Around half the millions of birds shot during the new pheasant shooting season – which opens on today – will never make it to a ‘game’ dealer, according to independent research.

According to the Savills ‘Shoot Benchmarking Survey 2017/18’, on average only 48 percent of the birds shot will be taken by game dealers.

With the number of pheasants being bred to be killed estimated as at least 27 million each year – though potentially much higher – the number of birds killed ‘purely for fun’ is at an alarming level.

Chris Luffingham, director of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “Shooting estates are churning out millions of factory-farmed pheasants and partridges into the British countryside, only for the birds to be gunned down and thrown in the incinerator, buried or fly-tipped by the roadside.

Falling prices

“Even if you’re happy to have pheasant for dinner, there can be no justification for this massive waste of life – all in the name of ‘sport’.”

The report also points out that prices received for ‘game’ birds have fallen by 50–60 percent over the last six years, and fell 35–38 percent between the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.

The report states: “The market situation also meant not all shoots were able to sell their shot game, last season 46 percent were supplying their game dealer free of charge and 12 percent were paying the game dealer to collect them. There was some variation but typically payments were 20–30p per bird.”

The shooting industry has set up the British Game Alliance, in an attempt to get more people to eat ‘game’ meat. But Countryside Alliance polling showed that 85 percent of people had never bought pheasant or partridge to eat at home – in spite of the meat being regularly available.

Incinerated, buried

Pressure on shooting has continued to increase. Last week, pheasant shooting was banned on public land in Wales. Meanwhile, polling during the summer by the League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid showed that nearly seven out of ten people (69 percent) in Great Britain want ‘game’ bird shooting made illegal.

Luffingham added: “You can’t shoot millions and millions of pheasants then claim it’s one for the pot, when it’s blindingly obvious that most people in this country don’t put pheasant in their pot.

The shooting industry is out of control. It’s purely about money – breed as many targets as they can then let the punters blast them to bits. Any claim that this industry cares about the birds it raises is patently nonsense.”

In recent months senior industry figures have publicly slated “greedy” shoots following game birds being incinerated, buried in pits and fly-tipped after being gunned down for ‘sport’.

Public opposition

Pheasants and partridges are routinely confined to barren, wire-floored battery cages on game bird breeding farms across the UK and France, undercover investigations by the League show.

The birds are not the only animals to suffer, as hundreds of thousands of other animals and birds are trapped, snared and killed to ‘protect’ the pheasants and partridges which will then be shot.

Luffingham concluded: “For many years the extreme cruelty and environmental damage inflicted by the ‘game’ bird shooting industry has gone on unabated, despite clear warnings and unprecedented public opposition.

“It is clear the game bird shooting industry is rotten to the core and a ban must be introduced. The public expect nothing less.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

The world is taking less than three percent of the action needed to stop the global extinction crisis, Zac Goldsmith MP said today.

The former editor of The Ecologist was speaking ahead of a Seahorse Environmental Communications fringe event at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham today. 

“If we need a hundred units of action we’re probably seeing two or three units at the moment. But as it happens a big chunk of those two or three units are emanating from the United Kingdom,” he said.

Nature for humans

However, Mr Goldsmith said Britain is lagging behind in the amount the country spends on biodiversity. The Government should allocate part of Britain’s foreign aid budget to protecting global nature, he argued. 

“The easiest and most effective tool at our disposal in this country is our aid budget – £14.5 billion and growing every year. We need to see a significant chunk of that money spent on restoring, repairing and protecting ecosystems and nature.”

The MP was speaking alongside Joanna Elliott, the senior director of conservation partnerships at Fauna & Flora International. “There is enough space out there for animals and people to coexist. So it must be nature for humans and humans for nature,” she said.

Peter Hall, director of International Rhino Foundation and a Conservative party donor, argued Brexit represents a “wonderful” opportunity to boost investment in global nature.

Supporting communities

“Britain sends £1.5 billion to the European Union as part of its Official Development Assistance spend. Let’s get that £1.5 billion and apply it to nature,” he added.

A member of the audience at the fringe event representing Oxfam reminded the delegates that the aid budget was essential in supporting life saving disaster work, and also supporting communities suffering from conflict, corruption and dire poverty.

Tony Juniper, the environmental campaigner Tweeted after the event: “Excellent fringe meeting hosted by @ZacGoldsmith on UK environmental leadership @wwf_uk’s @MBarrettwwfuk sets out three parts to leading: 1. Restore our own wildlife 2. Cut our global footprint 3. Use our aid programme to achieve environment goals at same time as cutting poverty.”

