The government is supporting plans by Shell to leave leftover oil and chemicals in some of its installations in the North Sea, according to an investigation by Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism team.

Oil and gas operators in the UK are decommissioning their infrastructure as it reaches the end of its life. This has cost companies in the sector more than £1 billion each year since 2014, according to a report by government spending watchdog the National Audit Office.

But decommissioning hundreds of North Sea oil and gas rig will also cost British taxpayers at least £24 billion, due to tax reliefs granted to companies in return for decommissioning.

Infrastructure

Shell has proposed leaving portions of its Brent oilfield installations in the North Sea, including the contents of concrete storage cells containing oil and chemicals at three of the four installations – Brent Bravo, Charlie and Delta.

In a document seen by Unearthed, the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED), part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), has given its full support to Shell’s proposal.

However, this may undermine the OSPAR Convention, an international agreement designed to protect the marine environment, Unearthed claimed.

The German government has written to environment secretary Michael Gove to express concerns that Shell has failed to properly account for long-term risks to the environment and ship traffic, according to a document seen by Unearthed.

Consultations

The investigative team understands that it is discussing whether to formally object to the UK’s proposal to allow Shell to leave the infrastructure in the sea. If three or more countries object, the government will have to undertake further consultations.

A spokesperson for Shell told Unearthed that it had met with the German government to discuss its decommissioning plans. “Our recommendations are the result of 10 years of research, involving more than 300 scientific and technical studies,” it said in a statement.

A spokesperson for BEIS said: “Decommissioning proposals are considered on a case-by-case basis and only approved following appropriate consultation with stakeholders.”

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

The primary need of any system is an input of energy and information that will allow it to maintain its existence, its pattern or structure, despite entropy. Systems have developed, have become more complex, over billions of years in order to address this need.

Live forms are systems that have developed an extraordinary variety of methods of meeting this need, and these methods themselves are themselves and relate to other sub-level needs which in turn need to be met by the system. The primary need of energy therefore cascades out into a structure of needs. These needs are different for every system, depending on the methods developed to meet the need for energy.

The human being is an example of this living system, and arguably the most complex yet developed. The primacy of energy flow through the system is expressed through the need for food, water and oxygen, without which we cannot survive for very long.

Anatomy of needs

Humans meet the need for food not as isolated, single systems. They meet this primary need through complex social structures with other human beings. The newborn child cannot feed itself. The human mind continues to develop after birth during feeding from another human being, and the most primary and fundamental characteristics of that mind are created when this relationship exists.

This series of articles will examine in detail some universal characteristics of systems, and the universal presence of such systems in our universe. It will also discuss how the individual human is a system, exhibiting a particular form of these universal characteristics.

Humans exist in groups, and these groups coalesce into organisations and societies – smaller systems together forming global systems. Finally, I want to talk about how consciousness of our existence of systems can help us work collectively towards system change, or development.

I have argued that the starting point of this (dialectical systems) analysis is need. I therefore want to examine human need in particular, developing a sketch of a taxonomy of need for human beings. I will argue later that any one activist will better engage allies and communities by first demonstrating an understanding of others’ needs and how these can be met.

There have been many attempts to map human needs. By way of example. Jonathan Bradshaw published his anatomy of needs in New Society in which he provides four distinct categories: normative needs, felt needs, expressed needs and comparative needs.

Satisfying

Normative needs are the minimum level of adequacy as set down by society, or the state. This might include the British Medical Association’s nutritional standard. The felt need is the want of the individual. The expressed need is that which stimulates action, such as hospital waiting list. Comparative need is that which someone feels if they do not have the same as others. While these definitions are useful, the taxonomy I will be relying on is quite different.

Humans have absolute needs, below which the individual cannot survive. This includes the universal need to counter entropy, and the need general to all life for a flow of energy – in the form of food. Absolute needs also include warmth, and protection from the elements – which takes the form of clothing, housing and fuel. These material needs are entirely natural, in that other animals also need food and, to varying degrees, shelter.

Humans are among those living systems that have developed a central nervous system, which senses its environment, through sight, sound, touch and so on. We experience pleasure in relation to objects that satisfy our needs, and pain in relation to objects which threaten our safety.

Further, we experience positive feelings such as joy when we know our needs can and will be met, and anxiety when the reverse is true. Feelings and emotions form part of the methods we as systems experience so that we satisfy our needs.

The human being in the process of satisfying these material needs has evolved to work collectively, and in the process has developed further absolute needs which are socially produced needs. These needs are material and also psychological. An adult human being may be able to survive for some time growing food, but in isolation may experience psychosis and therefore no longer function.

Food and shelter

Humans have evolved as humans because of a high level of dependency on the group at birth. A new born child, as with a newborn penguin or bonobo, simply would not survive without the long term, intensive care of an adult. Humans, like other animals, have evolved to need proximity to an adult (a theme I will return to at greater length later). These needs are as absolute for a human being as food and water.

Humans through our advanced tool making, through production, have now inhabited parts of the world where our needs are more general and complex than other animals – indeed, this may be our key distinguishing feature. Central heating, transport, avocados have become for individual humans an absolute need.

