British scientists have worked out how to make sure of a better-than-even chance that 195 nations can fulfill a promise made in Paris in 2015 to stop global warming at 1.5°C by the end of the century.

The answer is simple: phase out fossil fuel hardware as soon as it reaches the end of its effective life. Scrap the old petrol-powered car and buy electric.

Shut down the coal-burning power generator and get electricity from the wind or the sunlight. Find some renewable fuel for jet planes. Deliver transoceanic cargoes with a marine fuel that isn’t derived from oil or coal.

Lifecycle

There is a catch. Those 195 nations should have already started doing all these things by the end of last year, 2018. To delay a start until 2030 could mean failure, even if – little more than a decade from now – the world then accelerated its escape from fossil fuel addiction.

“Although the challenges laid out by the Paris Agreement are daunting, we indicate 1.5°C remains possible and is attainable with ambitious and immediate emission reduction across all sectors”, the researchers say in the journal Nature Communications.

Their study is based on the match of climate models and a range of possible scenarios and is focused on energy generation, transport and industry: these account for 85 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that have begun to warm the planet and change the climate, and for which researchers have the most reliable lifetime data.

Christopher Smith, of the University of Leeds, worked with colleagues from Britain, Norway, Austria, Switzerland and Canada to model a huge range of possibilities to identify a timetable strategy with a probability of success of 64 percent.

He said: “All fossil fuel infrastructure, such as coal power plants, carries a climate change commitment. A new coal plant will emit carbon dioxide for roughly 40 years across its lifecycle which in turn affects global warming.  

Infrastructure

“Investments into carbon-intensive infrastructure and their development and maintenance lock us in to the associated carbon emissions and make the transition to lower-carbon alternatives more difficult.

“Our research found that the current amount of fossil fuel infrastructure in the global economy does not yet commit us to exceeding the 1.5°C temperature rise limit put forward by the Paris Agreement.

“Climate change policy does need some good news, and [the] message is that we are not (quite) doomed yet”

“We may have missed starting the phase-out by the end of 2018, but we are still within the margin of achieving the scenario the model put forward.”

The implication is that no new oil wells should be drilled, or mines opened; no more coal-burning or oil-burning power plant commissioned. Infrastructure in use now will be retired when it reaches the end of its life, perhaps 40 years from now.

Human history

The scientists don’t discuss how feasible – in political, economic and development terms – such a step will be. Their point is that, to keep the Paris promise, the world must start now.

And their assumption does not incorporate any of the much-feared and potentially catastrophic changes in the near future, as ice caps melt and permafrost thaws to release vast quantities of carbon trapped in once-frozen Arctic soils, and make global warming accelerate.

The study is not the first to warn that the time available for ending fossil fuel dependence and switching to renewable energy resources is limited.

Almost as soon as the world made its historic agreement in Paris many scientists warned that on the basis of pledges made at the time the target would be difficult or impossible to achieve.

The planet has already warmed by 1°C since the Industrial Revolution began to release ever greater levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. One study forecast that a world already at least 1.5°C warmer than it had been for most of human history could arrive by 2026.

Other scientists have welcomed the Leeds research. “Climate change policy does need some good news, and their message is that we are not (quite) doomed yet,” said Phillip Williamson of the University of East Anglia.

“If from now on the greenhouse gas-emitting power plants, factories, cars, ships and planes are replaced by non-polluting alternatives as they reach the end of their lifetimes, then the threshold of 1.5°C warming might not be crossed. Yet that is a very big ‘if’.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

The nuclear energy industry faces severe problems in 2019 – and beyond. Chief among them is the ageing of the global reactor fleet.

The average age of the fleet reached 30 years in mid-2018 and continues to rise. The average lifespan of the current reactor fleet will be about 40 years, according to reasonable estimates.

There will likely be an average of 8‒11 permanent reactor shutdowns annually over the next few decades. This will add up to about 200 reactor shutdowns between 2014 and 2040.

Shutdowns

Indeed, the International Energy Agency expects a “wave of retirements of ageing nuclear reactors” and an “unprecedented rate of decommissioning”.  

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) anticipates 320 gigawatts (GW) of retirements from 2017 to 2050 (that’s about 80 percent of the current worldwide reactor fleet).

Another IAEA report estimates up to 139 GW of permanent shutdowns from 2018‒2030 and up to 186 GW of further shutdowns from 2030-2050.

The reference scenario in the 2017 edition of the WNA’s Nuclear Fuel Report has 140 reactors closing by 2035. 

A 2017 Nuclear Energy Insider article estimates up to 200 permanent shutdowns over the next two decades.

Construction starts

So an average of 8‒11 construction starts and grid connections will be required to maintain current nuclear output. Yet construction starts have averaged just 4.5 over the past five years.

