From the world’s northernmost town, Longyearbyen, down to Cape Town in South Africa, from the Western tip of Anchorage in Alaska to Tokyo in Japan, young people are preparing to go on a school strike for the climate.

The walkout on on Friday 15 March will be the biggest yet, in a weekly drumbeat of pressure on governments to safeguard their futures. At time of publication, 1,209 events had been registered across 92 countries with the German movement Fridays for the Future.

“The situation we are facing today is a unique one,” Linus Steinmetz, spokesperson for Fridays for the Future said.

Pre-industrial

“We are the last generation to have a realistic chance to prevent a climate catastrophe. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have less than 12 years to deliver the changes required to avoid this, but we do have the means.”

The school strikes for climate were initially spurred by the solo protests of Swedish 16-year old Greta Thunberg.

In September, Thunberg started a weekly vigil on the steps of the parliament in Stockholm to call for faster action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The teenager, who has Asperger syndrome, has since become a figurehead for the global climate movement, garnering praise for her blunt and persistent activism.

Climate strikers are demanding that countries comply fully with the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to “well below 2 degrees” above pre-industrial levels.

Youth movement

George Bond, a 15-year-old from Dorset in the UK, told Climate Home News he wanted the government to declare a state of emergency and involve young people more in decision-making.

“We are living in an imminent climate crisis,” he said. “We must take immediate, drastic action to reverse the ecological changes that we’re inducing.”

Some commentators have criticised the movement for encouraging children to skip school. The strikers, who are mostly too young to vote, argue it is the only way to make their voices heard.

“There are so many students joining the movement because we have lost our faith in adult politicians,” Steinmetz said.

Cut classes

“We have lost our belief in a real change for climate politics. We have lost faith in our generation’s future. When adults do not act responsibly, we as an international youth movement perceive it as our duty to be the voice of reason.”

While it started with schoolchildren, the movement welcomes citizens of all age to participate. As such, it defines itself as “youth-led”.

In France, a video by climate school strikers called on “high-school students, parents, teachers, citizens” to take part in the action.

In February, hundreds of academics urged UK schools to allow students to cut classes for the climate.

This Article

This Article first appeared on Climate Home News.

When we think about the challenges climate change poses to the UK, flooding is understandably at the top of a lot of people’s minds.

It’s certainly been a concern for the people of Wolverley, Worcestershire. The village sits between the River Stour and the Worcestershire canal and it’s had four once-in-a-lifetime floods in the past decade.

The community have come together to do something about it, and my teammates and I at 10:10 Climate Action wanted to help. Together, we’ve been working with a great, tried-and-tested technology which can help tackle a load of problems all at once: tree planting.

Increased risk

Flooding has been a risk for Brits since we first set up camp on this island. Every so often, a community would experience a storm, a river bursting its banks or huge waves crashing onto the shore. The results were – and still are – devastating. It can take years to recover.

But we’re seeing these ‘once in a generation’ type floods happening much more regularly. The Met Office confirmed that four out of the five wettest years on record in Britain have taken place since the year 2000.

There are two ways climate change can make flooding more likely. Firstly, sea levels are rising due to melting ice caps. Rising sea levels make storm surges more frequent and more severe, which can create disastrous flooding in coastal areas.

On top of this, our atmosphere is warmer. And a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture. With more water in the atmosphere, when it does pour there’s a lot more rain up there to fall down! This increases the severity of flooding as riverbanks are overwhelmed, making floods much more destructive.  

By cutting greenhouses gases to limit the impacts of climate change, and by building communities that are resilient to the levels of climate change we’re already locked into, this disruption to people’s lives and to families can be prevented.

Climate change

Firstly, they absorb carbon, making tree-planting a great way to tackle climate change. The government’s own climate change advisors say trees are a vital part of us hitting our climate targets – in fact they think we need a lot more.

So trees will help reducing climate impacts like flooding in the long-term. But did you know that trees have a double purpose in tackling flooding: they can also be used as a soft flood defence?

Trees reduce flood risk from the top to bottom. Lots of raindrops that land on leaves evaporate straight into the air- so less water reaches the ground. And, leaves intercept rainfall, slowing the rate that water flows into rivers and reducing the risk it’ll burst its banks.

The roots of a tree are also important. They create little passages in the soil as they grow, so when it rains water flows into those instead of flowing straight into the river.

The roots also act as a net to hold the soil in place and stop it washing into a river. That can be a problem because the more soil on a river bed, the less space for water, which means the river is more likely to flood when it rains a lot.

Trees are a great way to combat flooding. Plus – they’re gorgeous! That’s why planting trees in Wolverley seemed like the obvious plan of action for us.

Tree planting diary

Here’s what happened on the day. 

It’s 6am on a Friday in January. I pack my wellies and rush out the door into the pouring rain. I immediately regret not wearing said wellies. I’m heading to 10:10 HQ in Camden Town, where I’ll meet two colleagues and we’ll set off together, heading north. Our destination is Wolverley, a village in Worcestershire.

On our journey up, we go through areas covered by a moderate layer of snow. I hope, for the sake of the trees, that this isn’t the case in Wolverley.

Upon arriving, we prepare for the tree planting session that will take place the following day. We examine the sites, check equipment and mark the ground where trees will be planted. As we finish, we go for a walk around the village. We walk down a winding road surrounded by sandstone that leads us to the home of a local family.

Over a cup of tea, the grandmother tells us she recently stumbled upon photos she took of a flood that hit their home a few years ago. She quietly says she finds the photos hard to look at, they aren’t good memories. I can see why, the scene is unnerving. Home should be a place you feel safe, not on edge.

Next day

It’s Saturday, the rest of the 10:10 team are here and we’re heading down to the village hall to meet the volunteers – exciting! We arrive early, and early bird volunteers start to trickle in shortly after. By the time we leave to go to the first field we’ll be planting on today, we have about 50 volunteers in tow.

It was fantastic to see people coming together from across the country – from uni students to scouts to retired folk to families. Everyone grabbed a spade and mucked in.

With masses of enthusiasm they braved the chilly weather (and quite a few spots of rain!). Cups of tea from the outdoor wood-burning kettle kept spirits high, not to mention a lovely low carbon plant based lunch.