These social needs have through history themselves become more complex and the systems that deliver the objects and processes that satisfy them more intricate and interconnected. These social needs remain absolute: the need for money extends to the need for employment, which will in turn result in a need for clothing of a particular kind, for haircuts and the instruments of work.

These needs are culturally determined, and some absolute need in one culture may seem luxurious or frivolous in another. Indeed, needs continue to multiply in form and in extent as the objects and services that can satisfy them. Societies with higher levels of production in turn produce higher levels of need. The need for spectacles is today absolute, but only appeared

Contemporary society has developed levels of production that it is at least possible for all absolute needs to be met: there is currently enough food and shelter in the world for everyone, were it evenly distributed. There are therefore needs that are not absolute, nor natural, but nevertheless remain needs rather than falling into the categories of wants and desires.

Access to food

Needs that are not absolute can be understood as luxury. But it is impossible to define what objects and processes fall within each category by attempting to find a particular quality or indeed list of qualities. This categorisation is historically and culturally contingent. Meat today is understood to be necessary to meet an absolute need, while artichokes would be seen as a luxury. This may be reversed as plant based diets become more popular, and then necessary.

We as humans are intensely social animals that experience emotions ranging from joy and pleasure to anger and anxiety in relation to our needs, Therefore, when we perceive that other human beings are having their needs met, and we are not, we can experience jealousy and shame. We have a visceral understanding that our needs are not fixed, but are contingent and varied.

The classification any need as ‘absolute’ is not based on the material quality of the object of need, but instead on the social, historical context of the human relation to any object. The definition of luxury then depends on the system of meaning in which they sit.

Among the most significant social contexts which impact on human needs, their satisfaction, and their classification, is production. Production is the mode and method of society in changing natural resources into objects that can satisfy human needs. The nature and classifications of needs change as the levels of production societies develop, and the complexity and abundance of these objects increase.

Industrial capitalism has created some societies where absolute, basic human needs are met and indeed satisfied. I personally have never missed a meal through lack of access to food, nor have I slept outside in the cold unless it was entirely voluntary. I have always enjoyed at least some social connection. Human beings in this context have not stopped needing, and the objects of that need are absolute and necessary to avoid anxiety and other emotional (and physical) harms.

Accumulation

This is why an iPhone could not have represented an absolute need before it was invented, but in some contexts and for some individuals today does represent an absolute need (whether as a non-negotiable tool for work and therefore sustenance, or to maintain a place in a social group such as a school). This in turn explains intergenerational conflict as a parent who never had an iPhone (or indeed reading glasses) at school struggles to understand how this can be the object of absolute need in today’s context.

So far, I have described human beings as systems and discussed their needs on this basis. Human beings are open systems (they take in energy and material from outside, and also excrete material as waste). They are autopetic living systems, self making systems both in terms of generating themselves and in giving birth.

Almost all human beings today organise themselves within another system: the capitalist system. This system also has needs, it takes in energy and produces waste as a necessary activity in generating and regenerating itself as a system.

The capitalist system came into being and evolved (and could only evolve) through meeting the needs of the individual human beings that sustain it, much like the human being has evolved through meeting the needs of the individual cells from which it is made.

Capitalism has, however, evolved its own needs (the creation of profits and the accumulation of value). These needs are different to, and now clearly antagonistic to) the needs of the individual humans that constitute capitalism as a system.

Profit

We are all born into a capitalist society, and as such our needs are met through engaging with capitalism as a system. We use money to buy food, and pay the rent, see a film. We earn money through work. When the system works, and our needs are met, it seems fair. The system is based on the fact that we need money to meet our needs.

The inverse of this is that if we do not work, if we do not play our part in the capitalist system as  a whole, our needs will not be met. When we struggle to find work, we face hunger and exposure. The system then starts to feel extremely unfair. It is at its essence a system of coercion (supported by the violence of the debtors’ prison and bailiff).

The often repeated claim that we live in a free market where we have choice ignores the fact that we are not free to choose the type of market in which we live, where we must survive. It is extremely difficult to meet your needs without performing the function of the part in the capitalist system, the capitalist whole.

Capitalism like all other systems has needs, and has purpose. The capitalist system must fulfil certain functions for it to continue. The primary need of capitalism is to generate profit. In the capitalist system profit is generated through the investment of capital in the production of commodities – through the exhaustion of human labour in transforming nature (raw materials) – which are then sold in exchange for even more capital.

If any one investor within the capitalist system cannot get interest on a loan, or a return on their investment, they will withdraw the investment. If all investors withdraw their individual capitals then the system as a whole will no longer function. The result of capital returning a profit on investment across the whole system is an accumulation of capital. This means that over time fewer investors hold all the wealth of society, and need ever larger returns on that investment.

Credit cards

Capitalism, like a living organism without predation, reproduces itself, getting ever larger, until ultimately it exhausts its own supply of food and sinks for waste – its needs multiply until they can no longer be met by its environment.

The problem with capitalism, and the problem of capitalism, is the needs of this system are not the same as the needs of the human beings that enact it. Indeed, the needs of capitalism are diametrically opposed to those of the human beings that live in capitalist societies – including those with capital who need a return on their investment.