The World Nuclear Association (WNA) claimed that 2018 was a “positive year for nuclear power“. And indeed it was ‒ compared to 2017. That was one of the industry’s worst-ever years.

The WNA cited nuclear power’s net gain in 2018 (nine reactor grid connections compared to six permanent shutdowns). A superficial look at the numbers suggests some more good news for the industry.

The number of reactor grid connections (or start-ups) over the past five years (38) almost doubled the number in the five years before that (21). If the number was to double again, the much-hyped nuclear renaissance would be upon us.

A casual observer might also be impressed by the fact that over the past decade the number of reactor grid connections (59) and construction starts (71) exceeded the number of permanent reactor shutdowns (50).

Nuclear decommissioning

According to the WNA, 41 reactors will enter commercial operation in the four years from 2019‒22. Then the pre-Fukushima mini-renaissance (38 construction starts from 2008‒2010) slows dramatically with an estimated total of just nine reactor start-ups in the following four years.

Ominously for the industry, the 22 construction starts from 2014‒18 was less than half the number (49) from 2009‒13.

The (independent) World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) noted in early January that 49 reactors are under construction worldwide ‒ the first time the number has fallen below 50 in a decade, down 19 since 2013, and the number has decreased for five years in a row.

If all these contradictory good-news, bad-news figures seem a little … contradictory, that’s because nuclear power currently reflects two opposing dynamics: the mini-renaissance is evident but will subside by the mid-2020s, and the era of nuclear decommissioning (discussed later) has begun and will be in sharp focus by the mid-2020s.

Grim prospects

For the first time in many years, perhaps ever, the IAEA was up-front about the grim prospects for nuclear power in a September 2018 report.

The IAEA said: “Nuclear power’s electricity generating capacity risks shrinking in the coming decades as ageing reactors are retired and the industry struggles with reduced competitiveness …

“Over the short term, the low price of natural gas, the impact of renewable energy sources on electricity prices, and national nuclear policies in several countries following the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 are expected to continue weighing on nuclear power’s growth prospects.”

The report added: “In addition, the nuclear power industry faces increased construction times and costs due to heightened safety requirements, challenges in deploying advanced technologies and other factors.”

The IAEA’s low and high projections for global nuclear power capacity in 2030 are both 36 percent lower than the same projections in 2010, the year before the Fukushima disaster.

Nuclear suicide

Steve Kidd, a former World Nuclear Association executive, noted in an August 2018 article: “The current upward spike in reactor commissioning certainly looks impressive (at least compared with the recent past) but there are few signs that here will be a further uplift in the 2020s.

“What we see today is largely the result of rapid growth in the Chinese industry, which has now seemingly ended. … In Asia, the sharp downturn in Chinese interest in nuclear is unlikely to be replaced by India or by a combination of the other populous counties there.

He added: “It is clear that without a strong lead from the established nuclear countries, a worldwide uplift in reactor construction is not going to happen.”

And therein lies a fundamental problem for the nuclear industry: it is in a frightful mess in the three countries that accounted for 56 percent of global nuclear power capacity just before the Fukushima disaster: the US, France and Japan.

A 2017 EnergyPostWeekly article said “the EU, the US and Japan are busy committing nuclear suicide.”

Spin

Bright New World, an Australian pro-nuclear lobby group (that accepts secret corporate donations) listed four wins in 2018.

1. Taiwanese voters voiced support for overturning legislation to eliminate nuclear power; 2. Poland announced plans for a 6‒9 GW nuclear sector; 3. China connected the world’s first AP1000 and EPR reactors to the electrical grid and 4. Some progress with Generation IV R&D projects.

Those are modest and pyrrhic wins. To take each in turn:

Taiwan’s government remains committed to phasing out nuclear power although the 2025 deadline has been abandoned following a referendum in November 2018.

Poland might join the club of countries producing nuclear power ‒ or it might not. Currently it is a member of a group of countries that failed to complete partially-built power reactors and have never generated nuclear power, along with Austria, Cuba, the Philippines, and North Korea.

Industrial processes

China’s nuclear power program has stalled ‒ the country has not opened a new construction site for a commercial reactor since December 2016. The most likely outcome over the next decade is that a small number of new reactor projects will be approved each year, well short of previous projections and not enough to match the decline in the rest of the world.

Generation IV fantasies are as fantastical as ever. David Elliot ‒ author of the 2017 book Nuclear Power: Past, Present and Future ‒ notes that many Generation IV concepts “are in fact old ideas that were looked at in the early days and mostly abandoned. There were certainly problems with some of these early experimental reactors, some of them quite dramatic.”

One example of the gap between Generation IV rhetoric and reality was Transatomic Power’s decision to give up on its molten salt reactor R&D project in the US in September 2018 ‒ just weeks before the public release of the New Fire propaganda film that heavily promotes the young entrepreneurs who founded Transatomic. The company tried but failed to raise a modest US$15 million for the next phase of its R&D project.

