Fracking developer and chemical firm INEOS has won an appeal over its application to build a well for test drilling in Derbyshire.

The firm applied for permission in May 2017 to erect a drilling rig up to 60 metres tall and drill around 2,400 metres below the ground, off Bramleymoor Lane near Marsh Lane in Derbyshire for a temporary period of five years. But Derbyshire County Council had not come to a conclusion by December, in breach of the allowed timescale of 16 weeks.

INEOS then took its application to government body the Planning Inspectorate (PINS), which held a public inquiry in June 2018. The council by then had decided to oppose the application, along with local campaign group Eckington Against Fracking, local MP Lee Rowley, and more than 30 members of the public.

Strong reactions

But the planning inspector concluded that, although residents near the development would suffer slightly from nighttime noise, this would not outweigh the benefits of the exploration in terms of improvements to energy resources. Other impacts could be reduced through planning conditions, she said.

Friends of the Earth tweeted: “Devastating news for Derbyshire and yet another example of local decisions being overturned in favour of the #fracking industry. Local people said no and the local council said no.”

Rebecca Long Bailey MP, Labour’s shadow business secretary, said that the decision was scandalous, and that a Labour government would ban fracking.

INEOS welcomed the decision but said that its application should not have had to go to public inquiry, which was “an unjustifiable waste of public money”. Following the test drill, the firm would have to obtain a separate environmental permit and planning permission if it wants to go ahead with fracking.

This Author

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

At least twelve earthquakes have awoken the usually quiet rural area around the village of Newdigate. The area is close to the oil exploration sites of UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) at Horse Hill and Angus Energy at Brockham.  

Along with searing global temperatures attributed to climate change, the quakes have not deterred the government from pressing ahead with measures to smooth the way for the onshore oil and gas industry. 

Water reinjection

Critics say the timing is a cynical ploy to accelerate development over the summer – traditionally a time of low public scrutiny. 

David Smythe, Emeritus Professor of Geophysics at the University of Glasgow, told The Ecologist: “We know from the US that re-injection can trigger quite major earthquakes, bigger than the ones in Surrey.

“For every barrel of oil that’s produced … you get seven barrels of water that you have to get rid of … The usual way of doing it that you have another borehole nearby and you force it down there back underground … That’s called re-injection.” 

The reinjection site doesn’t even need to be close by to trigger an earthquake: “They can be 40-50 miles away”. 

It has now become clear that the quakes were relatively near the surface, increasing the likelihood that they were caused by human interference.

Weak regulation

Smythe explained: “In the case of UKOG at Horse Hill it is just possible that they started some activity that they haven’t told anyone about. Re-injection or well testing or something like that, before the first of the Newdigate earthquakes that was on 1 April this year.” 

On the 27 June 2018, the same day as one of the bigger earthquakes, UKOG put out a press release that stated: “Production flow test operations commence.” 

The Ecologist invited UKOG to comment on reports linking its operations to the earthquakes but it did not respond. 

Smythe said: “It’s clear from the evidence that they will ignore the regulations and permits with impunity. And they say they’re not active at a certain day but you know, whose checking up on them?”

Recent regulatory and government approvals coupled with a draft law designed to dissolve planning obstacles, have given oil and gas companies a summer fillip. 

Commercial fracking

On 24 July, energy minister Claire Perry announced: “I am content that Hydraulic Fracturing Consent should be granted” for an extraction license at the Preston New Road exploration site in Lancashire. 

This is the first time that horizontal commercial fracking has been allowed on mainland Britain since a moratorium was put in place in 2011 due to earthquakes linked to operations. 

Green MP Caroline Lucas said in parliament the decision had been: “smuggled out on this last day before recess.

“It is an extraordinarily perverse decision given the reality of accelerating climate change. Essentially the government is locking us in to a whole new fossil fuel industry.” 

Residents Action on Fylde Fracking have challenged fracking company Cuadrilla’s apparent exemption to water restrictions at a time when Northwest water provider United Utilities has imposed a hosepipe ban from 5 August. 

‘Water protector’

That same day that the government awarded the license, six activists were arrested for locking on using arm pipes and obstructing the fracking site entrance road. A Cuadrilla press release on 24 July stated: “Cuadrilla can confirm that it plans to take legal action against six individuals.” 

When asked whether he was there to enforce the injunction one policeman at the site that day said the injunction covered, “actions on this road and any other road as well, but that’s their [Cuadrilla’s] concern and not the police. It’s a civil matter.”

Fiona [last name withheld], an activist at Preston New Road, described herself as a “water protector” and was doing her shift on “rig watch.” 

She said that the injunction had not stopped protesters blockading the site. “I’m staying here all the time. It feels really important.” she said. One protestor said that the cost of challenging the injunction at Preston New Road had so far proved prohibitive. 

The six anti-frackers from Surrey including from Leith Hill Protection Camp, were in court in early July and are expecting the verdict on their legal challenge in August. The ruling could have significant implications for civil liberties including the right to protest against fracking companies.

Eroding democracy 

On 17 May, government minister Greg Clark announced that it would introduce a bill to allow oil companies to bypass the planning application process altogether by allowing exploration to go ahead as “permitted development.” 

The bill is currently under public consultation over the summer and if successful could see central Government excluding local and county planners from much of the process. 

Campaigners say this amounts to an erosion of local democracy. Fiona said the campaigning organisations around Preston plan group meetings with their MPs to lobby against the plans. The plans could enable companies such as Angus Energy easier access to drill. 

According to campaign group Brockham Oil Watch, Angus has ignored planning requirements and went ahead with unauthorised drilling. Now, a year and a half later, its retrospective application was approved on 8 August by Surrey County Council, to the dismay of campaigners.  

Ada Zaffina of Brockham Oil Watch said: “They [Angus Energy] misled the council into believing they were doing maintenance on an existing well and not drilling.” 

Ignoring opposition

In a letter to The Times, 6 August, four senior academics said: “A moratorium is urgently needed on hydrocarbon exploration in the area of Surrey recently affected by 12 earthquakes.”  

However their professional concerns failed to sway Surrey County Council which on 8 August passed a controversial application by 7 votes to 4 for Brockham operator, Angus Energy to drill. The company said it was “pleased to acknowledge today’s planning approval.” 

Zaffina, who spoke at the meeting, said: “This permission was given against the objections by the Parish Council, Mole Valley District Council and the local people”. Campaigners were shocked that the Council decision had ignored widespread local opposition.

Referring to letter in The Times, Zaffina said: “The Oil & Gas Authority can hardly be regarded as independent or impartial. Its objective is to support the industry in maximising the economic recovery of oil and gas, and it is largely funded by the industry.

“We are disappointed that the planning officers relied on such advice in favour of the recent advice from a group of leading independent geologists.” 

Self regulation

Smythe argued that existing permits do not require the company to submit an appropriate level of detail: “Unfortunately under the regulations in which Angus energy operate, there has been no requirement for them to report on a daily or weekly basis, what they are doing to report about re-injection – how much and how often.” 

Zaffina agreed that self-monitoring by the industry is not adequate: “Even the way the permit applications work is really old school. In some US states you have a live, searchable online database that can be accessed by the public. Here you have nothing like that.” 

At nearby Leith Hill campaigners were dismayed to receive news that the Environment Agency had issued an approval decision for exploration to go ahead on 23 July. 

In its decision the Environment Agency highlighted the biological sensitivity of this ancient woodland classified as both a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). 

Yet it has still given the green light for industrialisation of this protected area.

Radioactive materials 

The decision report stated that: “The permit will authorise as part of the mining waste activity the flaring of any waste gas arising from well testing.” 

The decision also allows naturally occurring radioactive materials “in concentrations exceeding those set out in … the Regulations.” It also determines that “an environmental permit for a groundwater activity is not required.” 

A concerted Government drive to promote the industry is now underway. Ongoing consultations over the summer could decide whether onshore projects are included in the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects regime, allowing central government to override regional decisions about projects. 

This dovetails with provision for extra resources for fast-tracking decisions on appeals of oil and gas applications that were refused at the county level. Whether the measures will kickstart the nascent industry in the face of widespread public opposition, has yet to be seen.

This Author

Rod Harbinson is a multimedia journalist focussing on environment and human rights issues, often in developing countries. At home behind a camera, he is also a persistent researcher, uncovering new and often overlooked stories. His photography is represented by the Polaris Images agency in New York.

Further Information

Brockham: https://brockhamoilwatch.org/

Preston: http://pnrgroup.org.uk/

Leith Hill: https://www.voiceforleithhill.co.uk/

If there’s one thing I’ve had the occasional guilty longing for over the course of my organic farming career, it is the odd squirt of glyphosate.

It could save so much time and effort, whether destroying pernicious weeds like couch, stopping grass shorting out electric fences in our pig field or helping young trees establish.

And like virtually all farmers, I had been convinced it was safe – safe enough to drink, as everyone would regularly say. Of course, organic farmers can’t use it, but there have been moments when I’ve wished we could!

So I was as taken aback as anyone by the decision in 2015 of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency, which found glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen.

Then this week we’ve seen a landmark case in the US which ruled that not only did Monsanto’s weed killer cause a man’s terminal cancer, but that the company knew its glyphosate products could be dangerous.

Monsanto has argued strongly against the jury’s decision, and there is surprisingly little research into the impacts of the chemical, especially when combined with the other ingredients in these weedkillers.

Whatever your view, there is no doubt that the case is mounting against glyphosate and questions are increasingly being raised over pesticides in general, particularly their impact on soil and wildlife. 

The same pattern repeats

Over the last 60 years the pattern has been the same.

A new chemical group is launched on the world, marketed as the solution to all our farming woes, then the doubts start to creep in, the evidence of human health and/or environmental damage builds, cautionary voices clash with practical farmers who feel their livelihoods are threatened, and finally the chemical is banned.

From DDT, to the organochlorines, then the organophosphates, the neonicotinoids, and now the ‘so safe you can drink it’ glyphosate – the same lifecycle plays out.

To add insult to injury, even those chemicals still allowed are failing. Farmers are struggling to control blackgrass, how-ever often they spray, and starting to recognise that other methods need to be employed if they are to protect their crops.

The water companies are spending a fortune trying to strip the slug killer metaldehyde out of our drinking water, the cost of which is ultimately passed onto consumers.

New genetic technologies like GM have been sold on the basis that they will allow us to reduce pesticide use, but the experience of farmers in countries where GM is allowed is that short term gain soon reverses into resistant ‘superweeds’ and the need for ever more powerful pesticides. 

Food without pesticides is perfectly possible

Enough of the quick fixes, the sticking plasters that scarcely cover the wound. What farmers need now is help to get off the treadmill, and that requires a wholesale rethink of our food and farming systems.

Producing plentiful, high quality food without pesticides is perfectly possible, as organic farmers worldwide demonstrate, but under our current economic model it costs more to do so; pesticides don’t carry the costs they incur, while labour is expensive.

Ecological approaches require diversity which is more management intensive, demanding skills and knowledge which many farmers don’t have, and investment is often needed too.

This is the perfect moment to rethink our food and farming system, as we prepare to exit the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

The Soil Association has long campaigned for a stop to spraying glyphosate on crops at harvest time and to it use in parks and gardens, and for a thorough rethink of pesticide regulations. 

We can support farmers to move away from pesticides, and invest in the research and development that is required to tackle the challenges that even successful organic producers face.

Government has committed to target public funding on the ‘public goods’ that benefit the whole of society but which farmers are not rewarded for, such as carbon sequestration, reversing wildlife declines, and cutting antibiotic use.

With the right (organic) carrots and sticks, we could transition our food system over the next decade to one which works with and for nature, provides a fair living for producers, and supports a healthy, affordable diet for citizens. 

The Author

Helen Browning is an organic farmer and business owner. She is Chief Executive of the Soil Association and a member of the Food Ethics Council.

If there’s one thing I’ve had the occasional guilty longing for over the course of my organic farming career, it is the odd squirt of glyphosate.

It could save so much time and effort, whether destroying pernicious weeds like couch, stopping grass shorting out electric fences in our pig field or helping young trees establish.

And like virtually all farmers, I had been convinced it was safe – safe enough to drink, as everyone would regularly say. Of course, organic farmers can’t use it, but there have been moments when I’ve wished we could!

So I was as taken aback as anyone by the decision in 2015 of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency, which found glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen.

Then this week we’ve seen a landmark case in the US which ruled that not only did Monsanto’s weed killer cause a man’s terminal cancer, but that the company knew its glyphosate products could be dangerous.

Monsanto has argued strongly against the jury’s decision, and there is surprisingly little research into the impacts of the chemical, especially when combined with the other ingredients in these weedkillers.

Whatever your view, there is no doubt that the case is mounting against glyphosate and questions are increasingly being raised over pesticides in general, particularly their impact on soil and wildlife. 

The same pattern repeats

Over the last 60 years the pattern has been the same.

A new chemical group is launched on the world, marketed as the solution to all our farming woes, then the doubts start to creep in, the evidence of human health and/or environmental damage builds, cautionary voices clash with practical farmers who feel their livelihoods are threatened, and finally the chemical is banned.

From DDT, to the organochlorines, then the organophosphates, the neonicotinoids, and now the ‘so safe you can drink it’ glyphosate – the same lifecycle plays out.

To add insult to injury, even those chemicals still allowed are failing. Farmers are struggling to control blackgrass, how-ever often they spray, and starting to recognise that other methods need to be employed if they are to protect their crops.

The water companies are spending a fortune trying to strip the slug killer metaldehyde out of our drinking water, the cost of which is ultimately passed onto consumers.

New genetic technologies like GM have been sold on the basis that they will allow us to reduce pesticide use, but the experience of farmers in countries where GM is allowed is that short term gain soon reverses into resistant ‘superweeds’ and the need for ever more powerful pesticides. 

Food without pesticides is perfectly possible

Enough of the quick fixes, the sticking plasters that scarcely cover the wound. What farmers need now is help to get off the treadmill, and that requires a wholesale rethink of our food and farming systems.

Producing plentiful, high quality food without pesticides is perfectly possible, as organic farmers worldwide demonstrate, but under our current economic model it costs more to do so; pesticides don’t carry the costs they incur, while labour is expensive.

Ecological approaches require diversity which is more management intensive, demanding skills and knowledge which many farmers don’t have, and investment is often needed too.

This is the perfect moment to rethink our food and farming system, as we prepare to exit the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

The Soil Association has long campaigned for a stop to spraying glyphosate on crops at harvest time and to it use in parks and gardens, and for a thorough rethink of pesticide regulations. 

We can support farmers to move away from pesticides, and invest in the research and development that is required to tackle the challenges that even successful organic producers face.

Government has committed to target public funding on the ‘public goods’ that benefit the whole of society but which farmers are not rewarded for, such as carbon sequestration, reversing wildlife declines, and cutting antibiotic use.

With the right (organic) carrots and sticks, we could transition our food system over the next decade to one which works with and for nature, provides a fair living for producers, and supports a healthy, affordable diet for citizens. 

The Author

Helen Browning is an organic farmer and business owner. She is Chief Executive of the Soil Association and a member of the Food Ethics Council.

If there’s one thing I’ve had the occasional guilty longing for over the course of my organic farming career, it is the odd squirt of glyphosate.

It could save so much time and effort, whether destroying pernicious weeds like couch, stopping grass shorting out electric fences in our pig field or helping young trees establish.

And like virtually all farmers, I had been convinced it was safe – safe enough to drink, as everyone would regularly say. Of course, organic farmers can’t use it, but there have been moments when I’ve wished we could!

So I was as taken aback as anyone by the decision in 2015 of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency, which found glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen.

Then this week we’ve seen a landmark case in the US which ruled that not only did Monsanto’s weed killer cause a man’s terminal cancer, but that the company knew its glyphosate products could be dangerous.

Monsanto has argued strongly against the jury’s decision, and there is surprisingly little research into the impacts of the chemical, especially when combined with the other ingredients in these weedkillers.

Whatever your view, there is no doubt that the case is mounting against glyphosate and questions are increasingly being raised over pesticides in general, particularly their impact on soil and wildlife. 

The same pattern repeats

Over the last 60 years the pattern has been the same.

A new chemical group is launched on the world, marketed as the solution to all our farming woes, then the doubts start to creep in, the evidence of human health and/or environmental damage builds, cautionary voices clash with practical farmers who feel their livelihoods are threatened, and finally the chemical is banned.

From DDT, to the organochlorines, then the organophosphates, the neonicotinoids, and now the ‘so safe you can drink it’ glyphosate – the same lifecycle plays out.

To add insult to injury, even those chemicals still allowed are failing. Farmers are struggling to control blackgrass, how-ever often they spray, and starting to recognise that other methods need to be employed if they are to protect their crops.

The water companies are spending a fortune trying to strip the slug killer metaldehyde out of our drinking water, the cost of which is ultimately passed onto consumers.

New genetic technologies like GM have been sold on the basis that they will allow us to reduce pesticide use, but the experience of farmers in countries where GM is allowed is that short term gain soon reverses into resistant ‘superweeds’ and the need for ever more powerful pesticides. 

Food without pesticides is perfectly possible

Enough of the quick fixes, the sticking plasters that scarcely cover the wound. What farmers need now is help to get off the treadmill, and that requires a wholesale rethink of our food and farming systems.

Producing plentiful, high quality food without pesticides is perfectly possible, as organic farmers worldwide demonstrate, but under our current economic model it costs more to do so; pesticides don’t carry the costs they incur, while labour is expensive.

Ecological approaches require diversity which is more management intensive, demanding skills and knowledge which many farmers don’t have, and investment is often needed too.

This is the perfect moment to rethink our food and farming system, as we prepare to exit the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

The Soil Association has long campaigned for a stop to spraying glyphosate on crops at harvest time and to it use in parks and gardens, and for a thorough rethink of pesticide regulations. 

We can support farmers to move away from pesticides, and invest in the research and development that is required to tackle the challenges that even successful organic producers face.

Government has committed to target public funding on the ‘public goods’ that benefit the whole of society but which farmers are not rewarded for, such as carbon sequestration, reversing wildlife declines, and cutting antibiotic use.

With the right (organic) carrots and sticks, we could transition our food system over the next decade to one which works with and for nature, provides a fair living for producers, and supports a healthy, affordable diet for citizens. 

The Author

Helen Browning is an organic farmer and business owner. She is Chief Executive of the Soil Association and a member of the Food Ethics Council.

The decades-old developmental fantasy of using Bolivia’s rapid altitude change from the Andes to the Amazon to generate electricity is about to be tested in reality.

Two proposed dams – Chepete and El Bala – are set to form the centre of the government’s dream to make Bolivia ‘The Energy Heart of South America’. 

Located on the Rio Bení north of La Paz, the dams would be the largest infrastructure projects in the country’s history, with total costs approaching $6billion to $8billion.

Critical ecosystem

The project was declared a national priority in 2007 and construction starts next year with the aim to have Chepete and El Bala in operation by 2025 and 2030, respectively.

In 2014, the government commissioned a feasibility study by Geodata, an Italian engineering firm. Both the process and the findings of the study have exposed many of the significant problems underlying the projects. 

The government tried to stifle publication of the Geodata study while commissioning another by the same company. In the meantime, they have persisted with plans to begin construction in 2019. 

