Monthly Archives: July 2017

Veteran Cumbria anti-nuclear activists recognised with Nuclear-Free Future Award

What makes someone take on the anti-nuclear cause? It is a dry, and largely technical subject without compelling images or obvious victims, and is guaranteed to get you ignored by the press almost 100 per cent of the time.

 

Even when the 2011 Fukishima-Daiichi nuclear disaster hit in Japan, the myopic British government — and others around the world, including even Japan — continued to promote nuclear expansion.

 

This determined and dangerous pursuit of economically failing and environmentally dangerous nuclear energy — despite all evidence that it can be replaced by renewable energy and energy efficiency without increasing fossil fuel use — should be enough to send frustrated anti-nuclear activists to an early grave.

 

In the case of Janine Allis-Smith and Martin Forwood, however, the heart of the aptly named CORE — Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment — the continued obsession with nuclear energy, and the continued although fading presence of the dirtiest end of the nuclear fuel chain, the Sellafield reprocessing facility, right in the their back hard, represent an irresistible red flag.

 

The Nuclear-Free Future Award

 

This month their commitment to a safer, cleaner, greener environment was rewarded when it was announced they would receive the 2017 Nuclear-Free Future Award in the category of Education, a prize that carries a $10,000 cheque, a rare and much needed boon in a movement largely deprived of consistent funding.

 

When Martin and Janine, who reside in a bucolic Cumbria cottage replete with dogs, cats and pet sheep, first heard of the award, the humble couple were lost for words.  A short email from Janine apologized for the lack of a lengthy acknowledgement. A glass (or two) of wine later and the news began to sink in.

 

“We are honoured to have received NFFA’s Education Award for 2017 and humbled to be joining the list of diverse and distinguished winners of the past,” Forwood said.

 

“Since the 1980s, when Sellafield was preparing to double its commercial reprocessing activities, we have focused not only on acting locally but also being the ‘eyes and ears’ for the many interested parties world-wide on Sellafield and its many detriments which include site accidents, environmental contamination, health risks, plutonium stockpiles and nuclear transports.

“With decades of uniquely difficult decommissioning yet to come, and with plans for new-build at Moorside, we still have much to do and will face the challenges with the same determination that has seen us through the many highs and lows experienced over the last thirty years in our campaign against an industry we believe still has much to answer for.”

 

The Nuclear-Free Future Award (NFFA) has, since 1998, recognized unsung heroes whose efforts and struggles, sometimes at risk to their own lives, and often unsupported financially, deserve international recognition and acclamation.

 

The NFFA gives three cash awards each year in the categories of Resistance, Education, and Solutions, for work to end the Atomic Age through the elimination of both the military and civilian applications of nuclear materials.  The 2017 ceremony will take place on September 15, in Basel, Switzerland.

 

Along with Forwood and Allis-Smith the 2017 winners include Almoustapha Alhacen, Niger, for Resistance, and Hiromichi Umebayashi, Japan, for Solutions. Jochen Stay of Germany and the Swiss anti-nuclear movement will receive the non-monetary Special Recognition awards.

 

Tenacious partners on the anti-nuclear battlefield

 

Martin and Janine, partners in life as well as activism, embody the longstanding and tenacious anti-nuclear fight in Cumbria, the most nuclear county in the United Kingdom. Without their watchdog vigilance and their compelling educational advocacy, far less would be known about the dangers posed by the British nuclear industry, and particularly by the Sellafield reprocessing and nuclear waste site.

 

Martin and Janine have been at the heart of the struggle against the Sellafield operations since the mid-1980s. They have exposed the the company’s clandestine activities, especially emissions of radioactive wastes into the environment.

 

For Janine, formerly from the Netherlands, this hit home especially hard when her own son was diagnosed with leukemia in 1983. He survived, but as Janine began to look into the issue, she found far too many other instances of childhood leukemias among children living close to Sellafield, many fatal. 

 

The pair began to suspect that radioactive discharges from Sellafield were contaminating local beaches and tide pools where children loved to play. And, as Allis-Smith, recounted, “it was not just leukemia, but other cancers. Some were stillborn, while other suffered unexplained deaths at a very young age.”

 

This launched Janine and Martin on a relentless campaign to expose the on-going violations at the Sellafield site where radioactive discharges have made the Irish Sea one of the most radioactively contaminated bodies of water in the world.

 

Just this year, CORE released a damning report which showed how, “during the 1995-2013 period, the radioactive discharges to the marine environment from Sellafield’s reprocessing facilities B205 (magnox) and THORP (oxide) have dominated those from all other UK facilities and are recognized as being the major contributor to the levels of radioactive substances recorded in the Irish Sea and wider oceans.”

 

The plight of children with leukemia

 

Janine and Martin became the perfect team at explaining the dangers of reprocessing at Sellafield. Both were new to the issue when they began. But they quickly educated themselves, then others.

 

Martin’s presentation perfected the art of explaining the complex and technical technology of reprocessing in easily understandable lay terms. Allis-Smith moved audiences as she vividly described the plight of her son and the other children. Politicians, the media, and the public at large were forced to take

notice.

 

Over the years, the pair have collected numerous mud samples from local beaches and estuaries that have been analyzed for radioactive contamination, confirming their suspicions.

 

Today, if you need to know anything about the Sellafield nuclear complex, about reprocessing and its emissions into air and water, or the hazards of shipping plutonium from Sellafield around the world — flotillas that Forwood, a former merchant seaman himself has vigorously opposed — you turn to Janine and Martin and CORE.

 

However, their expertise did not happen overnight. It has built over the decades. Martin’s deep knowledge and his fearless commitment were instrumental in uncovering scandals and illegal activities at the site.

 

Martin and Janine fought the THORP reprocessing plant, due to close permanently next year; the rash decision to develop a MOX fuel manufacturing plant, which closed after just 10 years of operation; and the global transport of radioactive materials. 

 

In 1990 Martin gave his first guided “Alternative Sellafield Tour”, highlighting the spots where the reprocessing plant endangers the environment.

 

More recently, they were part of a successful effort to prevent the Nuclear Waste Agency NIREX from building a subterranean depository for British and international nuclear waste at the edge of the Lake District National Park.

 

Currently, they are at the forefront of the fight to block three new nuclear power plants planned for Moorside adjacent to Sellafield. Their landmark 2015 report, “Moorside Build & Job Projections – All Spin and No Substance,” has proven an essential tool for the broad opposition to this deadly plan, one that now teeters on the brink of collapse.

 

Without major financial and human resources and without regard to personal risks and disadvantages, Martin and Janine have successfully confronted the British nuclear industry as well as decommissioning and waste authorities.

 

Together they are researchers and whistleblowers, organizers of local meetings and international conferences and resourceful activists. 


Radioactive pizza

 

And they are not without a sense of drama either. In 2005, Martin made and delivered a radioactive ‘Pizza Cumbriana’ as a protest to the Italian Embassy in London —Italy was shipping radioactive waste to Sellafield for reprocessing at the time.

 

The box was marked “Best before 26005”, a reference to plutonium 239, which has a half-life of 24,400 years. Seized at the time by the Environment Agency, it was stored, then buried eight years later at the Drigg nuclear waste dump in Cumbria.

 

But Martin and Janine remain undeterred. They network both locally and internationally with grassroots initiatives as well as major NGOs. Several times, it was CORE who provided the essential inside information for campaigns that have dealt major blows to the nuclear industry.

 

However, these days it is hard to catch Martin and Janine together outside of their home town. Their pastoral idyll includes sheep and other animals which must be tended to daily. If one leaves on a road trip, the other often stays behind.

 

The pair are an impressive example of effective teamwork in activism and are the key to CORE’s success in fighting the Sellafield nuclear complex and alerting the world to the dangers of nuclear energy.

 

This Author

 

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a USA based environmental advocacy group.

 

Trump’s top trade nominees lobbied for hormone-meat exports

Donald Trump’s nominee to be the United States’ chief agricultural trade negotiator previously called for the US to walk away from trade talks with the EU if it refused to drop its ban on beef reared with antibiotics and growth supplements.

The revelation could have implications for the UK’s attempts to strike a post-Brexit trade deal with the United States, with reports suggesting the US agricultural sector wants to weaken UK food standards – including the ban on growth hormones – to help boost its meat exports.

Last week, international trade secretary Liam Fox refused to rule out reversing a ban on the import of chlorine-washed chicken during a visit to Washington to discuss a post-Brexit trade deal.

This resulted in a cabinet split as environment secretary, Michael Gove, insisted that the UK would not compromise on its food standards by dropping restrictions on chlorinated chicken.  

Now, an Energydesk investigation has found that two of Trump’s nominees for top agricultural trade positions have strong links to the US beef and growth hormone lobbies. And that these powerful groups are already mobilising in Washington to take advantage of the UK’s need to strike a post-Brexit trade deal.

“Walk away” from talks

Gregg Doud, who was nominated for the US’ top agricultural trade position by President Trump last month, authored a paper in 2013 arguing that the US should “absolutely” walk away trade talks with the EU if it refused to drop restrictions on US meat imports.

