Back-to-back heatwaves in the central Indian Ocean killed more than two-thirds of corals in two years, a study has shown.

But the research by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) suggests some corals were more resilient to the high sea temperatures, which could provide hope for the important habitat as the planet warms.

Scientists studied reefs in the remote Chagos Archipelago of the British Indian Ocean Territory before and after two ocean heatwaves with unusually high sea temperatures, which came 12 months apart.

Killed

Surveying of the seafloor between 2015 and 2017 found that the high sea temperatures led to the loss of 70% of the hard corals, the study published in the journal Coral Reefs suggests.

In 2015, seawater temperatures around reefs in the territory were unusually high for nearly eight weeks, and the seafloor surveys before and after the heatwave saw live healthy coral cover fall by 60 percent.

Before the corals could recover, they were hit by another ocean heatwave in 2016, lasting for more than four months.

Although researchers were unable to assess the impact of the second heatwave across all the islands of the archipelago, data from the Peros Banhos Atoll show 68% of the remaining corals were bleached and 29 percent died.

This suggests around 70 percent of hard corals were lost between 2015 and 2017. But while the second heatwave lasted longer, fewer of the surviving corals were killed.

Compromised

Researchers suggest the remaining corals are more resilient to rising temperatures and their ability to survive may be key to protecting reefs from rises in sea temperatures driven by global warming.

Hard corals are the building blocks of reefs which provide a home for around a quarter of all marine species and food, protection and income for some 500 million people worldwide.

Similar coral death and changes to the make-up of species in the reef were seen in the Chagos Archipelago following global coral bleaching in 1998, from which recovery took 10 years, the study said.

The relatively rapid recovery suggests the reef is highly resilient and the lack of disturbance it has from humans – as a result of the UK’s controversial removal of local people to make way for a US military base – increases the probability the reefs will recover again over time.

But as these kinds of heatwaves become more frequent, the ability to recover will become “increasingly compromised”, the study said.

Catastrophic

Marine biologist and lead author, Dr Catherine Head of ZSL’s Institute of Zoology, said: “We know it has taken about 10 years for these reefs to recover in the past but, with global temperatures rising, severe heatwaves are becoming a more regular occurrence, which will hinder the reef’s ability to bounce back.

“Our data shows the event in 2016 was worse than in 2015, but it did less damage.

“We think this is because the 2015 heatwave killed off the more vulnerable species, and those that survived were more tolerant of hotter temperatures.”

She said preliminary reports from April 2019 suggest another period of high sea temperatures has led to further coral bleaching in the British Indian Ocean Territory, though it is not yet known how serious it is.

“It is encouraging that reefs may have some degree of natural resilience, though further research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which some corals are able to protect themselves,” she said. “This may be our best hope to save these vital habitats from the catastrophic effects of climate change.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency under the federal government in the United States that focuses on all things related to safeguarding the environment, including enforcing environmental quality regulations. However, some people assert that the EPA falls short in that area.

As a result, individuals, wildlife and entire communities could be at risk for the ramifications that come about when regulations are loose or non-existent. Insufficient rules might also trigger more substantial issues that are not immediately apparent, but severe nonetheless.

It’s common for people to argue that the EPA needs to step up its regulatory efforts without getting into specifics. However, here are a few concrete things that the EPA could do to improve regulations for environmental quality.

More Accountability

The EPA, along with other federal organizations, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conduct environmental quality inspections and alert organizations to potential hazards. But, evidence suggests that those checks do not happen frequently enough, and perhaps, the EPA downplays the severity of issues that worry residents the most.

A document published by the Office of the Inspector General shows that the EPA did not carry out adequate evaluations to check for asbestos levels in schools from 2011 through 2015. The agency conducted only 13% of the inspections required under the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act during that timespan. The EPA blamed budget cuts for the issue, but in any case, the lack of inspections means the parties to blame are not necessarily held accountable.

On a related note, the EPA conducted soil tests in 2009 and selected North Birmingham, Alabama as a Superfund site, which means it has hazardous waste contamination and got designated by the EPA as a candidate for cleanup due to the risks caused to human health and the environment.

But, residents allege that the EPA isn’t doing enough to check that progress happens in the community. Dozens of residents have chronic health conditions, and even as residents say that environmental conditions are to blame, government reports don’t mention that aspect.

