The plan to turn South Australia (SA) into the world’s nuclear waste dump has lost momentum since 2016 though it continues to be promoted by some politicians, the Business SA lobby group, and an assortment of individuals and lobbyists including self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ or ‘ecomodernists‘.

In its 2016 report, the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission established by the state government promoted a plan to import 138,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (about one-third of the world’s total) and 390,000 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste.

The state Labor government then spent millions on a state-wide promotional campaign under the guide of consultation. The government also initiated a Citizens’ Jury process. However two-thirds of the 350-member Citizens’ Jury rejected the waste import proposal “under any circumstances” in their November 2016 report. The Jury’s verdict was non-binding but it took the wind out of the dumpsters’ sails.

A key factor in the Jury’s rejection of the waste import plan was that Aboriginal people had spoken clearly in opposition. The Jury’s report said: “There is a lack of aboriginal consent. We believe that the government should accept that the Elders have said NO and stop ignoring their opinions. The aboriginal people of South Australia (and Australia) continue to be neglected and ignored by all levels of government instead of respected and treated as equals.”

The respect shown by the Citizens’ Jury to Aboriginal Traditional Owners had been conspicuously absent in the debate until then. The SA government’s handling of the Royal Commission process systematically disenfranchised Aboriginal people.

The Royal Commission

Royal Commissioner Kevin Scarce ‒ a retired Navy officer ‒ didn’t appoint a single Aboriginal person to the staff of the Royal Commission or to his Expert Advisory Committee. Aboriginal people repeatedly expressed frustration with the Royal Commission process.

Tauto Sansbury, Chairperson of the SA Aboriginal Congress, said:

“In our second meeting with Commissioner Scarce we had 27 Native Title groups from all around South Australia. We had a vote on it. And it was unanimous that the vote said ‘no we don’t want it’. It was absolutely unanimous.

“Commissioner Scarce said ‘well maybe I’m talking to the wrong people’ and we said ‘well what other people are you going to talk to? We’re Native Title claimants, we’re Native Title Traditional Owners from all over this country … so who else are you going to pluck out of the air to talk to … we’ve stuck to our guns and we still totally oppose it. That’s every Native Title group in South Australia’.”

The Royal Commission acknowledged the opposition of Aboriginal people to its nuclear waste import plan – but it treated that opposition not as a red light but as an obstacle to be circumvented. The Commission opted out of the debate regarding land rights and heritage protections for Aboriginal people, stating in its report: “Although a systematic analysis was beyond the scope of the Commission, it has heard criticisms of the heritage protection framework, particularly the consultative provisions.”

Such an analysis wasn’t “beyond the scope of the Commission” ‒ it ought to have been core business. The terms of reference specifically directed the Commission to consider potential impacts on “regional, remote and Aboriginal communities” and to consider “lessons learned from past … practices”.

No analysis but favourable conclusions

Despite its acknowledgement that it had not systematically analysed the matter, the Royal Commission nevertheless arrived at unequivocal, favourable conclusions, asserting that there “are frameworks for securing long-term agreements with rights holders in South Australia, including Aboriginal communities” and these “provide a sophisticated foundation for securing agreements with rights holders and host communities regarding the siting and establishment of facilities for the management of used fuel.”

Such statements were conspicuously absent in submissions from Aboriginal people and organisations. There is in fact an abundance of evidence that land rights and heritage protection frameworks in SA are anything but “sophisticated.”

To give one example, the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988 provides feeble rights and protections at the best of times, but it does not apply to the Olympic Dam copper/uranium mine. The mine must partially comply with an old (1979) version of the Act ‒ or at least, the mine might have to comply with the 1979 version of the Act but that it is doubt since the 1979 Act was never proclaimed and has dubious legal standing.

The legislation governing the Olympic Dam mine ‒ the Roxby Downs Indenture Act ‒ was amended in 2011. A perfect opportunity to do away with the mine’s exemptions from the Aboriginal Heritage Act. But the state Labor government failed to consult Traditional Owners and enshrined the exemptions in the amended legislation. Asked to justify that decision, a government MP said in state Parliament: “BHP were satisfied with the current arrangements and insisted on the continuation of these arrangements, and the Government did not consult further than that.”

Enter the ecomodernists

Ben Heard from the ‘Bright New World’ pro-nuclear lobby group said the Royal Commission’s findings were “robust”. Seriously? Failing to conduct an analysis and ignoring an abundance of contradictory evidence but nevertheless concluding that a “sophisticated foundation” exists for securing agreements with Aboriginal rights-holders … that’s “robust”?

Likewise, academic Barry Brook, a member of the Commission’s Expert Advisory Committee, said he was “impressed with the systematic and ruthlessly evidence-based approach the [Royal Commission] team took to evaluating all issues.”

In a November 2016 article about the nuclear waste import plan, Ben Heard and Oscar Archer wrote: “We also note and respect the clear message from nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia that there is no consent to proceed on their lands. We have been active from the beginning to shine a light on pathways that make no such imposition on remote lands.”

In Heard’s imagination, the imported spent nuclear fuel would not be dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities, it would be processed for use as fuel in non-existent Generation IV ‘integral fast reactors‘. Even the stridently pro-nuclear Royal Commission gave short shrift to Heard’s proposal, stating in its final report: “[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk.”

Heard claims his imaginary Generation IV reactor scenario “circumvents the substantial challenge of social consent for deep geological repositories, facilities that are likely to be best located, on a technical basis, on lands of importance to Aboriginal Australians”.

But even in Heard’s scenario, only a tiny fraction of the imported spent fuel would be converted to fuel for imaginary Generation IV reactors (in one of his configurations, 60,000 tonnes would be imported but only 4,000 tonnes converted to fuel). Most of it would be stored indefinitely, or dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities.

Honoured in the breach

Heard says he “respects” the opposition of Traditional Owners to the waste import plan, but that respect appears to be honoured in the breach. Despite his acknowledgement that there was “no consent” to proceed from “nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia”, Heard nevertheless wrote an ‘open letter‘ promoting the waste import plan which was endorsed by ‘prominent’ South Australians, i.e. rich, non-Aboriginal people.