Doud previously spent eight years working for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) – a powerful lobby group that has identified Brexit as an opportunity to lift UK restrictions on the import of beef reared with substances that increase animal growth rate – such as hormones and beta agonists.

Energydesk can further reveal that Trump’s nominee for the new role of under-secretary of trade at the US department of agriculture, Ted McKinney, is a former director at Elanco Animal Health – a major manufacturer of growth hormones and beta agonists.

During last week’s visit to Washington, Fox downplayed the significance of US meat exports to any future trade deal between the UK and US.

But some US trade experts believe that getting rid of barriers preventing the export of US beef, pork and chicken will be a red line for the US in any negotiations.

Speaking to Energydesk, Daniel Pearson, a senior fellow in trade policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, said that a post-Brexit deal will not happen if the UK is not willing to drop restrictions.

“The agriculture community here can prevent a UK-US agreement from happening and probably would unless there’s some significant progress on those issues. I can’t see the Farm Bureau and the commodity organisations being willing to say yes, let’s do a deal with the UK under the same terms that we have with the European Union.”

No “safe level”

The US maintains that beef and pork reared using hormones and beta agonists is safe and that the EU ban is simply a protectionist measure.

Nick Giordano, vice president of global government affairs at the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) – a large industry group that focuses on free trade – told Energydesk: “The EU is making arguments that are not based on science, they’re below the belt punches that are belied by the scientific facts”.

He added: “It would be over my dead body that a free trade agreement gets through the US Congress that doesn’t eliminate tariffs on food and agriculture products… and non-tariff barriers”.

The European Commission though, maintains that there is insufficient evidence supporting claims that currently banned animal growth substances are safe.

In a 2009 assessment of evidence supporting a bid by the US to establish a recognised safe intake level for the beta agonist ractopamine, the European Food Safety Authority found “weaknesses in the data” and concluded that: “the study on cardiovascular effects in humans cannot be taken as a basis to derive an Acceptable Daily Intake”.  

Banned substances

Ted McKinney, the nominee to be the USDA’s trade under-secretary, held the role of director of global corporate affairs at Elanco Animal Health  – a major manufacturer of ractopamine – between 2009-2014.

In 2012, McKinney played a role in a successful bid to get the UN to adopt levels at which ractopamine should be considered safe.

The motion passed by just two votes and was strongly opposed by the European Union “on the grounds of persisting scientific uncertainty about the safety of products derived from animals treated with ractopamine”.  

McKinney was later recruited by Indiana’s then governor, current Vice President Mike Pence, to serve in his cabinet.

As director of agriculture for Indiana, McKinney is a member of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) – which is calling for the US government to eliminate barriers to US agricultural exports, such as Europe’s ban on growth hormones. 

When contacted for comment by Energydesk, McKinney declined to comment – citing the ongoing nomination process.

Pork Alliance

Energydesk’s investigation found that lobbying is already underway in Washington, as the US agricultural sector seeks to ensure that the UK relaxes its restrictions on meat imports from the US post-Brexit.

McKinney’s former employers, Elanco, are funders of the Pork Alliance – a lobbying operation coordinated by the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC). 

Senate lobbying disclosures show that, in 2017, the NPPC has lobbied Congress; the US Department of Agriculture and the Office of the US Trade Representative regarding “lifting market access restrictions” to the UK.

The NPPC’s Giordano told Energydesk: “I don’t think I’m the only one who’s been on the other side of the pond, and who’s been talking to US and UK officials”.

Elanco failed to respond to multiple requests for comment.

Beef lobby

Chief agricultural trade nominee, Greg Doud, spent eight years as chief economist for leading beef lobbyists, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA).

His nomination to be chief trade negotiator was warmly welcomed by his former colleagues. Senior vice president of government affairs, Colin Woodall, said:

“Gregg has been a friend and colleague for many years, and I can testify first-hand that America’s cattlemen and women will be well-served by having Gregg at the table as agricultural trade deals are hammered out.”

The NCBA believes that Brexit offers an opportunity to finally begin exporting to the UK. Woodhall told CNBC that: “A U.K. agreement will be a good opportunity for us to actually base trade on science rather than just a precautionary principle and undue fear.”

“UK has been under the blanket EU restrictions where they will only take non-hormone, non-antibiotic treated beef”, he added.

Strong criticism

Doud’s 2013 paper argued that the US should walk away from trade negotiations with the EU if it refused to drop its restrictions on US meat imports.

Citing the EU’s bans on beta agonists and antibiotics, Doud said: “Are we prepared to walk away from the negotiating table if access is restricted via these other issues? We better be.”

Referring to the European Union, he also said: “we all know who wrote the book when it comes to using non-tariff trade barriers to block imports and protect domestic markets”.

When contacted by Energydesk to verify that this had been his position on trade with Europe, Doud said this was “accurate”, but declined to comment further.

This Author

Lawrence Carter is an investigations reporter at Greenpeace Energydesk. 

 

 

Bruce Parry returns from the rainforest with the secret to love, peace and harmony

Bruce Parry has lived with indigenous tribes in Africa, South America and South East Asia, and his documentaries have won awards. The former marine has taken it to the very edge – eating exotic and powerful drugs, testing his physical and mental resilience on a trip the South Pole, and living the high life on the party island of Ibiza. 

 

But he has returned to the UK to share with the world a fundamental insight that could bring each of us individual wellbeing, as well as providing a powerful lesson about our society, and our relationship with nature.

 

The problem Parry now aces is his lesson is so radical, so transformative that it sits outside what is considered acceptable, or believable, firstly with his former commissioners at the BBC and  then also for our culture as a whole.

 

So Parry has funded and directed his own film –  TAWAI – A voice from the forest – so that he can share his new insight unmediated, without being sanitised. Having left the comfort of the BBC, and tapped up his founders, he has risked everything. So what is it that he has discovered from the indigenous tribes that he thinks is so important?

 

In Part II [read Part I here] of this exclusive interview with The Ecologist, Parry sets out what he believes to be the answer to the most important challenges of the day. It’s about social structures, but it’s also about yoga and meditation, about spirituality and the unknown. This is what his new film addresses.

 

Empathic experiences of connection

 

Parry tells me: “I pitched this to the BBC, and I can’t really blame them for not taking it. We may have had the mindfulness revolution, but it hadn’t happened at the time. And ‘spirituality’ – these are like red-flag terms. Everyone was like, ‘you know what, I’ve come to my conclusions about all this – Bruce, you’ve obviously gone a bit crazy.’

 

“The Beeb didn’t give much credibility to these experiences of feeling connected, feeling at one with everything, sort of transcending my own physical limits of my body and having these empathic experiences of connection.”

 

One of the reasons for scepticism among the media establishment was that some of the insight came from taking drugs. Parry explains: “I had a very rational team behind me, material scientific mindset of people who I very much looked up to who were incredibly bright and helped me write the script. When it came to me doing anything shamanic they would be like, ‘well, you don’t really believe in all that’. 

 

“So I maintained a very scientific, materialist world view even though I was living with people, and telling the world that I’m living with these people, and looking at the world through their eyes – but deep down I wasn’t really looked through their eyes at all. I was absolutely keeping looking through my eyes at them, and in a sense judging them accordingly. Loving them, appreciating them. But there was always a little bit, ‘well, I know science knows better’.”

 

At this time Parry was no longer seeking status or success, but instead he was searching for an answer to the question posed by his experience of living with tribes. There was a interconnectedness among the people, and between people and nature, that he was not part of and could not really understand. 

 

The possibility that they are right

 

“I went to live with a group of people called the Kogi in Colombia who are a very fascinating group of people, who train some of their children in the dark for 18 years from birth, and these people with sensory deprivation learn through meditation to communion with nature. Clearly that’s a very complex thing for us to understand and imagine.

 

“I thought, here is a group of people who could probably prove something – so let’s go there. They said, ‘oh, yes you can come and make a film with us – but go away and prepare. Give up sex, drugs, alcohol. Then maybe you will be able to come back and understand a but more’. People said to me, ‘you know they are going to be watching you’. I had met with a girlfriend, and [soon after] I got a text on my phone going, ‘so there’s a problem with the film, it is not going to happen’.” 

 

The adventurer spent a long time resisting the idea that interconnectedness could have more profound implications, beyond the known and beyond the material. “I thought, ‘of course it’s just coincidence’.But in that moment I thought, ‘I really want to make this film, because I’m really fascinated by this group of people, and how dare I not allow the possibility that there are right’.”

 

“So in that moment – motivated by my own anxiety to make the film, I have to admit – I decide I will try this on. Suddenly everything changed. Everything is now full of meaning, and my life became saturated with the most blissful experiences of serendipity at every corner.”

 

There were very many experiences that convinced Parry that the tribal people knew more about what it means to be human than he does. He is still exploring the possibilities about how this may be about spirituality, and some greater meaning.

