This week Friends of the Earth will make an intervention at the Court of Appeal to support the right to peaceful protest.

The green group is supporting the appeals brought by Joe Corré, activist and fashion designer, and Joe Boyd, who are challenging a wide-ranging and draconian attempt from the UK’s biggest oil and gas company Ineos to stop so-called ‘unlawful’ protests at their sites.

The case has far-reaching implications for members of the public to protest oil and gas extraction and the appeal is the latest attempt by campaigners to stop a swathe of injunctions against peaceful protests: there are now court orders granted to five fossil fuel companies in force at sites spread across 10 counties.

Suppressing protest

Controversially, these injunctions apply to ‘persons unknown’ rather than specific, named individuals or groups, and their sanctions apply to activities which have been used for legal protest such as slow walking. For this reason, Corré and Boyd have put themselves forward as defendants to oppose Ineos’ injunction in the courts.

Friends of the Earth is intervening in their appeals to support the democratic right to peaceful protest. Having been granted by the High Court, the Court of Appeal will examine a number of important points of law to establish whether it has been granted lawfully. Friends of the Earth is represented in court by barristers from Garden Court Chambers.

Joe Corré, said: “I’m quite used to going to court these days. We’re in this kind of war against a fracking industry that knows it’s on its way out but is clinging on as long as it can. What the industry has done is put the frighteners on people and curbed their right to peacefully protest.

“Ineos’s wide-ranging injunction has also been adopted by other fracking companies to shut down protest. They’ve all copied the ‘persons unknown’ thing.

“These local communities affected by fracking have spent god knows how many weeks, months, years, writing letters to their MPs, finding out information, talking to each other, fighting off all attempts by fracking companies at every opportunity. For years they have successfully held back fracking operations in this country and kept the gas in the ground”.

Legal challenge

Dave Timms, head of political affairs at Friends of the Earth, said: “Friends of the Earth intervened in this important case because private oil and gas companies want to limit the public’s hard-fought-for right to peaceful protest. We support Joe Corré and Joe Boyd in their legal challenge to stop Ineos stifling free speech among citizens who want to exercise their right to peacefully protest about the impact of fracking on their environment.

“These draconian injunctions create a climate of fear where people taking lawful protest are uncertain about whether their actions could breach an injunction with the risk of imprisonment or having their assets seized.  They put  decisions about public order policing  into the hands of the oil and gas industry with their army of corporate lawyers and private security firms.”

Debaleena Dasgupta, lawyer, Liberty, said: “The use of injunctions by private companies to criminalise peaceful protest is deeply concerning and a step towards the privatisation of justice.

“The granting of such broad orders to defend business interests undermines some of the most basic principles of a free and fair society and places a huge cost burden on the small number of individuals and organisations willing and able to defend them.

“If our fundamental right to protest is to mean anything, we must be able to peacefully express dissent even – especially – when it is inconvenient to those being protested against, no matter how powerful they are.”

This Author

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

We need more, not less. The system of human needs must be extended, expanded and elevated if we are ever to escape climate breakdown and a more generalised ecological collapse.

Read our On The Nature of Change series here.

Capitalism is causing ecological crisis precisely because it limits human needs, and because the actual satisfaction of human needs would result in the collapse of capitalism itself.

This is the exact opposite of what many environmentalists claim today, and appears to be self contradictory or paradoxical. So what does it mean?

Wrapping paper

What we see all around us is an astonishing orgy of consumerism, with a bewildering variety of goods being bought every day. These goods are made from the earth’s depleted resources, and quickly become rubbish filling our gorged landfill sites.

The problem prima facie appears to be that people want too much, want too many things, and are buying too much rubbish. The needs and wants of these consumers are not legitimate, it seems, and are destructive. They need to buy less, and make better buying choices.

Environmentalism in recent decades has therefore focused a significant amount of its attention and efforts messaging to private individuals, acting as consumers.

The single use plastics campaign has been extraordinarily successful on its own terms in the last twelve months. We are told to consume less palm oil. To give up meat. To avoid avocados, less soya, less food.

The core claim in these campaigns remains, however, that needs as expressed by almost all people are not legitimate. They are wants, rather than needs. People want phones, they don’t need them. They want Firesticks and wrapping paper and coffee served in paper cups. We have to give up on these wants. Queue the Rolling Stones.