Bolivian (and international) law guarantees indigenous groups an open, prior consultation, conducted in good faith, when a project is proposed in their territory. But locals described various instances of corrupt and conniving visits by government officials.

Çhepete and El Bala would sever the waterway intersecting Madidi National Park and Pilon Lajas Biosphere Reserve, which together constitute one of the most biodiverse and well-preserved stretches of Amazon rainforest.

Socio-ecological disaster

Their construction would inundate 771 km² of rainforest, an expanse five times greater than the La Paz urban area. The dams would have all of the wider effects typical of hydroelectric development (interruption of sediment flows and nutrient cycles, disruption of fish migration, elevated mercury content) in one of the most critical ecosystems on earth. 

For the people living in this region, this is not an exclusively environmental issue: their interdependence with the natural environment would make the dams a socio-ecological disaster.

Most directly, the inundations would displace over 4,000 people from the Mosetén, Leco Tacana, and San Jose de Uchupiamona groups – with no clear plan for their resettlement and no compensation for the disappearance of thousands of years of cultural patrimony.

A similar fate will befall those not directly inundated by the reservoirs, as the ecological destruction will deprive both local indigenous nations and the downstream towns of Rurrenabaque and San Buenaventura of their livelihoods.

Since the 1990s, the region has depended on a thriving eco-tourism industry. This sector, which respects the local environment and cultural heritage while providing sustainable incomes, would be crippled by the dams’ impacts.

Higher price

The area is geologically unstable, suggesting a possibility of dam failure caused by landslides or intense rainfall. Recent disasters in Colombia and Laos show just how easily this can unfold, especially in light of increasingly severe weather events due to climate change.

Perhaps most remarkably, though, the project does not appear to be economically viable.

Even the most favorable price estimate (55 USD/mgwhr) exceeds the current market price of energy in Brazil (52 USD/mgwhr), the supposed export market for electricity.

Significantly, these estimates consider neither the cost for the transmission line necessary to transport the electricity, nor the likely price decrease induced by Brazil’s domestic development of energy alternatives.

Executive power

President Evo Morales presents himself as an anti-capitalist advocate for indigenous rights and environmental protection.

Some people in the region have said that Evo’s administration began with honest intentions to support a radical leftist transition, while others have suggested that the rhetoric was only a ruse to gain office. 

All agreed that a systematic disregard for these values has been borne out of a desire to build, maintain, and consolidate executive power.

After nationalizing hydrocarbon resources early in his Presidency, Morales used this income to develop and expand social programs aimed at reducing poverty and improving the standard of living.

But as Morales’ popularity began to rely on these social investments, his dependence on the extractive industries that fund them has also deepened. 

Appeasing supporters

Fracking in Tarija, lithium mining in Salar de Uyuni, and, most of all, the TIPNIS highway are all designed to appease Morales’ supporters and augment government bank accounts. And they have all created a wide spectrum of ecological conflicts and resistances.

With hydrocarbon reserves being depleted more rapidly than expected, Morales is turning to hydropower dams like Chepete and El Bala to maintain the income needed for social investments.

But rather than being the key to a sustainable and just future, Chepete and El Bala appear only to be the next step in a line of contradictory, exploitative, and authoritarian projects which disregard the interests and people Morales purports to represent in favor of those on which his power depends.

Fortunately, there is a vast network of selfless and determined people fighting against this potentially great social and environmental injustice. Their resistance is now the most crucial part of the story. 

Activism and resistance

La mancomunidad de las comunidades (commonwealth of communities) was founded to represent the indigenous groups who will be most affected by the dams. They have been the focal point for resistance and communications while representing interests abroad to raise awareness and build capacity. 

La Coordinadora para la Defensa de la Amazonia (Coordinator for the Defense of the Amazon), was formed by a conjunction of indigenous peoples living in the protected areas and local citizens in Rurrenabaque and San Buenaventura. They play a key role in providing supplies, finances, and organizational support.

In the urban centers of La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz, larger networks of activists spread the message of the planned injustice amongst a wider and more detached populace.

Most significant among these are Fundación Solón and CEDIB. They have played a central role in disseminating information via several media to raise awareness about the injustices and incongruities inherent to current plans for Chepete and El Bala and speaking truth to power more directly in La Paz.

Great works

There’s a large sign standing outside the two-story, house-like airport building in Rurrenabaque. The right third is a picture of Morales in full presidential regalia, with the rest of the board announcing the details of an airport renovation project taking place this year.

Under the facts, figures, and timeframe it says, “Con grandes obras cambiamos la historia”: with great works we change history.

The activists, scholars, and leaders whom I had the humbling privilege of interviewing are some of the most dedicated, selfless, and inspiring people I have ever had the honor to know.

I was thinking of them as I left Rurrenabaque and once more saw Evo smiling on the sign. Con grandes obras cambiamos la historia. But with them in mind, I would suggest a different line: Con grandes resistencias cambiamos el futuro. 

