President-elect Donald Trump has been unclear so far on how many of his campaign pledges he actually intends to see through.

Hopeful Democrats and moderates have clung to this uncertainty as reason to hope that a Trump presidency wouldn’t be as bad as they feared.

And on climate change, Trump has sent some mixed signals. He famously called global warming fake in a 2012 tweet. But in an interview with The New York Times on 22nd November, he said that he has an “open mind” concerning a global climate accord, and that there is “some connectivity” between human activity and climate change.

His prospective chief of staff. Reince Priebus, later qualified the position, telling Fox News a few days ago: “As far as this issue on climate change – the only thing he was saying after being asked a few questions about it is, look, he’ll have an open mind about it but he has his default position, which most of it is a bunch of bunk, but he’ll have an open mind and listen to people. I think that’s what he’s saying.”

But as an ethicist who looks at issues around climate change, I’d like to take Trump at his own word, not Priebus’s, and make the moral case that an open-minded president would not risk becoming responsible for the human suffering his proposed climate policies will cause.

Climate policy and consequences

During the campaign, candidate Trump said that he would “cancel“ the Paris Agreement, a deal signed by most of the world’s countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As president-elect, he has said his administration will massively invest in coal and fossil fuels and cancel financial commitments to the UN for climate programs.

These steps echo similar vows he made as a candidate, such as bringing back the coal industry and building the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Since the election, there has been significant analysis regarding how much of this agenda he can do, and just how bad it would be for emissions. But we cannot overlook that the climate policy agenda laid out by candidate Trump would be obviously bad to some degree.

Trump can’t ‘cancel’ the Paris accords (even formally withdrawing takes 3-4 years), but he absolutely can signal his intent not to live up to the agreement – particularly by undermining Obama’s signature environmental achievement, the Clean Power Plan. And while it’s also true that market forces will likely continue to push us toward renewable energy, they will not do so fast enough.

Why? The Paris Agreement, as written, is already insufficient to prevent dangerous climate change. Indeed, a recent report reveals that full adherence to the agreement by all nations will limit warming only to 2.9C – 3.4C – a far cry from the aspirational limit of 1.5C set by the Paris Agreement itself. That means that the agreement requires strengthening, not weakening.

If the US drops its commitment to cut national emissions, in the best-case scenario all nations other than the US keep (and strengthen) their commitments. Recent modeling suggests that a Trump presidency results in ‘only’ an additional 3.4 billion tons of carbon emitted compared to a Clinton presidency.

The worst-case scenario, however, seems far too realistic. Some of the nations of the world will almost certainly be required to act against their own self-interest to some extent; that is, the economic incentives alone will not push the world fast enough toward the ultimate goal of net zero (or negative) emissions.

And when these nations see that America – the world’s second-largest emitter – is not doing its part, they will decide that it is not rational for them to prioritize low-carbon energy just so the Americans can work to undermine their progress. And the already-too-weak plan will weaken further.

Human suffering in waiting

President-elect Trump, then, is in a radically powerful position to do either good or harm. Because the current global agreements are already too weak, there is every reason to believe that we will cross the 1.5 degree (and likely the 2 degree) threshold.

Already, climate change is causing problems, such as more extreme weather events and rising seas. Scientists have said pushing global average temperatures higher than 2 degrees above preindustrial levels will lead to “dangerous” changes with more severe effects.

The real question, then, is how long will global temperatures remain in the ‘danger zone’? Asked another way: How many additional years would the world spend at dangerous temperature levels because of Donald Trump’s proposed policies?

Under the most optimistic scenario, it could be only a few – perhaps the rest of the world would rally and cap the damage that a rise in U.S. emissions causes. But under the less optimistic scenario, it’s not unimaginable that the needed, aggressive action on climate change could be set back by a decade or more.

Such a delay would be a moral catastrophe. Climate change is already having deadly effects, such as deaths from climate-worsened storms. The World Health Organization estimates that by 2030, climate change will cause 250,000 additional deaths per year, due to malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress.

This doesn’t include the deaths and suffering from other extreme weather events, displacement or armed conflict, nor does it account for those resulting directly from air pollution. Spending additional years at that level of warming, then, could result in literally millions more people dying.

Unlike the rest of us, Trump will have the power to effect real change

For most of us, moral responsibility for the harms of climate change gets diluted, thanks to the sheer scale of the problem.

When I drive my car, take a vacation or keep my house warmer than I need, I contribute infinitesimally to climate change through my emissions, and so it is reasonable to think that my responsibility for the consequent harms is relatively minor. Indeed, this is precisely the feature that makes climate change such a massively difficult problem to solve.

This will not be true, however, for Donald Trump. He has the power, as an individual, to undermine or protect US environmental policy. And so he also bears the moral responsibility for the death and human suffering that may occur as a result.

President-elect Trump has, as a result, an incredibly solemn task ahead. He can act as he indicated he would, with the predictable result that many thousands, if not millions, of people will die needlessly. Or, he can prove his open-mindedness and reconsider.