An article by four current and former researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in July 2018, argues that no US advanced reactor design will be commercialised before mid-century.

Further, the Carnegie authors systematically investigated how a domestic market could develop to support a small modular reactor industry in the US over the next few decades ‒ including using them to back up wind and solar, desalinate water, produce heat for industrial processes, or serve military bases ‒ and were unable to make a convincing case.

Electricity generation

Kennedy Maize, an established energy journalist, recently argued in POWER magazine that Generation IV R&D projects are “longshots”.

He wrote that “highest profile of the LWR apostates is TerraPower” which is “backed by Microsoft founder and multi-billionaire Bill Gates.”

He added: “TerraPower is working on a liquid-sodium-cooled breeder-burner machine that can run on uranium waste, while it generates power and plutonium, with the plutonium used to generate more power, all in a continuous process.”

TerraPower recently abandoned its plan for a prototype reactor in China due to new restrictions placed on nuclear trade with China by the Trump administration.

Bright New World might have cited some other pyrrhic wins in 2018. The French government abandoned previous plans to reduce nuclear power to 50 percent of total electricity generation by 2035 – but still plans to shut 14 reactors by 2035.

Dying industry

The Vogtle project in the US state of Georgia came close to being abandoned but it was rescued despite multi-year delays and monumental cost overruns (the estimate for two AP1000 reactors has doubled from US$14 billion to US$28 billion).

In many countries with nuclear power, the prospects for new reactors are dim and rear-guard battles are being fought to extend the lifespans of ageing reactors that are approaching or past their design date.

A new era is approaching ‒ the era of nuclear decommissioning ‒ following on from nuclear power’s growth spurt from the 1970s to the 1990s, then 20 years of stagnation.

The era of nuclear decommissioning will entail:

• A decline in the number of operating reactors.
• An increasingly unreliable and accident-prone reactor fleet as ageing sets in.
• Countless battles over lifespan extensions for ageing reactors.
• An internationalisation of anti-nuclear opposition as neighbouring countries object to the continued operation of ageing reactors (international opposition to Belgium’s ageing reactors is a case in point ‒ and there are numerous other examples).
• Battles over and problems with decommissioning projects (e.g. the UK government’s £100+ million settlement over a botched decommissioning tendering process).
• Battles over taxpayer bailout proposals for companies and utilities that haven’t set aside adequate funds for decommissioning and nuclear waste management and disposal. (According to Nuclear Energy Insider, European nuclear utilities face “significant and urgent challenges” with over a third of the continent’s nuclear plants to be shut down by 2025, and utilities facing a €118 billion shortfall in decommissioning and waste management funds.)
• Battles over proposals to impose nuclear waste repositories and stores on unwilling or divided communities.

The era of nuclear decommissioning will be characterised by escalating battles (and escalating sticker shock) over reactor lifespan extensions, decommissioning and nuclear waste management.

In those circumstances, it will become even more difficult than it currently is for the industry to pursue new reactor projects. A feedback loop could take hold and then the nuclear industry will be well and truly in crisis, if it isn’t already.

And if that sounds like wishful thinking from someone who opposes the industry, keep in mind that nuclear power supporters have issued any number of warnings in recent years about nuclear power’s “rapidly accelerating crisis” and a “crisis that threatens the death of nuclear energy in the West“, while pondering what if anything might be salvaged from the “ashes of today’s dying industry”.

This Author

Dr Jim Green is the editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter and the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia.

The decision by Japanese firm Hitachi this month to postpone the Wyfla nuclear power station development in Anglesey, as well as its Oldbury project near Bristol, leaves a substantial gap in future low carbon electricity supply for the UK.

Work has started on Hinkley Point in Somerset, but this is the only one of the six major nuclear projects in the pipeline to progress. Last year Toshiba, another Japanese company, pulled out of developing a power plant at Moorside in Cumbria.

The proposed developments by Chinese firm CGN at Sizewell (Suffolk) and Bradwell (Essex) are politically contentious and yet to be agreed.

More renewables

In 2008, the Labour government set out its strategic vision for a future UK low carbon power sector, which had nuclear at its centre. But in the 20 years since, the economics of nuclear have deteriorated, while the remarkable drop in the cost of renewables and flexible energy sources is threatening the profitability of large, inflexible power stations.

There are currently four high-voltage electricity interconnectors that connect Britain to the Netherlands (BritNed), France (IFA), and the island of Ireland (Moyle and EWIC). A fifth connection, running to Belgium (Nemo), is due to go live at the end of January.

At least another eight are planned to be developed by the late 2020s, nearly trebling the supply capacity that currently exists.

Interconnectors are important for energy and climate change for several reasons. They help decarbonise UK electricity consumption by importing lower carbon power from countries such as France which has lots of nuclear power, and – in future – Norway and Iceland which generate electricity from hydro and geothermal.

