The Polish government broke European Union law by logging the ancient forest of Białowieża, judges from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) have ruled.

The judgment is the final say on the case, which began in 2016 when then Polish environment minister Jan Szyszko tripled the logging limits in the forest.

The forest is one of Europe’s last primeval forests, a Natura 2000 site, and a World Heritage Site. Located on the border between Poland and Belarus, it covers around 140,000 hectares and is home to the European bison.

Chainsaws and harvesters

Szyszko, who lost his post earlier this year, claimed that the logging was necessary to protect the forest from a bark beetle infestation.

Lawyers at ClientEarth alongside six other organisations made a formal complaint to the European Commission, which took the case to the ECJ.

The campaigners’ case was backed by scientists, who argued that bark beetles are not a threat to the forest, and that the dead trees that are also being removed are extremely important for the biodiversity of the forest. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee also urged Poland to stop the logging.

The case was fast-tracked at every stage. In July 2017, the ECJ ordered all chainsaws and harvesters to be stopped immediately while it considered the case. The logging finally ended in November.

James Thornton, the chief executive of ClientEarth, said: “This is a huge victory for all defenders of Białowieża Forest. Hundreds of people were heavily engaged in saving this unique, ancient woodland from unthinkable destruction.”

Conflict of interest

However, this was not the end of the fight, he warned. “The ruling is just on paper for now – we need to see concrete action.

“First, the decisions that allowed logging must be withdrawn. Then, the Polish government should also consider enlarging the national park so it encompasses the whole of Białowieża Forest. This is the only way to guarantee that devastation of the forest will not happen again.”

Greenpeace Poland, which had also campaigned against the logging, said that the ECJ’s ruling confirmed that its protection of the forest was “not just necessary, but just”.

Katarzyna Jagiełło, a forest campaigner with the campaign group, said: “But the struggle to protect this forest doesn’t end here. This unique natural treasure is still not protected properly, with more than two-thirds of the Polish part of the forest administered by the state’s forest holding office who are responsible for logging the forest.”

The only way to secure the protection of the forest for the environment minister to make it a national park, and end the conflict of interest caused by the state holding office, which carried out the logging, administering an EU and UNESCO protected area.

No appeal possible

Environment minister Henryk Kowalczyk, who has replaced Szyszko, told Reuters in March that it should be up to Poland to decide the forest’s future.

If the ECJ made any specific recommendations about the forest’s future management, particularly if it banned any logging, then the government would have to discuss it, he said. 

Today’s judgment is final and the Polish government cannot appeal it. The verdict is valid from today, so the government needs to take immediate action.

If it does not, the commission will launch a legal case over non-compliance, which could result in hefty fines. The minimum penalty is €4.3 million, but usually in such cases the fines are much higher, potentially reaching tens of millions of euros, according to ClientEarth.

The Polish Ministry of Environment said that it would study the judgment in detail, but added that it would respect the verdict.

“The Białowieża Forest is our national heritage. All the activities have been undertaken with its preservation in the best possible condition for present and future generations in mind,” Kowalczyk said.

He added that the ministry would soon present the commission with proposals for “compromise solutions” for the Białowieża Forest, which would take into account the work of an expert team preparing a long-term plan for protecting the ‎forest.

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. 

Scientists have engineered an enzyme which can digest some of our most commonly polluting plastics, providing a potential solution to one of the world’s biggest environmental problems.

The discovery could result in a recycling solution for millions of tonnes of plastic bottles, made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which currently persists for hundreds of years in the environment.

The research was led by teams at the University of Portsmouth and the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Real solutions

Harry Austin, the paper’s lead author, is postgraduate student jointly funded by the University of Portsmouth and NREL. He said: “I am delighted to be part of an international team that is tackling one of the biggest problems facing our planet. This research is just the beginning and there is much more to be done in this area. ”

Professor John McGeehan at the University of Portsmouth and Dr Gregg Beckham at NREL solved the crystal structure of PETase—a recently discovered enzyme that digests PET— and used this 3D information to understand how it works.

During this study, they inadvertently engineered an enzyme that is even better at degrading the plastic than the one that evolved in nature. The researchers are now working on improving the enzyme further to allow it to be used industrially to break down plastics in a fraction of the time.

Professor McGeehan, director of the Institute of Biological and Biomedical Sciences in the School of Biological Sciences at Portsmouth, said: “Few could have predicted that since plastics became popular in the 1960s huge plastic waste patches would be found floating in oceans, or washed up on once pristine beaches all over the world.

“We can all play a significant part in dealing with the plastic problem, but the scientific community who ultimately created these ‘wonder-materials’, must now use all the technology at their disposal to develop real solutions.”

Protein engineering

The researchers made the breakthrough when they were examining the structure of a natural enzyme which is thought to have evolved in a waste recycling centre in Japan, allowing a bacterium to degrade plastic as a food source.

PET, patented as a plastic in the 1940s, has not existed in nature for very long, so the team set out to determine how the enzyme evolved and if it might be possible to improve it.

The goal was to determine its structure, but they ended up going a step further and accidentally engineered an enzyme which was even better at breaking down PET plastics. “Serendipity often plays a significant role in fundamental scientific research and our discovery here is no exception,” Professor McGeehan said.

“Although the improvement is modest, this unanticipated discovery suggests that there is room to further improve these enzymes, moving us closer to a recycling solution for the ever-growing mountain of discarded plastics.”

The research team can now apply the tools of protein engineering and evolution to continue to improve it.

Industrial recycling

The University of Portsmouth and NREL collaborated with scientists at the Diamond Light Source in the United Kingdom, a synchrotron that uses intense beams of X-rays 10 billion times brighter than the sun to act as a microscope powerful enough to see individual atoms.

Using their latest laboratory, beamline I23, an ultra-high-resolution 3D model of the PETase enzyme was generated in exquisite detail.

