Proposals to allow trophy hunting of elephants to resume in Botswana, home to Africa’s largest elephant population, and even use the meat for canned pet food have been strongly criticised by the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting (CBTH).

A report by ministers  recommends a lifting of the ban and also calls for the “establishment of elephant meat canning” for pet food. Approximately 130,000 elephants – representing one-third of the world’s total remaining African elephant population – live in the country which is the size of France.

The CBTH has led international efforts to stop plans to bring back trophy hunting in the southern African nation.

Elephant trophy

Supporters of the charity including Bill Oddie and Sir Ranulph Fiennes handed in an open letter to Botswana’s High Commission in October 2018. The letter was signed by Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry and Chris Packham, among others. A global petition coordinated by CBTH was signed by 250,000 people.

Eduardo Gonçalves, of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, said: “African elephants are in serious trouble. Populations have crashed in recent years, and there is a real risk of the species going extinct. Allowing elephants in their last stronghold to be killed for entertainment is the last thing it needs.

“The proposal to kill them for pet food is beyond bizarre. If the trophy hunting ban is lifted, we can expect to see an increase in elephant trophies, ivory and body parts coming into Britain. The UK was one of Botswana’s primary markets prior to the ban.

“It would be a travesty if this plan led to Britain – which oridesnitself as a world leader in wildlife conservation – once more becoming a major global destination for elephant trophies.”

The vote by Botswana’s parliament to call for the resumption of elephant trophy hunting was condemned by conservationists and public figures.

Disappear

Joanna Lumley said: “I have always considered trophy hunting the lowest of the low. Killing animals for fun is just disgusting. We are urging President Masisi to reject the proposal to lift the ban on trophy hunting for the sake of the elephants in his beautiful country and for the reputation of humans everywhere.”

The proposal has angered leading conservationists. Bill Oddie warned that allowing trophy hunting could spell disaster: “I’m just incredulous that anyone would even think this is a good idea.

“Elephants are fast approaching a pre-extinction phase. They’ve disappeared from much of Africa. You’ve got small isolated groups separated from one another. Trophy hunting in the one place where they are relatively thriving could spell disaster. Botswana is the last hope for the African elephant. If we lose them here, the whole battle could be lost.”

Damian Aspinall added: “As a conservationist and as someone directly involved in working to save persecuted species, I can say from first-hand experience that hunting for ‘sport’ is putting tremendous pressure on our wildlife.

“Trophy hunting is simply inexplicable and inexcusable, and those who practice it need to take a long, hard look at themselves and what they’re doing. Elephants have been with us for millions of years. Are we really going to allow them to disappear within the blink of an eye just because a handful of people take pleasure from killing them?”

Trophy

Legendary explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes is another leading name to have thrown his weight behind the campaign: “Our children will despise us if we let elephants die out.

“We should hang our heads in shame at what’s going on. People who kill elephants for fun need to be stopped. We need a global ban and tough jail terms for trophy hunting and poaching.”

Politicians from across the political spectrum have condemned Botswana’s plans and backed a ban on trophy hunting. Sir Ed Davey MP (Lib Dem) said: “The case for legal hunting of elephants ranges from weak to immoral.

“Legal hunting can often act as a cover for illegal hunting, endangering the species – and the idea that tourist money trickles down to support local people who then prevent poaching simply isn’t proven. We need the ban – and we need to resource its enforcement, urgently.”

Chris Williamson MP (Labour) added: “The appalling, indiscriminate killing of elephants for their tusks is barbaric. There has been a spate of killings in Botswana, a previous safe haven for these beautiful creatures.

Collapsed

“That’s why I am calling on the Botswana Government to take action to address the slaughter of these animals without delay”.

Trophy hunting was banned in 2014 by President Ian Khama following a decline in elephant numbers in the country, since which populations have recovered. However the election of President Masisi last year has seen a push for trophy hunters to be allowed back into the country.

Botswana’s parliament passed a resolution last May calling on the government to overturn the ban, a move supported by the Vice President. President Masisi launched a ‘public consultation’ exercise which has now concluded and recommends a resumption of hunting.

It is thought there were as many as 10 million elephants at the beginning of the 20th century.  Populations in Zimbabwe have collapsed by up to 75 percent in some parts of the country.

The population in Tanzania has crashed by 60 percent in the last five years, and halved in Mozambique. In Zambia – which has one of the largest groups in the 1960s – numbers have plummeted from around 200,000 to 10,000.

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting.

Environmental campaign group A Plastic Planet will go head-to-head with leading figures in the plastics industry during a major debate in Birmingham today (Wednesday, 26 February 2019).

Headlining the first day of Packaging Innovations Fair 2019, The Big Plastics Debate will home in on the future of packaging in the UK and beyond.

The debate, held at the fair’s Ecopack Stage, will see two teams of experts engage in a probing discussion on plastic packaging.

Plastic-free

The speakers will debate the motion: ‘This house believes plastic packaging will always be fundamental to our everyday lives.’

A Plastic Planet co-founder Sian Sutherland and Iceland Foods Packaging Manager Ian Schofield will be challenging the motion, while British Plastics Federation Plastic Packaging Group Director Barry Turner and Heriot-Watt University Professor of Materials Chemistry David Bucknall will be in favour of it.