According to the Fullfact charity: “About 15 percent [of the aid budget] goes as humanitarian aid, or crisis relief, with the rest focused on strategic or long-term goals.

The side adds that “36 percent of the money goes via multilateral organisations, like the United Nations. The other 64 percent goes to programmes in specific countries as bilateral aid.

“The five biggest recipients of bilateral aid are Pakistan, Syria, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Afghanistan. When it comes to continents, significantly more gets spent in Africa (51 percent) and Asia (42 percent) than anywhere else.”

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.

Around half the millions of birds shot during the new pheasant shooting season – which opens on today – will never make it to a ‘game’ dealer, according to independent research.

According to the Savills ‘Shoot Benchmarking Survey 2017/18’, on average only 48 percent of the birds shot will be taken by game dealers.

With the number of pheasants being bred to be killed estimated as at least 27 million each year – though potentially much higher – the number of birds killed ‘purely for fun’ is at an alarming level.

Chris Luffingham, director of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “Shooting estates are churning out millions of factory-farmed pheasants and partridges into the British countryside, only for the birds to be gunned down and thrown in the incinerator, buried or fly-tipped by the roadside.

Falling prices

“Even if you’re happy to have pheasant for dinner, there can be no justification for this massive waste of life – all in the name of ‘sport’.”

The report also points out that prices received for ‘game’ birds have fallen by 50–60 percent over the last six years, and fell 35–38 percent between the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.

The report states: “The market situation also meant not all shoots were able to sell their shot game, last season 46 percent were supplying their game dealer free of charge and 12 percent were paying the game dealer to collect them. There was some variation but typically payments were 20–30p per bird.”

The shooting industry has set up the British Game Alliance, in an attempt to get more people to eat ‘game’ meat. But Countryside Alliance polling showed that 85 percent of people had never bought pheasant or partridge to eat at home – in spite of the meat being regularly available.

Incinerated, buried

Pressure on shooting has continued to increase. Last week, pheasant shooting was banned on public land in Wales. Meanwhile, polling during the summer by the League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid showed that nearly seven out of ten people (69 percent) in Great Britain want ‘game’ bird shooting made illegal.

Luffingham added: “You can’t shoot millions and millions of pheasants then claim it’s one for the pot, when it’s blindingly obvious that most people in this country don’t put pheasant in their pot.

The shooting industry is out of control. It’s purely about money – breed as many targets as they can then let the punters blast them to bits. Any claim that this industry cares about the birds it raises is patently nonsense.”

In recent months senior industry figures have publicly slated “greedy” shoots following game birds being incinerated, buried in pits and fly-tipped after being gunned down for ‘sport’.

Public opposition

Pheasants and partridges are routinely confined to barren, wire-floored battery cages on game bird breeding farms across the UK and France, undercover investigations by the League show.

The birds are not the only animals to suffer, as hundreds of thousands of other animals and birds are trapped, snared and killed to ‘protect’ the pheasants and partridges which will then be shot.

Luffingham concluded: “For many years the extreme cruelty and environmental damage inflicted by the ‘game’ bird shooting industry has gone on unabated, despite clear warnings and unprecedented public opposition.

“It is clear the game bird shooting industry is rotten to the core and a ban must be introduced. The public expect nothing less.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

The stunningly biodiverse Ryukyuan island chain has been garnering international headlines for its local protests, election manoeuvrings, and the planned relocation of the US Futenma military base to Oura Bay, Okinawa.

Local resentments are mounting against forty pre-existing military bases and the ecological destruction they have caused, but these local voices have not been represented in global conversations. 

Prior to annexation by Japan, Okinawa was an independent kingdom. It is home to indigenous people whose traditions have kept the area’s interconnected ecosystems in balance. But construction is endangering Okinawa’s aquatic and terrestrial environments. 

Endangering species

The Oura Bay alone is home to 262 endangered species. The military facility plans to dump 21 million metric tons of sand and soil mixed with the alien invasive Argentine ant and Red-back spider into its waters. 

In this distinctive natural environment, 26 newly discovered endemic species have been found since 2006.

These islands are home to the Sekisei Lagoonresides, Japan’s largest – and dying – coral reef. Corals currently on Japan’s ‘red list’ – Okinawensis veron and Sargassum carpophyllum – could be crushed by the construction works. It is a sad irony this would occur in our International Year of the Reef, 2018.