Would understanding his moral responsibility have any influence on the president-elect? It’s certainly possible that it would not. But we cannot allow him to act under the impression that his actions won’t have consequences or that his hands can remain clean if he causes great human suffering.

Every day until inauguration (and likely beyond), Donald J. Trump must be reminded of the awesome responsibility he has by virtue of his ability, nearly unilaterally, to decide the fate of our environmental policies moving forward. Lives depend on it.

Travis N. Rieder is Research Scholar at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Last week I was thrilled to win the ‘Environmental Champion’ DEBI award (Devon Environmental Business Initiative) in recognition of my commitment to a low carbon lifestyle over 20 years.

My most significant contribution to low carbon living is my work as Director of CosyHome Company, a business offering energy-saving insulation solutions for period homes. I am currently aiming to catalyse an insulation revolution across the UK as insulating all Britain’s homes will reduce the national carbon footprint by 10%.  

I was awarded the DEBI Environmental Champion award largely in acknowledgment of CosyHome’s work restoring the iconic North Devon heritage village of Clovelly, renowned worldwide as one of the UK’s most picturesque villages. Perched at the edge of a 400 foot cliff, Clovelly is famous for its old-world charm and cobbled streets, where donkeys and sledges are the only form of transport. 

CosyHome’s insulation of Clovelly represents an excellent model for how old buildings can be insulated so they are made warm for winter while preserving their character, saving energy, protecting the environment, and reducing heating bills. 

We have just completed Phase One of the Clovelly project applying draft proofing and loft insulation to all 120 properties, as well as room-in-roof insulation to sloping ceilings. We are in discussion with the landlord about a potential Phase Two, which will involve fitting our unique, advanced secondary glazing system, reducing heat lost through the windows by 70%.

With demand rising for warmer, energy-saving old homes, CosyHome is actively expanding, and has achieved 72% growth on last year. The DEBI award will help us get more attention for our home energy-saving products, which in turn will help more home owners save money and be warmer in their homes as well as having a greatly reduced impact on the environment.  

However, even though CosyHome aims at over 50% growth per year, one company could never insulate even 1% of Britain’s 27 million homes, so we hope other companies will copy our techniques to achieve our nationwide insulation mission.

Meantime, with freezing temperatures predicted across the UK this winter, now is the time to insulate your period home and get it cosy, safe in the knowledge that you’ll be preserving its beauty, saving energy and money, and helping to avert climate change.

This Author

Mukti Mitchell is Director of CosyHome Company specialising in insulation solutions for period properties: www.cosyhomecompany.co.uk; 0845 347 9367. He is also the author of the Guide to Low Carbon Lifestyles (downloadable at www.lowcarbonlifestyle.org.uk)

Australia has always been seen as the apprentice in trilateral agreements between the USA and UK.  With drastic changes in the political landscape, for the Greens, now is the time to renegotiate Australia’s geopolitical position and put the environment at the top of the national agenda. 

Australian Greens Leader Richard Di Natale, last week told the Australian Institute for International Affairs (AIIA) conference that: “These are tumultuous times; Global warming, terrorist attacks and non-state actors controlling swathes of territory; The EU on the brink of losing a key member. And most recently of course, the election of Donald Trump as President of the US, which raises big questions about how the US will act both within our own region and globally”.

As the UK prepare to leave the European Union (EU), Australian environmentalists’ anxiety is that without EU backing the UK’s existing environmental policies will be watered down.  

If Australia sticks with the UK, it may mean losing the stringent European Union (EU) environmental regulatory safety nets, a point shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer and Di Natale agree on.  

Green’s Leader Di Natale’s disappointment after the referendum was obvious, “The Australian Greens respect the vote of the British people today but we share in the disappointment of our UK Greens colleagues who campaigned strongly for the UK to remain in the EU”.

An Institute for European Environmental Policy’s (IEEP) post-Brexit report claims the prospect of a UK exit is already impacting on wider European environmental ambitions. IEEP’s report shows Brexit places uncertainty in the short and long-term, slowing down the “UK climate ambition and the ability for the UK to deliver on that ambition”.  

European Union Support Still Needed Down Under

The EU’s environmental policy means 70% of the UK’s environmental legislation is set by the EU. Australia has many links with the EU, and that “means it is even more important that our leaders show the courage to chart our own course as a confident, independent and outward looking nation” says Senator Di Natale.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific rely on EU support in the Pacific region. Last year the environmental group called on the EU to “maintain pressure on Taiwan to clean up its fisheries industry after the government imposed a weak penalty on a Taiwanese fishing longliner with illegally caught tuna and shark fins in the Pacific” says Ning Yen, Greenpeace East Asia Oceans Campaigner.

Australia relies on the EU for many policies, and siding with the UK may put the agreements in question. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive, between the EU and Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is an intrinsic agreement ensuring the future health of the Reef. Australia and the EU also work together stopping illegal logging and whaling, and share satellite data to improve conservation.

