The frontline of shale gas extraction in England moves to Cheshire this week with the beginning of a public inquiry into shale gas flow testing in Ellesmere Port at Chester Town Hall.

Local residents will gather outside the town hall to highlight the continued and overwhelming opposition to fracking in the UK. They will be supported by frack-free groups from across the country.

Cheshire West and Chester council last year rejected plans from oil and gas company IGas to ‘flow test’ for shale gas at a wellsite in Ellesmere Port, following thousands of objections from the public. The public inquiry is being held after IGas appealed against the decision.

Harmful impacts

The public inquiry is significant for the future of shale gas development in the North West. Although several shale gas wells have been drilled in Cheshire, Ellesmere Port would be the first flow test site in the county, if permission to go ahead was granted.

The inquiry, which is scheduled to last for six days, will hear from a range of experts in fields such as climate change, air quality, geology and public health, against the proposal.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth will speak at the inquiry to highlight the harmful impacts the site would have on air quality – with residents of Ellesmere Port already suffering illegal levels of pollution – and its incompatibility with action on climate change.

Helen Rimmer, Friends of the Earth North West campaigner, said: “Thousands of local residents and the local council have clearly said no to shale gas testing in Cheshire, while climate scientists warn that fossil fuels must be left in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“Residents in Ellesmere Port already suffer from poor air – the last thing they need is another polluting industry on their doorstep.

“Instead of forcing dirty fracking on communities, the government should back clean renewable energy which could create thousands of new jobs in Cheshire.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a commissioning editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Friends of the Earth. 

Hundreds of millions of people watched Liverpool face Real Madrid in the Champions League Final in May 2018. Although they lost on the day, football fans around the world were transfixed by Liverpool’s journey to Kiev where they ruthlessly tore apart reputable opposition including Porto, Manchester City and Roma.

In the same month as the final, Liverpool signed a fresh deal worth 160 million pounds with their primary shirt sponsors: Standard Chartered. That’s £30m a year until the 2022/23 season.

Its unsurprising that non-football fans have little knowledge of Standard Chartered. They are a London-based bank, though they operate primarily in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Climate impacts

They boast of 1,026 branches across 60 markets and of employing 86,000 staff representing 125 nationalities. Claiming online that “we’re here for good”, its hard to tell whether the bank is celebrating its supposed commitment to prosperity through wealth creation and sustainable development, or advancing a more sinister assertion of the bank’s inevitable longevity despite its reckless complicity in social and environmental crises.

The 30 million pounds that Standard Chartered will give to Liverpool this season dwarfs in comparison to the 1.303 billion dollars that they gave to fossil fuel companies in 2017.

748 dollars million went to ultra-deepwater oil; 353 million to coal power; 109 million to liquefied natural gas; 80 million to coal mining; 13 million of this went to tar sands; and 0.5 million to Arctic oil.

In September 2018, Standard Chartered did announce a new policy excluding project finance for new coal-fired power stations. Their policy went further than HSBC’s, but at the time they remained invested in two major Vietnamese coal projects and refused to withdraw corporate finance for the companies behind new coal.

We know that the overwhelming majority of fossil fuels must stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change. Standard Chartered’s movements on ditching fossil fuel finance are too few and too slow. It would be easy for them to ditch coal along with many other banks.

True climate leadership would mean abandoning finance for oil and gas projects too, along with the companies behind them.

Climate breakdown

It is especially perverse that Standard Chartered’s primary markets of Africa, Asia and the Middle East are already being hit by the harshest impacts of climate breakdown despite contributing relatively little to global emissions.

As Mount Kilamanjaro’s glaciers retreat, the supply of water becomes increasingly limited in surrounding regions. Higher temperatures in East Africa have intensified droughts killing crops and cattle exacerbating food shortages.

The Middle East has felt similar impacts, with the mass migration following a four-year drought often held partially responsible for the Syrian civil conflict and refugee crisis. While the Vietnamese Government and international banks try to profit from new coal mines there, local activists argue that their country is among the hardest hit by climate change and pollution.

Standard Chartered know that there are far more people regularly watching the Premier League in Asia and Africa than Europe. Over 50 percent of all people in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand watch the Premier League on TV, compared to just 36 percent in the UK where it is based. Its between 39 percent and 41 percent in Malaysia, Turkey and India.

Standard Chartered aren’t advertising to scousers or UK-based Premier fans. When Mo Salah scores at Anfield and the camera focuses on the front of his shirt as he celebrated, a global audience is exposed to the Standard Chartered brand.

Greenwashing

As Liverpool surpass pre-season expectations in 2018/19, mounting an assured Premier League title challenge, Standard Chartered’s deal is beginning to look like a bargain for the bank.

