investment house Hermes EOS, a member of the IGCC.

“Investors expect the industry to embark upon a smoother route to future prosperity by developing and implementing long-term business strategies that are resilient to climate change and resulting regulatory shifts.”

Sustainable returns

Chris Davis, senior programme director of the Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk, another IIGCC member, agrees. “A growing number of institutional investors recognise that climate change will impact their holdings, portfolios, and asset values in the short and long-term,” he says.

“To achieve sustainable returns for clients and beneficiaries, investors in the automotive sector must engage to ensure companies are prepared to thrive in a carbon-constrained environment and support robust policy action sufficient to drive the transition to clean vehicles.”

The traditional car industry has gradually been increasing its output of pure electric and hybrid diesel / electric models, but in small numbers. It has failed to shrug off its image as a foot-dragger in the fight against climate change – similar to the way most big oil companies are seen.

The recent Volkswagen emissions scandal, in which the German car manufacturer used ‘cheat devices’ that underplayed pollution on its cars, has further tarnished the industry’s image over the last 12 months. And critics have long claimed that few vehicles live up to the fuel consumption levels claimed of them.

Making sure the industry has “closed the gap between real world and emissions testing” is highlighted by the IIGCC as one of the key issue that must be fixed.

But the finance houses also want car and truck makers to set more meaningful targets and metrics to reduce greenhouse gases in their own supply chain. And car companies need to engage more meaningfully with international policy-makers and their own investors on climate change.

Big investors point out that large car companies face serious threats inside their own sector from innovators such as the California-based automaker Tesla, evangelists for climate change and producers of low-carbon electric vehicles.

Climate agreement

And the finance houses say the move towards driverless vehicles, being pioneered by the likes of Google, poses a threat of even more severe potential new competition for the traditional car firms. They points to a recent study by the Moody’s credit agency that highlighted the potential dangers of tighter regulations for vehicles.

Last year’s Paris climate change agreement has increased the urgency for the big manufacturers such as Ford, VW and Toyota to move more quickly, the report warns. And the new IIGCC report warns that the automotive industry is already exposed to “a plethora of CO₂ and pollutant emission reduction targets in all major markets”.

It says that tougher vehicle standards have already been implemented or are on their way in Australia, Brazil, China and India, as well as the US and Europe.

And it stresses that governments are increasingly incentivising the use of electric vehicles in countries such as Norway and Holland.

Terry Macalister, an award-winning journalist and author of a book on the Arctic, is former energy editor of the Guardian newspaper. He now writes for Climate News Network.

This article was originally published by Climate News Network (CC BY-ND).

The Paris Agreement, the first global accord to tackle climate change, has been getting a lot of love lately. It has been ratified in record time and will come into force next month.  Yet all its lauded goals and national pledges to reduce carbon emissions will be undermined if countries fail this week to tackle a little known, but deadly, greenhouse gas: hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.

HFCs – originally designed to be some kind of an environmental savior – have the potential to accelerate climate change at a rapid rate if left unchecked. Thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide, their use in refrigerators and air conditioners is growing by 10 to 15% a year.  It’s vital that while the war on carbon gets most of the attention, we don’t take our eye off other crucial battle lines in the fight for the climate.

This week in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, nations are meeting to hammer out a plan to phase them out. At the heart of the talks will be the date at which the world will end their use.

A group of a hundred countries, including the Africa Group, Pacific Island States and the EU are pushing for an early phase-out around 2019 for developed countries and 2021 for developing countries. But worryingly, others are calling for the date to be pushed back with India calling for it to be as late as 2031.

It doesn’t take an atmospheric physicist to calculate that with the demand on the rise in developing countries for HFC-driven cooling devices- ironically needed in an evermore warming world – that such a date would spell disaster for the climate. 

In Paris country leaders pledged to limit global warming to 2°C and to do their upmost to keep it to 1.5°C.  If they are serious about keeping those promises then they need to get serious about HFCs. Those crucial climate thresholds won’t be met with HFCs left on their current course.

Our factories began churning HFCs out in 1990 as a silver bullet to ‘fix the hole’ in the ozone layer caused by their predecessors, CFCs and HCFCs. What we didn’t realise then, but we know now, is that although the new chemicals didn’t deplete the ozone layer, they had the potential to cook the planet. Like a dark twist in a dystopian science fiction novel, we had inadvertently unleashed a monster.