One of the reasons to pursue the waste import plan cited in Heard’s open letter is that it would provide an “opportunity to engage meaningfully and partner with Aboriginal communities in project planning and delivery”. There is no acknowledgement of the opposition of Aboriginal people to the waste import plan ‒ evidently Heard believes that their opposition should be ignored and overridden but Aboriginal people might be given a say in project planning and delivery.

A second version of Heard’s open letter did not include the above wording but it cited the “successful community consultation program” with Aboriginal communities. However the report arising from the SA government’s community consultation program (successful or otherwise) stated: “There was a significant lack of support for the government to continue pursuing any form of nuclear storage and disposal facilities. Some Aboriginal people indicated that they are interested in learning more and continuing the conversation, but these were few in number.”

Beyond offensive

Geoff Russell, another self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalist, wrote in a November 2016 article in New Matilda:

“Have Aboriginals given any reasons for opposing a waste repository that are other than religious? If so, then they belong with other objections. If not, then they deserve the same treatment as any other religious objections. Listen politely and move on.

“Calling them spiritual rather than religious makes no difference. To give such objections standing in the debate over a repository is a fundamental violation of the separation of church and state, or as I prefer to put it, the separation of mumbo-jumbo and evidence based reasoning.

“Aboriginals have native title over various parts of Australia and their right to determine what happens on that land is and should be quite different from rights with regard to other land. This isn’t about their rights on that land.

“Suppose somebody wants to build a large intensive piggery. Should we consult Aboriginals in some other part of the country? Should those in the Kimberley perhaps be consulted? No.

“They may object to it in the same way I would, but they have no special rights in the matter. They have no right to spiritual veto.”

Where to begin? Russell’s description of Aboriginal spiritual beliefs as “mumbo-jumbo” is beyond offensive.

His claim that Traditional Owners are speaking for other people’s country is a fabrication.

Federal native title legislation provides limited rights and protections for some Traditional Owners ‒ and no rights and protections for many others (when the federal Coalition government was trying to impose a national nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land in SA in 2003, it abolished all native title rights and interests over the site).

National nuclear waste dump

The attitudes of the ecomodernists also extend to the debate over the siting of a proposed national nuclear waste dump. Silence from the ecomodernists when the federal government was passing laws allowing the imposition of a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory without consent from Traditional Owners.

Echoing comments from the Liberal Party, Brook and Heard said the site in the Northern Territory was in the “middle of nowhere”. From their perspective, perhaps, but for Muckaty Traditional Owners the site is in the middle of their homelands.

Heard claims that one of the current proposed dump sites, in SA’s Flinders Ranges, is “excellent” in many respects and it “was volunteered by the landowner”. In fact, it was volunteered by absentee landlord and former Liberal Party politician Grant Chapman, who didn’t bother to consult Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners living on the neighbouring Indigenous Protected Area.

The site is opposed by most Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners and by their representative body, the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association (ATLA).

Indigenous Protected Area

Heard claims there are “no known cultural heritage issues” affecting the Flinders Ranges site. Try telling that to the Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners who live on Yappala Station, in the Indigenous Protected Area adjacent to the proposed dump site. The area has many archaeological and culturally-significant sites that Traditional Owners have registered with the SA government over the past decade.

So where did Heard get this idea that there are “no known cultural heritage issues on the site”? Not from visiting the site, or speaking to Traditional Owners. He’s just repeating the federal government’s propaganda.

Silence from the ecomodernists about the National Radioactive Waste Management Act (NRWMA), which dispossesses and disempowers Traditional Owners in every way imaginable:

• The nomination of a site for a radioactive waste dump is valid even if Aboriginal owners were not consulted and did not give consent.
• The NRWMA has sections which nullify State or Territory laws that protect archaeological or heritage values, including those which relate to Indigenous traditions.
• The NRWMA curtails the application of Commonwealth laws including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and the Native Title Act 1993 in the important site-selection stage.
• The Native Title Act 1993 is expressly overridden in relation to land acquisition for a radioactive waste dump.

Uranium mining

Silence from the ecomodernists about the Olympic Dam mine’s exemptions from provisions of the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act.

Silence from the ecomodernists about sub-section 40(6) of the Commonwealth’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act, which exempts the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory from the Act and thus removed the right of veto that Mirarr Traditional Owners would otherwise have enjoyed.

Silence from the ecomodernists about the divide-and-rule tactics used by General Atomics’ subsidiary Heathgate Resources against Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners in relation to the Beverley and Four Mile uranium mines in SA.

Adnyamathanha Traditional Owner Dr Jillian Marsh, who in 2010 completed a PhD thesis on the strongly contested approval of the Beverley mine, puts the nuclear debates in a broader context:

“The First Nations people of Australia have been bullied and pushed around, forcibly removed from their families and their country, denied access and the right to care for their own land for over 200 years. Our health and wellbeing compares with third world countries, our people crowd the jails.

“Nobody wants toxic waste in their back yard, this is true the world over. We stand in solidarity with people across this country and across the globe who want sustainable futures for communities, we will not be moved.”

Now, Traditional Owners have to fight industry, government, and the ecomodernists as well.

This Author

Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter, where a longer version of this article was originally published.

Dominic Raab has been appointed Secretary of State for Brexit following David Davis’ resignation. He is a hardline Brexiteer with links to an extended network of individuals and organisations pushing deregulation and climate science denial.

A former solicitor, Raab worked as Davis’s chief of staff between 2006 and 2010. He was elected the MP for Esher and Walton in 2010.

Raab served as minister of state for justice and housing under Theresa May’s government and has been a member of the committee on exiting the European Union from October 2016 to May 2017.

Raab and a Brexiteer Climate Science Denial Network

A staunch Brexiteer, Raab has been involved in a number of pressure groups advocating a hard Brexit with some of the UK’s prominent climate science deniers.

He served on the political advisory board of the campaign group Leave Means Leave, alongside North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson, who has long lobbied to cut regulations and targets related to climate change.

Paterson has strong ties to the UK’s premier climate science denial campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation(GWPF). Paterson’s brother-in-law is hereditary peer Matt Ridley, who sits on the GWPF’s advisory board.

