Fuel duty will be frozen for the ninth consecutive year, prime minister Theresa May told delegates at the Conservative party conference this week.

“For millions of people, their car is not a luxury. It’s a necessity,” she said. The freeze will be confirmed in the chancellor’s budget later this month.

The move was criticised by campaigners. Morten Thaysen, clean air campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “This fuel duty freeze shows May is still failing to take her obligation to bring air pollution to within legal limits seriously.”

The government should instead incentivise electric vehicles and ensure cheap and reliable public transport, he added.

Chemicals trade

Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair of hard-Brexit group the European Research Group, told a fringe event that the UK should scrap “non-tariff barriers” to trade after Brexit such as the REACH chemicals regulations.

The regulations require companies who manufacture or import chemicals into the EU to register their properties and risks with a central agency. Mogg said that this increases the cost of chemicals and could put off companies from outside the EU exporting to the UK after Brexit.

Kate Young, Brexit and chemicals campaigner at NGO CHEM Trust, tweeted: “It is vital that a post-Brexit Britain continues to have an effective system to protect people and the environment from hazardous chemicals.”

This was best achieved by the UK remaining in REACH, she said.

Meanwhile, both environment minister Therese Coffey and environment secretary Michael Gove said that the forthcoming waste strategy would contain radical proposals on plastic, such as expanding policies to impose the environmental cost of packaging on to producers, and tax use of virgin plastics.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She was formerly the deputy editor of the Environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76. 

The European Commission has reportedly given up on plans to raise the EU’s 2030 carbon emissions target — with critics blaming the German government for ‘torpedoing’ the move.

It comes as the German government is refusing to clarify its position on proposals by other EU states to phase out subsidies for coal power plants and force them to meet tougher pollution rules.

The EU posturing is just the latest in a series of actions taken by Germany to stifle higher climate ambition where it threatens key industries, including pushing for weaker car emission standards and renewable energy targets.

Climate targets

And then there’s Hambach forest, where the energy ministry has backed coal giant RWE in its attempt to clear ancient woodland to make room for the expansion of the country’s biggest lignite mine.

The widely-reported fight for the forest may be the German government’s most visible move to defend fossil fuels, but behind the scenes the it has quietly been taking a number of positions at odds with the country’s Energiewende-inspired green rhetoric.

Earlier this year the EU was looking to increase its renewable energy and energy efficiency targets in light of the Paris Agreement, and Germany used its substantial clout to weaken the end result.

As much of western and northern Europe called for a 35 percent target for renewables by 2030, Germany (alongside the UK) backed a much-weaker 30% goal — which led to a compromise of 32 percent.

Then, as the EU climate commissioner tried to formally raise the body’s carbon emission targets to reflect its higher RES and efficiency aims, the Germans once again tried – and in this case succeeded – to derail the push for greater ambition.

Hambach

“There’s no possibility of leaving the forest standing.”

As the final protesters are removed from Germany’s 1,200-year-old Hambach forest, RWE boss Martin Schmitz has declared the entire area will be cleared for his company’s coal mine.

That next day energy minister Thomas Bareiß came out in support of the controversial project. “It should go ahead,” he said, citing concerns over security of supply without the coal.

Environmental activists have occupied the ancient woodland for six years. The protest has grown in size and stature in recent months, but it is now being forcibly brought to an end by German police, sparking global outrage and questions over the move’s legality.

“What’s happening at Hambach Forest shows the true face of German climate politics,” leading Hambach activist Maja Rothe from Aktion Unterholz told Unearthed.

“While internationally Germany is reasserting its climate leadership, the lignite mines in the Rhineland are the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Europe.”

Hambach is the battlefield for the mounting climate conflict in Germany, a country that has for years lead the world in renewable energy but has failed to meaningfully phase out its use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

Coal subsidies

“In Germany, three lignite units will go into ‘a strategic reserve’ this weekend,” Dave Jones, coal analyst at think-tank Sandbag, told Unearthed, referring to the policy that pays power stations for staying available as a back-up source.

“The strategic reserve is a €1.6 billion jackpot to ‘compensate’ German utilities as Germany phases out coal. It’s not utilities that need compensation though, it’s communities.”

“Since the strategic reserve was set up in 2016, no German lignite units have announced a retirement date, despite carbon prices quadrupling. Strategic reserves just encourage utilities to keep coal plants open longer, to wait out for free handouts.”

A clutch of EU countries – including the UK – are calling for these coal plants to meet the emission standards that other power stations are required to. The Germans are not part of that coalition, and refused to state their position when contacted by Unearthed.

That’s not the only coal subsidy that the EU has allowed. The capacity mechanism, which like the strategic reserve rewards power stations for being emergency back-up, has already handed out over €15 billion to coal plants across the EU, according to a Greenpeace analysis.

Environmental groups  (and Italy) argue they are often used to prolong the lives of environmentally destructive and financially unsustainable power plants — and justify building new ones, like Ostroleka C in Poland.

A group of countries have proposed the introduction of emissions standards that would effectively make coal plants ineligible for the subsidy and yet Berlin’s position remains unclear.

With France, Spain, Italy and the UK backing a 550g CO2/kWh standard for ‘capacity market’ recipients, Germany is the deciding vote.

Coal pollution

Last year the EU introduced a new set of power plant pollution rules called BREF — despite last minute opposition from the Germans. That was, in itself, a pretty shocking move, but Germany’s displeasure with BREF didn’t stop there.

The government has yet to incorporate the rules into its national environmental standards, breaching its own law that requires such rules to be transposed within a year of publication.

Concerns have even been raised as to whetherGermany’s coal commission, launched this summer to figure out how best to phase out coal power, has will take the BREF limits into account when recommending which plants should close and when.