The good news is that we have time to get it back in its cage. Human ingenuity has once again come up with a solution to our HFC problem and, this time, we hope there won’t be any nasty surprises. In fact by replacing HFCs we have the potential to prevent a full degree centigrade of global warming. Not only are the new natural refrigerants less warming, the new technology is also much more energy efficient. This reduction in energy use would have the twin benefits of saving both money and the planet.

The problem is that the growing demand in developing countries for cool rooms and cold drinks needs to be met.  Many countries are still phasing out older technology using HCFCs, and this poses an opportunity. Rather than slowly follow behind the developed world they can leapfrog HFCs altogether and transition to the newer, more efficient, less harmful equipment.

To aid this transition and encourage an earlier phase down date, richer nations have committed to providing funds that developing countries can call on when investing in the slightly pricier, newer, kit. Known as the Multilateral Fund, this pot of money has a budget of $507.5 million between 2015 and 2017.

In September a group of countries including the US, UK, Germany and the Netherlands topped it up with a further $27 million. And in a groundbreaking move 19 philanthropists chipped in a further $53 million. It’s not uncommon for philanthropists to give money to causes they think are important but it’s very rare to see them offering that cash directly into the coffers of nation states. This all goes to reassure developing countries that they have nothing to fear from a jump away from HFCs. In fact they have much to gain.

One might wonder why HFCs were not dealt with in the historic negotiations in Paris just 10 months ago. It was decided that they were better left to the Montreal Protocol – the pioneering treaty which was hailed as the most successful environmental accord in history when it successfully closed the ozone hole.

In Kigali this week we need to see still further support offered to speed up this transition, including more financial support and ‘tech transfer’, so that poorer countries can benefit from the latest technological developments.  The more of this that is provided the quicker poor countries can move away from these pollutants and the earlier we can be rid of them for good.

This Author:

Joe Ware is a journalist and New Voices writer for The Ecologist.

He can be found on twitter at @wareisjoe

Major investors have warned the automotive industry it needs to accelerate its readiness for a low-carbon world if it is to retain their support and prosper.

Vehicle makers must put climate change specialists on their boards, engage better with policy-makers, and invest more heavily in low-emission cars, says a network of 250 global investors with assets of more than $24trillion.

The demands come in a new report, Investor Expectations of Automotive Companies, published this week by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC).

“Long-term investors want to ensure that automotive companies are prepared for the challenges stemming from climate change, new technologies, changing policies and shifts in demand caused by global trends”, says Dr Hans-Christoph Hirt, co-head of investment house Hermes EOS, a member of the IGCC.

“Investors expect the industry to embark upon a smoother route to future prosperity by developing and implementing long-term business strategies that are resilient to climate change and resulting regulatory shifts.”

Sustainable returns

Chris Davis, senior programme director of the Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk, another IIGCC member, agrees. “A growing number of institutional investors recognise that climate change will impact their holdings, portfolios, and asset values in the short and long-term,” he says.

“To achieve sustainable returns for clients and beneficiaries, investors in the automotive sector must engage to ensure companies are prepared to thrive in a carbon-constrained environment and support robust policy action sufficient to drive the transition to clean vehicles.”

The traditional car industry has gradually been increasing its output of pure electric and hybrid diesel / electric models, but in small numbers. It has failed to shrug off its image as a foot-dragger in the fight against climate change – similar to the way most big oil companies are seen.

The recent Volkswagen emissions scandal, in which the German car manufacturer used ‘cheat devices’ that underplayed pollution on its cars, has further tarnished the industry’s image over the last 12 months. And critics have long claimed that few vehicles live up to the fuel consumption levels claimed of them.

Making sure the industry has “closed the gap between real world and emissions testing” is highlighted by the IIGCC as one of the key issue that must be fixed.

But the finance houses also want car and truck makers to set more meaningful targets and metrics to reduce greenhouse gases in their own supply chain. And car companies need to engage more meaningfully with international policy-makers and their own investors on climate change.

Big investors point out that large car companies face serious threats inside their own sector from innovators such as the California-based automaker Tesla, evangelists for climate change and producers of low-carbon electric vehicles.

Climate agreement

And the finance houses say the move towards driverless vehicles, being pioneered by the likes of Google, poses a threat of even more severe potential new competition for the traditional car firms. They points to a recent study by the Moody’s credit agency that highlighted the potential dangers of tighter regulations for vehicles.