Capitalism needs to keep producing commodities for exchange, to make a profit. This need overwhelms and overrides human needs. Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, the first study of political economy assumed that the individual in working to meet their own need would unconsciously and naturally meet the needs of capital, of society, more generally.

But as we know, the advertising industry exists today in order to stimulate ever greater needs in us humans. If Smith’s ‘hidden hand’ was effective, there would be no need for advertising at all.

Capitalism needs us to keep buying, even when our fridges are full, our pillows are plump and our iPads are charged. The individual human being might have different needs: a rest from advertising, needs to save and pay off some credit cards, needs to spent more time at home with family, and less at work, and needs a stable environment where resources have not been exhausted and where landfill does not belch out climate damaging gasses.

Vital need

These needs are completely irrelevant to capitalism. Indeed, these particular needs are opposed to the needs of capital. It is the needs of capitalism today that win out, the system has greater purpose and agency than the individuals of which it is made.

Capitalism is the most productive economic system so far developed. It creates enormous wealth, which satisfies both necessary and natural needs and the artificial needs it has also created. The accumulation of capital in the hands of a small minority of the world population has meant that some individuals have extreme wealth.

Capitalism has satisfied almost all of the needs of those with the money to participate in effective demand. Therefore capitalism has to constantly generate new needs. These are artificial, as opposed to necessary or natural needs. These needs can include mouth wash, SUVs and private space travel. Capitalism needs and is very adept at ensuring these artificial needs are felt as, and indeed become, necessary needs. 

The environmental crisis we face is best understood from the standpoint of capitalism constantly creating artificial needs in real, living human beings in order to satisfy its systemic need for the accumulation of capital, and then destroying natural resources in the production of commodities that then satisfy these artificial needs.

Capitalism creates the environmental crisis – but it also creates its solution.

Freedom

The concentration and absolute levels of wealth in capitalism has created new needs, the most important and significant is freedom. There are human beings who never have to work, are not accountable to anyone, and can be reasonably confident that all their needs will be satisfied during the course of their lifetime, and that the same will be true for their heirs.

Freedom is also experienced by human beings who do not enjoy extreme wealth. Freedom from acute hunger is enjoyed by millions of people. Some countries have a significant cohort of human beings who have retired, have pensions, own their own homes and expect (and feel entitled to) a life of leisure.

They are also free to choose from an extraordinary variety of goods and services, which only centuries ago were beyond the wealthy of any individual.

Capitalism has created a form of freedom not previously enjoyed. However, it has managed this through violence and coercion. Humans who are unfree can see that other humans are free (often, because of our cultural practices, this is impossible to avoid even when desired).

Capitalism has created a vital need for freedom, for leisure, for creative time and space. This need is felt acutely by most human beings. But it is a need that capitalism itself cannot satisfy. I want to discuss this paradox (or contradiction) in my next article.

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.

Europe could be farmed entirely through agroecological approaches such as organic and still feed a growing population, a new scientific paper released yesterday shows.

Published a week after research revealed a steep decline in global insect populations linked to pesticide use, the ‘Ten Years for Agroecology’ study from European think tank IDDRi shows that pesticides can be phased out and greenhouse gas emissions radically reduced in Europe through agroecological farming, which would still produce enough healthy food for a growing population.

With new agricultural and dietary modelling, the report’s authors examine the reduction in yields that would result from a transition to agroecological farming.

Meat production

These reductions can be mitigated by eliminating food-feed competition – reorienting diets towards plant-based proteins and pasture-fed livestock, and away from grain-fed white meat. More than half the cereals and oilseed crops grown in the EU are currently fed to animals.

The paper suggests that agroecology – using ecological principles first and chemicals last in agriculture – presents a credible and holistic way of feeding Europe by 2050. But action is needed now. The next 10 years will be critical in engaging Europe in this agroecological transition.

Rob Percival, head of food policy at the Soil Association said: “Pesticide-hungry intensive production is not the only way to feed a growing population. The ‘Ten Years for Agroecology’ study shows that agroecological and organic farming can feed Europe a healthy diet, while responding to climate change, phasing out pesticides, and maintaining vital biodiversity.

“The idea of an entirely agroecological Europe is often considered unrealistic in terms of food security because agroecology sometimes means lower yields. But this new research shows that by refocussing diets around plant-based proteins and pasture-fed livestock, a fully agroecological Europe is possible. The UK government should respond by supporting agroecology within the Agriculture Bill.”

The ‘Ten Years for Agroecology’ study models a future in which meat production in Europe has been reduced by 40 percent, with the greatest reductions in the production of grain-fed pork and poultry.

Farmland biodiversity

It models European diets that include less meat and more plant-based proteins overall, but with an ongoing sustainable role for grass-fed meat and dairy and that Europe has achieved protein self-sufficiency, halting the import of protein crops for animal feed, which are often associated with deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions abroad.

This would mean Europe’s biodiverse and carbon-rich grasslands are maintained, nurturing biodiversity and contributing towards a reduction in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions of 40 percent.

The study is being published in parallel with the UK launch of the EAT-Lancet ‘planetary health diet’, which proposes a shift towards a more plant-based diet. The ‘Ten Years for Agroecology’ study addresses similar concerns to EAT-Lancet, but places greater emphasis on farmland biodiversity, and frames these concerns in a specifically European context.

The IDDRi paper has already launched in Europe, but the Soil Association has worked with the authors to bring the English translation of this research to the UK.  The paper will be launched at the EAT-Lancet debate 20th February, co-hosted by the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission and Centre for Food Policy Food Thinkers.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from the Soil Association. 

Many of our world leaders have remained almost silent about the UN warning that we have just 12 years to halt a climate catastrophe. That’s why the Million Dollar Vegan campaign offered $1m to charity if Pope Francis chooses to eat only plant-based foods during Lent, and encourages Catholics around the world to do the same.

The campaign has so far attracted more than 500 media articles in more than 40 countries, but this is no PR stunt. It is a carefully calculated campaign to get the world talking about the ecological breakdown that is underway, and to urge world leaders to step up to the plate.

Although climate change is regularly reported on, political leaders are all too often complacent or complicit, while environmental groups tend to focus their firepower on lobbying governments over fossil fuels and clean energy, while failing to empower individuals to take meaningful action in their own lives. Turning off lights and switching to a green energy tariff will only achieve so much.

Global farmland

We need greater ambitions. And so we must appeal directly to world leaders to take action. That’s why the Million Dollar Vegan campaign approached a leader who is not bound by party political factions or short-term strategies designed to shore up support for the next election.

The campaign instead transcends nationalities and provides a global approach, which is why it made a plea to Pope Francis, the head of the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church.

We know Pope Francis cares. In his encyclical letter in 2015, he wrote at length about the environment, climate change, deforestation, loss of wildlife and man’s tyrannical use of animals. What he didn’t mention – and what he may not know – is that animal agriculture underpins and drives this destruction.

Animal farming is a key driver of climate change, creating more emissions than the fuel from every car, bus, ship, plane and train on the planet. According to environmental researcher at University of Oxford, Joseph Poore, by choosing a plant-based diet, we each reduce our emissions by 15 per cent, which is not insignificant, but that figure increases dramatically over the longer term.

This is because it takes a lot less land to produce plant foods than animal products. In fact, 83 per cent of global farmland is used to produce animal products, but it provides just 18 per cent of our calories. It’s incredibly wasteful of the Earth’s resources.

Intensive agriculture

If we ate only plant foods, Poore estimates that we would need 75 per cent less land, which would be returned to nature. As trees regrow, they will take carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 30 to 50 per cent. Poore said: “As a solution, diet change is incredibly powerful.”

Because creating animal products requires so much land, animal farming is a leading driver of deforestation. Ancient forests are razed to the ground largely to make way for grazing or to grow feed for farmed animals, and the wild animals who lived there are killed or displaced.

It’s easy to think of these losses as historic and yet in the last 15 years, we have lost tropical forests the size of the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal. And in the last 50 years, around 60 per cent of all animal populations have been wiped off the face of the Earth. Farming – particularly animal farming – is one of the leading causes.

With the loss of habitat and animals comes the loss of whole species. Our meat-centric diets are driving them to extinction. It is so serious that scientists say the sixth mass extinction is underway. But this is the first mass extinction to be caused by a species – and it is us.

Extinction is not solely a problem for people in other lands. In the UK, one-fifth of all wild mammals are at high risk of extinction, with some species like the wildcat and the black rat already on the brink. Birds, hedgehogs, bees and other pollinators are all in decline, with intensive agriculture cited as a key driver.

Walking the walk

Moreover, animal agriculture is a key polluter of air, land and waterways. There are billions of farmed animals on the planet, producing gargantuan quantities of waste. It’s too much to be absorbed by the land as fertiliser and so slurry is stored in tanks and lagoons, from which it all too often leaks out, threatening drinking supplies and causing widespread destruction to aquatic wildlife.

Slurry – as well as industrial fertilisers – is responsible for killing whole areas of the ocean, which are known as ‘dead zones’ because no animal can survive there. Producing food for a vegan population reduces nitrogen and phosphorous pollution by about 50 per cent, according to Poore.

For all these reasons, he said: “Going vegan is the most powerful change most people can make in their lives to reduce their environmental impact.”

It is absolutely clear that individuals can make a real difference, which the Million Dollar Vegan campaign wholeheartedly wishes to inspire, but we need more. That’s why our aim is to force change at institutional level.

While we appreciate the concern shown by Pope Francis towards these serious ecological issues, we desperately need institutions like the Catholic Church to start walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

Education campaigns

At institutional level, we can make huge and sweeping changes to defend the living planet in a much shorter timeframe. We have a chance to limit the devastating impacts of climate change and preserve species under threat.

Each person that eats vegan for Lent will save emissions equivalent to a flight from London to Berlin, and if every Catholic on the planet takes part, it will be equivalent to the whole of the Philippines not emitting CO2 for a year. Now, just imagine if they stayed vegan.

Of course, this is not the sole responsibility of Pope Francis and the Catholic Church, and us as individuals – businesses must also be pressed to act. Retailers should be creating and promoting more and better plant-based foods.

Vegan meals should be the default in work canteens, in schools, and on flights. Poore’s research has shown that the environmental impact of animal foods is almost always larger than that of plant foods, and that the most sustainable dairy is still worse for the planet than the least sustainable soya milk. Environmental impact labelling on food products is needed to help people make better choices.

And of course, governments must act through state-sponsored education campaigns, ending subsidies for animal agriculture, and taxing the products that cause the most harm.

There is much to be done. But it must be done, not just for the sake of our common home – though that should be reason enough – but also to protect people from the devastating impacts of antibiotic resistance that is driven by animal agriculture, and because imprisoning animals in squalid conditions, taking their young, their milk and their lives is utterly inhumane. I like to think that human nature is better than this.

And so Million Dollar Vegan will lobby institutions to try to kick-start these desperately needed actions, because world leaders do have a moral obligation to go vegan, and to encourage all to follow. But there is no time to lose, and each of us can make a difference every day with every meal we eat.

This Author

Matthew Glover founded the Veganuary campaign, which has seen more than 500,000 people go vegan for January. He now aims to magnify his impact and create global change through Million Dollar Vegan. @1mdollarvegan. The free Vegan Starter Kit available at www.milliondollarvegan.com is a great place for each of us to start.

New public polling published today (Thursday, 21 February 2019) by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) reveals that less than a quarter of people would support weakening limits on earthquakes caused by fracking. More than twice as many people support the rules as they stand.

More than half of all respondents to a survey commissioned by CPRE believe that the government should prioritise the concerns of the general public when making decisions on whether or not to weaken regulations, while just one person in 25 believes that the views of the fracking industry should take precedent.

Despite these overwhelming public concerns, just 13 percent of respondents feel the government is listening to the public on the issue of fracking; more than half (51%) believe they are being ignored. The government’s own data, published earlier this month, shows that support for fracking is the lowest it has been.

Industry lobbying

The poll, which was carried out by YouGov on the behalf of the countryside charity, follows a series of calls from fracking companies for the government to loosen regulations that force them to stop fracking if it causes earthquakes with a magnitude of 0.5 or above.

In response to demands from industry, the government has said that it does not intend to review earthquake regulations, stating: ‘We set these regulations in consultation with industry and we have no plans to review them.’ However, despite these comments, there have been more recent reports that a review is on the horizon [5] with fresh calls from industry that included a direct plea to the Prime Minister [6].

Tom Fyans, deputy chief executive at CPRE, said: “The public has made it abundently clear that they do not want earthquake regulations to be weakened. But given that they don’t believe that the government is listening to their concerns over fracking – at a time when we are facing the unprecedented threat of climate change – it is imperative that action is taken to restore public faith.

“If the government rolls over on this latest bout of industry lobbying and relaxes these standards to make way for more fracking – which exist to protect the public, our countryside and environment – it will only ramp up public opposition to new heights.

“At a time when government proposals threaten to impose fast-tracked fracking over communities’ heads, it is crucial that it reassures the public that it is taking their concerns seriously.”

CPRE believes the government must reassure the public by issuing a definitive statement confirming that it will not weaken regulations that pause fracking when it causes earthquakes with a magnitude of 0.5 or above.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from  the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

New public polling published today (Thursday, 21 February 2019) by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) reveals that less than a quarter of people would support weakening limits on earthquakes caused by fracking. More than twice as many people support the rules as they stand.

More than half of all respondents to a survey commissioned by CPRE believe that the government should prioritise the concerns of the general public when making decisions on whether or not to weaken regulations, while just one person in 25 believes that the views of the fracking industry should take precedent.

Despite these overwhelming public concerns, just 13 percent of respondents feel the government is listening to the public on the issue of fracking; more than half (51%) believe they are being ignored. The government’s own data, published earlier this month, shows that support for fracking is the lowest it has been.

Industry lobbying

The poll, which was carried out by YouGov on the behalf of the countryside charity, follows a series of calls from fracking companies for the government to loosen regulations that force them to stop fracking if it causes earthquakes with a magnitude of 0.5 or above.

In response to demands from industry, the government has said that it does not intend to review earthquake regulations, stating: ‘We set these regulations in consultation with industry and we have no plans to review them.’ However, despite these comments, there have been more recent reports that a review is on the horizon [5] with fresh calls from industry that included a direct plea to the Prime Minister [6].

Tom Fyans, deputy chief executive at CPRE, said: “The public has made it abundently clear that they do not want earthquake regulations to be weakened. But given that they don’t believe that the government is listening to their concerns over fracking – at a time when we are facing the unprecedented threat of climate change – it is imperative that action is taken to restore public faith.

“If the government rolls over on this latest bout of industry lobbying and relaxes these standards to make way for more fracking – which exist to protect the public, our countryside and environment – it will only ramp up public opposition to new heights.

“At a time when government proposals threaten to impose fast-tracked fracking over communities’ heads, it is crucial that it reassures the public that it is taking their concerns seriously.”

CPRE believes the government must reassure the public by issuing a definitive statement confirming that it will not weaken regulations that pause fracking when it causes earthquakes with a magnitude of 0.5 or above.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from  the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

MPs are set to debate four post-Brexit trade deals tomorrow (Thursday, 21 January 2019) in a move likely to launch formal trade negotiations with the USA and Britain’s application to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

But campaigners have warned MPs that the debate shows the almost complete lack of power which they will have to guide, scrutinise or stop trade deals after Brexit.