10:10’s director of innovation, Leo, happens to also be an ex-tree surgeon. He gathers everyone round and gives a demonstration of how we’ll be planting trees today. He is in his element. When he finishes, everyone disperses across the fields in a hurry to get those trees in the ground.

I chat to Jo, who heard about the project from a 10:10 email. She’s travelled down from Bristol wanting to take some positive, practical action against climate change. I also chat to a middle aged man who’s a Wolverley local.

He’s your traditional countryside Brit, and I am surprised when he tells me that he, along with his wife and daughters, went vegan last year, inspired by their son’s decision to make the diet change to reduce his personal carbon footprint.

Refreshing change

I finish the day chatting to volunteers – from near and far – underneath a marquee. The rain pours outside, but it doesn’t dampen spirits. One thing that really stands out to me is how powerful doing something physical is to them.

In our world of increasingly online actions, this is a refreshing change to those who feel frustrated and can use their hands for something other than typing at a keyboard. For those who’ve come with climate change in mind, it is therapeutic to see some change happening right in front of them.

For those wanting to protect their homes from flooding, this gives them a sense of control – the ability to influence a force that they’ve traditionally felt powerless against.

We head back to our rented barnhouse and whip up a hearty sweet potato curry for dinner, we’re exhausted but excited to do it all again tomorrow.

By the end of the weekend, with the help of 80 incredible volunteers, we had planted 200 trees and 2000 whips (that’s little trees) that’ll grow into about 500m of hedgerow. They will help protect the village from flooding and soak up CO2 for decades to come!

This Author

Emma Kemp is campaigns officer at 10:10 Climate Action, a charity that runs positive, practical projects at the community level, and turns these local actions into a force for bigger changes.

Image: © Chris Rhys Field.

The High Court heard arguments concerning the climate change implications of the development, brought by climate lawyers Plan B and environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth against Transport Secretary Chris Grayling.

The House of Commons voted in favour of the estimated £14 billion expansion in June 2018. Construction of the third runway is set to begin in 2021, with an estimated 700 additional planes over Heathrow everyday.

Tim Crosland, Director of Plan B, said expansion was “completely inconsistent with the science.”

Paris Agreement

Crosland continued: “It looks almost certain that if Heathrow proceeds [with expansion], there’s just no chance we’ll be able to comply with the Paris Agreement. Why on Earth would the government have invested everything that it did in the Paris Agreement if it wasn’t going to consider it?”

Plan B argued that the proposal to expand Heathrow airport breaches legal obligations in the Planning Act to alleviate the impact of climate change. The group also argued that Grayling did not assess the Airports National Policy Statement (ANPS), the policy framework for Heathrow expansion, against the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement is not legally enforceable in domestic law. Katan Jha, a member of Plan B’s legal team, said that the organisation is seeking “to prove that the Paris Agreement is government policy. If [the government] did consider the Paris Agreement, they would not have been able to justify a third runway.”

Jha added: “It is plainly incompatible with sustainable economic strategy”.

Protestors gathered outside the court to give speeches ahead of the hearing, and paper planes with written messages of support were hung from the gates outside the court. “I fear for my children’s future,” read one message, while another said that  “cheap flights are killing the Earth.”

Judicial reviews

Sebastian Kaye, a student and Plan B volunteer, said that it’s “crucial that we don’t allow the third runway to be built because of the extra carbon emissions as a result of it.

“It’s also really important for us to be able to overturn this decision to send a really loud and clear message to our political class to tell them that they’re not pulling their weight in terms of climate action and to show them that they will be held accountable.” 

Five judicial reviews in total have been brought against Grayling. Other parties bringing legal challenges include the mayor of London Sadiq Khan, local authorities Hillingdon, Hammersmith and Fulham, Richmond, Wandsworth, and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, and other environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

Friends of the Earth, which was also able to present arguments today, is pursuing a different line of objection to Plan B. The group believes the airport’s expansion policy is unlawful because it breaches the UK’s climate change commitments and duties towards sustainable development.

Friends of the Earth argue that the airport’s expansion will jeopardise the country’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are “necessary to prevent global warming from causing catastrophic, irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.”

Mitigation package

William Rundle, Head of Legal at Friends of the Earth, said: “We consider they have acted unlawfully and unfairly in not considering the true impact on future generations.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Transport defended the plans, however. “Expansion at Heathrow is a critical programme which will boost the economy, increase our international connections and create tens of thousands of new jobs,” they said.

“As with any major infrastructure project, the government has been anticipating legal challenges and we will robustly defend our position.

“We recognise the local impact of any expansion, which is why a world class package of mitigations would need to be delivered.”

This Author

Soila Apparicio is a journalist for Climate Home News. She is also a radio producer for Resonance FM. She has previously worked for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Compass News. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

The Arctic railway would have opened up the Arctic trade routes and allowed Finland to have a direct connection to central Europe for transport of raw materials. However, a recent report has brought the project’s commercial and ethical viability into question.  

The report concluded that: “A railway project this size is so complex and involves so many stakeholders and factors that in the time and resources given it has not been possible to properly assess all of the issues regarding the Arctic railway project.”

The report argues that more planning is needed regarding funding and respecting the rights of the Indigenous people (the Sami) whose land the railway would have to traverse across.

Environmental impact 

The projected railway was planned to cross from Rovaniemi, Finland to Kirkenes Norway. This railway would open up the Arctic circle to Europe and secure a more direct trade route for Baltic Nations, Russia, Japan and China to transport raw materials to Central Europe.

The project was initially announced in October 2015 by former Prime Minister of Finland Paavo Lipponen, in a memorandum to Former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. 

This project has since been met with vehement criticism from the Sami People, environmental activists and artists supporting the Sami people and ordinary Finnish citizens.

Johanna Kronqvist, a student at Abo Akademy in Finland, said: “At first, I thought [the railway project] sounded quite exciting, but as soon as I realised the effects on the Sami people, the reindeer husbandry and the environment in general, I got upset”. 

Indeed, though the Norwegian and Finish governments explored five different route options, all would have had to cross Sami Lapland, and thus cause damage to the habitat of the reindeer and the fishing traditions of the Sami people.

