British high street banks have spent a lot of time and money rebuilding their battered brands following the financial crisis ten years ago.

But they are in danger of tipping themselves into the mire once again with their environmentally damaging investments which are viewed as immoral by large swathes of the public.

ComRes polling commissioned by Christian Aid reveals that:

• 78 percent of the public believe that investing in companies which cause dangerous climate change is morally wrong no matter how profitable it is.
• 80 percent (four out of five) say they do not want banks to use their savings to invest in projects that damage the environment, and:
• 81% hold bank CEOs responsible for ensuring their investments don’t cause environment damage.

It’s particularly galling to see the big four banks – Barclays, RBS, Lloyds and HSBC – announcing profit rises of up to 40 percent this week while communities from South Asia to the Caribbean continue to count the cost of extreme weather in lives lost and massive clean-up bills.

Profit from pollution

America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reported that there have been 15 weather and climate disaster events in the US alone this year where, total financial losses exceeded $1bn each.

A new Christian Aid report, out today, shows how Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS are all funding the companies behind the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia, the coal from which generates nearly the equivalent carbon pollution in a year as Colombia’s entire national emissions.

Although communities in the developing world are not the cause of climate breakdown, cruelly they are the ones suffering the most impacts – and they are starting to shift their investments accordingly.

The Archbishop of Cape Town, Most Reverend Thabo Makgoba, leads the Province of Southern Africa which recently decided to divest all its fossil fuel investments on climate grounds.

He said: “Climate change is hurting people in the developing world first and worst. In response to this we are divesting from fossil fuels and can no longer profit from pollution.

Economic self-interest

“But in Britain UK banks are still propping up coal mines which are driving the climate change we suffer from. This is morally questionable and they have a responsibility to clean up their act.”

The big four high street banks have all signed up the pledge to support the goals of the Paris Agreement but their investment practices have barely changed.

Banks have a vital role to play in providing the crucial lending facilities to companies that do the very opposite of leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

Last month former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres called on banks to invest a ratio of 2:1 in favour of green investments over brown investments to avoid an economic cliff edge.

Speaking at an event on sustainable finance in Europe she said banks needed to do some heavy lifting out of economic self-interest.

Bury their heads

And this is the crucial point. Not only is it unwise to keep doing something that 80 percent of your potential customer base thinks is immoral, it also will soon make very little financial sense too.

Hannah McKinnon, Energy Futures & Transitions Director at Oil Change International pointed out: “The fossil fuel era is coming to an end.

“Banks should be looking for every opportunity to shift investments before the ship sinks: along with a worthless portfolio of stranded assets, there will be a massive moral price tag for those that insist on trying to be the last one out.

“Financing the climate crisis is an inexcusable ethical decision and a reckless financial one, banks too can decide which side of history they want to be on.”

And it’s not just climate organisations saying this. Last month the editor of The Banker magazine, Brian Caplen warned that banks faced an existential crisis if they continue to bury their heads in the sand.

Follow suit

“Under clean-energy scenarios, oil majors become rather less blue-chip to lend to than those engaged in the technologies of the future – for example renewable energy, electric cars and insulation,” he argued.

“In these sectors, there are big opportunities with one estimate putting the investment needed to transition to a lower carbon economy at $1,000bn each year for the foreseeable future.

“This figure is not something dreamed up by an idealistically green organisation – it comes from the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, chaired by Michael Bloomberg.”

Some banks are showing there’s an alternative to doing business without fouling up the planet. Triodos don’t lend to companies that make more than 5 percent of their revenue from extracting, producing, selling or generating electricity from oil, gas or coal while 23 percent of its loans support renewable energy projects.

Maybe with enough pressure from the majority of the public that think it’s immoral to profit from climate change the high street banks will follow suit.

This Author:

Joe Ware is a journalist and writer at Christian Aid. He is on twitter @wareisjoe. To join the Big Shift campaign and write to the CEOs of the big four banks, visit the website. You can also view the spoof bank TV ad that Christian Aid has produced.

How do you engage the next generation in a conversation about environmental issues that is becoming increasingly urgent? A story about a recognisable feature of their world is a good place to start. This is why the Lorax’s rallying call of “I speak for the trees!” is something children can immediately see as relevant. And this is the heart of this entertaining and heart-warming children’s musical.

Adapted from Dr Seuss’s original book by award-winning playwright David Greig, and with music and lyrics by former Noah and the Whale frontman Charlie Fink, the Old Vic’s The Lorax takes Dr Seuss’s prescient story for children and creates energetic, visually exciting and beautifully produced theatre that has its young audience captivated from the start.

Animal and human inhabitants

Starring the irrepressible, moustachioed Lorax (ingeniously manipulated by three puppeteers) whose commitment to the beautiful environment where he lives is pitted against the Once-ler’s desire to impress his family, contrivingfame and fortune via the destruction of the same treesthat the Lorax seeks to protect.

Simon Paisley Day’s axe-wielding Once-ler is by turn laconic, naïve and dastardly, a good match for the lovable, quirky Lorax, voiced and animated by David Ricardo-Pearce, assisted by puppeteers Laura Caldow and Ben Thompson, and completely convincing in its characterisation.

Keeping to Seuss’s rhyming text, the ingenious play on words to amuse both children and their accompanying adults alike even has a few contemporary references (Trump, anyone?) cunningly thrown in.

Beautifully designed by Rob Howell, the imaginative staging of the show with its instantly recognisable, Seuss-referenced sets, complements the talents of the cast and musicians, with lots of exuberant, imaginative choreography and songs that range from ballad to jazz.

At its heart, this is something of a dark tale of corporategreed and the production of a worthless item which sapsthe natural resources of a paradise of clean air and fresh water, until the toxicity of the spoiled environment begins to show an impact on both its animal and human inhabitants.