Consumer

This is a problem because the attack on consumer culture is – and will be experienced as – taking away something that is already enjoyed. It is difficult to hear, especially amid the constant din of advertising saying ‘you need this’, ‘you must have that’, ‘everyone else is enjoying everything you do not have’.

To tell one community that it will never enjoy the wealth or security currently enjoyed by another is highly likely to elicit only a negative response. To tell another community under stress that next year will be harder than today will also fail.

Even to tell the wealthiest community that the privileges and luxuries that it currently enjoys must be surrendered without resistance will – and has been – a recipe for failure.

Environmental campaigning that assumes that people’s acutely felt needs are not going to be met is in fact a barrier to people coming to appreciate the need for climate action.

Read our On The Nature of Change series here.

The decision taken that the environment movement should focus on the individual was made in part because challenging and confronting capitalism seemed too radical, both in terms of political positioning and scale.

Natural world

It seemed easier to attack the purchasing practices of a million individuals than the production practices of an entire world economic system. But if capitalism is too vast to challenge directly, how can it be outcompeted in messaging and behaviour change?

The problem is capitalism needs consumerism, more than any individual needs to consume. Capitalism as society, as economy, creates a system of needs of which the individual consumer is a small if necessary part. Capitalism in aggregate has significantly more resources to influence – and, through work, to coerce – individuals than any environmental organisation or cause.

Capitalism is a highly productive system which in parts of the world has created wealth for the majority of people that had only been enjoyed by very few. The crisis of capitalism is not underproduction (as it was in Adam Smith’s era) but is now overproduction.

The system of capitalism has already saturated people’s needs, and constantly needs to create new, artificial, needs. This is the mode and the function of the trillion dollar advertising industry, which has now subsumed the creatives industries, from music to high art. This is why we have Black Friday. This is why the profligacy and waste of our society is so acute, so apparent, that it is the primary target for many environmentalists.

The economic system is fundamentally about creating profit from investment, the accumulation of capital, in money terms. It is about making numbers on spreadsheets even higher numbers. This money signal means all needs must be quantifiable and subsumed to profit making. Everything is reduced to its cost, and the cost is reduced to the labour it takes to make them. Human lives are reduced to hours worked, and pounds per hour.

Exponential

Capitalism is in crisis not because people want to consume too much, but the very opposite: because the productive capacity of the system now far outstrips the needs and desires of those who have the wealth to be active agents in this economic world. Asking for more will not make a difference.

Capitalism is not in crisis because individuals need too much, want too much. The very opposite is true: capitalism continues to destroy the natural environment, and what remains of our natural world, in an infinite pursuit of profit. This is its purpose and function as a system. To change or limit this purpose is to change capitalism so fundamentally that it no longer functions or takes the form of capitalism.

The investor, or owner, in capitalism is reduced to the need for profit, and all other needs in the capitalist system are subsumed by this single need. The need of the worker, any person who needs to earn a living, is simply to have enough to survive, for life to feel worthwhile. These needs are diametrically opposed, a contradiction that leads to crisis.

Read our On The Nature of Change series here.

Capitalism, like natural systems, will – for this reason – cause its own destruction. The emergence of the climate breakdown is one manifestation of this concept. Where capitalism once divided us into classes, into owners and workers, into consumers and producers, it now unites us. The human species as a whole needs fundamental change.

Necessary needs

There is no class, or sector, or nation of people that does not need to prevent climate change, and therefore needs a radical change in how our economic systems function. How well this need is understood or appreciated by any individual varies enormously, but as the crisis matures the variance will by necessity reduce.

People holding the anxiety of climate change may have greater needs than those who continue to deny its urgency. Those living in geographical areas most impacted by climate change will need more support, more resources. They may not respond well to messages that they need less, must use less, that what they feel as needs are unnecessary wants. Taking away what they feel they need will cause resistance.

But you cannot have your cake and eat it. This much is clear. We – or more precisely, capitalism – cannot continue to produce the goods that appear to satisfy consumer needs for much longer, and certainly not at rate that is increasing exponentially.

The capitalist system attempts to negate this restriction through economic growth – allowing for the accumulation of capital and valorisation of investments through profits for the one percent without reducing the quality of life for the 99 percent. But in reality the contradiction is exported into the developing world, and into increased appropriation of nature, stress on the environment, pollution of the skies.