Final frontier

The construction of the line was projected by Minister Anna Berner to cost €2.9 billion, with Norway paying €0.9 and Finland paying the rest. Te Rovaniemi-Kirkenes line would cut through lake Inari and a large portion of forest and herding territories.

Dr Humrich from the University of Groningen describes the Arctic as “the final frontier”. The Arctic region is a goldmine for those seeking to exploit its natural resources, with its untapped liquid oil and gas reserves, and the Arctic ocean serving as an expedient sea route that helps transport raw goods.

Dr Humrich said: “Concerning the transport of raw materials, the railway would be transferring copper, iron ore, phosphate or raw wood. They are not transportable by plane. The goods are currently being transported by boat but that is a very slow process.

“Finally, the goods could be transferred by street but they have less capacity than trains, who are in the eyes of the Finnish government, the most economically feasible option.”

As it stands, goods from Russia enter the northernmost part of Norway and still have to be transferred to other modes of transportations. The Rovaniemi-Kirkenes line would have effectively cut out the middle man and set up a direct line connecting Europe to the Arctic sea and create new transport hubs and ports. 

In Dr Humrich’s opinion, despite looking at all five proposal routes for this line, there was no way for construction to avoid Sami Lapland. However, he did agree that the Rovaniemi-Kirkenes was the option, though most direct, that would cause the greatest amount of damage to the Lapland flora and fauna.

Indigenous livelihoods

The Sami people are the only Indigenous peoples living within the European Union. They are present in Norway, Sweden, Russia and Finland.

Part of their heritage is Reindeer Husbandry and Fishing.  The projected railway line would cut through one third of Lapland forest region and would cause significant damage to an already fragile Arctic Environment.

As Dr. Cepinskyte of the Finnish Intstitute of International Affairs, specialist on the protection of national minorities and indigenous peoples and Arctic Security explained: “The Sami people fear the railway would disrupt reindeer pastures and migration patterns, while trains could also kill a lot of reindeers.

“In addition, the railway would likely attract large scale industrial activities, such as mining, which would pose a threat to the environment and nature.

“Reindeer herding and the traditional use of lands is fundamental for the survival of the Sami culture and languages, thus any harm to the environment and nature would put the preservation of the Sami identity at risk.”

Activist interventions

This view is further supported by Former head of YLE Sami-language news, Pirita Näkkäläjärvi, who wrote an article citing that the projected line would plough through Sami remains, thus disrespecting culturally significant traditions and bring about significant damage to Sami culture.

Näkkäläjärvi wrote: “The grazing lands for the reindeer have already been cut by competing land use such as logging, roads and construction. Building a railway through the reindeer herding cooperatives would further fragment, narrow and decrease the land needed by the reindeer.”

Activist groups such as Suohpanterror and Greenpeace joined the Sami people in September 2018 as the Sami formed a ‘red line’ along the projected railway route to protest the construction that was planned without the ‘Free, Prior, Informed Consent’ right given to the Indigenous people to protect their rights.

Furthermore, Sami Parliament have issued a statement claiming that the Sami were not consulted adequately by Norwegian and Finnish governments to discuss the implications this project would have for the Sami.

This is not the first time Nordic governments have ignored indigenous people’s rights, but the cancellation of the project is a step closer to protecting the environment and indigenous rights.

Viable solutions

The Sami and the environment can breathe a little easier as the controversy seems to be settled peacefully, unlike those affected by the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States.

The future of this project remains unclear. What is clear however, is that if Norwegian and Finnish authorities wish to continue with this railway, they must include the Indigenous peoples on their territories in all stages of planning and discussion, in order to come up with a viable solution for all parties.

This Author 

Clemence Waller is a journalism Masters student at the University of Groningen. Growing up in the Middle East, she has always been interested in international reporting and politics. She is currently a freelance journalist.

Famed for its remarkable archaeological treasures from the ancient past, today Orkney is forging a low-carbon future for itself.

The archipelago can point to a string of landmark achievements in developing low-carbon technology, and hasn’t been a net importer of electricity since April 2015.

Yet, this quiet renewables revolution in the far north of Scotland is under threat.

Historic shift

The UK’s carbon and nuclear-oriented energy regime continues to punish Orkney for its clean energy bounty: community-owned wind turbines often sit idle due to a lack of grid infrastructure, the islands have the highest fuel poverty rate in the UK, and a regressive charging regime sees producers pay a premium to send their electricity south.

Set in the north-west corner of the Orkney archipelago, the island of Westray (population: 600) was an early-starter in making a bid for a sustainable future based on the fierce elements that have shaped ways of life in this part of the word for millennia.

This historic shift began in 1998 when, with the traditional whitefish industry in crisis, the islanders on Westray held a conference to determine what might be done to mitigate outward migration from the island in the wake of job losses.

The result was the foundation of the Westray Development Trust, formed with the goal of making the island entirely powered by renewable energy. In 2005, they took the audacious step of purchasing an electric vehicle for community use, well before manufacturers were offering off-the-shelf models.

Clare Lucas, who works at Westray Development Trust, said: “The community recognised early on that something needed to be done if a healthy, thriving population was going to remain on the island. There needed to be a way to bring sustainable jobs and infrastructure to the island to reverse this downward trend.”

The island’s 900 kilowatt wind turbine generates around half a million pounds of revenue each year for community projects. Throughout Orkney, other communities have gone on to develop their own turbine-powered trusts based on this model.

Renewables revolution

The story of Westray Development Trust is just one strand in a rich tapestry of stories about Orkney’s remarkable renewables revolution by ethnographer, poet and writer Laura Watts. 

Energy at the End of the World is the result of a ten year study, and offers an original perspective on how Orkney has changed in that crucial decade.

In this account, these “Energy Islands” are a place where renewable power, a constant presence amongst the gale force winds and raging seas that incessantly batter the coastline, is viewed less as a commodity and more like a fundamental part of day-to-day life.

Watts notes: “A low-carbon renewable energy future, which is much talked about elsewhere, is coming early to Orkney.” 

But in addition to being a study of the economic and scientific processes involved in making this new future, her work is also deeply rooted in the islands’ past, woven, like the old Norse sagas, from fragments of culture, fable, myth.