Leave Means Leave was also supported by some of the UK’s most prominent climate science deniers such as former Tory MPand now Lord Peter Lilley, and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Sammy Wilson. It was also supported by libertarian Tories calling for deregulations which have previously pushed disinformation on climate change including Jacob Rees-Mogg John Redwood, Christopher Chope and Ian Paisley to name a few.

Leave Means Leave lobbied for “a swift, clean exit from the EU” without “delay obstruction of dilution of the Brexit process” and advocates leaving the single market and the customs union and argues that “no deal is better than a bad deal”.

According to data from the Electoral Commission, the group’s co-chairman Richard Tice donated £38,000 to Grassroots Out, a pro-Brexit campaign group which was supported by UKIP, Liam Fox and David Davis.

Raab’s name no longer appears on the list of the Leave Means Leave supporters page yet the group’s YouTube channel still includes a number of his interviews on Brexit.

Raab was also co-founder of Change Britain, a campaign group that evolved out of Vote Leave and wrote a letter to Theresa May last year warning that Britain could not be “kept in the EU by stealth”.

Tufton Street Links

Raab has also published several articles on the Taxpayers’ Alliance website, a British think tank that campaigns for a low tax society and sits at the heart of a cosy climate euro-sceptic bubble pushing for a hard Brexit and less climate action.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance is based out offices at 55 Tufton Street, an office shared by a number of other organisations promoting a hard Brexit and climate science denial, just around the corner from the Houses of Parliament.

In 2012, he wrote a piece for Taxpayers’ Alliance demanding the government be transparent about the cost of its climate policies, according to the groups’ Twitter feed. The link to the story is no longer available.  

Its founder Matthew Elliott sits at the nexus of a group of pro-hard Brexit campaigners closely linked to the UK’s climate science deniers and other anti-regulation think tanks.

In 2014, he was a key speaker at an event organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs about Brexit’s economic risks and opportunities alongside Paterson and Redwood.  

Climate Change Voting Record

In Parliament, Raab has voted against allowing a right to remain for EU nationals already in living in the UK after Brexit.

Following the Miller case and the High Court ruling that Brexit could not be triggered without a parliamentary vote, Raab told The Telegraph: “On June 23 the British people gave a clear mandate for the UK Government to leave the EU and take back control of our borders, laws, money and trade. It is disappointing that today the court has chosen to ignore their decision.

“This case is a plain attempt to block Brexit by people who are out of touch with the country and refuse to accept the result.”

Raab has also voted against a number of measures to prevent climate change including against setting a decarbonisation target for the UK within six months of June 2016 and to review it annually thereafter, and against requiring a strategy for carbon capture and storage for the energy industry.

In 2015, he voted against against explicitly requiring an environmental permit for fracking activities and voted not to bam the exploitation of unconventional petroleum for at least 18 months and not to require a review of the impact of such exploitation on climate change.

In 2011, he called feminists “amongst the most obnoxious bigots”.

Chris Heaton-Harris: New junior Brexit minister 

Davis’s deputy, Steve Baker, also resigned over Theresa May’s Chequers plan for Brexit.

Chris Heaton-Harris, the MP for Daventry and a former Conservative whip has been appointed to replace him. He served as an MEP for the East Midlands from 1999 to 2009. 

Known for his strong anti-windfarm views, he is a hardline Brexiteer and chaired the European Research Group, an influential pro-Brexit Conservative group of MP backbenchers now led by Rees-Mogg from 2010 to 2016.

Last year, he wrote a letter to every university vice-chancellor asking them to declare what they are teaching about Brexit and a list of the teachers’ names. 

He voted against a right to remain for EU nationals after Brexit and has voted against measures to tackle climate change.

How David Davis and Steve Baker fit in the Brexiteer Climate Science Denier Network

Following his resignation, Davis told the BBC he was no longer the best person to deliver Theresa May’s Brexit plan as he did not “believe” in it.

He said the “career-ending” decision was a personal one but he felt the UK was “giving away too much and too easily” to the EUin the negotiations.

A long-standing eurosceptic with close ties to the free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, Davis campaigned for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2005 on an agenda of low taxation, free market deregulation and “a suspicion of big government”.

Davis is a member of the European Research Group.

Davis has previously received donations from the now-defunct National Center for Policy Analysis which advocated “private, free-market alternatives to government regulation and control” and spread disinformation about climate change.

He also received donations from company Techtest that donated money to the Bruges Group, a eurosceptic think-tank which rejects the scientific consensus that global warming is manmade.

Davis was also handed money by Michael Hintze, one of the Conservative Party’s main donors who has also donated money to the Brexit campaign and is one of the key funders of UK climate science denial thinktank the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Baker, who resigned as junior Brexit minister, is also at the centre of the Brexit-climate-science-denier nexus.

According to research by Open Democracy, Baker accepted a donation from the Constitutional Research Council, the shadowy group that channelled a mystery £435,000 to the DUP to campaign for Brexit.

Open Democracy also reported that Baker accepted conference expenses from radical right wing group American Liberty Fund, which has a history of close collaboration with the fossil fuel magnates and climate science denier funders Koch brothers.

Baker has previously written about the “uncertainties” of climate change and some of his blogs have been cross-posted by the climate science denier Global Warming Policy Foundation.  

Davis and Baker’s resignation means the pair is now free from ministerial responsibility, allowing them to resume their lobbying activities.

Boris Johnson 

In another twist on a dramatic day in Brexi-land, foreign secretary Boris Johnson became the third minister to resign over May’s Brexit Chequers plan.

A long-standing Brexiteer, the former London mayor endorsed the official Vote Leave campaign during the EU referendum and was appointed foreign secretary following the 2016 vote. 

Johnson was also on the board of advisors for the now-defunct right wing think tank The Atlantic Bridge which was founded by Liam Fox to promote “a special relationship” between the UK and the US.

Last September, Johnson helped to launch a new thinktank called the Institute for Free Trade (IFT) to push “the moral case for open commerce” and to seize Brexit as “a unique opportunity to revitalise the world trading system”.

The IFT is based at 57 Tufton Street, sharing an office with the anti-renewables thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies, and next door to many of the organisations at the heart of a UK climate science denial network in 55 Tufton Street.

Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, who gave the 2017 annual lecture at the climate science denying Global Warming Policy Foundation, is on the IFT’s ‘international advisory panel’ and the IFT’s president is climate science denying Tory MEP Daniel Hannan.

Johnson has previously flirted with climate science denial. 

In 2013, he wrote in his Telegraph column that a cold snap in weather casted doubt on climate science.

He said: “I am also an empiricist; and I observe that something appears to be up with our winter weather, and to call it “warming” is obviously to strain the language.” 

Writing for the Telegraph in 2015, he argued that recent warm winter weather had nothing to do with climate change. “There may be all kinds of reasons why I was sweating at ping-pong [in December] – but they don’t include global warming,” he wrote.

In both columns he referred to the “great physicist and meteorologist Piers Corbyn” – brother of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and a known climate science denier.

This Article

This article first appeared at DeSmog.UK.

“Sweetgrass is best planted not by seed, but by putting roots directly into the ground,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer. “Thus the plant is passed from hand to earth to hand across years and generations. Its favored habitat is sunny, well-watered meadows. it thrives along disturbed edges.”

Book tickets to the Off Grid festival now!

Like sweetgrass, wisdom is best passed on person to person, rooted in place and time, so that the memory can access the learning easily and put it into practice.

And at this point in human history, there is an urgent need for practical wisdom – wisdom with an eye on both past and future – and where better to receive it than in a sunny, well-watered meadow – a traditional English festival field?

Extra potential

Perhaps here, close to nature and deep in the experience of being, we can learn something of the wisdom of Seven Generations Stewardship – a concept borrowed from the Iroquois Native American peoples, whereby all decisions need to be made with consideration for the effect on seven generations into the future.

Coming into being as the younger cousin of Sunrise Festival, Off Grid Festival was literally born on the edge – a festival within a festival. It has always sought out wisdom – traditional and modern knowledge concerning how to create a sustainable, resilient lifestyle.

Taking the idea of Seven Generations Stewardship as its theme this year, Off Grid Festival is a place where concepts such as this become reality.

One of the key systems implemented and promoted at Off Grid Festival is permaculture, and one of permaculture’s twelve defining principles is the ‘edge effect’.

This points to the biodiversity and richness that can be found when two living cultures meet, and to the extra potential created when we increase access to an edge.

Energy systems

Reef ecologies and riparian systems, for instance, are some of the most diverse and productive natural zones on the planet.

To go to our edges, whether it be a growing edge, learning edge or the edge of our comfort zone, means to enter a phase of active learning. Edges take us fearwards, demanding that we face the challenges that life is presenting us, right here and right now.

Beyond the edge, before the next ecosystem fully takes over, we find the ecotone – a transition zone between two adjacent ecological communities. The shift between the two can be gradual and gentle or steep and sharp, but either way, it’s a place of huge potential.

It could be argued that at this point in history, we are living in an ecotone. We are transitioning between a fossil fuel economy to – well, we don’t really know what comes next.

Even now, as our weather systems create havoc for civilisations across the planet, our social systems prove unable to ensure quality of life for every human, our food systems are threatened with collapse and our energy systems uncertain, we stumble over finding viable solutions, bowing to pressure from those who stand to profit for a failing planet.

Guidance and celebration

Yet there are an abundance of smart, workable solutions that exist at the edges of medicine, architecture, agriculture and technology.

Some of these alternatives have been in existence for thousands of years, some have only recently been invented, but it is at these edges that we find an ecosystem teeming with opportunity.

Part gathering, part training school, Off Grid Festival is a living ecotone, bringing together a community of people who are keen to learn and share wisdom. Want to learn how to weave, knit or turn wood?

The family-friendly workshops on the Village Green and in the Wild Wood area offer hands-on experience. Want to explore how to manage change? Join in and take part in discussions with the Zebra Collective. Want to develop some tools for self-care? Try a healing session with Ben Giddey or a yoga class in the Serenity Zone.

In order to avoid a steep descent when our existing systems finally hit the buffers, it makes good sense to prepare. Off Grid Festival offers a wealth of tools, techniques, inspiration, guidance and celebration to nurture mind, body and soul – aiming to help produce whole-organism resilience for the difficult times ahead.

This Author

The Off Grid Festival weekend takes place from 9 August 2018 at Tapeley Park, Instow, North Devon.

The trade unions will be crucial to climate-change mitigation and adaptation. But you wouldn’t know it from recent comments by their leaders in Britain.

Take the intervention by Len McCluskey into the parliamentary debate on a third runway at Heathrow. Had all Labour MPs followed their leader—Jeremy Corbyn—into the ‘No’ lobby the vote would have been close.

The Unite leader encouraged them to cast their ballots with the Tories and the DUP, and most of them did, securing for the government a mighty majority and boosting the prime minister’s standing. By backing a third runway, McCluskey promised, they would help “create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.”

Vulnerable territories

If “new jobs” were one day required for the construction of elaborate machineries of human sacrifice would McCluskey urge ‘Yes’ then too? I fear he would.

For Heathrow III is precisely that. Enabling up to 260,000 extra take-offs and landings per year, it will siphon oceans of hydrocarbons from the lithosphere into the atmosphere.

This will intensify the feedbacks that are propelling the planet toward a rise of six degrees Celsius or more—an “extreme greenhouse state” with, in all likelihood, remnants of humanity pushed to polar latitudes and scrabbling to subsist.

McCluskey appeals to the interests of Heathrow workers and their children and grandchildren. But what lives await them if global warming accelerates unchecked?

Those predicted to suffer first and hardest will be in territories vulnerable to climate change: in South and East Asia, the Middle East and Africa. But Middlesex and Surrey will not escape.

Aviation fuel

A glance at recent trends and volatility in Heathrow’s own region is unsettling enough. In South East England, May 2018 was the hottest since records began over a century ago, and June was the driest.

The Junes of 2012 and 2016 were the wettest on record, and in between came July 2015, when a new July temperature record was set for the UK—appropriately, at Heathrow itself.

To this, the Professor Panglosses have a one-word response. Technology. Bring on the biofuel! But this has been tried. One flight from Heathrow to Amsterdam ran on a mix of nineteen parts jet fuel to one part biofuel.

Given that even that tiny fraction was distilled from 150,000 coconuts, how many coconut cocktails would it take to fuel all Heathrow’s aircraft? And if an average palm yields 60 coconuts per year, how much land and…. well, you do the maths.

Of course, other materials may emerge to knock off the coconut. Scientists have succeeded in imitating aviation fuel using sources such as “municipal waste and even grease from restaurants and sewers.” Good luck with that harvest.

Profit accumulation

Will Heathrow expansion provide the jobs that McCloskey promises? Already, Unite’s regional secretary has revised the figure down by an order of magnitude, to “tens of thousands of new jobs”.

From Heathrow’s recent history, expect that to shrink further. Back in 2008, thousands of new jobs were promised in connection with the construction of Terminal 5, but the airport now employs several thousand fewer people than it did then.

The same logic – of capital accumulation – pushes businesses to shed jobs and to ramp up production without regard to the environmental effects. It makes them raise pressure on employees – with periodic stress relief available in the form of trips abroad. Three-quarters of flights out of Heathrow are for leisure.

With higher levels of demand, and increased supply at Heathrow, other locations will be forced to follow suit. If Heathrow is allowed to expand, Caroline Lucas has warned, it’ll resemble an arms race among Europe’s airports, each one fighting for more passengers.

This is the ‘arms race’ that some trade union leaders embrace. In the case of Heathrow III, the prime minister, Theresa May, announced that the decision was taken not for reasons of profit accumulation and business lobbying but for “jobs and growth” – and one or two union leaders have bought this line too.

Struck in solidarity

But the ‘arms race’ can be resisted. There are alternatives, and unions can be central to them.

Ecological questions, including issues such as climate change that pose major challenges to ‘intergenerational social reproduction,’ are of quite as much concern to ‘labour’ as are questions concerning pay and working conditions.

The environment is not an ‘externality’, as capital and its apologists would have it, but is of existential and universal concern.

The classic instance of ‘green’ unionism were the ‘green bans’ of 1970s Australia. They were sparked when a group of Sydney women approached the Builders Labourers Federation for assistance in preventing construction on undeveloped bushland.

The BLF agreed and, when the developer called in scabs, BLF members on other sites struck in solidarity. The movement spread, and it was from here that the word ‘green’ made its way into general political discourse.

Transport systems

Environmental change necessitates social change. The latter will come, and at an accelerating pace. What is up for grabs is its ecological and social content.

In the utopian distance, the goal must be a relaxed and less harried society, lacking the compulsive drives to travel far, a society that resolves to restore this orb of ours to a habitable state.

In the short run, many domestic and European flights – around half the flights from Heathrow – could be replaced by train and coach travel.

Changes to transport systems of this scope require state-led investment, and a large-scale reallocation of resources and labour. In countries including Britain, South Africa and Norway, union-backed ‘climate jobs’ initiatives have pressed for this.

They seek to win the union movement behind plans for a ‘just transition’, with jobs guarantees for any worker who faces redundancy due to the shift from high- to low-carbon energy and transport systems.

Emergency motion

In Britain, the conflict between let-the-planet-burn unionism and green unionism is delicately poised.

Some union leaderships follow Unite in promoting Heathrow expansion. Others, such as the PCS and the NUT, support climate jobs programmes.

The Trades Union Congress is blown hither and thither. It backs Heathrow expansion, but also a just transition for workers—and it is the first major national union federation to have officially endorsed divestment from fossil fuels.

The divide runs within the unions too. This week, the Unite policy conference has been debating the Swansea tidal lagoon project, the cancellation of which the government announced on the day of the Heathrow vote.

The Unite leadership had not campaigned for this major renewable energy project. Delegates from the Welsh region proposed an emergency motion that forces them to do so. It passed, unanimously.

And the divide cleaves the Labour left. McCluskey is one of Corbyn’s key backers.

But Corbyn’s closest ally, John McDonnell, is a dedicated supporter of environmental causes and an ardent opponent of Heathrow expansion. Much hangs on how these conflicts will play out.

This Author

Gareth Dale teaches politics at Brunel University. He is a co-editor of Green Growth (Zed, 2016), and has written on the growth paradigm, sustainability, and Marx’s ecology.

The reasons why our civilisation continues hurtling towards a precipice are multilayered. There are some readily identifiable factors; underpinning these are certain structural characteristics of our global system that lock in our current momentum; and underlying these are cognitive frames – the ways we think about life, often unconsciously – that form the basis for our collective behaviour.

Each of these layers must be addressed to make a meaningful course correction.

Read our review of Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct.

The easily identifiable forces propelling humanity on its current course are the special interests that gain financially and politically – at least, in the short term – from continued economic growth and use of fossil fuels.

Competing network

In the United States, for example, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually in political lobbying and funding for those who deny the threat of anthropogenic climate change. They currently exert enough power over the US legislative process to thwart meaningful national legislation.

However, even without these special interests, some structural characteristics of our global system make it very difficult to change direction. One of these is known as technological lock-in: the fact that, once a technology is widely adopted, an infrastructure is built up around it, making change prohibitively expensive.

A frequently cited example is the QWERTY keyboard, which was originally designed for its inefficiency, in an attempt to slow down the rate of typing and therefore prevent early typewriter keys from hitting each other.

More efficiently laid-out keyboards can double typing speeds, and yet it has been impossible for them to make inroads, because everyone is used to the older, inefficient design.

In the case of fossil fuels, an obvious example of technological lock-in is the network of petrol stations for vehicles with conventional engines. Any new electric car technology has an uphill battle to create a competing network, even if its vehicles offer equivalent performance.

Growth trajectory

These technological challenges can be overcome with enough investment. A far greater obstacle to meaningful change is financial lock-in: the financial infrastructure underlying the fossil-fuel-based economy.

Fossil-fuel companies and corporations are valued primarily on the basis of their proven coal, oil and gas reserves. However, for the world to keep global warming to 2 degrees, the oil companies would only be able to use about one-fifth of their reserves.