So how can we encourage people to need more, to have richer more fulfilling lives without reinforcing the falsehoods of capitalism and destroying what is left of the natural habitats and spaces (or indeed fertile agricultural land) on our finite planet?

To resolve this contradiction, to solve the apparent paradox, we need to have a better understanding of human needs.

Brands

We need to transition from a capitalist to a post-capitalist economic system to prevent the compound ecological and social crises becoming all consuming and permanent. This by necessity involves evolving from the system of needs that sits within capitalism, and one that instead nests within the earth’s ecological system.

The transition beyond capitalism will only manifest when people need more than capitalism can provide. But this is not more of the same. We need to saturate people’s basic needs, meet their necessary needs, so they have the confidence and self value to move beyond them and demand more.

The solution to the ecological crisis is to encourage everyone to expand and enhance their needs, they deserve more and they deserve better. Expanding – rather than contracting – the human system of needs will not lead to even greater levels of material production.

Read our On The Nature of Change series here.

The highest needs of human beings are connection, community, learning, play, free time, freedom and security. These are non-material needs, easily produced and reproduced through relationships of reciprocity. They are carbon neutral. 

People with a relative level of wealth do not need bigger televisions, but may need better television, or entertainment that is better than television.

Transformed

Teenagers are constantly reprimanded for following celebrities on social media using smartphones, but  can this really be understood and characterised as having too much, rather than having too little when local live music venues and theatres have been replaced with Costas, where there is no local fame, and not much local community, few career opportunities, almost no places for creative and social activity, and where peer pressure is fuelled by brands?

You really do need a working smartphone to survive in school today. You need to be constantly engaged in the conversations that are taking place all around you. You need to avoid the stigma that comes – and which is actively manufactured by international corporates – with having outdated models.

And our children need to demand more. More enriching experiences. Safer and more engaging school experiences. More time with teachers, more time with family, more free, unpressured time, with each other. More fun, more games, more everything. If we can encourage these needs, and meet these needs, iPhones will slide into the background. The same applies to adults.

The environment movement can honestly and boldly proclaim that the vision we have for the future will be significantly better for every individual than the world being created by capitalism. People’s needs will be better understood and better met when the human system of needs is the purpose and limitation of the world’s intersecting economic systems.

This argument can be made, and can be defended, based on a better understanding of how each of our needs can be understood only as a complex system of needs, and that these systems have evolved and developed (and continues to evolve) within – and as an aspect of – wider economic and ecological systems.

In my next article I want to provide a sketch of what the human systems of needs looks like within capitalism and how this will be transformed in a post capitalist, needs-centred society.

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. Image copyright: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/472570. Read our On The Nature of Change series here.

A study of England’s farmland has found key earthworm types are rare or absent in two out of five fields and has led to the majority of farmers affected vowing to change the way they farm.

The results indicate widespread, historical over-cultivation, and may explain observed declines in other wildlife, such as the song thrush, that feed on these worms.

The #60minworms project was the first comprehensive worm survey concentrating solely on farmland and was carried out by farmers themselves – 57 percent of whom said they would now change their soil management practices as a result.

Ecosystem services

The scientist behind the survey, Dr Jackie Stroud, a NERC soil security fellow at Rothamsted Research, said: “Earthworms are sensitive and responsive to soil management which makes them an ideal soil health indicator. 

“The aim of this research was to find a baseline of farmland earthworm populations that would be useful and used by farmers to assess soil health now and in the future.”

Biologists categorise earthworms by ecological role – with surface dwelling and deep burrowing worms the types most sensitive to farming practices, whilst the topsoil worms are generally unaffected by over-cultivation. Earthworms perform a number of useful ‘ecosystem services’, and high numbers of earthworms have been linked to enhanced plant productivity.

This new citizen science project published today in the journal PLOS One, has revealed most fields have good earthworm biodiversity – meaning an abundance of all three types of earthworms were seen.

In Spring 2018, the average field had nine earthworms in every spadeful of soil, with top fields having three times that number. One in 10 fields had high earthworm numbers of more than 16 worms per spadeful.

Successful pilot 

However, the study also revealed that 42 percent of fields had poor earthworm biodiversity – meaning either very few or none of the surface dwelling and deep burrowing worms were seen.