The debate comes at a time when industry is being challenged to adopt more sustainable packaging amid growing concerns about the impact of plastic pollution.

Founded in 2017, A Plastic Planet has built a formidable coalition of global support for a plastic-free future.

Brands

As well as featuring in the debate, A Plastic Planet will host an exhibition of products packaged exclusively in plastic-free materials in a stand throughout the duration of the fair.

Products on show will include tea, coffee, chocolate, dairy, bread and fresh meat packaged in innovative materials such as wood, cellulose and compostable biomaterials as well as in traditional materials such as glass and metal.

Packaging Innovations Birmingham is the UK’s leading packaging event, taking place at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC).

The two-day event brings together brands and retailers with more than 300 packaging suppliers spanning the entirety of the packaging supply chain.

Toxic plastic

Sian Sutherland said: “The Big Plastics Debate is vitally important. Our audience comprises the people who have the power to design our packaging without indestructible toxic plastic. There are already so many alternative materials and we need to accelerate the switch to them.  Of course, everything comes down to one thing – money.

“Somehow those brands that have pumped out plastic for decades have zero responsibility for the devastation it continues to create. We need to show our children that we care about their future rather than short term convenience and profit.

“Plastic pollution is the most pressing environmental challenge of our time and very rarely do people get the opportunity to see those on both sides for and against plastic come together in one place to discuss their opposing views.

“The motion that plastic packaging will always be fundamental to our everyday lives is simply bonkers. This debate should flesh out why we all need to face up to our plastic addiction, start telling the truth and start on a very different path.”

This Article

This article is based on a press release from Higginson Strategy. For more information on the debate click here.

The impacts of the late Anthropocene, the age of human dominance over the planet, are now headline news: this weekend Britain experienced the warmest winter day on record. 

Visions of a pessimistic future for present and future generations are regularly presented to audiences in public and scientific forums. From the IPCC to cli-fi, the message is one that constantly reminds us that the hot breath of the apocalypse is on our necks.

The Anthropocene has evolved under the influence of a fundamentally flawed set of dominant themes and ideas.

Lived experience

Our cultural, scientific and technological evolution has taken most of humanity onto a path that reduces life to isolated atoms, transforms cultural and biological diversity into homogeneity, smashes symbiotic connections between species, transgresses Earth-system boundaries, and introduces toxic elements that are beyond the evolutionary experience of all organisms.

The dominance and hubris of humans has taken us to the brink of what has been called the sixth great extinction and is now forcing us to gaze into the abyss of the seventh great extinction … ourselves.

To avoid such a fate, a new meme is needed to guide our thinking and provide inspiration to all generations, but especially to the young. Symbiotic thinking leads to the Symbiocene, a new era that nurtures all aspects of being human in a world of other beings.

Global-scale negative environmental and climate change is generating seismic global emotional upheaval felt by people in particular locations.

We now live in an ‘age of solastalgia’, or the lived experience of negative environmental change. We have become homesick within our Earthly home.

Living together

Many more negative psychoterratic – psyche-earth – emotions such as ecoanxiety and ecoparalysis are erupting in people all over the planet.

If the Anthropocene is now increasingly associated with negative Earth emotions such as solastalgia, deep-seated pessimism about the future and feelings of hopelessness, then we need an urgent counter to its deep depression.

Humans now need a new meme that champions extreme optimism in the face of the ruthless pessimism that churns out of the Anthropocene conceptual hurricane.

The biosciences, in the last fifty years, have made hugely important discoveries about life on Earth that ought to have revolutionised our thinking about ourselves and our place in nature.

In particular, the central role of symbiosis in the structure and function of life has been shown to be profound. The scientific meaning of symbiosis implies ‘organisms living together’, most often for mutual benefit.

Cooperative

It also implies an overall homeostasis, or balance of interests, since domination of one part or organism over the rest would lead to functional failure.

In fields as diverse as botany and human physiology, discoveries have been made that reinforce the centrality of symbiosis from micro to macro levels as vital for life.

For example, we know that the chloroplast, now fully integrated within plants, was once an independent cyanobacteria and that the human gut microbiome is home to trillions of symbiotically interacting micro-organisms taking in nutrition for themselves and playing a role in maintaining physical and mental health for us, their host.

From the wonder of the ‘wood-wide-web’ of the plant world to the menagerie of the human microbiome, the biosciences have gradually assembled enough evidence for us to fully appreciate the centrality of symbiotic co-existence between diverse species as a foundation for life.

Evolution is driven by both cooperation and competition, and science is only just beginning to shed new light on the cooperative and shared foundations of life.

Small is vital

The implications of this revolution for our thinking about life are profound. For one, rather than being seduced by the ‘big’ things in life for inspiration, we should be empathising with the smallest.

It is time to do away with the big tree, big whale, big man view of status and importance in life.

Further, big picture systems theory and other animistic Gaian ways of thinking tend to favour managing the big system over allowing the micro to spontaneously build the macro.

From the perspective of micro-symbiosis, Gaia is the net result of trillions of micro-events happening within and between organisms throughout the habitable parts of the planet: it is not the prime mover of those events.

