I can still remember the moment when my ecological fear awoke. A freshly-drowned harbour porpoise fell out of the gill net into my embrace with the weight and muscular fluidity of a deep-sleeping toddler.

I set about the science first – turning it over to measure its length, to fix a numbered tag to its flukes, to record its gender and guesstimate its age. I ticked off my tasks with the pretence of objectivity whilst its blowhole oozed with a yellow froth as its drowned lungs emptied onto my hands and across its shining skin.

I wiped the evidence away and looked up at the grief-stricken fisherman leaning out of the wheelhouse window above me. Science appeased, I lowered the porpoise over the stern and watched with growing sadness as this little spy-hopping corpse slipped out of the boat’s wake into the chopping waters of the Atlantic, and finally disappeared into the seascape.

Ecological rift 

Sadness was momentarily replaced by anger before that too was pushed to one side by a feeling of absolute, uncontrollable and questioning fear: what have we become? How did we become thus? And how do we get out of this mess?

Twenty-five years on my fear still remains, and my own nautical big reveal for what we’re now describing as the Anthropocene still haunts and drives me on.

Two main things have changed in that quarter century though. First, the situation has grown worse.

The ecological rift that I stared into on that traumatic day in the Celtic Sea has grown despite the valiant efforts of many of us – and we now find ourselves teetering on the brink of a Sixth Mass Extinction event.

Second, I have come to realise that the problem with my questions was my use of the word ‘we’.

Fear

Fear is, on the whole, a pretty healthy reaction to the scale and intensity of this ecocidal moment in history. It is the reaction to fear and its basis in knowledge or ignorance that is crucial.

Fear itself comes in two categories. There is motivational fear that is derived from knowledge, discovery or revealed truth – the kind that motives school children to march through the streets to highlight climate change.

Or there is the paralyzing kind of fear that comes from ignorance, naivety or falsehood – the kind that feeds self-loathing misanthropy and the Malthusian imagery of humanity-as-plague.

Fear of the Anthropocene contains elements of both and this contradiction needs to be worked out if we’re to feel any pride for (or even survive) this geological shift.

Deep time

The concept behind the Anthropocene – humanity carrying a geological footprint – is not new.

In the late nineteenth century, Friedrich Engels, in his strangely neglected and wonderfully unfinished book The Dialectics of Nature, pointed out that: 

“Man alone has succeeded in impressing his stamp on nature, not only by shifting plant and animal species from one place to another, but also by so altering the aspect and climate of his dwelling place, and even the animals and plants themselves, that the consequences of his activity can disappear only with the general extinction of the terrestrial globe” 

For all of the debates amongst geologists over the start date of the Anthropocene – the 1950s, 1750 or 1492 – it will appear in deep time as an episode that arises simultaneously with our speciation, a geological blink of a few million years.

The crucial question is not when it arose, but how it did so, and in what ways might it develop or end.

Social form

Identifying a geological shift by the collective actions of one species leads to a temptation to generalise from our evolved biology, from our apehood-ancestral origins.

But that road towards biological determinism is fraught with danger, cynicism and fatalism. Prisoners of our biology we may be to some degree but humanity requires a more nuanced critique if we are to understand and adapt our geological expression.

The biologist Richard Lewontin’s eloquence helps: “Biology is not physics, because organisms are such complex physical objects, and sociology is not biology, because human societies are made by self-conscious organisms”.

And the truism outlined by the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran hammers the point home nicely: “Humanity transcends apehood to the same degree by which life transcends mundane physics or chemistry”.    

The character of our geological/ecological footprint, then, is set by our social form and the societal changes that have developed through human history.

Radical perspective

Societal formation – at every spatial level from the household to the global – is what nature wraps itself around without prejudice.

This is what human ecology entails with its history and potential for our positive or negative interrelationship with biodiversity.

This is why the character of the Anthropocene depends on whether we can reject and move on from this most ecologically dysfunctional phase of human history – neoliberal capitalism. 

Rephrasing the questions I asked myself on that trawler 25 years ago demanded a radical perspective on our ecological crisis, but the updated questions are fairer on humanity in the round and less paralysing: What has our social system made us become? How do those who shape our society produce environmental degradation, and fool us into blaming all humanity or even our biology for their ecological sins?

What future relationship can we strike with life on earth once we have found the courage and means to move on to a historically viable, post-capitalist, society?

Throttled Earth

Through the lens of biodiversity conservation – that vital field where we are knowingly or unknowingly striving to create a more convivial Anthropocene – I’ll be using these columns over the coming year to explore debates and options for the ecological road ahead.

The critical need to look forward into the Anthropocene, to embrace its positive potential, and to aim for meaningful sustainability, is highlighted by Barry Lopez in his first major work since the wonderful Arctic Dreams was published a generation ago:

“However it might be viewed, the throttled Earth – the scalped, the mined, the industrially farmed, the drilled, polluted and suctioned land, endlessly manipulated for development and profit – is now our home.

“We know its wounds. We have come to accept them. And we ask, many of us, what will the next step be?”

This Author 

Ian Rappel is a conservation ecologist. He is also a member of the Beyond Extinction Economics (BEE) network.

BBC Springwatch presenter Chris Packham has been the target of abuse after backing a legal challenge which resulted in restrictions on shooting “pest” birds.

Packham was part of an action which resulted in Natural England revoking three general licences which allowed the shooting of 16 species of bird, including crows, magpies, Canada geese and feral and wood pigeons.