They also contribute to decarbonisation by helping to match supply and demand, which in turn allows more renewables and electric vehicles.

Negative consequences

Excess electricity can then be exported during periods of low demand or imported when demand is high – something that helps with security of electricity supply, as imports can complement domestic power generation.

Interconnectors also help reduce electricity prices. The UK has higher wholesale power prices than other EU countries, meaning electricity typically flows to the UK from markets where power is less expensive. Buying this cheaper electricity lowers prices here, which reduces consumer bills.

Even though the current and previous governments have actively encouraged the building of interconnectors, the UK leaving the EU threatens their development and operation.

After Brexit the UK is expected to leave the EU’s internal energy market, as well as key EU market arrangements and trading platforms. These allow electricity trade to happen in the most efficient and cost-effective way and losing access to them could lead to higher bills for consumers.

This would also reduce the system benefits of developing interconnectors as they cannot work at their most effective, which in turn would have negative consequences for future development of renewables. But irrespective of the outcome of Brexit, the UK should build more interconnection as it is a ‘no-regrets’ option for the UK.

Decarbonisation

Even after leaving the EU, they can still needed to help with the transition to a low carbon energy system, the least-cost pathway to decarbonisation, and fill the capacity gap from the postponed nuclear plants.

The UK and EU will need to continue cooperating on climate change and energy issues post Brexit, because the connected physical space between them means that choices made by one will impact the other.

As the Brexit negotiations move towards discussions on the future relationship, the UK should prioritise interconnectors in discussion on future cooperation and commit to cross-border initiatives in energy markets around the North Sea region.

The rationale to build interconnectors and their contribution to energy and tackling climate change has long been recognised, but there is now an even greater need to construct them.

Despite Brexit, the UK government needs to bolster its support for new interconnectors and maintain high levels of cooperation with the EU and regional partners to ensure they get built and the UK stays on the path to decarbonisation.

This Author

Joseph Dutton is a policy adviser for the global climate change think-tank E3G. All views are his own. He tweets at @JDuttonUK.

Weak enforcement of environmental law is a trend that is exacerbating environmental threats worldwide, according to a major new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The report presents the first ever global assessment of environmental laws. It found that the number of environmental laws created has grown 38-fold since 1972, including the adoption of a constitutional right to a healthy environment in 88 countries, and the creation of over 350 environmental courts and tribunals in over 50 countries.

However, while international aid helped scores of countries to enter into more than 1,100 environmental agreements since 1972, and develop many environmental framework laws, neither aid, nor domestic budgeting, has led to the creation of strong agencies capable of effectively enforcing laws and regulations.

Harassment and killing

Factors contributing to poor enforcement include poor coordination across government agencies, weak institutional capacity, lack of access to information, corruption and stifled civic engagement.

David Boyd, UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment said: “This compelling new report solves the mystery of why problems such as pollution, declining biodiversity and climate change persist despite the proliferation of environmental laws in recent decades.”

Unless implementation and enforcement is strengthened, even rules that appear to be rigorous are destined to fail and the fundamental human right to a healthy environment will go unfulfilled, he added.

The report also highlights growing resistance to environmental laws which has led to the harassment and killing of environmental defenders. Between 2002 and 2013, 908 people, including forest rangers, government inspectors, and local activists, were killed in 35 countries, with 197 killed in 2017 alone.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Imidacloprid – a type of neonicotinoid – changes the way that worker bees interact with the colony’s larvae: they become less social, stop nursing larvae, experience altered social and spatial dynamics within nests, and cease hive insulation construction.

A research team led by James Crall of Harvard University investigated the effects of imidacloprid using a robotic platform for continuous, multicolony monitoring of uniquely identified workers. Their research showed that the behaviours induced by imidacloprid lead to colony collapse.

The team concluded: “Our results show that neonicotinoids induce widespread disruption of worker behavior within the nest that may contribute to impaired growth, highlighting the potential of automated techniques for characterizing the multifaceted, dynamic impacts of stressors on behavior in bee colonies.”

Neurological and social

Many media reports characterised the bees in the study as “antisocial and lazy,” but it is crucial that we understand the larger paradigm afoot here.

While there are many studies which speak to the links between neonics and colony collapse, there are many others that decry this science as a “myth.”  There will be yet another onslaught of those who say that that correlation is not causation, in response to the proposition that neonics – or imidacloprid at the very least – have a direct effect upon social behaviours that result in the loss of larvae. 

This is logically true, but there is enough science on the links between colony collapse and neonics that it is time to stop reacting in bad faith to the science.  Many researchers in Europe are interested to learn more about this link between bees and neonics, following  a near-total ban on neonics in the EU last year. 