Professor McGeehan said: “The Diamond Light Source recently created one of the most advanced X-ray beamlines in the world and having access to this facility allowed us to see the 3D atomic structure of PETase in incredible detail. Being able to see the inner workings of this biological catalyst provided us with the blueprints to engineer a faster and more efficient enzyme.”

Professor Andrew Harrison, chief executive of the Diamond Light Source, said: “With input from five institutions in three different countries, this research is a fine example of how international collaboration can help make significant scientific breakthroughs.

“The detail that the team were able to draw out from the results achieved on the I23 beamline at Diamond will be invaluable in looking to tailor the enzyme for use in large-scale industrial recycling processes. The impact of such an innovative solution to plastic waste would be global. It is fantastic that UK scientists and facilities are helping to lead the way.”

Building blocks

With help from the computational modelling scientists at the University of South Florida and the University of Campinas in Brazil, the team discovered that PETase looks very similar to a cutinase, but it has some unusual features including a more open active site, able to accommodate man-made rather than natural polymers.

These differences indicated that PETase may have evolved in a PET-containing environment to enable the enzyme to degrade PET. To test that hypothesis, the researchers mutated the PETase active site to make it more like a cutinase.

And that was when the unexpected happened – the researchers found that the PETase mutant was better than the natural PETase in degrading PET. Significantly, the enzyme can also degrade PEF, a bio-based substitute for PET plastics that is being hailed as a replacement for glass beer bottles.

Professor McGeehan said: “The engineering process is much the same as for enzymes currently being used in bio-washing detergents and in the manufacture of biofuels – the technology exists and it’s well within the possibility that in the coming years we will see an industrially viable process to turn PET and potentially other substrates like PEF, PLA, and PBS, back into their original building blocks so that they can be sustainably recycled.”

The research was funded by the University of Portsmouth, NREL and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from the University of Plymouth. 

Two British scientists, Jane Hill and Steven Willis, moved five hundred individuals of each of the marble white and the small skipper species up the A1 highway in north eastern England in 2000 as they were concerned about what climate change was doing to a pair of local butterflies.

Studies in the years since have indicated that this, one the earliest methods of managed relocation, worked successfully. 

A number of species will die if they remain in their historical geographical ranges as the impact of the anthropogenic climate becomes more pronounced. And so environmentalists and biologists are suggesting that struggling species should be given a helping hand.

Deploy technologies

But Christopher Preston, the environmental philosopher, argues that with managed relocation humans are now deciding what nature is. Speaking to The Ecologist from his home in Montana in the United States, he said: “We are recomposing ecosystems and choosing its members. And so nature increasingly becomes synthetic nature:the thing we choose nature to be.”

Preston adds: “We are redesigning the earth from atom to atmosphere, and we have to decide if those are good choices to make or not.”

Preston is originally from the UK and moved to the US two decades ago. He has recently published The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species and Reengineering Our World.   

Human beings are now learning how to replace some of nature’s most historically influential operations with synthetic ones of their own design in a myriad of ways.

These include: learning how to synthesise and stitch together new arrangements of DNA and useful organisms; fabricating novel atomic and molecular structures, which will create entirely new material properties; reassembling the species composition of ecosystems; and even studying how to deploy technologies that will turn back the sun to keep the planet cool.

Vital elements

This last technological breakthrough is known as climate engineering: a process that involves tweaking with the fundamental workings of the atmosphere to bring down global temperatures. The most common method is known as Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

Typically, this involves putting some form of reflective particle or droplet into the stratosphere to intercept solar energy before it gets any closer to the earth. “SRM doesn’t solve global warming though,” Preston warns: “It doesn’t take carbon out of the atmosphere.” 

What SRM does do – however – is act like a sun shade: cooling down the globe’s temperature down for a period of approximately 40 years. Crucially, it buys the global community time, before it can finally figure out how to take out of the atmosphere climate change’s chief culprit: carbon dioxide.

The best way to implement this – Preston explains – is to introduce Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). And there are a number of ways this can be done. But principally, Preston points out, two common methods are used.

The first is a process that generates massive blooms of phytoplankton in the oceans. This can be done by spreading powdered forms of vital elements such as iron, potassium, or phosphorous, on the ocean surface, in areas that are otherwise nutrient deficient.

Solar energy

With the additional ingredients introduced into the soup, phytoplankton – naturally occurring at the ocean surface – will proliferate and take up increasing amounts of carbon dioxide as they photosynthesise

However, Preston warns that it’s still not fully understood by environmentalists and scientists whether the carbon actually ends up in safe long term storage on the ocean floor. Moreover, he says the jury is still out on how much carbon microorganisms can actually absorb: as nutrients are sprinkled on the ocean surface.

The other method of CDR Preston mentions is Direct Air Capture (DAC): this involves using an engineered structure like a windmill that would capture carbon from the breeze. The carbon harvest could then be extracted from the chemical, before being transported and stored in the geological formations in which oil and gas are stored. 

Preston says it is paramount to “ take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” – regardless of what methods are used. The environmental philosopher wants to make one thing abundantly clear:he is no utopian-tech-enthusiast.

Critical juncture

He is also keen to stress the distinct differences between SRM and CDR. SRM takes something which has been integral to the formation of the planet on which we live for four and a half billion years— the solar energy that comes in— and it tries to recalibrate that for our purposes,” Preston adds.

CDR – on the other hand – takes something that we put into the atmosphere that we now realise is a pollutant, Preston explains.

“The idea of replacing nature with something synthetic is highly problematic,” Preston states categorically: “Humans encounter nature as one of the fundamentals of human life.”

Humanity is thus at a critical juncture, the philosopher believes:to decide what the future of nature will actually consist of. Particularly as technological progress offers to reshape nature like no previous time in our history; and, as we gain total dominion over the natural world too.

“There used to be this thing called nature,” says Preston. “It built itself through ecological and evolutionary forces. Then [humans] arrived and had to respond in relation to it.”