The same thinking can be applied to the human being: we are not what we thought we were. We are a collection of diverse organisms, known as holobionts, vitally united by a shared life, not inherently atomistic, isolated, egocentric individuals.

The Sumbios

The ideas derived from this understanding of symbiosis have yet to be fully integrated into the diverse domains of human activity. A Greek root of symbiosis, sumbios, or “living together”, becomes the core for a new set of concepts.

Humans must become ‘sumbiocentric’ thinkers in order to get out of the anthropocentrism of the Anthropocene.

Using the new discipline of ‘sumbiology’, to fully understand the inter-connections in life, enables us to give priority to the maintenance of symbiotic bonds in what we can now call the ‘symbioment’.

We must say goodbye to ‘the environment’ as all it has done is perpetuated the myth of human separation from nature.

Some humans have done well in the short-term defying symbiosis in our industrial gigantism and monocultures, but it is now time for all humanity to re-join the diversity and unity of rest of life.

The Symbiocene

The term, ‘the Symbiocene’ was first used by me in a blog post I wrote in 2011. The very idea of the Anthropocene outraged me and I wanted out of it. It felt like a metastasizing cancer.

In order to imagine a new pathway for an optimistic future, I created the meme of the Symbiocene to form the basis of what I hope will be the next period (cene) in human history.

Sumbiology delivers a new form of thinking that shows us how the symbiotic and mutually supportive processes that are found in life can be incorporated into human social and technological systems.

The creative thinking required to achieve this is massive, but it also presents an exciting and optimistic challenge for all humanity, one that also entails huge amounts of creativity and employment. Symbiotic growth is good.

In what I hope will be a relatively short period of time (perhaps decades), there will come a point in human social development where almost every element of culture, agriculture, economy, habitat and technology will be seamlessly re-integrated back into earthly symbiotic life.

An important consequence of re-integration will be that our psychoterratic emotions will again become positive. Solastalgia will be ‘on the run’ by the 2070s and our biophilia, topophilia, endemophilia and eutierria will once again be freely experienced.

Symbiocene principles

In order to get to that preferred state of living, I suggest that some of the key organising principles of the Symbiocene.

These must include: the full elimination of toxic-to-life substances; the complete and safe biodegradability of all materials in human use; exploitation of non-polluting forms of safe, renewable energy.

They must also include the priority use of the renewable resources of locality and regions; respect for the shared life or biocomunen of all holobionts; and the creation, protection and repair (if necessary) of the symbiotic bonds between species at all scales.

As all of these principles are applied, there will appear, on the very youngest soil strata on Earth, a new, thin film of vitally organic microbiome substances that will cover everything.

The emergent hybrid sumbiofilm will mark the proper geological commencement of the Symbiocene. From that point onwards, as we rapidly build the Symbiocene, that ‘organic’ layer will completely cover the multitude of sins left by the Anthropocene.

Humanity

There cannot be anything less than the complete adoption of the Symbiocene principles, since there are now over seven billion people on the planet, and their collective impacts are massive.

I suggest that all of the principles are easy to comprehend and technically feasible within decades.

Already, we are seeing the emergence of self-repairing bricks made from fungi and organic waste, and coffee grounds transformed into biodegradable coffee cups. Small steps, but the Symbiocene is already being built, brick by brick, one coffee at a time.

The idea of the Symbiocene stimulates all humans to create a future where positive Earth emotions will prevail over the negative. To have a commitment to action requires hope and belief that the action will lead to good outcomes.

The Symbiocene gives all, especially those that I call Generation Symbiocene (Gen S), reason to be committed to a future that unlocks human creative potential and returns humanity to the great Earth project of a shared life. Once you start thinking about the Symbiocene, you are already in it.

This Author

Dr Glenn Albrecht is freelance environmental philosopher and farmosopher. He has pioneered the domain of psychoterratic or psyche – earth relationships with his concept of solastalgia. He is the author of Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World and writes at Psychoterratica.

Since the deadly heat of Summer 2018, the need for urgent climate action has been inescapable and widely felt. The IPCC’s ominous deadline of 12 years to limit climate catastrophe has started an anxiety-inducing countdown in the heads of many for whom climate was previously a secondary concern. One response was David Wallace-Wells’ recent call for panic in The New York Times.

Wallace-Wells makes the case that now is time to embrace “alarmism”, amidst a comprehensive account of climate science and an outline of the severity of climate breakdown’s catastrophic effects. He concludes by asking, “What creates more sense of urgency than fear?” For Wallace-Wells, fear of what is to come could be the best catalyst of action.

I have seen this fear-driven alarmism grip many in the UK climate movement since the summer. It has also effectively inspired many new people to join us in taking action. But climate fear limits the scope and ambitions of the action we can take.

For hope

Our attitude to the climate crisis should be led by the global wave of youth strikes. Callum Cant reported from the UK strikes on 15 February that the the word ‘hope’ was the one common denominator across students’ placards.

Hope was in their faces as they climbed on top of post boxes and ran through the streets. As scientists warn of the worst scenarios, the climate movement must give these children a future to be optimistic about.

The explosion of the Green New Deal into the mainstream of US politics has provided one source of hope. It is now beginning to cut through in the UK, where it was originally conceived.