With great resistances we change the future.

This Author

Jonathan Elwell is a political science student at Carleton College in the United States with experience researching and writing on issues related to climate change and development.

James Hansen was the first scientist to detect the current rise in global temperatures – but he certainly was not the first to understand the effect greenhouse gases have on global temperatures.

Read the Fakenomics series now!

It was well understood for centuries that without carbon dioxide, the Earth would be too cold to maintain life as we know it. Warnings about climate change in fact predate the discovery of oil.

In 1824, Joseph Fourier discovered the “greenhouse effect” and explained how heat from the sun is trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. In 1861, the Irish scientist John Tyndall confirmed different gases in the atmosphere—such as carbon dioxide—could change the temperature of the planet.

It was forty years later, on 10 January 1901, that brothers Al and Curt Hammil used a rotary drill for the first time and sunk an oil well that produced a hundred thousand barrels a day—“the combined production of every other well on Earth”.

Guy Callender, a British scientist, came to the conclusion in 1961 that a contemporary rise in global temperatures was due to carbon dioxide, but his faith in the theory cooled when in 1963 Britain experienced the coldest winter in more than two centuries.

HOW CLIMATE SCIENCE BECAME A POLITICAL ISSUE

Part 1: James Hansen: How Climate Change Became Political

Part 2: James Hansen: I Thought There Would Be a Rational Response

Part 3: How Free Market Thatcher First Called for Climate Action

Pioneering climate science was initially welcomed and well understood in the White House. President Jimmy Carter, known as the “worrier-in-chief”, ordered his staff to draft the Global 2000 Report, which drew together all the potential risks to person and nation, which in turn posed the question about the sensitivity of the Earth’s temperatures to rising greenhouse gases.

Carter installed 32 solar panels in the White House in June 1979—at the height of the Middle Eastern oil embargo.

He said the solar heater might become “a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people, harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”

Hansen would reflect years later: “Considering that Carter initiated and approved projects aimed at extracting oil and gas from coal, as well as cooking the Rocky Mountains to squeeze oil from tar shale, he had very good reason to worry.”

Exterminate all life

“These projects, if they had been carried to full fruition and spread to other nations, had the potential to exterminate all life on Earth.”

The term “global warming” was first used in a scientific paper by Hansen in 1981 when he published his article “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” in the journal Science.

He told the author: “That was the point where it was clear that this was going to happen in our lifetime.”

“I remember telling Andy Lassis, my colleague at Iowa University, that wow, by the end of this century we will definitely be able to see the effects that humans are having on this planet. And that was an eye opener.”

Hansen at first struggled to get the article published. The scientist resorted to cutting out graphs showing how coal, oil and gas burning correlated with the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The 1981 journal article prompted dire headlines on the front page of the New York Times. Hansen suffered no fear or trepidation back then.

A rational response

“We had coal phase-out scenarios. I wasn’t thinking, ‘oh, this is really gonna happen out in the twenty-first century’, because I thought there would be a rational response.”

“There has not been: it’s as if we didn’t know. We might as well not know. Our fossil fuel use wouldn’t be much different. By and large, the emissions have just continued to accelerate.”

Everything changed when Ronald Reagan, an avid reader of Hayek and exponent of the free markets, was elected president in 1981 and immediately ordered that the White House solar panels were to be removed.

Under the new leader of the free world, the department of energy cancelling funding to Hansen’s department at NASA.

“Other researchers were told their funding would be terminated if they used climate models developed in Hansen’s lab, and some of his researchers were laid off as other funding was arranged,” according to environmental author Mark Lynas.

“The pressure was so intense that Hansen sometimes asked to testify as a private citizen rather than as a federal employee.”

Climate change would be kept off the American policy agenda for a further seven years. After Hansen told the Senate in 1988 that America was experiencing its hottest year in modern human history, he was subjected to years of censorship.

Hansen, by demonstrating that climate change was already taking place, forced the issue. But, surprisingly, it was Reagan’s closest political ally and fellow advocate of the free market who would finally put the global crisis of climate change onto the international agenda.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

One of the protesters acquitted last week of trespassing on a new coal mine site in County Durham has spoken out against the legal system that protects designated animal species but fails to protect the climate.

Sarah Johnson was found not guilty of aggravated trespass along with seven other protesters, after the group argued they had been fighting to prevent a wildlife crime against a newt species classified as endangered by European law.

“It’s really bittersweet,” Johnson said of the outcome, “because the law serves to protect this species as it should, but when it comes to the climate – that Banks Group is directly affecting by mining coal that will be burnt – that’s not protected. If we had argued for climate change, we probably wouldn’t have won.”

Residential camp

Banks Group, the company behind the mine, said it had found no great crested newts in ecological surveys taken over a number of years, but the protesters claimed to have found one of the protected amphibians on the site.

“Of course, the great crested newt is something I strongly care about and that’s why I was there, but it seems completely contradictory that the law will protect a species but it’s not going to protect the ecosystem that that species survives in. That goes across species,” Johnson said.