Dr Richard Gill, a researcher from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, and his team have explored the relationship between bumble bees and neonicotinoid-treated food. Their study shows that while at first the bumble bee bees avoided this food, they eventually come to develop a preference for neonicotinoid-treated foods.  

Gill, who has worked in this field for some time, has demonstrated how neonics bind to synapses in the brains of bees, which in turn causes these bees to have seizures which he likens to an epileptic seizure. The neonics target the nicotinic acetylcholinesterase receptors in the brain. Hence, there is both a neurological reaction from the neonics as well as a social reaction in relation to them which impacts the propagation of the species. 

Citizen science

The end result is the decline of bee populations but also – since bombus play key roles in the food chain acting as pollinators in temperate ecosystems – many other species have declined across Europe and North America.

The lack of quantitative data has further prevented the collation of data to make more robust conclusions about the contributing factors of colony collapse and the declining bee population.

That is until November of last year when researchers and more than fifty citizen scientists conducted surveys to determine the status of bumble bees throughout Vermont, in the northeastern United States.

From 2012 through 2014 these scientists identified and digitized bumble bee specimens from thirteen public and private collections. Having examined more than 100 years of bumble bee records, these scientists found that almost half of Vermont’s bumble bee species have either completely vanished or are in serious decline.

“Our dataset contained 12,319 records, which we separated into historic (1915–1999; n = 1669) and modern (2000–2014; n = 10,650) periods, with our survey contributing 94 percent of modern data. Of 17 species, four were not detected and four showed significant declines.”  

Collaborative engineering 

These findings are tragic for the ecology and the economy alike, as these bees are the primary pollinators on Vermont’s farms.  

While the researchers could not state with certainty the cause for this decline, recent studies have reinforced the conclusion that it is a combination of habitat loss, disease, mite infections, parasites, pesticides, urbanisation, and climate change. 

The dystopian results of recent studies do not give hope for turning around the damage done to bees, but some scientific projects are afoot which seek to understand — if not remedy — the disaster thus far.  

In line with some of last fall’s scientific revelations, citizen scientists are coming to the rescue, developing apps to record bumble bee sightings and upload pertinent information such as  habitat type, location of sighting, and  weather. This information will then be shared with researchers who can analyze the submissions and chart out migration patterns.  

Designed by Dinah Shi, John Salaveria and Luisa San Martin, in collaboration with environmental non-profit Friends of the Earth Canada, these software engineering students developed this bumble bee tracking app to enlist Canadians to contribute to helping the bee populations as citizen scientists. The mobile app also teaches users how to get involved in creating a sustainable environment for bees. 

Nanotechnology 

More and more research projects focussing on bee populations are enlisting the help of citizen scientists from across the United States.

One project in Idaho houses the volunteer efforts of anyone with a camera and a computer to record the various species throughout the region. In Washington, researchers are turning bees into cyborg drones, attaching chips onto their bodies tracking their movements in order to gain more insight into their decline.

In fact, with the uptick of nanotechnology in recent years and the increase of free website builders,  scientists today are able to construct research projects extending far beyond their grant limits, involving local and international citizenry in crucial research needed to end the demise of bumble bee populations around the world.

The Xerces Society, for instance, is actively engaged in the Bumble Bee Watch and is entirely composed of citizen scientists.

We need to consider the risks to our planet in the eventuality that bee populations continue to decline, especially those populations that are responsible for one-third of our food pollination. Why not consider contributing your time and efforts any number of bee studies that are in need of more citizen scientists to help track the declining bee populations across North America and Europe?

This Author 

Julian Vigo is an independent scholar, filmmaker and activist who specialises in anthropology, technology, and political philosophy. Her latest book is Earthquake in Haiti: The Pornography of Poverty and the Politics of Development (2015). You can follow her on Twitter at @lubelluledotcom. 

Image: Alvesgaspar, Wikimedia. 

Vegan fashion continues to soar in popularity. Aligned with Veganuary, and a popular shift in cultural values, vegan fashion reflects the new generation of conscious thinkers wanting to do more to help save animals from cruelty during the production of fashion and beauty products.

Animal-free fashion materials continue to proliferate, with vegan leather, fur, cotton and silk being mass produced and used by big brands as alternatives to animal-based materials.

Whether it’s a culture-change by the brand – like Tom Ford going vegan and tweaking his product line – or simply small brands like Bread and Reel providing animal-free and cruelty-free clothing, the popularity of vegan fashion is only growing.

Water waste

However, vegan fashion is just the first step. Veganism isn’t always as environmentally friendly as you might think, and vegan fashion isn’t the perfect solution to the crisis.

The production of vegan-based fashion materials can cause just as much harm as traditional production methods. Whilst the material has changed, the way this is developed and crafted may not.

Take PVC for example, it’s vegan, but it’s a toxic material that impacts the environment and fuels global warming: 43 percent of PVC comes from petroleum feedback.