On 13 February, activists from the Labour Party and climate movement came together to discuss what building a Green New Deal for the many could look like. Rebecca Long-Bailey, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, took the opportunity to layout Labour’s approach to their proposed ‘green transformation’. Long-Bailey announced a national call for evidence on how a zero-carbon future could work best for the UK’s towns and cities.

It would be easy to quickly adopt a headline-grabbing suite of climate policies which herald the severity of the climate emergency, but fall down on the details. Labour recognises the need to bring every community along by engaging them on developing radical plans for their own future.

Imprecise policies

In contrast, the Scottish Green Party are currently proposing a Climate Emergency Bill for the Scottish Parliament.

This language invokes the urgency and alarmism of climate fear, but contains relatively unambitious targets and false solutions. It only proposes net-zero emissions by 2040. Net-zero is based on non-existent technologies and probable land grabs.

Our aim in the Global North should be full decarbonisation by 2030. The Climate Emergency Bill offers a suite of imprecise policies contributing to decarbonisation, but together they are insufficiently transformative to sufficiently rewire the economy.

Wallace-Well points to the rise of Extinction Rebellion (XR) as an example of the success of alarmism and climate fear. Indeed, XR has successfully mobilised large numbers and frustrated traffic in parts of London with demands including “tell the truth” and for the declaration of climate emergency. However, their panic-organising has little strategy or demands beyond advanced awareness raising.

XR’s more tangible demand for a Citizens’ Assembly to decide and oversee exactly what to do illustrates how few answers they have. This political vacuity gives rise to rhetorically powerful but substantively weak proposals like the Scottish Greens’.

Sustainable future

Instead, our response must be to put forward an unashamedly political program to fully decarbonise and transform the global political economy so that it works for the many, not the few.

Kate Aronoff’s case for the Green New Deal paints a hopeful picture of what life could be like for the next generation.

Our message to students striking for climate can be that together we will build a luxurious future of universal public services like free education and health care; cheap, highly connected public transit; green jobs for all; and participatory democratic control of our economic and political lives – all ecologically underwritten by full decarbonisation.

Now is not the time to panic. It is not productive to induce climate fear to provoke a movement demanding governments hurriedly do something.

The climate movement and progressive parties must take responsibility to listen to and interpret the hopes, fears and ideas of people across generations, industries, cultures and communities about climate and wider social injustices. We can reconstruct those feelings into a coherent articulation of a future that inspires hope and optimism.

Although the clock is ticking, a prosperous and sustainable future is on the horizon. The urgency of the climate crisis gives us the opportunity to build it together.

This Author

Chris Satmarsh is co-director of cimate change campaigns at People & Planet. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

Since the deadly heat of Summer 2018, the need for urgent climate action has been inescapable and widely felt. The IPCC’s ominous deadline of 12 years to limit climate catastrophe has started an anxiety-inducing countdown in the heads of many for whom climate was previously a secondary concern. One response was David Wallace-Wells’ recent call for panic in The New York Times.

Wallace-Wells makes the case that now is time to embrace “alarmism”, amidst a comprehensive account of climate science and an outline of the severity of climate breakdown’s catastrophic effects. He concludes by asking, “What creates more sense of urgency than fear?” For Wallace-Wells, fear of what is to come could be the best catalyst of action.

I have seen this fear-driven alarmism grip many in the UK climate movement since the summer. It has also effectively inspired many new people to join us in taking action. But climate fear limits the scope and ambitions of the action we can take.

For hope

Our attitude to the climate crisis should be led by the global wave of youth strikes. Callum Cant reported from the UK strikes on 15 February that the the word ‘hope’ was the one common denominator across students’ placards.

Hope was in their faces as they climbed on top of post boxes and ran through the streets. As scientists warn of the worst scenarios, the climate movement must give these children a future to be optimistic about.

The explosion of the Green New Deal into the mainstream of US politics has provided one source of hope. It is now beginning to cut through in the UK, where it was originally conceived.

On 13 February, activists from the Labour Party and climate movement came together to discuss what building a Green New Deal for the many could look like. Rebecca Long-Bailey, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, took the opportunity to layout Labour’s approach to their proposed ‘green transformation’. Long-Bailey announced a national call for evidence on how a zero-carbon future could work best for the UK’s towns and cities.

It would be easy to quickly adopt a headline-grabbing suite of climate policies which herald the severity of the climate emergency, but fall down on the details. Labour recognises the need to bring every community along by engaging them on developing radical plans for their own future.

Imprecise policies

In contrast, the Scottish Green Party are currently proposing a Climate Emergency Bill for the Scottish Parliament.

This language invokes the urgency and alarmism of climate fear, but contains relatively unambitious targets and false solutions. It only proposes net-zero emissions by 2040. Net-zero is based on non-existent technologies and probable land grabs.

Our aim in the Global North should be full decarbonisation by 2030. The Climate Emergency Bill offers a suite of imprecise policies contributing to decarbonisation, but together they are insufficiently transformative to sufficiently rewire the economy.

Wallace-Well points to the rise of Extinction Rebellion (XR) as an example of the success of alarmism and climate fear. Indeed, XR has successfully mobilised large numbers and frustrated traffic in parts of London with demands including “tell the truth” and for the declaration of climate emergency. However, their panic-organising has little strategy or demands beyond advanced awareness raising.