The area’s seagrass is the last northern feeing ground for the critically endangered dugong and it will be buried. This revered marine mammal is part of Okinawa’s creation story, held-up as a Japanese National Monument and protected by the US Historic Preservation Act. It will face extinction if further construction goes through.

Regular local protests and prefectural efforts such as the ‘Okinawa’s treasure, World’s treasure: Let’s Pass it on to the Future’ symposium have tried to demonstrate the disastrous ecological consequences of this project. 

The past governor, alongside the Centre for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice, recently lost the court battle against the US Department of Defence. The department claimed that the construction has “taken into account” the relevant issues, and that the Japanese government had fulfilled its obligations surveying the situation. 

Deforestation and contamination

Sea turtles will lose their egg-laying grounds and the temporary offshore yards will disturb marine animals. The large base – approx. 1,800m in length – will rest on an extremely fragile seabed that is vulnerable to earthquakes. 

As a possible solution, François Simard, a Deputy Director of the IUCN, called for declaring the bay a protected marine area in accordance with the Aichi Biodiversity Target 11. However, the protection of an area to prevent military expansion has not worked well on these islands in the past.

The Yanbaru forest, which is a rare and rich subtropical evergreen forest with 11 endemic species, was slated to be put on the UNESCO World Natural Heritage list for its’ biological uniqueness. Yet, it hosts the US Jungle Training Warfare area. An expansion of this site in 2016 introduced six helipads for the upgraded MV 22 Ospreys, and lead to the felling of 24,000 trees and to the disturbance of endangered species such as the Okinawa rail.

Since 1998, there have been over 415 incidents of toxic spills and dumping from the military facilities. Polluted matter has flowed into rivers and embedded itself into the ecosystem. It’s horrific to imagine this occurring yet again, especially amidst seeming efforts to house nuclear weapons in the the Oura Bay.

Extreme contamination 

The investigative journalist Jon Mitchell and the Okinawan organization, Informed Public Project, have found sewage and diesel leaking into rivers that provide drinking water at levels that far exceed maximum EPA recommendations. 

This level of exposure poses severe threats to wildlife. Near one base, mongoose and habu snakes were found to have respectively high levels of PCBs and DDTs, an internationally banned chemical. DDT is a poisonous insecticide that magnifies through the food chain.  

Local populations live in fear of these high levels of contamination, particularly because fish make up a large part of their diet. 

Added to this, it was uncovered in 1996 that US aircrafts were test-firing over 1,500 depleted urranium shells near an important fishing ground in Torishima. 

In 2015, the Pentagon’s release of US Marine Corps’ documents from the 1970s revealed “large fish kills” in the waters near Camp Kinser. Inspections demonstrated a high concentration hazardous compounds in the sea.

No accountability 

Shinako Oyakawa, co-founder of the ASCILs, an anti-base group advocating for Okinawa’s self-determination and sustainable indigenous environmental practices, said: “To tell the truth we don’t know how much contamination we are facing from the past, the present and even into the future.”

This opacity around the exact amount of contamination is due to the level of secrecy around US military practices abroad, and the current US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement which prohibits the inspection of bases and removes accountability for its’ environmental mismanagement.

Now that the anti-base Governor Takashi Denny has won the prefectural elections, the central government is planning to bring the prefecture to court. 

However, in this international dialogue on the matter, it is fundamental that these issues aren’t only approached from political angles. We need a strong framework for environmental protection, itself an important – though neglected – aspect of ensuring our future security. 

This Author 

Temo Dias is a journalist and researcher in East Asian political affairs, environmental issues and governmental corruption. 

For the first time anti-fracking protectors have been jailed in the UK. This is no fleeting, symbolic sentence. Three friends and comrades to so many in the climate movement have been denied up to 16 months of their freedom.

All for sitting on top of lorries outside Cuadrilla’s Lancashire site where they are attempting to frack for shale gas for the first time in the UK.

Unusually they were charged with public nuisance while the majority of the 300 anti-frackers arrested at Preston New Road (PNR) have been charged with obstruction of the highway. With public nuisance comes the possibility of jail time at the whim of a judge.

Disrupting Cuadrilla

It seems clear that in this instance our imprisoned comrades were made an example of by the forces of our criminal (in)justice system to deter future disruption to Cuadrilla as they move rapidly closer to actually beginning to frack.

Indeed, the action of our imprisoned friends was no mere protest. We do not passively request the Government or Cuadrilla suddenly change their minds. Its too late for that. Our strategy is to frustrate and disrupt Cuadrilla to stop fracking ourselves.