The author documents how until recently, most notable pieces of human history have taken place in the epoch known as the Holocene: a geological period dating back from the present day to roughly 12,000 years ago.

Bold choices

The Holocene age, however, is now becoming the past tense. This is due to how vigorously humans have dominated the earth in the interim. This coming new dawn of history is more commonly referred to as the Anthropocene.

As we shortly enter this new age, two things have happened,Preston explains. Firstly,we have realised that there is no nature untouched in the world anymore.

“You can go up the artic and find pesticides in whales, or you can pick up a teaspoon of ocean water, [where] you find dust residues. So we have arrived suddenly at this moment where some people are even talking about the end of nature.”

Secondly, if nature has indeed ended, Preston believes we need— as a global community— to ask the fundamental question: where are we heading now? He believes the future of the natural world essentially comes down to two bold choices.

Are we really going to take control of the earth and synthesise it from nanotechnology? Or, are we going to return to where we were before, keeping some hope of there being something natural out there?

“I’m skeptical of the synthetic age,” the philosopher concludes: “ I have nostalgia for the idea of nature. I think it’s an essential background for us; and believe people will choose it over accepting a full throttle synthetic age.”

This Author

JP O’ Malley is a freelance journalist and cultural critic who writes regularly on politics, history, literature, society, the environment and technology, for numerous publications around the globe.

A new law to ensure fish stocks are protected from overfishing after Britain leaves the EU would be supported by more than three out of four people across the UK, according to a new poll.

The survey has been conducted by YouGov and shows there is widespread support amongst the British public for new laws that ensure we fish responsibly and protect the marine environment. A total of 79 percent of respondents said they believe the government has a moral duty to ensure sustainable fishing.

Further, more than 80 percent people support an increase in government fines for illegal overfishing after Britain leaves the EU – including 86 percent of ‘leave’ voters.

Transition deal

Illegal fishing puts fish stocks and marine habitats at risk. The UK is currently failing to police fisheries laws properly and out of the four biggest EU fishing nations, Scotland had the highest rates of reoffending.

Amy Hill, a fisheries lawyer at ClientEarth, said: “The results are clear. People overwhelmingly support sustainable fishing laws once Britain leaves the EU and want the government to make sure that overfishing is prevented.

“Blue Planet II showed us the immense pressures that are facing the ocean. We need sustainable fishing laws that better protect our ocean and the marine life that depends on it.

Fish responsibly

“Some MPs should stop playing politics with the ocean. Healthy fish populations will ensure a profitable fishing industry and healthy seas for everyone. Whatever happens with Brexit, people want strong laws that ensure we fish in a way the ocean can support.”

The government announced last month that the EU will continue to control Britain’s waters until the end of 2020, and will be “consulted” on future fishing quotas as part of the Brexit transition deal. But in reality, the future of UK fisheries depends on a government white paper – due this Spring.

The majority of people surveyed said protecting fish stocks from overfishing should be the government’s priority in the Brexit negotiations, rather than ensuring the British fishing industry has a larger share of fish to catch.

Hill added: “Protecting our fish and our marine life should be the government’s top priority in any future negotiations with the EU. And no matter what happens, the UK needs to cooperate with our neighbours and fish responsibly once we leave the EU.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth.

Two British scientists, Jane Hill and Steven Willis, moved five hundred individuals of each of the marble white and the small skipper species up the A1 highway in north eastern England in 2000 as they were concerned about what climate change was doing to a pair of local butterflies.

Studies in the years since have indicated that this, one the earliest methods of managed relocation, worked successfully. 

A number of species will die if they remain in their historical geographical ranges as the impact of the anthropogenic climate becomes more pronounced. And so environmentalists and biologists are suggesting that struggling species should be given a helping hand.

Deploy technologies

But Christopher Preston, the environmental philosopher, argues that with managed relocation humans are now deciding what nature is. Speaking to The Ecologist from his home in Montana in the United States, he said: “We are recomposing ecosystems and choosing its members. And so nature increasingly becomes synthetic nature:the thing we choose nature to be.”

Preston adds: “We are redesigning the earth from atom to atmosphere, and we have to decide if those are good choices to make or not.”

Preston is originally from the UK and moved to the US two decades ago. He has recently published The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species and Reengineering Our World.   

Human beings are now learning how to replace some of nature’s most historically influential operations with synthetic ones of their own design in a myriad of ways.

These include: learning how to synthesise and stitch together new arrangements of DNA and useful organisms; fabricating novel atomic and molecular structures, which will create entirely new material properties; reassembling the species composition of ecosystems; and even studying how to deploy technologies that will turn back the sun to keep the planet cool.

Vital elements

This last technological breakthrough is known as climate engineering: a process that involves tweaking with the fundamental workings of the atmosphere to bring down global temperatures. The most common method is known as Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

Typically, this involves putting some form of reflective particle or droplet into the stratosphere to intercept solar energy before it gets any closer to the earth. “SRM doesn’t solve global warming though,” Preston warns: “It doesn’t take carbon out of the atmosphere.” 

What SRM does do – however – is act like a sun shade: cooling down the globe’s temperature down for a period of approximately 40 years. Crucially, it buys the global community time, before it can finally figure out how to take out of the atmosphere climate change’s chief culprit: carbon dioxide.

The best way to implement this – Preston explains – is to introduce Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). And there are a number of ways this can be done. But principally, Preston points out, two common methods are used.

The first is a process that generates massive blooms of phytoplankton in the oceans. This can be done by spreading powdered forms of vital elements such as iron, potassium, or phosphorous, on the ocean surface, in areas that are otherwise nutrient deficient.