Knowledge base

There is an inherently heroic quality to the story of a rural, plucky, self-reliant place trying to make a distinctive mark, despite frequent intransigence on the part of a UK economy and government still hooked on fossil-fuels. But Orkney has long since surpassed the limitations of what fierce independent localism can achieve.

Orkney boasts a string of notable firsts — the first smart grid, the first grid battery, the first community owned wind turbine, in addition to the highest number of electric vehicles per head of population in Scotland.

There is also an impressive energy knowledge base on the islands, embodied in the Orkney Renewable Energy Forum, which meets every month.

But this string of achievements pales in comparison with future potential. The unique geographical position of Orkney at the meeting point of the North Atlantic and the North Sea means that there is an estimated marine energy capacity amounting to several gigawatts: if fully exploited, energy generated from around the islands’ coastline would be on a par with one of the UK’s large nuclear reactors.

Despite the burgeoning sector creating hundreds of local jobs and delivering millions in revenues and investment, the islands continue to be viewed as a peripheral anomaly in the current UK energy system: a system that makes Orkney pay for its excess of renewable energy.

Additional capacity

The islands currently generate around 120 percent of their electricity needs. But rather than being rewarded for this energy surplus, the current set-up sees the islands penalised for creating too much clean power.

At the root of the problem is the sub-sea cable built to link Orkney to a highly centralised, carbon and nuclear-oriented national grid, which simply isn’t up to the job.

There have been a plethora of calls for additional capacity, with OFGEM and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) currently negotiating terms for a £260 million, 220 megawatt, high-voltage link to be completed by 2023.

As Watt’s notes in her study, the “exchange-rate” for energy prices is “inverted.” At present the constantly shifting rate can see generators on Orkney charged as much as £40 or £100 per kilowatt hour.

Added to this, community owned wind turbines have to be turned off or “curtailed” when the grid reaches capacity, directly depriving some of the most isolated areas of potentially transformative funds.

Pace of change

Many islanders are incensed at the slow pace of change, when contrasted to the rapid innovation taking place daily around their coastline.

Based in an old high-school, the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) is the preeminent global testbed for marine renewables, drawing the interest of an array of global investors — including Silicon Valley giants like Microsoft.

However, despite its success (since 2003, 31 devices from 11 different countries have undergone testing at the site) the inadequate grid infrastructure poses a potential threat to the viability of EMEC.

Neil Kermode, Managing Director of EMEC, said: “It’s definitely holding us back”.

“At the moment, we’re the only place doing this anywhere in the world. But there are other places lining up to do this … the industry that we have got here and we’ve built up here is absolutely at risk and will go overseas if they get better from somewhere else.”

Energy inequality

The lack of strategic vision required to fix Orkney’s energy infrastructure is an issue of social justice, too. Despite an abundance of energy production and a willingness by the islanders to push innovation to its limits, the islands have the highest fuel poverty rate in the UK.

The factors behind this, common throughout rural Scotland but especially acute in Orkney, range from a lack of gas infrastructure for heating, to high fuel costs, to the nature of the housing stock itself — which in places like Westray consists mainly of old stone built dwellings that are often uninsulated.

The still smaller island of Rousay (population: 216) is trying to tackle the twin issue of community turbine curtailment and fuel poverty with a Smart Heat Project, using a variant of “Total Heat Total Control” already deployed by providers to manage demand during peak times.

The aim is simple and compelling: “instead of turning the turbine off, we want to divert that lost power and use it locally,” says the island development trust.

Energy inequality within the islands is a potent issue, too.

Rich and poor

Robert Leslie, Energy Officer at Orkney Housing Association, describes the gap between ‘energy rich’ Orcadians — those with the means to invest their own capital in personally owned assets (such as a small turbine, solar panel, or electric vehicle) and the majority of ‘energy poor’ islanders. The latter pay exorbitant prices for electric heating and at the petrol pump.

Of the housing association’s 772 tenants, 66 percent are in fuel poverty, with 22 percent in “extreme fuel poverty” where more than 20 percent of their income is spent on fuel costs.

For Leslie, this problem is captured in a single anecdote: “A couple of years ago, I heard the story of a farmer who noticed that gaps were opening in the wood panelling in his hallway due to the fact he was heating it to such a degree, unable to put the electricity generated by his wind turbine into the grid.”

“At the same time, a mile from that farmer’s house on the edge of Kirkwall, I could visit a tenant who worried how many hot meals she could serve her children during the week as she watched the money count down on her prepayment electricity meter.”

“The gap between Orkney’s energy rich and energy poor might be small in distance, but it is huge in resource,” he explains.

Scottish nationalism 

Orcadians might not be taking to the streets, as the Gilet Jaunes did, to protest at the iniquities present in the shift to low-carbon energy. But the question of who will be carried along and who will be left behind on the Energy Islands cannot be answered in isolation.

Orkney Islands Council, with the smallest population of any local authority in Scotland, lacks the scale and, particularly in a time of austerity, the risk-bearing capacity, to take decisive interventionist steps to fix the situation.

At a Scottish level the changing picture is not encouraging.

Our Power, a Scottish government supported not-for-profit retail energy supplier, folded in January 2019. After only a few years in business, its attempt to reduce fuel poverty by brokering lower prices for social tenants, including many in Orkney, was stymied by a retail energy market that props up the big six and has seen numerous start-ups go to the wall.

The current Scottish National Party (SNP) administration at Holyrood is committed to delivering a Scottish National Energy Company (SNEC) during the current term of the Scottish Parliament, but the nature of this new public entity is already a matter of fierce debate.

Scottish nationalism has often mobilised around the issue of injustice of fuel poverty in an energy rich nation.

Energy injustice

Riding the wave of a previous energy revolution, the SNP’s iconic “Scotland’s Oil” campaign, which led to the party’s first electoral breakthroughs in 1974, featured text below the image of a Scottish pensioner asking, “why are so many Scots old folk cold and undernourished? Why do 5,000 die of hypothermia every year?”

With Age Scotland reporting that 60 percent of single-pensioner households in Scotland struggle with energy bills, the issue remains a national controversy.

The nature of how the SNEC is constituted will be crucial. A recently published report by left-leaning thinktank Common Weal called on the Scottish Government to embrace a model that moves beyond the retail market and includes ownership of generation assets, too.