He appeared on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday to reveal he and his family had received “threats of a very serious nature” and shared a letter with the Daily Mirror which arrived at his home on Monday.

Bombarded with abuse

In block capitals, the letter says: “We know where you live Packham and we will get you some way or another. We want you dead and we will succeed.

“R.T.A? Poison there are numerous ways… as long as you f***ing die thats (sic) all what matters”.

Packham told GMB police had spent a “considerable amount of time” at his house over the last few days and he had been sent a package containing human excrement.

Packham said it is not just he and his family being targeted, but also businesses he works with.

Packham said: “I’m very resistant to this sort of thing. What worries me is that the charities that I’m affiliated with, the small businesses that I work for, these people aren’t set up to take this sort of abuse, and yet they’ve had to close their websites, their TripAdvisor accounts have had to be shut down, because they’ve been bombarded by these bullies who want to take aim at me.

“My message is clear. Please, take aim at me, but leave all of the charities, all of the other businesses that I work with, leave them out of it. They’re not necessarily sharing my views. They’re not a fair target.”

Licenses revoked

Packham said he can understand the argument from farmers because they have been “misinformed”.

Bodies including the British Association of Shooting and Conservation (BASC), Countryside Alliance, and the National Gamekeepers Organisation have written an open letter to Environment Secretary Michael Gove calling on him to launch an investigation into Natural England’s decision.

They complained that the revocation of the licences which previously allowed them to freely shoot birds such as carrion crows, wood pigeons, magpies and Canada geese had left them in chaos.

Natural England, the body advising the Government on managing the natural environment, took the decision after it was threatened with legal action by environmentalists.

Wild Justice – whose directors include Packham – sought a judicial review of the licences, which Natural England ultimately decided not to fight, believing it would lose.

National attention

As a result, three general licences for controlling wild birds were revoked on April 23, to be replaced by individual licences.

By Friday, only a new licence allowing the killing of carrion crows had been issued.

The issue was catapulted to national attention after the bodies of two dead crows were hung from Packham’s gate two days after Natural England’s decision.

BASC condemned the attack on the presenter’s home but said the new licensing rules are causing havoc at one of the busiest times of the farming calendar.

This Author 

This article was provided by the Press Association. 

Image: Community Spaces Fund, Flickr. 

There was a rumble in the air. Yes, it’s a cliché, but we were all so excited. Finally, we would get the chance to have our voices heard. They’re finally beginning to listen! Or are they?

‘All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group’. What a mouthful. ‘APPCCG’ is a tad catchier, I guess. We wouldn’t have needed to go to Parliament had the powers that be heeded the warnings earlier.

As Greta repeatedly pointed out that Tuesday afternoon, the scientific proof’s there. The existence of climate change is undeniable. But, as is often said, ‘better late than never’.

Truth

And now’s the time we need to act. All of us. We can all add our voices to the movement. We must do it. But why?

Well, because we haven’t any other option. We only have one Earth, after all. If we ruin our world, that’s it. No second chances. No Plan B, no Planet B. No going back. Extinction is permanent.

Greta’s speech captivated the audience, and was perhaps the most compelling part of the meeting. It reminded us that we, as citizens of the world, must work together to stop climate catastrophe.

She travelled by rail and road to deliver her important message to British politicians. “You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to”, she said.

It’s a sombre truth. “You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before.”

Storms

For the most part, they did lie. And not just in our country, mind you. Such untruths are being perpetuated by politicians in other nations, too. This needs to stop.

We must hold our representatives to account. No longer should we accept their excuses for not doing enough to combat climate change. Greta didn’t claim to have all the answers – “not even a scientist could”, she said.

To put it quite simply, some of the technology that could help us eliminate carbon dioxide just hasn’t been invented yet.

So the notion of waiting for it to be invented before doing anything substantial is, quite frankly, absurd. Especially when you consider the fact that new, highly polluting coal, oil and gas plants are being planned.

Countries in the rich ‘Global North’ contribute most to the problem of global warming, while those in the ‘Global South’ bear the brunt of its consequences, with the results of climate change including increased flooding, drought and storms, which can and all too often do lead to famine, problems with infrastructure and economic loss in such nations.

Responsibility

The United Kingdom, in particular, has a special role to play in leading the fight against climate change, as Greta quite rightly pointed out.

Our country is the birthplace of industrialisation, and through the subjugation of nations beyond the seas and exploitation of the world’s natural resources, our ancestors have unknowingly laid the foundations for environmental instability.

To be proud to be British, those of us who do identity as British should be proud to take responsibility for repairing our share of the damage us humans now collectively realise we have done to our planet.

Leaders of wealthy nations like ours are privileged to have such influence on the world stage. We, the people, should put pressure on them to tackle the climate crisis. And a percentage reduction of greenhouse gas emissions just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

One of the things the political leaders of our country need to do is to ensure that major polluters such as the United States and China are also on board. This isn’t going to be easy, but we mustn’t bury our heads in the sand. The fate of our world is at stake.

Contamination

The homes and livelihoods of our friends in the developing world are already in peril.

At the meeting, sat in the front row opposite Michael Gove, Yusif asked why MPs decided to vote for Heathrow expansion even though they knew how climate change is already having a detrimental effect on the lives of so many people around the world right now.

For instance, in some parts of Ghana, the country where Yusif was born and lived in until moving to the UK three years ago, the impact of climate change is projected to have a serious effect on food security.