A post-Brexit UK and Trump Presidency brings global instability and uncertainty over climate change solutions. Senator Di Natale adds that: “With Donald Trump in the White House, we are going to have to do some heavier lifting to have any hope of stabilising below two degrees”. 

Defence a priority over the environment?

The Australian Greens are nervous Trump’s ideas over climate change will ramp up tensions between China and the USA.

“From a foreign policy perspective, this is a man who says climate change is a ‘hoax’, perpetrated by the Chinese to make US manufacturing non-competitive. He wants to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement as soon as possible. The national security, refugee and diplomatic challenges that Trump was elected to solve will amplify a hundred-fold if he blindly marches towards a 4 degree temperature rise”, warns Senator Di Natale.

Australia has been a key ally of the USA and UK in the Pacific region for over 75 years. The USA and UK rely heavily on their colonial cousins as an important strategic outpost for the region. 

Two years ago, Australia and the US signed the U.S.-Australia Force Posture Agreement at the annual Australia-United States Ministerial consultations (AUSMIN) (2014). The agreement sees US forces training side-by-side with Australian defence personnel.

A joint satellite tracking centre, Pine Gap, 300 miles (500 kilometres) north of Uluru, provides vital security data for US and UK intelligence agencies.  Australian Defence magazine says Pine Gap’s role is to “support the United States in its ballistic missile early warning program by hosting a space-based infra-red system relay ground station”.

The Greens’ aren’t convinced defence is a good enough reason to remain with the current agreement; “rather than investing billions in defence, we should be putting taxpayer funds towards Australia’s critical infrastructure needs, like cleaning up our energy systems, improving public transport and modernizing our cities and regions” said the Green Party Leader.

New Alliances Needed for the Planet?

Australia is good at negotiating deals, and with its strongest market growth in Asia, and China’s environmental record improving, it may be time to look at new allies instead of old adversaries. 

Recently, China has reduced its carbon emissions, (partly because of cut backs in the construction industry and steel production), put in place greater air pollution measures and increased investment in renewable energy. 

China is Australia’s biggest trading partner. Last year, trade deals between the two countries were worth $155,447bn (AUD) with a growth rate of 8.4% since 2011. Trade between UK-Australia is worth $23,210 (AUD), and between the EU and Australia $89,314bn (AUD).  

A post-Brexit/Trump era offer a renewed way to address climate change, and as Di Natale says, “We’re currently in the midst of an unprecedented retreat – on our commitments to global warming and clean energy investment…in my desperate search for a silver lining, Donald Trump’s election provides us with the opportunity to have a serious debate about the merits of our US alliance”.

This Author

Maxinwe Newlands is an Ecologist news reporter, based in Australia.

Ecology@newlands.tv or @Dr_MaxNewlands

Agriculture was one key focus for the global climate change talks that have just concluded in Marrakesh. There’s two good reasons for that.

One is that it’s one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions as a sector, on a par with transport and industry.

It contributes about 12% of emissions directly, but add in forestry and other landuse changes, much of which (about 70%) involves clearing of land for agriculture, and that account for another 12% of GHG emissions.

On electricity generation and transport, the ways forward towards a sustainable future are clear. Electricity generation needs to be via renewables, and there needs to be a strong focus on reducing the need for energy through energy efficiency.

As for transport, we need a massive modal shift to ‘active transport’ (like walking and cycling) and public transport, with electric cars to fill in the gaps. We mightn’t be doing enough, but broadly we know what needs to be done.

When it comes to agriculture, however, we don’t really have a clear idea of the way forward. That’s one reason why the discussions in Marrakesh were so important.

‘Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go round’

The other reason is that there’s two aspects of policies on climate change. They are known as mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means preventing emissions (or drawing carbon out of the atmosphere), and adaptation means working with the changing climate and protecting human societies.

Adaptation means, put simply, survival. The agricultural issue that featured high on many sessions in Marrakesh – in the Africa pavilion in particular but by no means exclusively – was food security.

It is worth saying there is currently plenty of food in the world. The fact that 800 million people regularly go to bed hungry is a failure of distribution, not production.

But the world’s population is growing, and production is under threat from the damage being done by the industrial agriculture that’s trashing our soils, drawing down fossil water supplies and polluting our rivers and oceans.

Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go around in future in our changing climate. That’s a huge ask.

Under even a ‘business as usual’ scenario, one part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is relatively easy, at least politically – avoiding food loss and waste: that could have a big impact. Another – reducing the use of nitrogen fertilisers, which can result in the production of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide – is at least imaginable.

Further, we could reduce total meat consumption, which would also be a positive for human health. There’s also mooted technical solutions to reduce the methane production from livestock, including improving feeding and breeding, feeding methane inhibitors to livestock and better management of manure.

‘Climate smart’ versus agroecology

Then we need to start greater changes to agriculture. Industrial farming has massively reduced the amount of carbon stored in the soil (as has clearing forests for arable farming). Changing the system of farming is essential to start to restore that.