The debate follows a government consultation on the deals which provoked what is believed to be the biggest public response in history, with 600,000 individuals and organisations expressing concerns about the impact the deal could have.

Meaningless

Food standards, the NHS and the introduction of ‘corporate court’ systems which could lead to the British government getting sued in secret tribunals by some of the biggest companies on the planet were of particular concern.

Campaigners are warning that the government has failed to put into practice any framework for replacing the current scrutiny and accountability mechanisms which exist in the EU for dealing with trade deals. In effect, this hands the government very substantial powers to make sweeping social and economic changes outside of normal parliamentary processes.

The Trump administration has already made clear that any trade deal with the US would need to substantially alter British food standards and increase medicine prices.

Nick Dearden, of Global Justice Now, said: “This debate simply highlights the woeful lack of democracy governing Britain’s post-Brexit trade policy.

Following a pretty meaningless public consultation, which nonetheless showed how concerned we all are about the government’s trade plans, the Secretary of State is expecting to simply start negotiating these deals in six weeks’ time.

Final deal

“Neither parliament nor the public are allowed to stop Liam Fox negotiating away our food standards or our public services. This must change before it’s too late.”

David Lawrence, of the Trade Justice Movement, said: “Liam Fox has again demonstrated that he does not take Parliamentary oversight of trade deals seriously – despite his previous promise, that MPs will be given ‘the opportunity to consider… the Government’s approach to negotiations and the potential implications of any agreements’.

“Trade deals with places like the US could have massive impacts on social rights, the environment, food and health standards in the UK. The current process for agreeing trade agreements give MPs very little say.

“Thursday’s debate could be the only chance for MPs to debate these deals, and does not offer any assurances that MPs will be able to influence negotiations, access texts or get a meaningful vote on the deals.”

Jean Blaylock, of War on Want, said: “We know the Secretary of State has a lot riding on doing a deal with the US but we don’t know what he is prepared to offer to get it. Thursday’s debate may be the only chance to find out.

“But more than that, it may be the only chance for parliament to have any say before an eventual deal is implemented. Trade officials can start negotiations, do the deal behind closed doors, finish and sign it, and parliament isn’t even guaranteed a vote on the final deal.”

This article

This article is based on a press release from War on Want.

The toxic heavy metal mercury can find its way into the blood of unborn babies through the placenta by “camouflaging” itself as an amino acid.

This finding was the outcome of research carried out by a team from Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences and the Medical University of Vienna (both Austria).

In contrast, little is known about placental transport of iron, an essential element that is often found in insufficient quantities in expectant mothers and their unborn foetuses.

Mother

Based on the methods used and experience gained in the mercury study, the inter-university team is now looking at this transport process in a new project, which is also being supported by NÖ Forschungs- und Bildungsges.m.b.H. (NFB).

Facilitating the exchange of metabolites, nutrients and gases between mother and foetus is one of the most important functions of the placenta. It is vital that harmful substances in the mother’s blood do not threaten the life of the unborn child.

The placenta is effective at blocking cadmium and lead, but the protective mechanism fails to stop mercury. This toxic heavy metal is transported from the mother’s blood stream into the foetus’s circulatory system with astonishing efficiency.

Until now, it was not clear how this happens, but now a team of physicians from Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences in Krems (KL Krems) and the Medical University of Vienna (MUV) has verified the reasons.

“Essentially, the cause is very simple,” explains Prof. Claudia Gundacker, who headed the research team. “Mercury is present in the blood in a form that is structurally similar to an amino acid which the placenta absorbs from the mother’s blood.

Newborns

“So the mercury ‘disguises’ itself and deceives the system.” In fact, mercury, including the neurotoxicant methylmercury, bonds easily with amino acids like cysteine, which contains sulphur. This compound of mercury and cysteine is similar to the amino acid methionine, which is taken up by the placenta using a specific mechanism known as system L.

Using cell cultures that are very similar to the placenta in the in vivo situation, Prof. Gundacker’s team showed for the first time that system L transports methylmercury like an amino acid. This also explains an earlier finding that foetuses have a higher concentration of mercury in their blood than the mothers. In effect, the placental transport mechanisms pump mercury into the unborn child’s bloodstream.

The findings, which have been published in the journal Toxicology and the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, confirm that the methods used by the team are suitable for analysing the placenta’s transport mechanisms.

All the more reason, then, to use these methods for further studies. Prof. Hans Salzer of KL Krems said: “Now we are also looking at the uptake of iron into the placenta.

“In contrast to mercury, foetuses need iron. But unfortunately, iron deficiency is common among pregnant women and newborns, even in highly developed countries. We can only address this problem effectively if we have a better understanding of how it is transported.”

Staggering

This is the focus of a project that the group has recently launched. The next aim is to identify the proteins responsible for iron transport in the placenta and test their function using cell cultures. The team will also establish precisely where these proteins occur in the placenta.

Then, the focus will switch to examining the relationship between the activity of the proteins in the placenta and the iron levels of mother-child pairs. The researchers have access to 100 data sets from healthy, non-anaemic mother-child-pairs, which will enable them to produce comprehensive results.

