A staggering 85 percent of people in the UK support renewable energy, with just three percent opposed to it, according to data published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s (BEIS) in its quarterly public attitudes tracker.

This is the highest level of support since the tracker began in July 2012, and the joint-lowest figure for people against. The number of people who ‘strongly support’ the use of renewables also hit a record high of 37 percent.

Support was highest for solar generation with 87 percent of people in favour of it, ahead of offshore wind (83 percent), wave and tidal (81 percent), and onshore wind (76 percent) – with all being record highs since the first tracker in 2012. No renewable technology had a disapproval level above the eight percent against onshore wind.

Power generation

The release of the data coincides with the UK power generation being coal-free for a record 76 hours across 21 April to 24 April, setting a new record. This came only a week after the UK had 54 coal-free hours – itself a new record at the time. A shorter but equally impressive 40 hours of coal-free electricity generation was also recorded across 25-26 April.

Unseasonably warm temperatures this month pushed down demand for heating, which in turn lowered electricity demand. And the sunny and windy weather saw electricity from wind and solar providing over 30 percent of electricity in the 21 April-24 April coal-fee period.

The trend is set to continue heading in to the summer. System operator National Grid expects electricity production from renewables through the summer months to significantly reduce both gas and coal fired power generation.

Electricity needed from power stations connected to the transmission network – typically gas, coal and nuclear – is forecast to be more than 10 percent lower this summer year compared to 2015 because of solar and other renewables.

The government has set a target of October 2025 for removing unabated coal-fired power generation from the electricity system, meaning the importance of electricity from renewables is going to increase. It will also have to grow to ensure the UK meets its targets of reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 compared to levels in 1990.

Energy security

The BEIS public attitude tracker also showed support for fracking edged higher to 18 percent from 16 percent in the previous tracker in February. But this remains someway below a total of 35 percent opposed to it. Opposition to fracking has been higher than support for it on every tracker since the spring of 2014.

Pro-fracking industry group UK Onshore Operator’s Group (UKOOG) released a statement welcoming the increase, saying it showed a growing concern among the public that the UK is too reliant on other countries for its energy, with the cold weather earlier this year and arrival of Russian LNG driving the change.

For those who do support fracking, reducing the UK’s dependence on imported energy is the biggest factor, ahead of others such as cheaper bills, economic growth, and jobs.

The attitude tracker reported that 60 percent of people are concerned about the UK’s energy security – 10pp higher than the last tracker – with 57 percent of people most concerned about gas.

But this has not translated directly translated in to support growth for fracking. Support for renewables grew by 8pp, compared to just 2pp for fracking, suggesting people are rapidly making the link between the development renewables and improving energy security.

The record levels of popularity for renewables reflects the strength of support there is behind the government’s policies on decarbonisation and phase out of coal.

But at the same time, the popularity goes in the face of government decisions to cut support for solar and onshore wind. And despite the slight rise in support for fracking, the sector has a long way to go before it has anything resembling the social licence it needs to operate in the UK. 

This Author

Joseph Dutton is a policy adviser for the global climate change think-tank E3G. He tweets at @JDuttonUK.

A partial ban of three types of neonicotinoids across the European Union (EU) has been extended to cover all outdoor uses, in what campaigners are hoping is a “turning point for the toxins”.

The use of clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam has been prohibited in the EU on oilseed rape, spring cereals and sprays for winter cereals since 2013. But they were still allowed to treat sugar beat, various horticultural crops and as seed treatments for winter cereals.

Following Friday’s vote – in which representatives from 16 countries including the United Kingdom supported the European Commission’s proposal for a ban – their use will only be allowed in permanent greenhouses.

Chronically polluted

Franziska Achterberg, a food policy adviser for Greenpeace EU, said: “This is great news for pollinators and our wider environment, but there was never any question that these three neonicotinoids had to go. Now the EU must make sure that they are not simply swapped with other harmful chemicals.”

The three neonicotinoids are “just the tip of the iceberg”, according to Achterberg. Other pesticides, and other neonicotinoids, are just as dangerous for bees and food production, she said. These include four neonicotinoids currently authorised in the EU, and insecticides like cypermethrin, deltamethrin and chlorpyrifos.

Failure to address the wider chemical burden on bees could mean that farmers simply replace banned chemicals with other permitted chemicals that may be just as harmful, warned Greenpeace.

France is to bring in a total ban on neonicotinoids from 1 September, including acetamiprid and thiacloprid, and possibly sulfoxaflor and flupyradifurone, depending on the outcome of discussions. The US Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing use of four neonicotinoids.