“If we are trying to protect these species then we should be trying to protect the climate even more so.”

Protesters, calling themselves the Protect Pont Valley group, set up a residential camp in February. Johnson, who graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in history and philosophy last summer, got involved with the campaign after reflecting on how to put her ideas surrounding the environment into reality.

“I’ve been interested in environmentalism for a really long time, since I was a kid. I remember watching the news when they were talking about global warming and it terrified me,” she said.

Nature reserve

Her turn to direct action resulted from exasperation with other campaign methods. “I wrote letters, I signed petitions religiously, and nothing’s changing. Yes there’ve been some wins, but we’re still going in the direction of complete climate breakdown and ecocide.”

She added: “For me, if I can actually stop that act [of extracting coal] in reality, in that moment, that is so important. 

“I’ve lost a lot of faith in the possibilities of government bringing in the needed legislation, or companies actually taking responsibility for their actions and giving reparations to the countries or people they are affecting through fossil fuels, clothes or agriculture.”

The protesters were evicted in April. Some, including Johnson, were arrested after locking themselves onto platforms, trees and equipment.

Banks Group plans to extract 500,000 tonnes of coal from the mine, which it says will bring 30 jobs to the area. The company has committed itself to planting a nature reserve on the site after finishing operations in 2021.

Restraining order

Johnson said she wasn’t feeling overly hopeful about what impact, if any, last week’s judgement would have on the future of the Bradley mine. She says the pond where the great crested newt was found has already been destroyed. Mining operations began at the start of summer.

“It’s a really funny feeling going through this whole very long process of getting arrested, waiting for the trial, and going through the trial.

“Then you get found not guilty and it feels like it should be a really amazing moment. But we don’t know how much it actually is going to change,” Johnson said.

“I’m always slightly overly pessimistic on these things, about how much we can change, especially when everything seems to be on the side of the extractivist industry.”

Despite this, she plans to carry on campaigning – although she doesn’t plan on breaking a restraining order imposed at the trial that prevents the acquitted eight from going near the site.

Applying pressure

“We’ve had a series of setbacks but carry on going,” she said.

The Protect Pont Valley group have planned a skill-sharing event and a demonstration for September, but their work against the wider extraction industry may be cut out.

Banks is currently appealing a rejection by Sajid Javid, the former local government secretary, of planning permission for an open cast mine in Northumberland. Javid turned down the proposal due to the impact it would have on climate change.

Johnson’s experiences at the Bradley site do not seem to have put her off the challenge.

“I hope we can continue the campaign and continue applying pressure, and hopefully make sure no other open cast sites [go ahead]. Even if we can’t stop this one, it could be the last open cast coal site in the UK.” 

This Author

Alexandra Heal is a freelance journalist. She has written for the Guardian, the i, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and DeSmog UK. She tweets at @alexandraheal.

A San Francisco court has ordered Monsanto to award $289m to Dewayne Johnson for failing to warn that RoundUp causes cancer.

The news made headlines around the world that day. In France, where farming remains at the heart of national identity, it has been impossible to ignore. 

This is in part because France has its own Dewayne Johnson in grain-grower Paul François. Contrary to what some outlets asserted over the weekend, it was François, not Johnson, who earned the grim title of first successful plaintiff against the agrochemical giant Monsanto, after a Court in Lyon 2012 ruled that Monsanto had failed to warn of the dangers  of its herbicide, Lasso.

Life-changing consequences 

The circumstances under which the men were poisoned are very different.  Johnson, a school gardener in the suburbs of San Francisco, eventually fell ill after spraying RoundUp, the world’s best-selling weedkiller. 

By contrast,  Paul François’ poisoning can be traced back to a single moment in the summer 2004 when he checked the pesticide container of his tractor and inadvertently inhaled the residues of Lasso, a herbicide already banned in several countries. 

In both cases the consequences have been life changing. Johnson has been diagnosed with mycosis fungoides, a skin-based non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that has left his body crippled with cancerous lesions; Paul François suffers from a serious neurological disorder, with symptoms including comas, violent headaches, mood swings, memory loss, and nausea.

Yet in spite of the outward differences, Monsanto’s playbook of obfuscation, dissemblance and outright deceit has remained the same. 

Scientific chicanery 

At the verdict on Friday, the San Francisco jury said that Monsanto had acted with deliberate “malice or oppression” by covering up the harmful effects of glyphosate, and that it had “fought science”. 

Internal company documents ordered for release by the Federal State, known otherwise as the Monsanto papers, have revealed that the Missouri-based firm was aware of the cancerogenic effects of glyphosate, the primary component of RoundUp, as early as 1982. 

Instead of redesigning their product, the firm paid employees to ghostwrite studies and cultivated a network of friendly scientists across the US and Europe. 