 

Nomadic hunter gatherers

 

But there are also more grounded, material reasons why many of the indigenous peoples of the world appear to have a deeper connection with each other, and with nature, than many cultures in developed, urban oil-fuelled, capitalist, consumerist cultures. 

 

Parry returns to the Penan. It was this community in particular who held the memory, the experience, and the potential for a different way of living that could bring personal happiness, and the potential for a very different kind of society.

 

Parry asks, “what was this experience with this group? When I met the Penan I could literally put them in a box: there was them, and then there’s all the other groups I had lived with, and then everyone else – they were that different. But what? 

 

“So I knew they were nomadic hunter gatherers, and I had lived with hunter gatherers before, I had lived with nomadic groups before. But. This is the first group who are essentially living without domestication, they were still living in this flow with nature.

 

“They carry everything they own on their backs. They share very fastidiously. All these things are very rational: it’s in our interests to share the meat if we’ve got nowhere to store or dry the meat, so I share it and in turn you share it back. 

 

No one bought into wanting more

 

“But why were they behaving differently? Why were they exuding something else entirely. And that was the bit I couldn’t figure out for a while. But then through the meditation, through the Ayahuasca, through these other experiences, something came up: the way they structure their society is also incredibly different. 

 

“They have no leaders. They have no Shaman. They were fully egalitarian. This was actually something that was incredibly real and lived in this group. They had tools and methods whereby if anyone is starting to say they were more, the rest wouldn’t allow it. With the Penan, that was so ingrained, it was so subtle. No one bought into wanting to be more.”

 

He adds: “They saw themselves as a collective, they did not have a sense of individual identity in the same way we do, they were absolutely a collective in the group, but also a collective with all the other species in that area, and the collective with the plants and everything else. 

 

“They felt themselves to be fully immersed within it. It wasn’t a theory. They felt empathically connected to each other, and to the birds, and to the trees, the river and the clouds. That feeling that I had when I was doing the Ayahuasca, and the mushroom trip, and on occasions with the meditation, that feeling a sense of empathic connection whereby your pain is my pain, your joy is my joy.

 

“I don’t want to be excessively brutal to anything if I know I am going to feel that too. So, that sense of empathy expanding out through the group and into the environment. I feel what what was going on. And I thought, ‘well, how is that? Why are they like that?’ 

 

We came to this egalitarian state

 

“And I thought, ‘well maybe because they’re meditating every day, because hunting is a form of meditation. When you learn how to meditate you learn concentration, awareness, [to be] in your senses fully, not drifting off in your mind to other times and places. But in the here and now.”

 

For Parry, the reason the Penan in particular have such a profound connection with the world is they have not gone through the process of relying on agriculture, and therefore retain an ancient connection with nature, and with the earth. 

 

What this says to be is that the Western assumption that developed cultures are more evolved or adapted is turned on its head. The experience of living in capitalism is one of trauma and loss, alongside the technological gains.  

 

He tells me: “We are waking up now to the fact that we have been so successful at gorging ourselves in the sweetie shop that we are suffering as a result. I think that these groups probably had that a long time ago. We came from an alpha male situation at one point, there was a period where we threw that out and came into this egalitarian state.” 

 

Parry is quick to point out that he is not a Luddite, and is grateful for the advancements in technology and health – and indeed travel – that has allowed him to have such experiences. But there is more all life than all of that. “The memory of how it was and how it can be is still with a lot of these people, but I think we have lost that since agriculture. 

 

The amazing diversity of life

 

“If we can drive that technology into an overarching wisdom of seeing ourselves not above nature but within it, and respecting it and as one planet and empathic connection to all peoples, whatever different beliefs and colours, and the empathic connection to nature too and have an understanding of this as a universal belief, then this can be the most beautiful journey. 

 

The connection with the immediate, in a meditative sense, and the connection with nature results, it seems, in a greater connection with the future. The appreciation of other living things becomes the motive for living – and the basis for optimism.

 

“I know that all of us exist by taking from another,” Parry continues. “That’s the cycle of life and death on the planet, I don’t believe of transcending out of that. There is pain, and there’s misery and there is joy and love on the planet so I get it I just also would love that amazing diversity that has come about in the four billion years – it’s had its ups and downs. 

 

“This is great, and we are now the first species – or maybe – we are at the space where we can stand back and experience it and enjoy it. And how cool would it be to come back, how cool would it be to know that your kids are gonna get that same experience – that’s just amazing – that’s the drive

 

“How cool is it if we still have tigers for my grandkids. That would be amazing. And I am willing to let go of some of my luxuries and comforts and things and live in a more humble way if I think that’s going to be still possible for them. 

 

The soil that provides the fruit

 

“I talk to the Penan and I say, ‘what is your own individual desire for the future?’ They don’t want to have a cup of coffee every day if it means [destroying forest elsewhere]. That is genuinely coming from the heart. It is genuinely their greatest desire – because they do not see themselves as individuals but as a collective – that this gig goes forwards.

 

He adds: “They have so much less stress, in some ways, as a result not needing to be famous, they don’t have to be the best. They see themselves as…they know that when they get old they are going to be looked after. 

 

“They know that when they die they going to be feeding the very soil that provides the fruit, and they will be remembered because the ancestors are there amongst them and remembered and the spirits are there among them every day. 

 

“So all of the stresses that we have as we approach old age and death, they not have. They just have they are just happy for the gig to carry on without any individual desire mixed up within that.”

 

The public relations person that Bruce has hired for the film comes over and explains that we have run out of time. I start to lose the vivid imaginings of the hunter gathers of the Borneo rainforest walking through the flora and speaking to the birds above them. I hear the chatter and clatter of crockery. I am once again in Piccadilly. 

 

Ostracised out of the group

 

Bruce wants to make a final point: a deeply communal experience of life – beyond individualism, materialism, and the fight for social status – does not have be confined to the dense undergrowth of the deep forest. It is possible in modern, urban, highly populated countries also.

 

“When I start talking about egalitarian groups, [even with] people who have studied these things, the first thing they often say is, ‘Bruce, we can see why within a small group people can act in this way that you are describing because the limits on their behaviour is by being ostracised out of the group and so that’s what keeps them in the group, and the behaviour and all the rest of it. 

 

“‘But don’t forget that they still have, you can say they have no competition within the group but they have massive competition with the group next door, and they have aggression with the group next door. So this is the thing that is often levelled at this. 

 

“And I also have the same question, until I met Jerome Lewis, who is an anthropologist and studies especially egalitarian, instant return, hunter gatherer societies, of which they are only in Africa and south-east Asia. 

 

“I went with him into the Congo and we go and live with the earliest, earliest groups of this kind. And I said to him, ‘how are we going to apply this to a wider space, because of course the in-group it’s fine, but externally this is as aggressive as anywhere. 

 

Resistant and sceptical

 

“But he is like, ‘no, no, you have no idea Bruce. These people here have all come together randomly for this and will go back to different families. This is a flowing, interactive space that goes out to tens of thousands of people throughout the Congo’. And I didn’t know that.” 

 

Parry continues: “But the thing is, historically it’s only possible – and this is why it only happens in Africa and Southeast Asia where there is abundance of resources and the ability for everyone to be able to have equal access to those resources, so the the problem is if with that sort of idea of egalitarianism can spread it has to come with it also how we go about distributing. That’s our challenge. 

 

“The reasons this ended up ending is probably when we left that tropical belt and were going into more seasonal areas, and is in the seasonal spaces that you have to collect or probably slow down and its then that whoever it is who gets to choose who gets what from the horde has power, then the power came in and then started all the things we experience today.” 

 

The interview is now coming to an end, my mind is buzzing with everything I have heard in the last hour. I want to believe that human being can once again experience this almost euphoric connection with each other, with nature, with the things we find, and the things we make. 

 

But I remain resistant and sceptical. Does the fact some of this ‘oneness’ and ‘interconnectedness’ that Parry has experienced come from his dabbling in exotic drugs undermine its scientific or sociological credibility? His claim that he Kogi could know things beyond their sensuous experience is beyond what I am willing to believe. 

 

Which is the best truth for life?

 

This is where we end. This is where we must begin. It is about belief and about believing. I ask Parry if he is concerned about believing something that simply is not true. He has spoken about going mad in the South Pole, and the concerns aired by the BBC commissioners about the veracity of his claims. Yet, what he has to say is utterly seductive: a human species no longer traumatised and at war, but instead blissed out on life, and at peace.

 

I say, ‘the rational, Cartesian belief that birds are little more than automatons has led to the slaughter and suffering of factory farming, while the beliefs of the Penan that we are all interconnected with all life, including the birds they eat, has led to sustainable living.’  

 

“Thank you,” Parry responds. “Thank you. The way I came to it, with me, was I said, ‘well, okay Bruce, you have got choices here – what’s the best for this thing that you believe in, which is having a future for your children and their children. Which is the best way, which is the best truth for that’. 

 

“We have all these different belief systems in the world, most of them created since agriculture, most of them have humans at the centre, even if they have had all these amazing of ways of connecting to something beyond we still focus it back on the human.

 

“Let’s have something universal. Whether we create it ourselves, it doesn’t really matter. What is the best  belief system for us getting through this shit together? Let’s enjoy it. It will be fun. Like, this is such a beautiful possible future.”

 

I’ve come back home…

 

We stand and I collect my things and slip the recorder into my pocket. I share how incredibly exciting it has been to experience this whistle stop tour of the world, and how it has reawakened my own desire to travel. Parry explains that it might finally be time for him to settle down.

 

I’m looking to be in community, and slow down and stop travelling and all the rest of it. That’s kind of where I’m at. I think I need to, I said earlier that my lifestyle is going in one direction and my understanding is going in another direction. It’s time for me to consolidate. So that’s why I’ve come back to the UK.” He smiles. “I’m here to start an egalitarian hunter gathering society.” We hug and say goodbye.

 

I’m standing by the kerbside, watching the black taxies and the red busses, the traffic lights and the  lights of Piccadilly circus. The fumes tingle in my nose. People brush past me to cross the road. I have that feeling of the traveller returned. I am yet to acclimatise to the familiar. I wonder about the potential for connectedness. The potential loss of these tribes, and with them an important part of our shared species memory, and sensuousness of being, and the dreams for the future.

 

How can this be made real for people who just need to get through the day to day. I search the route home on Google Maps, check my email, see what’s happening on Twitter, play music through my headphones. I come back down to earth.

 

A vegan diet can reduce environmental impact

The Vegan Society’s biggest campaign to encourage more people to eat a plant-based diet is launched today. Half a million people in the UK are already following a vegan lifestyle, According to figures from the charity. 

This is “a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.”

The campaign Plate up for the Planet, is focusing on a planet-saving challenge to encourage participants to go vegan for seven days.

By signing up to the challenge would-be vegans are sent recipe ideas and will receive information on the greenhouse gas savings being made, compared to that of an omnivorous diet.

A fast moving trend for moving towards a vegan diet

Vegans exclude all animal products from both their diet and their fashion choices, so leather and fur are off-limits, as is eating eggs, honey, cheese and other dairy products.

There is a fast moving trend for moving towards a vegan diet and the Society is hoping its campaign will convert many more to this way of life. In the last decade the number of vegans has risen by 260 percent and continues to rise steadily.

Going vegan is believed to reduce an individual’s food-related carbon impact by up to 50 per cent.

The meat and dairy industry produces methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide – all gases that contribute heavily to climate change and there is also the strong argument for veganism which draws on the fact that to keep animals for food the industry drains precious resources such as water, and uses feed that could otherwise be fed to humans. For every 100 calories fed to animals, only 12 calories are given back by consuming flesh and milk.

Becoming a vegan is a lifestyle choice, and is by no means an easy one. Sometimes vegans have to decide between the lesser of two evils – for example egg-based vaccinations, or medical treatments which contain animal derivatives.

A vegan by its definition has to try to the best of their ability to follow an ethical way of life, where is “practicable”. It is not, of course always practicable to do so, especially where medical intervention may be necessary for human health.

Spokesperson for the Vegan Society Dominika Piasecka said: “We know that dropping meat, eggs and dairy from your diet can have a huge environmental benefit.

Removing one item at a time

But we also know that many people who consider themselves environmentally aware or even activists haven’t made the link between the campaigns they are passionate about and their diet.

“How many of your readers know that a vegan diet can cut your food-related carbon emissions by up to 50 per cent? That’s where ‘Plate up for the Planet’ comes in.”

For a vegetarian the step towards becoming a vegan is not such a big one – but for meat eaters the challenge is far harder. The Vegan Society advocates taking small steps to begin with and to go slow.

Removing one item at a time from your diet is easier than cutting out all meat and dairy in one go. It could be that you just start changing one meal a day to begin with.

If you’re inspired to start a journey towards a vegan way of life, you can sign up to the Plate up for the Planet initiative on The Vegan Society’s website and register your email address to receive daily recipes and advice.

This Author

Laura Briggs is a regular contributor to the Ecologist. Follow here here: @WordsbyBriggs.

 

 

Bruce Parry returns form the rainforest with the secret to love, peace and harmony

Bruce Parry has lived with indigenous tribes in Africa, South America and South East Asia, and his documentaries have won awards. The former marine has taken it to the very edge – eating exotic and powerful drugs, testing his physical and mental resilience on a trip the South Pole, and living the high life on the party island of Ibiza. 

 

But he has returned to the UK to share with the world a fundamental insight that could bring each of us individual wellbeing, as well as providing a powerful lesson about our society, and our relationship with nature.

 

The problem Parry now aces is his lesson is so radical, so transformative that it sits outside what is considered acceptable, or believable, firstly with his former commissioners at the BBC and  then also for our culture as a whole.

 

So Parry has funded and directed his own film –  TAWAI – A voice from the forest – so that he can share his new insight unmediated, without being sanitised. Having left the comfort of the BBC, and tapped up his founders, he has risked everything. So what is it that he has discovered from the indigenous tribes that he thinks is so important?

 

In Part II [read Part I here] of this exclusive interview with The Ecologist, Parry sets out what he believes to be the answer to the most important challenges of the day. It’s about social structures, but it’s also about yoga and meditation, about spirituality and the unknown. This is what his new film addresses.

 

Empathic experiences of connection

 

Parry tells me: “I pitched this to the BBC, and I can’t really blame them for not taking it. We may have had the mindfulness revolution, but it hadn’t happened at the time. And ‘spirituality’ – these are like red-flag terms. Everyone was like, ‘you know what, I’ve come to my conclusions about all this – Bruce, you’ve obviously gone a bit crazy.’

 

“The Beeb didn’t give much credibility to these experiences of feeling connected, feeling at one with everything, sort of transcending my own physical limits of my body and having these empathic experiences of connection.”

 

One of the reasons for scepticism among the media establishment was that some of the insight came from taking drugs. Parry explains: “I had a very rational team behind me, material scientific mindset of people who I very much looked up to who were incredibly bright and helped me write the script. When it came to me doing anything shamanic they would be like, ‘well, you don’t really believe in all that’. 

 

“So I maintained a very scientific, materialist world view even though I was living with people, and telling the world that I’m living with these people, and looking at the world through their eyes – but deep down I wasn’t really looked through their eyes at all. I was absolutely keeping looking through my eyes at them, and in a sense judging them accordingly. Loving them, appreciating them. But there was always a little bit, ‘well, I know science knows better’.”

 

At this time Parry was no longer seeking status or success, but instead he was searching for an answer to the question posed by his experience of living with tribes. There was a interconnectedness among the people, and between people and nature, that he was not part of and could not really understand. 

 

The possibility that they are right

 

“I went to live with a group of people called the Kogi in Colombia who are a very fascinating group of people, who train some of their children in the dark for 18 years from birth, and these people with sensory deprivation learn through meditation to communion with nature. Clearly that’s a very complex thing for us to understand and imagine.

 

“I thought, here is a group of people who could probably prove something – so let’s go there. They said, ‘oh, yes you can come and make a film with us – but go away and prepare. Give up sex, drugs, alcohol. Then maybe you will be able to come back and understand a but more’. People said to me, ‘you know they are going to be watching you’. I had met with a girlfriend, and [soon after] I got a text on my phone going, ‘so there’s a problem with the film, it is not going to happen’.” 

 

The adventurer spent a long time resisting the idea that interconnectedness could have more profound implications, beyond the known and beyond the material. “I thought, ‘of course it’s just coincidence’.But in that moment I thought, ‘I really want to make this film, because I’m really fascinated by this group of people, and how dare I not allow the possibility that there are right’.”

 

“So in that moment – motivated by my own anxiety to make the film, I have to admit – I decide I will try this on. Suddenly everything changed. Everything is now full of meaning, and my life became saturated with the most blissful experiences of serendipity at every corner.”

 

There were very many experiences that convinced Parry that the tribal people knew more about what it means to be human than he does. He is still exploring the possibilities about how this may be about spirituality, and some greater meaning.

 

Nomadic hunter gatherers

 

But there are also more grounded, material reasons why many of the indigenous peoples of the world appear to have a deeper connection with each other, and with nature, than many cultures in developed, urban oil-fuelled, capitalist, consumerist cultures. 

 

Parry returns to the Penan. It was this community in particular who held the memory, the experience, and the potential for a different way of living that could bring personal happiness, and the potential for a very different kind of society.

 

Parry asks, “what was this experience with this group? When I met the Penan I could literally put them in a box: there was them, and then there’s all the other groups I had lived with, and then everyone else – they were that different. But what? 

 

“So I knew they were nomadic hunter gatherers, and I had lived with hunter gatherers before, I had lived with nomadic groups before. But. This is the first group who are essentially living without domestication, they were still living in this flow with nature.

 

“They carry everything they own on their backs. They share very fastidiously. All these things are very rational: it’s in our interests to share the meat if we’ve got nowhere to store or dry the meat, so I share it and in turn you share it back. 

 

No one bought into wanting more

 

“But why were they behaving differently? Why were they exuding something else entirely. And that was the bit I couldn’t figure out for a while. But then through the meditation, through the Ayahuasca, through these other experiences, something came up: the way they structure their society is also incredibly different. 

 

“They have no leaders. They have no Shaman. They were fully egalitarian. This was actually something that was incredibly real and lived in this group. They had tools and methods whereby if anyone is starting to say they were more, the rest wouldn’t allow it. With the Penan, that was so ingrained, it was so subtle. No one bought into wanting to be more.”

 

He adds: “They saw themselves as a collective, they did not have a sense of individual identity in the same way we do, they were absolutely a collective in the group, but also a collective with all the other species in that area, and the collective with the plants and everything else. 

 

“They felt themselves to be fully immersed within it. It wasn’t a theory. They felt empathically connected to each other, and to the birds, and to the trees, the river and the clouds. That feeling that I had when I was doing the Ayahuasca, and the mushroom trip, and on occasions with the meditation, that feeling a sense of empathic connection whereby your pain is my pain, your joy is my joy.

 

“I don’t want to be excessively brutal to anything if I know I am going to feel that too. So, that sense of empathy expanding out through the group and into the environment. I feel what what was going on. And I thought, ‘well, how is that? Why are they like that?’ 

 

We came to this egalitarian state

 

“And I thought, ‘well maybe because they’re meditating every day, because hunting is a form of meditation. When you learn how to meditate you learn concentration, awareness, [to be] in your senses fully, not drifting off in your mind to other times and places. But in the here and now.”

 

For Parry, the reason the Penan in particular have such a profound connection with the world is they have not gone through the process of relying on agriculture, and therefore retain an ancient connection with nature, and with the earth. 

 

What this says to be is that the Western assumption that developed cultures are more evolved or adapted is turned on its head. The experience of living in capitalism is one of trauma and loss, alongside the technological gains.  

 

He tells me: “We are waking up now to the fact that we have been so successful at gorging ourselves in the sweetie shop that we are suffering as a result. I think that these groups probably had that a long time ago. We came from an alpha male situation at one point, there was a period where we threw that out and came into this egalitarian state.” 

 

Parry is quick to point out that he is not a Luddite, and is grateful for the advancements in technology and health – and indeed travel – that has allowed him to have such experiences. But there is more all life than all of that. “The memory of how it was and how it can be is still with a lot of these people, but I think we have lost that since agriculture. 

 

The amazing diversity of life

 

“If we can drive that technology into an overarching wisdom of seeing ourselves not above nature but within it, and respecting it and as one planet and empathic connection to all peoples, whatever different beliefs and colours, and the empathic connection to nature too and have an understanding of this as a universal belief, then this can be the most beautiful journey. 

 

The connection with the immediate, in a meditative sense, and the connection with nature results, it seems, in a greater connection with the future. The appreciation of other living things becomes the motive for living – and the basis for optimism.

 

“I know that all of us exist by taking from another,” Parry continues. “That’s the cycle of life and death on the planet, I don’t believe of transcending out of that. There is pain, and there’s misery and there is joy and love on the planet so I get it I just also would love that amazing diversity that has come about in the four billion years – it’s had its ups and downs. 

 

“This is great, and we are now the first species – or maybe – we are at the space where we can stand back and experience it and enjoy it. And how cool would it be to come back, how cool would it be to know that your kids are gonna get that same experience – that’s just amazing – that’s the drive

 

“How cool is it if we still have tigers for my grandkids. That would be amazing. And I am willing to let go of some of my luxuries and comforts and things and live in a more humble way if I think that’s going to be still possible for them. 

 

The soil that provides the fruit

 

“I talk to the Penan and I say, ‘what is your own individual desire for the future?’ They don’t want to have a cup of coffee every day if it means [destroying forest elsewhere]. That is genuinely coming from the heart. It is genuinely their greatest desire – because they do not see themselves as individuals but as a collective – that this gig goes forwards.

 

He adds: “They have so much less stress, in some ways, as a result not needing to be famous, they don’t have to be the best. They see themselves as…they know that when they get old they are going to be looked after. 

 

“They know that when they die they going to be feeding the very soil that provides the fruit, and they will be remembered because the ancestors are there amongst them and remembered and the spirits are there among them every day. 

 

“So all of the stresses that we have as we approach old age and death, they not have. They just have they are just happy for the gig to carry on without any individual desire mixed up within that.”

 

The public relations person that Bruce has hired for the film comes over and explains that we have run out of time. I start to lose the vivid imaginings of the hunter gathers of the Borneo rainforest walking through the flora and speaking to the birds above them. I hear the chatter and clatter of crockery. I am once again in Piccadilly. 

 

Ostracised out of the group

 

Bruce wants to make a final point: a deeply communal experience of life – beyond individualism, materialism, and the fight for social status – does not have be confined to the dense undergrowth of the deep forest. It is possible in modern, urban, highly populated countries also.

 

“When I start talking about egalitarian groups, [even with] people who have studied these things, the first thing they often say is, ‘Bruce, we can see why within a small group people can act in this way that you are describing because the limits on their behaviour is by being ostracised out of the group and so that’s what keeps them in the group, and the behaviour and all the rest of it. 

 

“‘But don’t forget that they still have, you can say they have no competition within the group but they have massive competition with the group next door, and they have aggression with the group next door. So this is the thing that is often levelled at this. 

 

“And I also have the same question, until I met Jerome Lewis, who is an anthropologist and studies especially egalitarian, instant return, hunter gatherer societies, of which they are only in Africa and south-east Asia. 

 

“I went with him into the Congo and we go and live with the earliest, earliest groups of this kind. And I said to him, ‘how are we going to apply this to a wider space, because of course the in-group it’s fine, but externally this is as aggressive as anywhere. 

 

Resistant and sceptical

 

“But he is like, ‘no, no, you have no idea Bruce. These people here have all come together randomly for this and will go back to different families. This is a flowing, interactive space that goes out to tens of thousands of people throughout the Congo’. And I didn’t know that.” 

 

Parry continues: “But the thing is, historically it’s only possible – and this is why it only happens in Africa and Southeast Asia where there is abundance of resources and the ability for everyone to be able to have equal access to those resources, so the the problem is if with that sort of idea of egalitarianism can spread it has to come with it also how we go about distributing. That’s our challenge. 

 

“The reasons this ended up ending is probably when we left that tropical belt and were going into more seasonal areas, and is in the seasonal spaces that you have to collect or probably slow down and its then that whoever it is who gets to choose who gets what from the horde has power, then the power came in and then started all the things we experience today.” 

 

The interview is now coming to an end, my mind is buzzing with everything I have heard in the last hour. I want to believe that human being can once again experience this almost euphoric connection with each other, with nature, with the things we find, and the things we make. 

 

But I remain resistant and sceptical. Does the fact some of this ‘oneness’ and ‘interconnectedness’ that Parry has experienced come from his dabbling in exotic drugs undermine its scientific or sociological credibility? His claim that he Kogi could know things beyond their sensuous experience is beyond what I am willing to believe. 

 

Which is the best truth for life?

 

This is where we end. This is where we must begin. It is about belief and about believing. I ask Parry if he is concerned about believing something that simply is not true. He has spoken about going mad in the South Pole, and the concerns aired by the BBC commissioners about the veracity of his claims. Yet, what he has to say is utterly seductive: a human species no longer traumatised and at war, but instead blissed out on life, and at peace.

 

I say, ‘the rational, Cartesian belief that birds are little more than automatons has led to the slaughter and suffering of factory farming, while the beliefs of the Penan that we are all interconnected with all life, including the birds they eat, has led to sustainable living.’  

 

“Thank you,” Parry responds. “Thank you. The way I came to it, with me, was I said, ‘well, okay Bruce, you have got choices here – what’s the best for this thing that you believe in, which is having a future for your children and their children. Which is the best way, which is the best truth for that’. 

 

“We have all these different belief systems in the world, most of them created since agriculture, most of them have humans at the centre, even if they have had all these amazing of ways of connecting to something beyond we still focus it back on the human.

 

“Let’s have something universal. Whether we create it ourselves, it doesn’t really matter. What is the best  belief system for us getting through this shit together? Let’s enjoy it. It will be fun. Like, this is such a beautiful possible future.”

 

I’ve come back home…

 

We stand and I collect my things and slip the recorder into my pocket. I share how incredibly exciting it has been to experience this whistle stop tour of the world, and how it has reawakened my own desire to travel. Parry explains that it might finally be time for him to settle down.

 

I’m looking to be in community, and slow down and stop travelling and all the rest of it. That’s kind of where I’m at. I think I need to, I said earlier that my lifestyle is going in one direction and my understanding is going in another direction. It’s time for me to consolidate. So that’s why I’ve come back to the UK.” He smiles. “I’m here to start an egalitarian hunter gathering society.” We hug and say goodbye.

 

I’m standing by the kerbside, watching the black taxies and the red busses, the traffic lights and the  lights of Piccadilly circus. The fumes tingle in my nose. People brush past me to cross the road. I have that feeling of the traveller returned. I am yet to acclimatise to the familiar. I wonder about the potential for connectedness. The potential loss of these tribes, and with them an important part of our shared species memory, and sensuousness of being, and the dreams for the future.

 

How can this be made real for people who just need to get through the day to day. I search the route home on Google Maps, check my email, see what’s happening on Twitter, play music through my headphones. I come back down to earth.

 

A vegan diet can have a huge environmental impact

The Vegan Society’s biggest campaign to encourage more people to eat a plant-based diet is launched today. Half a million people in the UK are already following a vegan lifestyle, According to figures from the charity. 

This is “a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.”

The campaign Plate up for the Planet, is focusing on a planet-saving challenge to encourage participants to go vegan for seven days.

By signing up to the challenge would-be vegans are sent recipe ideas and will receive information on the greenhouse gas savings being made, compared to that of an omnivorous diet.

A fast moving trend for moving towards a vegan diet

Vegans exclude all animal products from both their diet and their fashion choices, so leather and fur are off-limits, as is eating eggs, honey, cheese and other dairy products.

There is a fast moving trend for moving towards a vegan diet and the Society is hoping its campaign will convert many more to this way of life. In the last decade the number of vegans has risen by 260 percent and continues to rise steadily.

Going vegan is believed to reduce an individual’s food-related carbon impact by around 50 percent.

The meat and dairy industry produces methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide – all gases that contribute heavily to climate change and there is also the strong argument for veganism which draws on the fact that to keep animals for food the industry drains precious resources such as water, and uses feed that could otherwise be fed to humans. For every 100 calories fed to animals, only 12 calories are given back by consuming flesh and milk.

Becoming a vegan is a lifestyle choice, and is by no means an easy one. Sometimes vegans have to decide between the lesser of two evils – for example egg-based vaccinations, or medical treatments which contain animal derivatives.

A vegan by its definition has to try to the best of their ability to follow an ethical way of life, where is “practicable”. It is not, of course always practicable to do so, especially where medical intervention may be necessary for human health.

Spokesperson for the Vegan Society Dominika Piasecka said: “We know that dropping meat, eggs and dairy from your diet can have a huge environmental benefit.

Removing one item at a time

But we also know that many people who consider themselves environmentally aware or even activists haven’t made the link between the campaigns they are passionate about and their diet.

“How many of your readers know that a vegan diet can cut your emissions by 55 percent? That’s where ‘Plate up for the Planet’ comes in.”

For a vegetarian the step towards becoming a vegan is not such a big one – but for meat eaters the challenge is far harder. The Vegan Society advocates taking small steps to begin with and to go slow.

Removing one item at a time from your diet is easier than cutting out all meat and dairy in one go. It could be that you just start changing one meal a day to begin with.

If you’re inspired to start a journey towards a vegan way of life, you can sign up to the Plate up for the Planet initiative on The Vegan Society’s website and register your email address to receive daily recipes and advice.

This Author

Laura Briggs is a regular contributor to the Ecologist. Follow here here: @WordsbyBriggs.

 

 

Adventurer Bruce Parry went in search of fame and fortune – but discovered something more valuable

Bruce Parry is the stuff of mythology. He is an anachronism, both as colonial style explorer of the ancient and as a harbinger of a profound truth that indicates a possible future so much more fulfilling and vital than our present. The former British army marine is the traveller returned. He went in search of fame, fortune and to prove himself a man.

 

Yet, in the act of achieving these very things has discovered an insight which is both opposite and more important than what he sought. An insight that he believes can bring happiness not just for him, but for you, for us – perhaps for everyone.

 

This all seems rather fantastical. So much so, in fact, that as the time passes since our interview in the cafe of the art deco styled Picturehouse Central cinema in London’s Piccadilly I start to question my own memory of what was said, my own excitement at what I was told, and my own belief in the insight he had to share.

 

Bruce Parry served in Iraq with the Royal Marines, led science exhibitions in South East Asia, and then became an award winning BBC presenter with ahas since presented a series of BBC programmes documenting his experience of living with some of the world’s oldest, most remote hunter gather tribes.

 

A remarkable vision of human societies

 

The call to adventure was initially a burning desire to prove himself, and then to satisfy an ever increasing desire for stimulation and excitement. He climbed mountains no British person had ever climbed, trekked to the South Pole, and lived with tribes people in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. He was richly rewarded for his pains.

 

But his experiences with the tribes living as part of nature, such as the Penan of Sarawak rainforests in Borneo, has given him a unique standpoint, and – he has come to believe – a vital insight that could provide a solution to the existential problems of our time, from personal anxiety to the threat of calamitous climate change.

 

I spoke with Bruce Parry for just over an hour, but in that time he set out a remarkable vision of human societies that once enjoyed an almost euphoric existence, how some still do, and how we could possibly regain this again for our own future.

 

His claims are so radical, so profound, and so challenging to conventional wisdom that they have been dismissed as merely the product of his exotic drug taking experiences. The BBC declined to set out his theses for human fulfilment, and now he is currently promoting his own independent film, titled TAWAI – A voice from the forest

 

Bruce Parry is the traveller returned. He sits in a black jumper and jeans, confident and relaxed. His tanned skin evidences his years spent overseas. We shake hands, and I set the Dictaphone rolling. 

 

Some of what he tells me next, I simply cannot believe. But what I do believe is that he really has identified the secret to happiness, both for the individual and for society as a whole.

 

Pop music was not deemed as acceptable

 

Parry was born in Hythe, Hampshire, in 1969, and his father was Major in the Royal Artillery. “I grew up very institutionalised,” he tells me. “English public school, military family, very Christian. Pop music was not deemed as acceptable. I don’t necessarily want to be down on my family, because I love my family very much.

 

“I had been totally against all types of drugs. My mum told me she would disown me if I ever took drugs. And, really, if I had seen someone smoking a spliff I would have called the police. I was very focused on work and anything that took away from that was not cool.”

 

After school Parry attended the Royal Marines Commando Training Centre. “I kind of ran away,” he explains. “I didn’t go to university – I joined the Marines. [That] was an extension and extenuation of home. And that became my new family, if you will. I took on board all their codes and practices.” 

 

His father had not expected him to join the military, so what was it that drove him forward? “I had this yearning, this angst to go and physically push myself to the limit. And so, I wanted to prove myself to the world: that I was a person, a human, a man. So that was the driving force.” 

 

Parry was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant aged 18, and five years later became Head of Fitness and Training. “There is a huge emphasis on us being amazing, and the best, and that we can do anything. There is a lot, in marine officer training, there is a lot of reinforcing of you being superhuman.”

 

I was still very much the military type

 

The culture of supremacy of the individual, and as Britain as a nation is – Parry argues – necessary for combat. But it comes at a considerable price, if not for the soldier then for all those who are deemed less than human. 

 

“In the military we have opinions of sectors of society that are not our own, behind closed doors there is quite a lot of vocalising about other sectors of society.” I take this as code for racism, and likely also homophobia. But Parry is careful not to denigrate his former comrades. 

 

At the same time, Parry once again felt a call to adventure. A need to do something other than the expected and the obvious. After six years as lieutenant he left the military. “Some people then carry on in that world, and hence going into the City and they can carry on being like that. But I went a different route”.

 

He took a job as an exhibition leader at Trekforce, and then led more than 15 expeditions in some of the most extreme and challenging terrains on earth.

 

“I led these civilian science and conservation expeditions in Asia for about five or six years. I was still very much the military type,” he says. “I was learning about conservation, and learning about the environment from leading these science and conservation trips. 

 

A broader, international understanding of the world

 

“I worked with tigers, orangutan, turtle, rhino out in Asia on all these different islands, mostly in Indonesia. I guess my motivation at that time was variety and enjoying this wonderfully, extraordinary life of variety and excitement and stimulation.”

 

The post military life brought Parry into close contact with nature, and also with people from vastly different cultures and backgrounds. But there was one person, a young woman with whom he fell in love, that would change his life fundamentally, and for ever.

 

“I was very lucky to have a number of girlfriends who allowed me to reflect on my life,” he explains. “They were more normal. Like, ‘Bruce, why are you stood to attention in front of the television?’ The national anthem is on. ‘Get back into bed!’ It was that bad.

 

“I had a girlfriend who I was very in love with. I was in my mid-twenties. She grew up in other countries, she was half Italian, half Irish and she grew up in the Philippines. So she had a much broader, international understanding of the world.’

 

Then, one evening, she suggested to Parry that he try an experience that he had always assumed he would never try. “She was like, ‘you would like this’, and somehow…I guess love.  She didn’t push me or persuade me too strongly. But I ended up taking a massive overdose of magic mushrooms. And then basically my Christianity was over in that moment – it was like that. 

 

I wanted to go to places no-one had been too

 

“I was completely confident that I was who I was. And then this thing totally turned me upside down. I realised, none of that is the case and there is something very different going on here.” 

 

Parry recovered from the experience. But it had changed the course of his life. “I came back to the UK. All my friends from the Marines had gone into the City and were in this bastion of hierarchical dominant society, and I having had this experience with this girl have come back and then going to festivals and was living a very different kind of life.”

 

At this time Parry was still very much focussed on adventure, on proving himself. The desire to be above all others, to increase his stature went from the metaphorical to the literal, when he journeyed to Puncak Mandala, the second highest mountain in Australasia.

 

“I went off at the Millennium to climb this mountain that I had seen on a map on the island of New Guinea in the middle of nowhere and thought, ‘I don’t think anyone has ever been there, so I would love to go there’.

 

“We got sponsored by Ginger Television who gave us some cash and off we went. But the trip at its heart was to go to places that no one had been to, to meet people that no one has met. It was still very much the individual: look at me! Look at what I can do!”

 

I started living with tribes

 

The show – Cannibals and Crampons – aired as part of the BBC1 series Extreme Lives in 2002 and launched Parry as a TV adventure presenter. “I got the gig at the BBC. And then I start living with tribes. I had lived with these indigenous people doing the exhibitions over the years, and met these tribal people on the film I had just made when we climbed the mountain. And then I had this realisation.”

 

Parry believes that the experience of taking magic mushrooms, of opening up a space for a more spiritual understanding of the world, proved useful when making the television programmes, and in relating to people who lived such different lives.

 

“Having come from this place, having had my worldview turned upside down on a number of occasions, I realised I had better not start jumping up and down saying, ‘I know what’s going on here’ because I clearly don’t. 

 

“So that ended up being part of the success of the series – my sort of tolerance of what was going on, and my willingness to listen and understand and just be there and not judge. So that was a really beautiful thing.” 

 

He added: “The more times you look at the world through another person’s set of eyes you have more opportunity to reflect on yourself and your own circumstances and your own society.

 

Your perceptions are going to shift

 

“You start see their world, the difficulties they are facing as a result of external pressures, and then you see those external pressures are coming from that the way you live your life. So in time, if you are in any way listening, or aware, or empathic, it’s a no-brainer that your perceptions are going to shift so that slowly grew for us.”

 

Parry for the second series of Tribe lived with communities in Ethiopia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Mongolia and Venezuela. The second series brought him to Bhutan, Brazil, Malaysia, Polynesia, Siberia and Tanzania.

 

Parry won the Best Presenter award for Tribe at the Royal Television Society Awards in 2007 and emboldened by the success decided to produce something more hard hitting. The documentary Amazon took on the serious problems facing indigenous people, such as the production of cocaine, oil, wood, and meat – very often for Western markets. 

 

“I did a series down the Amazon where we went and basically looked at globalisation, because we could see the tribal people were suffering, often as a result of external forces – what were these external sources,” he tells me.

 

“I did meet the loggers and I did meet the miners and they’re great, and I don’t have any issue with them – more of an issue with us buying the gold and the wood. The coltan in our phones, all of these things. So the curtain has definitely been ripped back for me looking at our behaviour in the world – and yet, a deeper, wider understanding also comes.”

 

I did the jungle medicines

 

I ask him what it feels like to value the culture and philosophy of indigenous people so highly – he is a supporter of Survival International – and see their existence under threat. “It feels very painful, when I really do sit with it. In my day to day life I don’t really sit with it enough, but when I do I feel very close to tears – not least because I know people who are suffering as a result.”

 

Integral to Parry’s learning and experience of indigenous peoples is his willingness to engage in their practices, including the use of powerful drugs. He believes this drug use has given him new insights, but this view was rarely shared by his colleagues at the BBC.

 

“During my time with these [Amazonian] tribes I had these experiences, I had a moment of relief from my usual perspective. It reminded me of the early mushroom trip. I did these jungle medicines. Iboga, Ayahuasca, Yopo. And I met the Shaman. 

 

“Not only was I living with these indigenous groups, but I was also seeing the world a little bit through their eyes and then having experiences, on occasion, that were really doing something to me on the inside.”

 

Parry is the archetypal explorer, deep in the forest. He is in direct contact with nature, away from the trappings of ‘civilisation’, and capitalism. But the success of the television programme means he is at the same time being richly rewarded, in the only way capitalism understands.

 

My life became so fast, so accelerated

 

He explains. “Money starts coming towards me, and attention starts coming towards me, and having public attention too. So, my life goes off on a very fast and weird trajectory which was impossible to prepare for and very hard to understand from the outside. It’s a very interesting and complex experience.” 

 

He adds: “The hardest thing is you walk with this sort of perfect veneer around you … people just think you’re amazing. My life just became so fast, so accelerated. I moved to Ibiza. I would come back and I am being introduced to 20 people a day.

 

“There’s this team, this mountain of people, taking me to these places, organising everything for me, … every day there is a new stimulation, every day there is new excitement and everyday a new horizon and new group of people, then back home so there’s extraordinarily rapid road to stimulation overload.

 

“My life and my understanding are going in two very different directions. I am understanding about community and simplicity. But then my life is about rapid-fire celebrity and money and all that.”

 

If dealing with the contrast between deep forest and Ibiza beach life was not enough, Parry then decided to take himself off to the South Pole, to film Blizzard – Race to the Poll. “I pretended to be Captain Scott and I went across Greenland for three months with a team of dogs and a team of people. Greenland is flat for 3,000 miles as far as the eye can see in every direction.”

 

The sense of empathic connection

 

He explains: “You get out of your tent and every day it’s just flat white – no trees, no foliage, no birds – no stimulation at all. You can’t even talk to your friend because the wind is blowing and you have to cover your face. You’re in your head, all day.

 

“I went fucking insane. I really felt like my life is trickling through my fingers. Time has slowed down to zero. The sun never went down because it’s just around our heads. It was a sense of timelessness drifting into oblivion. I went mad.”

 

Parry at this time decided to take some much needed time out. The rest allowed him to process and try and come to terms with some of the intense experiences he had lived through. It was then that he began to think that the tribes had lessons to share that really were of epochal importance. This came from a “sense of expansion, the sense of empathic connection”.

 

The people around him remained sceptical, often putting it down to the drugs he had taken. So rather than resting, he began researching. He turned to the academic community to try and understand and give context to what he had experienced.  

 

“I saw this lecture, a TedTalk by a lady called Jill Bolte Taylor who has this brain trauma on the left hand side of her brain, called, ‘My Stroke of Insight’,” he tells me.

 

My addiction to stimulation

 

“It’s about a left and right hemisphere; how the language centre gets shut down, and how she then feels; she looks at her hand and can’t see any difference between the molecules of her own hand and the rest of the world around her; and this sense of expansion. ‘Oh My God, that’s the experience that I’ve been having doing these things – and here is how this scientist talking about it, that’s amazing’.”

 

He also turned to more traditional routes to understanding, at the behest of his increasingly concerned friends. “Because my addiction to simulation was getting so excessive, I had a dear friend who basically almost handcuffed me and took me to a meditation retreat and said, ‘you just have to have this’. And it totally changed my life. It absolutely did.” 

 

During the period of reflection, he keeps remembering the Penan, the last indigenous group he had been living with during the filming of Tribe. “I just remembering there was something so, so unique about them – and it wasn’t just that they were the only nomadic hunter gatherers, because I got that, there was a rational explanation for that.

 

“I did more research into these groups, and met the anthropologists that know about these particular groups. And then I was like, ‘okay yes, something emerging here that I need to make a film about that’.” 

 

The teachings of the Penan. The feeling of empathy from taking Ayahuasca. The expansive experience of the neuroscientist. Parry felt that he was arriving at a deeper truth, and decided he simply must make a film about it. His mission changed from one of proving himself to the world, instead he wanted to prove he had discovered something of real importance. 

 

“I had a theory. I realised it was backed up by now because I had done my research. And also it relates to all of us. It relates to our history. And our future,” he explains. 

 

“I find it to be incredibly compelling and it certainly helped me in my life and I feel in the space we are now in this world where we are looking for answers and we realise there is stuff going on, I feel this is a piece of the jigsaw that’s absolutely essential.“

 

Tomorrow: Bruce Parry talks exclusively about the valuable insight he gained from the Penan tribe which may provide an answer to the individual anxiety, the social uncertainty and environmental catastrophe of our times.

 

This Author: 

 

Brendan Montague is the contributing editor to the The Ecologist, and a regular contributor to opeDemocracy. He can be reached at brendan@theecologist.org and on Twitter, @EcoMontague.

 

One-Third of British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Wells Are Leaking Significant Levels of Methane

About 35 per cent of British Columbia’s 11,000 active oil wells, abandoned wells and water injection wells in the northeastern part of the province are leaking significant amounts of methane, according to a forthcoming new study.

The report will be released later in the summer and submitted to the industry-funded British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission.

Researchers with the David Suzuki Foundation measured leaks from abandoned, suspended, shut-in and active oil wells in the Montney shale gas play near Fort St. John.

According to John Werring, senior science and policy advisor to the Foundation, the study found that the average rate of flow of methane gas from surface casing vents from oil wells was conservatively estimated to be between nine and 11 cubic metres per day. That amounts to 14.2 million cubic metres, or 10,617 metric tonnes of methane a year from roughly 11,079 active oil wells, alongside abandoned, suspended and water disposal wells in B.C., said Werring.

Surface casing vent flow, or leaks at the wellhead, often signal failed well integrity. Cement seals erode and crumble as they age, creating pathways for methane to migrate to the surface.

“Methane leaks from abandoned wells are a huge problem and issue in this province,” said Werring. “As Alberta goes, so too does B.C.”

Both provinces have similar legislation that gives industry an indefinite time period to clean up inactive wells. Neither province has required industry to set aside even a fraction of the funds necessary to cover the cost of fixing these environmental liabilities.

The new study follows research with a mobile sensor mounted on a vehicle that detected large amounts of methane emanating from oil and gas wells in northeastern B.C.

That peer-reviewed study found that methane emissions from B.C.’s shale gas basins are now at least 2.5 times higher than provincial government estimates. That makes the oil and gas sector the largest source of climate pollution in B.C., a greater source of pollution than commercial transportation.

“The field study told us methane was floating around the region, but we didn’t know if it was coming from venting from pneumatic devices or leaks from the wellhead,” explained Werring.

Last August, Werring used a Flir infrared camera to identify the source of methane leaks at well sites. Where possible he put a balloon over the leak, and then measured the length and width of the balloon to calculate the volume of methane being leaked over time.

With a Flir camera, “The vapour coming off the sites looks like smoke,” Werring said.

Of 178 wells that Werring examined, 62 were abandoned or suspended wells. Twenty-nine per cent of these wells were leaking methane.

Werring also took images and methane samples from 25 producing oil wells and found that seven were leakers, or 28 per cent. In addition, more than half of all water injection wells were leaking methane, too.

The new study also found that 86 per cent of pneumatic devices, which help to control the flow of gas, at the provinces 12,000 gas well sites were venting methane into the atmosphere.

“The number one reason the industry is not dealing with the problem is the cost. It has nothing to do with the technology,” said Werring.

In jurisdictions such as B.C. and Alberta where the oil and gas industry is not required to post reclamation and clean up bonds, there is no incentive for industry to address these environmental liabilities.

“The problem is getting worse as the wells age, and the clean up of these wells shouldn’t be put on the back of taxpayers,” Werring said.

Out of 25,000 wells drilled in B.C in the last 100 years, nearly 7,000 have been abandoned and nearly 3,000 are inactive and await proper cement plugging and reclamation

This Author

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee

*This article is shared with the Ecologist by www.TheTyee.ca

 

   

 

 

 

One-Third of British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Wells Are Leaking Significant Levels of Methane

About 35 per cent of British Columbia’s 11,000 active oil wells, abandoned wells and water injection wells in the northeastern part of the province are leaking significant amounts of methane, according to a forthcoming new study.

The report will be released later in the summer and submitted to the industry-funded British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission.

Researchers with the David Suzuki Foundation measured leaks from abandoned, suspended, shut-in and active oil wells in the Montney shale gas play near Fort St. John.

According to John Werring, senior science and policy advisor to the Foundation, the study found that the average rate of flow of methane gas from surface casing vents from oil wells was conservatively estimated to be between nine and 11 cubic metres per day. That amounts to 14.2 million cubic metres, or 10,617 metric tonnes of methane a year from roughly 11,079 active oil wells, alongside abandoned, suspended and water disposal wells in B.C., said Werring.

Surface casing vent flow, or leaks at the wellhead, often signal failed well integrity. Cement seals erode and crumble as they age, creating pathways for methane to migrate to the surface.

“Methane leaks from abandoned wells are a huge problem and issue in this province,” said Werring. “As Alberta goes, so too does B.C.”

Both provinces have similar legislation that gives industry an indefinite time period to clean up inactive wells. Neither province has required industry to set aside even a fraction of the funds necessary to cover the cost of fixing these environmental liabilities.

The new study follows research with a mobile sensor mounted on a vehicle that detected large amounts of methane emanating from oil and gas wells in northeastern B.C.

That peer-reviewed study found that methane emissions from B.C.’s shale gas basins are now at least 2.5 times higher than provincial government estimates. That makes the oil and gas sector the largest source of climate pollution in B.C., a greater source of pollution than commercial transportation.

“The field study told us methane was floating around the region, but we didn’t know if it was coming from venting from pneumatic devices or leaks from the wellhead,” explained Werring.

Last August, Werring used a Flir infrared camera to identify the source of methane leaks at well sites. Where possible he put a balloon over the leak, and then measured the length and width of the balloon to calculate the volume of methane being leaked over time.

With a Flir camera, “The vapour coming off the sites looks like smoke,” Werring said.

Of 178 wells that Werring examined, 62 were abandoned or suspended wells. Twenty-nine per cent of these wells were leaking methane.

Werring also took images and methane samples from 25 producing oil wells and found that seven were leakers, or 28 per cent. In addition, more than half of all water injection wells were leaking methane, too.

The new study also found that 86 per cent of pneumatic devices, which help to control the flow of gas, at the provinces 12,000 gas well sites were venting methane into the atmosphere.

“The number one reason the industry is not dealing with the problem is the cost. It has nothing to do with the technology,” said Werring.

In jurisdictions such as B.C. and Alberta where the oil and gas industry is not required to post reclamation and clean up bonds, there is no incentive for industry to address these environmental liabilities.

“The problem is getting worse as the wells age, and the clean up of these wells shouldn’t be put on the back of taxpayers,” Werring said.

Out of 25,000 wells drilled in B.C in the last 100 years, nearly 7,000 have been abandoned and nearly 3,000 are inactive and await proper cement plugging and reclamation

This Author

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee

*This article is shared with the Ecologist by www.TheTyee.ca

 

   

 

 

 

One-Third of British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Wells Are Leaking Significant Levels of Methane

About 35 per cent of British Columbia’s 11,000 active oil wells, abandoned wells and water injection wells in the northeastern part of the province are leaking significant amounts of methane, according to a forthcoming new study.

The report will be released later in the summer and submitted to the industry-funded British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission.

Researchers with the David Suzuki Foundation measured leaks from abandoned, suspended, shut-in and active oil wells in the Montney shale gas play near Fort St. John.

According to John Werring, senior science and policy advisor to the Foundation, the study found that the average rate of flow of methane gas from surface casing vents from oil wells was conservatively estimated to be between nine and 11 cubic metres per day. That amounts to 14.2 million cubic metres, or 10,617 metric tonnes of methane a year from roughly 11,079 active oil wells, alongside abandoned, suspended and water disposal wells in B.C., said Werring.

Surface casing vent flow, or leaks at the wellhead, often signal failed well integrity. Cement seals erode and crumble as they age, creating pathways for methane to migrate to the surface.

“Methane leaks from abandoned wells are a huge problem and issue in this province,” said Werring. “As Alberta goes, so too does B.C.”

Both provinces have similar legislation that gives industry an indefinite time period to clean up inactive wells. Neither province has required industry to set aside even a fraction of the funds necessary to cover the cost of fixing these environmental liabilities.

The new study follows research with a mobile sensor mounted on a vehicle that detected large amounts of methane emanating from oil and gas wells in northeastern B.C.

That peer-reviewed study found that methane emissions from B.C.’s shale gas basins are now at least 2.5 times higher than provincial government estimates. That makes the oil and gas sector the largest source of climate pollution in B.C., a greater source of pollution than commercial transportation.

“The field study told us methane was floating around the region, but we didn’t know if it was coming from venting from pneumatic devices or leaks from the wellhead,” explained Werring.

Last August, Werring used a Flir infrared camera to identify the source of methane leaks at well sites. Where possible he put a balloon over the leak, and then measured the length and width of the balloon to calculate the volume of methane being leaked over time.

With a Flir camera, “The vapour coming off the sites looks like smoke,” Werring said.

Of 178 wells that Werring examined, 62 were abandoned or suspended wells. Twenty-nine per cent of these wells were leaking methane.

Werring also took images and methane samples from 25 producing oil wells and found that seven were leakers, or 28 per cent. In addition, more than half of all water injection wells were leaking methane, too.

The new study also found that 86 per cent of pneumatic devices, which help to control the flow of gas, at the provinces 12,000 gas well sites were venting methane into the atmosphere.

“The number one reason the industry is not dealing with the problem is the cost. It has nothing to do with the technology,” said Werring.

In jurisdictions such as B.C. and Alberta where the oil and gas industry is not required to post reclamation and clean up bonds, there is no incentive for industry to address these environmental liabilities.

“The problem is getting worse as the wells age, and the clean up of these wells shouldn’t be put on the back of taxpayers,” Werring said.

Out of 25,000 wells drilled in B.C in the last 100 years, nearly 7,000 have been abandoned and nearly 3,000 are inactive and await proper cement plugging and reclamation

This Author

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee

*This article is shared with the Ecologist by www.TheTyee.ca