Solar energy

With the additional ingredients introduced into the soup, phytoplankton – naturally occurring at the ocean surface – will proliferate and take up increasing amounts of carbon dioxide as they photosynthesise

However, Preston warns that it’s still not fully understood by environmentalists and scientists whether the carbon actually ends up in safe long term storage on the ocean floor. Moreover, he says the jury is still out on how much carbon microorganisms can actually absorb: as nutrients are sprinkled on the ocean surface.

The other method of CDR Preston mentions is Direct Air Capture (DAC): this involves using an engineered structure like a windmill that would capture carbon from the breeze. The carbon harvest could then be extracted from the chemical, before being transported and stored in the geological formations in which oil and gas are stored. 

Preston says it is paramount to “ take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” – regardless of what methods are used. The environmental philosopher wants to make one thing abundantly clear:he is no utopian-tech-enthusiast.

Critical juncture

He is also keen to stress the distinct differences between SRM and CDR. SRM takes something which has been integral to the formation of the planet on which we live for four and a half billion years— the solar energy that comes in— and it tries to recalibrate that for our purposes,” Preston adds.

CDR – on the other hand – takes something that we put into the atmosphere that we now realise is a pollutant, Preston explains.

“The idea of replacing nature with something synthetic is highly problematic,” Preston states categorically: “Humans encounter nature as one of the fundamentals of human life.”

Humanity is thus at a critical juncture, the philosopher believes:to decide what the future of nature will actually consist of. Particularly as technological progress offers to reshape nature like no previous time in our history; and, as we gain total dominion over the natural world too.

“There used to be this thing called nature,” says Preston. “It built itself through ecological and evolutionary forces. Then [humans] arrived and had to respond in relation to it.”

The author documents how until recently, most notable pieces of human history have taken place in the epoch known as the Holocene: a geological period dating back from the present day to roughly 12,000 years ago.

Bold choices

The Holocene age, however, is now becoming the past tense. This is due to how vigorously humans have dominated the earth in the interim. This coming new dawn of history is more commonly referred to as the Anthropocene.

As we shortly enter this new age, two things have happened,Preston explains. Firstly,we have realised that there is no nature untouched in the world anymore.

“You can go up the artic and find pesticides in whales, or you can pick up a teaspoon of ocean water, [where] you find dust residues. So we have arrived suddenly at this moment where some people are even talking about the end of nature.”

Secondly, if nature has indeed ended, Preston believes we need— as a global community— to ask the fundamental question: where are we heading now? He believes the future of the natural world essentially comes down to two bold choices.

Are we really going to take control of the earth and synthesise it from nanotechnology? Or, are we going to return to where we were before, keeping some hope of there being something natural out there?

“I’m skeptical of the synthetic age,” the philosopher concludes: “ I have nostalgia for the idea of nature. I think it’s an essential background for us; and believe people will choose it over accepting a full throttle synthetic age.”

This Author

JP O’ Malley is a freelance journalist and cultural critic who writes regularly on politics, history, literature, society, the environment and technology, for numerous publications around the globe.

Two British scientists, Jane Hill and Steven Willis, moved five hundred individuals of each of the marble white and the small skipper species up the A1 highway in north eastern England in 2000 as they were concerned about what climate change was doing to a pair of local butterflies.

Studies in the years since have indicated that this, one the earliest methods of managed relocation, worked successfully. 

A number of species will die if they remain in their historical geographical ranges as the impact of the anthropogenic climate becomes more pronounced. And so environmentalists and biologists are suggesting that struggling species should be given a helping hand.

Deploy technologies

But Christopher Preston, the environmental philosopher, argues that with managed relocation humans are now deciding what nature is. Speaking to The Ecologist from his home in Montana in the United States, he said: “We are recomposing ecosystems and choosing its members. And so nature increasingly becomes synthetic nature:the thing we choose nature to be.”

Preston adds: “We are redesigning the earth from atom to atmosphere, and we have to decide if those are good choices to make or not.”

Preston is originally from the UK and moved to the US two decades ago. He has recently published The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species and Reengineering Our World.   

Human beings are now learning how to replace some of nature’s most historically influential operations with synthetic ones of their own design in a myriad of ways.

These include: learning how to synthesise and stitch together new arrangements of DNA and useful organisms; fabricating novel atomic and molecular structures, which will create entirely new material properties; reassembling the species composition of ecosystems; and even studying how to deploy technologies that will turn back the sun to keep the planet cool.

Vital elements

This last technological breakthrough is known as climate engineering: a process that involves tweaking with the fundamental workings of the atmosphere to bring down global temperatures. The most common method is known as Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

Typically, this involves putting some form of reflective particle or droplet into the stratosphere to intercept solar energy before it gets any closer to the earth. “SRM doesn’t solve global warming though,” Preston warns: “It doesn’t take carbon out of the atmosphere.” 

What SRM does do – however – is act like a sun shade: cooling down the globe’s temperature down for a period of approximately 40 years. Crucially, it buys the global community time, before it can finally figure out how to take out of the atmosphere climate change’s chief culprit: carbon dioxide.

The best way to implement this – Preston explains – is to introduce Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). And there are a number of ways this can be done. But principally, Preston points out, two common methods are used.

The first is a process that generates massive blooms of phytoplankton in the oceans. This can be done by spreading powdered forms of vital elements such as iron, potassium, or phosphorous, on the ocean surface, in areas that are otherwise nutrient deficient.

Solar energy

With the additional ingredients introduced into the soup, phytoplankton – naturally occurring at the ocean surface – will proliferate and take up increasing amounts of carbon dioxide as they photosynthesise

However, Preston warns that it’s still not fully understood by environmentalists and scientists whether the carbon actually ends up in safe long term storage on the ocean floor. Moreover, he says the jury is still out on how much carbon microorganisms can actually absorb: as nutrients are sprinkled on the ocean surface.

The other method of CDR Preston mentions is Direct Air Capture (DAC): this involves using an engineered structure like a windmill that would capture carbon from the breeze. The carbon harvest could then be extracted from the chemical, before being transported and stored in the geological formations in which oil and gas are stored. 