The EPA’s cleanup operation is ongoing, and people say the organization is not cracking down hard enough on the contributing parties. Indeed, if the entities causing the problems don’t receive punishments for their actions, they likely won’t be motivated to change their operations very much, if at all.

Fewer Delays

The EPA also receives criticism due to complaints that regulatory reform takes too long to happen. Concerning improvements to the New Source Review (NSR) air construction permitting process whereby construction projects associated with stationary polluters must receive permits before commencing, small-scale actions initially happened about once per month. But now, the EPA seems to be in a rain-delay period regarding its reform actions in 2019.

Personnel changes and the lessons learned from previous legal pushbacks brought about by environmental groups may be among the root causes of the EPA’s noticeable slowness. Additionally, it’s possible that the EPA would rather issue rules to follow instead of merely giving guidance, and that action takes comparatively more time to implement.

Alarming delays occur for things under the EPA’s control not related to air pollution, too. For example, the EPA will take action on nonstick chemicals that pollute drinking water by the end of 2019, and critics say that timeframe is too generous.

There is also an assortment of state governments trying to take more decisive action to combat climate change. Colorado and California are among the states where leaders set specific climate change mitigation targets in response to the delayed response from the EPA to do so — likely because members of the current Administration deny that global warming is a serious issue.

The lack of prompt action mentioned here is only a sampling of how the EPA is, in the eyes of many, failing to swiftly mandate corrections. If the agency improved in this area, environmental quality issues would almost certainly improve.

Tighter Rules

It’s also worth highlighting some instances where the EPA shows signs of loosening or not enforcing the rules adequately against entities that cause pollution. This matter is similar to the one mentioned in the earlier section about accountability, but it more often allows companies to continue operating in ways that degrade environmental quality without getting penalized.

For example, in June 2019, an EPA chief eased the restrictions on coal-fired power plants initially put in place during Barack Obama’s presidency. This decision happened despite the EPA’s internal analysis that the air pollution from these facilities could result in up to 1,500 more deaths per year by 2030.

Also, researchers compiled a list of more than 80 environmental rules that got rolled back under the Trump Administration. That means coal power plant operators are not the only parties that could potentially cause detrimental effects to environmental quality without officially doing anything wrong.

A study released in February 2019 also suggests that the EPA is less aggressive when polluters do break the rules — and here’s where accountability comes into play again. The research revealed an 80 percent drop in the penalties the EPA brought against offenders. Plus, the amount of injunctive relief — money paid by those at fault to fix issues and stop them from happening again — reached a 15-year low.

The issues brought up here indicate that, in various ways, the EPA is moving in the wrong direction when curbing environmental quality issues. Instead of acting in ways that make violators want to remedy their actions, EPA representatives far too often behave in ways that make the perpetrators believe they won’t face the consequences, perpetuate delays that let years pass before remediation happens and allow the guilty parties to look forward to looser regulations.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

As a movement Extinction Rebellion has consciously used the power of nonviolent civil disobedience as an embodied practice of love asking for the needs of the Earth and all its living splendour to be safeguarded.

The work of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication or peaceful communication, are nourishing reference points for Extinction Rebellion.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Modern politics, religious dogma and culture at large have bred a tremendously violent language. We have become trapped in moralistic judgements implying wrongness or badness on the part of people who don’t act in harmony with our values. In focusing our attention on classifying and diagnosing the behaviour of ‘the other’ to then blame and shame, we have become lost to our feelings and needs and thus our ability to respond to each other with honesty and integrity.

Political discourse

This way of being in the world has created a fortress around our hearts to enable us to cope with the consequent feelings of disconnection, dis-ease, separation and powerlessness. Essentially, we are in constant inner and outer conflict, suffering under micro-violences day after day.

We have hardly noticed how the language of war dominates our ‘peaceful’ campaigns. Let me confess to the struggle and vulnerability within our fledgling movement. We have at times described our collaboration work as building ‘allies’, but then through exploring our truth we have discovered our need for the re-weaving of the whole human family so that actually we are building relatives and embracing our relations.

The roots of the language of our conditioned separation run as deep as the chemicals poisoning our soil and water.

As we shift the Overton window, as per XR strategy, we also seek to shift our current dysfunctional paradigm (encased in a violent language) because in reality there is no fragmentation between the natural, the spiritual and the social. They are one integrated whole.

We cannot shift our value systems for the natural world without moving normal political discourse, and we cannot shift political discourse without shifting the spiritual and moral discourse. We can then no longer act as arbiters of right and wrong and instead we become peacemakers between all that divides us.