Fabian Huebner, policy officer at German NGO Climate Alliance, said: “The level of the pollutant limits is of great relevance for the coal commission currently negotiating the coal-phase out. The decision on a shutdown plan of coal power plants in Germany must go hand in hand with the new EU environmental limits for coal-fired power plants.

“Power plants that do not comply with the new emission limits and for which retrofitting is no longer worthwhile due to their age or lack of economic viability must be shut down first. The oldest and most harmful coal-fired power plants are to be taken off the grid first.”

Meanwhile RWE and a bunch of other German coal companies are suing to stop the BREF rules from taking effect.

Car emissions

The EU is also currently deliberating new CO2 emission targets for cars, and Germany once again finds itself advocating for a weaker climate goal than its western and northern neighbours.

At a high-level meeting last month, a group of up to 17 countries – including the UK – threw their weight behind a CO2 reduction target of 40% by 2030, much higher than what had been proposed by the European Commission (30%) but more conservative than the target backed by the European Parliament (45%).

Last week the German government decided it would back the weak 30% target for fear that any higher ambition could impact the competitiveness of European carmakers, who have largely sung from the same hymn sheet.

In a statement Julia Poliscanova from NGO Transport & Environment said: “Germany’s stance on car CO2 standards puts at risk its own climate goals for 2030, necessitating instead harsh measures such as curbing car use, demanding more cuts from agriculture or accepting high fines for non-compliance.

“Crucially, the risk to German automotive jobs comes not from the EU car CO2 standards, but from billions of its own carmakers investing in electric car production in China. The Commission proposal, which largely prolongs the sales of dirty diesels in Europe, will do nothing to help Germany’s climate, economy or industrial leadership.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

A London-based mining company accused of extensive human rights abuse and environmental damage in India has delisted from the London Stock Exchange amidst concerns it is seeking to escape public scrutiny.

Vedanta Resources Plc delisted from the London market on Monday amidst strong accusations by protesters that the company was “fleeing” the stock exchange without being held accountable by the regulatory authorities for “corporate massacres” .

Vedanta made headlines earlier this year after 13 protesters demanding the shutdown of India’s second largest copper plant in the southern state of Tamil Nadu were shot dead by police and dozens were injured.

Controversial judgements

Police opened fire on the crowd of unarmed protesters who demanded the closure of the plant citing environmental concerns including pollution of groundwater and the threat to the local fisheries.

At the time, Vedanta’s chairman and main shareholder, controversial billionaire Anil Agarwal, made a personal address to the people of Tamil Nadu in which he said being “very sad” to hear about the deadly incident, which he called “unfortunate”.

State officials subsequently announced the permanent closure of the plant.

Following the incident, campaigners called on the UK regulatory authorities to investigate allegations Vedanta was complicit in the police opening fire and demanded it be delisted from the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

India’s state-funded National Human Rights Commission said it was carrying out its own probe into the events. The state government of Tamil Nadu also appointed judge Aruna Jagadeesan as a one-person commission to investigate the killings. Jagadeesan is reported by the Indian press as a judge known for her controversial judgements.

Clean slate

Just over a month after the deadly protests, Vedanta announced its possible delisting from the LSE following a cash offer by Volcan Investments, a holding company registered in the Bahamas and controlled by Agarwal.

In a statement published this week, Vedanta confirmed its delisting following a successful buyout of the company’s shares by Volcan Investments.

Miriam Rose, from the UK-based campaign group Foil Vedanta, told DeSmog, that while protesters were celebrating the delisting of Vedanta because it “curtailed its corporate ambition”, she suggested the company was leaving the LSE to avoid further scrutiny.

“They are jumping before they are being pushed,” she said. “Vedanta should not be allowed to simply escape London without being investigated as a London-based company. Instead, they are being allowed to delist and start again with a clean slate.”

Campaigners protested outside the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Vedanta’s annual general meeting (AGM) in London on Monday demanding the company be investigated over the deadly protests in Tamil Nadu.

Mass protests

Fatima Babu, from the Anti Sterlite People’s Movement, one of the campaign groups attending the company’s AGM protest, said: “The people of Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu are still reeling from the massacre of innocent women, men and children in May, which was carried out in the name of protecting Vedanta’s industry from the people whom it has polluted for so many years.

“The Tamil Nadu, Indian and British government’s must all take responsibility for the lawlessness and disproportionate power wielded by Vedanta, which led to this tragic event.”

Samarendra Das, from Foil Vedanta, who wrote a report delivered to the FCA which accused Vedanta of “corporate massacre”, accused Agarwal of “being so desperate to avoid public” that he failed to attend Vedanta’s AGM.

“We cannot let him and his board escape accountability and justice in the UK, under whose jurisdiction they have committed widespread financial, human rights and environmental crimes,” she said, urging the FCA and the City of London to initiate proceedings against the company or risked being “complicit in enabling and mitigating these abuses”.

Neither the FCA nor Vedanta responded to DeSmog UK’s requests for comment.  But Vedanta Resources’ chairman Agarwal has previously denied any links between the company’s delisting and the backlash against the fatal mass protests which took place in Tamil Nadu in May.

Suing Vedanta

Agarwal previously told India Today that delisting Vedanta from the LSE would help simplify the Vedanta Group’s corporate structure and that the “maturity of the Indian capital markets” makes a seperate London listing “no longer necessary to achieve the group’s strategic objectives”.

But Foil Vedanta’s Rose said the case reflected a systematic failure of the City of London’s regulatory authorities to investigate allegations of corporate wrongdoing.

“London is known as the money-laundering capital of the world. But it is also a capital for criminal companies using the City’s reputation to boost their credentials,” she said.

“British finance is allowing companies to commit crimes abroad without being investigated for those crimes at home. This is a systematic problem of the total lack of regulation on the London Stock Exchange.”

Rose added that British courts are currently considering the eligibility of a group of claimants from Zambia, who are suing Vedanta and its local subsidiary KCM for extensive pollution from the Nchanga copper mine, to have their case against the parent company heard in the UK.