Liverpool’s superstar players are the perfect unknowing celebrity endorsements with international roots and global appeal: Alisson Becker (Brazil), Virgil Van Dijk (Netherlands), Joel Matip (Cameroon), Fabinho (Brazil), Naby Keita (Guinea), Sadio Mane (Senegal) and Mo Salah (Egypt).

As well as simply attracting new customers for its retail bank, Standard Chartered’s sponsorship effectively normalises itself as a valid participant in global public life. Just as fossil fuel companies like Shell invest hugely in greenwashing PR, by association with Liverpool and the Premier League Standard Chartered seeks to buy social license to profit from climate breakdown and our unequal financial system.

While the divestment movement has held the fossil fuel industry to account with growing success over the last 7 years, banks like Standard Chartered have been let off the hook. This has to end. It may be unrealistic to expect a Premier League club to abandon their sponsor over complicity in climate breakdown. But we should use subvert the profile Standard Chartered borrow from Liverpool to expose the dark side of their business.

This Author

Chris Saltmarsh is co-director of climate change campaigns at People & Planet. He tweets at chris_saltmarsh.

The world’s biggest fast-food chains have been placed under the spotlight by a new welfare report from the charity World Animal Protection. And no company receives a grade better than ‘poor’.

The Pecking Order 2018 ­report is the first-ever international ranking on the welfare of chickens raised for meat. Burger King, Domino’s Pizza Group, Domino’s Inc, KFC, McDonalds, Nando’s, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and Subway have all been assessed.

The results are deeply concerning: not one of the companies is taking this critical issue seriously.

Animal welfare

World Animal Protection has launched the ranking as part of its Change for Chickens campaign, which is challenging the fast-food industry to stop the cruelty and suffering in chicken production worldwide by committing to source from higher-welfare farms rather than factory farms.

Companies are assessed through publicly available information on three areas: Interest, via policies (how important the welfare of chickens is to the company); ambition, via objectives and targets (the promises a company has made to improve chickens’ lives); and transparency, via performance reporting (how clear the company is about living up to its promises).

Key findings 

Alarmingly, none of the fast-food chains have a global policy on improving chicken welfare. In most areas, chickens are not even guaranteed a humane slaughter.

Only three of the nine companies – Burger King, Starbucks and Subway ­– have demonstrated interest and ambition in addressing the main problems faced by factory farmed chickens. However, the commitments are all limited to one region or country;

Two companies – Domino’s Inc. and Domino’s PLC – receive a ‘failing’ grade. Four companies – KFC, Nando’s, Pizza Hut and McDonalds – receive a ‘very poor’ grade.

Transparency is universally poor, with all companies providing little or no information to show how they are performing when it comes to chicken welfare.

Policy changes

World Animal Protection’s Change for Chickens campaign urges the fast food industry to commit to global policy changes that will improve the welfare of billions of chickens. In particular, companies are expected to:

Use chicken breeds that grow at a healthier rate; ensure that chickens have the space to behave more naturally. Cages must never be used; give chickens the opportunity to enjoy natural behaviours via enrichment – including perches or platforms and pecking objects – natural lighting and high-quality bedding and ensure that chickens are slaughtered using more humane methods that avoid live shackling and render all animals unconscious before slaughter.

Increasing pressure

Currently, it’s estimated that 40 billion chickens around the world each year are subjected to significant cruelty and suffering in factory farms.

They are given around 40 days to live until they are slaughtered. In that time, in many countries they live in crowded, barren, dark warehouses. Grown with little consideration for them as living, breathing, inquisitive animals, they are genetically selected to develop unnaturally fast, which places huge pressure on their heart, lungs and legs. As a result, they often live their entire lives in chronic pain, suffering from lameness, skin lesions and even heart failure.

Food companies that continue to turn a blind eye to this cruelty are under increasing pressure to change their ways.

World Animal Protection will review The Pecking Order every year to monitor the progress of the major fast-food brands. The organisation hopes that future iterations of the ranking will highlight companies that are truly leading the way when it comes to improving chicken welfare.

Jonty Whittleton, global campaign head at World Animal Protection said: “The scores are in and it’s not looking good for some of the world’s largest fast-food brands when it comes to chicken welfare.

These iconic companies must respond to growing consumer concerns over chicken cruelty, using their immense power to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of animals. Using tools such as The Pecking Order, we will continue to put pressure on these companies to change for chickens.”

Consumer concern

Whittleton continued: “There is no excuse for the pain, fear and stress that a factory farmed chicken feels for much of their life.

“Billions of chickens never get the chance to see sunlight, to grow at a natural rate or behave as they would do in the wild. Major brands, including those featured in The Pecking Order, profit from this pain.

“hey hold the power to turn this situation around and there is a growing consumer concern that they must do so. Chickens are at the very heart of their businesses and deserve the chance to live a happier, healthier life. That’s not too much to ask.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a commissioning editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from World Animal Protection. Read the full report here. 

Japan’s legislature has enacted the most significant reform of its fisheries laws in 70 years.

The new legislation has the potential to signal a meaningful shift in how other countries in the Asia Pacific region manage their fisheries in the future.

Katie McGinty, senior vice president of EDF Oceans, said: “The world should take note of this moment because it signals a transformational shift in how countries are managing their fisheries for the long term, and if done right, has the potential to usher in a new era of sustainability in the region that will have far-reaching positive impacts”.

Landmark moment

The passage of the reform legislation through the Japanese Diet (Japan’s bicameral legislature) marks a landmark moment in the nation’s efforts to reform its fisheries, which has been a high priority for Prime Minister Abe as he continues to restructure Japan’s economy for long-term prosperity.

For more than a year, EDF has provided expert scientific and policy support and advice to government officials, scientists and regulators to help lay the groundwork for the reform effort. 

The legislation’s goal is to ensure long-term productivity of important fish stocks that are at the heart of the Japanese economy, culture and cuisine, and that impact seafood markets across the globe.

The reform package incorporates several recommendations from EDF including expanding stock assessments to cover all commercial stocks and increasing the percentage of catch managed with science-based catch limits.

In addition, the reforms include requiring recovery plans for overfished stocks within 10 years and establishing a system of individual vessel quotas with some transferability.

Sustainable fisheries

McGinty added: “We applaud Japanese Diet members and the Abe Administration for their leadership and will continue to work alongside our partners to ensure the reform effort is implemented in the most effective way possible.” 

While the reforms being passed by the Diet are a meaningful step forward on the road to creating sustainable fisheries in Japan, the implementation phase will be equally important, EDF said.

During that crucial phase, regulations known as cabinet and ministerial ordinances will be drafted by Japan’s Fishery Agency and will shape how the legislation is put in place on the water.

EDF said it is particularly focused on helping refine the reforms during the implementation phase to include a transition financing plan that does not undercut sustainability, including stakeholders more broadly in the management process and improvements in monitoring and accountability.

McGinty concluded: “There can be no doubt that this development to create greater sustainability in Japan’s fisheries is a significant win, but more work needs to be done.

“We must continue to work together in order to achieve Prime Minister Abe’s vision of creating thriving, resilient and sustainable fisheries that provide more food, more prosperity and greater environmental wellbeing for people, their communities and the ocean.”

This Article. 

This article is based on a press release from the Environmental Defence Fund.

Climate change protestors from Extinction Rebellion Canterbury blocked a main road near the Guildhall for seven minutes at a time, allowing traffic to pass every two minutes.

This was done to raise awareness of climate change and to push for council, and government, action to reduce emissions, after the recent IPCC report added a sense of urgency to the issue.

Protestors held signs apologising for the delay, as well as asking drivers to turn off their engines. Emergency services were able to pass through.

Climate justice

The action tool place on Saturday of last week and was peaceful, with local police supervising. No-one was arrested. Protestors told drivers what they were doing and why and the protest ended around 2.30pm.  This is the first action from Kent’s Canterbury XR group – a national week of action is scheduled in March.

Protestors chanted “What do we want? Climate justice. When do we want it? Now!” They demanded that the government, BBC and local council “Tell the truth” about climate change.

Spokesman Nicholas Thurston warned drivers that the consequences of not acting “are beyond imagination, as spelled out in the IPCC report, drought, famine, mass migration, huge loss of land … That is why we’re standing here today, to demand our governments declare a climate emergency”.

The IPCC report gives governments twelve years to drastically reduce emissions to limit climate change. Mr. Thurston also called on listeners to lobby their representatives to adopt climate friendlier policies.

Extinction Rebellion is a fast-growing movement, with around 80 groups in the UK. It demands that the government communicate the seriousness of climate change and end contradictory policies. It advocates for legally binding measures leading to zero carbon emissions, reduced consumption, and monitoring by a Citizen’s Assembly. 

This Author 

Ellie is a student from Canterbury. She is keenly interested in the environment and politics, and is an active member of Greenpeace.

Environment lawyers have warned that a new gas plant in the north of England would be responsible for as much as 75 percent of the emissions budget for the entire UK power sector, once approved and fully operational.

Environmental law organisation ClientEarth has submitted a formal assessment of the climate impact of Drax Power’s plans to build four new gas turbines at its Selby power plant in North Yorkshire.