Dr Stroud said that the absence of deep burrowing worms on 16 percent of fields is concerning because they are ‘drainage worms’ with vertical burrows that aid water infiltration and ultimately helps combat waterloggin.

 “The deep burrowing worms have slow reproduction rates so recovery in their populations could take a decade under changed management practices.  In fact, we know very little about earthworm recovery rates,” she added.

More than 1,300 hectares were surveyed from all over England for the project, including fields managed under arable, potatoes, horticulture and pasture. 

Each farmer volunteered to dig 10 regularly spaced pits across their field to make the observations, and an identification guide allowed them to allocate any sightings to one of the three main types of earthworm.

The success of this pilot project has already led to a much larger study, which recently concluded. 

Soil health 

Working with farmers led to the redesign of the pilot survey, culminating in a shorter, more efficient field assessment and a co-created earthworm identification guide, to help improve farmer confidence in earthworm monitoring.

These improvements were well received, with farmers all over the country spending an hour of their time digging five soil pits and assessing their earthworm populations in the Autumn.

Empowering farmers to survey their own soils would save about £14 million in soil health monitoring if rolled out nationally. 

Healthy Soils were not a headline indicator for the draft DEFRA 25-year plan for the environment, so the DEFRA policy aspiration of achieving sustainable soils is currently unclear. 

Despite this, soil health is widely regarded as vital for both farming and the environment.

Farming practices 

Dr Stroud said: “Decisions made above the ground, whether by farmers or policy makers, influence the billions of earthworms that are engineering the soil ecosystem below the ground.

“Earthworms influence carbon cycling, water infiltration, pesticide movement, greenhouse gas emissions, plant productivity, the breeding success of birds and even the susceptibility of plants to insect attack.”

However, she added, as earthworms are sensitive to various farming practices, including tillage, rotations, cover cropping, organic matter additions, and pesticides, we need to do more to look after them.

Dr stroud continued: “Crucially, working together with farmers, we now know typical earthworm numbers in agricultural soils and between us have developed a quick method for ongoing monitoring.  Many farmers have reported they plan to survey again this Spring following benchmarking their fields last year.

“Soil health is complicated, but the path to doing things differently has to begin somewhere.”    

The work is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with facilities provided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from Rothamstead Research. 

Image: Thomas Brown, Flickr. 

“We are creating natural spaces that people of all ages can benefit from”. This is the promise from Carol Rowntree Jones of the National Forest, announcing that Timber festival will return on 5 July 2019, with music, debate, theatre, spoken word, performance and provocation from some of the UK’s leading thinkers and artists,  

Timber is a site-specific festival located in response to the National Forest landscape at Feanedock, a 70 acre woodland site in the midlands. The woodland has been transformed from a former coalfield to be part of the first forest to be created at scale in England for over 1,000 years.   

Timber aims to engage visitors with the natural environment and the programme offers varied opportunities from bush craft to yoga to explore and reevaluate our relationship with trees and nature.

Live music

Ms Rowntree Jones added:”Timber has grown out of this unique transformation, and is the perfect way to share this vision with a whole new generation of people – how trees can transform lives as well as the landscape. By coming to Timber you are part of the National Forest story and we welcome you.”

Guest speakers include writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie. Stuart is returning to Timber in 2019 for his second festival and will be talking about his book The Long Road From Jarrow.

Welsh and Cornish speaking musician Gwenno described as ‘the visionary of Synth Pop’ by Pitchfork, will be taking part in a discussion about minority languages, music and the landscape.

Gwenno Saunders is a sound artist, DJ, radio presenter and singer from Cardiff who has released two albums – the first, hailed as ‘one of the best British debuts of 2015, was in Welsh, while last year’s Le Kov is in Cornish, created with long term collaborator Rhys Edwards. The conversation will be followed by the chance to hear Gwenno’s forthcoming Radio 4 documentary, Songs from the Edgelands.

Live music will include sets from Jesca Hoop. Her recent album on Sub Pop Records wastes no time in making clear its confidence, confrontation, and craftsmanship. The stark and reverberant title track opens the set with a fighting spirit that serves as an anthem to push through any obstacle and put forth your very best work.