XR’s more tangible demand for a Citizens’ Assembly to decide and oversee exactly what to do illustrates how few answers they have. This political vacuity gives rise to rhetorically powerful but substantively weak proposals like the Scottish Greens’.

Sustainable future

Instead, our response must be to put forward an unashamedly political program to fully decarbonise and transform the global political economy so that it works for the many, not the few.

Kate Aronoff’s case for the Green New Deal paints a hopeful picture of what life could be like for the next generation.

Our message to students striking for climate can be that together we will build a luxurious future of universal public services like free education and health care; cheap, highly connected public transit; green jobs for all; and participatory democratic control of our economic and political lives – all ecologically underwritten by full decarbonisation.

Now is not the time to panic. It is not productive to induce climate fear to provoke a movement demanding governments hurriedly do something.

The climate movement and progressive parties must take responsibility to listen to and interpret the hopes, fears and ideas of people across generations, industries, cultures and communities about climate and wider social injustices. We can reconstruct those feelings into a coherent articulation of a future that inspires hope and optimism.

Although the clock is ticking, a prosperous and sustainable future is on the horizon. The urgency of the climate crisis gives us the opportunity to build it together.

This Author

Chris Satmarsh is co-director of cimate change campaigns at People & Planet. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

Since the deadly heat of Summer 2018, the need for urgent climate action has been inescapable and widely felt. The IPCC’s ominous deadline of 12 years to limit climate catastrophe has started an anxiety-inducing countdown in the heads of many for whom climate was previously a secondary concern. One response was David Wallace-Wells’ recent call for panic in The New York Times.

Wallace-Wells makes the case that now is time to embrace “alarmism”, amidst a comprehensive account of climate science and an outline of the severity of climate breakdown’s catastrophic effects. He concludes by asking, “What creates more sense of urgency than fear?” For Wallace-Wells, fear of what is to come could be the best catalyst of action.

I have seen this fear-driven alarmism grip many in the UK climate movement since the summer. It has also effectively inspired many new people to join us in taking action. But climate fear limits the scope and ambitions of the action we can take.

For hope

Our attitude to the climate crisis should be led by the global wave of youth strikes. Callum Cant reported from the UK strikes on 15 February that the the word ‘hope’ was the one common denominator across students’ placards.

Hope was in their faces as they climbed on top of post boxes and ran through the streets. As scientists warn of the worst scenarios, the climate movement must give these children a future to be optimistic about.

The explosion of the Green New Deal into the mainstream of US politics has provided one source of hope. It is now beginning to cut through in the UK, where it was originally conceived.

On 13 February, activists from the Labour Party and climate movement came together to discuss what building a Green New Deal for the many could look like. Rebecca Long-Bailey, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, took the opportunity to layout Labour’s approach to their proposed ‘green transformation’. Long-Bailey announced a national call for evidence on how a zero-carbon future could work best for the UK’s towns and cities.

It would be easy to quickly adopt a headline-grabbing suite of climate policies which herald the severity of the climate emergency, but fall down on the details. Labour recognises the need to bring every community along by engaging them on developing radical plans for their own future.

Imprecise policies

In contrast, the Scottish Green Party are currently proposing a Climate Emergency Bill for the Scottish Parliament.

This language invokes the urgency and alarmism of climate fear, but contains relatively unambitious targets and false solutions. It only proposes net-zero emissions by 2040. Net-zero is based on non-existent technologies and probable land grabs.

Our aim in the Global North should be full decarbonisation by 2030. The Climate Emergency Bill offers a suite of imprecise policies contributing to decarbonisation, but together they are insufficiently transformative to sufficiently rewire the economy.

Wallace-Well points to the rise of Extinction Rebellion (XR) as an example of the success of alarmism and climate fear. Indeed, XR has successfully mobilised large numbers and frustrated traffic in parts of London with demands including “tell the truth” and for the declaration of climate emergency. However, their panic-organising has little strategy or demands beyond advanced awareness raising.

XR’s more tangible demand for a Citizens’ Assembly to decide and oversee exactly what to do illustrates how few answers they have. This political vacuity gives rise to rhetorically powerful but substantively weak proposals like the Scottish Greens’.

Sustainable future

Instead, our response must be to put forward an unashamedly political program to fully decarbonise and transform the global political economy so that it works for the many, not the few.

Kate Aronoff’s case for the Green New Deal paints a hopeful picture of what life could be like for the next generation.

Our message to students striking for climate can be that together we will build a luxurious future of universal public services like free education and health care; cheap, highly connected public transit; green jobs for all; and participatory democratic control of our economic and political lives – all ecologically underwritten by full decarbonisation.

Now is not the time to panic. It is not productive to induce climate fear to provoke a movement demanding governments hurriedly do something.

The climate movement and progressive parties must take responsibility to listen to and interpret the hopes, fears and ideas of people across generations, industries, cultures and communities about climate and wider social injustices. We can reconstruct those feelings into a coherent articulation of a future that inspires hope and optimism.

Although the clock is ticking, a prosperous and sustainable future is on the horizon. The urgency of the climate crisis gives us the opportunity to build it together.