The assessment shows that over its lifetime the project would create additional greenhouse gas emissions 400 percent greater than the baseline scenario.

Stranded asset 

This scenario tracks forecasts from the department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of overall grid emissions intensity to 2050 and represents the mix of generation technologies that could provide the same quantity of electricity generation.

Sam Hunter Jones, a ClientEarth climate accountability lawyer, said: “Drax has failed to prove why adding so much new large-scale fossil fuel power is necessary given existing and planned capacity. It has also failed to assess the project’s full climate impact, at the precise time when the UK needs to rapidly decarbonise.

“By failing to explain how this emissions-intensive gas project squares with the UK’s carbon targets and its Clean Growth Strategy, Drax is asking the public to face a carbon budget blowout, a huge stranded asset requiring propping up by the taxpayer, or a combination of the two.”

In its planning application, Drax claimed its proposal for four combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT) was warranted to replace its existing two coal-fired units ahead of the government’s proposed coal phase-out in 2025. However, ClientEarth warns that the combination of the project’s scale, high emissions intensity and long operating life make it a significant threat to the UK’s carbon targets.

ClientEarth was invited to complete the assessment, which was supported by climate think-tank Sandbag, as part of Planning Inspectorate hearings discussing objections to the project. In November, ClientEarth had submitted a written objection to project on climate grounds.

Alternative designs

The government’s latest forecasts estimate that the UK will need 6GW of new gas generation through to 2035. However, the UK has already greenlit more than 15GW worth of large-scale gas plants. Approving Drax’s project would take this to 18GW – three times the government’s estimates. 

The government’s climate body, the Committee on Climate Change, has warned there should be no more gas on the UK grid by the mid-2030s, without carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Drax’s application failed to outline how its large-scale gas project would be consistent with the UK’s decarbonisation targets for the power sector and the alternative low-carbon generation technologies available. Lawyers said this was a missed opportunity, given the obvious commercial benefits of bringing forward a future-proof scheme.

Hunter Jones added: “The only way to avoid the project’s negative climate impacts would be to make its operation conditional on the use of carbon capture and storage technology – however, Drax is not content to wait until this technology is viable.

“Drax has also failed to consider alternative project designs that would provide the best climate outcomes, as planning rules require. As Sandbag’s research shows, the UK can transition from coal to clean, without locking in more large-scale gas plants. Drax’s assertions that its plant should be built because it will be better than the worst current market performers makes a mockery of the UK’s decarbonisation ambitions.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a commissioning editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth.

We are planting seeds, fertilising ideas, growing a network. We are part of a much wider ecosystem that includes natural scientists, progressive publications and campaigning charities.

The audience for The Ecologist is blooming. We now have 200,000 readers every month, which is almost double the number from the previous year. It’s still down some from our hey day but it’s the right direction of travel.

But there is so much to be done, we want to do so much better. To achieve this, we want to build a community of readers and advocates who not only read our articles – regularly or through online searches – but also share them with friends, colleagues and fellow activists.

To further enhance these efforts we have put together a concise guide to the best social media tools currently available for sharing content, and getting the message out there. This guide is written for our authors, but we would love our readers to engage with these suggestions as well. 

1. Send it out

If you’ve written the article, send it to the people you have interviewed after it’s published. I never understood why, but often as journalists we are afraid of doing this – afraid of judgment, I assume.

But if you haven’t misquoted, or written terrible things about the people you interviewed, then there’s no need to be afraid; make the jump. They’ll love it. Their name and views in your article gives them exposure and prestige, and they’ll push it even further than you’d end up doing.(If you have misquoted them or written biased things about them, we need to talk.)

Authors – and also readers – should even consider developing their own newsletter, using MailChimp, Constant Contact or other free online platform. Even if you are sending just a few emails to a dozen people, this makes it quicker and more impactful. People can then become part of your ecosystem by signing up.

Social media

Tell people about your article, both in real life and online. If you found a story interesting, chances are that somebody else will too, especially if this is a person who thinks like you.

Each social media platform is different and what draws people to read an article will depend on many things – Instagram works very differently than, say, LinkedIn, or Reddit. So you should change how you post the article across different platforms, spending that extra minute to tailor your post description to the platform you’re using, or you could add a picture, a video, etc.

That said, don’t put your eggs in one basket – you’ll reach different people on different social media, so why not experiment with environmental news on Instagram and LinkedIn?

If you don’t know a platform very well and want to get to know what works well on it and how you should post, invest some time on it; interact with other users etc. 

But as a general rule of thumb, inject some of your personality in your posts. Say why you liked the article, or why you think it’s crucial that other people read it.

Facebook groups

On Facebook, most of us will have friends we grew up with who have since switched to the dark side, or people who don’t care about climate change. Sharing an article on your own wall will target those people too, and they won’t read it.