Campaigners are concerned that pollution from previous use of neonicotinoids may continue to harm wildlife. Last year, conservation charity Buglife, which has been campaigning since 2009 for neonicotinoids to be banned, found that half of rivers and lakes monitored in England were “chronically polluted” with neonicotinoids from use in agricultural and pet flea treatments.

Initial ban

It wants EU member states to rapidly adopt guidance on improving the EU pesticide approval process produced by scientific advisory body the European Food Safety Authority so that they stop approving new insecticides suspected of being similarly harmful to bees.

However, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) said that the EU’s decision was “regrettable” and “not justified by the evidence”.

Guy Smith, NFU deputy president, said: “Without neonicotinoids many crops grown in the UK will become less viable, and a ban could simply mean we import more crops from parts of the world where there is no political desire to ban these key insecticides.”

Bayer, which manufactures imidacloprid and clothianidin, said the restrictions were not warranted, because neonicotinoids are safe “when used in accordance with the label instructions”.

The agrochemicals company, together with thiamethoxam manufacturer Syngenta, took the European Commission to the European Court of Justice over its initial ban of neonicotinoids in 2013. The result of the case is due next month.

Flowering crops

“A reversal of the current restrictions could have profound implications for the legal justification of the new proposals,” Bayer said in a statement. “The ban further reduce European farmers’ ability to tackle important pests, for many of which there are no alternative treatments available.”

However, Peter Lundgren, an arable farmer with a 100ha farm in Lincolnshire, said that farmers “did not need to panic” about not being able to use neonicotinoids. Lundgren has been managing his farm without neonicotinoids for eight or nine years. “I don’t believe I’ve suffered any worse damage to my crops from not using neonicotinoids. I’ve saved quite a lot of money because the treatment is quite expensive,” he said.

Lundgren has instead encouraged populations of beneficial insects on his farm, which eat pests such as flea beetles and aphids. This has had the added benefit of removing the need for slug pellets, since spiders and beetles eat slug eggs. He is also using companion planting to entice pests onto plants he is happy to sacrifice so that they leave the ones he wants to harvest alone.

“We’ve had a ban on neonicotinoids on flowering crops for a number of years. There were dire warnings of a collapse in production in oil seed rape, but we haven’t actually seen that,” he said.

“There are a number of different opportunities for farmers to protect their crops. There’s also a number of us who have been able to farm reasonably successfully without neonicotinoids, so there is a blueprint. There’s no need to panic!” he added.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

A group of supermarkets and other stores announced with much fanfare that within the next seven years they are planning to cut out non-recyclable plastic packaging.

This is good news – although chiefly for the way it demonstrates that public concern about plastic waste – well stirred by Blue Planet II – is forcing reaction from the polluters.

But there’s a crucial point to make about the announcement: ‘recyclable’ doesn’t mean an object is going to be recycled.

Drowning in recyclables

Yes, it is good if we stop producing the black plastic trays and film that can only end up in landfill or wasteful, polluting incineration. But our plastics recycling facilities are already groaning with over-supply of recyclables from the impact of the Chinese decision to stop importing most plastic waste for recycling there.

That’s when only about a third of the 3.7 million tonnes of the single-use plastic waste we produce in Britain each year is recycled. At the consumer end, households are struggling with a hugely variety of different schemes with different rules: if you move house there’s a good chance you’ll have to learn a new system.

How much better if an unnecessary item isn’t produced at all. That more than 40 percent of the plastic produced goes into single-use packaging is shocking, even before you consider the fact that the world total is more than 300 million tonnes each year.

As Julia Hartley-Brewer said to me last week on Talk Radio: we used to do without all these plastics – it surely can’t be that hard to find alternative ways of doing things.

Choked planet

Some companies are already doing much more than the Plastic Pact. Morrisons announced that it would be trialling stores in which no fruit or vegetables were sold in plastic packaging and allowing consumers to bring their own container for meat and fish – hopefully a step towards ending their use in any stores.

The café chain Boston Tea Party said it would be ending the use of all disposable cups in its stores. Sky has said it will remove all single-use plastics from its products and supply chain by 2020.

We surely can’t be too far from an innovative community following Freiburg in Germany in introducing a scheme where an entire town heads towards ending the use of disposable cups.

We are – finally – recognising that there is no such thing as throwing something ‘away’ on our poor choked planet.