Heart lines

What feels as beautifully clear as a dawn chorus, within and around XR today, is that in nurturing our capacity for nonviolent language or compassionate communication as an internal and external process we have been able to cultivate relationships that have opened doors to people’s hearts, including the hearts of policemen and policewomen during our 11 days of mass rebellion.

Not only this, but we also have liberated individual and collective curiosity, imagination and creativity and thus our desire to co-create a language fitting for our transition to what Joanna Macy describes as ‘The Great Turning’.

Whether as witness or arrestee, we are changed by the experience of XR’s nonviolent civil disobedience in both word and deed. The edge of transformation and the nonviolent language this requires are now in sight.

A good example of this is our description of the ‘heart lines’. The rows of people at the edge of disobedience on our sites in London were not the front lines. They were hearts in unison – our heart lines.

When we attached ourselves to Jeremy Corbyn’s fence with our chocolate Easter egg and flowers, we were love-showering, not ‘occupying’ or love-‘bombing’, and as we induct people into the movement and we train our rebels in direct action we learn about the values, principles and practice of nonviolent communication in all we do and say.

Tipping point

Together, we are exploring and ushering in a more comprehensive language of nonviolence. The further construction of this language for disobedience will require a presence of heart intelligence from where we can source our courage to choose to speak this language.

The tipping point, paradigm shift or full turning will involve a profound adoption of nonviolent language.

In this moment as we grieve for being at the edge of the collapse of this civilisation we can also celebrate our joy at reaching the edge of transformation. We are at the edge of the abyss between paradigms and we have started to build the bridge.

Today XR, along with our relatives, has the permission to act as a bridge maker. With nonviolent language as an essential tool, we can accelerate the realisation of our interconnectedness and our remembering of our instinct to protect and nurture what we love and that which loves and sustains us.

This Author

Skeena Finebaum-Rathor is Vision Coordinator for Extinction Rebellion and is a Labour councillor. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Image: Sarah Cresswell.

The empirical data and theoretical literature is both overwhelmingly clear and sobering: there is no evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown.

This is the conclusion of the new report, Decoupling debunked: Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability.

The authors also explain that there are at least seven reasons to be sceptical about the occurrence of sufficient decoupling in the future: rising energy expenditures, rebound effects, problem shifting, the underestimated impact of services, limited recycling potential, insufficient and inappropriate technological change, and cost shifting.

The fact that decoupling on its own, without addressing the issue of economic growth, has not been and will not be sufficient to reduce environmental pressures to the required extent is not a reason to oppose decoupling (in the literal sense of separating the environmental pressures curve from the GDP curve) or the measures that achieve decoupling.

Quite the contrary, without many such measures the situation would be far worse. In other words, decoupling shifts us from racing down the fast lane to cruising along the slow lane, which is an improvement. But to get off the highway, we need to do more.

The true cause for concern is the predominant focus among policy-makers on green growth as a panacea, with this focus being based on the flawed assumption that sufficient decoupling can be achieved through increased efficiency without limiting economic production and consumption.

Sustained growth is not sustainable

This scientific finding is strongly at odds with the eighth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG8), which aims to “promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth”.

While almost all SDGs have very important goals and targets that humanity desperately needs to achieve, SDG8’s pursuit of the economic growth is undermining the possibly of achieving the others.

The question now is whether governments will be willing to act upon the best available scientific evidence when they review SDG8 on 10 July in New York.

Countries such as Finland have already reacted to this contradiction within the SDGs by downgrading the importance of GDP growth in their plan to achieve the SDGs, but the EU as a bloc has yet to admit that there is a problem with target 1 in SDG8.

Researchers have some ideas about the truly sustainable way forward. The main conclusion of ‘Decoupling debunked’ is that increasing efficiency only makes sense if it is part of a wider pursuit of sufficiency, which is the direct downscaling of economic production and consumption in those sectors where it is needed most.

In the view of the authors and based on the best available scientific evidence, only sufficiency strategies respect the EU’s ‘precautionary principle’.

This Author

Nick Meynen is policy officer for Environmental and Economic Justice at the European Environmental Bureau. He authored several books on the environment and he comments on global environmental and economic issues on Facebook and Twitter.

