Most of the world’s largest forestry companies producing paper or wooden furniture are failing to protect their workers from forced labour, according to new research.

Just three of the 39 largest forestry companies can show how they check for forced labour risks in their supply chains, KnowTheChain revealed today. 

The forestry sector employs thirteen million workers globally with another 41 million employed in informal forestry. They carry out logging, produce pulp or timber or make paper or wooden furniture But exploitation in the forestry sector is endemic, with up to 50 percent of the world’s $30-100 billion illegal logging operations based on forced labour.

Exploitation

Forestry workers in sawmills face threats, violence, poor living and working conditions, non-payment of wages, and excessive or unpaid overtime, and having their freedom of movement restricted, with risks even higher for the sector’s large migrant workforce.

Yet today’s study finds that just 8 percent of the sector’s largest companies ban their suppliers from charging workers recruitment fees, which can lead migrant workers into debt bondage.

None of the 39 companies disclosed engaging with supply chain workers’ groups such as trade unions – a key safeguard against exploitation.

The briefing argues that forestry companies and investors must understand these risks and carry out human rights checks (due diligence) to avoid risk and help prevent the exploitation of workers. 

Systemic problem 

Felicitas Weber, KnowTheChain project lead, said: “The world’s forestry sector has a systemic problem of forced labour, and right now companies show a lack of action to address this appalling abuse.

“Responsible investors have a role to play in ensuring the people carrying out logging or producing pulp, paper or wooden furniture are safe from forced labour and exploitation.”

She added: “This guidance provides forestry investors with the tools they need to drive meaningful change in this sector, avoid risk, and protect workers from forced labour and abuse.”

This Article 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. 

Red grouse (Lagopus lagopus) are wild birds that live in heather moorlands of the UK and Ireland. 

In order to keep red grouse numbers as high as possible, gamekeepers routinely kill predators, such as foxes and stoats, undertake large-scale mountain hare culls and, on some estates, illegally persecute birds of prey, such as hen harriers and golden eagles.

A fifth of upland Scotland is used for driven grouse shooting, with the land being managed to maximise the number of red grouse available for shooting. 

Mountain hares

It is time for the Scottish Government to reform the intensive management of Scotland’s grouse moors and put an end to the indiscriminate killing of our wildlife.

More than 26,000 mountain hares are killed each year on Scotland’s grouse moors, according to Scottish Government figures.

The mountain hare is Britain’s only native hare and its conservation status was recently downgraded to ‘unfavourable’ as a result of new data supplied by the UK to the EU, primarily because of hunting and game management. This means that special conservation action needs to now be taken to stop further declines and aid population recovery.

Yet, gamekeepers routinely carry out mountain hare culls as they fear that the hares spread disease via ticks to red grouse, thereby reducing the number of red grouse available for commercial shooting. This management has persisted despite the fact that scientists at one of Scotland’s independent research institutes concluded that there was ‘no compelling evidence base to suggest culling mountain hares might increase red grouse densities’. 

Hares are notoriously challenging to shoot as they are small, fast-moving animals that are able to take cover easily. This means that the risk of causing injury rather than a clean kill is heightened, and hares can suffer greatly as a result. There is also no requirement for cull returns during the open season, or for welfare monitoring of these culls, so the scale of suffering is unknown.

OneKind has been campaigning to secure greater protection for mountain hares for the past three years, with a petition currently before the Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee as well as an open letter to the Scottish Government that has now attracted almost 22,000 signatures.  Both call for an end to the slaughter of these iconic creatures.

Protected birds

There is a clear and well-documented association between driven grouse moors and the illegal persecution of protected birds of prey. 

Methods of killing these protected birds include shooting, live-trapping, illegal poisoning and nest destruction. Each year RSPB reports incidents on driven grouse moors in its Birdcrime report. 

In order to help conservation planning of golden eagles, in 2017 a number of these protected birds were satellite-tagged. Of the thirteen that later went missing, eleven occurred on land managed for grouse moors. 

In May of this year, a young male hen harrier was also found in an illegal spring trap sat next to its nest on a grouse moor. The hen harrier did not survive, and a senior vet confirmed it was clear that he had suffered greatly.

Another trap was found in its nest, beside abandoned eggs, and with no sign of the female hen harrier. Naturalist, Chris Packham, met with experts, including OneKind Director Bob Elliot, to unravel the horrific storyon camera. 

It is no coincidence that the majority of those convicted of raptor persecution crimes are gamekeepers.

Legal traps

Traps and snares can be, legally, set on grouse moors to target the red grouse’s natural predators: foxes, weasels, stoats and other birds. However, these traps are indiscriminate, and cause suffering to non-target species too, such as protected badgers and even companion dogs and cats.

There is no limit to the number of animals that gamekeepers can legally kill, and many of the target species are not protected by closed seasons.

Bird Traps

In addition to the estimated 700,000 red grouse shot each year in the UK, hundreds of thousands of other birds are also killed each year on driven grouse moors.

Birds are captured in legal live-catch corvid traps, traps which are also indiscriminate as to the species of bird caught: victims can spend hours under stress in this confined space before the gamekeeper arrives to shoot or beat them to death. 

Foxes are targeted with cruel, outdated snare traps: an anchored noose that is positioned to capture an animal by its neck, leg or abdomen.  They can cause severe physical and mental suffering for captured animals and although they are only meant to ‘restrain’ the animal, their struggle to set themselves free causes the wire to tighten, often leading to severe injury or strangulation. 

To lure foxes into snares, gamekeepers often lay snares around a ‘stink pit’: a place where the gamekeepers dump rotting animal carcasses. The smell of decomposing animals lures the foxes towards the dead animals, where they are then caught in the snares surrounding the pit. During our work in the field we have discovered foxes, deer, geese and fish in stink pits. 