Most of the eight-billion tonnes of plastic produced since the 1950s is still in existence – in our drinking water, our soils, our oceans, our animals and our air. Even in our beer. And we can’t afford to throw out into this increasingly toxic world.

Pace of change

Government announcements about plans to ban plastic straws, cotton bud sticks and stirrers have already been well-received. These are patently obviously unnecessary items.

But it is well behind the pace of change. Theresa May’s announcement of a ban on unnecessary single-use plastic by 2042 looked laughable at the time: who knows how long she’ll be prime minister – but certainly not for that kind of timeframe.

But with some companies leaping far ahead of the government, it’s obvious it needs to move much faster – it can be done, it should be mandated to be done.

The public will for action is clear – it needs to be matched with government action. The Green Party is calling for a ban on all unnecessary single-use plastic – which means nearly all of it on our high streets. That’s the Plastic Pact we need.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is former Green Party leader.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is policy officer for Environmental and Economic Justice at the European Environmental Bureau. He authored several books on the environment and he comments on global environmental and economic issues on Facebook and Twitter.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.

There’s so much wrong with this story, it’s difficult to know where to start. So let’s begin with the forests in Flanders fields – or lack thereof. After all, no other region in the EU has so little forest as Flanders.

A protest group recently planted three billboards outside Wachtebeke – inspired by the Oscar-winning film – with the message: “Since you’ve been minister, 2,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. You promised a plan for forest conservation. What are you waiting for?”

Fair enough: they were targeting the minister for the environment, who once said that ‘a tree was always meant to be cut down’. In the highway story, it’s the minister for mobility who made it possible to start felling trees as soon as people start hiding behind them.

Refugee-hunting

Unfortunately, it seems to be hunting season on both trees and migrants. The Belgian police’s cat-and-mouse game with distressed refugees living miserably on the side of the highway as they try to reach the UK is attracting more and more coverage.

It all fits in an atmosphere fueled by Theo Francken, the Flemish nationalist secretary of state for migration and asylum, who recently said we need to “push back the boats” coming into Greece.

He also declared part of Brussels as “cleaned up” after asylum seekers sleeping on the street were rounded up and handed over to the Sudanese police to be tortured.

Francken uses language that was last used when Jews were deported from Belgium to camps in Germany, but this hasn’t prevented him from quickly becoming the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile, amid all the refugee-hunting, the real life stories of the people who slept in the few sleeping bags found in that little patch of forest remain untold.

Open letter

As bad as the story already is, there’s another angle. The trees’ location alongside the busy E313 motorway – which connects Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – did not go unnoticed as people reacted to the story.

The key function of those trees was not to provide the heartbreaking setting for a dystopian game of hide-and-seek, but rather as a limited defense in absorbing some of the deadly fumes coming from the highway.

While Belgium has a long history of breaching European air quality standards, there is a recent surge in public anger about the fact that one person dies every hour just from breathing Belgium’s air.

According to one method of measurement, Belgium’s air is almost the worst of Europe, second only to Montenegro. People in Antwerp have recent launched a court case demanding drastic emergency measures to tackle toxic air.

Their campaign was launched with a passionate open letter from Jeroen Olyslaegers, the leading Belgian author, which began: “Dear concerned parents that have children with lungs”.

Grassroots movements

Now parents are protesting in front of their children’s schools, after a documentary on national TV showed just how toxic some of Belgium’s playgrounds have become.

A national newspaper is working with a university on a massive air quality project – planting 20,000 monitoring stations all across the country, and reporting on the issue in the hard hitting style of the Keep it in the Ground series from The Guardian.

I live in country where institutions rarely work together at all, but where they complement each other when it comes to destroying the natural world and increasing the suffering of fellow human beings.

But it sometimes takes one action that is testimony to utter cruelty and stupidity before the wider narrative can change – just as the full horror of the Windrush scandal is revealed in the UK – 

The silver lining to this story is that grassroots movements – such as those forming around concerned parents’ objection to their children breathing harmful air – create new and flourishing political spaces.

Pruning season

Something as crazy as cutting down trees to stop people hiding behind them provides an opportunity to ask, ‘are you serious?’ about wider regressive policies. 

Politicians ignore the anger over air pollution at their own peril. Local elections are slated for October while regional, national and European elections are in a year from now.

The reaction from the highways agency after the inevitable Twitter storm broke out only added insult to injury. They did finally issue an apology, but not because they cut the trees. The agency apologised for cutting the trees right in the pruning season.

This Author

Nick Meynen is the project officer for global policies and sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau.