It is now 10 years since the Climate Change Act (CCA) was first brought into law. Professor Chris Rapley CBE was one of the authors of the piece of legislation that served to hold governing ministers to account.

A decade on it is time to ask where it has put the UK in the context of the Paris Agreement and is it still fit for purpose.

Rapley speaks candidly about our preparedness for an ever-rising tide of climate impacts that are already having a disastrous effect on nearly all regions of the world.

Nick Breeze (NB): Can you summarise why the Climate Change Act (CCA) was significant when it was brought into law a decade ago?

Professor Chris Rapley CBE (CR): Ok, CCA was a really innovative piece of legislation and the fundamental core of it was that it makes the secretary of state, whoever they are in the future, in a statutory way, responsible for ensuring that the UK reduces its carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. And indeed, following a trajectory that is dictated by an independent body. 

NB: Would you say that this has been effective in the 10 years it has been enforced? 

CR: Well, up until now, yes. The UK’s carbon emissions are today 40 percent lower then they were in 1990. Partly, there are a whole load of factors that contributed to that.

But at the same time, the economy has grown by 60 percent, so one of the big results is that the myth that you can not decarbonise without damaging the economy has been blown out of the water. It’s clear: you can. 

NB: Where does this place Britain in the context of climate action compared with other countries? 

CR: From the government and the statutory point of view it places the UK well in the lead. It is a very innovative piece of legislation which many other nations are considering following.

Spain among others has been looking at it because it is seen as overcoming the four or five yearly electoral cycle. It commits the nation to a long-term set of action. So, this has been highly beneficial. 

NB: And do you think it stood the test of time? 

CR: Yes, I think it has. The Climate Change Committee which was established as the independent body to lay out the trajectory that the country needs to follow, and the Adaptation Sub-Committee which has been looking at the nation’s preparedness for climate change which is inevitably happening around us, now.

These are both very prestigious bodies. They are regarded – even at a time where experts are suspect – they are regarded as being rigorous and having done a very effective job. 

So, it’s established a process which I think is largely admired. What it reveals though, is that there are many areas where government action or national action is still, lagging.

But nevertheless, we have an independent and rigorous means of exposing that and once you expose the problem, then, of course, you can begin to address it. 

NB:  Do you think 10 years on, there are areas now where you think well, that could be tightened up or this could be improved upon. I mean, are there elements of the CCA that could be changed?  

CR: I think in terms of the act itself and the processes, the structures that had been set up to support it, I think they’ve stood the test of the time.

What we see now is the actual action on the ground is not keeping up in many areas. So for example, there are some very good examples of flood protection plans, like the London flood plan.

We know that there are many other areas around the country, which are very poorly prepared for sea level rise, flooding, or the intense rainfall flooding, that we are already experiencing. So there is plenty to do. 

NB: And, do you think when you highlight risks outside of London, in other parts of Britain, do you think these are being acted on right now? 

CR: It’s very patchy. There are some good examples and there are some areas where there is really insufficient knowledge and action. The present administration has definitely not helped.

For example, there had been a long process by which zero carbon home legislation was being prepared. The new administration abandoned that, and when they did so, they also removed the ability of local councils to impose conditions for the development on developers.

These conditions would make sure that the future developments are future and climate-proofed. 

So, a huge opportunity was lost to ensure that the local appropriate action was being taken. And if you talk to local councils now, or boroughs, the austerity and cutbacks have so reduced their staffing, that often you will find that there is nobody responsible for climate change at all.

So, if one has a new report that provides some useful advice there is literally nobody to send it to because there is nobody in the borough administration who is assigned that task. 

NB: Ok, I was curious whether [ministers] might be making a lot of noise but not actually taking a lot of action.

CR: Well we don’t know. Ah, well the cynic in me says, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’, but we have to be…there are good signs because the markets are beginning to have an effect, in two ways. 

Firstly, the green technology, the experience curves, the cost of the solar PV and wind have so plummeted, so much faster than was expected, that they are cost competitive with fossil fuels in many parts of the world, but also in the UK.

So we see the kind of baseload delivery of green energy increasing: I mean, we have been through periods were coal contributed nothing to the UK electricity supply for a couple of days on end. 

But in addition, large investment companies, say pension funds and so on, are increasingly nervous of potential carbon bubbles, and stranded assets.

So you can see, the huge supertanker is a probably a very good metaphor, you can see the nose ineluctably begin to move towards the green and clean future, almost regardless of what the government may do. 

NB: Are there signs you can see that change is happening at the speed we need to see it, to avert the worst of climate impacts?

CR: Well yes we do things are happening but absolutely not at the scale, or pace that is necessary if we are serious about keeping the overall warming to about 2 degrees Centigrade, or less. 

We are currently on a track to 3-3.5ºC maybe even 4ºC at the end of the century. And we may have gone over a threshold where we have committed the Earth to rising sea levels of many metres over hundreds, if not thousands of years. 

So, certainly, the actions that we all collectively take over the next decade or two will determine the trajectory of the planet for thousands of years.

I absolutely do not see the scale and pace that is necessary to achieve our aspirations, which is two degrees of warming maximum and a planet that stabilizes in the next century or so. 

NB: You had a lot of experience, obviously with British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and so on, when we talk about many meters of sea level rise, this is a game-changer for the civilisation, isn’t it?

CR: Yes. British Antarctic Survey and of course all of the polar scientists have many contributions to understanding how the planet works. Antarctica is a big and important piece of the planetary machinery.

It is the air-conditioning system, or the water conditioning system, and at present, it is not the major contributor to the sea level rise that we are measuring now.

That is coming from the thermal expansion of the ocean as it warms and from Greenland and the glaciers on mountains around the world. 

But the paper came out last week that shows that the contribution of Antarctica to rising sea levels rise tripled in the last five years. So, it is beginning to accelerate.

Some years ago, I likened the Antarctic to a slumbering giant, and said, there were signs that it was awakening, and more recently I said, I think it is beginning to stretch its limbs and we should be very nervous about what is happening down there. 

NB:  When you consider a climate timeline of action versus impacts what concerns you the most? 

CR: Well, let’s talk about impacts, what we have seen is that climate change is happening now. This is not some abstract thing that is going to happen, to other people, somewhere else in the future. It is happening right now. 

There is a wonderful book that just came out called The Water Will Come by the journalist called Jeff Goodell which I recommend. And he has done a wonderful job, really investigating Florida and Venice and all of the obvious places that sea-level rises is going to impact. 

And there are people in Miami who are making decisions now, about whether to sell some of their condominiums now, before the prices collapse, or perhaps keep it, and sell it, or rent it to low-income people and finally let it go at the zero value. 

So people are seeing that the climate change is happening around them and they are reacting to it. One of the more controversial aspects of the climate change is that there is evidence that it is driving migration already, and it is migration probably more than anything else, that will be so disruptive in the future. 

Climate refugees from areas that are too hot, where crops fail, from areas that are flooded either through the sea-level flooding or whatever.

Or through the areas that no longer have a water supply because the winter system of snowfall that sits on the top of the mountains and then delivers water in the summer, from the Himalayas or Alps or wherever it is, no longer functions. 

So, very large numbers of people will move. We have seen the destabilising effect that has on Europe. Of course, the migrants we are seeing in Europe are not solely driven, or even largely driven by climate change, although there is a climate change component.

But that threat multiplier is a really serious consequence of climate change, and we are beginning to see it happening and it is only going to get worse, and that could cause very, very unpleasant social consequences. 

NB: In the struggle to communicate the challenges of climate change, what gives you the most strength? 

CR: Well the fact that a large percentage, although not all of the people, are genuinely what you might call communalistic, that is they believe that there is such a thing as society – despite that what we are told – and they are outraged by injustice.

And they are concerned about future of their children and their children’s children and, indeed, other’s people’s children’s children. 

So, what I see is a willingness on the part of people to bond together and act. If only they understood what it is that they can do. So, the strength is that there is a willingness out there. The weakness is, that it is very difficult to offer people agency in a way that it is effective. 

What I say to people is: personal, professional and political. You can organise your own life so that it is a low carbon, you can work within, amongst your colleagues, so assuming you have a job, and often do much more that way.

But the political pressure is where people can really make a difference, keeping that pressure on elected representatives to recognise that this is an issue that needs an action. 

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate change interviewer and can be followed on Twitter here: @NickGBreeze – He also blogs at Envisionation.co.uk.

Planting season for corn and soybeans across the United States corn belt is drawing to a close. As they plant, farmers are participating in what is likely to be one of the largest deployments of insecticides in United States history.

Almost every field corn seed planted this year in the US – approximately 90 million acres’ worth – will be coated with neonicotinoid insecticides, the most widely used class of insecticides in the world.

The same is true for seeds in about half of US soybeans – roughly 45 million acres and nearly all cotton – about 14 million acres. In total, by my estimate, these insecticides will be used across at least 150 million acres of cropland, an area about the size the Texas.

Yield loss

Neonicotinoids are very good at killing insects. In many cases they require only parts per billion, equivalent to a few drops of insecticide in a swimming pool of water.

In recent years, concerns have been raised about the influence of neonicotinoids on bee populations. As an applied insect ecologist and extension specialist who works with farmers on pest control, I believe the focus on bees has obscured larger concerns.

In my view, US farmers are using these pesticides far more heavily than necessary, with potential negative impacts on ecosystems that are poorly understood.

Neonicotinoid use by crop from 1992 to 2014. The y-axis represents mass of neonicotinoid active ingredient applied in millions of kg. Tooker, Douglas, Krupke, 2017, doi:10.2134/ael2017.08.0026, CC BY-NC-ND

Most neonicotinoids in the United States are used to coat field crop seeds. Their role is to protect against a relatively small suite of secondary insect pests – that is, not the main pests that tend to cause yield loss.

National companies or seed suppliers apply these coatings, so that when farmers buy seed, they just have to plant it.

Limited time

The percentage of corn and soybean acreage planted with neonicotinoid seed coatings has increased dramatically since 2004.

By 2011, over 90 percent of field corn and 40 percent of soybeans planted were treated with a neonicotinoid. Between 2011 and 2014, the area treated crept toward 100 percent for corn and 50 percent for soybeans.

And the mass of neonicotinoids deployed in each crop doubled, indicating that seed suppliers applied about twice as much insecticide per seed. Unfortunately, many farmers are unaware of what is coated on their seeds, while others like the peace of mind that comes from an apparently better protected seed.

Unlike most insecticides, neonicotinoids are water soluble. This means that when a seedling grows from a treated seed, its roots can absorb some of the insecticide that coated the seed.

This can protect the seedling for a limited time from insects. But only a small fraction of the insecticide applied to seeds is actually taken up by seedlings.

For example, corn seedlings only take up about two percent, and it only persists in the plant for two to three weeks. The critical question is where the rest goes.

Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid used almost exclusively as a coating on seed corn. Maps from USGS.

Pervading the environment

Because neonicotinoids are water soluble, the leftover insecticide not taken up by plants can easily wash into nearby waterways. Neonicotinoids from seed coatings are now routinely found polluting streams and rivers around the country.

Here it is likely that they are poisoning and killing off some of the aquatic insects that are vital food sources for fishes, birds and other wildlife.

In the Netherlands, neonicotinoids in surface waters have been associated with widespread declines in insectivorous bird populations – a sign that concentrations of these insecticides are having strong effects on food webs.

Neonicotinoids also can strongly influence pest and predator populations in crop fields. My lab’s research has revealed that use of coated seeds can indirectly reduce crop yield by poisoning insect predators that usually kill slugs, which are important crop pests in mid-Atlantic corn and soybeans fields.

More broadly, planting coated seeds generally decreases populations of insect predators in crop fields by 15 to 20 percent. These predatory insects can eat insect pests, such as black cutworm and armyworm, that can reduce yield. Crop fields with fewer resident predators are more vulnerable to pest infestations.

Slugs, shown here on a soybean plant, are unaffected by neonicotinoids, but can transmit the insecticides to beetles that are important slug predators. Nick Sloff/Penn State University, CC BY-ND

An exaggerated need

Neonicotinoid advocates point to reports – often funded by industry – which argue that these products provide value to field crop agriculture and farmers.

However, these sources typically assume that insecticides of some type are needed on every acre of corn and soybeans. Therefore, their value calculations rest on comparing neonicotinoid seed coatings to the cost of other available insecticides.

History shows that this assumption is clearly faulty. In the decade before neonicotinoid seed coatings entered the market, only about 35 percent of US corn acres and 5 percent of soybean acres were treated with insecticides. In other words, pest populations did not cause economically significant harm very often.

Importantly, the pest complex attacking corn today is more or less the same as it was in the 1990s. This suggests that it is not necessary to treat hundreds of millions of acres of crops with neonicotinoid seed coatings.

Neonicotinoids can harm birds via multiple pathways, sometimes in very small quantities.

From overkill to moderation

Should the United States follow the European Union’s lead and pass a broad ban on neonicotinoids? In my view, action this drastic is not necessary.

Neonicotinoids provide good value in controlling critical pest species, particularly in vegetable and fruit production. However, their use on field crops needs to be reined in.

In the Canadian province of Ontario, growers can only use neonicotinoid seed treatments on 20 percent of their acres. This seems like a good start, but does not accommodate farmers’ needs very well.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a control strategy based on using pesticides only when they are economically justified, offers valuable guidelines.

It was introduced in the late 1950s in response to issues stemming from overuse of insecticides, including environmental damage and pest populations that had evolved resistance. Field-crop growers have a good history of using IPM, but current use of neonicotinoids ignores pest risk and conflicts with this approach.

To implement IPM in field crops with neonicotinoids, seed companies need to acknowledge that the current approach is overkill and poses serious environmental hazards.

Extension entomologists will then need to provide growers with unbiased information on strengths and limitations of neonicotinoids, and help farmers identify crop acres that will benefit from their use.

Finally, the agricultural industry needs to eliminate practices that encourage unnecessary use of seed coatings, such as bundling together various seed-based pest management products, and provide more uncoated seeds in their catalogs. These steps could end the ongoing escalation of neonicotinoid use and change the goal from “wherever possible” to “just enough.”

This Author

John F. Tooker is a associate professor of entomology and extension specialist at Pennsylvania State University. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

It is now 10 years since the Climate Change Act (CCA) was first brought into law. Professor Chris Rapley CBE was one of the authors of the piece of legislation that served to hold governing ministers to account.

A decade on it is time to ask where it has put the UK in the context of the Paris Agreement and is it still fit for purpose.

Rapley speaks candidly about our preparedness for an ever-rising tide of climate impacts that are already having a disastrous effect on nearly all regions of the world.

Nick Breeze (NB): Can you summarise why the Climate Change Act (CCA) was significant when it was brought into law a decade ago?

Professor Chris Rapley CBE (CR): Ok, CCA was a really innovative piece of legislation and the fundamental core of it was that it makes the secretary of state, whoever they are in the future, in a statutory way, responsible for ensuring that the UK reduces its carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. And indeed, following a trajectory that is dictated by an independent body. 

NB: Would you say that this has been effective in the 10 years it has been enforced? 

CR: Well, up until now, yes. The UK’s carbon emissions are today 40 percent lower then they were in 1990. Partly, there are a whole load of factors that contributed to that.

But at the same time, the economy has grown by 60 percent, so one of the big results is that the myth that you can not decarbonise without damaging the economy has been blown out of the water. It’s clear: you can. 

NB: Where does this place Britain in the context of climate action compared with other countries? 

CR: From the government and the statutory point of view it places the UK well in the lead. It is a very innovative piece of legislation which many other nations are considering following.

Spain among others has been looking at it because it is seen as overcoming the four or five yearly electoral cycle. It commits the nation to a long-term set of action. So, this has been highly beneficial. 

NB: And do you think it stood the test of time? 

CR: Yes, I think it has. The Climate Change Committee which was established as the independent body to lay out the trajectory that the country needs to follow, and the Adaptation Sub-Committee which has been looking at the nation’s preparedness for climate change which is inevitably happening around us, now.

These are both very prestigious bodies. They are regarded – even at a time where experts are suspect – they are regarded as being rigorous and having done a very effective job. 

So, it’s established a process which I think is largely admired. What it reveals though, is that there are many areas where government action or national action is still, lagging.

But nevertheless, we have an independent and rigorous means of exposing that and once you expose the problem, then, of course, you can begin to address it. 

NB:  Do you think 10 years on, there are areas now where you think well, that could be tightened up or this could be improved upon. I mean, are there elements of the CCA that could be changed?  

CR: I think in terms of the act itself and the processes, the structures that had been set up to support it, I think they’ve stood the test of the time.

What we see now is the actual action on the ground is not keeping up in many areas. So for example, there are some very good examples of flood protection plans, like the London flood plan.

We know that there are many other areas around the country, which are very poorly prepared for sea level rise, flooding, or the intense rainfall flooding, that we are already experiencing. So there is plenty to do. 

NB: And, do you think when you highlight risks outside of London, in other parts of Britain, do you think these are being acted on right now? 

CR: It’s very patchy. There are some good examples and there are some areas where there is really insufficient knowledge and action. The present administration has definitely not helped.

For example, there had been a long process by which zero carbon home legislation was being prepared. The new administration abandoned that, and when they did so, they also removed the ability of local councils to impose conditions for the development on developers.

These conditions would make sure that the future developments are future and climate-proofed. 

So, a huge opportunity was lost to ensure that the local appropriate action was being taken. And if you talk to local councils now, or boroughs, the austerity and cutbacks have so reduced their staffing, that often you will find that there is nobody responsible for climate change at all.

So, if one has a new report that provides some useful advice there is literally nobody to send it to because there is nobody in the borough administration who is assigned that task. 

NB: Ok, I was curious whether [ministers] might be making a lot of noise but not actually taking a lot of action.

CR: Well we don’t know. Ah, well the cynic in me says, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’, but we have to be…there are good signs because the markets are beginning to have an effect, in two ways. 

Firstly, the green technology, the experience curves, the cost of the solar PV and wind have so plummeted, so much faster than was expected, that they are cost competitive with fossil fuels in many parts of the world, but also in the UK.

So we see the kind of baseload delivery of green energy increasing: I mean, we have been through periods were coal contributed nothing to the UK electricity supply for a couple of days on end. 

But in addition, large investment companies, say pension funds and so on, are increasingly nervous of potential carbon bubbles, and stranded assets.

So you can see, the huge supertanker is a probably a very good metaphor, you can see the nose ineluctably begin to move towards the green and clean future, almost regardless of what the government may do. 

NB: Are there signs you can see that change is happening at the speed we need to see it, to avert the worst of climate impacts?

CR: Well yes we do things are happening but absolutely not at the scale, or pace that is necessary if we are serious about keeping the overall warming to about 2 degrees Centigrade, or less. 

We are currently on a track to 3-3.5ºC maybe even 4ºC at the end of the century. And we may have gone over a threshold where we have committed the Earth to rising sea levels of many metres over hundreds, if not thousands of years. 

So, certainly, the actions that we all collectively take over the next decade or two will determine the trajectory of the planet for thousands of years.

I absolutely do not see the scale and pace that is necessary to achieve our aspirations, which is two degrees of warming maximum and a planet that stabilizes in the next century or so. 

NB: You had a lot of experience, obviously with British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and so on, when we talk about many meters of sea level rise, this is a game-changer for the civilisation, isn’t it?

CR: Yes. British Antarctic Survey and of course all of the polar scientists have many contributions to understanding how the planet works. Antarctica is a big and important piece of the planetary machinery.

It is the air-conditioning system, or the water conditioning system, and at present, it is not the major contributor to the sea level rise that we are measuring now.

That is coming from the thermal expansion of the ocean as it warms and from Greenland and the glaciers on mountains around the world. 

But the paper came out last week that shows that the contribution of Antarctica to rising sea levels rise tripled in the last five years. So, it is beginning to accelerate.

Some years ago, I likened the Antarctic to a slumbering giant, and said, there were signs that it was awakening, and more recently I said, I think it is beginning to stretch its limbs and we should be very nervous about what is happening down there. 

NB:  When you consider a climate timeline of action versus impacts what concerns you the most? 

CR: Well, let’s talk about impacts, what we have seen is that climate change is happening now. This is not some abstract thing that is going to happen, to other people, somewhere else in the future. It is happening right now. 

There is a wonderful book that just came out called The Water Will Come by the journalist called Jeff Goodell which I recommend. And he has done a wonderful job, really investigating Florida and Venice and all of the obvious places that sea-level rises is going to impact. 

And there are people in Miami who are making decisions now, about whether to sell some of their condominiums now, before the prices collapse, or perhaps keep it, and sell it, or rent it to low-income people and finally let it go at the zero value. 

So people are seeing that the climate change is happening around them and they are reacting to it. One of the more controversial aspects of the climate change is that there is evidence that it is driving migration already, and it is migration probably more than anything else, that will be so disruptive in the future. 

Climate refugees from areas that are too hot, where crops fail, from areas that are flooded either through the sea-level flooding or whatever.

Or through the areas that no longer have a water supply because the winter system of snowfall that sits on the top of the mountains and then delivers water in the summer, from the Himalayas or Alps or wherever it is, no longer functions. 

So, very large numbers of people will move. We have seen the destabilising effect that has on Europe. Of course, the migrants we are seeing in Europe are not solely driven, or even largely driven by climate change, although there is a climate change component.

But that threat multiplier is a really serious consequence of climate change, and we are beginning to see it happening and it is only going to get worse, and that could cause very, very unpleasant social consequences. 

NB: In the struggle to communicate the challenges of climate change, what gives you the most strength? 

CR: Well the fact that a large percentage, although not all of the people, are genuinely what you might call communalistic, that is they believe that there is such a thing as society – despite that what we are told – and they are outraged by injustice.

And they are concerned about future of their children and their children’s children and, indeed, other’s people’s children’s children. 

So, what I see is a willingness on the part of people to bond together and act. If only they understood what it is that they can do. So, the strength is that there is a willingness out there. The weakness is, that it is very difficult to offer people agency in a way that it is effective. 

What I say to people is: personal, professional and political. You can organise your own life so that it is a low carbon, you can work within, amongst your colleagues, so assuming you have a job, and often do much more that way.

But the political pressure is where people can really make a difference, keeping that pressure on elected representatives to recognise that this is an issue that needs an action. 

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate change interviewer and can be followed on Twitter here: @NickGBreeze – He also blogs at Envisionation.co.uk.

Planting season for corn and soybeans across the United States corn belt is drawing to a close. As they plant, farmers are participating in what is likely to be one of the largest deployments of insecticides in United States history.

Almost every field corn seed planted this year in the US – approximately 90 million acres’ worth – will be coated with neonicotinoid insecticides, the most widely used class of insecticides in the world.

The same is true for seeds in about half of US soybeans – roughly 45 million acres and nearly all cotton – about 14 million acres. In total, by my estimate, these insecticides will be used across at least 150 million acres of cropland, an area about the size the Texas.

Yield loss

Neonicotinoids are very good at killing insects. In many cases they require only parts per billion, equivalent to a few drops of insecticide in a swimming pool of water.

In recent years, concerns have been raised about the influence of neonicotinoids on bee populations. As an applied insect ecologist and extension specialist who works with farmers on pest control, I believe the focus on bees has obscured larger concerns.

In my view, US farmers are using these pesticides far more heavily than necessary, with potential negative impacts on ecosystems that are poorly understood.

Neonicotinoid use by crop from 1992 to 2014. The y-axis represents mass of neonicotinoid active ingredient applied in millions of kg. Tooker, Douglas, Krupke, 2017, doi:10.2134/ael2017.08.0026, CC BY-NC-ND

Most neonicotinoids in the United States are used to coat field crop seeds. Their role is to protect against a relatively small suite of secondary insect pests – that is, not the main pests that tend to cause yield loss.

National companies or seed suppliers apply these coatings, so that when farmers buy seed, they just have to plant it.

Limited time

The percentage of corn and soybean acreage planted with neonicotinoid seed coatings has increased dramatically since 2004.

By 2011, over 90 percent of field corn and 40 percent of soybeans planted were treated with a neonicotinoid. Between 2011 and 2014, the area treated crept toward 100 percent for corn and 50 percent for soybeans.

And the mass of neonicotinoids deployed in each crop doubled, indicating that seed suppliers applied about twice as much insecticide per seed. Unfortunately, many farmers are unaware of what is coated on their seeds, while others like the peace of mind that comes from an apparently better protected seed.

Unlike most insecticides, neonicotinoids are water soluble. This means that when a seedling grows from a treated seed, its roots can absorb some of the insecticide that coated the seed.

This can protect the seedling for a limited time from insects. But only a small fraction of the insecticide applied to seeds is actually taken up by seedlings.

For example, corn seedlings only take up about two percent, and it only persists in the plant for two to three weeks. The critical question is where the rest goes.

Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid used almost exclusively as a coating on seed corn. Maps from USGS.

Pervading the environment

Because neonicotinoids are water soluble, the leftover insecticide not taken up by plants can easily wash into nearby waterways. Neonicotinoids from seed coatings are now routinely found polluting streams and rivers around the country.

Here it is likely that they are poisoning and killing off some of the aquatic insects that are vital food sources for fishes, birds and other wildlife.

In the Netherlands, neonicotinoids in surface waters have been associated with widespread declines in insectivorous bird populations – a sign that concentrations of these insecticides are having strong effects on food webs.

Neonicotinoids also can strongly influence pest and predator populations in crop fields. My lab’s research has revealed that use of coated seeds can indirectly reduce crop yield by poisoning insect predators that usually kill slugs, which are important crop pests in mid-Atlantic corn and soybeans fields.

More broadly, planting coated seeds generally decreases populations of insect predators in crop fields by 15 to 20 percent. These predatory insects can eat insect pests, such as black cutworm and armyworm, that can reduce yield. Crop fields with fewer resident predators are more vulnerable to pest infestations.

Slugs, shown here on a soybean plant, are unaffected by neonicotinoids, but can transmit the insecticides to beetles that are important slug predators. Nick Sloff/Penn State University, CC BY-ND

An exaggerated need

Neonicotinoid advocates point to reports – often funded by industry – which argue that these products provide value to field crop agriculture and farmers.

However, these sources typically assume that insecticides of some type are needed on every acre of corn and soybeans. Therefore, their value calculations rest on comparing neonicotinoid seed coatings to the cost of other available insecticides.

History shows that this assumption is clearly faulty. In the decade before neonicotinoid seed coatings entered the market, only about 35 percent of US corn acres and 5 percent of soybean acres were treated with insecticides. In other words, pest populations did not cause economically significant harm very often.

Importantly, the pest complex attacking corn today is more or less the same as it was in the 1990s. This suggests that it is not necessary to treat hundreds of millions of acres of crops with neonicotinoid seed coatings.

Neonicotinoids can harm birds via multiple pathways, sometimes in very small quantities.

From overkill to moderation

Should the United States follow the European Union’s lead and pass a broad ban on neonicotinoids? In my view, action this drastic is not necessary.

Neonicotinoids provide good value in controlling critical pest species, particularly in vegetable and fruit production. However, their use on field crops needs to be reined in.

In the Canadian province of Ontario, growers can only use neonicotinoid seed treatments on 20 percent of their acres. This seems like a good start, but does not accommodate farmers’ needs very well.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a control strategy based on using pesticides only when they are economically justified, offers valuable guidelines.

It was introduced in the late 1950s in response to issues stemming from overuse of insecticides, including environmental damage and pest populations that had evolved resistance. Field-crop growers have a good history of using IPM, but current use of neonicotinoids ignores pest risk and conflicts with this approach.

To implement IPM in field crops with neonicotinoids, seed companies need to acknowledge that the current approach is overkill and poses serious environmental hazards.

Extension entomologists will then need to provide growers with unbiased information on strengths and limitations of neonicotinoids, and help farmers identify crop acres that will benefit from their use.

Finally, the agricultural industry needs to eliminate practices that encourage unnecessary use of seed coatings, such as bundling together various seed-based pest management products, and provide more uncoated seeds in their catalogs. These steps could end the ongoing escalation of neonicotinoid use and change the goal from “wherever possible” to “just enough.”

This Author

John F. Tooker is a associate professor of entomology and extension specialist at Pennsylvania State University. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

It is now 10 years since the Climate Change Act (CCA) was first brought into law. Professor Chris Rapley CBE was one of the authors of the piece of legislation that served to hold governing ministers to account.

A decade on it is time to ask where it has put the UK in the context of the Paris Agreement and is it still fit for purpose.

Rapley speaks candidly about our preparedness for an ever-rising tide of climate impacts that are already having a disastrous effect on nearly all regions of the world.

Nick Breeze (NB): Can you summarise why the Climate Change Act (CCA) was significant when it was brought into law a decade ago?

Professor Chris Rapley CBE (CR): Ok, CCA was a really innovative piece of legislation and the fundamental core of it was that it makes the secretary of state, whoever they are in the future, in a statutory way, responsible for ensuring that the UK reduces its carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. And indeed, following a trajectory that is dictated by an independent body. 

NB: Would you say that this has been effective in the 10 years it has been enforced? 

CR: Well, up until now, yes. The UK’s carbon emissions are today 40 percent lower then they were in 1990. Partly, there are a whole load of factors that contributed to that.

But at the same time, the economy has grown by 60 percent, so one of the big results is that the myth that you can not decarbonise without damaging the economy has been blown out of the water. It’s clear: you can. 

NB: Where does this place Britain in the context of climate action compared with other countries? 

CR: From the government and the statutory point of view it places the UK well in the lead. It is a very innovative piece of legislation which many other nations are considering following.

Spain among others has been looking at it because it is seen as overcoming the four or five yearly electoral cycle. It commits the nation to a long-term set of action. So, this has been highly beneficial. 

NB: And do you think it stood the test of time? 

CR: Yes, I think it has. The Climate Change Committee which was established as the independent body to lay out the trajectory that the country needs to follow, and the Adaptation Sub-Committee which has been looking at the nation’s preparedness for climate change which is inevitably happening around us, now.

These are both very prestigious bodies. They are regarded – even at a time where experts are suspect – they are regarded as being rigorous and having done a very effective job. 

So, it’s established a process which I think is largely admired. What it reveals though, is that there are many areas where government action or national action is still, lagging.

But nevertheless, we have an independent and rigorous means of exposing that and once you expose the problem, then, of course, you can begin to address it. 

NB:  Do you think 10 years on, there are areas now where you think well, that could be tightened up or this could be improved upon. I mean, are there elements of the CCA that could be changed?  

CR: I think in terms of the act itself and the processes, the structures that had been set up to support it, I think they’ve stood the test of the time.

What we see now is the actual action on the ground is not keeping up in many areas. So for example, there are some very good examples of flood protection plans, like the London flood plan.

We know that there are many other areas around the country, which are very poorly prepared for sea level rise, flooding, or the intense rainfall flooding, that we are already experiencing. So there is plenty to do. 

NB: And, do you think when you highlight risks outside of London, in other parts of Britain, do you think these are being acted on right now? 

CR: It’s very patchy. There are some good examples and there are some areas where there is really insufficient knowledge and action. The present administration has definitely not helped.

For example, there had been a long process by which zero carbon home legislation was being prepared. The new administration abandoned that, and when they did so, they also removed the ability of local councils to impose conditions for the development on developers.

These conditions would make sure that the future developments are future and climate-proofed. 

So, a huge opportunity was lost to ensure that the local appropriate action was being taken. And if you talk to local councils now, or boroughs, the austerity and cutbacks have so reduced their staffing, that often you will find that there is nobody responsible for climate change at all.

So, if one has a new report that provides some useful advice there is literally nobody to send it to because there is nobody in the borough administration who is assigned that task. 

NB: Ok, I was curious whether [ministers] might be making a lot of noise but not actually taking a lot of action.

CR: Well we don’t know. Ah, well the cynic in me says, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’, but we have to be…there are good signs because the markets are beginning to have an effect, in two ways. 

Firstly, the green technology, the experience curves, the cost of the solar PV and wind have so plummeted, so much faster than was expected, that they are cost competitive with fossil fuels in many parts of the world, but also in the UK.