For the report’s lead author, Dr Keith Baker of Glasgow Caledonian University, this will be the essential determinant of whether an SNEC can tackle energy injustice in Scotland:

“At the end of the day Our Power was still a retail energy company. Therefore they were always going to be susceptible to the kinds of things that tend to bring retail energy companies down … that’s one of the reasons that we pushed so hard for the National Energy Company to own generation assets.”

Systematic failure

Slamming a lack of strategic thinking on the part of the Scottish Government, Baker contends that an SNEC would be uniquely well placed to front the kind of investment in infrastructure required in Orkney:

“The real value here is in generation assets and in supply assets and in doing the sorts of projects that are not going to have very high returns but are going to benefit a lot of people in a lot more ways — the co-benefits of tackling fuel poverty and job creation, and sustainable fuel supply chains — they need to be thinking at that level. Which again is why we need a strategic approach.”

Orkney’s electricity export log-jam is a by-product of this lack of long-term thinking on the part of regulators and policymakers. This is why OFGEM and SSEN continue to debate the immediate return required to justify the additional connection, despite Orkney’s marine energy capacity equating to around 10 percent of the UK’s current electricity demand.

Neil Kermode of EMEC points out that this debate has been going on for twenty years. It is a symptom, he believes, of a systemic failure:

“Frankly it’s a function of the privatised element of the process, which requires people to have a business case for doing things, as opposed to there being an element of vision.”

Island resourcefulness

In response to such frustrations, and a system that seems intent on keeping Orkney on the margins, island resourcefulness attempts to fill the gap.

The profusion of electric vehicles offers a DIY method of offloading additional grid capacity, acting as multiple mobile grid batteries. There’s also a plan, with a pilot already underway, to re-fit Orkney Island Council’s ferry fleet to be powered by locally produced hydrogen — another notable first.

Kermode, originally from Bournemouth, sees a unique factor in Orkney that underpins this willingness to innovate:

“There’s something really powerful about an island: you know who’s there. You can pretty quickly get around and go ‘right, we’re thinking of doing this, has anyone got a problem with this? If you have, then just say so’,” he explains. 

“In a landscape like Orkney … it’s really hard to keep a secret. So you don’t bother. So you tend to be honest and open about stuff … it’s quite a contributive culture … That sort of culture pervades what goes on in Orkney and has done for generations.”

Island independence

In one of the last poems published before his death, Orkney’s greatest bard, George Mackay Brown, wrote to an imaginary Orcadian poet in 2093. In verse rich with the references to the different cultures that have inhabited Orkney, he explored the commonalities across time, including the role of the sea:

“We wear the sea like a coat/We have salt for marrow.”

Explaining the significance of marine energy to UK policy makers, unfamiliar with the far-flung islands, is bound to be challenging. But perhaps Orkney’s insistence on occupying the leading edge of energy innovation, rather than settling for a peripheral role, points to a whole new paradigm for a post-carbon economy. 

Carbon-based capitalism concentrated itself in large cities where cheap workforces were easier to come by and economies of scale, fed by centralised distribution networks, kept costs down. Perhaps its successor is already taking root in places not hemmed-in by the assumptions of what has gone before.

Writing against the bleak backdrop of the late 1930s, another Orkney bard, the novelist Eric Linklater, observed: “Have I said we are an independent people? It is one of the blessings of a small land. For freedom of opinion, even of action, is still permissible in small places.”

By shaping an energy revolution on its own terms, Orkney has shown that it doesn’t require permission to forge a new future. It simply needs the rest of the UK, with its ageing 20th century energy system, to stop living in the past.

This Article

Chris Silver is a writer currently looking at #JustTransition in Scotland and beyond. He tweets @SilverScotland. This article first appeared on Desmog.uk.

I loved the school students’ climate strikes last month. The energy, the jokes on the placards, the smiles, the hopeful faces. The students in Brighton marching by the railway station, chanting ‘F*** Theresa May’. I had all those kindly, patronizing, adulty feelings. But something deeper too. 

I have been a climate activist since 2004: endless protests and phone calls and emails and meetings in small rooms, week after week, year after year, all the time trying to give other people hope. When I spoke at meetings people would ask – But how can we do it? How can we force the powerful the act? In every country, on every continent, someone always asks that question. Because everyone wants to know the answer.

I would try to invent an answer, and then lie alone in the dark in the middle of the night and wrestle with despair. But now I have seen a power that can change the world. 

First steps

If young people all over the world come out of school and stay out of school, the cities will stop. The workplaces will stop, because so many people need to go look after their children.

The young people would have immense moral force. They can occupy the parliaments. The police will not and cannot beat and gas and kill all the children. Nor will the soldiers. Nor would we let them. And if it is all over the world, it will be a power such as Earth has never seen.

The kids could make the rest of us brave and decent, and we could follow them out of work into the squares and the halls of power until we win.

We are not anywhere near that now. These are one-day strikes. Who knows how long the strikes will last? How far they will spread? What exactly do they want? 

I fantasize we will go all the way this time. I know we won’t. Great historical movements do not work like that. But the process has begun. 

International movement 

What I can now imagine, many can now imagine. It will be possible for millions to begin working out how to use their power, with apocalypse in their future and a lifetime of making history ahead of them.

I have seen another thing. For forever I have had to listen to experts telling me we would never be able to convince people by scaring them shitless about climate change. They told me, and you, how people were too short sighted and greedy and stupid and unwashed to grasp what the enlightened understood.

Now I know that we climate activists have persuaded hundreds of millions. The first part of our work is done. The real work commences.

Another thing is so big people hardly comment on it. The internationalism. The strikes started with one young woman in Stockholm, spread to Australia, back to Belgium, on across parts of Europe, even came to Britain, are going to be global this Friday, and will not stop there.

As I watched the strike reports, Nancy Lindisfarne and I were finishing a book on class and male violence. The last chapters – a joy to write – were about the exploding resistance to rape and sexual harassment.