Additionally, cotton production uses 2,700 litres of water for one shirt. To put that into perspective, that’s enough water for you to drink for two years.

The fashion industry alone causes 20 percent of the world’s water pollution. And the worst part? Organic cotton, a more sustainable and environmentally friendly solution is used by under 0.1 percent of cotton manufacturers.

Core values

It’s not all doom and gloom for vegan fashion though. Using vegan leather minimises direct killing. The same goes for other animal-based materials; silk, wool, cashmere, fur etc.

Brands are taking note, and while H&M, Primark, Converse, Topshop and more are providing vegan- based fashion alternatives, brands such as Kuma Design provide products that are solely vegan and sustainable to the environment. 

There’s a cruelty-free alternative for nearly every piece of fashion material, but if vegan fashion is only the start, what’s next?

Sustainable or ‘eco-friendly’ fashion, step forward! Eco-fashion is an anti-fast-fashion design trend that looks to create a system that drastically lowers fashion production’s impact on the environment. 

The three core values for this type of fashion align perfectly with the environmentally-conscious consumer in today’s market. These are:

1. A focus on good quality, rather than quick turnaround.
2. A clean production system that doesn’t harm or impact the environment.
3. Fair pay and conditions for employee’s, and fair prices for consumers.

 

Hot topic

As a result of this style trend, more than ever, consumers are interested in who made their clothes, and what their values are towards animal-cruelty and the environment. In a study by Sustainable Fashion Matterz (yes that’s how you spell it), they found that there is a 100 percent increase in searches for sustainable fashion.

That’s not all – in 2013, the Google Trend score for the search term ‘sustainable fashion’ was 13. Now in 2018, the score is 100/100. 

Eco-friendly fashion is a hot topic with an ever-increasing interest. As newly informed consumers look to buy products that actively help the environment, while staying trendy and stylish, the fashion industry will have to adapt and clean up. 

This Author

Elewisa Young is a professional fashion and beauty writer with keen interests in vegan and eco-friendly fashion. Hailing from London, England, Elewisa has been writing about fashion for nearly 10 years, and has been published in The London Economic, Fashion Gone Rogue, Thomson Local, Medium and more.

‘Need’ is a concept, and therefore can be subjected to the same dialectical investigation as any other concept. From this, we find that need can only be fully understood in relation to its opposite. The opposite of need is the state of fulfilment, and the movement from need to a state of fulfilment is the act of fulfilment.

Any one need cannot be understood or exist unless its fulfilment simultaneously exists. To appreciate need in its full manifestation one must examine both need and fulfilment. At the same time, need is the very opposite of fulfilment: need is the negation of fulfilment and fulfillment is the negation of need.

Need is best described as the negation of its negation: need is the absence of fulfilment. These findings can be derived from dialectics in general, but are also confirmed when examined through material dialectics alone. I will later in this series explain why dialectics has been adopted in this study, and more fully describe the form of dialectics that provide the findings briefly outlined here.

Universe

There is also a very real practical (a real, concrete) relation between need and fulfilment. We begin with the second law of thermodynamics that entropy (randomness, disorder) increases over time: the universe in general is expanding, cooling, and becoming less complex.

This movement from order to disorder is not even. Matter in this universe is differentiated. As a result, there are organisations or complexes of matter which are differentiated from their environment and what surrounds them.

What we find in this particular universe is that some complexes of matter have evolved to a state of existence where they are capable for varying periods of time to counter this law of thermodynamics: systems and complexes exist today that become more complex, more ordered, in direct opposition to the universal natural law of entropy.

Energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed, the first law of thermodynamics. Therefore, in order for any system to counter the movement to entropy it must somehow be able to access energy. Therefore, in almost all cases systems are able to capture energy, in our solar system this often means the capture of energy and light from the sun. 

Extant systems have over a considerable amount of time developed an extraordinary variety of patterns and processes that act in this way. This has led to an assertion that systems themselves are universal. The universe as a whole is a system, made up of parts. These parts are almost always in turn systems themselves. Where any parts are not themselves systems they form a function within a system, or have been produced (and will be destroyed) by a system.

Complex brains

The systems that surround us use energy to counter entropy. In these terms, every system has a need. Need, therefore, is a universalising concept. Need, which is real, concrete, is general to life. All systems are identical in having (or expressing) a need. This is true of all living things, which are by necessity systems. Need is the driver of evolution: the system that does not meet its need is selected negatively, they cease to exist.

To put it the other way around, all things that do not fulfil the need to counter entropy will by definition and by necessity degenerate into a state of randomness and disorder, white noise, void, nothingness. 

Need comes into being when it is simultaneously met, both conceptually and materially. Every living thing is meeting its needs, and has evolved in order to meet this primary need for energy and complexity. Those living things that cannot meet their own needs die, no longer exist, are selected out of the flow of evolution. Death itself serves a need: evolution can only take place if one generation makes space and frees resources for the next iteration.