So we see the kind of baseload delivery of green energy increasing: I mean, we have been through periods were coal contributed nothing to the UK electricity supply for a couple of days on end. 

But in addition, large investment companies, say pension funds and so on, are increasingly nervous of potential carbon bubbles, and stranded assets.

So you can see, the huge supertanker is a probably a very good metaphor, you can see the nose ineluctably begin to move towards the green and clean future, almost regardless of what the government may do. 

NB: Are there signs you can see that change is happening at the speed we need to see it, to avert the worst of climate impacts?

CR: Well yes we do things are happening but absolutely not at the scale, or pace that is necessary if we are serious about keeping the overall warming to about 2 degrees Centigrade, or less. 

We are currently on a track to 3-3.5ºC maybe even 4ºC at the end of the century. And we may have gone over a threshold where we have committed the Earth to rising sea levels of many metres over hundreds, if not thousands of years. 

So, certainly, the actions that we all collectively take over the next decade or two will determine the trajectory of the planet for thousands of years.

I absolutely do not see the scale and pace that is necessary to achieve our aspirations, which is two degrees of warming maximum and a planet that stabilizes in the next century or so. 

NB: You had a lot of experience, obviously with British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and so on, when we talk about many meters of sea level rise, this is a game-changer for the civilisation, isn’t it?

CR: Yes. British Antarctic Survey and of course all of the polar scientists have many contributions to understanding how the planet works. Antarctica is a big and important piece of the planetary machinery.

It is the air-conditioning system, or the water conditioning system, and at present, it is not the major contributor to the sea level rise that we are measuring now.

That is coming from the thermal expansion of the ocean as it warms and from Greenland and the glaciers on mountains around the world. 

But the paper came out last week that shows that the contribution of Antarctica to rising sea levels rise tripled in the last five years. So, it is beginning to accelerate.

Some years ago, I likened the Antarctic to a slumbering giant, and said, there were signs that it was awakening, and more recently I said, I think it is beginning to stretch its limbs and we should be very nervous about what is happening down there. 

NB:  When you consider a climate timeline of action versus impacts what concerns you the most? 

CR: Well, let’s talk about impacts, what we have seen is that climate change is happening now. This is not some abstract thing that is going to happen, to other people, somewhere else in the future. It is happening right now. 

There is a wonderful book that just came out called The Water Will Come by the journalist called Jeff Goodell which I recommend. And he has done a wonderful job, really investigating Florida and Venice and all of the obvious places that sea-level rises is going to impact. 

And there are people in Miami who are making decisions now, about whether to sell some of their condominiums now, before the prices collapse, or perhaps keep it, and sell it, or rent it to low-income people and finally let it go at the zero value. 

So people are seeing that the climate change is happening around them and they are reacting to it. One of the more controversial aspects of the climate change is that there is evidence that it is driving migration already, and it is migration probably more than anything else, that will be so disruptive in the future. 

Climate refugees from areas that are too hot, where crops fail, from areas that are flooded either through the sea-level flooding or whatever.

Or through the areas that no longer have a water supply because the winter system of snowfall that sits on the top of the mountains and then delivers water in the summer, from the Himalayas or Alps or wherever it is, no longer functions. 

So, very large numbers of people will move. We have seen the destabilising effect that has on Europe. Of course, the migrants we are seeing in Europe are not solely driven, or even largely driven by climate change, although there is a climate change component.

But that threat multiplier is a really serious consequence of climate change, and we are beginning to see it happening and it is only going to get worse, and that could cause very, very unpleasant social consequences. 

NB: In the struggle to communicate the challenges of climate change, what gives you the most strength? 

CR: Well the fact that a large percentage, although not all of the people, are genuinely what you might call communalistic, that is they believe that there is such a thing as society – despite that what we are told – and they are outraged by injustice.

And they are concerned about future of their children and their children’s children and, indeed, other’s people’s children’s children. 

So, what I see is a willingness on the part of people to bond together and act. If only they understood what it is that they can do. So, the strength is that there is a willingness out there. The weakness is, that it is very difficult to offer people agency in a way that it is effective. 

What I say to people is: personal, professional and political. You can organise your own life so that it is a low carbon, you can work within, amongst your colleagues, so assuming you have a job, and often do much more that way.

But the political pressure is where people can really make a difference, keeping that pressure on elected representatives to recognise that this is an issue that needs an action. 

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate change interviewer and can be followed on Twitter here: @NickGBreeze – He also blogs at Envisionation.co.uk.

Planting season for corn and soybeans across the United States corn belt is drawing to a close. As they plant, farmers are participating in what is likely to be one of the largest deployments of insecticides in United States history.

Almost every field corn seed planted this year in the US – approximately 90 million acres’ worth – will be coated with neonicotinoid insecticides, the most widely used class of insecticides in the world.

The same is true for seeds in about half of US soybeans – roughly 45 million acres and nearly all cotton – about 14 million acres. In total, by my estimate, these insecticides will be used across at least 150 million acres of cropland, an area about the size the Texas.

Yield loss

Neonicotinoids are very good at killing insects. In many cases they require only parts per billion, equivalent to a few drops of insecticide in a swimming pool of water.

In recent years, concerns have been raised about the influence of neonicotinoids on bee populations. As an applied insect ecologist and extension specialist who works with farmers on pest control, I believe the focus on bees has obscured larger concerns.

In my view, US farmers are using these pesticides far more heavily than necessary, with potential negative impacts on ecosystems that are poorly understood.

Neonicotinoid use by crop from 1992 to 2014. The y-axis represents mass of neonicotinoid active ingredient applied in millions of kg. Tooker, Douglas, Krupke, 2017, doi:10.2134/ael2017.08.0026, CC BY-NC-ND

Most neonicotinoids in the United States are used to coat field crop seeds. Their role is to protect against a relatively small suite of secondary insect pests – that is, not the main pests that tend to cause yield loss.

National companies or seed suppliers apply these coatings, so that when farmers buy seed, they just have to plant it.

Limited time

The percentage of corn and soybean acreage planted with neonicotinoid seed coatings has increased dramatically since 2004.

By 2011, over 90 percent of field corn and 40 percent of soybeans planted were treated with a neonicotinoid. Between 2011 and 2014, the area treated crept toward 100 percent for corn and 50 percent for soybeans.

And the mass of neonicotinoids deployed in each crop doubled, indicating that seed suppliers applied about twice as much insecticide per seed. Unfortunately, many farmers are unaware of what is coated on their seeds, while others like the peace of mind that comes from an apparently better protected seed.

Unlike most insecticides, neonicotinoids are water soluble. This means that when a seedling grows from a treated seed, its roots can absorb some of the insecticide that coated the seed.

This can protect the seedling for a limited time from insects. But only a small fraction of the insecticide applied to seeds is actually taken up by seedlings.

For example, corn seedlings only take up about two percent, and it only persists in the plant for two to three weeks. The critical question is where the rest goes.

Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid used almost exclusively as a coating on seed corn. Maps from USGS.

Pervading the environment

Because neonicotinoids are water soluble, the leftover insecticide not taken up by plants can easily wash into nearby waterways. Neonicotinoids from seed coatings are now routinely found polluting streams and rivers around the country.

Here it is likely that they are poisoning and killing off some of the aquatic insects that are vital food sources for fishes, birds and other wildlife.

In the Netherlands, neonicotinoids in surface waters have been associated with widespread declines in insectivorous bird populations – a sign that concentrations of these insecticides are having strong effects on food webs.

Neonicotinoids also can strongly influence pest and predator populations in crop fields. My lab’s research has revealed that use of coated seeds can indirectly reduce crop yield by poisoning insect predators that usually kill slugs, which are important crop pests in mid-Atlantic corn and soybeans fields.

More broadly, planting coated seeds generally decreases populations of insect predators in crop fields by 15 to 20 percent. These predatory insects can eat insect pests, such as black cutworm and armyworm, that can reduce yield. Crop fields with fewer resident predators are more vulnerable to pest infestations.

Slugs, shown here on a soybean plant, are unaffected by neonicotinoids, but can transmit the insecticides to beetles that are important slug predators. Nick Sloff/Penn State University, CC BY-ND

An exaggerated need

Neonicotinoid advocates point to reports – often funded by industry – which argue that these products provide value to field crop agriculture and farmers.