This strategy – sitting happily alongside the movement building, lobbying and litigation of other organisations – is necessary because the UK’s regimen of environmental regulation and democratic processes have failed to stop this egregious imposition of extraction by fossil capital on a Lancashire community that loudly repeats again and again its firm stance against fracking: “WE SAID NO!”

The state has taken political prisoners of the anti-fracking movement because we are winning. Our strategy had successfully frustrated Cuadrilla’s efforts to frack for the first time and lay the groundwork for a UK fracking industry.

For the state so intimately bound up with fossil capital and private finance which stand to profit so much from a new domestic gas industry, deploying its capacity to withdraw individuals’ freedom and terrorise a grassroots movement is common sense when it comes to defending private profit.

Neoliberalism

I am one of the 300 anti-frackers arrested and charged as part of the state’s offensive against our peaceful democratic movement. I can say from experience that police conduct has been consistently violent and the (in)justice system punitive.

Many of us have been assaulted, beaten and taunted by sneering cops who use trade union legislation to collect our data during arrest, while the courts charge us with obstruction of the highway for actions where traffic has been allowed to continue to speed by or where the police have themselves closed the road.

In many ways the story of fracking in the UK is archetypal of our decaying neoliberal regime. Using plucky start-ups like Cuadrilla and Third Energy (backed by venture capital) to pave the way for a new frontier of accumulation, corporate giants like Shell and BP wait in the wings to descend on and rapidly expand the market when the time is right.

This model’s reliance on financial capital is no clearer than the ownership of Third Energy – seeking to frack in North Yorkshire – by Barclays. The bank pledged in 2017 to sell the company but still haven’t. Regardless, the rogue profiteers of British stand to gain as much as the fossil fuel industry as they provide support for this new industry.

Indeed, it is only fossil capital, finance and their representatives in the Tory party that stand to benefit from a UK fracking industry. For them, their need to maximise the value they realise of the UK’s untapped gas reserves trumps any concerns by local people of what fracking will do to their communities. Let alone the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground to avoid climate chaos.

(In)justice system

Local democracy was trampled on by central Government in defence of the interests of capital. The police repress peaceful disruption at the site. The courts inflict significant costs on protectors and have begun to take their prisoners.

These various factions of the state operate as a very well oiled machine protecting the fledgling fracking industry. This is definitive neoliberalism: ideological appeals to the total sovereignty of the free market, rolling back the state’s protections for the many; while in practice there is a total reliance on unregulated finance and repressive state power to protect and create markets for capital as it fails to viably expand its sphere of accumulation by its own stated logic.

Of course the Tory Government has actively supported a UK fracking industry. But the imprisonment of three anti-frackers underlines the deep relationship between the state and finance and fossil capital. Who has the keys to the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy alone does little to determine the culture of our criminal (in)justice system.

When Labour goes into Government, they will ban fracking. But a much harder challenge eco-socialists in this country must prepare for is restraining the deeply embedded commitment to protect capital’s interests held by the state’s many agencies.

Too far

As Labour prepares to repeal decades of anti-trade union law, the base of the labour movement and social movements must prepare to unleash unprecedented backlash against British capital through industrial and direct action.

For this to be successful and not repressed, finance must serve the transformative program of a government led by the many. The (in)justice system can no longer defend finance’s dispossession of communities globally. It must be made turn its attention holding it to account.

In the anti-fracking movement we give great care to the welfare of our comrades, from those taking disruptive action to the communities we act in solidarity with.

The state has demonstrated a total disregard for the welfare of protectors defending their community and the climate. They’ve gone too far this time. This may have been a move to silence us. In due course, they will understand they just made us more resolved than we ever thought possible to stop fracking as the first step of irreversibly transforming our society and economy.

This author

Chris Saltmarsh is co-rirector of climate change campaigns at People & Planet. He is active in the anti-fracking movement as a member of Reclaim the Power Oxford. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

Around half the millions of birds shot during the new pheasant shooting season – which opens on today – will never make it to a ‘game’ dealer, according to independent research.

According to the Savills ‘Shoot Benchmarking Survey 2017/18’, on average only 48 percent of the birds shot will be taken by game dealers.

With the number of pheasants being bred to be killed estimated as at least 27 million each year – though potentially much higher – the number of birds killed ‘purely for fun’ is at an alarming level.

Chris Luffingham, director of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “Shooting estates are churning out millions of factory-farmed pheasants and partridges into the British countryside, only for the birds to be gunned down and thrown in the incinerator, buried or fly-tipped by the roadside.