Alongside scientific chicanery, Monsanto have systematically denied victims’ suffering. Borrowing the tobacco industry’s favourite trick, Monsanto’s lawyers argued that Johnson’s cancer was inherited, citing a study that showed that there was a higher prevalence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma among the African-American community.  

Similarly, when François naively called the company in 2004 to discuss his illness, Monsanto’s doctors dismissed it as unrelated to their product and offered a tidy settlement provided the farmer dropped his case. 

Protecting profits

Monsanto has appealed against both verdicts – and we can only hope for the terminally ill Johnson that the American justice serves him better than its French counterpart. Despite two condemnations in 2012 and 2015, François is still fighting the company’s appeal, and has yet to receive a cent of  compensation.

Meanwhile, Bayer AG, the conglomerate that bought Monsanto in June this year, has said it is “convinced that glyphosate is safe and does not cause cancer”.

On both sides of the Atlantic the agrochemical industry has persistently twisted science to protect its multibillion dollar-worth products. 

This is, of course, nothing new. Once released to the market the first instinct of chemical producers has been to protect profits against those who raise sanitary and environmental concerns. 

The US government has been aware for a century – literally since 1918 – of the premature deaths of workers from handling asbestos. Yet it took 80 years for the UK to ban it, and asbestos continues to be in use in the States. It took 10 years from the publication of Silent Spring by biologist Rachel Carson to the eventual ban of DDT in 1972.

Serious exposure

But what of the safety of the 10,000 odd commercial formulations apart from RoundUp, many of which can linger in the environment for years? 

Alerted by whistleblowers like Paul Francois, French society is fast losing patience with pesticide producers.  

In a 2016 poll 72% French people said that they believed pesticides posed an “important risk” to society. Pressured by victims and mounting scientific evidence, the agricultural branch of  French social security now recognizes that pesticides can cause Parkinsons disease and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. 

The French state has estimated no less than 10,000 farmers suffer the two illnesses, and that up to  a million people are seriously exposed to pesticides. 

Anger is mounting. Générations Futures (Future Generations), an influential NGO campaigning for alternatives to pesticides, has voiced hope that Johnson’s court battle will act as an “electroshock”, while the French environmental minister, Nicolas Hulot, said on Saturday the verdict signaled the “start of a war” against pesticides.

‘Day of reckoning’

With more than 4,000 similar cases scheduled across the US, Friday 10 August may well be remembered as what attorney Brent Wisner described as Monsanto’s “day of reckoning”. 

The UK’s corporate culture is so favourable to Monsanto that the firm chose to settle its European headquarters in Cambridge. But here’s to the wild hope that the UK join arms with pesticide victims worldwide and champion a truly sustainable agriculture. 

Over the Channel, France has pledged to reduce its pesticide use by half by 2025 and ban glyphosate by 2022. If Michael Gove is in any way serious about delivering a Green Brexit, he will follow suit. 

This Author 

Natalie Sauer is a French British journalist covering environmental and agricultural matters. She has recently completed an investigation into pesticide-related illnesses in France, and has written for publications such as Politico Europe, AFP, The World Weekly, and El Ecologista.

Sulfoxaflor, the first branded sulfoximine-based insecticide, is currently licensed for use in 47 countries around the world, and is under review for licensing in the UK.

PhD student Harry Siviter, alongside Professor Mark Brown, and Dr Ellouise Leadbeater, all from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, tested the effects of the substance on bumblebee colonies.

In their experiment, sulfoxaflor reduced both the size of bumblebee colonies and the number of male offspring they produced, with a 54% reduction in the total number of sexual offspring produced in exposed colonies.

Likely successor 

Their study is pre-emptive, because sulfoxaflor is a new product and we currently have limited data about the levels to which bees are likely to be exposed in the pollen and nectar of sprayed crops.

However, such impacts identify that broad use of sulfoxaflor pesticides could have the potential to harm wild bumblebee populations, under certain conditions.  

Harry Siviter said: “Neonicotinoids are the most commonly used insecticide in the world, but the evolution of resistance by pests, as well as bans and restrictions on their usage has resulted in a demand for alternative pesticides”.

“Sulfoximine-based insecticides are a likely successor and are being registered for use globally.

“Our results show that sulfoxaflor can have a negative impact on the reproductive output of bumblebee colonies under certain conditions.”

Risk assessment 

Dr Elli Leadbeater added: “Our study highlights that stressors that do not directly kill bees can still have damaging effects further down the line, because the health of the colony depends on the health of its workforce.”

The results of this research highlight the need to incorporate the sub-lethal consequences of novel insecticides on bumblebees and other wild bees into the risk assessment process.

Professor Mark Brown said: “We need to know much more about what levels of emerging insecticides wild bees will be exposed to in the field – only with realistic and publicly available exposure data for a range of crops can we determine the true risk of these insecticides to wild bees and other important pollinators.”

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from Royal Holloway, University of London. The full title of the paper is ‘Sulfoxaflor exposure reduces bumblebee reproductive success’. It was published in Nature on 15 August 2018.