Although stink pits are targeted towards foxes, they can also attract badgers, otters, pine martens and domestic cats and dogs.  

The future

We believe that it’s time to end the indiscriminate killing of wildlife on grouse moors and elsewhere and that’s why we recently launched a petition with the Scottish Parliament to conduct a full review on the use of traps and snares and their impact on animal welfare. You can keep up to date with our campaign here.

OneKind is also part of a coalition of like-minded organisations that have come together to work towards radical reform for Scotland’s grouse moors.

The Revive Coalition has the backing of naturalist, Chris Packham, and recently hosted a collaborative conference with members of the public.  You can sign the Revive pledge to revive Scotland’s moors here.

This Author 

Eve Massie is campaigner and press officer for Scotland’s leading animal campaigns charity, OneKind.

National Galleries Scotland has announced that it is ending its partnership with the oil company BP in response to the climate emergency.

In a statement posted on its website the gallery said: “The BP Portrait Award 2019 exhibition opens on 7 December at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. At the National Galleries of Scotland we recognise that we have a responsibility to do all we can to address the climate emergency. For many people, the association of this competition with BP is seen as being at odds with that aim.

“Therefore, after due consideration, the trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland have decided that this will be the last time that the galleries will host this exhibition in its present form.”

Destructive activities 

Campaigners in Edinburgh have targeted the award on its previous annual visits to the Scottish Portrait Gallery. The creative action group BP or not BP? Scotland have performed several times inside the gallery, including with oily portraits and climate-themed Christmas carolling.

The BP Portrait Award has been targeted by campaigners for many years, who believe that the prestigious portrait prize is being used by the oil giant to ‘artwash’ its image and distract from its real destructive activities.

One of the judges of this year’s prize, Gary Hume, spoke out against the BP branding when this year’s award was announced, and was joined in his criticism by 77 other artists including five Turner Prize winners.

At the VIP launch of the BP Portrait Award at the London National Portrait Gallery in June, activist theatre group BP or not BP? blocked the entrances to the gallery with portraits of frontline environmental defenders, forcing guests to climb over a wall to get into the event.

On the final day of the London exhibition, activists from Extinction Rebellion poured fake oil over semi-naked performers inside the gallery in protest at the BP sponsorship.

Massive win

Alys Mumford, from BP or not BP? Scotland said: “It is extremely significant that yet another major Scottish cultural institution has dropped fossil fuel sponsorship, following the Edinburgh International Festival in 2015 and the Edinburgh Science Festival earlier this year.

“This is a massive win for campaigners who have taken action against the BP Portrait Award being hosted in Scotland for several years.

“It sends a clear message that it is no longer socially acceptable to have links with the fossil fuel industry because of their continued role in driving the climate crisis and human rights abuses across the world.

“We hope that the few remaining institutions that allow themselves to be used as greenwash for the industry join the National Galleries on the right side of history’

According to Roxana Halls, an artist who has exhibited in the BP Portrait Award 5 times and who was one of the artists who joined Gary Hume in calling for an end to the BP branding: “This is a brave and difficult decision on the part of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, one which cannot have been easy to take and which I applaud.”

Seismic

According to Chris Garrard of Culture Unstained, a research and campaign group who have been working with artists to challenge BP sponsorship at the Portrait Galleries.

“This is nothing short of seismic” Chris said. “Following in the footsteps of the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre, the trustees have recognised that, in a time of climate emergency, an ethical red line must be drawn and BP is on the wrong side of it.

“Now the National Portrait Gallery must follow this lead, cut its ties with BP and reinvent the Portrait Award as a positive celebration of portraiture, not a promotional tool for a climate criminal.’

This news comes just a month after the Royal Shakespeare Company publicly announced the end of its long-running sponsorship deal with BP. According to the RSC’s Artistic Director Gregory Doran and Executive Director Catherine Mallyon,

“Amidst the climate emergency, which we recognise, young people are now saying clearly to us that the BP sponsorship is putting a barrier between them and their wish to engage with the RSC. We cannot ignore that message.”

Two days after the RSC statement, the National Theatre in London announced that its corporate partnership with Shell would not be renewed when it comes to an end in June 2020.

Trojan Horse

The ending of these three sponsorship deals in the space of five weeks increases the pressure on the shrinking number of UK arts institutions (including the London National Portrait Gallery, British Museum, Royal Opera House, Science Museum and Southbank Centre) that still have promotional deals with fossil fuel companies.

Attention is turning in particular to the British Museum, where a BP-sponsored Troy exhibition is due to open on 21 November. 

Activist theatre group BP or not BP? have announced plans for a “mass creative takeover” of the British Museum on February 8th 2020.

In a cheeky twist, the group has successfully crowdfunded to build a Trojan Horse to bring to the event, which they believe will be the largest protest the museum has ever seen.

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from BP or not BP.

Image: BP or not BP.

We need to talk about geoengineering. Badly. To do so, I suggest two ground rules.

First, when we imagine futures with geoengineering, whether utopian or dystopian, let’s talk about the path from the present to those futures.

Second, if society is to protect itself from dangerous global warming, it will most likely combine a whole range of different methods; there is no silver bullet. So we need to discuss geoengineering together with other actions and technologies, not in isolation.