Two models of the future were setting out their stall at COP:

• One is known as ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’. It’s basically a business-as-usual model with technological tweaks. It’s the model of agribusiness, of the giant multinational companies that dominate much of the profits of global agriculture, of grand promises from genetically modified organisms that have failed to deliver even what they’ve promised so far, even while small-scale farmers on generally low incomes dominate the production of food.
• The other is agroecology, an approach that aims to work with nature rather than to master it, that focuses on biodiverse farming, using local skills and knowledge, and locally developed crops and varieties, with minimal outside inputs. It’s an approach that encourages small independent businesses, lots of jobs, and varied seasonal food supplies for communities.

I believe that agroecology is the only possible approach: climate change is only one of many pressing environmental issues that threaten our future and that of the Earth as a balanced ecosystem. Agroecology addresses such diverse problems as biodiversity loss, soil degradation, pollution of our rivers and oceans. And it can create huge numbers of jobs, sustain small businesses, and offer far greater food security.

Understandably, there was at COP a lot of talk about the development of agroecology for the Global South, where food security is the most obviously pressing issue. But I’m interested in how we can develop this in the UK – where we also need to think hard about food security – given that we import 40% of our food, and 75% of our fruit and vegetables, which are particularly critical for health.

Building agroecology from the roots up

At the moment most towns and cities have one, or at most a handful, of market garden-type farms operating in more or less an agroecological manner – through cooperatives, through Community Supported Agriculture, through individual effort. Many rely on volunteer labour to help keep them going, and/or school visits and ‘farm tourism’ for at least some of their income. That’s not a model scalable to the size we need.

I’ve seen a couple of examples heading in a more commercial direction – Riverside Market Garden outside Cardiff, which had funding from the Welsh government explicitly to help to develop a commercial model, the Kindling Trust in Manchester, OrganicLea in London.

On a larger scale, there are organic farms (and farms operating with these kinds of methods, if not formally organic), mostly family-owned, operating in as responsible a way as the current legislative and economic frameworks allow them, producing food in larger quantities.

It’s a start, but we need a great deal more. And as a ‘co-benefit’ in the language of COP, we’d also get many thousands of small independent businesses, huge numbers of good jobs – and far better tasting food available to more people, without the choking hold of the supermarkets over supplies.

Changes in our economy, society and treatment of the environment for the common good – that makes agroecology one essential part of our future. We’ve made a start but there’s a very long way to go.

Natalie Bennett attended the COP talks in Marrakesh with the Green Economics Institute.

Agriculture was one key focus for the global climate change talks that have just concluded in Marrakesh. There’s two good reasons for that.

One is that it’s one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions as a sector, on a par with transport and industry.

It contributes about 12% of emissions directly, but add in forestry and other landuse changes, much of which (about 70%) involves clearing of land for agriculture, and that account for another 12% of GHG emissions.

On electricity generation and transport, the ways forward towards a sustainable future are clear. Electricity generation needs to be via renewables, and there needs to be a strong focus on reducing the need for energy through energy efficiency.

As for transport, we need a massive modal shift to ‘active transport’ (like walking and cycling) and public transport, with electric cars to fill in the gaps. We mightn’t be doing enough, but broadly we know what needs to be done.

When it comes to agriculture, however, we don’t really have a clear idea of the way forward. That’s one reason why the discussions in Marrakesh were so important.

‘Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go round’

The other reason is that there’s two aspects of policies on climate change. They are known as mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means preventing emissions (or drawing carbon out of the atmosphere), and adaptation means working with the changing climate and protecting human societies.

Adaptation means, put simply, survival. The agricultural issue that featured high on many sessions in Marrakesh – in the Africa pavilion in particular but by no means exclusively – was food security.

It is worth saying there is currently plenty of food in the world. The fact that 800 million people regularly go to bed hungry is a failure of distribution, not production.

But the world’s population is growing, and production is under threat from the damage being done by the industrial agriculture that’s trashing our soils, drawing down fossil water supplies and polluting our rivers and oceans.

Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go around in future in our changing climate. That’s a huge ask.

Under even a ‘business as usual’ scenario, one part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is relatively easy, at least politically – avoiding food loss and waste: that could have a big impact. Another – reducing the use of nitrogen fertilisers, which can result in the production of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide – is at least imaginable.

Further, we could reduce total meat consumption, which would also be a positive for human health. There’s also mooted technical solutions to reduce the methane production from livestock, including improving feeding and breeding, feeding methane inhibitors to livestock and better management of manure.

‘Climate smart’ versus agroecology

Then we need to start greater changes to agriculture. Industrial farming has massively reduced the amount of carbon stored in the soil (as has clearing forests for arable farming). Changing the system of farming is essential to start to restore that.

Two models of the future were setting out their stall at COP:

• One is known as ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’. It’s basically a business-as-usual model with technological tweaks. It’s the model of agribusiness, of the giant multinational companies that dominate much of the profits of global agriculture, of grand promises from genetically modified organisms that have failed to deliver even what they’ve promised so far, even while small-scale farmers on generally low incomes dominate the production of food.
• The other is agroecology, an approach that aims to work with nature rather than to master it, that focuses on biodiverse farming, using local skills and knowledge, and locally developed crops and varieties, with minimal outside inputs. It’s an approach that encourages small independent businesses, lots of jobs, and varied seasonal food supplies for communities.