Try finding people who think the issue is critical instead. There are thousands of active Facebook Groups, and there almost certainly is one for the article you’d like people to read. Start with

• Climate Change: Science, Mitigation & Adaptation;
• Global Environmental Awareness Network;
• Animal Rights and the Environment;
• The Ecology of Systems Thinking

Reddit!

Yes, Reddit. The platform intermittently sends articles viral – or leaves them languishing in internet obscurity; but it’s always worth a try.

Like Facebook, Reddit teems with groups (subreddits) of people who share interests. Some say if someone is interested in something, then there’s a subreddit about it – there are thousands of them, including… a subreddit to find subreddits. So chances are that there will be one for you here, too.

Start with r/Environment, (the biggest environmental discussion group I know of) and explore from there!

Reddit is quite different from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, so read the rules (for example, you can get banned for spamming and self-promotion) and spend some time on it before you use it. This will also make you familiar with what sends a post trending.

Our newsletter

Did you know we have some? Newsletters are a big part of how we are trying to shake things up at The Ecologist, so take a look at our daily and weekly newsletters and tell people about them.

Your article will be there, and we’re sure you’ll find more interesting reads on the environment – and so will they. Forward the newsletter to contacts, and encourage them to sign up as well. 

Online networking 

Don’t use the internet just as a dumping site. Social media is a place to network, talk to people, interact – just like the real world. Nobody will casually read your posts if all you do is tweet links and sign out. 

Try and create relationships with other readers, and then move from there. You could tag people you interviewed for the article when you tweet it. It might encourage them to retweet, or to post it on their social media accounts themselves.

Another way to cheat is to follow a few people who are interested in the topic after you tweet about it. They might see your work and follow back.

But the key is to keep getting to know people and learn. Make sure you monitor trends and hashtags related to your interests, and opportunities will jump out to you.

I’ll give you one, and only one, example. Have you noticed Twitter accounts using #FBPE? It means ‘Follow Back, Pro EU’, and is used by Remain voters to network and join forces on Twitter. Maybe something similar will arise for environmentalists one day! 

​​​​​​​This Author 

Alessio Perrone is a freelance journalist and digital native. Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

Twelve nature charities – including Plantlife, RSPB and Friends of the Earth – yesterday welcomed new regulations to cut ammonia emissions announced in the Clean Air Strategy.

This move is vital and long overdue given the ravaging effect ammonia has on wild plants, woodlands and meadows, and the wildlife that rely on them, and the disastrous impact of ammonia on people’s health.

Cutting ammonia emissions by 50 percent could prevent the equivalent of an estimated 250,000 premature deaths globally each year.

Increasing emissions

Ammonia is the ‘poor cousin’ of air pollution – flying below the radar of regulators until now, despite its destructive impacts, and the rising levels of this toxin in the air we breathe.

Recent official data shows that ammonia emissions in England increased for the third year in a row in 2016, in stark contrast with all other major pollutants. Ammonia emissions are higher than at any time since 2005, while levels of other pollutants are largely unchanged or decreasing.

Ammonia plays a major role in creating particulate matter, one of the biggest threats to people’s health from air pollution, with emissions from farms harming the health of people hundreds of miles away.

An estimated 40,000 premature deaths in the UK each year are attributed to air pollution, with more than 40 towns and cities at, or exceeding, limits set by the World Health Organization. There is also a wealth of scientific evidence showing that nitrogen pollution is one of the greatest threats to wild plants around the world including evidence from the charities to the Clean Air Strategy consultation on the decimation of plants by ammonia.

Nitrogen-rich ‘badlands’

Jenny Hawley, Senior Policy Officer at Plantlife, said: “Air pollution from farming has been neglected by policymakers for too long – with year-on-year increases in ammonia emissions.

“Voluntary measures haven’t worked, so the commitments to new regulation are a positive step forward. But the devil will be in the detail and the Clean Air Strategy must be translated into legislation without delay if it is to protect some of our rarest plants, lichens and fungi from extinction.

“Runaway ammonia emissions are contributing to unnaturally nutrient-rich soil conditions that are having a chilling impact on plant diversity. Many rare and threatened wildflowers like harebell and bird’s-foot trefoil are being crowded out of the countryside by a marauding gang of ‘nitrogen guzzlers’ such as brambles and stinging nettles. 

“The knock-on effects of habitats becoming nitrogen-rich ‘badlands’ can be lethal, for example the marsh fritillary butterfly feeds almost exclusively on Devil’s-bit scabious, a plant that simply cannot survive in these conditions.’