Drought and flooding are common occurrences in the country, leading to poor crop harvests, impacting upon farmers and their families, and at the same time reduces the amount of safe, clean water for drinking, leading to dehydration.

Flooding can lead to the contamination of drinking water sources, so that water is unusable until repurified. Flooding has also lead to an influx of pests and increases in the incidence of waterborne diseases.

Havoc

Yusif never got an answer to his question from the Environment Secretary, but Greta replied pointedly with “I don’t know” when asked how MPs can vote through airport expansion when so many countries are suffering the impact of climate change now.

Our friend and fellow activist, Ummi Hoque, attended the meeting with us. Sadly, Bangladesh, where her family is from, is now a textbook example of a land seriously affected by climate change.

Much of the country is low-lying and prone to flooding, a problem that will only get worse should sea levels continue to rise due to our failure to reverse global warming.

As weather conditions become more extreme, there will be a severe loss of arable land, and an increased risk of damage to crops and livestock through natural disasters such as cyclones. The potential for loss of life around the world due to climate change is unimaginable.

If, around the world, we carry on polluting the atmosphere, and if we fail to reverse our carbon footprint, we will allow this destructive phenomenon to worsen. Climate change will not hesitate to wreak havoc on not just faraway countries but also our own.

Act now

Regardless of the current administration’s reluctance to declare it as such, this is a climate emergency. And it should be treated as such.

The time has come for all politicians around the world to put their party affiliations and other differences aside for the issue of climate change, which has often been described as the most pressing issue ever faced by the human race.

Those who have chosen to represent us in legislative bodies of government around the world need to speak the truth about the calamity of climate change and the threat it poses to everybody as a global crisis.

As Ummi said: “Climate change does not favour a specific race, class, age, gender or any other group”. It doesn’t discriminate on any grounds; it poses a threat to all.

We can’t wait until it’s too late. Climate change is something that we all have a responsibility to reverse. The time for us to act is now.

The Authors

Tom Jayamaha and Yusif Ibrahim became campaigners with Friends of the Earth after graduating from the ‘My World My Home’ leadership programme offered in their colleges.

Friends of the Earth took the government to court for failing to properly consider climate change and sustainable development when approving a third runway at Heathrow.

Represented by law firm Leigh Day, they argued that the government’s Airports National Policy Statement was unlawful as it breached sustainable development and climate duties in the Planning Act 2008. Primarily because – as the government admitted – it had not considered the Paris Accord and the needs of future generations related to it.

However, the case at the High Court did not succeed. There were a total of five claimants also taking other cases against the government, objecting to the expansion of Heathrow airport on a variety of grounds, but none of the claimants succeeded.

Major hurdles

On the climate case the court ruled that the Secretary of State did not have to consider Paris but only the targets and policy under the Climate Change Act, even though it is accepted those targets do not go far enough.

Will Rundle, Friends of the Earth’s Head of Legal, said: “On a day when parliament is being asked to declare a climate emergency and just before the independent Committee on Climate Change is expected to advise the government to tighten its belt on climate-wrecking emissions, this decision feels completely out of step with the real world around us.

“Heathrow airport is already the single biggest climate polluter in the UK, expansion will only exacerbate the problem.

“Parliament’s decision to green-light Heathrow was morally wrong, but today we believe the courts have got it legally wrong too. We are examining the judgement in detail and will consider all options including the possibility of appealing.

“The climate case against the third runway is growing stronger every day and Heathrow bosses face many more major hurdles before they can bring in the bulldozers. This fight will go on, the issue is just too big to drop.”

Bitterly disappointed

Rowan Smith, Solicitor at Leigh Day, said: “Our client Friends of the Earth is of course bitterly disappointed with the result, particularly after all the hard work involved in its tireless campaign against the damaging climate change impacts of a third runway.

“We will reflect on the judgment and advise our client on the prospects of any appeal.

“Despite the court’s decision in favour of the government we expect that this will be overtaken by tomorrow’s planned publication of advice from the Climate Change Committee on the need to revise the UK’s current climate change targets in line with the Paris Agreement.

“We hope that the Committee’s advice will positively move forward the arguments that Friends of the Earth have advanced throughout these legal proceedings.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from Friends of the Earth. 

Image: Thousands say ‘No to Heathrow expansion. Hacan2009, Flickr. 

Oceans mop up vast amounts (up to 80 percent) of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by humans.

The ecosystems that they support could provide new, albeit controversial, ways to draw carbon from the air.

But their health and management remains sidelined from the key political forum on climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Landmark report 

That could change this year. Host nation Chile, which has control over almost 18 million sq km of the world’s oceans, is calling this year’s Cop25 UN climate conference in Santiago a “Blue Cop”.

At a special preparatory meeting in Madrid earlier this month politicians, scientists, and NGOs discussed ways to use the meeting to gain political traction.

Chile’s environment minister and the Cop25 president Carolina Schmidt told the meeting through a video: “Time is running out. This is why Chile has been pushing to highlight this problem.

“In our vision, there cannot be an effective response to climate change without a global response to ocean issues.”

The UN body of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is due to release a landmark report on the complex linkages between ocean and climate change in September. This is expected to add impetus to Chile’s programme.

Marine issues

What it means to host a “Blue Cop” is still up for debate. Rémi Parmentier, secretary of Because the Ocean, an initiative signed by 23 countries at COP21 in Paris to call for the IPCC report, told Climate Home News “the role of the ocean in mitigating climate change, and the ocean change that it is causing (ocean warming, acidification, deoxygenation, etc) will take centre stage, now and in the future”.