Falling prices

“Even if you’re happy to have pheasant for dinner, there can be no justification for this massive waste of life – all in the name of ‘sport’.”

The report also points out that prices received for ‘game’ birds have fallen by 50–60 percent over the last six years, and fell 35–38 percent between the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.

The report states: “The market situation also meant not all shoots were able to sell their shot game, last season 46 percent were supplying their game dealer free of charge and 12 percent were paying the game dealer to collect them. There was some variation but typically payments were 20–30p per bird.”

The shooting industry has set up the British Game Alliance, in an attempt to get more people to eat ‘game’ meat. But Countryside Alliance polling showed that 85 percent of people had never bought pheasant or partridge to eat at home – in spite of the meat being regularly available.

Incinerated, buried

Pressure on shooting has continued to increase. Last week, pheasant shooting was banned on public land in Wales. Meanwhile, polling during the summer by the League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid showed that nearly seven out of ten people (69 percent) in Great Britain want ‘game’ bird shooting made illegal.

Luffingham added: “You can’t shoot millions and millions of pheasants then claim it’s one for the pot, when it’s blindingly obvious that most people in this country don’t put pheasant in their pot.

The shooting industry is out of control. It’s purely about money – breed as many targets as they can then let the punters blast them to bits. Any claim that this industry cares about the birds it raises is patently nonsense.”

In recent months senior industry figures have publicly slated “greedy” shoots following game birds being incinerated, buried in pits and fly-tipped after being gunned down for ‘sport’.

Public opposition

Pheasants and partridges are routinely confined to barren, wire-floored battery cages on game bird breeding farms across the UK and France, undercover investigations by the League show.

The birds are not the only animals to suffer, as hundreds of thousands of other animals and birds are trapped, snared and killed to ‘protect’ the pheasants and partridges which will then be shot.

Luffingham concluded: “For many years the extreme cruelty and environmental damage inflicted by the ‘game’ bird shooting industry has gone on unabated, despite clear warnings and unprecedented public opposition.

“It is clear the game bird shooting industry is rotten to the core and a ban must be introduced. The public expect nothing less.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

Around half the millions of birds shot during the new pheasant shooting season – which opens on today – will never make it to a ‘game’ dealer, according to independent research.

According to the Savills ‘Shoot Benchmarking Survey 2017/18’, on average only 48 percent of the birds shot will be taken by game dealers.

With the number of pheasants being bred to be killed estimated as at least 27 million each year – though potentially much higher – the number of birds killed ‘purely for fun’ is at an alarming level.

Chris Luffingham, director of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “Shooting estates are churning out millions of factory-farmed pheasants and partridges into the British countryside, only for the birds to be gunned down and thrown in the incinerator, buried or fly-tipped by the roadside.

Falling prices

“Even if you’re happy to have pheasant for dinner, there can be no justification for this massive waste of life – all in the name of ‘sport’.”

The report also points out that prices received for ‘game’ birds have fallen by 50–60 percent over the last six years, and fell 35–38 percent between the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.

The report states: “The market situation also meant not all shoots were able to sell their shot game, last season 46 percent were supplying their game dealer free of charge and 12 percent were paying the game dealer to collect them. There was some variation but typically payments were 20–30p per bird.”

The shooting industry has set up the British Game Alliance, in an attempt to get more people to eat ‘game’ meat. But Countryside Alliance polling showed that 85 percent of people had never bought pheasant or partridge to eat at home – in spite of the meat being regularly available.

Incinerated, buried

Pressure on shooting has continued to increase. Last week, pheasant shooting was banned on public land in Wales. Meanwhile, polling during the summer by the League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid showed that nearly seven out of ten people (69 percent) in Great Britain want ‘game’ bird shooting made illegal.

Luffingham added: “You can’t shoot millions and millions of pheasants then claim it’s one for the pot, when it’s blindingly obvious that most people in this country don’t put pheasant in their pot.

The shooting industry is out of control. It’s purely about money – breed as many targets as they can then let the punters blast them to bits. Any claim that this industry cares about the birds it raises is patently nonsense.”

In recent months senior industry figures have publicly slated “greedy” shoots following game birds being incinerated, buried in pits and fly-tipped after being gunned down for ‘sport’.

Public opposition

Pheasants and partridges are routinely confined to barren, wire-floored battery cages on game bird breeding farms across the UK and France, undercover investigations by the League show.

The birds are not the only animals to suffer, as hundreds of thousands of other animals and birds are trapped, snared and killed to ‘protect’ the pheasants and partridges which will then be shot.