She told DeSmog UK’s that Vedanta’s lawyers have warned that allowing this case to take place under British jurisdiction would “open the floodgates” to claimants against British listed companies.

She argued that while profits from mining flow freely into the City of London, victims of the liabilities they create have no recourse to justice in the UK.

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

Housing for working people is becoming as central an issue for labour and social movements in the twenty first century as it was in the nineteenth and twentieth. And not just decent housing, but housing that is comfortable, aesthetically pleasing – and, crucially, low energy, zero energy or even energy positive. 

Here is a wonderful opportunity for our movement to get a grip on technology. We can and should find ways to bring the experience of architects and energy conservation engineers into discussions about housing among community activists and building workers.

A good example of how not to do this is the call for mass installation of air conditioners, made by Leigh Phillips in his article, In Defense of Air Conditioning published by Jacobin. 

Improved design

The problem that Phillips purports to address – the cruel effect of heat on millions of urban residents, during summers such as 2018’s – is real enough.

The need to provide ourselves with homes that shelter us from extreme heat as well as colder weather – something ruling classes down the ages have never done for working people – is indisputable. 

But Phillips’s techno-fix – mass AC installation, supported by a grand expansion of nuclear and hydro power – is not the answer. He sounds like someone proposing the state-funded distribution of armour-plated BMWs to parents demanding safe cycle routes to school for their children.

Better temperature control can and should be achieved not in the first place by AC, but mainly by better building design, better insulation and better urban planning, in the context of better ways of living generally.

This ABC of AC is widely understood by three groups of people, ignored in Phillips’s article, who spend time thinking about our homes: community groups organising on housing issues; building workers and architects; and energy conservation researchers. 

Radical municipalism

Community groups in London, where I live, are battling against right-wing Labour councils that neglect social housing for working people and strike deals with profiteering property developers.

A grass roots alliance last year defeated such a deal in Haringey and reprioritised social housing: the potential for ‘radical municipalism’, to renew cities for their people in ecologically sustainable ways, was spelled out by Gordon Peters, one of the group’s organisers. 

Owen Hatherley, a socialist writer on architecture, in a recent call for the Labour Party to get its act together on housing, argued that Labour “ought to look at scaling up the small-scale experiments made in low-energy and zero-carbon construction” by community groups in Leeds and Bristol. 

This potential for low-energy and zero-carbon building seems to have passed Phillips by.

Low-energy housing

Building workers and architects, by contrast, are well aware of these potentialities.

In the UK labour movement, the example of City Building in Glasgow, a union-linked co-operative that builds low-energy housing stock, is often mentioned. It uses site-appropriate combinations of solar thermal, photovoltaic, combined heat and power, ground and air source heat pumps and optimisation technologies. 

Architects understand perfectly that while AC may sometimes help to cool buildings, it is usually the wrong answer.

When The Economist, that bible of neoliberalism, last month gave qualified support to expanding AC, Richard Lorch of Building Research & Information responded, in a letter to the magazine, that “cities often exacerbate high temperatures” by the heat-island effect; that the micro-climate of streets had to be taken into account; that “it is far better to create cities and buildings that can provide thermal comfort with little energy demand”; and that “the capabilities and technologies exist to provide an alternative to AC”. 

Passive techniques 

Energy conservation researchers have been writing about those capabilities for at least 40 years.

Amory Lovins, in his classic 1977 pamphlet Soft Energy Paths, estimated – relying partly on analysis by the American Institute of Architects – that design improvements could save 50 percent or more of energy use in offices and 80 percent in some new houses.

The passage of time, and the ballooning of the property development and construction industries, has only amplified this point. 

Researchers have repeatedly argued that good insulation, high-reflective materials, shading, windows with low solar heat gain, and “passive” techniques such as underground earth pipe cooling can be combined, in most conditions, to give as good temperature control as energy-intensive heating and cooling systems.

Engineers have proposed that, where AC is essential, oversize systems be avoided and solar power be used.

A research group at Cambridge University synthesised years of advances in building and materials use and reached similar conclusions. ‘Passivhaus’ techniques could reduce energy consumption in buildings, mostly for heating and cooling, by 83 percent, they showed. 

Electricity networks

The Global Energy Assessment (2012) summarised dozens of academic publications on building design, and concluded that they can achieve reductions in gross energy requirements of upwards of 75 percent in new buildings, and upwards of 50 percent in existing buildings.

It is not that that labour and social movements might never want AC fitted anywhere. But it is a myopic and outdated place to start.

Phillips’s approach to electricity generation is little better. He acknowledges that AC is very energy-intensive, but claims that nuclear and hydro – and, as he specifies in another article, with a co-author, “a vast build-out of dependable base-load electricity” from those sources – can easily provide the necessary non-fossil energy.

He seems unaware of, or uninterested in, the last 30-plus years of changes in electricity networks, towards decentralised renewable generation and better-integrated distribution.

The trend towards ever-bigger, more centralised, generation started to reverse in the 1980s, with combined-cycle gas turbines (which can easily be used in power stations smaller than earlier coal- or gas-fired ones), and cogeneration (i.e. plants that produce electricity and heat).

Decentralised generation 

Since the turn of the century, a much greater degree of decentralisation in generation, and better ways of integrating intermittent renewable sources (i.e. wind that doesn’t always blow and sun that doesn’t always shine), have become possible, thanks to networked computing. 

Phillips objects to what he calls “a return to the small and local”, and portrays it as an approach by “greens”, who want to replace multinationals with small businesses.

This is a misrepresentation of where electricity technology is at. The discussion among electrical engineers has, for several years now, focused on further step-changes in computing (so called “smart grids”), that pave the way for systems dominated by renewables and help deal with the always knotty problem of storing electrical energy. For a summary, see Our Renewable Future by Richard Heinberg and David Fridley; for details see e.g. the multiple volumes edited by Fereidoon Sioshansi.