Hannah Freeman, Senior Government Affairs Officer at Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, said: “Air pollution literally doesn’t exist in a bubble. Ammonia in the air over our farmlands dissolves into our wetlands and waterways and wreaks havoc on delicate aquatic ecosystems.

“The proposed measures are a step forward, but what we really want is government policy that supports farmers to be true stewards, holistically managing our air, soil and water together.”

Regulatory reforms

Thomas Lancaster, Acting Head of Land Use Policy at the RSPB said: “The Government’s proposals for reducing ammonia emissions from farming are a significant step forward, and recognise the importance of effective regulation in protecting the environment and public health.

“We now need Government to set out a much more comprehensive and ambitious package of regulatory reforms for farming, to secure the safeguards that both progressive farmers and the environment so desperately need.’

Frances Winder, conservation policy lead at the Woodland Trust said: “Nitrogen deposition and increasing concentrations of ammonia are severely damaging our ancient woodlands. It is imperative we integrate on-farm measures for air quality, water quality and greenhouse gas emissions to protect these precious, irreplaceable habitats.

“Working with nature can have significant beneficial impacts. Planting new trees downwind of a poultry house fan outlet, for example, can be very effective at capturing both gaseous and particulate pollutants as well as providing shade and water management- a win-win for farm efficiency, reducing input costs and protecting the environment.  

“Any new land management scheme must include effective enforcement as well as support for the development of solutions.’

Localising production 

Richard Young, Policy Director at the Sustainable Food Trust said: “The Sustainable Food Trust welcomes the Government’s Clean Air Strategy, but feels that greater action is needed to address the issue of ammonia, a major component of air pollution, which mostly comes from the agricultural sector. 

“In particular, the overuse of nitrogen fertiliser must be recognised as the main cause of ammonia, and this needs to be urgently addressed.

“In order to make real headway in tackling the air pollution crisis, we need a fundamental change in the way we produce food, moving away from heavy reliance on nitrogen fertiliser towards mixed farm systems which utilise forage legumes, such as clover, to rebuild the soil’s natural nitrogen levels.

“We should also focus on re-localising food production and consumption as much as possible to reduce diesel emissions associated with transport. Future ‘public goods’ funding should be used to help shift farming systems in this more sustainable direction.”

New measures

Farming is the main source of ammonia emissions, stemming from the storage and spreading on fields of manure, slurry, digestate and artificial fertilisers.

The UK Government has relied on restricting farming practices in certain areas (nitrate vulnerable zones (NVZs)) to tackle pollution of rivers and streams from fertilisers. However, the charities argue that Government should use post-Brexit agriculture policy and its proposed Environmental Land Management Scheme to reform NVZs, prevent water and air pollution more effectively and better protect our environment.

Under the new measures announced today, farmers will have to use low-emissions technology and facilities to collect, store and spread animal wastes and fertilisers on their fields. Many dairy and intensive beef farms will have to apply for an environmental permit, as is already the case for the largest poultry and pig farms.

The strategy also tackles emissions from anaerobic digesters which have risen significantly as the technology has become more popular.

Charities and campaigners support these measures but warned that their effectiveness will depend on the detail which still has to be developed. They called on the Government to bring forward detailed proposals in the coming months and to set earlier deadlines for reducing ammonia emissions from the most polluting sources.

While the new target to reduce by 17 percent the area of wildlife habitat affected by nitrogen deposition by 2030 is welcome, it does not go far enough and the Strategy does not take forward the specific measures recommended by the charities to protect and restore wildlife.

Legal limits 

There are many other welcome moves in the Clean Air Strategy from Government, however nature organisations are warning that:

·     More still needs to be done to tackle pollution from cars and other vehicles in particular, as plans on the main source of illegal air pollution in our towns and cities fall short. For example, this should include a network of clean air zones and support for people and businesses to move to cleaner forms of transport;

·     We need new clean air laws that enshrine people’s right to breathe clean air and stricter legal limits based on World Health Organisation guidelines in UK law to drive greater ambition on this issue;

·     The Clean Air Strategy is being developed in response to legally binding emission reduction targets from the EU. After Brexit, it is essential the promised new UK environment watchdog is strong, well-resourced and independent to ensure the government complies with its legal duty to protect the health of people and the environment.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a commissioning editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Wildlife and Countryside Link. 

In ancient Greek mythology, the sin of hubris – excessive self-praise and over-weaning pride – was punished by Nemesis, the goddess of indignation.  It is a metaphor sometimes used to describe how the giants of the banking industry were destroyed by market forces in the great recession that began in 2008. 

Their inflated egos allowed banks to lose the run of themselves, investing in assets that were vastly over-valued and which the bankers often didn’t even understand.