Preston says it is paramount to “ take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” – regardless of what methods are used. The environmental philosopher wants to make one thing abundantly clear:he is no utopian-tech-enthusiast.

Critical juncture

He is also keen to stress the distinct differences between SRM and CDR. SRM takes something which has been integral to the formation of the planet on which we live for four and a half billion years— the solar energy that comes in— and it tries to recalibrate that for our purposes,” Preston adds.

CDR – on the other hand – takes something that we put into the atmosphere that we now realise is a pollutant, Preston explains.

“The idea of replacing nature with something synthetic is highly problematic,” Preston states categorically: “Humans encounter nature as one of the fundamentals of human life.”

Humanity is thus at a critical juncture, the philosopher believes:to decide what the future of nature will actually consist of. Particularly as technological progress offers to reshape nature like no previous time in our history; and, as we gain total dominion over the natural world too.

“There used to be this thing called nature,” says Preston. “It built itself through ecological and evolutionary forces. Then [humans] arrived and had to respond in relation to it.”

The author documents how until recently, most notable pieces of human history have taken place in the epoch known as the Holocene: a geological period dating back from the present day to roughly 12,000 years ago.

Bold choices

The Holocene age, however, is now becoming the past tense. This is due to how vigorously humans have dominated the earth in the interim. This coming new dawn of history is more commonly referred to as the Anthropocene.

As we shortly enter this new age, two things have happened,Preston explains. Firstly,we have realised that there is no nature untouched in the world anymore.

“You can go up the artic and find pesticides in whales, or you can pick up a teaspoon of ocean water, [where] you find dust residues. So we have arrived suddenly at this moment where some people are even talking about the end of nature.”

Secondly, if nature has indeed ended, Preston believes we need— as a global community— to ask the fundamental question: where are we heading now? He believes the future of the natural world essentially comes down to two bold choices.

Are we really going to take control of the earth and synthesise it from nanotechnology? Or, are we going to return to where we were before, keeping some hope of there being something natural out there?

“I’m skeptical of the synthetic age,” the philosopher concludes: “ I have nostalgia for the idea of nature. I think it’s an essential background for us; and believe people will choose it over accepting a full throttle synthetic age.”

This Author

JP O’ Malley is a freelance journalist and cultural critic who writes regularly on politics, history, literature, society, the environment and technology, for numerous publications around the globe.

Two British scientists, Jane Hill and Steven Willis, moved five hundred individuals of each of the marble white and the small skipper species up the A1 highway in north eastern England in 2000 as they were concerned about what climate change was doing to a pair of local butterflies.

Studies in the years since have indicated that this, one the earliest methods of managed relocation, worked successfully. 

A number of species will die if they remain in their historical geographical ranges as the impact of the anthropogenic climate becomes more pronounced. And so environmentalists and biologists are suggesting that struggling species should be given a helping hand.

Deploy technologies

But Christopher Preston, the environmental philosopher, argues that with managed relocation humans are now deciding what nature is. Speaking to The Ecologist from his home in Montana in the United States, he said: “We are recomposing ecosystems and choosing its members. And so nature increasingly becomes synthetic nature:the thing we choose nature to be.”

Preston adds: “We are redesigning the earth from atom to atmosphere, and we have to decide if those are good choices to make or not.”

Preston is originally from the UK and moved to the US two decades ago. He has recently published The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species and Reengineering Our World.   

Human beings are now learning how to replace some of nature’s most historically influential operations with synthetic ones of their own design in a myriad of ways.

These include: learning how to synthesise and stitch together new arrangements of DNA and useful organisms; fabricating novel atomic and molecular structures, which will create entirely new material properties; reassembling the species composition of ecosystems; and even studying how to deploy technologies that will turn back the sun to keep the planet cool.

Vital elements

This last technological breakthrough is known as climate engineering: a process that involves tweaking with the fundamental workings of the atmosphere to bring down global temperatures. The most common method is known as Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

Typically, this involves putting some form of reflective particle or droplet into the stratosphere to intercept solar energy before it gets any closer to the earth. “SRM doesn’t solve global warming though,” Preston warns: “It doesn’t take carbon out of the atmosphere.” 

What SRM does do – however – is act like a sun shade: cooling down the globe’s temperature down for a period of approximately 40 years. Crucially, it buys the global community time, before it can finally figure out how to take out of the atmosphere climate change’s chief culprit: carbon dioxide.

The best way to implement this – Preston explains – is to introduce Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). And there are a number of ways this can be done. But principally, Preston points out, two common methods are used.

The first is a process that generates massive blooms of phytoplankton in the oceans. This can be done by spreading powdered forms of vital elements such as iron, potassium, or phosphorous, on the ocean surface, in areas that are otherwise nutrient deficient.

Solar energy

With the additional ingredients introduced into the soup, phytoplankton – naturally occurring at the ocean surface – will proliferate and take up increasing amounts of carbon dioxide as they photosynthesise

However, Preston warns that it’s still not fully understood by environmentalists and scientists whether the carbon actually ends up in safe long term storage on the ocean floor. Moreover, he says the jury is still out on how much carbon microorganisms can actually absorb: as nutrients are sprinkled on the ocean surface.

The other method of CDR Preston mentions is Direct Air Capture (DAC): this involves using an engineered structure like a windmill that would capture carbon from the breeze. The carbon harvest could then be extracted from the chemical, before being transported and stored in the geological formations in which oil and gas are stored. 

Preston says it is paramount to “ take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” – regardless of what methods are used. The environmental philosopher wants to make one thing abundantly clear:he is no utopian-tech-enthusiast.

Critical juncture

He is also keen to stress the distinct differences between SRM and CDR. SRM takes something which has been integral to the formation of the planet on which we live for four and a half billion years— the solar energy that comes in— and it tries to recalibrate that for our purposes,” Preston adds.