This Author

Chris Satmarsh is co-director of cimate change campaigns at People & Planet. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

Since the deadly heat of Summer 2018, the need for urgent climate action has been inescapable and widely felt. The IPCC’s ominous deadline of 12 years to limit climate catastrophe has started an anxiety-inducing countdown in the heads of many for whom climate was previously a secondary concern. One response was David Wallace-Wells’ recent call for panic in The New York Times.

Wallace-Wells makes the case that now is time to embrace “alarmism”, amidst a comprehensive account of climate science and an outline of the severity of climate breakdown’s catastrophic effects. He concludes by asking, “What creates more sense of urgency than fear?” For Wallace-Wells, fear of what is to come could be the best catalyst of action.

I have seen this fear-driven alarmism grip many in the UK climate movement since the summer. It has also effectively inspired many new people to join us in taking action. But climate fear limits the scope and ambitions of the action we can take.

For hope

Our attitude to the climate crisis should be led by the global wave of youth strikes. Callum Cant reported from the UK strikes on 15 February that the the word ‘hope’ was the one common denominator across students’ placards.

Hope was in their faces as they climbed on top of post boxes and ran through the streets. As scientists warn of the worst scenarios, the climate movement must give these children a future to be optimistic about.

The explosion of the Green New Deal into the mainstream of US politics has provided one source of hope. It is now beginning to cut through in the UK, where it was originally conceived.

On 13 February, activists from the Labour Party and climate movement came together to discuss what building a Green New Deal for the many could look like. Rebecca Long-Bailey, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, took the opportunity to layout Labour’s approach to their proposed ‘green transformation’. Long-Bailey announced a national call for evidence on how a zero-carbon future could work best for the UK’s towns and cities.

It would be easy to quickly adopt a headline-grabbing suite of climate policies which herald the severity of the climate emergency, but fall down on the details. Labour recognises the need to bring every community along by engaging them on developing radical plans for their own future.

Imprecise policies

In contrast, the Scottish Green Party are currently proposing a Climate Emergency Bill for the Scottish Parliament.

This language invokes the urgency and alarmism of climate fear, but contains relatively unambitious targets and false solutions. It only proposes net-zero emissions by 2040. Net-zero is based on non-existent technologies and probable land grabs.

Our aim in the Global North should be full decarbonisation by 2030. The Climate Emergency Bill offers a suite of imprecise policies contributing to decarbonisation, but together they are insufficiently transformative to sufficiently rewire the economy.

Wallace-Well points to the rise of Extinction Rebellion (XR) as an example of the success of alarmism and climate fear. Indeed, XR has successfully mobilised large numbers and frustrated traffic in parts of London with demands including “tell the truth” and for the declaration of climate emergency. However, their panic-organising has little strategy or demands beyond advanced awareness raising.

XR’s more tangible demand for a Citizens’ Assembly to decide and oversee exactly what to do illustrates how few answers they have. This political vacuity gives rise to rhetorically powerful but substantively weak proposals like the Scottish Greens’.

Sustainable future

Instead, our response must be to put forward an unashamedly political program to fully decarbonise and transform the global political economy so that it works for the many, not the few.

Kate Aronoff’s case for the Green New Deal paints a hopeful picture of what life could be like for the next generation.

Our message to students striking for climate can be that together we will build a luxurious future of universal public services like free education and health care; cheap, highly connected public transit; green jobs for all; and participatory democratic control of our economic and political lives – all ecologically underwritten by full decarbonisation.

Now is not the time to panic. It is not productive to induce climate fear to provoke a movement demanding governments hurriedly do something.

The climate movement and progressive parties must take responsibility to listen to and interpret the hopes, fears and ideas of people across generations, industries, cultures and communities about climate and wider social injustices. We can reconstruct those feelings into a coherent articulation of a future that inspires hope and optimism.

Although the clock is ticking, a prosperous and sustainable future is on the horizon. The urgency of the climate crisis gives us the opportunity to build it together.

This Author

Chris Satmarsh is co-director of cimate change campaigns at People & Planet. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

Since the deadly heat of Summer 2018, the need for urgent climate action has been inescapable and widely felt. The IPCC’s ominous deadline of 12 years to limit climate catastrophe has started an anxiety-inducing countdown in the heads of many for whom climate was previously a secondary concern. One response was David Wallace-Wells’ recent call for panic in The New York Times.

Wallace-Wells makes the case that now is time to embrace “alarmism”, amidst a comprehensive account of climate science and an outline of the severity of climate breakdown’s catastrophic effects. He concludes by asking, “What creates more sense of urgency than fear?” For Wallace-Wells, fear of what is to come could be the best catalyst of action.

I have seen this fear-driven alarmism grip many in the UK climate movement since the summer. It has also effectively inspired many new people to join us in taking action. But climate fear limits the scope and ambitions of the action we can take.

For hope

Our attitude to the climate crisis should be led by the global wave of youth strikes. Callum Cant reported from the UK strikes on 15 February that the the word ‘hope’ was the one common denominator across students’ placards.

Hope was in their faces as they climbed on top of post boxes and ran through the streets. As scientists warn of the worst scenarios, the climate movement must give these children a future to be optimistic about.

The explosion of the Green New Deal into the mainstream of US politics has provided one source of hope. It is now beginning to cut through in the UK, where it was originally conceived.