These corporations would experience drastic declines in market value if the world were to make a serious commitment to rein in global warming. Given the overriding corporate objective of maximising financial returns, their executives have a powerful incentive to steer the public debate away from this issue.

Beyond the narrow interests of the fossil-fuel industry, the entire capitalist economy is founded on perpetual growth. In aggregate, world stock markets are valued on the same growth assumptions that predict a quadrupling of the global economy by mid-century.

Business leaders fret that if a concerted attempt is made to reduce this growth trajectory, it might lead to a spiralling decline in valuations, possibly even to the collapse of the capitalist system.

Extracting and marketing

Additionally, in the arena of geopolitical rivalry, the power of a nation relative to others is substantially based on economic strength. National political leaders fear that if their nation unilaterally chose to reduce its own growth to a more sustainable level, this would reduce its ability to protect its national interests.

This self-defeating collective dynamic highlights a crucial flaw in capitalist ideology: the notion that it is inevitably beneficial for society when each person seeks to maximise his or her own gain. Underlying this notion is an even more fundamental defect of classical economic theory: the assumption that Nature is inexhaustible.

When the framework of modern economics was developed in the 18th century, it seemed reasonable to view natural resources as unlimited, because for all intents and purposes they were.

Economists therefore treated minerals, trees and water as commodities to be sold at a price that was simply the cost of extracting and marketing them. As we’ve seen, the experience of the past 50 years has proved that assumption to be wrong.

Political systems

In the words attributed to systems theorist Kenneth Boulding, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

In spite of this obvious and fundamental flaw, classical economic theory continues to be used around the world as the driving force for decisions made by corporations, policymakers and governments. How can that be?

The American environmental historian J.R. McNeill offers an explanation: “When an idea becomes successful, it easily becomes even more successful: it gets entrenched in social and political systems, which assists in its further spread. It then prevails even beyond the times and places where it is advantageous to its followers.”

This is another form of lock-in: ideological. “Big ideas”, McNeill observes, “all became orthodoxies, enmeshed in social and political systems, and difficult to dislodge even if they became costly.”

This Author

Jeremy Lent is the author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning. This is an extract of a longer article that appeared in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. The latest issue is available now. 

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a man of many passions. To name but several: good food, less waste, healthier people, thriving nature, and an end to human cruelty to animals. But there is one more that knits all three together: vegetables. Or rather, more vegetables. Or then again, many more vegetables!

How so? Because if we in the UK, and indeed a broader ‘we’ the world over, can be convinced to switch to a more vegetable-based diet, we will eat better, live longer, take pressure off the natural world, and reduce the daily suffering inflicted on farm animals.

Hence the title of Hugh’s new book, Much More Veg, and his River Cottage festivals – the next is in August – named after his home on the Devon/Dorset border.

Literally billions

Hence, too, his latest television documentary series on how many Britons’ dreadful diets underlie a major national crisis of obesity, diabetes, disability, massive NHS spending, and lives cut short.

“Looking into it has been scary at times, inspiring at others, and often gloomy. It is a startling truth that here in the UK we have one of the worst diets in the world,” Hugh tells Resurgence and Ecologist.

“There aren’t the words to describe how bad our national eating habits have become. Half the food we eat is ultra-processed – and for some it’s as much as 90 percent.

“We are looking here at refined sugar, fat, flour and salt spun into endless combinations that are industrially tested to get us hooked. There’s hardly any fibre for the guts to get to work on. These foods deliver an avalanche of calories that’s more than our bodies can handle, and much of it just gets turned into fat.

“It’s obvious that the solution is to eat whole real food. So how do you get people to do that? It’s incredibly hard to persuade people to eat healthy food. One reason is the billions spent on persuading people to eat the bad stuff because that’s where the profit is. Literally billions.

Extraordinary resilience

“As for vegetables, yes, they are there on the supermarket shelves, but it’s still hard to compete against that massive advertising spend on junk food. And it’s especially difficult for people trying to make a living on low wages, working long hours, with rent or mortgages to pay, looking after families, looking for an easy way to fill their children’s bellies. Everything is against them. Families can and do turn things around – but it’s very hard.”

Another problem, he says, is that we have a generation of parents who rarely or never cook, relying instead on packaged foods and takeaways. “For a lot of people, cooking is a drudge, not ‘quality time’.

“But what if cooking is one of the things you do with your own time because you want to and see it as one of life’s pleasures? Then you are well on your way to eating better.

“If you can cook, you can cook healthy food, even on a tight budget, and you are in control of what you eat. That’s why we have to raise a generation that can cook again.

“Being a competent cook is a life-saving skill. If you’re out of work, or have a low-paying job, it is a lifeline. It confers extraordinary resilience in a world where economic challenges are growing.

Making deliciousness

“The idea that we could raise a generation of competent cooks may seem a long way off, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try! What’s the alternative?

“People who cannot cook depend on industrially produced foods that are mostly high in fat, salt, sugar, and so on. It’s not impossible for us to educate children in every age group in food and cooking – but it will need commitment from government and families to make it happen.”

Much More Veg is aimed at helping that shift to take place, by showing people – not just vegetarians and vegans, but everyone – how to make vegetables delicious and open up a captivating new world of taste.

“Omnivores need to spend more time cooking and eating veg, which has become an after-thought when it should be the main part of every meal,” Hugh insists.

“It’s the greatest opportunity for making deliciousness in the kitchen. And of course eating more veg is great for animal welfare, the environment and health. I decided at the outset to show what a valuable resource plant foods are. Meat and fish have become tyrannical – there is so much more!”

Good parsnips

Our meal – taken at Hugh’s River Cottage Canteen in a converted church on Bristol’s Whiteladies Road – certainly says all the right things for the deliciousness of his recipes.

Our menu selection was not strictly vegetarian – we started with grilled Cornish sardines and went on to share a lamb and spicy sausage platter – but it was overwhelmingly vegetable-based, from roast parsnip, celeriac and beetroot, to salads bursting with the unexpected but delectable aromas of wild garlic and coriander. “We offer ten different seasonal vegetable dishes every day,” says Hugh.