You Tell Me will be performing on Timber’s Nightingale stage. Peter Brewis has been honing the craft of pop songwriting for almost fifteen years as one half of band Field Music. Sarah Hayes joins him in this new venture and they will be performing music from their self-titled debut album.

Performance art 

BBC Radio 4’s Geoff Bird will be hosting Wilderness Tracks where guests chose six pieces of music that soundtrack their relationship with nature.

Laura Barton is an English music journalist, writer and radio presenter and she will be the first guest to join Geoff. As contributing editor at Q magazine and a former staff writer on The Guardian, Laura’s new book on music and sadness will be published this year. Her Radio 4 series ‘Laura Barton’s Notes on a Musical Island’ dwells on the intricate connections between music and place.

BBC presenter and broadcaster Elizabeth Alker is one of Timber’s guest curators and she will be taking over the Eyrie stage on Saturday, programming a mixture of live music, spoken word and a DJ set. Elizabeth is perhaps best known for presenting the music news on BBC6 Music’s Radcliffe & Maconie show, as well as hosting her weekend breakfast show on BBC Radio 3.

Timber plays host to all kinds of magic and it is the live performances, arts and theatre that make the site come alive for festival-goers, creating lasting memories.

The Forest of Dreams is a performance project that combines storytelling, puppetry and projections. Delivered by B Arts from Stoke on Trent, Timber will host the premiere of the outdoor adaptation of this piece.

Visitors will be sure to bump into Trixie and Tilly, two eccentric tea ladies, who serve their fine leaf drink from their special musical trolley- dancing to their favourite Gramophone records as they swirl and stir along their way.

Wild Rumpus 

Trixie and Tilly are part of Tea Club, an outdoor strolling piece of dance theatre celebrating Britain’s passion for tea and all things vintage, produced by Axial Dance.

Artist Dan Fox will be presenting his work Shimmer a freestanding installation with 12 branches, each with a cymbal suspended from it. The 12-channel piece is designed to be heard in the round and the audience will be invited to stand underneath the cymbal canopy and absorb the sound.

Timber is collaboration between the National Forest and Wild Rumpus, an award-winning arts organisation, specialising in showcasing arts and culture in the natural environment.

Wild Rumpus will be creating a new piece of work for Timber 2019 exploring the site’s coalmining heritage. Throughout the National Forest are coal seams that wind beneath the landscape.

Seams will take the audience on a multi-sensory journey inspired by the evocative names and diagrams of the coal seams that surround Feanedock. Don your miners helmet and venture below ground, for a sound and light installation through dark stony bind, and nether coal, before emerging into a brave new world, viewing Feanedock in a whole new light.

Rowan Hoban, director, Wild Rumpus, said: “We’re very excited about this year’s Timber. We have some inspiring speakers who really understand what the festival is about. They will be talking about their experience of landscapes.

“Our audiences can expect to step out of their everyday lives into an extraordinary space – which will be transformed by our artists and musicians to create a truly memorable weekend festival experience.”

This Author 

This article is based on a press release from Timber Festival. For more information on the programme visit their website; to buy tickets click here.  Follow Timber Festival at @timber_festival, www.facebook.com/timberfestivaluk/, and www.instagram.com/timberfestival/

The rise in youth activism on climate change is not only uplifting to see – it’s frankly essential. This is particularly true at a time when Brexit dominates everything and the UK is gripped with political uncertainty.

The face of Greta Thunberg – the impassioned sixteen year-old Swedish climate activist has become synonymous with the rise youth climate activism.

Her dire warnings to global political elites of the impending realities of climate change have become the stuff of a million retweets and Facebook shares. With her clarity and rousing calls to action, she has become the face of a young generation of activists.

Climate Strike

In recent weeks, the sight of thousands of school children skipping lessons to deliver dire warnings to those in power have lifted the spirits of millions of jaded older activists. They stand as a stark reminder of the future that all in the environmental movement are fighting for.

According the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – we have under twelve years to prevent runaway climate change. While other issues have come to dominate both domestically and on the international stage, we have been losing time. Something which is at the forefront of the minds of the new, young generation of climate activists.

From the rallying cries of the Extinction Rebellion Movement to Thunberg’s moving speeches – the tone of climate activism has changed and with good reason. For years it has been urgent but now that urgency is ever greater, and our movements are reinforcing this message.