Parmentier said: “Ocean and climate are two sides of the same coin: if we want to protect the climate, we must protect the ocean, and vice-versa.” 

According to observers from the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, some governments at the meeting requested that ocean health be placed on the formal agenda for the Cop. This would hoist marine issues at the top of the list of climate priorities.

Other governments were more reluctant, stressing that the creation of special slots for ocean matters could delay negotiations.

Instead, the UN could hold a special event in relation to the publication of the IPCC report or release a political statement, they suggested. (The meeting was closed and ENB did not attribute the statements.)

Specific measures

Political statements are a common device in the UN process. They can propose solutions to specific problems, form new commissions or simply commit governments to place new attention on an issue.

Several countries, including Chile, Monaco and France, are pushing for countries to include ocean health issues alongside the energy transition, forestry, agriculture and industry in the national climate plans they submit to the UN climate process.

Launching the Cop25 talks this month, Chilean president Sebastian Piñera used his speech to call for this.

These voluntary plans can include anything governments wish, but their inclusion would indicate governments are considering what they can do to protect the ocean carbon sink.

Spain’s minister for the ecological transition Teresa Ribera said the IPCC report would identify specific measures that countries could take that could then be addressed in their reports.

Controversial technologies

Scientists and policy-makers are currently debating what these could be, with some calling to monitor ocean acidification or increase the number of marine protected areas.

Others have suggested that national jurisdictions should count and cut their shipping emissions, which account for 2.5 percent of global emissions, according to the latest International Maritime Organisation (IMO) study.

Participants also voiced caution that a renewed focus on the ocean could boost controversial technologies, such as ocean fertilisation and blue carbon credits.

Ocean fertilisation refers to the sprinkling of iron into the oceans to spur the growth of algae, or phytoplankton, which bloom and capture large quantities of carbon through photosynthesis.

Scientists are still evaluating the consequences of the geotechnology, however. Sunken blooms could, for example, deplete oxygen reserves, which are vital for marine life, and produce greenhouse gases that are more perilous than CO2.

Ocean grabbing

Head of the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) Sébastien Treyer, told CHN that it was therefore “very important that all the potential negative impacts that solutions like ocean fertilisation can have on ocean ecosystems and ecological cycles are assessed” before promoting them through climate negotiations.

An emphasis on offsetting emissions through blue carbon, or the carbon stored by coastal ecosystems such as mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and salt marshes, also comes with its own set of risks.

In the past, the inclusion of such spaces into carbon markets have led to “ocean grabbing” from small-scale fishermen, civil societies such as Afrika Kontakt have argued.

Parmentier cautioned that “avoid repeating past abuse with regard to carbon credits”.

On top of the the Blue Cop and IPCC report, 2021 will also mark the start of the UN decade on Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

This Author 

Natalie Sauer reports for Climate Home News. She has contributed to a variety of international outlets, including Politico Europe, AFP and The Ecologist. This story was first published on Climate Home. 

As the impacts of humankind shift our world from the stable conditions of the Holocene and into the far less predictable and volatile conditions of the Anthropocene, we have a stark choice.

Do we act in our collective best interests to halt and reverse the damage being caused to our planet’s unique web of life, or do we press on regardless, pursuing narrow national and economic interests in the full knowledge that this will likely lead to disaster?

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Thus far, and despite the plainest warnings, it is the latter path that we are embarked upon. The consequences are seen in the rapidly changing climate, the depletion of resources, from soils to fresh water, ecosystem degradation and the hastening pace of extinction.

Wildlife restoration

If we are to avoid these trends causing major impacts in the human world, now is the moment that we must act.

This is not least because the risks are no longer in a theoretical future: they are in the here and now and arising from the damage that has already been done. This is why the agenda is now not only about the protection of the Earth’s natural systems, but also about their recovery.

The good news is that we do actually possess the capacity to turn things around. Across the world there is an increasing number of examples of how the curve of decline can be bent towards recovery.

The restor­ation of forests, the rebuilding of soil health, the rapid rise in renewable electricity generation, the expansion of some wildlife populations and the replenishment of critical resources such as fish and fresh water are being achieved in different places via combinations of individual and community leadership, private sector investment, local and national government action and the scaling up of more benign technology.

Despite the potential to do things differently, however, there are still some missing pieces, including the absence of a clear and unequivocal global signal to the effect that things really must change, at a considerably greater scale than is presently the case, and much faster.

Political will

Not only do we need a more visible statement of the need for rapid change: it must be spoken from the highest political level. 

The political appetite for action should, though, be considerably sharpened by the simple and inescapable fact that all economic growth and development in the end depends on natural systems.

While this basic truth has so far evaded the attention of many leaders, it is a reality that is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid. For if we are to meet the needs of the billions of people now living on Earth, never mind their children and grandchildren, then we need to do things differently.

If there were sufficient political will, we could embark on the journey towards change this year.

Should world leaders see fit to rise to the occasion, this September’s United Nations General Assembly could provide the launch pad for an emergency plan to turn things around. The initiative needs to come from there, as our reaction to the unfolding global crisis must be based on a political signal from the highest level.

Strong signal 

This is not least because climate change talks, those in the Convention on Biological Diversity, or in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, are often quite technical and focused on their immediate agendas.