I believe that agroecology is the only possible approach: climate change is only one of many pressing environmental issues that threaten our future and that of the Earth as a balanced ecosystem. Agroecology addresses such diverse problems as biodiversity loss, soil degradation, pollution of our rivers and oceans. And it can create huge numbers of jobs, sustain small businesses, and offer far greater food security.

Understandably, there was at COP a lot of talk about the development of agroecology for the Global South, where food security is the most obviously pressing issue. But I’m interested in how we can develop this in the UK – where we also need to think hard about food security – given that we import 40% of our food, and 75% of our fruit and vegetables, which are particularly critical for health.

Building agroecology from the roots up

At the moment most towns and cities have one, or at most a handful, of market garden-type farms operating in more or less an agroecological manner – through cooperatives, through Community Supported Agriculture, through individual effort. Many rely on volunteer labour to help keep them going, and/or school visits and ‘farm tourism’ for at least some of their income. That’s not a model scalable to the size we need.

I’ve seen a couple of examples heading in a more commercial direction – Riverside Market Garden outside Cardiff, which had funding from the Welsh government explicitly to help to develop a commercial model, the Kindling Trust in Manchester, OrganicLea in London.

On a larger scale, there are organic farms (and farms operating with these kinds of methods, if not formally organic), mostly family-owned, operating in as responsible a way as the current legislative and economic frameworks allow them, producing food in larger quantities.

It’s a start, but we need a great deal more. And as a ‘co-benefit’ in the language of COP, we’d also get many thousands of small independent businesses, huge numbers of good jobs – and far better tasting food available to more people, without the choking hold of the supermarkets over supplies.

Changes in our economy, society and treatment of the environment for the common good – that makes agroecology one essential part of our future. We’ve made a start but there’s a very long way to go.

Natalie Bennett attended the COP talks in Marrakesh with the Green Economics Institute.

Agriculture was one key focus for the global climate change talks that have just concluded in Marrakesh. There’s two good reasons for that.

One is that it’s one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions as a sector, on a par with transport and industry.

It contributes about 12% of emissions directly, but add in forestry and other landuse changes, much of which (about 70%) involves clearing of land for agriculture, and that account for another 12% of GHG emissions.

On electricity generation and transport, the ways forward towards a sustainable future are clear. Electricity generation needs to be via renewables, and there needs to be a strong focus on reducing the need for energy through energy efficiency.

As for transport, we need a massive modal shift to ‘active transport’ (like walking and cycling) and public transport, with electric cars to fill in the gaps. We mightn’t be doing enough, but broadly we know what needs to be done.

When it comes to agriculture, however, we don’t really have a clear idea of the way forward. That’s one reason why the discussions in Marrakesh were so important.

‘Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go round’

The other reason is that there’s two aspects of policies on climate change. They are known as mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means preventing emissions (or drawing carbon out of the atmosphere), and adaptation means working with the changing climate and protecting human societies.

Adaptation means, put simply, survival. The agricultural issue that featured high on many sessions in Marrakesh – in the Africa pavilion in particular but by no means exclusively – was food security.

It is worth saying there is currently plenty of food in the world. The fact that 800 million people regularly go to bed hungry is a failure of distribution, not production.

But the world’s population is growing, and production is under threat from the damage being done by the industrial agriculture that’s trashing our soils, drawing down fossil water supplies and polluting our rivers and oceans.

Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go around in future in our changing climate. That’s a huge ask.

Under even a ‘business as usual’ scenario, one part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is relatively easy, at least politically – avoiding food loss and waste: that could have a big impact. Another – reducing the use of nitrogen fertilisers, which can result in the production of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide – is at least imaginable.

Further, we could reduce total meat consumption, which would also be a positive for human health. There’s also mooted technical solutions to reduce the methane production from livestock, including improving feeding and breeding, feeding methane inhibitors to livestock and better management of manure.

‘Climate smart’ versus agroecology

Then we need to start greater changes to agriculture. Industrial farming has massively reduced the amount of carbon stored in the soil (as has clearing forests for arable farming). Changing the system of farming is essential to start to restore that.

Two models of the future were setting out their stall at COP:

• One is known as ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’. It’s basically a business-as-usual model with technological tweaks. It’s the model of agribusiness, of the giant multinational companies that dominate much of the profits of global agriculture, of grand promises from genetically modified organisms that have failed to deliver even what they’ve promised so far, even while small-scale farmers on generally low incomes dominate the production of food.
• The other is agroecology, an approach that aims to work with nature rather than to master it, that focuses on biodiverse farming, using local skills and knowledge, and locally developed crops and varieties, with minimal outside inputs. It’s an approach that encourages small independent businesses, lots of jobs, and varied seasonal food supplies for communities.