CDR – on the other hand – takes something that we put into the atmosphere that we now realise is a pollutant, Preston explains.

“The idea of replacing nature with something synthetic is highly problematic,” Preston states categorically: “Humans encounter nature as one of the fundamentals of human life.”

Humanity is thus at a critical juncture, the philosopher believes:to decide what the future of nature will actually consist of. Particularly as technological progress offers to reshape nature like no previous time in our history; and, as we gain total dominion over the natural world too.

“There used to be this thing called nature,” says Preston. “It built itself through ecological and evolutionary forces. Then [humans] arrived and had to respond in relation to it.”

The author documents how until recently, most notable pieces of human history have taken place in the epoch known as the Holocene: a geological period dating back from the present day to roughly 12,000 years ago.

Bold choices

The Holocene age, however, is now becoming the past tense. This is due to how vigorously humans have dominated the earth in the interim. This coming new dawn of history is more commonly referred to as the Anthropocene.

As we shortly enter this new age, two things have happened,Preston explains. Firstly,we have realised that there is no nature untouched in the world anymore.

“You can go up the artic and find pesticides in whales, or you can pick up a teaspoon of ocean water, [where] you find dust residues. So we have arrived suddenly at this moment where some people are even talking about the end of nature.”

Secondly, if nature has indeed ended, Preston believes we need— as a global community— to ask the fundamental question: where are we heading now? He believes the future of the natural world essentially comes down to two bold choices.

Are we really going to take control of the earth and synthesise it from nanotechnology? Or, are we going to return to where we were before, keeping some hope of there being something natural out there?

“I’m skeptical of the synthetic age,” the philosopher concludes: “ I have nostalgia for the idea of nature. I think it’s an essential background for us; and believe people will choose it over accepting a full throttle synthetic age.”

This Author

JP O’ Malley is a freelance journalist and cultural critic who writes regularly on politics, history, literature, society, the environment and technology, for numerous publications around the globe.

Two British scientists, Jane Hill and Steven Willis, moved five hundred individuals of each of the marble white and the small skipper species up the A1 highway in north eastern England in 2000 as they were concerned about what climate change was doing to a pair of local butterflies.

Studies in the years since have indicated that this, one the earliest methods of managed relocation, worked successfully. 

A number of species will die if they remain in their historical geographical ranges as the impact of the anthropogenic climate becomes more pronounced. And so environmentalists and biologists are suggesting that struggling species should be given a helping hand.

Deploy technologies

But Christopher Preston, the environmental philosopher, argues that with managed relocation humans are now deciding what nature is. Speaking to The Ecologist from his home in Montana in the United States, he said: “We are recomposing ecosystems and choosing its members. And so nature increasingly becomes synthetic nature:the thing we choose nature to be.”

Preston adds: “We are redesigning the earth from atom to atmosphere, and we have to decide if those are good choices to make or not.”

Preston is originally from the UK and moved to the US two decades ago. He has recently published The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species and Reengineering Our World.   

Human beings are now learning how to replace some of nature’s most historically influential operations with synthetic ones of their own design in a myriad of ways.

These include: learning how to synthesise and stitch together new arrangements of DNA and useful organisms; fabricating novel atomic and molecular structures, which will create entirely new material properties; reassembling the species composition of ecosystems; and even studying how to deploy technologies that will turn back the sun to keep the planet cool.

Vital elements

This last technological breakthrough is known as climate engineering: a process that involves tweaking with the fundamental workings of the atmosphere to bring down global temperatures. The most common method is known as Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

Typically, this involves putting some form of reflective particle or droplet into the stratosphere to intercept solar energy before it gets any closer to the earth. “SRM doesn’t solve global warming though,” Preston warns: “It doesn’t take carbon out of the atmosphere.” 

What SRM does do – however – is act like a sun shade: cooling down the globe’s temperature down for a period of approximately 40 years. Crucially, it buys the global community time, before it can finally figure out how to take out of the atmosphere climate change’s chief culprit: carbon dioxide.

The best way to implement this – Preston explains – is to introduce Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). And there are a number of ways this can be done. But principally, Preston points out, two common methods are used.

The first is a process that generates massive blooms of phytoplankton in the oceans. This can be done by spreading powdered forms of vital elements such as iron, potassium, or phosphorous, on the ocean surface, in areas that are otherwise nutrient deficient.

Solar energy

With the additional ingredients introduced into the soup, phytoplankton – naturally occurring at the ocean surface – will proliferate and take up increasing amounts of carbon dioxide as they photosynthesise

However, Preston warns that it’s still not fully understood by environmentalists and scientists whether the carbon actually ends up in safe long term storage on the ocean floor. Moreover, he says the jury is still out on how much carbon microorganisms can actually absorb: as nutrients are sprinkled on the ocean surface.

The other method of CDR Preston mentions is Direct Air Capture (DAC): this involves using an engineered structure like a windmill that would capture carbon from the breeze. The carbon harvest could then be extracted from the chemical, before being transported and stored in the geological formations in which oil and gas are stored. 

Preston says it is paramount to “ take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” – regardless of what methods are used. The environmental philosopher wants to make one thing abundantly clear:he is no utopian-tech-enthusiast.

Critical juncture

He is also keen to stress the distinct differences between SRM and CDR. SRM takes something which has been integral to the formation of the planet on which we live for four and a half billion years— the solar energy that comes in— and it tries to recalibrate that for our purposes,” Preston adds.

CDR – on the other hand – takes something that we put into the atmosphere that we now realise is a pollutant, Preston explains.

“The idea of replacing nature with something synthetic is highly problematic,” Preston states categorically: “Humans encounter nature as one of the fundamentals of human life.”

Humanity is thus at a critical juncture, the philosopher believes:to decide what the future of nature will actually consist of. Particularly as technological progress offers to reshape nature like no previous time in our history; and, as we gain total dominion over the natural world too.