Negotiations are often conducted by civil servants or at best junior ministers, and so generally lack the mandate needed to address the bigger challenges at hand. When those challenges include an existential threat to our civilisations, we can see that the political space for action needs to be made considerably bigger.

This is why we need a clear and strong signal from heads of state to open the possibilities for breakthroughs in these more specific political processes.

As well as signalling the fact that we face an urgent situation, and restating the need for a step up in ambition, the heads of state must also set out their intention to integrate ongoing processes to ensure that the recovery of Nature, sustainable development, and efforts to avoid the worst effects of climate change become united in a single programme.

The reasons for this are quite straightforward. One is the extent to which efforts to protect the climate can sometimes undermine Nature protection; for example, some biofuels policies have incentivised more deforestation.

Climate change

On the other hand, some renewable energy technologies have not gathered scale as quickly as they could, because the policies to promote their proliferation did not take adequate account of Nature; for example, some onshore wind power developments have been stopped as a result of the risk they would pose to wildlife.

On top of this, neither the conservation nor the low-carbon agenda can succeed without complementary action in the other.

For example, we know that it will not be possible to achieve the 1.5-degree warming limit in the Paris Agreement on climate change without action to protect and restore natural systems, including forests and soils.

Similarly, it will not be possible to sustain the natural diversity of the Earth should temperatures exceed that level, for example as a result of damage caused to polar and coral reef ecosystems.

Also, if we are to adapt to the climate change already under way, the enhancement of the natural environment will be one of our best insurance policies, for example through the restoration of wetlands and coastal ecosystems so as to assist in reducing the risks posed by floods and inundation from the sea.

Political mandate

The achievement of both conservation and carbon goals will be possible only if we can embed genuinely sustainable development to ensure that the needs of all the world’s people are met while respecting envir­onmental limits.

Again, we know this can be done, because in some parts of the world environmental progress is being made at the same time as social progress.

Take the Central American republic of Costa Rica, where the electricity supply is now nearly 100 percent renewable and where since the 1980s both forest cover and per capita GDP have doubled at the same time.

Laying the foundations for the climate-friendly recovery of the natural world for the benefit of humankind is within our grasp.

We can do this, not least via a series of global meetings taking place in 2020, including what we can expect to be the historic meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Beijing and climate talks that will, among other things, review the adequacy of action to achieve the Paris agenda.

This will, however, require a clear political mandate from the world’s presidents and prime ministers. Since these leaders represent us, the citizens, one important thing we can all do between now and later this year is to insist they rise to the challenge. There is, after all, now no time to lose.

This Author 

Tony Juniper is Chair of Natural England. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Investment deals emerging from China’s belt and road summit 25-27 April show continued support for controversial coal projects, despite leaders’ green rhetoric.

The official round-up of conference outcomes highlighted Chinese involvement in a recently opened coal mine and 660MW power plant in Thar desert, Pakistan; and Vietnam’s 1,200MW Nam Dinh coal power station.

Media reports and company announcements also flagged coal projects in Turkey, Cambodia and Indonesia, as compiled by Greenpeace campaigner Yan Wang. Most announcements signalled advancement on existing projects, rather than new deals.

Carbon footprint

President Xi Jinping told dignitaries, including more than 30 heads of state, on Friday that his flagship foreign policy “aims to promote green development”.

The remarks respond to rising concern about the carbon footprint of China’s coal power spree abroad, which risks blowing international climate goals.

Some 25 countries signed up to a “green development coalition” in Beijing, while 28 joined the “belt and road energy partnership”. There was little overlap between the two groups.

Pakistan was one of the few nations with a foot in both camps. Prime minister Imran Khan welcomed “substantial progress” on developing the country’s energy supplies and called for partnership to scale up his mass tree-planting policy.

Khan said: “I suggest we launch a joint project to plant 100 billion trees in the next two years, so that we can mitigate the effects of climate change for our coming generations.” 

Investment principles 

On coming to power in 2018, Khan’s climate chief Malik Amin Aslam warned that Chinese-backed coal projects spelled “potential disaster” for the environment, but said it was too late to pull out. He said that the government could only make the “best out of a bad situation” and enforce green standards.

The vast majority of Chinese investment in Pakistan continues to flow into energy: mostly coal, followed by hydroelectric, grid, solar and wind power installations.

On Saturday, Khan’s industrial adviser Razak Daoud attended the signing ceremony for a 700MW coal power plant, China Machinery Engineering Corporation announced.

Turkey’s leadership shunned this year’s summit, citing China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority and “debt trap diplomacy” – accusing it of predatory lending to secure strategic advantage.

That did not stop Shanghai Electric Power signing a deal with Chinese banks earlier in April to build Hunutlu coal power station in southern Turkey. Financial partners include China Development Bank and Bank of China, who on Thursday signed up to voluntary green investment principles.

Health concerns

Environmentalists are fighting the proposal, which is among 13 plants planned for Iskenderun Bay. They warn it threatens two protected species of turtle and human health.

Funda Gacal of the Health and Environment Alliance said in a statement: “We are worried about the aggravation of disease and ill-health of the population with new coal, given that there was already a 50 percent increase in the number of deaths from respiratory diseases from 2009 to 2017 in Adana city.”

It was not all fossil fuel energy dealing at the summit. The Silk Road Fund invested in the DEWA 950MW concentrated solar power park in Dubai, while the Export-Import Bank of China signed a loan agreement for solar PV and hydroelectric projects with Argentina’s finance ministry.