As we speak of extinction, existential threat and the kind of future that may be denied to today’s young – we must not lose the justice arguments within the climate discussion. It is after all the world’s poorest people who will bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change, while the lion’s share of the responsibility lies with the global elite.

A Broad-based Movement

As 2019 unfolds – I hope it will be a year that sees a rising tide of climate action with young people leading from the front. Seeing people of all ages willing to take direct action as part of the Extinction rebellion Movement and young people demonstrating their passion for the cause is a reminder of the need for a large, broad-based movement to achieve the change we need.

It is essential that activists, whether aged nine or ninety-five draw connections between the big issues of our day – linking climate change with the role of the global elite and corporate power.

As activists and community members we must celebrate the informed passionate and creative approach that young people bring to climate campaigning. They are the ones who will suffer as a result of inaction.

The stereotype of the self-interested politically disengaged youth is a pernicious falsehood.

The School Strike for Climate movement  is in its infancy and could be a powerful component of progressive environmental activism globally.

To challenge the vested interests that stand in the way of meaningful climate action – coordinated action between young and older activists of all ages is essential. Here’s to further strikes and young people in the UK and globally taking powerful steps to fight for a future for all of us.

This Author

Andrew Taylor-Dawson has been involved with the social justice and environmental movements for over a decade. He works in the NGO sector as well as writing about civil society, campaigning and progressive causes. Twitter: @Andrew_J_Taylor.

The rise in youth activism on climate change is not only uplifting to see – it’s frankly essential. This is particularly true at a time when Brexit dominates everything and the UK is gripped with political uncertainty.

The face of Greta Thunberg – the impassioned sixteen year-old Swedish climate activist has become synonymous with the rise youth climate activism.

Her dire warnings to global political elites of the impending realities of climate change have become the stuff of a million retweets and Facebook shares. With her clarity and rousing calls to action, she has become the face of a young generation of activists.

Climate Strike

In recent weeks, the sight of thousands of school children skipping lessons to deliver dire warnings to those in power have lifted the spirits of millions of jaded older activists. They stand as a stark reminder of the future that all in the environmental movement are fighting for.

According the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – we have under twelve years to prevent runaway climate change. While other issues have come to dominate both domestically and on the international stage, we have been losing time. Something which is at the forefront of the minds of the new, young generation of climate activists.

From the rallying cries of the Extinction Rebellion Movement to Thunberg’s moving speeches – the tone of climate activism has changed and with good reason. For years it has been urgent but now that urgency is ever greater, and our movements are reinforcing this message.

As we speak of extinction, existential threat and the kind of future that may be denied to today’s young – we must not lose the justice arguments within the climate discussion. It is after all the world’s poorest people who will bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change, while the lion’s share of the responsibility lies with the global elite.

A Broad-based Movement

As 2019 unfolds – I hope it will be a year that sees a rising tide of climate action with young people leading from the front. Seeing people of all ages willing to take direct action as part of the Extinction rebellion Movement and young people demonstrating their passion for the cause is a reminder of the need for a large, broad-based movement to achieve the change we need.

It is essential that activists, whether aged nine or ninety-five draw connections between the big issues of our day – linking climate change with the role of the global elite and corporate power.

As activists and community members we must celebrate the informed passionate and creative approach that young people bring to climate campaigning. They are the ones who will suffer as a result of inaction.

The stereotype of the self-interested politically disengaged youth is a pernicious falsehood.

The School Strike for Climate movement  is in its infancy and could be a powerful component of progressive environmental activism globally.

To challenge the vested interests that stand in the way of meaningful climate action – coordinated action between young and older activists of all ages is essential. Here’s to further strikes and young people in the UK and globally taking powerful steps to fight for a future for all of us.

This Author

Andrew Taylor-Dawson has been involved with the social justice and environmental movements for over a decade. He works in the NGO sector as well as writing about civil society, campaigning and progressive causes. Twitter: @Andrew_J_Taylor.

Opposite my bedroom window in Sheffield, across the street in the doctor’s surgery carpark, was a small patch of woodland, around 20 foot square. It held rowan trees, on which the birds were feeding through the winter, and buddleia on which butterflies and bees fed in the spring and summer.

It did attract some rubbish dumping. I cleaned up the edges of it one day on a Green Party litter pick. But mostly it was greenery with flowers, and full of life. A small flock of sparrows spent a lot of time hanging out in it. It was home to a couple of blackbirds.