Tracing the history of the last few years, the same thing jumped out at us – internationalism. The movement leaps, from the riot against rape at India Gate in Delhi in 2012, to Rhodes University in South Africa, to Buenos Aries and across Latin America, to the women’s marches against Trump, to the MeToo movement in the US, to the Chinese MeToo and the Indian MeToo, to Stormy Daniels and Blasey Ford, just two women, to hundreds of thousands protesting for legal abortion in Argentina, to the conviction of Cardinal Pell in Australia, to three million women in Kerala joining hands to defend the dignity of their menstrual blood, to demonstrations of millions around the world on International Women’s Day last week.

Increasing visibility 

These movements are only the beginning, and the earthquakes will threaten all established power.

You can see that same internationalism – the leapfrogging power of example and shared messages – moving as quickly in the climate strikes. It’s partly social media, and partly that our experience is growing more alike across the world. It’s partly migration and Skype.

There is one imbalance. Everyone sees what happens in the US, but people in the US have trouble seeing anything in the rest of the world. That sucks. Let’s change it.

The movement and the internationalism are a property of our age. It is the same this week in the great crowds and strikes against the tyrants in Sudan, Morocco and Algeria. That is how it was in the Arab Spring eight years ago too, which spread throughout the Arab world and south to the rest of Africa, to Greece and Spain and to Occupy in the US. That Spring, like MeToo, like the climate strikes, was a movement of the young.

The young are changing, which means the world will change.

Against the walls

Internationalism matters right now. The solution to climate change must be global, because the atmosphere we breathe is global.

Our movement has tried for global agreement at the top, between the existing governments, tried long and hard, and failed utterly. That’s why we know that we need mass movements from the grassroots, pushing upwards. But those movements have to spread from country to country, each encouraging the others, because in the end we have to win this globally. 

Internationalism matters too, because this is the age of The Walls. Trump’s wall, Netanyahu’s wall, the migrant-hating spreading across Europe, the drowning pool of the Med, the xenophobia in South Africa, hating Muslims in India, hating Roma in Hungary, and Brexit.

Internationalism matters in Britain this week because the politicians are leading us into a racist Brexit. Many on the left are tailgating the racist right. They say it would be wrong to have another referendum, because the majority would vote to remain. They say we have to leave because we can only change the world by ourselves, on our own, in our little island. That is a mistake about how we can change the world. 

Internationalism matters now because in the lifetime of the today’s climate strikers, heat and its consequences will drive hundreds of millions from their homes. One solution will be the Walls around the World.

Changing the world

We will be climbing these walls, clambering out of the sea, our children in our arms, begging the men and women with the guns to let us through. Or we will be the ones standing on the Wall, gassing the refugees, shooting them, shoving them back into the sea or the desert or the barbed wire.

But the children of Earth are showing us another way. Internationalism makes it possible to learn to welcome the needy because they are our brothers and sisters, and because we can only change the world together.

This Author 

Jonathan Neale is a writer and was secretary of the Campaign Against Climate Change for several years. He is the editor of One Million Climate Jobs, and blogs with Nancy Lindisfarne at Anne Bonny Pirate.

Image: School climate strike in Berlin. 350.org, Flickr. 

Crowdfunding and peer to peer lending grew out of the banking crisis of 2008. According to the European Central Bank, the availability of bank loans to SMEs declined 23 percent immediately following the crash, causing a devastating impact on the economy.

The crowdfunding revolution that sprung up as a result of this credit crunch (along side the rise of the internet) may not have completely filled this funding gap, but has led to what some call the democratisation of capital, allowing people to invest with greater ease directly into projects of their choice. What’s more some you can invest as little as £5 in some of the projects making investing in green projects more accessible than ever before.

These crowd funding platforms also allow organisations to raise finance at reduced interest rates, and breaks down some of the power once held by larger financial institutions and even governments that had something of a monopoly on finance.  This has been great news for environmentally focused projects that have often found it hard to raise funds through the mainstream banking sector.

The rise of crowd funding

There are now more than 65 crowdfunding platforms, many of which enable investors to take out Innovative Finance ISAs (IF ISAs) and some of which specifically support environmentally focused projects and businesses.

An IF ISA is essentially a way to invest in projects and businesses via a crowdfunding platform. IF ISAs are a relatively new savings product introduced in 2016 to offer investors an alternative to the traditional Cash ISA and Stocks and Shares ISA.

IF ISAs are a great option for those looking for transparent investments that can help tackle climate change. The most ethical platforms support investors to create a portfolio of projects aligned to their principles; cutting out the traditional middleman or fund manager, that will often also invest your savings in environmentally damaging sectors.

At the moment IF ISA’s still account for less than one percent of the UK ISA market, but with £290 million invested in only the second full tax year of their existence (2017/18), eight times more than the 2016/17 figure of £36 million, IF ISAs are rapidly growing in popularity.

How and where you invest your money is an area ripe for change, the Ethical Consumer Markets Report showed a 6.3% growth in spend related to ethical investments between 2016-17 alone.

Making up for government mistakes and market failure

The growth of crowd funding platforms marks a real shift in power at a time when government failures around the management of our power sector are becoming increasingly clear. Yet even with public sentiment and support shifting towards renewable energy, our Ethical Consumer Markets report revealed earlier in the year how new government rules had a hugely negative impact on the solar sector.

Sales of solar panels fell by 87.4 percent in 2017 after the government reduced support for at-home solar energy generation.  In 2016, the government cut incentives for solar panels known as Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) by 65 percent and, in 2017, it ended subsidies for solar thermal schemes. The market has been declining ever since and, in 2017, it was less than a quarter of its 2010 size, when FITs were first introduced.

Meanwhile is also a growing mistrust in large banks and financial institutions as they continue to finance industries with a high climate impact such as fracking or palm oil.

The most ethical investment platforms

Of the more than 65 crowdfunding platforms Ethical Consumer has awarded four Best Buy status in our new guide to Ethical IF ISAs; they are Abundance, Energise Africa, Ethex and Triodos.
Each of these platforms arrange crowdfunding for projects that all have social and environmental goals. Perhaps equally important with the option to invest as little as £5 into some of the projects it makes a people’s revolution in green finance a real possibility.