Over 2013-18, Chinese power project loans were heavily weighted towards coal, according to analysis from NRDC. Lending to renewables increased sharply in 2018, but it is too early to say whether – and how fast – the switch towards wind, solar and hydro will continue.

This Author 

Megan Darby is Climate Home News’ deputy editor. She previously wrote about UK energy and water industries for leading sector publication Utility Week. This story was first published on Climate Home. 

The impacts of climate change caused by global warming have become graphically evident in the last 20 years.

Record high temperatures have been twice as frequent as record low temperatures, and 17 of the 18 warmest years in recorded history occurred in the last 19 years.  The consequences are death, injuries, and catastrophic economic losses to tens of millions of people around the world.

News reports on the latest disasters show massive forest fires in California and unprecedented flooding in the Midwest. They don’t show less photogenic effects, like inevitably melting glaciers and declining marine fisheries, nor completely invisible consequential effects, like diverting public funds from building better schools and hospitals to replacing storm-damaged housing, roads and bridges.

Predicting danger

Worse, the destructive events we’ve seen are not a “new normal” – the damage will intensify as the years pass. The carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted during the twentieth century, combined with our much larger current emissions, will cumulate to increase the average global temperature year after year.

Why are we only now recognizing the predicted dangers?

Scientists theorized that increases in atmospheric CO2 could cause an unprecedented increase in the earth’s temperature as early as the 1850s. But the timing and practical impacts were an enigma.

By the 1970s, satellites and other scientific tools began providing real-world data that made some rough predictions possible.

In 1988, the United Nations created an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to build an international consensus on the threat.

Uncertain language 

The record shows that the IPCC climate scientists insisted on too much certainty, understated the human and social consequences of climate change, and engaged in optimistic, perhaps magical thinking about the risks of irreversible disaster for civilization.

The First IPCC Report in 1990 was hardly an urgent call for action. It estimated the most likely global average temperature increase, compared to 1990, would be about 1o Celsius [1.8o Fahrenheit] by 2025 and about 3o C [5.4o F] by 2100.

Moreover, its summary stressed uncertainty about its conclusions: the warming “could be largely due to natural variability”, and “the unequivocal detection of the . .  . effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.”

“Great uncertainties remain with regard to the timing, magnitude and regional impacts…”

This language could easily be read as only suggesting more research.  

Treading cautiously

The Fifth IPCC Report in 2014 contained much more concrete projected temperature increases. It anticipated a most likely average temperature increase of 4.0o C [7.2o F] by 2100.

But this report presented the likely effects in non-emotive terms: for example, it said “sea-level rise and storms could lead to significant movements of people”, instead of a more graphic, and accurate, statement like “millions of poor, uneducated farmers and fishermen will become refugees seeking new homes in more developed countries.”

The scientists involved still stressed the hopeful side of the probabilities. They didn’t point out that there is  a 35 percent or 40 percent chance of much higher temperatures that could destroy civilization – less probable than the median temperature rise projection, but a risk of unacceptable catastrophe.

So why were the IPCC scientists still so cautious in 2014?

The scientists’ statistical concept of “confidence” is far more demanding than what most non-scientists consider sufficient. They were reluctant to recommend drastic, disruptive economic restructuring to end fossil-fuel emissions without being absolutely positive their predictions were correct. Only in 2019 did the three best climate models all confirm a greater than 99.9 percent likelihood that global warming is human-induced.

Reputation for objectivity 

Added to this, the dominant scientific disciplines of IPCC members were climate science and meteorology –– not biology, ecology, economics, or social science.

These climate scientists focused on the most certain danger: rising sea levels over time. Possible societal effects were glossed over.  

IPCC Report conclusions are inevitably watered down to obtain consensus (virtual unanimity) among all participating scientists. Some participants from oil-dependent countries seemed to lean toward protecting their economic interests.  

Finally, scientists try to avoid “alarmist” talk about global warming consequences that would sound “unscientific” or “political” and taint their reputation for objectivity.

This reluctance, combined with the human tendency toward optimism, discourages them from saying “the end of civilization is coming.”

Destructive force 

The Fifth IPCC Report also confirmed that the use of fossil fuels was dramatically expanding, not declining.

Meanwhile, biologists and social scientists had begun ringing alarm bells. They saw the impacts everywhere: falling agricultural yields, disappearing fisheries, coastal flooding, extreme storms, species extinctions, melting glaciers, and collapsing water supplies.

Most prominently, they identified the multi-year droughts in Somalia and Syria as the underlying cause of famines, civil and international violence, and massive migrations toward Europe.

Hurricane Sandy brought home the destructive force of storm surge for New York, and the enormous cost of either protecting the city or rebuilding it afterward.

The 2015 Paris Accords thus committed parties to limit global average temperature increase to a stable 2.0o C [3.6o F] by 2100, with an aspirational goal of 1.5o C [2.7o F].

Negative emissions

An IPCC Special Report this January explored pathways to the goal. It concluded that the 1.5o C target can probably be met if the world reduces net carbon emissions to zero by 2055 and there after achieves net negative emissions (that is, removes more atmospheric CO2than is emitted.)

What would that mean in practical terms? 

Zero net emissions by 2055 means eliminating nearly all carbon emissions from energy production and transportation, and seriously reducing emissions from food production and buildings.

Over the next 36 years, most of the mines, oil wells, pipelines, and fossil-fueled electric plants would close. Transportation, including autos, railroads, trucks, ships, and airplanes, would be powered by electricity.