In view of the placenta’s importance for the health of unborn children and expectant mothers, the gaps in our understanding of its transport methods are staggering. However, the KL Krems-MUV team is now rapidly filling in these blanks thanks to its international expertise and its methods, which are now firmly established.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from University Hospital Tulln, Austria. Image courtesy of nursingschoolsnearme.com.

Thousands of women across the world – from the UK, the USA and Australia, to Kenya, South Africa and Nepal – will be gathering to sing for the trees in celebration of International Women’s Day, Friday 8 March.

The “mass of gentle activism” includes 53 events in parks, forests and gardens in 14 countries across the globe and is part of a campaign being spearheaded by global women-led reforestation movement, TreeSisters.

The events will raise awareness of the crucial role trees play in mitigating climate change, as well as the vital role women are playing in the restoration of the world’s forests.

Dynamic change

TreeSisters, a UK registered charity, had so far funded the planting of more than three million trees in the tropics – increasing the capacity for reforestation to provide up to 50 percent of our global warming solution over the next 50 crucial years.

Pollyanna Darling, a spokesperson for TreeSisters, is leading the Sing for the Trees campaign. She said: “On International Women’s Day we want to honour the remarkable role trees play in mitigating climate change and sustaining a healthy planet.

“Trees restore life in so many ways. They provide clean air, oxygen and food, boost our health and wellbeing, sequester carbon, filter pollution from the air, minimise flood damage, prevent soil erosion, seed rainfall, nourish our rivers and oceans, provide a bountiful habitat for wildlife, and countless other benefits.

“With the theme of International Women’s Day being to build a gender-balanced world, we also want to honour the important role women play in bringing a feminine response to climate change.”

She added: “Our care for living systems and capacity to rally together to create dynamic change in the world, inspiring others by example, really matter at this time. We influence our children, our extended families and our communities. The world needs women to raise their voices and singing for trees is a beautiful, nourishing way to do that.”

Primary allies

Details of Sing for the Trees activities happening in the UK and across the globe can be found on the TreeSisters Facebook events page, with more being added every day.

Events in the UK include an appearance in Stroud by renowned singer and song maker Liz Terry ; with singing in Ceredigion, Wales led by Jenny Smith, programme director of TreeSisters; and another in Great Malvern coordinated by Susan Hale, author of Sacred Space Sacred Sound and founder of the annual global event Earth Day-Sing for the Trees.

TreeSisters are encouraging women worldwide to take a leadership role, raise their voices and set up their own Sing for the Trees events on 8 or 9 March, whether in an organised way, or more informally.  The charity is also inviting women to use the opportunity to take some restorative time out in nature from their typically busy, care-giving lives.

Clare Dubois, founder and CEO of TreeSisters, said: “Women tend to give a lot, taking little time for ourselves and our energy can get very depleted. Singing opens our hearts and gives us energy, joy and hope, something we really need right now as we face climate change.

“Trees are a huge hope and are primary allies for us all. Singing for the trees is a way of coming into connection with the forests we love, and with others – for the sheer fun of it. This International Women’s Day, we invite you to step into leadership and coordinate a Sing for the Trees event for your community. You’re not alone, we’re doing it together all around the world.”

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Sing for the Trees. If you would like to coordinate a Sing for the Trees event for your local community, TreeSisters would love to support you. The charity has a resource of songs, a coordinator’s kit and a support group for coordinators. To find out more, sign up to the TreeSisters online community platform, TreeSisters Nest: http://bit.ly/TSNestjoin. Once you’ve joined, locate the Sing for the Trees Group.

Shipping specialists from around the world are shuttering themselves in the International Maritime Organization’s central London headquarters this week to thrash out a number of issues surrounding the threat of pollution to the climate and oceans from the global shipping industry.

This is an industry that for most of us remains unseen, but which we depend on for bringing us stuff from all over the planet.

At this meeting, the elegantly titled “PPR6”, delegations will be tasked with designing a ban on the use and carriage of heavy fuel oil, as fuel, from Arctic waters, and the identification of measures which will reduce emissions of black carbon from the burning of fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel

Many member states of the IMO – the UN body that regulates shipping – already voiced clear support for the ban at the IMO in April 2018. 

Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and the United States, along with Germany, the Netherlands and New Zealand, proposed the ban on the use and carriage as fuel of HFO by ships operating in the Arctic, as the simplest approach to reducing the risks associated with HFO.

Their proposal was supported by Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Ireland, Japan, the League of Arab States, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.

These progressive stances are being met with some leaps of faith and innovation from some leading shipping players. This is notable for an industry that traditionally tends to move at a near glacial pace, and happy to stay quiet during international climate negotiations.

A clearer picture is emerging – of the climate impacts from global shipping, the health risks to cruise ship passengers and crews from fossil fuel pollution, and the dodges used by the cruise industry to get away with dirty practices.

Filthier

It seems impossible to “get away from it all”, when the air on board your ship is filthier than the world’s most polluted cities. And the polluters won’t get away with it for much longer.

The shipping sector is changing – it has gone the tentative floating of zero emission concepts, to full speed ahead, with some commentators referring to a “gold rush” mentality in the quest for cleaner shipping fuels.

Perhaps shipping industry leaders are finally taking inspiration from Lampedusa’s The Leopard: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”. They could even end up demanding more progressive regulations from policymakers.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Sweden’s shipping sector is preparing to end the use of fossil fuels domestically by 2045. This follows recent claims from shipping giant Maersk that it is aiming for a zero co2 emission target by 2050 – followed by Engine manufacturer MAN Energy Solutions saying this is “technically possible”, but citing a 2030 as a target.

Elsewhere, Norway’s Arctic cruise operator Hurtigruten is building hybrid vessels, and the country is experimenting with hydrogen-powered ferries.

Warming

Stena Line, one of the largest ferry operators, has been experimenting with methanol and battery-powered propulsion. Iceland is due to get its first battery-powered car ferry. Back in October 2018, The Economist reported that “Wind-powered ships are making a comeback”.

All of this is a good thing – the sooner that shipping companies veer away from heavy fuel oil, the better. HFO is a dirty and polluting fossil fuel that powers ships throughout our seas and oceans – accounting for 80 percent of marine fuel used worldwide.

Around 75 percent of marine fuel currently carried in the Arctic is HFO; over half by vessels flagged to non-Arctic states – countries that have little if any connection to the Arctic.

Already banned in Antarctic waters and in the waters around Svalbard, HFO is also a greater source of harmful emissions of air pollutants, such as sulphur oxide, and particulate matter, including black carbon, than alternative fuels such as distillate fuel and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Ice melts

When emitted and deposited on Arctic snow or ice, the climate warming effect of black carbon is up to five times more than when emitted at lower latitudes, such as in the tropics – just this week there’s been a spill of HFO in the Solomon Islands.

In addition, if HFO is spilled in cold polar waters, it emulsifies, proving almost impossible to clean up, and breaks down very slowly. A HFO spill would have long-term devastating effects on Arctic indigenous communities, livelihoods and the marine ecosystems they depend upon.

Banning it removes this problem – and any potential costs in doing must be handled at a policy level, without passing costs onto communities. 

Climate change is already fuelling temperature rises in the Arctic that are double the increases further south. Changes in the Arctic don’t stay in the Arctic – they resonate further south.

As the Arctic warms, the sea ice melts and opens up new shipping channels, larger cargo vessels, such as container ships carrying consumer goods could divert to Arctic waters in search of shorter journey times, as an alternative to the Suez Canal and the Straits of Malacca.

Back-pedalled

In September 2018, the first commercial container ship – owned by Maersk – crossed the Northern Sea Route, from Vladivostok to Bremerhaven.

While this crossing was something of an experiment – and Maersk maintained that it did not use HFO, a full commercial rollout of container ships crossing the Arctic would greatly increase the volumes of black carbon emitted in Arctic waters, as well as the risks of HFO spills.

As this week’s meeting opened in London, IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim said that “with future vessel traffic in Arctic waters projected to rise, the associated risk of an accidental oil spill into Arctic waters may also increase. It is therefore imperative that the [IMO] takes robust action to reduce the risks to the Arctic marine environment associated with the use and carriage of heavy fuel oil as fuel by ships”.

Yet a couple of Arctic nations are fence-sitting on the HFO issue: Canada and Russia. Canada was initially enthusiastic – with Justin Trudeau’s government co-signing an agreement with the Obama Administration for a “phase-down” of the fuel from their respective Arctic waters in late 2016.

Since then, Canada has back-pedalled, and made much of its IMO proposal to assess the impact of such a ban on Arctic communities. What Canada has so far failed to mention its submissions to the IMO, is that there is widespread, well documented support from indigenous Arctic communities from Canada, the US and Greenland.

Positive change

Russia has considered a ban on use of HFO in the Arctic as a “last resort”. However, one of the biggest users of HFO in the Arctic, Russian state-owned shipping company Sovcomflot has spoken openly about the need to move away from oil-based fuels, and marine bunker fuel supplier Gazpromneft expects to halt fuel oil use from 2025.

Significantly, in August 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Finnish President Sauli Niinisto made a joint statement on the need to move to cleaner ships’ fuels in the Arctic.

The outcomes from this week’s IMO meeting will spawn no great headlines, no grand speeches from heads of state. IMO member states already agreed, back in April 2018, to move forward on an Arctic HFO ban, and recognized the need to reduce the impact in the Arctic of shipping’s black carbon emissions over five years ago.

But what happens this week is critical to addressing the threats to the Arctic, rather than just talking about them. Banning of the the world’s dirtiest fuel from what remains one of the Earth’s remaining pristine environments should be a no-brainer – hardly challenging when compared with the task of reversing climate change globally.

Banning HFO use in the Arctic is a quick and simple step in the right direction – alternative fuel options are available, and non-fossil fuel forms of propulsion are on the horizon. The global environment, and this planet’s climate is under severe pressure.

Real, positive change is required across the board, from everyone on the planet. Even with the new-found enthusiasm within the shipping industry, there is much work in negating the impact of shipping on our health, and the health of the planet. Ensuring the Arctic is protected from oil spills and black carbon pollution from heavy fuel is one these ways – it’s achievable, and within our grasp.

This Author

Dave Walsh is an advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, which campaigns for a ban on the use and carriage of heavy fuel from Arctic shipping.