The report, Decoupling Debunked. Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability, was produced by the EEB, with the support of the German Alliance for Nature Conservation (Deutscher Naturschutzring), in the context of the EEB’s work on economic transition in the context of the Make Europe Sustainable for All (MESA) project. It was released on 9 July and can be downloaded at https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/

London’s climate will be more like Barcelona’s by 2050, according to an analysis which illustrates the impacts of global warming on major cities.

An evaluation of the world’s 520 major cities by the Crowther Lab indicates more than three-quarters will experience a striking change in climate conditions by 2050 compared with today.

It finds more than a fifth, including Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, will experience unprecedented conditions that major conurbations have not seen before.

Beliefs

London’s climate in 2050 will be more similar to Barcelona’s current conditions, while Edinburgh’s will be more like Paris is now, and Cardiff will be more similar to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, it suggests.

The researchers say that pairing up cities in this way can help people visualise the impact of climate change in their own lives.

For example, London could face the kind of extreme drought conditions that hit Barcelona in 2008, with severe implications for the Spanish city’s population and major economic costs from importing £20 million of drinking water.

The research projects what the 520 current cities’ climate will most closely resemble by 2050, under an “optimistic” scenario where action is taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Jean-Francois Bastin, lead author of the research paper, said: “History has repeatedly shown us that data and facts alone do not inspire humans to change their beliefs or act.

Visualising

“The intangible nature of reporting on climate change fails to adequately convey the urgency of the issue – for example, it is hard to envision how 2C of warming, or changes in average temperature by 2100 might impact daily life.

“With this analysis from Crowther Lab scientists, we want to help people visualise the impact of climate change in their own city, within their lifetime.”

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, suggests summers and winters in Europe will get warmer, with average increases of 3.5C and 4.7C respectively – equivalent to a city shifting 1,000km (620 miles) further south.

Commenting on the study, Professor Richard Betts, from the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter, said: “This study helps to put climate change in the context of human experience – and more importantly, shows that many places will see entirely new climates that are outside of current human experience.”

Professor Mike Lockwood, from the University of Reading, said the study was really useful in visualising climate change, but warned against overlooking huge infrastructure issues caused by changes to the climate of the world’s cities.

Rainfall

“For example, bringing Barcelona’s climate to London sounds like it could be a good thing – if you don’t suffer from asthma or have a heart condition, that is – except London clay shrinks and is brittle if it gets too dry and then swells and expands when very wet.

“The greater swings in ground moisture expected in a warmer world would cause massive subsidence problems. As ever, there is destructive and unforeseen devil in the details of climate change.”

Dr Grant Allen, atmospheric physicist at the University of Manchester, said there was also the issue of extreme weather events becoming more frequent, particularly in terms of intense rainfall for the UK.

“While the mean climate may well become much like Barcelona, which presents its own chronic challenges for UK ecosystems and infrastructure, the science concerning the changing chances of extreme weather events is much less certain and recent evidence is a cause for alarm,” he said.

Professor Gabi Hegerl, from the University of Edinburgh, said: “The study considers some aspects of extremes but doesn’t capture individual events like unprecedented heatwaves, droughts and heavy rainfall or flooding. Also, sea level rise will add to the difficulties faced by many of these cities.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.

Britons could spend more than £2.7 billion this year on tens of millions of summer outfits they will wear only once, a survey suggests.

Consumers are set to spend £800 million on 10 million wedding outfits they will wear once, £700 million on single-use holiday clothes, and millions more on items for events such as barbecues, festivals and balls or other formal events, the poll for Barnardo’s indicates.

Must Read: Climate emergency and creative industries.

It found that one in four people is embarrassed to wear an outfit to a special occasion more than once, rising to 37 percent of 16 to 24-year-olds, with the children’s charity suggesting that “this needs to change”.

Vulnerable

Just 12 percent of over-55s reported feeling any embarrassment over wearing an outfit more than once. More than half of consumers said buying new clothes for a festival or holiday added to the excitement of the build-up.

In response, Barnardo’s is launching an in-store booklet with tips on finding and styling occasion wear from its shops. It is also releasing a short film with tips from experts on sustainable fashion.

The charity is urging people to consider “pre-loved” clothes or visit its shops for second-hand options to cut the estimated 50.3 million single-use outfits expected to be bought this year, warning that current levels of throwaway fashion are “wasteful, expensive and unsustainable”.