However, these sources typically assume that insecticides of some type are needed on every acre of corn and soybeans. Therefore, their value calculations rest on comparing neonicotinoid seed coatings to the cost of other available insecticides.

History shows that this assumption is clearly faulty. In the decade before neonicotinoid seed coatings entered the market, only about 35 percent of US corn acres and 5 percent of soybean acres were treated with insecticides. In other words, pest populations did not cause economically significant harm very often.

Importantly, the pest complex attacking corn today is more or less the same as it was in the 1990s. This suggests that it is not necessary to treat hundreds of millions of acres of crops with neonicotinoid seed coatings.

Neonicotinoids can harm birds via multiple pathways, sometimes in very small quantities.

From overkill to moderation

Should the United States follow the European Union’s lead and pass a broad ban on neonicotinoids? In my view, action this drastic is not necessary.

Neonicotinoids provide good value in controlling critical pest species, particularly in vegetable and fruit production. However, their use on field crops needs to be reined in.

In the Canadian province of Ontario, growers can only use neonicotinoid seed treatments on 20 percent of their acres. This seems like a good start, but does not accommodate farmers’ needs very well.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a control strategy based on using pesticides only when they are economically justified, offers valuable guidelines.

It was introduced in the late 1950s in response to issues stemming from overuse of insecticides, including environmental damage and pest populations that had evolved resistance. Field-crop growers have a good history of using IPM, but current use of neonicotinoids ignores pest risk and conflicts with this approach.

To implement IPM in field crops with neonicotinoids, seed companies need to acknowledge that the current approach is overkill and poses serious environmental hazards.

Extension entomologists will then need to provide growers with unbiased information on strengths and limitations of neonicotinoids, and help farmers identify crop acres that will benefit from their use.

Finally, the agricultural industry needs to eliminate practices that encourage unnecessary use of seed coatings, such as bundling together various seed-based pest management products, and provide more uncoated seeds in their catalogs. These steps could end the ongoing escalation of neonicotinoid use and change the goal from “wherever possible” to “just enough.”

This Author

John F. Tooker is a associate professor of entomology and extension specialist at Pennsylvania State University. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Even if we could meet the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target, the climate changes already in effect are irreversible. Various initiatives are asking governments and non-state actors to accelerate their climate actions to meet the Paris Agreement objectives and Sustainable Development Goals targets.

Acceleration in this context means to expediate climate change adaptation and mitigation measures, but the fundamental question is: how is this to be accomplished?

There are many historic approaches to combating climate change; some focus on calculating sustainability, and more recently there is a fascination with big data.

Process-based approaches

These approaches fill the gap in individual sectorial approaches to sustainability – such as the energy and transport sectors. However, outside these more modern, quantitative means of calculating sustainability there are ancient technologies derived from traditional knowledge systems.   

It is hard to quantify a holistic approach to eco-systems of a desert oasis for example; where food production of dates co-enables production of vegetables and fruits, which is also linked to sustainable ground water management by the community.

The oases prevent land degradation and desertification, produce microclimate for the nearby cities and are enablers of economic transitions.

These interdependences co-existed through millennia on the Sahara Desert and in the Arabian Peninsula: sadly some of these practices are no longer in use due to the forces of globalisation. 

In this case, process-based approaches to acceleration of climate change adaptation and mitigation might be the right, if not the only, remaining answer.

Vernacular architecture

Approaches to accelerate in this context may need to take a different form to what we know. Traditional knowledge systems have been acknowledged in all three Climate Change Conventions since 1992 (prior to the Paris Agreement. 

Yet, until today we have not been able to define their importance or commercialise them globally in terms of job creation opportunities, especially in the most vulnerable climate zones such as deserts and tropics that are also affected by poverty.

We have been studying traditional knowledge systems for millennia and historically this knowledge has been passed on from one generation to the next through families.

Today, this knowledge transfer is mostly passed on through more formal education and is in the hands of the state. Higher education research institutes have their own individual expertise too, critical for delivery of technology transfer.

From time to time studies such as HABITAT: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Planet – the first global review of vernacular architecture carried out by over one hundred and forty contributors over the last twenty years – make an impact on innovative and global outlook on “filling the gaps” opportunity.

Traditional knowledge

Endorsed by several United Nations entities, the HABITAT multidisciplinary team includes architects, engineers, anthropologists, botanists, ethnobotanists, geologists, geographers, archaeologists, film makers and United Nations officials.

It has taken the HABITAT team over five years to deliver their assessment, looking also at cross-sectorial approaches to adaption with experts studying the subject for over twenty years or more.

Collectively we offer over approximately 2,860 years of experience in traditional knowledge systems and cross-sectoral approaches to adaption.

Ownership of acceleration

The big question is what next? How to turn this knowledge into policy making strategies at the regional level and in markets, where technology transfer can deliver transformative sustainable transition using local skills and local materials and be owned by the people of the land to build local resilience.

There must be a clarity which UN organisations own delivery of acceleration for developing countries in the context of “filling the gaps” strategies. What else can we do over and above what has been done already to build on the tremendous achievements and success stories to date?

It is not clear at the moment, and it is hoped that Talanoa Dialogue UNFCCC initiative leading to COP24 in Katowice and the forthcoming High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development Goals due to take place in New York in July 2018 will provide some answers.

Financing acceleration

Defining acceleration opportunities at the global scale requires funding for high level research and the preparatory stages. There needs to be clearly defined funding mechanisms for these high-level ‘filling the gaps’ assessments to be carried out in an innovative way with the participation of Technical Experts and people that have a specialist knowledge on the subject.

Embracing catalysts

There are several inspiring climate change high level champions that stay faithful to their mission to combat various aspects of climate change.

There are also scientists, researchers and people with a passion for sustainability are not necessarily driven by commercial gains. Embracing them as a catalyst for acceleration alongside other non-state actors with a definitive role in the acceleration process might be a good thing.

It means that there is no need to start from scratch at the fundamental definitions level – rather to capitalise on decades of research already done on the subject to take it up to the implementation level.

These ‘Acceleration Catalysts’ also have a capacity to communicate strategies both to the climate change movement as well as indigenous people. Time is a gift.

This Author

Dr Sandra Piesik is an architect and a researcher specialising in technology development and transfer. She is the founder of Habitat Coalition and a director of 3 ideas Ltd, leading several pilot projects endorsed by UNCCD and UNFCCC. She is also the author of Arish: Palm-Leaf Architecture, published by Thames & Hudson. She is the editor of HABITAT: Vernacular Architecture for a Changing Planet which is published by Thames & Hudson.

The Five Star Movement in Italy has been campaigning on a platform of direct democracy and environmentalism. This March, they won the largest percent of the vote and the most seats in Parliament. Sounds good, right?

Except that Beppe Grillo and Luigi Di Maio – the two foremost leaders of the party – have called for expelling all migrants from Italy and ending the flow of migrants to Europe.

Read more from this series here.

They entered into a coalition with the Lega Nord following the 2018 election, a party advocating full regional autonomy – and protecting the ‘Christian identity’ of Italy.

Direct democracy

Even as anti-authoritarian, anti-racist movements all over the world are working to take power where they live, self-described localist movements have also won elections with racist, and frankly fascist, platforms.

New right movements like the Lega Nord have even adopted the more typically leftist, anti-authoritarian language of ‘autonomy’ and ‘direct democracy’.

Continuing our discussion of the potential pitfalls of radical municipalism, we want to address this toxic strain of localism – what we’ve termed dark municipalism – and why it is so dangerous.

If a diverse, egalitarian, and ecological local politics is to be successful, it must develop strategies for addressing and combating these tendencies.

Racism and Localism

The Nazis showed the world that it’s entirely possible to be both a back-to-the-lander and a genocidal racist. American militia movements have long fused struggle for local autonomy against the federal government with anti-immigrant hatred and white nationalism.

In the Pacific Northwest, fascist groups like the Northwest Front and the Wolves of Vinland have attempted to co-opt the vision of an independent Cascadia for the ends of white racial separatism.