False premise

In After Geoengineering, Holly Buck urges social movements and climate justice militants to engage with geoengineering, rather than rejecting it. She questions campaigners’ focus on mitigation, i.e. on measures such as energy conservation and renewable electricity generation that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Buck offers a clear, jargon-free review of technologies, from afforestation and biochar that some climate campaigners embrace, to solar radiation management, the last word in technofixes that is broadly reviled. She intersperses her narrative with fictional passages, warning of the pitfalls of “mathematical pathways or scenarios, behind which are traditions of men gaming our possible futures”.

But one of Buck’s key arguments – that we will reach a point where society will collectively “lose hope in the capacity of current emissions-reduction measures to avert climate upheaval”, and “decide that something else must be tried” – cuts right across both my ground rules.

Buck asks: are we at the point […] where “the counterfactual scenario is extreme climate suffering” and therefore “it is worth talking about more radical or extreme measures [than mitigation]”, such as geoengineering? “Deciding where the shift – the moment of reckoning, the desperation point – lies is a difficult task”.

This is a false premise, in my view, for three reasons.

Implied community 

First: we cannot, and will not for the foreseeable future, perceive this “desperation point” as a moment in time. For island nations whose territory is being submerged, for indigenous peoples in the wildfire-ravaged Amazon, for victims of hurricanes and crop failures, the point of “extreme climate suffering” has already passed. 

For millions in south Asian nations facing severe flooding, it is hovering very close. For others living on higher ground, particularly in the global north, it may not arrive for years, perhaps even decades. 

If we take action, it will hopefully never arrive in its more extreme forms. This slow-burning quality of climate crisis is one of the things that makes it hard to deal with.

Second: at no point in the near future will “we” easily be able to take decisions on geoengineering – particularly the large-scale techniques – collectively. Political fights over geoengineering are pitting those with power and wealth against the common interest, and it’s hard to see how it could be otherwise.

Buck writes: “There will be a moment where ‘we’, in some kind of implied community, decide that something else [other than mitigation] must be tried” (p. 2). But she doesn’t probe who this “we” is, or spell out the implications of the fact that, in the class society in which we live, power is appropriated from the “implied community” by the state, acting in capital’s interests.

We can only decide, to the extent that we challenge their power. We can not free technologies from that context without freeing ourselves from it.

Alternative visions

Third: the political fights actually unfolding are not about “geoengineering vs extreme climate suffering”, but about “geoengineering vs measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions”.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is lauded by the fossil fuel industry as an alternative to cutting fossil fuel use; Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios in order to cover up governments’ failure to reduce emissions; research funds that go to technofixes such as ocean fertilisation and solar radiation management (SRM), that sit easily with centralised state action, do not go to decentralised technologies that have democratic potential.

Buck believes that, despite these current clashes, we can uncover ways of using geoengineering for the common good. For example, she writes of expensive and unproven techniques for direct removal of carbon from the atmosphere: “We have to move from reflexive opposition of new technologies toward shaping them in line with our demands and alternative visions”.

Shape technologies in line with our visions of a socially just society? Yes, certainly. Start with direct carbon removal or CCS? Absolutely not.

We should focus, first, on technologies that produce non-fossil energy, and those that cut fossil fuel use in first-world economies and the energy-intensive material suppliers in the global south that feed them. We need also to understand technologies of adaptation to a warmed-up world (e.g. flood defences and how they can work for everyone, and not just the rich).

Carbon capture

As for technologies that suck carbon from the atmosphere, if they can be used in the common interest at all, it should be a matter of principle that “soft” local technologies (e.g. afforestation and biochar) be researched and discussed in preference to big interventionist technologies like SRM.

I will expand these arguments with reference to three themes: (1) the current treatment of geoengineering techniques by governments and companies; (2) whether, and why, we should start with “soft” and local technologies, as opposed to big ones; and (3) how we might compare geoengineering with mitigation technologies.

The dangers inherent in Buck’s approach are nowhere clearer than with CCS. This technique extracts carbon dioxide from wherever it is emitted, e.g. power stations’ smokestacks, with “scrubbers” (often using adsorbent chemicals). The CO2 is then trapped, liquefied and transported to a site nearby to be stored.

CCS was developed by oil companies more than 40 years ago in the USA, as a technique for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), i.e. squeezing extra barrels of oil out of a depleting reservoir. The captured carbon is pumped into oil reservoirs to increase the pressure, and increase the volume of oil that could be pumped to the surface.

More recently, CCS has been used to trap carbon dioxide emissions at power stations and other industrial sites. But it is so complex, and so expensive, that its supporters say it can not yet be applied at large scale. It has never lived up to decades of talk about its potential.

Redistributive ends

Buck, displaying a super-optimism that strains credibility, writes: “Perhaps industry’s failure to make use of this technology could even be an opportunity to redirect it for more progressive ends” (p. 124).

Linking it with biofuel production is “an opportunity to appropriate this group of techniques for redistributive ends” – which would require “an appetite for paying for and living with expensive infrastructure – and for making bright, clear distinctions regarding how and why it is built”.

Who will steer the introduction of geoengineering techniques? Buck argues that: “If there’s no progressive vision about how to use CCS, […] the oil companies can essentially take us hostage” (p. 203)

To advance an alternative vision to the companies’ would require a price on carbon, she argues (p. 204); a discussion about nationalising oil companies (p. 206); and a movement to demand carbon removal from the state, linking it to an end to subsidies for fossil fuels (p. 207).

This logic is back-to-front. CCS, unlike renewable electricity generation and a string of proven mitigation technologies, will require years of development before it can work at large scale and in a manner that makes any economic sense.

Moreover, CCS’s function is to remove carbon dioxide already produced by economic activity.

So in every situation, the first question to ask about it is: is there not a way to avoid emitting the carbon dioxide in the first place?

Investment

Let’s imagine an optimistic scenario, in which, in a western oil producing country, e.g. the USA or UK, a social democratic or left-leaning government, committed to serious action on climate change, is elected. The oil companies find themselves fighting a desperate battle to protect their practices and profits; a progressive, working-class movement seeks to control and contain them.

That movement will surely put stopping fossil fuel subsidies at the top of its list of demands. Some sections of it might demand carbon taxes (and some oil companies are already reconciled to these). At best, some of the oil companies will be nationalised.

But then we will surely face struggle over what to do with the funds freed up by an end to subsidies, and what to do with companies over which the state has taken control. Should funds be invested in CCS development? Or in proven technologies that can slash fossil fuel demand? Should oil companies be directed to use their engineering capacity to develop CCS? Or to use it to complete the decarbonisation of electricity generation and start working on other economic sectors?

If there is a situation where CCS research would be preferred, I cannot imagine it. And Buck didn’t spell one out in her book.

One difficulty I had with Buck’s argument is that in a crucial section on CCS (pp. 133-137), she discusses it together with direct capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a different technique (also currently too expensive to be operable at any scale). Her interest in the latter relates to a possible future need to draw carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere more rapidly than can be done with other “softer” technologies (biochar, afforestation, etc).

This is something we might have to worry about in many years’ time, and I don’t want to speculate about it now.

Bioenergy

But Buck sees both technologies as a way of reforming oil companies, in the course of implementing a Green New Deal in the USA, i.e. as a current political issue. Direct air capture could “breach the psychic chain between CCS and fossil fuels”, she suggests (p. 127).

Now? Or in many years’ time? After our movement has grown strong enough to stop fossil fuel subsidies, or even to nationalise oil companies? Or before? Timing and sequencing matter.

Given that CCS and direct air capture are both monstrously expensive and many never work at scale, and given the emergency nature of climate action, proven mitigation and renewable electricity generation technologies should be our priority. That’s the quickest way of reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. If that doesn’t fit with oil companies as presently constituted, tough on them.

The other potential use of CCS that Buck discusses is in conjunction with bioenergy (BECCS). CCS with fossil-fueled processes only saves the carbon those processes have produced, and is at best carbon-neutral. BECCS is seen as potentially carbon-negative, i.e. it could leave the atmosphere with less carbon than it started with. Plants naturally capture carbon as they grow; if they are used for fuel, with CCS, that carbon is also captured and stored.

BECCS is unproven to work at scale, in part because it would need massive amounts of land to grow the crops, presenting a potential threat to hundreds of millions of people who live by farming.

Widespread concern 

The principal practical use of BECCS so far has been by the IPCC: by including wildly exaggerated estimates of BECCS use, they have made their scenarios for avoiding dangerous climate change add up, without too rapid a transition away from fossil fuels.

This use – or rather, misuse – of BECCS has provoked outrage from climate scientists since the IPCC’s fifth assessment report was published in 2014. (See e.g. here.)

One team of climate scientists who double-checked the calculations, led by Sabine Fuss at the Mercator Research Institute in Berlin, concluded that the IPCC projections of BECCS’s potential was probably between twice and four times what is physically possible.

The best estimates Fuss and her colleagues could make for the sustainable global potential of negative emission technologies were: 0.5-3.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide removal per year (GtCO2/yr) for afforestation and reforestation, 0.5-5 GtCO2/yr for BECCS, 0.5-2 GtCO2/yr for biochar, 2-4 GtCO2/yr for enhanced weathering, 0.5-5 GtCO2/yr for direct air capture of carbon and 0-5 GtCO2/yr for soil carbon squestration.

Fuss and her colleagues wrote that they share “the widespread concern that reaching annual deployment scales of 10-20 GtCO2/yr via BECCS at the end of the 21st century, as is the case in many [IPCC] scenarios, is not possible without severe adverse side effects.”

And that’s putting it in polite, scholarly language.

Public rift

Buck does not discuss this dispute, perhaps the sharpest public rift between the IPCC and the climate scientists on whose work it relies. She only comments in passing that, to answer why the concept of BECCS has any life in it, “possible answers include” that “modelers needed a fix for the models, and BECCS seemed the most plausible” (p. 64). That’s wildly understated.

Further on, Buck speculates that “deployment [of BECCS] at climate-significant scales would be a massive feat of social engineering”, which would imply “a different politics” under which people who live on and work the land and own the resources for production (pp. 68-69).

Again, this argument is back-to-front. 

I embrace the idea of speculating about a post-capitalist future in which industrial agriculture, along with other monstrosities, has been overcome. And I would not exclude the idea that BECCS in some form might be part of it. 

But long before we get to that stage, there is the current battle to be fought: we need to join with the many honest climate scientists who have denounced the fraudulent use of BECCS in the IPCC’s scenarios; to expose its use as a cover for pro-fossil-fuel government policies; and address the climate policy priorities those governments seek to avoid. Now, BECCS is not one of these.

“Hard” and “soft”

The geoengineering technologies discussed by Buck range from those that are by their nature local, small-scale and “soft”, to the largest, “hardest” technologies such as SRM. 

At the furthest “soft” end is biochar, a process by which biomass (crop residues, grass, and so on) is combusted at low temperatures (pyrolysis) to make charcoal, which can be mixed into soils or buried, to store the carbon. Afforestation is also on the “soft” end of the scale, as are some ocean farming techniques. 

Buck also points to some significant local, if not “soft”, techniques, such as engineering specific glaciers to prevent them from melting (pp. 247-248).

Buck is sceptical of some claims made for the potential of afforestation, and I am too. But her appeals to social movements to engage, instead, with big and “hard” technologies left me unconvinced.

“The shortcomings of large infrastructure projects have generated suspicion about megaprojects, suspicion which may be transferred to solar geoengineering” (p. 45), she writes. Quite rightly so, I say.

Degrowth

Degrowth advocates, Buck complains, believe that “technologically complex systems beget technocratic elites: fossil fuels and nuclear power are dangerous because sophisticated technological systems managed by bureaucrats will gradually become less democratic and egalitarian” (p. 160). 

The belief that big technological systems “result in a society divided into experts and users […] limits the engagement of degrowth thinking with many forms of carbon removal, which is unfortunate” (p. 161).

What about the substantial issue? Don’t sophisticated technological systems managed by bureaucrats really become less democratic and egalitarian? Aren’t the degrowth advocates right about that? Hasn’t nuclear power, for example, shown us that?

Arguments similar to Buck’s about geoengineering techniques – that, if they were controlled differently, could be of collective benefit, and so on – have long been made about nuclear power, the second largest source of near-zero-carbon electricity after hydro power.

But experience shows that nuclear’s scale has made it intrinsically anti-collective: in our hierarchical society, it has only been, and could only have been, developed by the state and large corporations. From where I am standing, SRM and CCS look much the same.

Technology and capitalism

Take another technology that is in a sense both big and small: the internet. Its pioneers saw its huge democratic potential as a tool of communication, but as it has grown, under corporate and state control, it has become an instrument of state surveillance, corporate control and mind-bending marketing techniques.

For Buck, the internet of the early 2000s was “new and transformative, before we knew it would give us so many cat videos and listicles and trolls”. She appeals to critics of geoengineering, who “tend to locate the psychological roots of climate engineering in postwar, big science techno-optimism”, to think of it instead as “a phenomenon born of the early 2000s, a more globalist moment” (p. 44).

I do not recognise, in the early 2000s, this moment of hope for the internet or for “globalism”. The terrorist attack on the USA on 11 September 2001 marked the end of a desperate game of catch-up, played by US regulatory agencies against the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs: it prompted demands by the security agencies that the state’s focus shift from stopping the tech giants hoovering up information, to insisting they share that information with the state.

All restraints on the invasion of personal privacy were removed. In China, the state is now combining the same technologies with facial recognition software to take control over citizens to a new level. (Shoshana Zuboff writes about this in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.)

A range of socialist writers from Andre Gorz onwards have theorised the way that technology is shaped by capitalism and cannot be seen as inherently progressive. A new generation of technological determinists such as Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek, and Leigh Phillips, have offered a challenge to this tradition (which has left me completely unconvinced).

A serious discussion of geoengineering will necessarily be contextualised by consideration of these underlying issues about technology.

Regeneration

To my mind, socialist and collectivist politics can embrace “soft” and small technologies more easily than large ones, because they can more easily be used independently of structures of power and wealth. 

In many cases, e.g. electricity networks, we may well find ourselves advocating a combination of big and small technologies. But if we envisage socialism as a process that resists and eventually supercedes the state and big corporations, then in principle those technologies that can only be mobilised by the state and big corporations, such as nuclear power – and the big “hard” forms of geoengineering – present greater problems to us.

Buck argues that “a world patterned around carbon removal would be similar to one that’s committed itself to deep decarbonisation and extreme mitigation”, but had gone one step further.

 On the other hand, she writes that “regeneration, removal, restoration and so forth [her descriptive categories for a range of geoengineering techniques] bring a different narrative than mitigation, and perhaps a different politics”. It might be easier to “build a broader coalition around regeneration”, although, or perhaps because, “the goal is more drastic” (p 192).

To point to geoengineering advocacy as an alternative, preferable to mitigation (i.e. reduction of carbon emissions), carries a great danger of playing into the hands of corporate and government opponents of action.

Craven greenwash

Who, in the here and now, will comprise this “broader coalition” to consider geoengineering? According to Noah Deich of Carbon 180, who is quoted by Buck (p. 246): [T]here’s the global Paris Agreement community [?], as well as energy, mining and agriculture, all of whom need to embrace carbon removal, ‘not as a scary transformation for their business, but really the natural evolution for where they need to go to increase prosperity. To serve their customers, employees, shareholders, all of these key stakeholders better. It needs to come from the top down.’

This version of geoengineering advocacy, which seeks to combine it with satisfying corporate needs to “serve stakeholders better”, scares me stiff. How can it be anything but craven greenwash?

Buck is not herself advocating such alliances. But she clearly sides with big and “hard” technologies against small, “soft” ones.

She derides supporters of regenerative agriculture for their “determined post-truth faith in soils”, which, she fears, “could contribute to a failure to invest in other technologies that are also needed for this gargantuan carbon removal challenge” (p. 116).

Why send more funds the way of big technologies? Already, “eco-system based approaches”, including afforestation and regenerative agriculture, only get 2.5 percent of global climate finance, Buck has reported a few pages earlier (p. 96).

Dramatic transformation 

“Soft” afforestation and biochar, or “hard” CCS and SRM? Buck cites a research group headed by Detlef van Vuuren of Utrecht university in the Netherlands, who proposed that the 1.5 degrees C target could be met with minimal amounts of BECCS and other types of carbon dioxide removal. (Reported here; full article (restricted access) here.) 

They propose a larger programme of afforestation, and more rapid expansion of renewables-generated electricity, than in the IPCC scenarios. Van Vuuren and his colleagues also factor in lifestyle changes, including an overhaul of food processing towards lab-grown meat.

Buck is sceptical about the prospect of this “dramatic transformation”, as opposed to a focus on carbon removal – although she concludes that it should be “a vibrant matter of debate” (p. 109). And I agree with her there. 