I believe that agroecology is the only possible approach: climate change is only one of many pressing environmental issues that threaten our future and that of the Earth as a balanced ecosystem. Agroecology addresses such diverse problems as biodiversity loss, soil degradation, pollution of our rivers and oceans. And it can create huge numbers of jobs, sustain small businesses, and offer far greater food security.

Understandably, there was at COP a lot of talk about the development of agroecology for the Global South, where food security is the most obviously pressing issue. But I’m interested in how we can develop this in the UK – where we also need to think hard about food security – given that we import 40% of our food, and 75% of our fruit and vegetables, which are particularly critical for health.

Building agroecology from the roots up

At the moment most towns and cities have one, or at most a handful, of market garden-type farms operating in more or less an agroecological manner – through cooperatives, through Community Supported Agriculture, through individual effort. Many rely on volunteer labour to help keep them going, and/or school visits and ‘farm tourism’ for at least some of their income. That’s not a model scalable to the size we need.

I’ve seen a couple of examples heading in a more commercial direction – Riverside Market Garden outside Cardiff, which had funding from the Welsh government explicitly to help to develop a commercial model, the Kindling Trust in Manchester, OrganicLea in London.

On a larger scale, there are organic farms (and farms operating with these kinds of methods, if not formally organic), mostly family-owned, operating in as responsible a way as the current legislative and economic frameworks allow them, producing food in larger quantities.

It’s a start, but we need a great deal more. And as a ‘co-benefit’ in the language of COP, we’d also get many thousands of small independent businesses, huge numbers of good jobs – and far better tasting food available to more people, without the choking hold of the supermarkets over supplies.

Changes in our economy, society and treatment of the environment for the common good – that makes agroecology one essential part of our future. We’ve made a start but there’s a very long way to go.

Natalie Bennett attended the COP talks in Marrakesh with the Green Economics Institute.

Agriculture was one key focus for the global climate change talks that have just concluded in Marrakesh. There’s two good reasons for that.

One is that it’s one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions as a sector, on a par with transport and industry.

It contributes about 12% of emissions directly, but add in forestry and other landuse changes, much of which (about 70%) involves clearing of land for agriculture, and that account for another 12% of GHG emissions.

On electricity generation and transport, the ways forward towards a sustainable future are clear. Electricity generation needs to be via renewables, and there needs to be a strong focus on reducing the need for energy through energy efficiency.

As for transport, we need a massive modal shift to ‘active transport’ (like walking and cycling) and public transport, with electric cars to fill in the gaps. We mightn’t be doing enough, but broadly we know what needs to be done.

When it comes to agriculture, however, we don’t really have a clear idea of the way forward. That’s one reason why the discussions in Marrakesh were so important.

‘Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go round’

The other reason is that there’s two aspects of policies on climate change. They are known as mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means preventing emissions (or drawing carbon out of the atmosphere), and adaptation means working with the changing climate and protecting human societies.

Adaptation means, put simply, survival. The agricultural issue that featured high on many sessions in Marrakesh – in the Africa pavilion in particular but by no means exclusively – was food security.

It is worth saying there is currently plenty of food in the world. The fact that 800 million people regularly go to bed hungry is a failure of distribution, not production.

But the world’s population is growing, and production is under threat from the damage being done by the industrial agriculture that’s trashing our soils, drawing down fossil water supplies and polluting our rivers and oceans.

Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go around in future in our changing climate. That’s a huge ask.

Under even a ‘business as usual’ scenario, one part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is relatively easy, at least politically – avoiding food loss and waste: that could have a big impact. Another – reducing the use of nitrogen fertilisers, which can result in the production of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide – is at least imaginable.

Further, we could reduce total meat consumption, which would also be a positive for human health. There’s also mooted technical solutions to reduce the methane production from livestock, including improving feeding and breeding, feeding methane inhibitors to livestock and better management of manure.

‘Climate smart’ versus agroecology

Then we need to start greater changes to agriculture. Industrial farming has massively reduced the amount of carbon stored in the soil (as has clearing forests for arable farming). Changing the system of farming is essential to start to restore that.

Two models of the future were setting out their stall at COP:

• One is known as ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’. It’s basically a business-as-usual model with technological tweaks. It’s the model of agribusiness, of the giant multinational companies that dominate much of the profits of global agriculture, of grand promises from genetically modified organisms that have failed to deliver even what they’ve promised so far, even while small-scale farmers on generally low incomes dominate the production of food.
• The other is agroecology, an approach that aims to work with nature rather than to master it, that focuses on biodiverse farming, using local skills and knowledge, and locally developed crops and varieties, with minimal outside inputs. It’s an approach that encourages small independent businesses, lots of jobs, and varied seasonal food supplies for communities.

I believe that agroecology is the only possible approach: climate change is only one of many pressing environmental issues that threaten our future and that of the Earth as a balanced ecosystem. Agroecology addresses such diverse problems as biodiversity loss, soil degradation, pollution of our rivers and oceans. And it can create huge numbers of jobs, sustain small businesses, and offer far greater food security.