• Abundance has allowed customers to invest even very small amounts, from £5, in different projects. It only funds what it calls ‘socially useful’ projects. These have largely been green energy in the form of wind turbines and solar farms, but have also affordable housing.
• Energise Africa is designed to provide working capital to projects that install and sell solar home systems in sub-Saharan Africa. The aim is to provide more than 111,000 rural families access to renewable energy over the next three years. Home systems tend to provide simple electric lighting and phone charging facilities.
• Ethex recently funded the Solar for Schools Community Benefit Society (CBS) that was set-up in 2016 to enable schools in England and Wales to derive some financial and environmental benefit from solar panels.
• Triodos is the first UK bank to launch its own crowdfunding platform. Since its launch the Triodos crowdfunding platform has raised £20 million for eight pioneering organisations delivering positive change. An example is the £1.8 million bond that was successfully raised for Mendip Renewables in 2018, which owns and operates a 5MW community solar scheme and uses its retained profits to support charities in Somerset.

 

Investing sensibly

Whilst only Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)-regulated platforms can offer an Innovative Finance ISA, they come with no other protection. IF ISAs don’t qualify for the savings element of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) that protects up to £85,000 should a firm go bust.

Neither do they get the FSCS investing element that covers up to £50,000 in case your investing platform goes bust and hasn’t done what it is meant to with your money.

Some platforms have “reserve funds” that they claim can cover you in the event of defaults with loans or businesses failing. However they are under no obligation to use these funds and it is at the discretion of the platform.

It is also more difficult to access your money with an IF ISA. Most of the assets (or loans) will be fixed term, making instant access impossible.

You should, therefore, take into account the length of time the asset is held for when making a decision about what projects to invest in.

Time to invest for a greener future?

That said you can limit your risk by investing in these Best Buy options. They work closely with projects on their platforms to ensure that they succeed and by investing small amounts of money into a number of projects spreading your risks.

If you can afford to take a risk with a small amount of your hard earned cash then these platforms provide consumers the opportunity to invest directly into projects that have tangible positive environmental impacts and could help pave the way for a revolution in clean, green energy financing.

This Author

Tim Hunt is a director at Ethical Consumer magazine.

In 2018, at an exhibition of Dutch masters at the Holburne Museum, Bath, I was particularly taken by a painting of Dordrecht harbour by Aelbert Cuyp. My attention was first drawn to the rhythms of the composition as whole, to the interplay of cloudy sky and calm sea.

My eye was taken more deeply into the picture by the artist’s use of light and shade. This led me to the closely observed detail – a flight of birds, a flag fluttering in the breeze, two men punting a lighter towards a ship – and back to better appreciate the whole. All this accomplished, quite unobtrusively, by a master’s skill with oil paint. 

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

I had a very similar experience reading How to See Nature. There is profound yet unobtrusive elegance in Paul Evans’ writing. His words and metaphors subtly alter our gaze, weaving observation, science, myth, poetry into stories of beauty and tragic loss.

Attraction to light

As I finished each chapter, I wanted to close the book and let the images play through my mind, rather than rush on to the next. The book is not a blow-by-blow instruction manual as the title might suggest. It is more of an exemplar, drawing us to see things through Evans’ eyes. This is a man who knows how to look at Nature, and we could all do well to follow his example.

Since I dislike the street lights that blare down on our neighbourhood, and often worry about the impact of light pollution, I was particularly interested in Chapter Two: Gardens of Light. The first paragraphs draw us into the strange beauty of pipistrelle bats hunting insects under a sodium street lamp.

The insects confuse the light with the far more distant moon, are drawn closer, and the pipistrelles follow them. Evans describes the sophisticated echolocation by which the bats hunt down the insects, and the evolution of the insects’ ability to evade them.

He invites us to wonder what it is like to be a bat: maybe we draw a little closer to them as we learn that, slowed down, a bat’s ultrasound emission sounds like birdsong; slowed even further, like the sounds of whales and dolphins.

But the attraction of insects to the street light has a wider impact. It may advantage pipistrelles’ feeding, but it disrupts their circadian rhythms, interferes with flight paths that require darkness. Some one-third of insects die as a result of encounter with artificial light, which confuses and disorients them; it exhausts them, makes them vulnerable to predators, and diverts them from pollinating flowers.

As the chapter continues, the reader sees the relation between light, insects, bats and flowering plants through the author’s eyes and sensemaking, so feels present with both the wonder and the disturbance of the phenomenon.

Intrinsic value

Each chapter picks up and explores a theme: rosebay willowherb cracking open seed pods like “fans of white feathers” leads to a reflection on plants of the wasteland; the warning call of grouse takes us onto the wild moors; the glimpse of a pine marten (or was it a polecat?) to questions of reintroduction and rewilding.

That all is not well with Nature we learn in particular in the chapters on The Greenwood and Blight, where we see how human interventions often have unforeseen impacts, unbalancing ancient relationships.

The book ends with a Bestiary of British wildlife, “idiosyncratic in its selection and based on personal encounter”, which brings the reader closer to Adder, Badger, Crow … Yellowhammer, Zooplankton.

Nature writers in this time of ecological devastation face two challenges: one is to draw attention to the losses caused by human action; another is to tempt us into an ever-deeper appreciation of the intricate beauty of the more-than-human world.

Who can say which is the more important? In this book, Evans successfully integrates both. He writes, “I intend the perspective of this book to be one of advocacy for what we see – bringing overlooked wildlife into focus as a way of revealing how much it matters… [For] seeing Nature as a resource to be exploited and commodified is a denial of its intrinsic value.” 

How to See Nature is handsomely produced by Batsford; readers will enjoy the illustrations by the author’s wife, Maria Nunzia. It shows that even in these times of ecological catastrophe, human culture can reflect the intricate beauty of the world around us.

This Author

Peter Reason’s latest book, In Search of Grace: An Ecological Pilgrimage, is published by Earth Books. 

Some of the most famous inventions and breakthroughs in design and technology have been inspired by nature. 

This is called biomimicry: but really, what is it? Biomimicry – or biomimetics – is the examination of nature, its systems, its procedures, processes and elements to then take inspiration for new inventions that help humans solve problems in which they are facing.

The goal is that humans create far more sustainable designs in order to both progress with innovation whilst having the future of the planet in mind.  