Once we have eaten our fill, he asks for the leftovers to be put in a doggy bag for his dinner. “The restaurant business creates huge amounts of waste and some of it is hard to avoid, but I still can’t stand seeing good food thrown away,” he says.

“A colossal amount of waste is just built into the food system, but it’s hidden. No one sees it. That’s where TV comes in – it can drag the secrets into public view.

“For example, when we filmed the mountains of perfectly good parsnips being piled up as waste after the ‘best’ had been graded out for the supermarkets, we needed a way to demonstrate the sheer scale of the problem.

Comfort and inspiration

“So we started filling shopping trolleys with all the waste parsnips and we soon had a line of them going a hundred metres down the farm track. That was a very filmic way to generate an emotional response.

“Or with Hugh’s Fish Fight [another recent television series, focusing on his campaign against wasteful and damaging modern fishing practices], even the crew on the fishing boat we were on never saw how many fish were being discarded.

“All the fish were put onto a conveyor belt as they came out of the sea, and the belt ran out over the sea, tipping out all but the ones that were picked out for sale.

“One day we persuaded the crew to put the discards on deck instead, and for the first time they were confronted with the scale of the waste; they got quite emotional about it.”

All this waste is a direct assault on the natural world, which has become Hugh’s main source of comfort and inspiration, as well as the subject of another current TV series.

Mysterious aggregation

“At the same time as working on obesity and diabetes, I have been making a series of Wild West wildlife programmes, and it has been a joy working with people who are dedicating all the time they can find in a delightful and infectious way, whether toad patrolling, or working for years on end to discover why a rare butter­fly is struggling and then making a difference, helping it to survive.

“I felt very energised just being exposed to it. But I’m just the front man. I’m lucky to collaborate with brilliant film-makers, and we are all lucky to work with brilliant campaigners and environmentalists. And we are all lucky to work with each other, and I think it’s work that is really worth doing!

“Of course the statistics are going the wrong way, with half our toads lost in the last 20 years, farmland birds in decline all over Europe, and so on. But the sense that Nature is worth protecting, worth devoting your life to, was inspiring, incredibly uplifting, and gave me a real sense of hope.

“If we don’t engage with the natural world, deriving pleasure and satisfaction from it, where will our inspiration come from? Because we are part of it. We cannot exist outside of Nature. If we don’t look after the world, one day it will reject us. Mother Nature will tell us to take a hike.

“Faced with all the political craziness, it is all the more important for me to spend time in Nature, in the woods. I have been putting up nesting boxes in my garden, and finding a harvest mouse in one, a mysterious aggregation of acorns in another…

Emotional response

“There are all these animals and ecosystems out there just doing what they do, and they are a joy, a wonder. We need to connect with them as much as possible, and if we do we can gain a certain perspective on the world that helps us through.

“Like watching a wren in the woods – just a tiny bundle of feathers flitting from one place to the next. And there’s water… Being on the sea, by a river or a stream, an endless source of comfort and distraction. We have restored an old pond at home in Devon to swim in, and now it’s heaving with toads, and herons are flying in…”

One of Hugh’s pastimes is sea kayaking, with Tiree in the Outer Hebrides a favourite destination. “If we’re very lucky we get among basking sharks, which is exhilarating. There is something about that experience that conveys the timelessness of the ocean.

“It’s wonderful to be in the water watching the second-biggest fish in the world just hoovering up the plankton. We have done terrible things to this creature, hunting it for its oil, but it’s just doing its thing, not minding if you’re there or not. It’s not how you think of a shark at all – completely peaceful.

“One of the things that are such a privilege about being human is our ability to observe and experience other parts of Nature. It would seem to be a uniquely human experience to observe and appreciate and have an emotional response to another creature in another environment.”

The tragedy

Less dramatic but more accessible, a very immediate way to engage with Nature is through food – fresh vegetables in particular.

“It’s wonderful to see tiny children discover ingredients for the first time, holding raw vegetables in their hands and knowing where they come from – pulling pea pods off the vine, or pulling carrots out of the ground. And that’s what happened to me.

“When my family moved out of London to Gloucestershire, we inherited a wonderful garden complete with thriving vegetable patch. One of my earliest memories is of picking peas in that garden.

“An early experience like that can colour how you see food for the rest of your life. The tragedy is that so many people are not just facing a challenging food environment, but also cut off from nature. They just have no experience of it. And that’s one of the things I’m hoping to change.”

This Author

Oliver Tickell is a regular contributor to Resurgence & Ecologist, where this article first appeared. The latest issue – focussing on food – is available now! 

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Much More Veg is published by Bloomsbury. Hugh will be speaking at numerous events in 2018, including the River Cottage Festival (25–26 August), where he will be joined by Satish Kumar, editor emeritus of The Ecologist.

The government’s plans for fisheries after Brexit are promising but alarmingly devoid of detail about its environmental commitments.

Yesterday’s white paper promised sustainable fisheries and better monitoring of fishing activity and enforcement of laws after Brexit, but no real plans for how these goals will be delivered.

Once again we’re seeing the government talking the talk, but failing to back up almost any of its promises with details or concrete action.

Marine life

Whilst it is great see a commitment to managing fisheries with the whole marine environment in mind, a lot of what’s in the white paper is just a continuation of current EU policies.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary has said he wants to use the opportunity of Brexit to secure a “sustainable marine environment for the next generation”.  This is the chance to set an ambitious agenda – but yesterday’s plans are really no better than the status quo.

Importantly, the white paper assumes the UK will get a larger share of fish to catch, as part of its negotiations with the EU.

Achieving the environmental promises in the white paper depends on curbing overfishing. As the same time the government is promising a greater share of fish stocks when the UK has left the EU, so it needs to explain how this is consistent with fishing at sustainable levels.

Fish responsibly

The government now has a chance to set rules that ensure marine life in the UK’s seas continue to recover and thrive once we leave the EU. New fisheries legislation must include:

• Requirements for government to set truly sustainable catch limits according to the best scientific advice

• High environmental standards for fishing gear and methods and better protection for vulnerable ocean ecosystems

• More resources for robust monitoring and enforcement of fisheries laws

• A commitment that negotiations with the EU and other countries will ensure commercially important shared stocks are managed sustainably.