Luffingham concluded: “For many years the extreme cruelty and environmental damage inflicted by the ‘game’ bird shooting industry has gone on unabated, despite clear warnings and unprecedented public opposition.

“It is clear the game bird shooting industry is rotten to the core and a ban must be introduced. The public expect nothing less.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

The stunningly biodiverse Ryukyuan island chain has been garnering international headlines for its local protests, election manoeuvrings, and the planned relocation of the US Futenma military base to Oura Bay, Okinawa.

Local resentments are mounting against forty pre-existing military bases and the ecological destruction they have caused, but these local voices have not been represented in global conversations. 

Prior to annexation by Japan, Okinawa was an independent kingdom. It is home to indigenous people whose traditions have kept the area’s interconnected ecosystems in balance. But construction is endangering Okinawa’s aquatic and terrestrial environments. 

Endangering species

The Oura Bay alone is home to 262 endangered species. The military facility plans to dump 21 million metric tons of sand and soil mixed with the alien invasive Argentine ant and Red-back spider into its waters. 

In this distinctive natural environment, 26 newly discovered endemic species have been found since 2006.

These islands are home to the Sekisei Lagoonresides, Japan’s largest – and dying – coral reef. Corals currently on Japan’s ‘red list’ – Okinawensis veron and Sargassum carpophyllum – could be crushed by the construction works. It is a sad irony this would occur in our International Year of the Reef, 2018.

The area’s seagrass is the last northern feeing ground for the critically endangered dugong and it will be buried. This revered marine mammal is part of Okinawa’s creation story, held-up as a Japanese National Monument and protected by the US Historic Preservation Act. It will face extinction if further construction goes through.

Regular local protests and prefectural efforts such as the ‘Okinawa’s treasure, World’s treasure: Let’s Pass it on to the Future’ symposium have tried to demonstrate the disastrous ecological consequences of this project. 

The past governor, alongside the Centre for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice, recently lost the court battle against the US Department of Defence. The department claimed that the construction has “taken into account” the relevant issues, and that the Japanese government had fulfilled its obligations surveying the situation. 

Deforestation and contamination

Sea turtles will lose their egg-laying grounds and the temporary offshore yards will disturb marine animals. The large base – approx. 1,800m in length – will rest on an extremely fragile seabed that is vulnerable to earthquakes. 

As a possible solution, François Simard, a Deputy Director of the IUCN, called for declaring the bay a protected marine area in accordance with the Aichi Biodiversity Target 11. However, the protection of an area to prevent military expansion has not worked well on these islands in the past.

The Yanbaru forest, which is a rare and rich subtropical evergreen forest with 11 endemic species, was slated to be put on the UNESCO World Natural Heritage list for its’ biological uniqueness. Yet, it hosts the US Jungle Training Warfare area. An expansion of this site in 2016 introduced six helipads for the upgraded MV 22 Ospreys, and lead to the felling of 24,000 trees and to the disturbance of endangered species such as the Okinawa rail.

Since 1998, there have been over 415 incidents of toxic spills and dumping from the military facilities. Polluted matter has flowed into rivers and embedded itself into the ecosystem. It’s horrific to imagine this occurring yet again, especially amidst seeming efforts to house nuclear weapons in the the Oura Bay.

Extreme contamination 

The investigative journalist Jon Mitchell and the Okinawan organization, Informed Public Project, have found sewage and diesel leaking into rivers that provide drinking water at levels that far exceed maximum EPA recommendations. 

This level of exposure poses severe threats to wildlife. Near one base, mongoose and habu snakes were found to have respectively high levels of PCBs and DDTs, an internationally banned chemical. DDT is a poisonous insecticide that magnifies through the food chain.  

Local populations live in fear of these high levels of contamination, particularly because fish make up a large part of their diet. 

Added to this, it was uncovered in 1996 that US aircrafts were test-firing over 1,500 depleted urranium shells near an important fishing ground in Torishima. 

In 2015, the Pentagon’s release of US Marine Corps’ documents from the 1970s revealed “large fish kills” in the waters near Camp Kinser. Inspections demonstrated a high concentration hazardous compounds in the sea.

No accountability 

Shinako Oyakawa, co-founder of the ASCILs, an anti-base group advocating for Okinawa’s self-determination and sustainable indigenous environmental practices, said: “To tell the truth we don’t know how much contamination we are facing from the past, the present and even into the future.”