Biomimetic design

Nature has been continuously evolving for the past 3.5 billion years – with all that right on our doorstep, it’s no surprise that humans are increasingly looking to the environment for technological inspiration.

Humans are continually looking for new ways to improve already-invented designs and, surprisingly, nature is helping humans construct better designs than ever before. The approach to human innovation through mimicking nature is called biomimetic design and has been the fundamental basis of many inventions, including buildings and cars.

RS Components has researched how nature is inspiring technologies that will affect our everyday lives – take a look at the infographic here.

With that said, researchers have formulated a mathematical solution that can help minimise noise and maximise aerodynamics in design to help wind turbines and air vehicles. Not only has this technology been inspired by owl feathers, but “it can actually be used for any application with a blade turning through the air”.

Similarly,  scientists from Salk and University of California San Diego have discovered that a fruit fly brain has the elegance and efficient innovative methods of performing similarity searches – could they be the search engines of the future? The fruit fly’s brain could possibly help design computer algorithms very soon.

Innovative technology

There are some inventions that we thought we’d never see – camouflaging material and skin being one of them. However, using octopus skin as an inspiration, engineers at Cornell University have reported on their invention of stretchable surfaces with 3D texture morphing a synthetic “camouflaging skin” – this is inspired by modelling the real thing in octopus and cuttlefish.

Similar to the above, scientists have used gecko skin as an inspiration for one of their inventions. Gecko’s gravity-defying grip is due to their rows on tiny hairs (setae) on their toes. Gecko-skin technology has been used frequently by scientists over the past few years, so we can only expect to see more nature-inspired technology in the future.

Nature isn’t just being used for tech though. EDAG – a German car company, has modelled its new cars off a turtle’s shell. So far, the design is just a potential idea but has recently been brought to life using a 3D printer, designed to improve passenger safety.

We very often see streamlined trains – for example, Virgin and Bullet Trains, but now there is a new invention that has been inspired by the kingfisher bird. The birds dive headfirst into the water to hunt their prey, but there is no splash due to their streamlined beaks.

The new trains have been modelled after the long narrow kingfisher beak in order to protect the train’s structural integrity. As well as the trains looking far more futuristic and innovative, they are quieter and faster which, in turn, helped them used less electricity.     

Energy efficiency

Solar panels have increased by 168 percent over a seven-year period according to the solar job census, and now scientists are looking at ways to improve this renewable energy to ensure it is being used as efficiently as possible.

Scientists are currently looking to imitate the micro-lenses in the compound eye of an insect, as it will enable them to pack small solar cells together and improve the amount of energy generated.

Another animal that has been used as inspiration for a new invention and that has become very close to humans, includes the household cat – researchers at Harvard University recently published a study in the journal PNAS, describing the structure of a cat’s tongue. This has resulted in a possible commercial product called the Tongue-Inspired Grooming Brush.

Moving onto more, Velcro: an everyday invention that many people use – mostly children who are learning the fundamental basics of tying shoelaces, doing up jackets and general connecting to things together.

You probably don’t think much about velcro, but in actual fact, it was invented by a Swiss called George de Mestral. Mestral was walking his dog one day when he noticed many burrs stuck to his sock whilst walking through the fields. Burrs are the seeds from burdock plants that have tiny hooks on the ends that enable them to catch fabrics, fur and other catching materials – this is where the idea spurred from for velcro.

Morphing wing

One invention that often gets ignored when discussing biomimicry is the aeroplane. Leonardo da Vinci designed a flying machine that flapped its wings and had a tail – a lot like a bird, and since then, people improved on that design, creating the aeroplane wing that still works similarly to birds.

Looking toward the future, scientists and professors are looking to develop a prototype for a “morphing wing” that moves dependent on weather conditions and situation of the plane  – whilst this invention clearly is inspired by birds, one researcher is looking to make aeroplanes mimic frogs in the way they leap to certain locations. What will the future of aeroplanes look like?       

Nature continues to adapt and evolve – as will technology. This is because inspiration can be found almost everywhere. It is clear to see that when it comes to biomimicry, we are only limited to how much humans are willing to explore the world and look for further inspiration – the possibilities are endless.

Janine Benyus, the Biomimicry 3.8 Co-Founder believes “biomimicry ushers in an era based not on what we can extract from nature, but on what we can learn from her. This shift from learning about nature to learning from nature requires a new method of inquiry.”

For more information on how nature has inspired technology and the types of inventions we can expect to see in the near future, visit this infographic done by RS Components.

This Author 

Alexandra Berger is a senior marketing leader with over eighteen years’ experience across an international business-to-business environment. She is senior vice president for RS Components. Alexandra’s broad experience has seen her lead digital transformation programmes, brand development initiatives and customer experience programmes. 

Image: John Turnbull, Flickr. 

Dorset County Council has recently started work on a stretch of new cycleway between Bridport and West Bay. The Council had put on an exhibition about the proposed route for a week last July, outside Bridport, and felt that this ticked the procedural boxes. 

It did not occur to anyone to seek out the views of biologist Professor Tom Brereton, a Bridport resident and keen cyclist, who became aware of the proposal only when yellow road-signs warning of traffic-delays went up.

Five species of wild orchid are present on the threatened site. There is an alternative route which would inflict no damage at all. A concrete path already exists directly opposite, quite adequate for pedestrian use and easily widened to accommodate cyclists. 

Local knowledge 

The council responded to Brereton’s inquiries by saying that it was now too late to alter the route and that there would, in any case, be mitigation.

Scrub running along the site could be cleared to create more orchid habitat.But the scrub is home to nesting chiffchaffs and, in some years, lesser whitethroats.

An online petition attracted almost 800 signatures in a few days.

You need to be familiar with a place to know which orchids are present because they don’t appear every year, especially not when the council keeps cutting them down. We all want cycleways but to get them right we need also to seek out and respect the fine-grain knowledge of people who have stuck around. 

Spring of a sort is here. Or, rather, the hottest winter’s day ever has just been recorded. Ninety-seven percent of the country’s wildflower meadows have been lost since 1945; Bridport has recently hosted an Extinction Rebellion event: the line running through all of this also runs through that patch of grassland on the edge of town.

This Author 

Horatio Morpurgo is a journalist and campaigner.