Yet utilities, oil companies, and airlines are still investing billions, with government subsidies, in fossil-fuel based infrastructure with over-50-year lifespans. Auto companies are resisting the switch to electric cars, which will force the end of their engine and transmission factories. Electrification of railroads, ships, and airplanes is rarely discussed because it currently seems so impractical.  

Removing CO2

Achieving net negative emissions thereafter means physically removing enough CO2 from the atmosphere to offset both the remaining annual fossil fuel emissions and CO2 from all other sources – cows, rice fields, slash-and-burn agriculture, and melting permafrost. The technology to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively only exists in the lab.

The IPCC Special Report crucially assumes immediate, substantial reductions in methane (natural gas) emissions.

Methane lasts only about 12 years in the atmosphere, yet its effect during that period is 80-100 times more potent than an equivalent amount of CO2. Its effects are thus far more immediate. Ominously, recent data show methane emissions increasing rapidly since 2007.

Finally, the IPCC Special Report still shows earth’s temperature probably exceeding 1.5°C for most of the period between 2030 and 2060, even if the world pursues the program and meets the 2100 target.

The focus on the 2100 goal downplays the irreversible damage to glaciers, fisheries, and other resources from these higher interim temperatures, strengthening immediate climate change effects.

Inhibiting action 

Why are we still arguing about whether to take immediate action when we should have begun acting over a decade ago?

Several factors inhibit prompt action. Firstly, in the abstract, the media and the public have a hard time imagining that a few degrees of average temperature increase during their entire lives could be a significant threat to themselves or civilization. Only recently have the impacts become evident.

By extension, human instincts are not attuned to the long term, complex realities of compounding effects, ecosystem interdependence, finite natural resources, and population growth. We tend to rely on “muddling through” and remain optimistic that “things will be okay.” 

Global warming is the ultimate “tragedy of the commons” – no individual or even national action is decisive alone. The current US Administration argument against strict auto emission standards is that emitting a little more won’t hurt and emitting even a lot less won’t help.

In addition, carbon emissions are essentially permanent, so each year’s emissions cumulate. Reversing that impact becomes more difficult and urgent with each passing decade. Even small carbon emissions will still contribute to the total warming potential of the atmosphere.

Time horizon

Most people’s time horizon is a lifespan. In 1990, the year 2100 was 110 years away – as far in the future as 1880 was in the past.

Now 2100 is only 80 years away – only as far in the future as 1940 is in the past. Living adults remember WW II; young children expect to see 2100.

The damage from global warming is becoming visible, but the world is still delaying the necessary transformations. Governments aren’t forcing change, and citizens aren’t demanding it.

The coming decade appears to be the last chance to avoid severe, irreversible climate change that will undermine society. The challenge is to shoulder the cost of transforming our economic systems now, in order to save civilization over the years and centuries ahead. 

This Author 

Sam Bleicher is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He was a member and vice chair of the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board from 2014 to 2018. His novel on climate change, The Plot to Cool the Planet, draws on his experience as a senior official in the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Department of State. 

As the son of an agricultural worker in NE Scotland in the 1970s and 80s I recall the amazing abundance and diversity of insects and other types of nature in agricultural areas. 

We saw gigantic fish jumping for flies from clean, clear rivers; birds feeding mid-flight from mass migrations of flying insects; a hundred beautiful lacewings drawn to the glass of a well-lit bedroom window.

When I see the barren industrial zones that agricultural areas in the UK and other economically developed nations have now become, I am filled with sadness and anger. This decimation is treated with a shrug of the shoulders by farmers, politicians, the agri-industrialists that supply the weapons of destruction, and the general public alike.

Species richness

Intensive farming is destroying not useful insects such as the pollinators, as well as larger animals such as birds and mammals.

Insects are characterised by their huge abundance and diversity. In 1980s North America, insects occurred at around 100 kg per hectare: 15 times greater than the mass of humans, birds and non-human mammals in the same area combined.

Figures for species richness are equally impressive. Just over half the species on earth are insects and half of those are plant-eating insects. Vertebrates only make up a paltry 4 percent of species.

In their role as pollinators, decomposers, and natural regulators of pests, insects support our food chain and a healthy environment.

Insects feature at the bottom of almost all food webs. The larger feathered and furry animals cannot survive without them. Messing with insect abundance is the last thing humans should be doing, yet insect abundance right across the globe is dropping and it is dropping fast.

Global decline 

Recent interest in insect decline followed a 2017 study showing that numbers of flying insects in Germany had dropped by an incredible 75 percent in the 27 years since 1990. An influential review on global insect decline and a flurry of media interest followed.

To my mind, what is interesting about these recent articles is the way they point the finger at intensive agriculture and pesticide use.

Entomologists (insect scientists) have a well-concealed but cosy relationship with agriculture and the agrochemical industry. If entomologists are speaking out you can bet they are really worried.

Agriculture impacts nature so profoundly by virtue of its scale. England, for example, is around 70 percent agricultural land with half planted in crops (arable) and the remainder pasture for feeding animals.

England is more or less all agricultural land. Natural habitat is restricted to patches here and there, so if nature declines across agricultural land it declines everywhere.

Increase in pesticides 

Agriculture leads a three pronged attack on insects. The first line of attack is through crop spraying with ever more potent insecticides.