Understandably, there was at COP a lot of talk about the development of agroecology for the Global South, where food security is the most obviously pressing issue. But I’m interested in how we can develop this in the UK – where we also need to think hard about food security – given that we import 40% of our food, and 75% of our fruit and vegetables, which are particularly critical for health.

Building agroecology from the roots up

At the moment most towns and cities have one, or at most a handful, of market garden-type farms operating in more or less an agroecological manner – through cooperatives, through Community Supported Agriculture, through individual effort. Many rely on volunteer labour to help keep them going, and/or school visits and ‘farm tourism’ for at least some of their income. That’s not a model scalable to the size we need.

I’ve seen a couple of examples heading in a more commercial direction – Riverside Market Garden outside Cardiff, which had funding from the Welsh government explicitly to help to develop a commercial model, the Kindling Trust in Manchester, OrganicLea in London.

On a larger scale, there are organic farms (and farms operating with these kinds of methods, if not formally organic), mostly family-owned, operating in as responsible a way as the current legislative and economic frameworks allow them, producing food in larger quantities.

It’s a start, but we need a great deal more. And as a ‘co-benefit’ in the language of COP, we’d also get many thousands of small independent businesses, huge numbers of good jobs – and far better tasting food available to more people, without the choking hold of the supermarkets over supplies.

Changes in our economy, society and treatment of the environment for the common good – that makes agroecology one essential part of our future. We’ve made a start but there’s a very long way to go.

Natalie Bennett attended the COP talks in Marrakesh with the Green Economics Institute.

Agriculture was one key focus for the global climate change talks that have just concluded in Marrakesh. There’s two good reasons for that.

One is that it’s one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions as a sector, on a par with transport and industry.

It contributes about 12% of emissions directly, but add in forestry and other landuse changes, much of which (about 70%) involves clearing of land for agriculture, and that account for another 12% of GHG emissions.

On electricity generation and transport, the ways forward towards a sustainable future are clear. Electricity generation needs to be via renewables, and there needs to be a strong focus on reducing the need for energy through energy efficiency.

As for transport, we need a massive modal shift to ‘active transport’ (like walking and cycling) and public transport, with electric cars to fill in the gaps. We mightn’t be doing enough, but broadly we know what needs to be done.

When it comes to agriculture, however, we don’t really have a clear idea of the way forward. That’s one reason why the discussions in Marrakesh were so important.

‘Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go round’

The other reason is that there’s two aspects of policies on climate change. They are known as mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means preventing emissions (or drawing carbon out of the atmosphere), and adaptation means working with the changing climate and protecting human societies.

Adaptation means, put simply, survival. The agricultural issue that featured high on many sessions in Marrakesh – in the Africa pavilion in particular but by no means exclusively – was food security.

It is worth saying there is currently plenty of food in the world. The fact that 800 million people regularly go to bed hungry is a failure of distribution, not production.

But the world’s population is growing, and production is under threat from the damage being done by the industrial agriculture that’s trashing our soils, drawing down fossil water supplies and polluting our rivers and oceans.

Adaptation means ensuring there’s enough food to go around in future in our changing climate. That’s a huge ask.

Under even a ‘business as usual’ scenario, one part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is relatively easy, at least politically – avoiding food loss and waste: that could have a big impact. Another – reducing the use of nitrogen fertilisers, which can result in the production of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide – is at least imaginable.

Further, we could reduce total meat consumption, which would also be a positive for human health. There’s also mooted technical solutions to reduce the methane production from livestock, including improving feeding and breeding, feeding methane inhibitors to livestock and better management of manure.

‘Climate smart’ versus agroecology

Then we need to start greater changes to agriculture. Industrial farming has massively reduced the amount of carbon stored in the soil (as has clearing forests for arable farming). Changing the system of farming is essential to start to restore that.

Two models of the future were setting out their stall at COP:

• One is known as ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’. It’s basically a business-as-usual model with technological tweaks. It’s the model of agribusiness, of the giant multinational companies that dominate much of the profits of global agriculture, of grand promises from genetically modified organisms that have failed to deliver even what they’ve promised so far, even while small-scale farmers on generally low incomes dominate the production of food.
• The other is agroecology, an approach that aims to work with nature rather than to master it, that focuses on biodiverse farming, using local skills and knowledge, and locally developed crops and varieties, with minimal outside inputs. It’s an approach that encourages small independent businesses, lots of jobs, and varied seasonal food supplies for communities.

I believe that agroecology is the only possible approach: climate change is only one of many pressing environmental issues that threaten our future and that of the Earth as a balanced ecosystem. Agroecology addresses such diverse problems as biodiversity loss, soil degradation, pollution of our rivers and oceans. And it can create huge numbers of jobs, sustain small businesses, and offer far greater food security.

Understandably, there was at COP a lot of talk about the development of agroecology for the Global South, where food security is the most obviously pressing issue. But I’m interested in how we can develop this in the UK – where we also need to think hard about food security – given that we import 40% of our food, and 75% of our fruit and vegetables, which are particularly critical for health.