Needs are met through objects, or through processes. Plants meet the need for energy through photosynthesis, herbivores through eating plants and carnivores, animals. It is assumed that more complex animals (and then humans, and human societies) evolved through hard necessity – to meet complex needs in challenging environments, including competition with rivals.

However, this dialectical systems examination suggests that more complex systems could only evolve in circumstances where greater needs could already be met. Humans, with complex brains requiring significantly greater levels of energy than less complex brains, will have evolved because the material and energy to sustain them was already available. The need can only appear and evolve when the conditions exist for them to be met, and not vice versa.

Human needs

The catalyst for human development was not ‘survival of the fittest’, the desertification of the savannah, but it’s opposite, a new abundance of food. Perhaps this took the form historically as the discovery by humanoids of the great rivers and coastlines (supporting the aquatic ape theory). Having chanced upon a habitat of extraordinary rich resources, humans developed the ability – and the need – for complex thought, and social relations with each other – working together.

In any case. human beings are complex, and have complex needs. Perhaps it is the quantitative difference of complexity of our needs that differentiates us from other apes, from other forms of life, rather than any one isolated characteristic or trait. Humans are different because we have greater needs, not greater abilities, compared to other forms of life. This is certainly true of the need for socialising care in early infancy.

Some of our human needs are self evident, others our friends and colleagues are perfectly capable of articulating and negotiating. Others, however, are less easily understood. Some needs are functional, some dysfunctional. Some are the result of our biological manifestation in the world, some are better understood as the needs of us as systems within systems, still others are artificial or imposed needs, such as the need for a Series 4 Apple Watch.

In this series I have described how human needs are the starting point in my theory of change, indeed in my own understanding of both epistemology (theory of knowledge) and ontology (theory of existence).

The change I advocate is towards a society that is focused on directly meeting human needs, and I argue that through practical necessity any deep social change can only take place when it is consciously and explicitly aimed at meeting immediate human needs. It seems therefore well worth taking some time for me to better understand – in the process of better explaining – what I mean my human needs.

We have arrived at this understanding of our human needs through dialectical systems analysis. I have suggested that needs can be understood dialectically as a universalising concept, and like all concepts can be best understood only in context of other concepts, beginning with its direct opposite (or negation), fulfillment. I have looked at needs from the standpoint of systems theory (or rather, looked at systems from the standpoint of needs).

In my next article I want to develop and explore the concept of a ‘system of needs’, firstly breaking down need in general into a series of categories of need (from the material, to the spiritual; the absolute to the artificial, and the radical). I then want to discuss how real, concrete systems of need in human societies are contextual and dependent on the systems (both interpersonal and material) that constitute those societies.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague.

The idea of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has a lot of support, particularly from those in the fossil fuel industry and governments seeking a quick fix for decarbonising their economies.

The Paris Agreement – the latest attempt to tackle climate change within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – relies on it heavily.

However, there are problems. CCS has proven extremely difficult to implement at any scale. More fundamentally, the promise of using a technological solution – a ‘technofix’ – to solve the environment’s problems, serves to postpone the radical societal and economic changes necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Yet like a zombie, the idea of CCS refuses to die.

CCS in the UK

Carbon Capture and Storage is the process of capturing carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels in power stations, and other industrial processes, and burying it underground to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. It is proposed as a technological solution to climate change, allowing the continued use of fossil fuels while preventing the waste emissions from warming the planet. CCS is also, less commonly, used to describe technologies which remove (or ‘scrub’) carbon dioxide directly from ambient air.

There have been several attempts to establish CCS projects in the UK. The latest involves Drax power station in Yorkshire, which currently burns coal and biomass (in the form of wood pellets), and is planning to replace coal with gas.

The previous CCS competition for a £1 billion contract was scrapped in 2015 after the Treasury pulled its pledged funding, with the then-chancellor George Osborne saying it was too costly. It was the second attempt by government to launch CCS in UK. A first competition to kick-start CCS was cancelled in 2011 when Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and National Grid, withdrew from the project at Longanet power station in Scotland, saying  one billion pounds wasn’t sufficient subsidy to make it viable. The government had already spent 68 million pounds on the scheme.

At the time it was cancelled, the second competition had two preferred bidders: the White Rose consortium in North Yorkshire, which planned to build a new coal plant with the technology (see our previous article), and Shell’s scheme in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, to fit CCS to an existing gas plant operated by SSE. Estimated costs to consumers rocketed to 8.9 billion pounds and – after one hundred million pounds of government spending – the project was deemed to no longer be cost effective.

Despite no existing demonstrations of the technology actually working at scale, the government and industry remain hopeful that a new CCS project could be viable. So the zombie lives on.