“There used to be this thing called nature,” says Preston. “It built itself through ecological and evolutionary forces. Then [humans] arrived and had to respond in relation to it.”

The author documents how until recently, most notable pieces of human history have taken place in the epoch known as the Holocene: a geological period dating back from the present day to roughly 12,000 years ago.

Bold choices

The Holocene age, however, is now becoming the past tense. This is due to how vigorously humans have dominated the earth in the interim. This coming new dawn of history is more commonly referred to as the Anthropocene.

As we shortly enter this new age, two things have happened,Preston explains. Firstly,we have realised that there is no nature untouched in the world anymore.

“You can go up the artic and find pesticides in whales, or you can pick up a teaspoon of ocean water, [where] you find dust residues. So we have arrived suddenly at this moment where some people are even talking about the end of nature.”

Secondly, if nature has indeed ended, Preston believes we need— as a global community— to ask the fundamental question: where are we heading now? He believes the future of the natural world essentially comes down to two bold choices.

Are we really going to take control of the earth and synthesise it from nanotechnology? Or, are we going to return to where we were before, keeping some hope of there being something natural out there?

“I’m skeptical of the synthetic age,” the philosopher concludes: “ I have nostalgia for the idea of nature. I think it’s an essential background for us; and believe people will choose it over accepting a full throttle synthetic age.”

This Author

JP O’ Malley is a freelance journalist and cultural critic who writes regularly on politics, history, literature, society, the environment and technology, for numerous publications around the globe.

Huge areas of hardwood forest in the state of Virginia are being chainsawed to create ‘biomass’ energy in Britain as the government attempts to reach targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in efforts to tackle climate change, an investigation by Channel 4 Dispatches has found.

A key part of government efforts to hit its green energy targets is to switch from generating electricity from burning coal to burning wood – or so-called biomass. It’s a policy that is costing taxpayers more than £700 million per year through a levy on their electricity bills.

The biomass industry and government argue that because wood is a renewable source of energy and trees can be replanted to reabsorb carbon dioxide this policy is good for the environment.

Simple experiment

Antony Barnett, reporter at Dispatches, travelled to the southern states of the USA to investigate the source of wood that is now being turned into millions of tonnes of wood pellets to be burnt in Britain’s largest power station, Drax, in North Yorkshire.

Footage reveals huge areas of hardwood forest in the state of Virginia  being chopped down and removed to a factory owned by US firm Enviva that grinds up logs into pellets. A large proportion of these pellets are then shipped across the Atlantic to be burnt at Drax in the UK – one of Enviva’s main customers.

Britain has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 57 percent by 2030 and getting Drax to switch from burning coal to wood is meant to play an important part in that. Drax now produces up to 17 percent of Britain’s ‘renewable’ electricity, enough to power four million homes.

The power station giant claims that burning pellets instead of coal reduces carbon emissions by more than 80 percent.

However, Dispatches conducted a simple experiment at a laboratory at the University of Nottingham to compare the carbon dioxide emitted when burning wood pellets, similar to those used by Drax, instead of coal.

Dozens of scientists

It found that to burn an amount of wood pellets that would generate the same amount of electricity as coal it would actually produce roughly eight percent more carbon.

Biomass is viewed as ‘carbon neutral’ under European rules. This means Drax is not obliged to officially report the carbon emissions coming out of its chimney stack. Dispatches calculated that if Drax were to report on the full extent of its emissions it would show that last year they amounted to 11.7 million tonnes of CO2.

Drax claims that the replanting of trees means all the C02 will be reabsorbed. But scientists argue that it will take decades for forests to regrow and subsidising biomass from wood pellets is fuelling an industry that’s making climate change worse in the short term.

Professor Bill Moomaw helped lead a team that won a Nobel Peace Prize for its work on climate change at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is one of dozens of scientists who have written to the British government, warning against this policy.

Professor Moomaw said in an interview with Dispatches: “If we take the forests and burn them the carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere instantly, in a few minutes. It takes decades to a century to replace that.

Carbon absorbed

“Britain may be on track to eliminating the use of coal but they are not on track to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. We’re not going to meet our one and a half or two-degree targets that all governments, including the British government, agreed to in Paris.

“Burning more wood makes it absolutely impossible to meet that target. We now know that if we overshoot that the consequences last for 100s to a thousand or more years.  So there’s no off switch, there’s no reverse gear.”

Andy Koss, chief executive of Drax Power, defended the policy of burning wood pellets in an interview with the programme: “I am very comfortable that all the material what we source meets regulatory standards in the UK and meets our very strict sustainability criteria.”

Koss said the site Dispatches had seen being logged was atypical and that the “vast majority” of its wood comes from residue and waste material. He said: “We’ve obviously looked at this as well.  The site was a working forest, it was left unmanaged.  

“The owner of that forest wanted to clear this using standard harvesting techniques to turn it back into a working forest. That forest is being regrown. We know the owner of that particular tract – that will grow and there will be more carbon absorbed.”

Sustainability provisions

On the question of Drax’s claim that by burning wood instead of coal it reduces carbon emissions by more than 80 percent, Koss admitted it didn’t include emissions from its chimneys: “We don’t count that. The government doesn’t count that.

“It doesn’t include stack emissions because if we are sourcing sustainable biomass from working forests, where this is more growth than is being harvested, we see the carbon as being reabsorbed.”

Envier said in a statement to Dispatches that it “works to industry leading, strict sustainability and wood sourcing policies and certifications.”

It added: We will not work with any supplier that does not adhere to our commitment to protecting, nurturing and growing forests. Enviva does not accept wood from old growth or independently designated conservation areas. The small family owned site allegedly being shown in the footage is made up of younger trees = not the alleged 80 to 100 years – and is not a sensitive wetland forest.”

A spokesman for the Government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy told Channel 4: “Between 1990 and 2016, the UK reduced its emissions by over 40 percent. We have the most stringent biomass sustainability provisions in Europe.