Britta Lokting argues in The Baffler that there is a greater commonality between this white nationalist fringe and the other tendencies within Cascadian bioregionalism than we’d like to admit. “Ecologists, liberal hipsters, and the alt-right in the Pacific Northwest [all] resist some sort of outside taint.”

Movements for local control can easily slip towards racist and fascist politics by positioning a given community in opposition to outside threats.

Oftentimes, savvy segregationists use the language of local control to mask the racial and class motivations behind their political projects.

Several European political parties like the Lega Nord have even begun to distort the term “direct democracy” to argue for “the people” (selectively defined) controlling national immigration policy as a means of achieving the authoritarian ethnonationalist system they envision.

Not all examples of reactionary localism are as extreme as Nazis and anti-government militias, however. It is also, for many people, very close to home, being central to the history of most American suburbs.

Suburban local control

When we think of racial segregation in the US, Jim Crow laws quickly come to mind. But localism—much of it in Northern cities—also played a big role in dividing US society along racial lines.

When urban rebellions rocked cities across the United States in the late sixties, millions of whites flocked to segregated suburbs.

By forming new municipalities, sometimes across county lines, wealthy and middle-class whites were free to organise local policy around excluding people of color and the poor, while starving American cities of the tax revenue needed to sustain public services.

Suburban communities walled themselves off with more than gates. Local control over housing policy let them block the construction of affordable housing, to keep low-income people from ever moving in next door.

By designing suburbs around cars rather than public transit, they ensured that no one without a car could even reach their communities.

Suburbanisation was both a social and ecological catastrophe. All across the US, urban areas were flattened outward into low-density, energy-intensive sprawl, swallowing up ecosystems and farmland.

To give a sense of how disastrous this has been for the climate: the average carbon footprint of suburban households is four times larger than the average household’s in dense cities. 

Job centers were displaced and made harder to reach by transit, leaving many inner cities in a crisis of chronic unemployment.

Most importantly for this discussion, suburbanisation fortified racial segregation in the very political structure of many metro areas, with wealthy, mostly white suburbs governing themselves independently from and at the expense of communities of color.

This brought the gains of the civil rights movement to a halt, with incalculable human costs. Local political autonomy, as this example illustrates, can easily become a vehicle for segregation and defunding the public sphere, and has genuinely destructive potential.

Public education is another important terrain of reactionary localism.

Generally speaking, local funding for public schools has resulted in deeply unequal educational outcomes for non-white and poor children (which is why many states have taken over school funding from local property taxes, to be allocated more equitably).

Many school districts around the United States have taken educational inequality a step further, with segments breaking off to form wealthier, whiter districts, depriving less privileged children of essential public resources.

Seventy-one communities have attempted to secede from their school districts since 2000, and forty-seven of them have succeeded. To quote one community member of a Chattanooga suburb advocating for this sort of entrenchment of school segregation: “Local control is power.”

From anti-immigrant movements to segregated schools, we’d do well to take these hard lessons to heart when rebuilding our society from the local level.

The language of “local control” is central to the political strategy of segregation and resegregation. It allows officials and advocates to apply a palatable, race-neutral framing to fundamentally racist policy.

Power consolidated fully at the local level is potentially pernicious precisely because there is such deep inequality between locales in our highly segregated society.

Local government is a terrain the right wing knows very well, and if empowered carelessly, one that can directly further reactionary agendas. The problem is deeper than an unfortunate correlation between localist movements and racism.

Because suburban municipalities had political autonomy, they were able to realise and institutionalise this segregationist agenda.

So how should we deal with this?

We have some ideas: actively undoing bigotry through organising itself, building connections beyond the local into our political project, and developing a grassroots political system around the principles of democracy and interdependence over autonomy and local control.

Building Power, Bridging Divides

Building grassroots, democratic alliances to take back control over the places where we live is easier said than done. Organising with your neighbours can be rewarding, but also tiresome and depressing. In the little spare time each of us has, it often feels easier to talk to people we already know who share our own values.

The truth is that community organising is hard work. Organisers are confronted every day with resistance to their ideas, not only from political opponents but from other community members who have become resigned to the oppressive status quo as well.

Movement-building takes time, through years of real human connection. The simple fact is that there are no shortcuts to moving beyond bigotry either.

Community organising has traditionally aimed to overcome social divides—racial, sexual, cultural—through human relationships.

Organising relies on building relationships to recognise common interests. These common interests let people identify the things they can organise around for their common good, and their relationships supply the power to actually win.

Through recognising commonalities and taking collective action, bonds between people across difference are forged across differences, uprooting prejudices and fears.

Radical democracy is a framework for extending that process across all areas of life.

As we carve out space for participatory, collective decision-making, either in the workplace through cooperatives or where we live through neighborhood councils and tenant unions, we cultivate a more expansive understanding of shared interests across racial and sexual hierarchies, and of how those inequalities pose barriers to our own democratic struggle.

We can build a new commons together that meets the needs of everyone through this deep organising, a community interdependence held together by strong relationships.

Class conflict

But is stopping fascism as simple as making friends with your neighbours? We can’t lose sight of the fact that there are real, material, conflicts between people.

Friendship between a tenant and their landlord can’t erase the exploitative relationship between them. Only by pursuing an intersectional class politics can we piece apart the forces that divide us.

Hateful and discriminatory attitudes don’t operate in a vacuum. They have a history we can trace and material roots we can transform.

Capitalists have spent centuries cultivating racist and nativist narratives to keep exploited people scapegoating each other.

The labour movement in the United States has historically hampered itself through its own racism. By refusing to fraternise with black, Latino, and Asian workers, white workers have undercut their potential power. We can’t afford to make these mistakes.

Visionary organisers need to make the case again and again, through their actions, words, and the resources they build, that ordinary people can only realize their deeper interests of freedom, a healthy life and planet, and real democracy by lifting up people at the margins.

Steps to expand participation—from translation to accessibility for disabled people to prioritizing childcare at meetings—can only make our movements more powerful.

A socially transformative politics teaches more privileged people that their common cause lies with the oppressed, through democracy in everyday life.

Beyond building real relationships and making our movements more accessible, we need to make sure that we can create resources for everyone.

Tenants rights action groups, community kitchens, and self-organized disaster response groups are all ways of offering people the things they need, all the while building alliances across race and class and addressing loneliness.

Social isolation feeds a steady supply of alienated people to the far-right. As we build a community economy beyond capitalism, we strike at the roots of all these things.

Beyond the Local

As we argued in our last column, radical municipalists must work to build power beyond the local in order to overcome capitalism and the state.

We have no hope of winning real power for our community without this wider network of popular struggle across municipal and national borders. This is also an important part of overcoming prejudices and inequalities between different communities.

Confederations of community councils and assemblies bring us into common cause with those we might otherwise consider outsiders. Even if your own neighborhood isn’t very diverse, scaling up the practice of radical democracy can have the same transformative impacts we discussed above on a much wider level.

Municipalism that is confederal is an antidote to xenophobic isolationism. It’s a localism which knows no national borders, yet retains the ability of citizens of every community to have a say in the affairs which affect them. The power of our strategy itself relies on building bridges rather than walls.

Building a New System

Lastly, as we develop new institutions of solidarity and democracy, we need to go beyond mere autonomy as an organisational principle. Autonomy is about securing freedom from an oppressive outside, but we’re not just trying to resist the system. We’re working to build a new system, a new society.

Anarchists and other anti-authoritarian leftists have long stressed the importance of autonomy. Bodily autonomy is a fundamental moral principle for a free, feminist society. Liberation struggles of all types have articulated their just vision in terms of autonomy.

Building autonomy for individuals and communities is clearly an essential aspect of resistance and dual power, but it is limiting as a framework for the reconstruction of a better world.

Autonomy is in essence a negative political value, being defined in terms of freedom from. It conveys nothing about the actual governance of an autonomous community, and defines its relations to other communities in exclusively negative terms. It amounts to non-interference by outsiders or outside sources of repression.

Given all the potential dangers of local political autonomy, we need to be intentional about the kind of democracy we are building from the ground up. This means thinking through how a future system would equitably solve specific problems beyond the local level.

In our previous columns, we’ve made the case for a system of directly democratic assemblies organised into confederations, which would come together through recallable delegates to coordinate activities regionally and beyond.