But still more important is a related debate that is absent from her book: the potential of energy conservation, rather than carbon removal, in the fight against dangerous climate change, which has been downplayed in the IPCC’s reports for years.

By energy conservation I mean the overhaul of the big technological systems that wolf down fossil-fuel-produced energy. This involves other dramatic transformations: of industrial, transport and agricultural practices, and in the way people live – particularly in the cities of the global north where transport systems are based on cars (or, now, SUVs), people are encouraged to consume some goods (e.g. hamburgers) unhealthily and excessively, and live in heat-leaking, energy-inefficient buildings.

These transformations could not only forestall dangerous climate change, but also make lives better and more fulfilling.

Energy conservation 

An indication of energy conservation potential is provided by a group of energy specialists, headed by Arnalf Grubler of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, who last year published a scenario suggesting that the 1.5 degree target, along with sustainable development goals, could be met entirely by energy conservation.

The point is not that one of these groups of technology researchers is 100 percent right as against another group. Rather, that to inform a serious discussion on these issues among people who are concerned about social justice and climate justice, we need to consider the relative advantages and disadvantages not only of different types of geoengineering, but of energy conservation measures too.

The best way to challenge corporations and governments is to make this discussion our own, rather than their property. Then we will be better armed in battles over political choices that we hope not only to influence, but to take into our hands. 

This Author

Gabriel Levy is a writer with People & Nature, where this article first appeared. 

Weary eco-activists across the country were holding their breaths in 2004. They’d been fighting an epic campaign for over seven years.

The technology they were opposing had never been used in the UK. People with experience of its effects from across the world toured the country with their stories. Regions earmarked for testing on the outskirts of cities and in rural backwaters found themselves thrust into the spotlight – needing to learn about and mobilise on an incredibly complex political issue. 

In doing so they rediscovered community and built a network of solidarity across the country – gathering year on year for big demonstrations and direct action as tests were carried out first in one place and then another, and then everywhere simultaneously.

Remarkable scale

Folks based in London, Oxford, Brighton, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Glastonbury and Totnes lead the way on direct action against trial sites. People were arrested for criminal damage and under obscure legislation. Short prison sentences were served and long sentences dodged in a series of high-profile trials.

The big green charities followed, running high-profile campaigns. The issue had years of newspaper backing, but grassroots campaigns only received a year or so of national media coverage. The scale of their work as it progressed was wildly under reported. 

Small teams went out month after month, year after year, sometimes in cross country team ups on a remarkable scale. They made practical interventions that substantially damaged the industry’s progress. Adventures invisible to all but those who drove home at dawn, weary but elated.

The wider population moved from ignorance of the technology, to low level awareness, to majority opposition across party lines. But the incumbent government were standing by their friends in the industry.

Everyone knew that we’d won, everyone knew that the industry was massively behind schedule, but still the trials continued and the rhetoric said that the industry would push on through.

Blueprint for resistance 

We were tired. Once mighty local groups had fizzled away. In the final push it felt like there was no momentum left – with a couple of dozen of us standing outside parliament with a placard that said ‘What part of ‘No Genetically Modified Crops’ did you not understand?’. While inside, Chardon LL maize, the first GM variety to be made commercially available in the UK, was granted its licence.

Three weeks later there was an announcement. The manufacturers of Chardon LL would not be putting it on the market. The company explained it’s product had been left “economically non-viable” because of the conditions imposed by the Government.

There was no ban. No formal U-turn. There still isn’t.

GM trials continue to happen with occasional campaigns against them and the threat of its return is ever present. It would have been better if we could have pushed further against the importing of GM for animal feed, and subsidies for experiments. 

But fourteen years later we still live in a country that has never grown GM crops on a commercial scale. We averted increased pesticide use, the dispersal of unstable DNA, and total corporate control of the food chain. A blueprint for effective resistance was laid out.

We are powerful 

I never knew how to celebrate that win, I don’t think any of us did, and so we didn’t. I always hoped that we could make it more solid. That there would be another moment we could point to when it really was over, when we were safe.

We live in late stage-capitalism. Nothing is safe; no victories are forever.

Does that mean that we never get to call our friends and tell them that we love them? We fought as hard as we could with all the skills that we had and for a little while, in a big way, it worked.

Tory rule, the rise of the far right and a US-dominated Brexit threaten to unravel hundreds of years of progressive politics on this island. Hundreds of forgotten struggles of people just like us, who threw their lives into pushing out the boundaries one tiny step at a time, from Union rights to the NHS, the protection of seeds to energy policy.

Which is why we must remind ourselves that we are powerful, why we must dig into what has worked and hold it high and learn from it.

Change and possibility

Winning is messy. It is a bit like grieving, everyone does it differently.

When we win things change, and with it all the weight of loss and possibility change too. The communities that we’ve spun around us unravel, leaving us purposeless. Shivering in the memories of state violence and suppressed fear.

Winning isn’t easy. But it is beautiful. It should be named.

It’s worth staking a claim on here and now before it passes. We are told time and again that there is no point in trying and it’s a lie. Every time me we remind ourselves of that, we make the next win more possible.

This Author 

Liz Snook has been active part of the UK environmental direct action movement through a number of groups including Earth First! the Genetic Engineering Network, Frack Free Bristol and Reclaim the Power.

Image: Block Around the Clock, Reclaim the Power, Flickr.

Extinction Rebellion is about to take its climate change message to the pop charts, with the release of its first single.

The protest group has joined forces with Lancashire-based rock band the Jade Assembly, aiming to claim a Christmas No.1 with a song that calls for action on climate change, “before we’re all dead”.