Barnardo’s chief executive Javed Khan said: “Choosing to buy pre-loved clothes for a special occasion from a Barnardo’s shop is kinder to the environment and your wallet, getting more wear out of clothes which might otherwise only be worn once and end up in landfill.

“Buying from Barnardo’s also means you will be helping to transform the lives of vulnerable children across the UK.” Censuswide surveyed 2,000 people aged 16 and over online between June 3 and 5.

This Author

Josie Clarke is the PA consumer affairs correspondent.

It’s all go in adland this week. Following Extinction Rebellion’s open letter to the industry a few weeks back, written by XR members with decades of experience in the ‘power of persuasion’, the agency world of smart-thinking, super-savvy spinmeisters is starting to respond to the thrown-down gauntlet.

The XR letter pulled few punches: “Advertising will increasingly be seen alongside oil and logging as obviously toxic industries and those with the job title ‘creatives’ will soon find themselves rebranded as ‘destroyers’.” Ouch.

They went on to demand that companies: “Declare a climate and ecological emergency and act accordingly”. Everybody’s doing it after all, in fact it’s quite ‘on trend’. Ask Greta. It’s time to panic. Today, it is reported that consumers are set to spend £800 million on 10 million wedding outfits they will wear once.

Carbon disclosure

In light of this challenge the launch of the Creative Climate Disclosure Project is a welcome initiative.

Acknowledging that “creativity has consequences”, that the industry “cannot be neutral” and that there is a real choice to “inspire change or keep serving destruction”, the project seeks to echo the hugely ambitious, influential and successful global Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

This initiative has transformed our understanding of where carbon intensity, responsibility, risk and opportunity lies in the global corporate world. In the same way that enlightened investors use CDP data to potentially divest their portfolios from climate destruction and hold companies to account, the Creative Climate Disclosure Project (CCDP – sorry about the acronyms!) calls for agencies to ‘divest’ their creative services away from ‘those most answerable for causing the climate emergency’. This is all highly laudable.

So who are those “most answerable”? Well, this is where it gets complicated. The CCDP is essentially calling for agency transparency around how much money they make or take from these problematic “high carbon” industry clients (as defined by the IEA and EPA). These include all the usual suspects: fossil fuels, aviation, trucks, cars and shipping, timber, steel and plastics and meat and dairy.

At the extreme end of accountability the CDP’s (bear with me here!) ‘Carbon Majors Report’ highlighted that just 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of carbon emissions since 1988. So ‘Divest’ away from those and you and your agency can join the rebellion right? Wrong.

Carbon inequality 

Don’t get me wrong – It’s a good thing to avoid working directly for those badboy businesses driving us towards the brink of climatic and ecological Armageddon, of which the fossil fuel majors are just the most obvious.

Taking their dirty dollars should be a source of real shame, but that’s not something we’re likely to see a lot of from BP’s agency WPP.

The awesome ‘Liberate Tate’ movement has pioneered campaigns to get fossil fuel money out of the arts sponsorship world, and ‘Culture Declares Emergency’ has now followed. Plus an ever growing bunch of activist artists, including Oscar winning actor Mark Rylance who recently quit the Royal Shakespeare Company over BP’s funding of it, are also stepping up.

These creative boycotts and ingenious lobbying tactics work. Refuting these businesses public licence to operate, for which their arts funding provides a foundation, is one thing. As is ‘divesting’ your agency from high carbon industry clients. But is it enough? 

The answer is no. The world has what Oxfam describes as ‘Extreme Carbon Inequality’ with the richest 10 percent of the world’s population in developed countries responsible for 50 percent of global carbon emissions.

Climate science

Our real challenge is about consumption not population. Whilst the number of humans on the planet also matters, it’s how we all live that really counts.

Generally, the richer we are, the more we consume, the bigger our carbon footprint. It’s a fairly consistent linear relationship. And even amongst the self-proclaimed ‘environmentally-enlightened’ individual impacts are higher than the average, and rise with rising income! 

And this is where, forgive the metaphor, the rubber really hits the road for the creative industries. They’re there to sell. And sell more. Simples. ‘Ah yes, but we can sell the good stuff!’ will say the ethical agencies, ‘we can tell the better stories and sell the more sustainable choices to keep us all on the right side of history and save the world’.