This opacity around the exact amount of contamination is due to the level of secrecy around US military practices abroad, and the current US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement which prohibits the inspection of bases and removes accountability for its’ environmental mismanagement.

Now that the anti-base Governor Takashi Denny has won the prefectural elections, the central government is planning to bring the prefecture to court. 

However, in this international dialogue on the matter, it is fundamental that these issues aren’t only approached from political angles. We need a strong framework for environmental protection, itself an important – though neglected – aspect of ensuring our future security. 

This Author 

Temo Dias is a journalist and researcher in East Asian political affairs, environmental issues and governmental corruption. 

For the first time anti-fracking protectors have been jailed in the UK. This is no fleeting, symbolic sentence. Three friends and comrades to so many in the climate movement have been denied up to 16 months of their freedom.

All for sitting on top of lorries outside Cuadrilla’s Lancashire site where they are attempting to frack for shale gas for the first time in the UK.

Unusually they were charged with public nuisance while the majority of the 300 anti-frackers arrested at Preston New Road (PNR) have been charged with obstruction of the highway. With public nuisance comes the possibility of jail time at the whim of a judge.

Disrupting Cuadrilla

It seems clear that in this instance our imprisoned comrades were made an example of by the forces of our criminal (in)justice system to deter future disruption to Cuadrilla as they move rapidly closer to actually beginning to frack.

Indeed, the action of our imprisoned friends was no mere protest. We do not passively request the Government or Cuadrilla suddenly change their minds. Its too late for that. Our strategy is to frustrate and disrupt Cuadrilla to stop fracking ourselves.

This strategy – sitting happily alongside the movement building, lobbying and litigation of other organisations – is necessary because the UK’s regimen of environmental regulation and democratic processes have failed to stop this egregious imposition of extraction by fossil capital on a Lancashire community that loudly repeats again and again its firm stance against fracking: “WE SAID NO!”

The state has taken political prisoners of the anti-fracking movement because we are winning. Our strategy had successfully frustrated Cuadrilla’s efforts to frack for the first time and lay the groundwork for a UK fracking industry.

For the state so intimately bound up with fossil capital and private finance which stand to profit so much from a new domestic gas industry, deploying its capacity to withdraw individuals’ freedom and terrorise a grassroots movement is common sense when it comes to defending private profit.

Neoliberalism

I am one of the 300 anti-frackers arrested and charged as part of the state’s offensive against our peaceful democratic movement. I can say from experience that police conduct has been consistently violent and the (in)justice system punitive.

Many of us have been assaulted, beaten and taunted by sneering cops who use trade union legislation to collect our data during arrest, while the courts charge us with obstruction of the highway for actions where traffic has been allowed to continue to speed by or where the police have themselves closed the road.

In many ways the story of fracking in the UK is archetypal of our decaying neoliberal regime. Using plucky start-ups like Cuadrilla and Third Energy (backed by venture capital) to pave the way for a new frontier of accumulation, corporate giants like Shell and BP wait in the wings to descend on and rapidly expand the market when the time is right.

This model’s reliance on financial capital is no clearer than the ownership of Third Energy – seeking to frack in North Yorkshire – by Barclays. The bank pledged in 2017 to sell the company but still haven’t. Regardless, the rogue profiteers of British stand to gain as much as the fossil fuel industry as they provide support for this new industry.

Indeed, it is only fossil capital, finance and their representatives in the Tory party that stand to benefit from a UK fracking industry. For them, their need to maximise the value they realise of the UK’s untapped gas reserves trumps any concerns by local people of what fracking will do to their communities. Let alone the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground to avoid climate chaos.

(In)justice system

Local democracy was trampled on by central Government in defence of the interests of capital. The police repress peaceful disruption at the site. The courts inflict significant costs on protectors and have begun to take their prisoners.

These various factions of the state operate as a very well oiled machine protecting the fledgling fracking industry. This is definitive neoliberalism: ideological appeals to the total sovereignty of the free market, rolling back the state’s protections for the many; while in practice there is a total reliance on unregulated finance and repressive state power to protect and create markets for capital as it fails to viably expand its sphere of accumulation by its own stated logic.

Of course the Tory Government has actively supported a UK fracking industry. But the imprisonment of three anti-frackers underlines the deep relationship between the state and finance and fossil capital. Who has the keys to the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy alone does little to determine the culture of our criminal (in)justice system.

When Labour goes into Government, they will ban fracking. But a much harder challenge eco-socialists in this country must prepare for is restraining the deeply embedded commitment to protect capital’s interests held by the state’s many agencies.

