Dr Fred Singer is the architect of one of the most controversial episodes in climate science, accused of using the infirmity of an old man to discredit his life’s work on climate change.

He attended the Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in New Orleans during February 1990  where Dr Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was speaking.

Revelle helped to establish that carbon levels in the atmosphere were steadily rising and also taught science to a young Al Gore in the 1960s. As Revelle wrote in 1992: “There is a good but by no means certain chance that the world’s average climate will become significantly warmer during the next century.”

Singer approached him off the back of this statement, asking if the two men could collaborate on an article for The Washington Post.

Conned at death

That night Revelle suffered a heart attack and was rushed from the airport to a local hospital for a triple-bypass, and was not discharged until May that year.

Singer nevertheless continued to press the scientist to work on a journal article. “Whenever Singer sent him a draft, Revelle buried it under piles of paper on his desk. When Singer called, [Revelle’s secretary] would dig up the draft and put it on the top, and Revelle would bury it again,”  records American historian of Science at the University of Harvard professor, Naomi Oreskes, in her account of the episode.

“Some people don’t think Fred Singer is a very good scientist,” Revelle told his secretary.

Later that year Singer published his article, with Revelle named as second author, in the journal Cosmos. It stated boldly: “The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.”

The words were copied and pasted from an earlier article published by Singer – and directly contradicted Revelle’s own publicly stated views.

Revelle died of a heart attack the following July. Family members, friends and students all claimed that Singer had pressured or tricked the dying scientist into signing off a journal article which presented an argument opposed to his own.

Silencing the critics

His student, Justin Lancaster, said in a written statement to a Harvard memorial symposium in memory of the late scientist: “Revelle did not write the Cosmos article and was reluctant to join it. Pressured rather unfairly at a very weak moment while recovering from heart surgery,Revelle finally gave in to the lead author.”

Not happy with these criticisms, Singer issued a ‘SLAPP’ lawsuit designed to silence and intimidate opponents. Lancaster was forced to issue a retraction or face an expensive and lengthy court trial.

While Lancaster has since recanted the retraction the damage remains, Singer successfully silenced the truth as he continued to wage a war against climate science.

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.

In April 2017, The Ecologist published concerns about the violation of an environmental buffer zone by the mining group Rio Tinto’s subsidiary, QIT Minerals Madagascar (QMM). 

Recent studies undertaken by Rio Tinto (RT) and independently by Dr Steven Emerman, the hydrology and mining expert for The Andrew Lees Trust and an author of this article, confirm that QMM’s mine activity on the Mandena site has extended well beyond legal permissions and encroached onto the lake bed where people fish, collect reeds and other water products.

The Andrew Lees Trust reports are available in French and English.

After three months, Rio Tinto has failed to produce an official statement about the buffer violation, or answer related questions raised by The Andrew Lees Trust.

Sensitive environment 

QMM is mining ilmenite, an industrial whitener, from coastal sands of southern Madagascar.

Situated alongside an estuary along the southeast coastline, the mine is operating in a sensitive environment with highly variable weather conditions, including cyclones and seasonal flooding, and a volatile water table.

The extraction of ilmenite leaves behind ponds of water and tailings enriched with radioactive substances (radionuclides). There are concerns that radionuclide-enriched water from the mine tailings will flow into the estuary by flooding or seepage. 

Malagasy law requires an 80-metre buffer zone between any investment activity – such as mining – and sensitive areas such as lagoons, marshy areas and wetlands, so as not to disturb the ecological balance. This means an 80-metre area should be left between the lake edge and the mine activity.

QMM claims it was unaware of the national 80-metre buffer restriction until 2013. 

Reducing the buffer

QMM therefore applied to the Malagasy Government to waiver the 80-metre restriction for their operation. Their proposed changes were presented in a Social and Environmental Management Plan (SEMP 2014-2018).