There is huge support amongst the British public for new laws that ensure we fish responsibly and protect the marine environment. More than three out of four people support a new law to ensure fish stocks are protected from overfishing after Britain leaves the EU.

Healthy seas mean healthy fish stocks. We need well-managed fisheries to achieve that and the government’s initial plans leave a lot to be desired.

This Author

Tom West is law and policy advisor, UK environment, for ClientEarth.

The government’s plans for fisheries after Brexit are promising but alarmingly devoid of detail about its environmental commitments.

Yesterday’s white paper promised sustainable fisheries and better monitoring of fishing activity and enforcement of laws after Brexit, but no real plans for how these goals will be delivered.

Once again we’re seeing the government talking the talk, but failing to back up almost any of its promises with details or concrete action.

Marine life

Whilst it is great see a commitment to managing fisheries with the whole marine environment in mind, a lot of what’s in the white paper is just a continuation of current EU policies.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary has said he wants to use the opportunity of Brexit to secure a “sustainable marine environment for the next generation”.  This is the chance to set an ambitious agenda – but yesterday’s plans are really no better than the status quo.

Importantly, the white paper assumes the UK will get a larger share of fish to catch, as part of its negotiations with the EU.

Achieving the environmental promises in the white paper depends on curbing overfishing. As the same time the government is promising a greater share of fish stocks when the UK has left the EU, so it needs to explain how this is consistent with fishing at sustainable levels.

Fish responsibly

The government now has a chance to set rules that ensure marine life in the UK’s seas continue to recover and thrive once we leave the EU. New fisheries legislation must include:

• Requirements for government to set truly sustainable catch limits according to the best scientific advice

• High environmental standards for fishing gear and methods and better protection for vulnerable ocean ecosystems

• More resources for robust monitoring and enforcement of fisheries laws

• A commitment that negotiations with the EU and other countries will ensure commercially important shared stocks are managed sustainably.

There is huge support amongst the British public for new laws that ensure we fish responsibly and protect the marine environment. More than three out of four people support a new law to ensure fish stocks are protected from overfishing after Britain leaves the EU.

Healthy seas mean healthy fish stocks. We need well-managed fisheries to achieve that and the government’s initial plans leave a lot to be desired.

This Author

Tom West is law and policy advisor, UK environment, for ClientEarth.

The government’s plans for fisheries after Brexit are promising but alarmingly devoid of detail about its environmental commitments.

Yesterday’s white paper promised sustainable fisheries and better monitoring of fishing activity and enforcement of laws after Brexit, but no real plans for how these goals will be delivered.

Once again we’re seeing the government talking the talk, but failing to back up almost any of its promises with details or concrete action.

Marine life

Whilst it is great see a commitment to managing fisheries with the whole marine environment in mind, a lot of what’s in the white paper is just a continuation of current EU policies.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary has said he wants to use the opportunity of Brexit to secure a “sustainable marine environment for the next generation”.  This is the chance to set an ambitious agenda – but yesterday’s plans are really no better than the status quo.

Importantly, the white paper assumes the UK will get a larger share of fish to catch, as part of its negotiations with the EU.

Achieving the environmental promises in the white paper depends on curbing overfishing. As the same time the government is promising a greater share of fish stocks when the UK has left the EU, so it needs to explain how this is consistent with fishing at sustainable levels.

Fish responsibly

The government now has a chance to set rules that ensure marine life in the UK’s seas continue to recover and thrive once we leave the EU. New fisheries legislation must include:

• Requirements for government to set truly sustainable catch limits according to the best scientific advice

• High environmental standards for fishing gear and methods and better protection for vulnerable ocean ecosystems

• More resources for robust monitoring and enforcement of fisheries laws

• A commitment that negotiations with the EU and other countries will ensure commercially important shared stocks are managed sustainably.

There is huge support amongst the British public for new laws that ensure we fish responsibly and protect the marine environment. More than three out of four people support a new law to ensure fish stocks are protected from overfishing after Britain leaves the EU.

Healthy seas mean healthy fish stocks. We need well-managed fisheries to achieve that and the government’s initial plans leave a lot to be desired.

This Author

Tom West is law and policy advisor, UK environment, for ClientEarth.

The government’s plans for fisheries after Brexit are promising but alarmingly devoid of detail about its environmental commitments.

Yesterday’s white paper promised sustainable fisheries and better monitoring of fishing activity and enforcement of laws after Brexit, but no real plans for how these goals will be delivered.

Once again we’re seeing the government talking the talk, but failing to back up almost any of its promises with details or concrete action.

Marine life

Whilst it is great see a commitment to managing fisheries with the whole marine environment in mind, a lot of what’s in the white paper is just a continuation of current EU policies.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary has said he wants to use the opportunity of Brexit to secure a “sustainable marine environment for the next generation”.  This is the chance to set an ambitious agenda – but yesterday’s plans are really no better than the status quo.

Importantly, the white paper assumes the UK will get a larger share of fish to catch, as part of its negotiations with the EU.

Achieving the environmental promises in the white paper depends on curbing overfishing. As the same time the government is promising a greater share of fish stocks when the UK has left the EU, so it needs to explain how this is consistent with fishing at sustainable levels.

Fish responsibly

The government now has a chance to set rules that ensure marine life in the UK’s seas continue to recover and thrive once we leave the EU. New fisheries legislation must include:

• Requirements for government to set truly sustainable catch limits according to the best scientific advice

• High environmental standards for fishing gear and methods and better protection for vulnerable ocean ecosystems

• More resources for robust monitoring and enforcement of fisheries laws

• A commitment that negotiations with the EU and other countries will ensure commercially important shared stocks are managed sustainably.

There is huge support amongst the British public for new laws that ensure we fish responsibly and protect the marine environment. More than three out of four people support a new law to ensure fish stocks are protected from overfishing after Britain leaves the EU.

Healthy seas mean healthy fish stocks. We need well-managed fisheries to achieve that and the government’s initial plans leave a lot to be desired.

This Author

Tom West is law and policy advisor, UK environment, for ClientEarth.