It would be nice to report that it was different at The Co-operative Bank, the so-called ‘ethical bank’.  Sadly, the story was just the same.  It was managed by people who were not up to the job, overseen by a board that were sometimes kept in the dark and who were often too consumed by inflated ambitions to apply common sense.

Ethical business

It was not supposed to be like this.  The Co-operative Bank was formed in 1872, as the banking arm of the Co-operative Wholesale Society – the body that supplied the co-operative retail stores across the UK.  

Those shops emerged out of the Rochdale Pioneers’ example, who set-up a store to sell nourishing, unadulterated food at affordable prices to low income families. That is about as ethical as a business can get.

But the co-operative retail societies declined and merged, until only a few survived.  Most of their department stores closed, as shoppers moved towards Tesco and other hypermarket groceries, selling a massive variety of goods at often lower cost. 

Co-ops failed to keep track with customers’ demands – and in many cases forgot what these days is called ‘the co-operative difference’.  

A study by co-operative practitioner Peter Couchman and academic Murray Fulton examined the failure of large co-ops.  It found five consistent features in these failures: seeing the co-operative structure as a weakness, not a strength; having the wrong people in charge; lack of board oversight; over-confidence; and a ‘final roll of the dice’, to achieve a big bang merger solution to a problem built-up, and left festering, over a long period.  Those five factors were central to the problems and near collapse of The Co-operative Bank.

Merging institutions 

Readers of national newspapers could be forgiven, by contrast, for believing that the Bank’s problems were entirely the result of the strange behaviour of its chair, the Reverend Paul Flowers – Christened by the tabloid press as the crystal Methodist. His penchant for drugs and his liaisons with teenage male prostitutes certainly damaged the Bank’s brand, but it was not the cause of its crisis.

In fact, the cause of the near sinking of the Bank dates from when it took over the Britannia Building Society in 2009.  This was before Flowers became chair of the Bank.  The board were not even informed of the merger discussions by management of the Bank and its owners, the Co-operative Group (the new name of the old Co-operative Wholesale Society).  

When the negotiations were complete the board were told this was a great arrangement, which would take the merged organisation to new heights, with much greater economies of scale.  The management seem to have believed their own hype.

Regulators, however, had a different perspective.  They regarded the Britannia as a weak institution, which was being rescued by The Co-operative Bank.  Yet they did not share their view with the boards of either the Bank or the Group.  

Bizarrely, the chief executive of the failing institution was appointed chief executive of the merged body.  And although the regulator had its reservations, it did not block the arrangement.

Financial crisis

While the regulator was aware of the weakness of Britannia, The Co-operative Bank should also have been aware.  In any major business transaction, the buyer undertakes what is called ‘due diligence’.  This involves close scrutiny of the books and assets of the business to be acquired. 

In the case of The Co-operative Bank’s takeover of Britannia, there was only limited due diligence. Crucially the bits of Britannia that were later found to have been greatly over-valued and the cause of the Bank’s near collapse were the parts that were not subject to proper due diligence. 

This failure of process, some years later, led to the professional disgrace of one of the Bank’s senior executives, who had to pay substantial penalties.  

If the Britannia merger was an example of hubris, it was outdone by the later attempt to take over more than 600 branches of Lloyds Bank – the so-called Project Verde deal.  It was only when this unravelled that the scale of financial crisis at the Co-op Bank was revealed.

But the Bank’s financial crisis had more than one cause.  The frantic attempt to build ‘scale’ was certainly a factor.  It was also, though, related to a lack of strategic consistency.  A massively expensive IT system was procured to implement one business model, only to become redundant when a different strategy was adopted in the chase for scale.

Customer base

Meanwhile the branding of ‘the ethical bank’ brought its own problems. In truth, the slogan owed more to accident than design.

This often badly run bank conducted research to determine why their customers remained loyal, despite often poor service.  The research found it was the bank’s ethical principles that customers valued.  

Yet, until that point, it did not have established ethical principles – instead it had built up a customer base from being the only high street bank that did not have a direct relationship with apartheid-era South Africa.

Building on that foundation, ‘the ethical bank’ branding was born.  Yet some of its practices sat uneasily with this.  In particular, the bank later had to make substantial repayments over the mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance.

Today The Co-operative Bank is no longer owned – either in whole or in part – by the Co-operative Group.  It was rescued by international hedge funds, which continue to proclaim it as an ethical bank.  Perhaps surprisingly, many customers continue with their loyalty.

Ultimately, what did it for The Co-operative Bank was incompetence on a massive scale.  Ethics – and the lack of it – comes into the story.  But essentially this is a story of how bad managers destroyed a bank and how bad directors allowed them to do it.