On 13 February, activists from the Labour Party and climate movement came together to discuss what building a Green New Deal for the many could look like. Rebecca Long-Bailey, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, took the opportunity to layout Labour’s approach to their proposed ‘green transformation’. Long-Bailey announced a national call for evidence on how a zero-carbon future could work best for the UK’s towns and cities.

It would be easy to quickly adopt a headline-grabbing suite of climate policies which herald the severity of the climate emergency, but fall down on the details. Labour recognises the need to bring every community along by engaging them on developing radical plans for their own future.

Imprecise policies

In contrast, the Scottish Green Party are currently proposing a Climate Emergency Bill for the Scottish Parliament.

This language invokes the urgency and alarmism of climate fear, but contains relatively unambitious targets and false solutions. It only proposes net-zero emissions by 2040. Net-zero is based on non-existent technologies and probable land grabs.

Our aim in the Global North should be full decarbonisation by 2030. The Climate Emergency Bill offers a suite of imprecise policies contributing to decarbonisation, but together they are insufficiently transformative to sufficiently rewire the economy.

Wallace-Well points to the rise of Extinction Rebellion (XR) as an example of the success of alarmism and climate fear. Indeed, XR has successfully mobilised large numbers and frustrated traffic in parts of London with demands including “tell the truth” and for the declaration of climate emergency. However, their panic-organising has little strategy or demands beyond advanced awareness raising.

XR’s more tangible demand for a Citizens’ Assembly to decide and oversee exactly what to do illustrates how few answers they have. This political vacuity gives rise to rhetorically powerful but substantively weak proposals like the Scottish Greens’.

Sustainable future

Instead, our response must be to put forward an unashamedly political program to fully decarbonise and transform the global political economy so that it works for the many, not the few.

Kate Aronoff’s case for the Green New Deal paints a hopeful picture of what life could be like for the next generation.

Our message to students striking for climate can be that together we will build a luxurious future of universal public services like free education and health care; cheap, highly connected public transit; green jobs for all; and participatory democratic control of our economic and political lives – all ecologically underwritten by full decarbonisation.

Now is not the time to panic. It is not productive to induce climate fear to provoke a movement demanding governments hurriedly do something.

The climate movement and progressive parties must take responsibility to listen to and interpret the hopes, fears and ideas of people across generations, industries, cultures and communities about climate and wider social injustices. We can reconstruct those feelings into a coherent articulation of a future that inspires hope and optimism.

Although the clock is ticking, a prosperous and sustainable future is on the horizon. The urgency of the climate crisis gives us the opportunity to build it together.

This Author

Chris Satmarsh is co-director of cimate change campaigns at People & Planet. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

Since the deadly heat of Summer 2018, the need for urgent climate action has been inescapable and widely felt. The IPCC’s ominous deadline of 12 years to limit climate catastrophe has started an anxiety-inducing countdown in the heads of many for whom climate was previously a secondary concern. One response was David Wallace-Wells’ recent call for panic in The New York Times.

Wallace-Wells makes the case that now is time to embrace “alarmism”, amidst a comprehensive account of climate science and an outline of the severity of climate breakdown’s catastrophic effects. He concludes by asking, “What creates more sense of urgency than fear?” For Wallace-Wells, fear of what is to come could be the best catalyst of action.

I have seen this fear-driven alarmism grip many in the UK climate movement since the summer. It has also effectively inspired many new people to join us in taking action. But climate fear limits the scope and ambitions of the action we can take.

For hope

Our attitude to the climate crisis should be led by the global wave of youth strikes. Callum Cant reported from the UK strikes on 15 February that the the word ‘hope’ was the one common denominator across students’ placards.

Hope was in their faces as they climbed on top of post boxes and ran through the streets. As scientists warn of the worst scenarios, the climate movement must give these children a future to be optimistic about.

The explosion of the Green New Deal into the mainstream of US politics has provided one source of hope. It is now beginning to cut through in the UK, where it was originally conceived.

On 13 February, activists from the Labour Party and climate movement came together to discuss what building a Green New Deal for the many could look like. Rebecca Long-Bailey, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, took the opportunity to layout Labour’s approach to their proposed ‘green transformation’. Long-Bailey announced a national call for evidence on how a zero-carbon future could work best for the UK’s towns and cities.

It would be easy to quickly adopt a headline-grabbing suite of climate policies which herald the severity of the climate emergency, but fall down on the details. Labour recognises the need to bring every community along by engaging them on developing radical plans for their own future.

Imprecise policies

In contrast, the Scottish Green Party are currently proposing a Climate Emergency Bill for the Scottish Parliament.

This language invokes the urgency and alarmism of climate fear, but contains relatively unambitious targets and false solutions. It only proposes net-zero emissions by 2040. Net-zero is based on non-existent technologies and probable land grabs.

Our aim in the Global North should be full decarbonisation by 2030. The Climate Emergency Bill offers a suite of imprecise policies contributing to decarbonisation, but together they are insufficiently transformative to sufficiently rewire the economy.

Wallace-Well points to the rise of Extinction Rebellion (XR) as an example of the success of alarmism and climate fear. Indeed, XR has successfully mobilised large numbers and frustrated traffic in parts of London with demands including “tell the truth” and for the declaration of climate emergency. However, their panic-organising has little strategy or demands beyond advanced awareness raising.