Costly trials

In October last year the government announced its approach to newly-named carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) in the Clean Growth Strategy. The name itself should set off alarm bells, another example of the continuing inability of governments to accept the fundamental contradiction between economic growth and environmental sustainability.

As part of the strategy, in May 2018 it was revealed that Drax would lead a four hundred thousand pound trial to remove CO2 from one of its four biomass burning units, in partnership with University of Leeds spin-off company C-Capture.

Ostensibly, the trial is intended to demonstrate the viability of so called BECCS technology (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage), which is supposed to act as a Negative Emission Technology (NET – a generic name for technologies designed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere).

In November 2018, the government also announced a new twenty million pounds dedicated fund to help build carbon capture equipment at industrial sites, such as chemicals plants and oil refineries, on top of an existing pot of one hundred million pounds.  

Lucrative alternative

A more sceptical, but realistic, interpretation of the Drax trial is that is allows the power station to go on burning highly unsustainable wood pellets – partially sourced from clearcut biodiverse forests in the southern US – while giving the impression that it is going ‘green’.

The original move to biomass itself was simply an attempt to stay in business, as coal power generation is set to be phased out in the UK by 2025 to meet air quality standards. Forced to accept the non-viability of coal burning, the company moved to biomass, the most lucrative alternative. Drax currently enjoys almost two million pounds a day in subsidies to burn biomass, paid for by surcharges to energy bills.

Large scale energy generation from biomass is, however, utterly unsustainable and adding CCS to it will do little to change that.

In a previous article for Corporate Watch, Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch explained why, due to a fundamental error in it’s representation of the carbon cycle, BECCS could never work, but also why such ‘sci-fi’ climate solutions are so prevalent and so dangerous.

Even if these kind of solutions have no realistic possibility of being viable, they allow politicians and businesses to give the impression that they are committed to reducing emissions and have strategies to do so. Thus, like the walking dead, new publicly-subsidised demonstration projects continue to pop up as others die off.

Vital questions

New technologies may be important parts of the process of decarbonisation – but they must complement rather than replace the fundamental changes required to our economies and societies.

The enthusiasm for CCS from the governments and institutions around the world is indicative of a much wider problem around technological narratives.

We live in a capitalist world, and technology’s role in our societies is heavily influenced by the thinking and values that come from that. Nature is viewed as something to be controlled and dominated, with technology providing the tools to do this. While capitalism continues to define the world’s economies, technofixes such as CCS will continue to be supported by those in power.

Corporate Watch’s technofix report, produced in 2008, explains the enduring appeal of technical solutions to social and politically driven ecological problems. It describes how fixating on technologies as solutions ignores the underlying causes of climate change and other ecological crises, treating each of them as separate unrelated issues. This fixation also has a tendency to concentrate power or exacerbate existing inequalities.

In order to evaluate the usefulness and appropriateness of technologies we need to ask vital questions such as: Who owns the technology? Who gains from the technology? Who loses? How sustainable is the technology? How likely is the technology to be developed, and when?

Radical transformation

If we are to avoid the worst, catastrophic, impacts of climate change and ecological collapse we need to view human societies as being part our wider natural environment, not above of separate from it. Until this existential relationship is resolved technofixes such as CCS and BECCS will only deepen the ecological hole we are digging ourselves.

Our relationship with nature may sound like an abstract philosophical issue, but it is precisely these kinds of questions that we must collectively answer.

And it’s not as if we are starting from scratch. While they are diverse and not to be idealised, many indigenous cultures have a radically different view of nature from that currently dominating western thought.

The relationship between nature and capitalism was explored further in our A-Z of green capitalism, published in 2016. It provides an introduction to the ideas surrounding green capitalism, as well as the alternatives to it, and explains why, despite its impossibility, the ‘greening’ of capitalism continues to be promoted as a solution to environmental problems.

Of course bringing about a fundamental change in our relationship with nature requires a radical transformation in how our societies are structured and in our attitudes and behaviours. But it also represents an unique opportunity to shift the direction we are moving in, to make a fairer, freer world where humans live in a more harmonious relationship with the rest of life on our planet.

Ecological crises

The depth and scale of change required is huge, but we have no other option.

When it comes to these issues, radicalism is pragmatism. Climate change is only one of a host of interlinked global ecological crises: biodiversity loss, soil degradation, deforestation, and chemical pollutants all also pose grave threats.

Relying on unproven technologies such as CCS to address only one of these problems in isolation is a dangerous distraction from the more profound changes required.

We need systemic change, not an endless horde of zombie technofixes.

This Author 

Corporate Watch is a not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism. Since 1996 our research, journalism, analysis and training have supported people affected by corporations and those taking action for radical social change.

Corporate Watch is currently working on a project on technology, if you’d like to know more or want to get involved please send them an email.