This Author 

Paul Gosling is a writer, public speaker, broadcaster and researcher. He specialises in the economy, accountancy, government and the public sector, the co-operative sector and personal finances.

Becoming Animal is a documentary by Scottish director Emma Davie and Canadian cinematographer Peter Mettler, produced in collaboration with the writer and philosopher David Abram.

Unlike traditional Nature documentaries, which tend to show us untouched landscapes devoid of human life, this film takes the viewer on a very different kind of journey: one in which we are encouraged to see ourselves through the eyes of the environment we inhabit.

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This ‘more-than-human’ world, a phrase Abram often uses in various forms to point to our human-centric viewpoint, is explored through both his voice-over and the film-making approach.

Unique experience 

Through impressive cinematography and immersive sound design, we are transported into a ‘more-than-world’ world where high-definition image, macro video, Foley sound and overlaid music manipulate our senses.

This tension between the narrative of Abram and the directors’ use of cutting-edge technology is what makes watching Becoming Animala unique experience.

When we first meet Abram he is walking through a dark forest on the hunt for the calls of male elk. In between the eerie night-time soundscape and hushed voices of the film-makers, we hear the animals’ strange bugling.

Abram muses that their evocative and plaintive sounds “seem to set the context for all of our human music-making”. In this manner he begins his thesis, where the human ear and eye are no longer central.

Later, exploring the textures of a tree, he describes his hand as part of the tactile field it explores, where the smooth surface of the tree is in fact touching him back, and “sampling the chemistry” of his skin.

Sensuous surroundings

Central to this theme, Abram discusses the earthly beginnings of human language. Set to images of rock drawings, we are told that written languages and phonetic alphabets no longer ‘image’ anything in the “sensuous surroundings”.

“The letters”, Abram says, “no longer function as windows opening onto a more-than-human language, but solely as mirrors reflecting the human face back upon itself.”

This leads to a heightened sense of awareness in which to simply look and be: trees sway majestically in the wind as we focus on the sound of their movement, moose gaze at us with knowing eyes and we can’t help but feel the sentience within, and a slow-motion river becomes silent.

However, at points, when Abram’s voice becomes too laboured and overbearing, or the images become almost too crisply defined and aesthetically fetishised, the effect is quickly lost.

This fine balance between descriptive narrative and visual imagery is part of the underlying question posed throughout the film.

Social media

Mettler, who tells us that capturing Nature on his camera has “strangely been an affirmation of the moment, of being in the present”, asks, “How can technology possibly help us connect with this vibrant life that surrounds us?” 

Becoming Animal is littered with visual links to this extremely important question, pushing us to examine and observe our own use of technology: the moose that looked at us earlier becomes a moose surrounded by people with long-lensed cameras, and a hot spring turns into a cinematic set for camera-phone narcissism.

Even the film-makers themselves occasionally appear in-shot, reflecting the film back upon itself and reminding us that what we are watching is a human construction. Through these scenes, it is hard not to feel that the task of decentring humans from their environments is largely weighed against the continual impulse we have to reaffirm our necessity in the world.

Emerging technology and the proliferation of social-media sharing is somehow about convincing ourselves that we have experienced, that we are important. Through this perpetual connectedness with others we sustain the illusion that we truly matter, at least to someone, somewhere.

These addictive behaviours are pertinent when we consider that the film we are watching is itself tangled up in this contradictory trap; simultaneously providing us with a heightened perception of our earthly bodies and their belonging to the environment, it uses technological film techniques that distort ‘normal’ visual and aural perceptions.

Environmental perceptions

Although the film provides a lot of places in which we can ponder this conundrum, the question gets slightly lost towards the end as Abram’s voice takes over more and more and the luscious images become a little repetitive.

It might be worth asking ourselves as viewers, then, how our consumption of images, where the world must be ‘filtered’ through technology for us to truly appreciate it, affects our perception of Nature, and whether this film somehow counters that, or makes us more aware of it.

Whatever conclusion you come to, and whether you find Abram’s prose wonderfully sensuous or simply a touch affected, Becoming Animal manages to open up these important questions in a way that is both self-aware and visually accomplished.

This is credit to the film-makers’ skills as image-makers and editors, thinking deeply about their roles not just as producers, but also as consumers. The film joins a healthy debate about our environmental perceptions in the age of the Anthropocene, and how we can begin to see the world through eyes not only of other animals, but of landscape too.

After all, if Abram is right, and our minds are not a “human property”, but rather a “property of the biosphere itself”, we should probably start thinking in an entirely different way about the planet on which we live: not as an object to be inhabited, but rather as a part of our very earthly being.

This Author 

Huw Wahl is an independent film-maker. He is currently working with the poet Stephen Watts on a project about landscape, language and memory. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.