Last year’s Paris climate change agreement has increased the urgency for the big manufacturers such as Ford, VW and Toyota to move more quickly, the report warns. And the new IIGCC report warns that the automotive industry is already exposed to “a plethora of CO₂ and pollutant emission reduction targets in all major markets”.

It says that tougher vehicle standards have already been implemented or are on their way in Australia, Brazil, China and India, as well as the US and Europe.

And it stresses that governments are increasingly incentivising the use of electric vehicles in countries such as Norway and Holland.

Terry Macalister, an award-winning journalist and author of a book on the Arctic, is former energy editor of the Guardian newspaper. He now writes for Climate News Network.

This article was originally published by Climate News Network (CC BY-ND).

The Paris Agreement, the first global accord to tackle climate change, has been getting a lot of love lately. It has been ratified in record time and will come into force next month.  Yet all its lauded goals and national pledges to reduce carbon emissions will be undermined if countries fail this week to tackle a little known, but deadly, greenhouse gas: hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.

HFCs – originally designed to be some kind of an environmental savior – have the potential to accelerate climate change at a rapid rate if left unchecked. Thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide, their use in refrigerators and air conditioners is growing by 10 to 15% a year.  It’s vital that while the war on carbon gets most of the attention, we don’t take our eye off other crucial battle lines in the fight for the climate.

This week in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, nations are meeting to hammer out a plan to phase them out. At the heart of the talks will be the date at which the world will end their use.

A group of a hundred countries, including the Africa Group, Pacific Island States and the EU are pushing for an early phase-out around 2019 for developed countries and 2021 for developing countries. But worryingly, others are calling for the date to be pushed back with India calling for it to be as late as 2031.

It doesn’t take an atmospheric physicist to calculate that with the demand on the rise in developing countries for HFC-driven cooling devices- ironically needed in an evermore warming world – that such a date would spell disaster for the climate. 

In Paris country leaders pledged to limit global warming to 2°C and to do their upmost to keep it to 1.5°C.  If they are serious about keeping those promises then they need to get serious about HFCs. Those crucial climate thresholds won’t be met with HFCs left on their current course.

Our factories began churning HFCs out in 1990 as a silver bullet to ‘fix the hole’ in the ozone layer caused by their predecessors, CFCs and HCFCs. What we didn’t realise then, but we know now, is that although the new chemicals didn’t deplete the ozone layer, they had the potential to cook the planet. Like a dark twist in a dystopian science fiction novel, we had inadvertently unleashed a monster.

The good news is that we have time to get it back in its cage. Human ingenuity has once again come up with a solution to our HFC problem and, this time, we hope there won’t be any nasty surprises. In fact by replacing HFCs we have the potential to prevent a full degree centigrade of global warming. Not only are the new natural refrigerants less warming, the new technology is also much more energy efficient. This reduction in energy use would have the twin benefits of saving both money and the planet.

The problem is that the growing demand in developing countries for cool rooms and cold drinks needs to be met.  Many countries are still phasing out older technology using HCFCs, and this poses an opportunity. Rather than slowly follow behind the developed world they can leapfrog HFCs altogether and transition to the newer, more efficient, less harmful equipment.

To aid this transition and encourage an earlier phase down date, richer nations have committed to providing funds that developing countries can call on when investing in the slightly pricier, newer, kit. Known as the Multilateral Fund, this pot of money has a budget of $507.5 million between 2015 and 2017.

In September a group of countries including the US, UK, Germany and the Netherlands topped it up with a further $27 million. And in a groundbreaking move 19 philanthropists chipped in a further $53 million. It’s not uncommon for philanthropists to give money to causes they think are important but it’s very rare to see them offering that cash directly into the coffers of nation states. This all goes to reassure developing countries that they have nothing to fear from a jump away from HFCs. In fact they have much to gain.

One might wonder why HFCs were not dealt with in the historic negotiations in Paris just 10 months ago. It was decided that they were better left to the Montreal Protocol – the pioneering treaty which was hailed as the most successful environmental accord in history when it successfully closed the ozone hole.

In Kigali this week we need to see still further support offered to speed up this transition, including more financial support and ‘tech transfer’, so that poorer countries can benefit from the latest technological developments.  The more of this that is provided the quicker poor countries can move away from these pollutants and the earlier we can be rid of them for good.

This Author:

Joe Ware is a journalist and New Voices writer for The Ecologist.

He can be found on twitter at @wareisjoe