However as the CCDP itself states “agencies must be aligned with the climate science, just like everyone else”. And this is where it gets really tricky…

Without going into the dangerously seductive notion of ‘techno-optimism’ in massive depth here (I’ll leave that to this excellent paper on ‘Prosperous Descent’ by Samuel Alexander), it is now abundantly clear that increases in efficiency of resource use in a continuous economic growth paradigm, and any progress from the relative decoupling of resource use from economic activity, are almost always undermined by rebound effects – direct, indirect and macroeconomic. As per Jevon’s paradox– increased efficiency of use usually increases overall consumption.   

Economic growth

In short so called ‘sustainable growth’ will kill us, because in our existing economic paradigm, mindset and behaviours, efficiency will always be *coughs* ‘Trumped’ by growth.

Overall economic growth wipes out our savings. And this is why the desire industry needs to confront it’s own CGI, VR, augmented interaction, day-glo pachyderm in the room. Extinction Rebellion exploded into the public consciousness on the back of imploring that we all “Tell the truth and act like that truth is real”. 

What does that truth look like for the advertising world? As XR puts it: “One of the reasons we’ve got here is because you’ve been selling things to people that they don’t need. You are the manipulators and architects of that consumerist frenzy.”

Agency reality is currently an ‘at-all-costs’ growth model and a client-service cage of incrementalism on supposed ‘sustainability’.

Marketing budgets exist to boost sales, turnover, deliver growth and profit. Clients don’t brief-in radicalism because they’re often doing very well out of the status quo thank-you-very-much-so-why-change?

That leaves even the most courageous agencies trying to unpick a Gordian Knot – How far to try to push a client’s sustainability ambitions when there are a myriad other equally clever creative competitors out there, who can outgun, out-resource and out-maneuvre you just by being the more ‘realistic’ or ‘less risky’ option for the even vaguely cautious client.

If not quite a race to the bottom, this is at least a constant and ongoing competitive dilution of more radical possibilities. 

This is not a Drill

And after almost two decades in the business I don’t see it changing anywhere near fast enough. Sure we’ve made some great in-roads, perhaps almost proven by the ham-fisted cynical and disingenuous attempts by cynical creatives to hijack genuine concerns, issues and even values by greenwashing, pinkwashing and purposewashing in order to flog more stuff.

But we’re all still basing our work, our value, our very client promise on ‘more’, when everything about our shared challenges is screaming ‘less’.

Climate activist Alex Steffen warns that “winning slowly is the same as losing”. And we’re not even winning slowly at the moment, we’re just slowing the pace at which we’re losing.

This is why XR’s letter isn’t a ‘nudge’. It’s a seismic shock, an electrical jolt, it’s a rocket up where the sun don’t shine. If what needs to be done doesn’t fit within existing commercial realities – then we must change those realities. Fast. Anything else is delusional.

Because this is an emergency. Now eleven years and counting until we deliver (at least) a 40 percent reduction in carbon. And an urgency on biodiversity loss which is even sharper. Every month matters. Every quarter counts. This is not a drill.

Brave or dead

I’m not going to go so far as Bill Hicks went 25 years ago and suggest anyone who works in advertising and marketing should ‘kill themselves’. Although he was right on one point – this industry has merrily spent the last quarter of a century making things a lot lot worse. 

The advertising industry and their clients both need to stand up and be counted right now in a far more soulful and systemic fashion. This is not just about who your clients are and how you pay your bills. This is not just about avoiding high carbon sectors.

This is about the very beast we are all feeding – overconsumption. That is the planet-eating monster we all serve whilst we virtue-signal our way to oblivion. We’re fanning the flames of disaster. The first thing we should do is switch off the fan.

The CCDP’s failure to grasp this, or even mention it, completely and utterly misses and misrepresents the spirit of XR. 

The US marketing guru Seth Godin famously said: “There are increasingly only two kinds of company; brave or dead”. Brave agencies must step up in a way that none has done in the last two decades, but just telling us you’re not working with the ‘nasty’ clients ain’t enough. As consultants ping around the world on millions of flights to advise clients we need to think far more creatively on how we live the change required.

Burning questions

Perhaps agencies need to relocalise? Only serving or accepting clients they don’t have to fly to? Maybe we need further gatekeeper criteria for client selection? Is the client committed to science based targets? Or Fair tax payments (corporate tax avoidance hobbles Government’s ability to address the climate emergency)?

These are the burning questions because we are in totally unchartered territory here, business as usual is not an option, it’s a collective death sentence.