The single, called Time For Change, comes with a video featuring footage from the group’s protests around the world in the past six months, with the main focus on London, according to newspaper reports.

Time

The video includes doctored shots of the Houses of Parliament on fire, Downing Street in flood, and MPs including former Prime Minister Theresa May wearing gas masks.

Lead vocalist John Foster sings: “So whether you’re a lucky man, a banker or a broken man, I’m standing here for everyone who’s never too afraid to say – we need you now, we need voices.

“A time to look ahead and now a time before we’re all dead, come on, it’s time for a change. I need everyone to be with me and I need everyone in here tonight to be themselves, so come on.”

Time For Change will be released early next month.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on copy supplied by PA.  

We’re in the middle of two major electoral processes – in the UK and USA – which have the potential to shape the world’s response to the climate emergency.

In the United States, the Democratic primaries have been framed by a vibrant and youthful campaign by the Sunrise Movement for a climate debate, meaning that bold climate commitments are an established litmus test of a candidate’s viability to win the nomination.

In the UK, as we enter the relentless and frenzied election campaign, loud and diverse calls are making a strong case for a televised leaders debate to ensure the electorate is given the chance to hear how any future prime minister will take action on the climate crisis.

Broadcasters

The call for a climate and nature debate isn’t just coming from the usual suspects within the environmental NGO sector.

Because the climate crisis will affect the entire economy, from housing to education to healthcare and everything in between, organisations cutting across sectors are adding their voices, from the National Union of Students, to the National Pensioners Convention, to the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Less than a day after launching the campaign the Green Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party have all committed their support to the leaders climate debate, demonstrating cross-party support.

The Conservatives are yet to commit their support, but risk the embarrassment of being empty-chaired once again at a time when they’re surely eager to assert their climate policies. The onus is now on broadcasters to demonstrate their commitment to climate action by stepping forward to host the debate.

Emergency

This year has seen the climate movement taking centre-stage in the political and media landscape.

Tens of thousands of youth strikers have been walking out of their classrooms month after month, culminating in the record-shattering global climate strike in September in which 300,000 took to the streets around the UK.

Extinction Rebellion hosted two major disruptions to the capital city that has firmly placed climate as a top concern for the public.

With such a spotlight on the climate emergency, it’s no wonder that 54 percent of voters say climate change will influence the way they vote at the next election, with the figure at almost three quarters for those under 25.

Task

However, with other political crises taking place, nearly two thirds of voters think politicians aren’t talking about climate enough. What is clear is that the electorate care deeply about how the government will tackle climate breakdown and implement policy to rapidly curb emissions. 

As voters, whether students or pensioners, we deserve to hear what party plans are for tackling the greatest crisis of our time.

The international scientific community continues to give increasingly severe warnings about the future of the planet, and the impacts of climate breakdown are being felt already both here in the UK, and even more acutely in poorer countries.

Barely a day goes by now without a climate-related wildfire, drought, tropical storm or flood wreaking havoc on a community. Yet those in positions of power in the UK and beyond continue to act as though tackling the climate crisis is still a task for the future.

Voters

The IPCC warned that we must drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030 to stand any chance of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees, agreed at COP21 in Paris.

This may be our last stand for our planet. The December election will potentially put in place a government for five years of the 10 we’ve got to drastically cut emissions.

We can’t risk sidelining the most important issue of our time, the stakes are too high. We need public scrutiny and we must focus appropriate attention on the climate crisis.

That means putting it centre stage for all voters to hear the future prime minister’s plans.

If we’re to elect a leader that prioritises the climate, it’s about time we have a climate and nature debate between party leaders and turn this into a climate election. 

The Author

Zamzam Ibrahim is President of the National Union of Students.

Join the call for a televised leaders debate on climate and nature.

Register to vote. 

Caroline Lucas has condemned attacks on individual’s carbon footprints, saying people should put greater focus on fossil fuel companies and holding the powerful to account.

The Green Party co-leader admitted that she “occasionally” flies to visit her son in the United States, as she called for a change to the system to reduce emissions.

She told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “I think sometimes the focus on individual behaviour, important though that is, lets the big fossil fuel companies off the hook, it lets those in power off the hook.

Judgement

“Because what we need here is systems change. It is incredibly easy to pit one person’s behaviour against another person’s behaviour and say you’re not good enough.

“We’re all trying to do our best in a deeply imperfect system. And so what we need to be doing, I think, is focusing on changing that system.”

She questioned why it was more expensive to take a train to other parts of Europe than to fly – saying it is because “we’ve chosen not to tax aviation fuel and VAT on aviation and instead we do when it comes to railways”.

“So let’s change those price signals to make it easier for people to do the right thing rather than sitting in judgment on each other saying we’re not doing enough.

Emergency

“Sometimes I think the green movement can sometimes sound as if we’re doing that, and I think that’s very off-putting and we shouldn’t.”

Ms Lucas also said her party had a “real chance of winning” in places like the Isle of Wight, Bristol West, Stroud, and Bury St Edmunds thanks to the electoral pact she has reached with the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru.

On her party’s plans to spend more than £100 billion “greening” the economy, she said: “£100 billion a year over 10 years is what we think is necessary to try to reach net zero by 2030.

“We think the government’s target of saying we’re going to get to net zero emissions by 2050 – another 30 years away – is just simply not up to scrutiny.

“And it’s like dialling 999 and saying can I have a fire engine, please in 30 years’ time? It’s not commensurate with what I understand to be an emergency.”

This Author

Harriet Line is the PA deputy political editor. 

Extinction Rebellion activists have floated a “sinking house” down the River Thames in London to highlight the impact of rising sea levels.