A whole awful lot

At its heart, too, this rollicking family showalso has a message of hope. We can all be Loraxes; we can all “speak for the trees” and stand against the destruction of our planet.

In an excellent feature written for the show’s programme, Leo Hickman (editor of CarbonBrief) writes, “Dr Seuss absorbed all the key environmental talking points of the day […] and joyously found a way to construct for his readers a beguiling, insightful mirror on our world and its ways.

He even found a way to gently chide the often preaching manner of the environmentalists when the Once-ler describes the Lorax as ‘sharpish and bossy’. There are lessons for us all on every page.”

The theatre is also actively embracing some of these lessons, by issuing e-tickets and encouraging ticketholders not to print them off, but let front-of-house staff scan their phones instead.

This is in an effort to become 90% paperless by the theatre’s 200th birthday in May 2018 and, along with a number of other measures including using a completely sustainable energy supplier, Good Energy, recycling all paper, glass, plastic and other items, using VegWare for any take-away items in the all-day café, providing programmes in pdf format and advising audiences on public transport, the theatre is making a concerted effort to become more green.

Straightforward message

An effort that is embodied in the Lorax’s key message:”Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot/Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
It’s good to see a public venue make this wholehearted commitment to a green agenda and, during the play’s run, renowned ethologist and conservationist Dr Jane Goodall also gave a live audience at the theatre, discussing her global youth programme Roots & Shoots.

Active in nearly 100 countries, Roots & Shoots is an education programme supporting children to implement practical, positive change for people, animals and the environment by providing teachers with free resources and activities.

I feel sure Seuss would have applauded all this. His children’s book, with its straightforward message delivered by the Lorax, was originally published in 1971, a year after the first Earth Day in April 1970 which had brought focus to an emerging global environmental movement that saw the formation of organisations like Greenpeace, the National Resources Defense Counciland the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Very much a product of its time at the beginning of the 1970s, some 20 years later Seuss said about the book that it “…came out of me being angry. In The Lorax I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.” The only alarm is that, 40 years later, we have even more reason to address these issues not less.

So the chips must continually be made to fall and, having been revived for this short run in London, this production of Dr Seuss’s The Lorax will be travelling to Toronto for a Christmas run from December 9th, and then Minnesotain April 2018.

It will be delighting new audiences and, hopefully, continuing to spread the word that the beautiful and precious environment on which we all depend must be continually protected for future generations of children.

This Author

Harriet Griffey is cultural editor of The Ecologist.

Birds of prey in Britain face a bleak future unless urgent action is taken to stop shooting, poisoning and trapping, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

The RSPB today published its latest report, Birdcrime 2016, which found that there were 81 cases of persecution in 2016 alone. This included 40 shootings, 22 poisonings, 15 trappings and four other incidents.

Hen harriers, peregrine falcons, red kites and buzzards were among the victims. The charity suggests these figures are just the tip of the iceberg with many illegal killings going undetected or unreported.

Prosecutions arising

The report also revealed close to two-thirds (53) of the confirmed incidents took place in England, with particular concern for raptors in North Yorkshire.

Over the last five years the county recorded the highest number of confirmed bird of prey persecution incidents in the UK, with 54 incidents since 2012 and 19 last year alone.

The problem wasn’t confined to England, with the report highlighting confirmed case in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, where there is growing concern over the repeated suspicious disappearance of satellite tagged birds of prey.

This year, a study by Scottish Government examined the fate of 131 golden eagles fitted with satellite tags between 2004-16 concluding that ‘as many as 41 (one third) disappeared, presumably died, under suspicious circumstances connected with records of illegal persecution.’

Increasingly, people in the UK are being robbed of the chance to see these spectacular birds because of these illegal incidents, yet in 2016, there wasn’t a single prosecution arising from a confirmed incident, the first time this has happened in 30 years.

Compelling evidence

Martin Harper, RSPB Conservation Director, said: “Birds of prey bring our skies to life. There is nothing like seeing a diving peregrine or a skydancing hen harrier.

“The sights of these spectacular birds are something we should all be able to enjoy, unfortunately illegal activity is stopping this and preventing the birds from flourishing.

“There are laws in place to protect these birds but they are clearly not being put into action. We need governments across the UK to do more to tackle illegal killing to protect our raptors for future generations to enjoy.”

Previous research has shown that illegal killing of birds of prey is associated with land managed for intensive driven grouse shooting, leaving vast areas of our uplands without raptors.

A Natural England study revealed ‘compelling evidence’ that persecution of hen harriers – associated with driven grouse moors – was the main factor limiting their recovery in England.

Environmental costs

The RSPB believes the introduction of a licensing system for driven grouse shooting would help tackle the ongoing illegal persecution that occurs on these grouse moors.

This would also help tackle the wider problems of intensive management of ‘big bag’ driven grouse shooting, like the draining of and burning on fragile peat bogs.

A fair set of rules in the form of a licensing system could help ensure shoots are operating legally and sustainably and introduce the option of restricting or removing a licence in response to the most serious offences, for example where staff on an estate have been convicted of illegally killing birds of prey.

The RSPB welcomes a recent announcement by Scottish Government that will see an independent panel established to review options for regulation of grouse shooting and to look at the economic and environmental costs and benefits of the industry.

Bob Elliot, RSPB Head of Investigations, said: “This latest Birdcrime report continues to highlight that in the UK we have a major issue with birds of prey being deliberately and illegally killed, despite having full legal protection.

“This type of crime has serious consequences for the populations of species, such as the hen harrier, and we must see a change in attitude and more effective law enforcement to protect these birds for years to come.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. For the full copy of Birdcrime 2016 report summarising the extent of illegal persecution offences against birds of prey in the UK, visit the RSPB website.