In their letter XR sardonically used the greatest of the advertising industry’s ‘hits’ back at them: Just Do It. Be All You Can Be. Impossible Is Nothing (or ‘shoes’, ‘army’, ‘shoes’ as they say in the studio). Or as David Attenborough put it recently ‘We cannot be radical enough’. 

Above all else what has driven XR is connection. A softly sublime and even spiritual reconnection with nature and one another and the often terrifying reality in which we find ourselves. An ability to recognize the grief so many of us feel at the unwravelling of the web of life around us, and in our lifetimes on our watch, and the unbearable suffering for people and wildlife that results.

We embrace XR to escape the nightmares created by advertising’s hollow dreams. XR’s collective emotional and emergent power stands in stark contrast to the psychological individual manipulation of the advertising industry.

Creative rebelling

What we really need and value and what genuinely makes us happy and gives us meaning in life is not material. It’s social, emotional and environmental. It’s not another slickly packaged and promoted product or service. We are already everything we need. And for the advertising world that is an inconvenient truth. 

XR and advertising are two wildly different worlds colliding. This will not be comfortable for anyone, and the CCDP is a good first step.

But we’re kidding ourselves if we think it is anything but the most basic of baby steps. A toddler when we need adults in the room immediately. To change everything we need everyone doing all they can. We need every concerned creative rebelling with all their heart and soul like all our lives depended on it*. 

*spoiler alert: they do

This Author

Ed Gillespie is the author ‘Only Planet’. Follow him on Twitter , LinkedIn , Facebook  and Instagram.

Image: Tomm Morton. 

An evaluation of the global energy return on investment for fossil fuels and renewable sources reveals a much more level playing field than previously believed.

An enduring argument for the ongoing use of fossil fuels is their high energy return on energy investment. This refers to the ratio of how much energy a source such as coal or oil will produce compared to how much energy it takes to extract.

Previously, the estimated ratios for energy return on investment (EROI) have favoured fossil fuels over renewable energy sources. Oil, coal and gas are typically calculated to have ratios above 25:1, this means roughly one barrel of oil used yields 25 barrels to put back into the energy economy. Renewable energy sources often have much lower estimated ratios, below 10:1.

Energy cliff

However, these fossil fuel ratios are measured at the extraction stage, when oil, coal or gas is removed from the ground. These ratios do not take into account the energy required to transform oil, coal and gas into finished fuels such as petrol used in cars, or electricity used by households.

A new study, co-authored by scientists from the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, has calculated the EROI for fossil fuels over a 16 year period and found that at the finished fuel stage, the ratios are much closer to those of renewable energy sources – roughly 6:1, and potentially as low as 3:1 in the case of electricity.

The study, undertaken as part of the UK Energy Research Centre programme and published in Nature Energy, warns that the increasing energy costs of extracting fossil fuels will cause the ratios to continue to decline, pushing energy resources towards a “net energy cliff”.

This is when net energy available to society declines rapidly due to the increasing amounts of “parasitical” energy required in the energy production.

The researchers emphasise that these findings make a strong case for rapidly stepping up investment in renewable energy sources and that the renewables transition may actually halt – or reverse – the decline in global EROI at the finished fuel stage.

Crude oil

Study co-author Dr Paul Brockway, an expert in energy-economy modelling at the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds, said: “Measuring energy return on investment of fossil fuels at the extraction stage gives the misleading impression that we have plenty of time for a renewable energy transition before energy constraints are a concern.

“Those measurements are essentially predicating the potential energy output of newly-extracted sources like crude oil. But crude oil isn’t used to heat our homes or power our cars. It makes more sense for calculations to consider where energy enters the economy, and that puts us much closer to the precipice.

“The ratios will only continue to decline because we are swiftly reaching the point where all the easily-accessible fossil fuel sources are becoming exhausted. By stepping up investment in renewable energy sources we can help ensure that we don’t tip over the edge.”

Study co-author Dr Lina Brand-Correa, an expert in the social aspects of energy use on the Living Well within Limits (LiLi) project at Leeds said: “There is too much focus on the initial economic costs of transitioning to renewable energy.

“Renewable infrastructure, such as wind farms and solar panels, do require a large initial investment, which is one of the reasons why their energy return on investment ratios have been so low until now.”

Energy policy

Brand-Correa continued: “But the average energy return on investment for all fossil fuels at the finished fuel stage declined by roughly 23 per cent in the 16 year period we considered.