Yet a couple of Saturday mornings back I came out to find it all being razed to the ground. The rubbish is still there, but the home for wildlife is well and truly gone.

Hibernate

That’s a microcosm of what we see again and again in Britain, one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world that is at the cutting edge of poisoning, slashing, degrading our natural world.

The county council of Buckinghamshire has outdone itself in deciding that – despite this dreadful age of local government austerity – it would go to special lengths to find an extra half-million pounds to visit such destruction on “unwanted greenery” in its towns and villages.

It would spray three times areas it specially wanted to denude – most likely with glyphosate, the disastrous, indiscriminate, toxic chemical that most of the rest of Europe is moving to ban.

No doubt, if asked, the councillors would express concern about the loss of favourite local birds, of hedgehogs and insects.

And then they go on finding scarce funds especially to ensure that these creatures have no place to feed, no roost for the night, no pile of branches in which to hibernate.

Strange

The public at least instinctively understands the problem. Wherever I go doorknocking around the country it is noticeable how many homes have a fat ball for the birds hanging from a feeder, a hedgehog home nestled in a shady corner, a bird box – people are trying to do their bit.

But a study just out of birdboxes illustrates the problem with this approach.

It found that being dry and sealed, the contents of birdboxes didn’t “self-clean” over the winter, as hollows and niches in trees and bushes do. Fleas (and certainly other parasites) overwintered in them very comfortably, just ready to feast on the hatchlings, diseases lurk ready to strike.

Nature is best at what it does – anything human is a poor imitation. Farmland is far less productive than wilderness. A bird box and a fat ball is better than nothing, but nowhere near as good as a patch of woodland and “weeds”, otherwise known as wildflowers.

But we experience so little of it now, that it seems strange, alien, even threatening to us.

Education programme

Nature is not tidy. It doesn’t have straight edges. It doesn’t stay within neat lines. And it is all the more wonderful for that.

It is the rich world of life that the human race evolved in and is dependent on for its survival. There’s even medical evidence that looking at straight lines is bad for us and that nature in cities contributes to the healthy human microbiome that we’re increasingly understanding is vital for mental and physical health.

We need to learn to live with nature, rather than slashing and poisoning it. And we need to make sure that particularly our young are familiar and comfortable with it.

Perhaps Buckinghamshire County Council could have a rethink. Instead of destroying nature, it might put that money towards supporting school trips into the natural world, into forest schools and education programmes in wildlife reserves.

Maybe it could arrange an education programme for councillors, or put the funds to signing up to the United Nations’ Healthy Urban Microbiome Initiative.

This Author 

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

‘For engineers to make more electric things and not diesel things!’ These words do not belong to me, but instead are Freddy’s. He is seven, and last week, stood in front of a crowd of hundreds to give a speech.

Like a great offering to something beyond himself, he spoke with an aching rawness, lost in the voice of policy. But no parent or teacher shadowed him, and the only hand he held was his own, as he grappled with the microphone.

Freddy didn’t say these words at school. For while he might have learnt about cars and electricity in the classroom of his primary, a platform for speaking so intensely has been peeled from the fabric of the curriculum.

Education

Children in schools are voiceless.

We swear allegiance to textbook litanies, binding ourselves to the task of passing a test – a bitter, acidic symbiosis during which we’re forced to devote our existence to memorisation. The prize at the end of this, is empty, and lonely – the hollow reward of self-interest: grades. The higher they are, the worse everyone else did.

Barred from sports, art, and the outdoors, we are split from our peers as education wheezes under the burden of its own standards. Values integral to our development: independent thought, social action, and citizenship are dropped from the foreground and relegated to the shadows of ‘extracurricular’.

But in schools what is really extinct is the voice of the student. Kids on school councils have little influence other than the location of a picnic bench, sixteen year olds are yet to receive the vote, and with the youth parliament left unnoticed, our generation can speak only in silence. Like our planet, and the people most at risk of its destruction, we are pushed aside by the power of big government, big business, and big voices.

But, teenagers seem to me to understand the reality of climate destruction far more vividly than politicians, as our futures quake underneath our feet. Quaking like the news of storms which hit us month after month. Another hurricane, another drought, another famine.