There is potential both in decentralised generation and in more integrated – and in that sense, centralised – networks. The main obstruction to this potential is the corporations that control the systems.

Why, then, should socialists focus on nuclear power – almost always, and everywhere, linked to militarism – and centralised hydro – which has time and time again been fought against by people in the global south, and indigenous people in Canada, for example, whose communities have been threatened, or wrecked, by it?

Fighting back 

As many people who think about electricity – from social democratic enthusiasts for energy cooperatives, to engineers working on off-grid systems in the global south – are well aware, the danger is not decentralised generation technologies, or integrated (centralised) networks, but that the multinationals will find ways of enclosing it and commodifying these.

How to fight back against them? That is the discussion that matters. 

Phillips’s arguments on AC are underpinned by four ideological fixations about technology that can only obstruct the development of socialist thinking. 

First, Phillips identifies an element of good living – being able to keep cool in the summer – with a consumer product, AC. A convincing riposte to Phillips, by Aaron Vansintjan in The Ecologist, deals with this point.

Vansintjan wrote: “Let’s not confuse ‘the right to be cool’ with the right to a consumer good […] There are plenty of cool alternatives, involving rethinking urban design and how we use public space.” The way towards these alternatives, Vansintjan argued, is “a political movement that links people’s needs to their capacity to have more control over their own lives”.

Capitalist control 

Second, Phillips falsely paints each and every expression of doubt about the efficacy of AC as part of a pro-austerity, anti-worker environmentalism. People who advocate passive cooling systems, or suggest that some rich world citizens could turn the AC down a little, are lumped together with Pope Francis, who cited AC as a “harmful habit of consumption”.

Having a go at the Pope is an easy crowd-pleaser in a socialist publication. And of course there are strands of environmentalism that focus on moralistic appeals to reduce individual consumption, rather than the technological, social and economic systems through which fossil fuels are consumed.

But the discussions among community housing activists, building workers, architects and energy researchers are streets ahead of this, i.e. they almost always assume that both improving living standards, and harmonising the relationship between human society and nature, are desirable aims.

One essential contribution socialists could make to this discussion is to underline that, as long as technologies are controlled by capital, they will primarily be directed neither at making people’s lives better, nor at overcoming the rupture between human society and the natural world, of which global warming caused by fossil fuel use is a key element.

The potential of progressive trends in urban planning and building design, or decentralised renewables-based electricity networks, can never be fully realised, or even understood, as long as these processes are controlled by the now-dominant centres of wealth and power.

Superior alternatives 

Third, rather than questioning technologies that have been shaped by urban development under capitalism, and thinking about why alternatives have been squashed or sidelined, Phillips appears to see technologies as socially neutral.

He claimed that AC is an “essential, life-saving part of public health” – as though it is the only way to keep cool (it isn’t), and as though its absence is the main reason that people die in heat waves (the research Phillips himself cites shows that AC is a minor issue among many, including the effects of poverty and ill health).

AC, like other technologies, has been shaped by the capitalist social relations in which it emerged. It took off in the USA from the 1920s, and was diffused across the rich world in the post-war boom, not only because it was a way of keeping people cool, but thanks to the profiteering of corporations who produced it. I wrote about this in History Today recently.

Just as car manufacturers lobbied against rail networks and public transport, so AC makers lost no opportunity to favour their product over less energy-intensive alternatives.

We can’t know what a socially just society would have done with AC, but we know that the architects’ superior alternatives have for decades been pushed aside by property and construction companies.

Imaginative optimism 

Fourth, Phillips is ideologically committed (a) to action through the state, rather than by society independently of the state, and (b) to economic expansion as a prerequisite of “progress”. He advocated these principles in his book Austerity Ecology (2015). 

In the case of AC, this means action through the currently dominant capitalist state. Phillips wrote: “New buildings must come with AC as part of any ‘Green New Deal’”. 

His declaration that “we [who?] are capable right now” of producing more electricity is telling. The really urgent thing, in fighting for a socially just society, is not to produce more electricity, but to take electricity out of the corporations’ hands, and transform the way it is distributed and used.

I am very optimistic that, by using it rationally, society as a whole could manage with less, not more. But this will only become clear as and when society takes hold of technological systems.

Phillips said: “Nothing’s too good for the working class”. Too right. So leave your dogmatically contrived techno-fixes at home!

Building on what community groups, building workers, architects and energy researchers have done, give us a serious discussion about technology. Then we can aim at a good life, in cities so wonderful we can only begin to imagine them, built and supplied in ways that don’t deepen the horrible rupture between humanity and the natural world.  

This Author

Simon Pirani is the author of Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption, Pluto Press, August 2018.

The 2000 US election cycle was as high stakes as they come. Congressional balance was in question, and the presidency was up for grabs.

The George W Bush–Dick Cheney partnership was Big Oil’s dream team. Bush, the presidential candidate, had made his early career though oil exploration in his home state of Texas, while Cheney, vice president (VP) candidate, was a Halliburton executive and ex-congressman of Wyoming, the US’s biggest coal producer.

Al Gore, the Democratic nominee for president, on the other hand, had been nothing short of a hate-figure for the sceptics and the oil industry, as VP under Clinton, so they knew which way their bread was buttered.

Republican Funding

More than 75 percent of the oil and gas industry’s direct spending on political candidates went to the Republicans that year.

And, with ExxonMobil, the divide was even starker: more than 95 percent of their $700,000 Political Action Committee spending went to the Republicans.

This is to say nothing of the numerous free market, climate sceptic think tanks funded by ExxonMobil and the Koch Brothers who donated to the Republican campaign. Individuals with a declared affiliation to ExxonMobil also gave a total $1.22 million in private donations to the Republicans between 2000 and 2008.

In total, Bush received $1.5 million from the oil industry for his 2000 presidential campaign. At the time, this was the largest donation from the industry to a single political candidate.