This decline will lead to constraints on the energy available to society in the not-so-distant future, and these constraints might unfold in rapid and unexpected ways.

“Once the renewable infrastructure is built and dependency on fossil fuel decreases, the energy-return-on-investment for renewable sources should go up.

“This must be considered for future policy and energy infrastructure investments decisions, not only to meet climate change mitigation commitments but to ensure society continues to have access to the energy it needs.”

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the University of Leeds. 

The TUC has published A just transition to a greener, fairer economy – a roadmap to meeting the needs of working people in the transition to a low-carbon economy.

The launch event included speakers such as the Shadow Environment Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey and Deputy Chair of the Committee on Climate Change Baroness Brown.

The roadmap sets out proposals for a Just Transition Commission, a cross-party national commission including business, consumers and unions to plan a clear and funded path to a low-carbon economy.

Industrial change

The roadmap also sets out Workplace Transition Agreements, to put workers’ voices at the heart of transition plans in every workplace where change is required; the need for Transition Skills Funding, so that every worker has access to training in the new skills needed for a low carbon economy, and guaranteed pathways to new work; and employment standard protections, to ensure new jobs in the low carbon economy are not of lower quality than jobs that are changed or superseded.

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Trade unions are committed to addressing the climate emergency. A greener economy can be a fairer economy too, with new work and better jobs right across Britain.

“It’s vital to avoid the mistakes of the 1980s, when industrial change devastated communities because workers had no say. This time we need a plan that everyone can get behind, with workers’ voices at the heart of it.

“That’s why we’re calling for politicians, businesses, consumers and unions to make those plans together, through a Just Transition Commission.”

This Author

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

A failure to tackle climate change will bring great “social unrest” and increased pressure from immigration, Sir David Attenborough has warned.

The TV naturalist told MPs that dealing with environmental problems will cost money and will require changes to people’s lifestyles, such as in their diet and with regards to air travel, where the cost of flights will have to go up.

But there are “huge opportunities” for making profits and benefiting from new innovations, he said.

Glacier

The veteran broadcaster was giving evidence to Parliament’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee as part of its inquiry into clean growth and international climate change targets.

He said the most vivid example he had witnessed of the changing climate was revisiting the Great Barrier Reef and seeing how it had been bleached because of rising temperatures.

Visiting the Australian landmark in the 1950s, Sir David said he had “the extraordinary experience of diving on the reef and suddenly seeing this multitude of fantastic, beautiful forms of life”.

But upon his return 10 years ago, he said: “Instead of multitudes of wonderful forms of life, I was struck by how it was bleached white because of the rising temperatures and increasing acidity of the seas.”

Sir David also remembers visiting a glacier on South Georgia, in the southern Atlantic Ocean, and then returning decades later to the same spot where the glacier was no longer visible because it had retreated so far.

Lifestyle

When he began making documentaries 50 years ago, he did not believe it was possible people could change the climate and, he said, “I’m not by nature a propagandist”.

But he added: “If you become aware of what is happening to the natural world, you don’t have any alternative.”

Quizzed on whether the UK’s new legal “net zero” target for 2050 or whether calls from campaigners for a 2025 goal were realistic, Sir David said: “The question is what is practically possible, and how can we take the electorate with us in dealing with these problems.

“Dealing with problems means we’ve got to change our lifestyle.”

Inexorably

And while the 93-year-old said the issue was unlikely to affect him, “the problems of the next 20 to 30 years are major problems that are going to cause great social unrest and great changes in what we eat and how we live”.

Sir David warned: “The problem you’re opening now is a very serious one. If the world climate change goes on, it is going to be facing huge problems with immigration.

“Large parts of Africa are going to be even less inhabitable than they are now, and there will be major upsets in the balance between our national boundaries.

“These kind of problems are going to grow inexorably and we are going to have to decide what we do about it, that’s going to happen.”

Futures

He said industry should be encouraged to invest in new technologies for generating, storing and transporting energy, such as batteries, and that he thought progress was being made.

Sir David backed the target to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, which the UK has now set in law, saying it was a “tough target”, but he hoped it could be achieved.

Asked if he was optimistic about the future, he said: “I feel an obligation – the only way you can get up in the morning is to believe we can do something about it, and I think we can.”

He said the growing voice of youngsters on environmental issues was a source of hope, and referring to the young people who had come to the committee hearing to hear him speak, he said: “It’s their futures that are in our hands.”

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Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.