In the UK the crop area treated with pesticides and the number of applications per area has doubled since 1990. The potency of pesticides has also increased dramatically with the introduction of the neonicotinoids in the 1990s.

The number of honeybee lethal doses applied to the 4.6 million hectares of arable land in the UK has increased sixfold since 1990. These pesticides don’t just wipe out the pest insects; they kill almost all insects that happen to be living or resting in the crop.

Every year farmers kill pretty much every insect across just under half the land area of their nation.

Can we reasonably expect to have a healthy insect fauna in nations where this intensity of spraying is common place?

Herbicide spraying

The second line of attack is herbicide spraying. Again using the UK as an example, the area of arable land treated with the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) has increased 9-fold since 1990 to a staggering 2.6 million hectares.

The surface of cereal fields and field margins used to be awash with a diversity of wild plants. Now there is nothing but sandy soil and crop and most field margins contain pretty much nothing but grass.

Recalling that almost half of all insects depend on wild plants for food, there is no way we can expect to have a healthy population of insects and the animals that eat them when almost half the land of the nation is treated in this way.

The last line of attack on insects by intensive agriculture is intensification of pasture. Traditionally grass pastures were managed with little chemical fertilisation, a low density of grazing animals, and long periods of rest between grazing.

They used to be an important habitat for plant and insect biodiversity. Now grass pasture is a high-throughput system for the production of meat and milk: they support nothing but grass and the large animals that graze on it.

Bearing in mind that grass pasture covers just under half of economically developed nations like England, this is a terrible blow to insects and nature in general.

Food security 

All we, the public, have gotten in return for agriculture’s destruction of insects and nature is an increase in crop and meat yield per area of land.

This was supposed to mean cheap food and food security but commonly it has led to a move away from healthy traditional diets to those higher in fattening animal products and sugar, with a increase in obesity an ill health.

In the UK candy and junk food are everywhere but the fruit and vegetables that we should be eating remain out of reach for as many as 4 million of the UK’s least well off. As for food security, the UK is a long way from self-sufficiency and only produces 60 percent of its own food with the rest imported.

International trade is considered to be more important than food security so any threat of altered trade relations like Brexit leads to food insecurity and panic buying.

And with the worldwide rise of powerful right wing zealots, who knows what disturbances to international trade and food security lie ahead?

Mobilising citizens 

In the UK, the response of the ruling Conservative Party to the issues discussed in this article is a new Agriculture Bill. However, the bill barely mentions pesticide and herbicide spraying, suggesting that they will continue unabated, which makes a mockery of the whole thing.

The solution to overuse of pesticides and herbicides is simple. All crops have a threshold beyond which insect pest and weed damage results in significant economic losses. A small team of government scientists could easily produce such thresholds for UK crops and all the farmer would then need to do is check his/her crops regularly to see if the threshold has been crossed, when spraying would be allowed.

But as the current UK Government won’t even mention pesticides and herbicides in their Agriculture Bill, these solutions seems a distant prospect.

We need a mass mobilisation of citizens in defence of nature and against intensive farming in a way we are beginning to see in response to the problem of global warming. But it is increasingly clear that most governments simply ignore mass peaceful protest.

Politicians only understand money and economics and only when activists begin to impact ‘the bottom line’ of nations will politicians sit up and take notice.

This Author 

Colin Tosh is a lecturer in ecology, evolution and computational biology at Newcastle University. A longer version of this article is available on his blog. 

Members of campaign group Extinction Rebellion said “the rebellion has to continue” after a “disappointing” meeting with Environment Secretary Michael Gove.

Five members of the group met with Mr Gove and ministers from other departments, including the Treasury, in Westminster to discuss demands for change.

They include declaring a national emergency on climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and establishing a Citizens Assembly for people to make decisions and suggest policies. However, they said they were left frustrated with Mr Gove.

Demands

Member of the youth branch Felix Ottaway O’Mahony, 14, from Lambeth, south London, said: “This meeting has been very disappointing, we’ve set no concrete demands, he hasn’t accepted any of our demands, he’s avoided our demands as a whole, he isn’t going to declare a national emergency.

“However, something has to be said for the fact he has recognised there is an issue.”

He added: “He is going to meet us again in a month’s time, which is a step forward that we will now be regularly meeting with political members.

“However, the rebellion has to continue because our demands have not been met.”

Farhana Yamin, 54, a prominent climate change lawyer who glued herself to Shell’s London headquarters during a week of protests, said: “I definitely think he could have taken the initiative to say Defra will show leadership that was necessary for the nation to come together, I was expecting a little bit more.”

Biodiversity

Earlier in the day, another meeting took place, with Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell at Portcullis House, which resulted in Extinction Rebellion being asked to address the shadow cabinet.

The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, concluded with claims some progress had been made.

Former Green Party county councillor for Stroud Sarah Lunnon, 54, who attended the meeting, said: “They gave us a concrete commitment to actually go and talk, McDonnell will ask for Extinction Rebellion to address the shadow cabinet, the shadow environment committee and also the Treasury Committee.

“I think it’s really fair to say the Labour Party are listening to Extinction Rebellion, I think they’ve heard the voices of all those people who got arrested on the streets.”

However, the MP for Hayes and Harlington did not agree to change the date in the Labour Party manifesto, which plans to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but would consider a new target of 2030.

This came after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced that the party will force a House of Commons vote on whether to declare an environmental and climate emergency following mass protests in London.

This Author

Ted Hennessey is a reporter for the Press Association.