And so, on 20th January 2001, George W Bush was inaugurated as President of the United States, floating on oil money.

Exxon and the White House

A mere three weeks later, ‘Iron Ass’ Raymond of Exxon flew to Washington to meet with VP Dick Cheney in the West Wing. The two Midwesterners were old hunting friends who had met in the ‘80s when Cheney was congressman for Wyoming.

Their wives, Charlene Raymond and Lynne Cheney, were friends from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. They came from the same free market background and, through the nineties, had lived in the same upper middle class leafy Victorian Preston Hollow in Dallas.

Raymond boasted that his access to the Bush administration was comparable to the halcyon years of the Reagan Presidency. Indeed, their private meetings became a regular feature, with two or three meetings scheduled every year through the administration.

ExxonMobil’s influence on the president reached as far as foreign policy. Shortly after Bush was elected, the oil giant’s approval was required for India’s largest state-owned oil company to buy into the Sakhalin-1 energy project in Russia.

When asked by Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister, “why don’t you just tell them [Exxon] what to do?” Bush replied: “Nobody tells those guys what to do.”

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.

Palaeoclimatology is the study of past climates. Scientists determine past environmental conditions via the use of climate proxies, the preserved physical characteristics of the past. 

Modern analogues are an essential part of palaeoclimatic studies because they provide the basis for understanding the geochemical signatures of fossils. Corals are extremely sensitive to variations in their environment so make excellent climate indicators.  

Corals have the potential to record several centuries of highly detailed environmental information in the form of chemical proxies such as trace elements and stable isotopes. They are fantastic sources for isotopes as their calcified skeletons are formed at or near to isotopic equilibrium with the surrounding seawater.

Research methods

Changes in chemical proxies are often correlated with thin growth bands, which are presumed to relate to annual growth cycles, just like tree rings. Larger corals commonly lay down density bands that are used as annual markers, allowing time-series records to be produced.

Scanning Electron Microscopy and backscattered electron imaging studies of the Caribbean species Montastraea faveolata, reveals small microbands that can be used to describe small variations in climate that provides researchers with a very accurate reading of past climates. 

Corals can also be used to help determine day length, Earth’s rotation, and diurnal cycles. By examining the growth rings of corals, we can determine that a year during the Devonian period was around 400 days long.

A limitation of using corals is that they are made almost entirely of calcium carbonate, so they dissolve with an increase in oceanic water acidification. Some parts of corals have also been altered by a process of diagenesis, and can yield false results. In some cases, diagenesis can erase environmental information.

The intermediate shell layers are the most likely to yield well-persevered sample materials and thus provide the most reliable results. This is true for both corals and macrofossils, myarea of research at CSM. 

No climate proxy is perfect so, to get the most reliable results possible, it is best to use multiple lines of evidence. This is especially true if important variables (e.g. sea-surface temperatures, eustatic changes, and ice-level fluctuations) are to be identified. Ideally, it is best to use a mixture of inorganic and organic data combined with model results.

Climate change

A quarter of marine ecosystems are dependent on coral reefs – these ecosystems directly support the livelihoods of millions of people worldwide, mostly from developing nations. 

Current anthropogenic climate change is having a devastating effect on coral colonies. Recent rises in ocean temperatures have already impacted reefs, and mass bleaching and disease outbreaks have already become more frequent. Bleaching occurs when the coral polyps expel the algae that that inside them, draining the corals of colour – hence the term “bleaching”.

These algae form an endosymbiotic relation with the coral: they are protected by the coral, and in turn they provide up to 90 percent of its energy. Without these source of energy the corals begin to starve and, given enough time, die. 

The increase in carbon dioxide in the oceans as decreased their pH, a process called ocean acidification. It is thought that between 30 to 40 percent of CO2 from human activity ends up in bodies of water and that some of it reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. This carbonic acid has already started to reduce calcification rates of coral-reefs.

Unless human-induced climate change is controlled, it will almost certainly destroy most of the coral reefs in the world.  Studies have shown that 93 percent of the almost 3000 individual reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef have been affected by bleaching. Almost a quarter of the reef died during a mass bleaching event in 2016.

The study of ancient corals and their responses to past climatic changes helps place the modern biodiversity crisis, which has been dubbed the Sixth Mass Extinction, in to its historical context. 

The Author

Jack Wilkin is a graduate researcher in the Deep Time Global Change palaeoclimatology research group at the Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter. His research focuses on the isotopic geochemistry of fossil shells from the South German Middle Jurassic. 

Every year on 4 October people around the globe celebrate World Animal Day. It is a particularly special day for me as it marks the day I decided to go vegetarian in 2010, and then vegan in 2012.

In the six years of being vegan, I’ve learned more about the world and myself than I ever have, and it’s important to me to share this knowledge with as many people as possible.

I remember watching a documentary about sustainability called ‘Cowspiracy’ – still available on Netflix – and being blown away by the facts and figures presented in the film.

I was amazed that my relatively new lifestyle choice could benefit the planet this way and I wanted to know more. The scale on which animals are used is truly mind-blowing, as I’m hoping to illustrate in this article.

Here is a selection of facts and statistics for the three major reasons why people are increasingly turning to veganism:

THE ENVIRONMENT

1. Feeding crops to people rather than farmed animals could feed three billion more people.

While veganism is of course an animal rights movement, it can help people too. Vegans are often very unfairly accused of not caring about people but, in fact, our lifestyle can help combat world hunger.

People in developing countries are starving; partially because of our greed for meat, dairy and eggs. If everyone ate the crops directly – rather that feeding them to animals and then eating them – we could feed nearly half of the world’s population!

2. For every 100 calories we feed to animals, we receive back only 12 calories from their meat or milk.

Animal agriculture is inherently wasteful and unsustainable. For every 100 calories fed to animals, we receive back only 12 calories by consuming their flesh and milk.