The half-submerged “classic suburban house” was pictured drifting near Tower Bridge early on Sunday morning.

In a statement, the environmental protest group said the stunt aimed to “send an SOS to the government on climate inaction and draw attention to the threat humans face from climate change and rising sea levels”.

Stunt

It comes as parts of the UK deal with the aftermath of widespread flooding that hit towns across the Midlands and northern England on Thursday and Friday.

Several areas were deluged with one month’s worth of rain in a day and a woman died after being swept up in floodwaters.

Extinction Rebellion said: “Representing the disastrous realities of projected sea level rises, perhaps the stunt was unnecessary.

Zero

“As the ongoing flood disaster in Derbyshire and Yorkshire has so starkly illustrated, our homes, businesses and families are at very real risk.

“We are watching, in real-time, as people’s lives are destroyed around the world and in the UK.

“Unless action is taken to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, these tragedies are set to worsen.”

Devastation

Katey Burak and Rob Higgs, builders of The Sinking House, said: “Sadly, climate change is something that affects every one of us.

“We want to respectfully raise awareness of the severity of the impending human-made disaster.

“We need urgent action to address the climate emergency and devastation of our beautiful and precious natural world, which is being decimated at an unprecedented and tragic rate.

Compensation

“We implore the Government to act responsibly and we will continue to make our voices heard until they act.”

On Wednesday, Extinction Rebellion won a High Court challenge over a protest ban issued by the Metropolitan Police.

The force could face hundreds of claims for compensation after it arrested protesters during the imposition of a blanket ban on the assembly of more than two people during the group’s Autumn Uprising action last month.

This Author

Tom Pilgrim is a reporter with PA.

Going green isn’t reserved for individuals or well-known brands — local governments can also participate in the movement. Governments can generate change in their communities by showing their dedication to sustainability.

The core of any eco-friendly campaign should start from these high-authority positions to encourage more people to preserve the environment. Citizens will be more likely to care for the planet if they see local leadership doing the same.

An excellent government can only cause change for its people when it implements the same strategies it tells others to follow. Creating green guidelines for businesses and individuals is worth praise.

Pinpoint

However, one truly learns the importance of sustainability by living it themselves. People will take these efforts seriously when they see their municipality upholding them.

Many governments cling to tradition in favor of new policies and plans. Doing so does everyone a disservice by denying them access to programs that can improve their quality of life and help the environment.

Transforming the status quo doesn’t have to be complicated — more cities should take the chance for the betterment of their people.

Before encouraging citizens and businesses to make an eco-friendly leap, you should implement these strategies within your own offices.

You’ll have a clear idea of whether specific approaches will work, saving you the trouble of trial and error. Sit down with green advisers and make a list of everything you can change within your department. A targeted plan provides efficiency and lets you pinpoint problem areas instead of relying on guesswork.

Temperatures

What are your short-term and long-term goals for each area? What does sustainability mean to your agency — does it include ethical and social aspects? How will you measure the effects of your changes?

These are a few questions to consider when making a green transition. One area you can target immediately is your paper consumption — many government agencies still rely on paper record-keeping. Landfills received 18.4 million tons of paper in municipal waste in 2017.

Try paperless record-keeping software and use recycled paper when hard copies are necessary. Install LED lights in the office and around the city wherever possible.

These have longer lifespans than fluorescents or incandescents, saving you money and reducing your energy consumption. They also provide increased visibility, making parks and other dark areas safer at night.

Connecting the lights and HVAC to a smart technology system allows for greater control and less energy consumption. Turn the lights off whenever a room is empty, and set the heating or cooling to activate only when necessary. Smart systems also let you set preferred temperatures for every room of the building.

Plastics

Consider renovating the building to allow for more natural light and green spaces. Large, unobscured windows let light in and reduce the need for artificial lighting. And if your building sits in a sunny area, you can take advantage of solar panels to reduce reliance on the energy grid.

Environmentally preferred purchasing enables organizations to analyze their current suppliers and goods and buy from greener businesses.

Bringing this plan into your governmental organization means buying materials that have positive effects on the environment and your local citizens. This plan can also extend to purchased services — for example, hiring a cleaning company that uses organic supplies, no harmful chemicals included.

Establishing an EPP policy depends on what you and your colleagues define as green. Not all products claiming to be eco-friendly will meet every environmental standard. Some may require less water during production, but use more fossil fuels.

Other products may come from companies that practice ethical sourcing, but still use plastic packaging. EPP plans require you to determine your purchasing needs and decide which factors you’re willing to compromise on.

Sustainability

Buy goods from local businesses that create recyclable products and participate in green programs of their own. You’ll help the environment and support citizens within your municipality. Purchasing locally reduces fossil fuel pollution produced by long-distance transport.

Recycled goods require less energy and material to produce than new ones, which conserves resources like water and trees.

Your agency’s carbon footprint will shrink, and your employees will benefit from using cleaner materials. Choosing green products over conventional ones prioritizes human health, as the processing used to make commercial goods involves numerous chemicals.

Your purchasing power will boost green businesses, causing their products and services to be accessible to others. With demand comes supply — when people take an interest in their services, they can spread their brand further. An increased outreach helps them connect with people who need their services, enhancing the benefits for all.

As you begin adopting green strategies within your workplace, make your efforts known to the local citizens.

They’ll appreciate your dedication to environmentalism and place more of their trust with you — which is what most governing bodies aim for.

Be genuine in your conservation work, and remain open to suggestions from individuals and businesses. Sustainability encourages everyone to learn from each other, which creates a shared understanding among all parties.

This Author 

Emily Folk is a regular contributor to The Ecologist, a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.