To prevent the rise of dark municipalism, however, confederations will have to be stronger than voluntary associations of autonomous communities.

We live in an unequal society, which we are trying to change by expanding the sphere of democracy. We undercut that goal if our conception of a truly democratic society is one where the wealthiest can wall themselves off without accountability to the wider human community.

Differing interests between particular neighborhoods, cities, and countries are inevitable on bigger questions—regional transit, watershed management, total decarbonisation of the economy, redistribution of wealth.

None of these can be resolved through a confederation of fully autonomous communes where unanimous agreement is required for them to act together. We can theoretically educate away prejudice, but we can’t educate away conflicting economic interests. A deeper political relationship is necessary.

‘Confederation’ should be conceived as layers of democracy, from the neighborhood to the worldwide. The defining principle of a confederal system is not community autonomy, but interdependence. This is a much stronger basis for the protection of human rights and radical democracy.

Interdependence is what makes municipalism and democratic confederalism unique among locally oriented political ideas: they are not intended to be withdrawals from global affairs and obligations, but movements for radically restructuring the balance of power in how decisions are made towards ordinary people, be that locally, regionally, or globally.

Democracy All the Way Down

Many progressives see these forms of reactionary localism and conclude that we need a strong centralized government to better protect marginalised people.

In particular, we as radical municipalists have to take seriously the history of federal power in securing greater freedoms for black people in America.

After the American Civil War, Reconstruction continued only as long as federal troops occupied the South. Desegregation and voting rights for African Americans were achieved through federal court cases and legislation.

The very principle of “states’ rights” which helped uphold American apartheid and slavery is itself a form of more local autonomy.

But governments only gave in when forced by the power of popular movements. When the state is removed from the people it governs, through unaccountable bureaucracies, technocracies, or oligarchies, it gets a free pass for abuse, oppression, and exploitation.

For instance, while suburbanisation in the United States was driven by racism, it was also a product of social engineering by federal policy, through redlining, freeway construction, and incentivizing industries to relocate from cities to suburbs.

Many of the Trump administration’s ongoing crimes are only possible because the people do not exercise direct control over their government.

We can’t maintain an oligarchy in the hopes that the ruling class will force through needed changes with respect to racial and economic equality.

The consolidation of authority into a small ruling class necessarily tends toward more oppression. To keep this system of hierarchy in place, the powerful always seek to divide and control the less privileged.

Ordinary people are far from perfect. But it’s ordinary people, with all their differences and shortcomings, with whom we build a more perfect world.

It’s only through lived experience that any of us can learn that we share common ground with others. When we, as organisers, go to where people are, offer the resources they need, build bridges across racial and class differences, and make decisions together, we slowly build the foundations of a new society.

At the end of the day, it’s only democracy—all the way down—that can give us any hope of universal emancipation.

These Authors

The Symbiosis Research Collective is a network of organizers and activist-researchers across North America, assembling a confederation of community organizations that can build a democratic and ecological society from the ground up. We are fighting for a better world by creating institutions of participatory democracy and the solidarity economy through community organizing, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city. Twitter: @SymbiosisRev. This article was written by Mason Herson-Hord (@mason_h2), Christian Bjornson, Forrest Watkins (@360bybike), and Aaron Vansintjan (@a_vansi).

Who would like to be happier? All of us have elements of our life we’d like to change or improve. Yet many of us fail to realise that happiness is a choice. It’s our choice.

And when we ask what or who would make us happier, the answer is always ourselves, says Sir Anthony Seldon.

As co-founder of the ‘Action for Happiness’ movement, Anthony Seldon has identified ten keys to happier living using the GREAT DREAM acronym: giving, relating, exercising, awareness, trying out, direction, resilience, emotions, acceptance and meaning.

Falling awake

He says we can’t stop the bad stuff happening. The only thing we have the ability to control is ourselves, our attitude, the way we think and the way we respond to events. 

He says this is why mindfulness is essential to our ability to cope in times of crisis. Mindfulness is about being aware of reality. Mindfulness is about “falling awake” – waking up to what is real. 

He said: “We are all as free as we choose to be”. And the only thing holding us back from a truly happy existence is our own mind.

He says striving for happiness shouldn’t be considered frivolous or superficial. It isn’t just about pleasure. He added: “Pleasure is what we get from a nice meal or holiday. It’s something about ‘me’ and ‘my consumption’. It’s not shared.”

True happiness is about being in harmony with oneself, with other people – and it doesn’t deplete the universe. It doesn’t take anything away. It’s about sacrifice which is the essence of any successful relationship.

Mindfulness in the classroom

And Sir Anthony says the concept of mindfulness needs to be taught in schools from an early age so our children develop grit and resilience to deal with the often harsh realities of life. 

He speaks of the reform required in our education system following an illustrious career in teaching. He says we need to ensure schools aren’t just factories churning out robotic students who may be able to pass exams but are ill-equipped emotionally to deal with life.

He argues schools and universities get it wrong because they’re obsessed with metrics as opposed to the quality of the education.

He adds teachers and schools are judged solely on their performances in exams meaning so much of their resources are dedicated to the quantitative rather than the qualitative experience.

He says if you reflect on your greatest teachers they will have made you do well in exams but also woken you up to the subject and given you the sense of discovery and excitement about a topic. 

He concludes by saying mindfulness is ultimately about letting go and says the best description is from the last of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets:  “A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything.”

This Author

Catherine Harte is a contributing editor to The Ecologist. 

Plastic is a problem. People have produced around 9.1 billion tons of the stuff since the 1950s – and the vast majority of that still exists in some form.

Every year, an estimated eight million tons of plastic ends up in the oceans and even more ends up littering the natural environment on land.

This plastic pollution doesn’t biodegrade and can release toxins. Wildlife may also ingest it or get caught in it. So what can we do to reduce this pollution in our everyday lives? Read on to find out.

1. Choose reusables 

One way to reduce plastic pollution is to stop using single-use plastics. You can find an alternative to many of the plastic items you use every day. Rather than disposable plastic water bottles, buy a reusable one. You could even buy a beverage in a sturdy glass container and reuse it. You can also:

• Replace plastic grocery bags with reusable cloth bags or single use paper bags
• Bring a reusable coffee mug or travel cup if you get coffee to go
• Shop at farmers’ markets where you can use your own containers
• Use refillable lighters or matches

At other times, you can just skip the single-use plastic items entirely. You could specify that you don’t need plastic ware if ordering takeout or tell your waiter you don’t need a straw. If you really like straws, you can purchase reusable ones!

2. Find alternatives

If you do need to purchase single-use items, pay attention to the materials they’re made of. This also goes for packaging, which accounts for a substantial portion of plastic waste. You could buy laundry detergent in a cardboard box, for example, rather than a plastic container.

Other alternatives to look for include biodegradable plastics, glass and aluminum. You can also search out items that use minimal packaging. Some manufacturers are now reducing their packaging to minimize their environmental impact.

You can also buy in bulk to reduce the amount of packaging you use or buy used items, which don’t typically have any packaging at all. Of course, if you can opt for a reusable item, that’s always the best choice.

3. Recycle more

Before buying items made of plastic or that use plastic packaging, check to see whether it’s recyclable. Today, many kinds of plastics are but check the rules in your community to find out what you can recycle.

If you don’t have curbside pickup for some types of plastic, you may be able to recycle it elsewhere. Some grocery stores, for instance, accept plastic shopping bags for recycling.

If your workplace doesn’t have a recycling program, talk to management and see if you can set one up. You should be able to arrange pickup with local waste management reasonably easily.

4. Stop litter

Never leave plastics or other trash in the natural environment and look for recycling bins, rather than trash cans, if possible. This might mean you have to hold onto that empty water bottle for a bit longer, but in the end, you’ll be helping the environment.

Of course, everyone needs to stop littering to make a widespread impact. You can help with this by picking up small items of trash if you see it littering the outdoors.

If you see evidence of illegal dumping, you can also report it. This can eliminate potential hazards to human and animal health and discourage others from dumping illegally in the future.

By following these tips, you can reduce plastic pollution in your everyday life without even having to change too much about how you live. Doing these four things will help you reduce your environmental impact and make progress toward a healthier, more beautiful world.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.