The dairy industry, far from its perception as an innocent by-product, is every bit as environmentally destructive as meat. Dairy alone accounts for about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, over half of which is methane – a highly potent greenhouse gas emitted by cows.

We need to be far bolder than “eating less or ‘better’ meat” if we are to protect our precious planet. 

ANIMALS

3. We don’t know how many animals we kill every year.

This one is a non-statistic really but, perversely, it’s the most shocking one. There is no accurate estimation of how many animals die at our hands. We as a society do not value animal lives enough to even note their passing.

There are at least two rough estimates for the number of farmed animals killed every year for ‘food’: 56 and 150 billion. Both are striking and neither includes the number of marine animals killed, which is so great that it’s measured in tonnes. The conclusion is just that we do not know the harm we cause.

4. Milk production per cow has doubled over the last 40 years, with cows typically worn out after just three lactations. 

The exploitation of female cows for their reproductive capacities by the dairy industry is one of the cruellest forms of injustice we perpetrate on animals. Drinking cow’s milk means contributing to the killing of a child, the breaking of a new mother’s heart and abuse of the miracle of bearing children.

With today’s intensive farming systems constantly seeking out ways to minimise costs and maximise profit, cows have been cross bred to the point where they produce much more milk than they naturally would, leading to terrible health consequences.

5. More than 40 million day-old male chicks are killed in the UK by either being gassed or being thrown into a macerator.

We may think that buying organic or free-range eggs means we’re not contributing to animal suffering but the reality is that every egg consumed shows support for the cruel and exploitative egg industry.

The practice of killing day-old male chicks occurs in all egg farming systems, including organic and free-range. Hens’ welfare is compromised as they’re specifically bred to produce two or three times as many eggs as they naturally would. This depletes them from calcium, meaning bone fractures are sadly very common.

HEALTH

6. If the world went vegan, it could save eight million human lives by 2050 and up to $1,000bn per year on healthcare.

A vegan world would not only be a kinder place for everyone, but also very beneficial to our health. Oxford University experts found that billions of dollars could be saved if no one ate animals.

There’s a disconnect between what we’re told we should be eating and the food we’re producing. Animal farming is sadly being prioritised, whereas governments should instead provide support for growers who produce food for human consumption.

7. Eating just 50g processed meat per day – two rashers of bacon – increases the risk of bowel cancer by 18 percent.

You’ve likely heard about the World Health Organisation report in November 2015 that classified processed meat as a carcinogen on a par with tobacco. The news caused many people to make changes to their diets.

While all diets are individual, an off-the-shelf vegan diet is often perceived as one of the healthiest.

Ultimately, every action we take is with a view to make ourselves happy – it is human nature to make choices that personally benefit us. While my decision to become vegan was motivated by my refusal to contribute to animal exploitation, you may find that you care about the environment or want to live a healthier life. Veganism is a great choice for all of us who care about these issues.

If you’d like to learn more about veganism, take up our seven-day challenge this World Animal Day here.

This author

Dominika Piasecka is Media and PR Officer at The Vegan Society and a keen vegan activist.

Climate science denier and hard-Brexiter MP Owen Paterson told the cheering crowd in a packed lecture hall a few hundred metres away from the Conservative Party Conference, “we are the mainstream of the Conservative Party”.

Paterson, a political advisor to the group Leave Means Leave, was preaching to an audience already on his side of the divide as the rift between different factions of the Conservative Party deepens over Brexit.

He was speaking at the Alternative Brexit Conference, a one-day event which ran parallel to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham on Monday and required no pass or accreditation to attend.

Rising star

It was organised by The Bruges Group, a Eurosceptic think tank created to uphold Margaret Thatcher’s ideas, which has repeatedly spread disinformation about climate change.

Indeed, previous blog posts and lecture notes published on the group’s website have criticised the EU’s “alarmist” views on man-made climate change and accused it of using global warming as an excuse to impose regulations and ramp up energy prices.

Throughout the day, the conference heard from those on the right of the Conservative party pushing for a hard Brexit and making the case for deregulation and the importance of a free trade deal with the US.

It gave a platform to climate science deniers such as David Campbell Bannerman, a Conservative MEP for the East of England, who joined UKIP between 2004 and 2011, and previously accused the EU of being a “green Taliban”.

The conference also heard from Whitham MP Priti Patel and one of the party’s right-wing rising star Andrew Jenkyns, the MPfor Morley and Outwood and an advocate for the group Leave Means Leave.

Passionate calls

Alternative and fringe events in and outside the Conservative Party conference showed how the networks of hardline Brexiters and climate science deniers continue to overlap and at times work together to mount pressure from the right of the party.

Among the crowd at the alternative conference, enthusiastic supporters were proudly wearing union jack ties and “Chuck Chequers” badges, in defiance of Theresa May’s soft Brexit plan.

Instead, the room unanimously backed leaving the EU, whether under a Canada-style free-trade deal or without a deal – resulting to trade under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.  

Cheers roared across the room at any mention of “taking back control” and that “no deal means no cash” for the EU. A Guardian reporter was booed when asking why the group did not push for a Conservative leadership contest.

Both Jenkyns and North Shropshire MP Paterson made passionate calls to “reject the over-regulated” EU standards and laws and embrace the opportunities of making trade deals with countries outside the EU.

Spread disinformation

Their comments came a week after the free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) published an alternative Brexit plan which called on the UK government to cut EU environmental regulations to secure free-trade deals with the US, China and India after Brexit.

The report singled out environmental protection rules as “frequently disguised methods of protectionism” and one of the areas where EU regulation is “moving in an anti-competitive direction”. The report, authored by controversial trade lobbyist Shanker Singham, was criticised for its methodology.

The same arguments were yet carried forward by the conference’s speakers.