Human tragedies spiral out of control every day as climate destruction proves that the populations already the most vulnerable to even small changes in the environment will suffer the fastest and hardest at its collapse.

Such truths are elementary to us now, moulding into our vocabulary. But we didn’t learn them at school. For education on climate change is restricted to diagrams and data, failing to teach us the true nature of the nightmare world we will inhabit. Instead, schools leave us to fumble over turning off the lights as a way to avoid total global collapse.

I think we see now, why so many textbooks heralded this as an effective solution to avoiding the destruction of the climate. Perhaps they did not want us to see through their lies. Perhaps they want to keep us in the dark.

Reality

Young eyes see collapse where adults do not. But we now know where the truth lies – we are the eye of the storm, we are the point from which destruction spirals, the final calm before everything falls apart.

This is our world now, one which our education leaves us unprepared to grow up in. Our futures will be marked by floods, fires, and famine, but education does little to recognise our fears, let alone help us build new ways in which to avoid their realisation.

So, as students we striked from school so that our absence makes you realise what education lacks. A sense of humans that live beyond the textbooks, and especially the textbook definitions of climate change which forgo all talk of social consequence.

And we are learning. Learning about how to speak in a public space, learning how to talk to the press, learning how to communicate, coordinate ourselves, and find a sense of community where all else fractures around us at the hands of politicians more in control of our futures than we are.

School taught us history, we are subverting the power structures which have dictated it. Our education does not end with a school strike, but will be improved by it.

If there’s anything I’ve learnt from my education in activism, then it’s that true hope exists only in action, in the solidarity which arises from a shared and deep fear. Solidarity which rarely exists in a school system which pushes us against each other to fight for grades, grit, and greed.

New Pathways

Reforming education starts, but does not end with fixing the way we teach climate. It requires a school system in which self-interest is not the end goal, but the creation of a culture in which we pay attention to the ecological principles abandoned in order to fulfil the consumerism we’ve been raised on.

Education for the future we will we inherit requires teachers, textbooks, and tests alike to change, and as we see this not really happening, we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands, in the only way we can.

By making you feel the absence we feel everyday.

This Author

Sophie Sleeman, 17, from Devon is an activist with the UK Student Climate Network, the organization mobilizing the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement. Sophie tweets at @SleemanSophie.

I continue to have hope and feel a shift in the way people view themselves in relation to the larger, global ecosystem. And reading Why we need ‘ecolocracy’ re-affirmed my belief in humanity’s ability to stop and reflect upon itself and the impact we’ve had on the natural world to meet our needs.

The recent wave of student protests sweeping across Europe needs our attention and our support.

Their protesting of governments’ neglecting to adequately address one of our most urgent challenges, climate change, clearly demonstrates that young people understand the need for change and want change enough to take to the streets and risk fines for not attending school.

Forgotten relationship

They realise the complexity of the situation and their sense of urgency must be a signal to us all that for us to more than exist in the future, there needs to be change.

Considering that we believe we need and value consumer goods to give our lives meaning drives the continued exploitation of Earth’s resources and each other, we are blindly tied to the delusion created by consumerism and use it as a measure of self-worth and success.

The article Capitalism has become a force of evil reinforces this and reminds me of the continued effectiveness of the advertising that feeds mainstream culture and the illusion that drives consumerism as represented in Manufacturing Consent.

How do we shift people out of, what I call, eco-vacancy and help them bridge the forgotten relationship with nature and understanding of ourselves and our interconnectedness with a higher ecological system – woman with nature as opposed to man over nature?

Collectively

Yes, we can use biomimicry to solve many of the problems we’ve created, but more people need to understand the bio and interconnectedness of all things universal.

For that to happen on a massive scale more schools and more educators must shift from teaching individual subjects which promotes a Newtonian/Mechanistic/fragmented view of the world, to an integrated curriculum that explores and develops a systems view of life way of thinking and then living that life.

Many schools are teaching the skills of systems thinking about the relationship between earth systems and human impact on those systems. But we’re a small pocket movement.

I have hope that the shift will take a firm hold. Once we convince the masses that their needs are natures needs then maybe we can begin the steady and long upward climb towards the significant changes we need to make collectively, to save ourselves.

This Author

Rita Bouchard is an educator at Antioch University of Los Angeles and an advocate for alternative education in public schools.