Building agroecology from the roots up

At the moment most towns and cities have one, or at most a handful, of market garden-type farms operating in more or less an agroecological manner – through cooperatives, through Community Supported Agriculture, through individual effort. Many rely on volunteer labour to help keep them going, and/or school visits and ‘farm tourism’ for at least some of their income. That’s not a model scalable to the size we need.

I’ve seen a couple of examples heading in a more commercial direction – Riverside Market Garden outside Cardiff, which had funding from the Welsh government explicitly to help to develop a commercial model, the Kindling Trust in Manchester, OrganicLea in London.

On a larger scale, there are organic farms (and farms operating with these kinds of methods, if not formally organic), mostly family-owned, operating in as responsible a way as the current legislative and economic frameworks allow them, producing food in larger quantities.

It’s a start, but we need a great deal more. And as a ‘co-benefit’ in the language of COP, we’d also get many thousands of small independent businesses, huge numbers of good jobs – and far better tasting food available to more people, without the choking hold of the supermarkets over supplies.

Changes in our economy, society and treatment of the environment for the common good – that makes agroecology one essential part of our future. We’ve made a start but there’s a very long way to go.

Natalie Bennett attended the COP talks in Marrakesh with the Green Economics Institute.

‘Should Big Oil back Big Art?‘ was the question splashed across the FT’s Arts section last weekend, as its top story delved into the issue of oil sponsorship of the arts.

It comes at a key moment – this year, Tate and Edinburgh International Festival announced the end of their BP sponsorship deals and over 300 arts organisations and artists have now committed to not take funding from the fossil fuel industry.

These are all strong signs of progress towards an arts sector embracing ethics and boldly addressing climate change. But some are still dragging their feet.

Coinciding with the FT’s story, 40 performers from 8 countries held a poignant creative protest throughout the British Museum’s iconic galleries. It marked the close of the British Museum’s latest BP-sponsored exhibition, the ironically titled, ‘Sunken Cities’.

By putting BP and the consequences of rising seas together in a single exhibition, the museum invented a whole new form of climate denial.

But with a genuine climate denier poised to enter the White House, it has become even more crucial that the British Museum makes clear which side of history it’s on. When you’re in the business of protecting the past for future generations, the answer should be obvious.

Unanswered ethical questions

In July, it was announced the BP had renewed its sponsorship deals with the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Unsurprisingly, that announcement was met with protest – 200 artists and cultural figures signed a letter in The Times the following week, calling for the deal to be dropped.

And last month, theatrical protest group ‘BP or not BP?’ led 250 people in an underwater-themed ‘splashmob‘ at the British Museum, with singing mermaids and a 40-foot sea-monster puppet, smuggled past security.

In the face of ethical questions being raised about the renewal of BP’s sponsorship of the British Museum, Sir Richard Lambert, the museum’s Chair, claimed that he has “a formidable bunch of trustees who are all very conscious of their responsibilities to the museum.”

Perhaps one of the most important of those responsibilities is to ‘stand guard’ over the museum’s reputation, as trustee and ex-Chair of the Arts Council, Dame Liz Forgan put it. Why then, were the museum’s trustees were not involved in the decision to renew BP’s sponsorship?

And how could the museum describe the decision to renew the deal as “straightforward“ when it had become the biggest controversy facing the museum’s new director?

A call for ethical sponsorship

In a recent speech, the Chair of the Arts Council, Sir Peter Bazalgette, emphasised that the boards of arts organisations need to make sure they are engaging in “ethical sponsorship” and demonstrate “clarity, consistency and transparency”. When it comes to BP, the British Museum has been unclear, inconsistent and resisted transparency.

The Chair of the Tate’s trustees, John Browne, told the FT “how important” it is that the gallery has an ethics committee, an interesting claim given that he was BP’s CEO from 1995 to 2007. He added, “We would never dream of letting our supporters direct our editorial ear.”

But with your ex-CEO as Chair, critical curators were unlikely to be a major problem for BP. A damning report by Art Not Oil published earlier this year painted a different picture. But if even Tate, under Browne’s chairmanship, recognises the necessity of an ethics committee, why is the British Museum without one?

If the British Museum had dug into the claims made against BP when its sponsorship was up for renewal, they would have unmasked a company with close ties to human rights violations, actively blocking crucial climate legislation and drilling for fossil fuels that we cannot afford to burn. Or, to put it another way, a company whose values do not align with those of a museum that supposedly holds a collection “for every citizen of the world”.

Undergoing a process of so-called ‘due diligence’ isn’t just a good idea – it is specifically advised in the Museums Association’s Code of Ethics, which the museum is obliged to follow.

Philanthropy or cheap advertising?

But Richard Lambert, like other spokespersons for the museum, has continued to dodge questions about BP’s record, arguing that “We need to raise the money from somewhere.”

This excuse is wearing thin though. BP actually turned down a direct request made by Lambert to help fund the museum’s new World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre, while just two of the Sainsbury Family Trusts collectively gave £25 million to the project and the Heritage Lottery Fund gave £10 million.