Paterson told the audience about his visit to Washington DC last week, when he made the case for a special relationship between the US and UK during a speech at the free-market think tank the Heritage Foundation.

The think tank has repeatedly spread disinformation about climate change, previously describing global warming as “a contentious and unproven scientific theory”.

Science denier

Recalling his conversation with US officials, he said: “They have made it completely clear that they won’t be a free-trade deal with the UK if the laws of this country are made elsewhere [in the EU] and involve regulations that they don’t like.

“We should be starting to actively negotiate with the US but until May’s Chequers’ plan is off the table, they won’t start talking to us.”

The regulations Paterson referred to include for instance allowing chlorine-washed chickens and hormone-fed beef and GMcrops to be imported into the UK for the first time.

Although both environment secretary Michael Gove and international trade secretary Liam Fox have said they would not lower the UK’s food and environmental standards to strike a free-trade deal with the US, the speakers made it clear that deregulation remains a key issue for the right of the Conservative party.

Carbon emissions

The Alternative Brexit Conference also gave a platform to MEP Campbell Bannerman, a climate science denier who also sits on the advisory board of Leave Means Leave, and is a former chairman of the Bow group – a free-market think tank closely linked to the IEA.

In a 2014 opinion piece for the Huffington Post called “The EU’s Green Taliban are another reason to quit the EU”, Campbell Bannerman said he agreed with former Australian Prime Minister John Howard that climate change has become “a substitute for religion”.

Campbell Bannerman accused “the majority of British civil servants” of being “environmental fundamentalists” and ignored the overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue to describe “the mass scientific uncertainties over man-made climate change”.

Campbell Bannerman argued that the EU’s target to reduce carbon emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030 “would simply destroy the European economy while at the same time the rest of the world carries on regardless”.

Speaking at the conference, he slammed the Labour Party’s Brexit policies describing Jeremy Corbyn as a “Nazi” and calling Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell “a nasty piece of work”.

Fossil fuels

Steven Woolfe, the MEP for the North West of England, was next to address the conference about “making the Conservative Party conservative again”.

Woolfe has recently been outspoken about the development of wind and solar energy. In a tweet, he described the backers of wind and solar energy as “the next crony capitalists” benefiting from subsidies and tax breaks, adding that this had left “costs soar for the poorest consumers”.

Woolfe was once considered a favourite to replace Nigel Farage as leader of the UKIP, might be best remembered for hisaltercation with a fellow UKIP MEP at the European Parliament which left him in hospital.

Woolfe, who resigned from UKIP in October 2016, was later found to have started the incident after wanting to settle his differences with UKIP MEP Mike Hookem “man to man”.

Educational charity

Woolfe’s renewable energy claims come in stark contrast with current research which show the rapidly declining costs of renewable energy – a trend which is accentuated when taking into account the carbon price of fossil fuels. Earlier this year,a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) found that renewable energy is set to be cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020.

But one fossil fuel company is keen to retain its close ties with the Conservative Party.

Inside the exhibition area of the conference centre, oil company BP was given a prime advertising stand opposite the government’s “Great Britain” campaign, which aims to boost investment and trade links with the UK around the world.

Even more prominent inside the conference centre were the IEA and TaxPayers’ Alliance, whose event space the “ThinkTent” was located right beside the entrance to the conference centre and alongside event spaces run by Policy Exchange and ConservativeHome.

Both the IEA, which is registered as an educational charity, and the TaxPayers’ Alliance are part of a number of organisations working out of an office at 55 Tufton Street, near Westminster, alongside the climate science denial group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

Trade deal lobbyist

While these groups have long pushed to influence policy on the fringes of the Conservative Party, their ideas and arguments are increasingly becoming central in swinging the ideological debate to the right.

All three groups were accused by grassroot campaign BeLeave whistleblower Shahmir Sanni of mounting a coordinated campaign to push for a hard-Brexit in the media.

The IEA is currently under a regulatory compliance investigation by the Charity Commission after an undercover investigation by Greenpeace’s investigative unit Unearthed and the Guardian suggested the IEA offered potential US donors access to UK government ministers to promote free-trade deals.

The IEA has denied any allegations of “cash for access”.

The IEA’s event panellists included its director general Mark Littlewood, its trade deal lobbyist Shanker Singham as well asMP Steve Baker, DUP leader Arlene Foster and climate denier MEP Campbell Bannerman.

Ideological debate

From the media, Liam Halligan, a Telegraph columnist and member of the “no-deal” advocate group Economists for Free Trade, and associate editor Camilla Tominey both took part in panel discussions.

On Sunday evening, Daniel Hannan MEP, from the Initiative for Free Trade, together with IEA’s Singham and representatives from the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation presented their visions for an “ideal US-UK free trade”. At the crux of that debate is environmental regulation.

As the UK is about to leave the EU, these campaign groups and think tanks which were used to pushing for a deregulated free-market on the party’s fringes have now taken a front seat in driving the Conservative Party’s ideological debate.

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

Lord Lawson courts controversy. The former chancellor of the exchequer is today one of the leading champions of of a no-deal Brexit. He remains founder and chairman for life of the climate denying Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Lawson likes to present his own interests as being aligned with those of the common man. He asserts that his attack on climate change policy is motivated by deep concerns for the working classes – fears environmental measures will cost jobs and undermine prosperity.

Environmentalists have claimed that instead Lawson is acting in the interests of the oil industry, even if he is not funded by any oil companies.

Essential services

A secret government document published after 34 years hidden in the Government archives provides new evidence that Lawson, when a Tory cabinet minister acted in the interests of the oil companies, – but certainly not their workers.

Lawson proposed his top secret LEADBURN plan to the Cabinet on 10 November 1981 which suggested declaring a national state of emergency within a week and confirmed 12,500 British troops had been placed on notice to move in order to keep fuel supplied and break a national strike. 