XR’s more tangible demand for a Citizens’ Assembly to decide and oversee exactly what to do illustrates how few answers they have. This political vacuity gives rise to rhetorically powerful but substantively weak proposals like the Scottish Greens’.

Sustainable future

Instead, our response must be to put forward an unashamedly political program to fully decarbonise and transform the global political economy so that it works for the many, not the few.

Kate Aronoff’s case for the Green New Deal paints a hopeful picture of what life could be like for the next generation.

Our message to students striking for climate can be that together we will build a luxurious future of universal public services like free education and health care; cheap, highly connected public transit; green jobs for all; and participatory democratic control of our economic and political lives – all ecologically underwritten by full decarbonisation.

Now is not the time to panic. It is not productive to induce climate fear to provoke a movement demanding governments hurriedly do something.

The climate movement and progressive parties must take responsibility to listen to and interpret the hopes, fears and ideas of people across generations, industries, cultures and communities about climate and wider social injustices. We can reconstruct those feelings into a coherent articulation of a future that inspires hope and optimism.

Although the clock is ticking, a prosperous and sustainable future is on the horizon. The urgency of the climate crisis gives us the opportunity to build it together.

This Author

Chris Satmarsh is co-director of cimate change campaigns at People & Planet. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

There is a rather large elephant in the newsroom:

Reporter 1: “Where did you say you’re flying to tomorrow?  

Reporter 2: “I’ve got a freebie to Morocco to write a travel feature. I just need to finish writing this climate change report first though.”

Isn’t this a bit awkward? Newspapers and many magazines write endlessly about a need for everyone else to take urgent action on climate change and behave differently, whilst simultaneously promoting and profiting from flying.

Travel promotion takes up a vast space in the media, whilst the income from flight advertising pays a significant portion of many journalists’ salaries.

Media influence

Not only are journalists enjoying personal gain from promoting a fossil fuel-dependent industry, they are widely influencing the holiday decisions of the general public – more precisely, a combined newspaper print circulation of around nine million people and a further 27 million daily readers on the top four news sites, which include Mail Online, Metro, Reach and The Sun. Readers of the regional press and magazines add a few more million British people being influenced by air travel advertising in the media.

Each plane passenger is likely to double, triple or even quadruple their household carbon footprint every time they fly, according to figures released by campaign group Flight Free 2019.

Calculations by the National Energy Foundation Carbon Calculator show that an average family of four’s annual CO2 emissions for domestic gas and electricity would be about 3 tonnes. However one single flight from London to Cairo adds on another 4.5 tonnes. If they fly to Florida they will burn 16 tonnes; to Sydney another 21 tonnes of CO2. 

On average, this one decision will single-handedly put an individual’s carbon footprint beyond what is environmentally acceptable if we are to have any chance of reducing global warming to levels advised by the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change.

Each of us needs to take an urgent look at our personal and professional lives to see how we can adopt lifestyles that reduce the rapidly accelerating climate crisis. As I work as a freelance journalist, for me that means I would like to open a conversation with the UK media about their role in continuing to promote and profit from lifestyles that are creating harmful climate change.

Funding crisis

I have recently written to all the national newspapers, questioning the sustainability of policies that promote air travel. 

One Danish newspaper has just led the way in ending the promotion of air travel.

By contrast, a large number of UK national and local media organisations and journalists remain inextricably implicated in this issue, because a sizeable – but fast shrinking – source of their funding comes from advertising.

Newspapers have been sinking in a mire of downward-spiralling profit and readership over the past two decades. They may struggle to sustain themselves financially without making a profit from the advertising income that partly-pays their salaries and promotes the destruction of our planet. 

The press funding crisis was highlighted in a Government report in 2018 by Mediatique, which revealed overwhelming losses in press jobs, advertising income and circulation over the past decade.

The report warned it saw “little hope that a charitable, community or franchise system could safeguard the cost of newspaper publishing.” In their place we risk an increase in online competition from cheaper, poorer quality and questionable news sources, including climate change-denial and other vested-interest lobby groups. 

Carbon footprint

Good journalism matters, and a financially sustainable but also environmentally sustainable free press is vital.

Perhaps wider society needs to support a new, independent funding model to support a good quality free press to do their job without going cap in hand to environmentally destructive industries for support.

The average carbon footprint for a British person is around 15 tonnes per year, but this figure varies slightly depending on which calculation you use. 

My personal annual carbon footprint is less than six tonnes/pa, just half the UK average, largely and most fundamentally because I do not fly; but also because we have switched to green energy at home, I don’t buy excessive amounts of ‘stuff’, I don’t waste food, I have reduced the amount of meat our family eats, I choose plastic-free whenever I can, I follow the idea of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’, I walk whenever I can, and I car-share whenever I can. 

However, to live sustainably and to meet the IPCC and Paris Agreement stated levels of carbon reduction targets, we need to further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to meet the global average target of three tonnes per person of CO2 emissions, per year.

Your footprint

Here are some carbon footprint calculators: 

WWF

Resurgence

CarbonFootprint

Carbon Trust

This Author 

Alex Morss is a freelance writer, author and ecologist. www.alexmorss.co.uk  @morss_alex