Too far

As Labour prepares to repeal decades of anti-trade union law, the base of the labour movement and social movements must prepare to unleash unprecedented backlash against British capital through industrial and direct action.

For this to be successful and not repressed, finance must serve the transformative program of a government led by the many. The (in)justice system can no longer defend finance’s dispossession of communities globally. It must be made turn its attention holding it to account.

In the anti-fracking movement we give great care to the welfare of our comrades, from those taking disruptive action to the communities we act in solidarity with.

The state has demonstrated a total disregard for the welfare of protectors defending their community and the climate. They’ve gone too far this time. This may have been a move to silence us. In due course, they will understand they just made us more resolved than we ever thought possible to stop fracking as the first step of irreversibly transforming our society and economy.

This author

Chris Saltmarsh is co-rirector of climate change campaigns at People & Planet. He is active in the anti-fracking movement as a member of Reclaim the Power Oxford. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

In 1997, BP’s British boss, John Brown, stunned the world by endorsing the science of climate change and calling for government regulation to reduce carbon emissions. Exxon’s Lee Raymond however, was an entirely different beast: brash, bullish and brutal.

This real life J.R. Ewing came from working class stock all the way from the Great Plains and fought his way to the top of the oil giant Exxon.

Raymond lived in a 8,642-square-foot, five-bedroom brick-façade home in Dallas, had around-the-clock access to the Exxon fleet of nine corporate planes for personal and work trips, and enjoyed the protection of an armed bodyguard and chauffeur who was a former New York police officer.

‘Oil and gas purist’

According to Steve Coll, the author of the award-winning Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, Raymond ruled the company with a “drill sergeant-inspired ethos” and he “considered himself unabashedly to be a ‘free-market capitalist’ and resisted government intervention and regulation instinctively.”

Raymond was also an “oil and gas purist” and, in taking over the company, ended the brief flirtation with environmentalism that had taken place under the former chairman Clifton Garvin, who had installed solar panels to heat his home’s swimming pool.

“It seemed the worst thing an Exxon manager could be in Raymond’s eyes was dishonest, but the second-worst thing was to be stupid,” according to one senior colleague. “‘Stupid shits’ was one of the direct phrases by which he conveyed his judgements.”

Raymond simply believed that “the scientists on the other side are wrong”. This formed the core of his speech before the Fifteenth World Petroleum Congress hosted in Beijing by the People’s Republic of China in October 1997. This took place just six months after BP’s Browne declared his conversion to the climate cause.

Fossil fuel

The captain steering the Exxon ship, however, refused to see danger ahead and defiantly told the international delegates that climate change was not, in fact, taking place.

He used the speech to express his sincere concerns about the poorest in society and concerns that developing countries would be denied the opportunity to experience wealth and growth if they were not allowed to use fossil fuels unabatedly.

“Energy use and economic growth are inextricably linked,” he told the people of China. “The countries with the highest economic growth and the highest standards of living are also those with the highest energy use per capita. Today, most of that energy, both in Asia and the world as a whole comes from fossil fuels – about 85 percent.

“I know there are some people who argue that we should drastically curtail our use of fossil fuels for environmental reasons … my belief is that such proposals are neither prudent or practical … their use is essential both for economic growth and for the elimination of poverty, which is itself a worse polluter.”

Climate science

Much of the speech was dedicated to attacking the climate science as often holding up straw men such as apparent claims of certainty about the impacts of and threat from global warming.

Raymond relied on many of the attacks first set out by the climate deniers du jour, including Fred Singer, Patrick Michaelsand Richard Lindzen, along with other coal and oil-funded scientists. “Many people, politicians and public alike, believe that global warming is a rock-solid certainty, but it’s not,” he said.

He argued that changes in the climate were merely natural variability, that human-produced carbon makes only a small contribution to the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, and that climate models are “notoriously inaccurate”.

“The case for so called global warming is far from airtight,” he argued. “You might think that all this uncertainty would give political leaders pause. Unfortunately, it hasn’t.”

Free markets

The American business leader called on China to follow “the free market approach”. He said climate mitigation would inevitably involve taxation and regulation, and “all of us would suffer from these proposals … I hope the governments of this region will work with us to resist policies that could strangle economic growth”.

The speech drew to a close with a quote from the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu: “Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish – do not overdo it.”

The Beijing speech was perfectly timed to undermine the Clinton administration and its negotiating position at Kyoto. It also provided the hymn sheet for Exxon-funded sceptics to sing from during the next 20 years.

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. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.