The document – released for the first time by DeSmog UK – is marked “confidential” and is headlined, Cabinet, Oil Tanker Drivers: Contingency Measures, Memorandum of the Secretary of State for Energy.

The Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) had called for an “all-out strike” demanding an 11 percent pay rise for its members working for BP, Shell, Esso and Texaco.

A meeting of the Civil Contingencies Unit (CCU) was called on 4 November with ministers agreeing “preliminary steps to bring forward plans to protect essential services from fuel shortages.

“If an all-out strike occurred, it would cut off two-thirds of normal supplies of oil products… and would bring almost all road deliveries to a halt…

Body of servicemen

“Shortages of this scale would have early and serious consequences the community and the economy.”

Lawson, who had been in the job about six weeks, warned industry would be “immobilised” preventing “movement of raw materials and products”; reserve stocks would be exhausted, and “there would be increasing difficulties in getting people to work as motorists run dry.”

The government was not about to let this happen. So 160 service instructors were placed on notice the following day to move to undisclosed training locations around the country. Then on 10 November “the main body of 12,500 men were placed on six days’ notice to move.”

The CCU planned to meet the following Friday to decide whether to “confirm the implementation of LEADBURN on 16 November and seek a Privy Council to secure the Proclamation of a State of Emergency on that day (if the situation has sharply deteriorated).”

They would also be asked to agree “to place the main body of servicemen on 24 hours’ standby from Sunday 15 November (if an all-out strike on 16 November looks uncertain). 

Emergency plan

“In this case it may be convenient to authorise the Home Secretary, in consultation with the Prime Minister and other Ministers immediately involved, to take any appropriate decision that may be needed over the weekend or in the early part of next week.”

The TGWU was at the time of the strike the biggest general union in Britain with more than 900,000 members. It has since merged to form part of Unite the Union.

The publication of these documents for the first time shows the significant power transport workers had in Britain during that time, and the lengths the government had to go to meet their demands.

The documents also suggest that people working for energy companies might take it with a pinch of salt when Lord Lawson claims to have their interests at heart when attacking the science of climate change.

The sense of panic and urgency conveyed in Lawson’s emergency plan is brilliantly echoed in the satire of his tendency to fear the worst in Spitting Image broadcast by the BBC (pictured above – video below).

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.

Geoengineering is a concept that can raise some eyebrows. Environmental scientists either love it or loathe it, and the application of large-scale engineered solutions to environmental problems have so far proven largely unpredictable – nature doesn’t always respond the way scientists expect. 

Nevertheless, geoengineering still offers what other branches of science don’t – large-scale potential solutions to global climate system problems. In this case, that problem is sea-level rise, which is influenced by glacial sea-ice melt. 

Even if we hit all the targets of the Paris Agreement, sea level will still increase because the heat caused by global warming to date can be stored in water for much longer than in air. Warm water will heat the bottoms of ice shelves, which will cause more sea-ice melt, which will contribute to sea-level rise. 

Thinking the unthinkable 

As Professor Jonathan Bamber, president of the European Geosciences Union, said: “Present-day sea level rise is about 3mm a year and it keeps accelerating. Even if we cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero tomorrow, we’re committed to some sea level rise, because of inertia in the oceans, glaciers, ice caps and the whole climate system.”

Lead researchers Michael Wolovick and John Moore decided to investigate the potential for glacial geoengineering to prevent sea-ice melt. Moore,  a scientist at Beijing Normal University China and a professor of climate change at the University of Lapland, Finland, said: “Doing geoengineering means often considering the unthinkable.” 

The team examined two methods – the first was to build walls underwater, blocking warm water from reaching the ice shelf’s base and melting it, and the second approach involved constructing artificial mounds on the seafloor to prop up the glacier, and help it to regrow. 

The researchers conducted the study with computer models, and based their modelling on the Thwaites glacier, which is projected to be the largest individual source of future sea-level rise. The idea was that by basing their study on one of the most challenging glaciers in the world, the researchers could reasonably expect it to work on most others. 

Their results have been astonishingly encouraging – they found that a small underwater wall blocking about half of all warm water from reaching the ice shelf base was 70 percent likely to succeed, and large walls would be even more likely to delay or even stop ice-sheet collapse completely.

Diverse consequences 

Even the smallest intervention tested – the building of isolated 300-metre-high mounds or columns on the seafloor, had a 30 percent probability of preventing a runaway collapse of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet for the foreseeable future, according to the models. 

Although the wall is more effective, other constraints could mean that the mounds are more practical in some instances, according to Moore. He said: “There is a trade off in the 2 designs, the long wall is more likely to succeed in stopping ice sheet collapse than the simple pinning points. But it requires a much larger volume of material to construct, so it’s much more difficult, and presumably a higher risk of potential accidents during construction.”

While geoengineering could be an effective tool to prevent sea-ice collapse, the researchers say that reducing greenhouse gases is still the most vital part of the fight against climate change. The solution proposed by the team would limit sea-level rise caused by glacial ice melt, but would not have an effect on other harmful consequences of climate change, such as ocean acidification, floods, droughts and heat waves. 

In the past, scientists have tried out geoengineering solutions that have affected the ecological balance and the environment around, but it is unlikely that the glacial walls will have those kinds of effects. In any case, glacial ice collapse is likely to cause even more disruption to ecosystems and the environment, according to Moore. More analysis is needed, but it is likely that the impacts would probably be localised because the aim would be to preserve the glaciers as close to their current form as possible. 

Moor said: “This is quite different from ideas such as iron fertilization or stratospheric aerosol injection which add new material and reactions to the global environmental system. If the glacier collapses – which it is very likely to do under greenhouse gas warming – then the local changes in oceanic environment and ecology would be far greater, as also would be the global consequences from the rising seas affecting coastal wetlands, agriculture and cities.” 

This Author 

Catherine Collins writes on marine and environmental issues. She has a BSc in marine science and an MA in journalism. You can read more of her work here.