“Environmentally friendly, low carbon bioenergy can help the UK to transition to a more diverse energy mix, increase our energy security, keep costs down for consumers and help us to meet our 2050 carbon targets.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Channel 4 Dispatches. Dispatches: The True Cost of Green Energy will be shown at 8pm on Monday 16 April on Channel 4.

We arrived at Belvoir Castle at around 11am on March 12th 2016. It was a fine, sunny day and the daffodils were in bloom in front of the Castle. There was a large turnout of hunt support, including some from neighbouring hunts who had already finished their season’s hunting.

When we found the hunt they were in the Vale of Belvoir, west of the castle. Darryl Cunnington suggested we take a public bridleway which offers amazing views across the Vale – this is where his knowledge of Leicestershire as an ex-rural police officer works so well.

We could hear the huntsman below us occasionally blowing his horn and the odd bay of a hound, and after about a mile of walking our views opened up and we could see three or four miles across the Vale.

Captive fox

We set up an observation point at the edge of the bridleway. We both have good quality camcorders with an added 1.7x teleconverter lens, which allows us to record reasonable footage from some distance away.

We were dressed in country walking gear so very few people would suspect who we were if they passed by and sure enough, an adult rider and two young girls on ponies probably returning to the meet, passed us unknowingly and exchanged pleasantries.

The League Against Cruel Sports employs a team of wildlife crime investigators. I’m their most recent recruit and started as a part-time investigator in 2015, working closely with Darryl across the East Midlands.

Prior to the April 2015 hunting season, BBC Inside Out approached the League requesting to follow our team for a regional piece on hunting. This had never been done before and neither we, nor the BBC reporter could predict how interesting this would be. It turned out to be very interesting.

In December 2015 we had rescued a captive fox from Lincolnshire’s Buckminster Estate, the day before a Belvoir Hunt meet. The gamekeeper involved in holding the fox was recently found guilty for cruelty under the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

Plausible reason

Just a few months later in March 2016 – aware we needed to spend more time with Inside Out, not easy as a small team that spans the length and breadth of the country– a last hurrah was suggested at the Belvoir Hunt’s final meet of the season.

Shortly after the huntsman rode out from the west side of the wood with the pack of hounds and I began to film. I then heard a quad bike. Now anyone who knows a thing or two about hunting will know that quad bikes usually signal the mysterious ‘terrier men’.

In traditional fox hunting a hunt would employ one or more terrier men, whose role it was to block fox earths and badger setts before a hunt – to prevent foxes from taking refuge below ground – and to deal with foxes that went to ground during the day’s hunting.

Since the Hunting Act came in, nobody has given a plausible reason as to why hunts continue to employ them, but they are commonly seen – even when hunts claim to be ‘trail’ hunting.

The terrier men’s quad started passing us, with two large boxes front and rear and two riders. They’d almost passed when they stopped sharply – they had recognised Darryl. “You’ve got a nerve showing up here”, said the older man, getting off the quad.

Blood dripping

“You know who I am?”, answered Darryl. We weren’t unduly concerned: there were two of them and two of us. We obviously don’t like to be spotted but sometimes these things happen, and we’ll always attempt to diffuse any situation that unfolds.

Darryl was amicable but the two terrier men were confrontational. “Go get the boys, Tom”, said the older man to his younger colleague. At that point – perhaps, in hindsight – we should have made a swift exit, but we were over a mile from the car and on foot and those who follow hunts are used to such threats so we weren’t too concerned.

The man named Tom took off on the quad while the older man stayed with us. A couple of minutes later he returned followed by a 4×4 with four masked men inside. They attacked Darryl and pushed him over the edge of the escarpment.

The original two terrier men held me and wrestled my camera from my hand. The younger one punched me in the head, while the older one restrained me and then he too pushed me over the escarpment.

The next thing I was aware of was silence – I called to Darryl but no response. I sat up and felt blood dripping down my face. My head was throbbing. Where was Darryl? I couldn’t see him. I called again and nothing.

Beyond repair

I walked across to where I thought he might have landed and saw him lying across some scree, hidden by undergrowth. Thankfully he was conscious. “Are you alright?”, I called. He wasn’t. He had pain in his neck and he couldn’t move his legs.

The next hour involved multiple phone calls for an ambulance, the police, our manager and finally the BBC reporter who was at the hunt. The location was remote.

The police arrived first, they responded quickly and we heard multiple sirens screaming around the area looking for the attackers. It was getting dark and cold by the time Darryl was hoisted into a specialist all-terrain, paramedic’s vehicle.

By the next day the dramatic rescue – filmed by the BBC – had made the national press and the two terrier men had been arrested. My stolen camera was returned by the men’s defence solicitor a few days later but was damaged beyond repair – including the memory card.

Darryl’s camera, which had been in his pocket throughout the incident, had continued to record audio – this went on to form a major part of the evidence against the men.

Suffering cruelty

George Grant, terrier man for the Belvoir Hunt, and his son Thomas Grant pleaded guilty in early April at Leicester Crown Court to charges of grievous bodily harm on investigator Darryl Cunnington, actual bodily harm on myself, theft of a video camera and criminal damage of a memory card.

Sentencing has been adjourned until June 14. The four masked men were never identified. The Belvoir Hunt and Countryside Alliance have remained silent over the incident.

Darryl suffered a partial fracture to his neck vertebrae. If it had been a full fracture or nerve damage, he might not be here today. Thankfully he has since made a full recovery.

Darryl and I and the rest of the League team will continue to investigate illegal hunting, despite the dangers posed. Our work to protect British wildlife goes on as we call for urgent strengthening to hunting legislation, to prevent animals suffering cruelty in the name of ‘sport’.

This Author

Roger Swaine is a field operator for the League Against Cruel Sports. The charity is currently campaigning to end illegal hunting. Sign the petition.