QMM proposed to reduce the legal buffer limit by 30 metres, from 80 metres to 50 metres. In reducing the buffer, QMM also proposed to build a “berm” or dam between the edge of the mining operation and the revised 50-metre buffer delimitation.

More egregious than the decimation of an additional 14.4 hectares of unique littoral forest acquired from the buffer reduction, is the fact that QMM’s mine has not respected the revised 50-metre limit and has extended onto the lake bed itself. 

There are restrictions to private legal ownership within natural public areas (domaines publics naturels) in Madagascar of which reserved lands (pas géométriques), such as river beds, are included. 

Malagasy law requires permissions from the local authority for extractive activities within these reserved lands. No evidence that such permissions have been sought and secured has been provided by Rio Tinto/QMM. 

Mine encroachment

Comparing two visual images of the same area of the mine site in question from 2009 and 2016 clearly shows the encroachment and destruction of original forest area.

The 2009 image illustrates the very marshy nature of the lake, which shows in dark pools between the trees.

QMM’s encroachment within and beyond the revised buffer has decimated the ecosystem. 

Original forest fragments have been destroyed, standing water areas of the original lake have been built over, and mine tailings have been piled into the lake, exposing the estuary to the risk of radioactive substances. 

QMM admitted to having “entered in this zone” and to having “stacked materials for a period of time.” However, QMM maintained that it is still compliant within the limits of the SEMP and that “no mining took place within the 50 metres.”

This is not the same as admitting that no “mining activity” has taken place, which is what their permission exacts, and which would include operational or construction aspects of the mine.

Water risks

In the ilmenite extraction process, zircon and monazite are present as by-products. Both minerals contain the radionuclides uranium-238 and thorium-232 and their decay products (other radionuclides such as radium-226).  These Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) are present in the mine tailings, and in water present in the dredge pond.

Any movement of water from the dredge pond into the lake risks transporting the water that is enriched with these radionuclides (relative to natural background levels), due to its contact with the tailings, into the adjacent waterways and the food chain of local people.  

There is nothing between the dredge pond, with its radionuclide-enriched water, and the estuary, except a “berm” made out of sand. 

The dam

The company’s proposal to build a 30-metre wide “berm” is primarily to afford the space needed for the mine anchorage and infrastructure, without which the dredging plant cannot function.   

This “mur de soutènement” (retaining wall), as QMM refer to it in their SEMP, can also be considered a dam in that QMM claims its purpose is also to prevent water transport between the mining basin and the lake.

The QMM dam is almost certainly composed of highly permeable, well-sorted beach sands and tailings – such as the company suggests they have used. 

Dr Emerman deemed this structure unfit for purpose and observed that the safety criterion used by QMM for the dam ”is similar to the criterion that would be used for the design of storm drains at a shopping mall parking lot”. 

In response, QMM argued that it is only temporarily mining this area, and that the area of the mining basin is “much smaller in volume than the neighbouring lakes.” They said, therefore, that they are not required to observe or apply internationally recognized safety criteria for a dam.

Unacceptable standards

Based on rainfall, Dr Emerman has calculated the annual probabilities of seepage from the basins and of overtopping of the dam to be “unacceptably high.”

Rio Tinto/QMM claimed that management of water levels is ongoing and asserted, “the dredge pond is generally operated at an elevation below the neighbouring lakes and below the natural topography.” The term “generally” compromises the commitment of rigorous monitoring of water levels, required under the permissions granted against QMM’s SEMP. 

Equally concerning is when the dredge pond is dewatered by discharging radionuclide-enriched water into the environment without treatment; then current safety protocols for confining radionuclides to the mining basin are completely irrelevant.

The company’s repeated assurances that the QMM mine poses “no risk” in respect of its radioactivity levels have yet to be substantiated. 

The Andrew Lees Trust has commissioned an independent review of the mine’s radioactivity levels and aims to release it later this year. 

Greenwashing

Inevitably the question arises as to why QMM would risk its ‘green’ award winning profile by violating a legal buffer and placing the environment and local people at risk.

The reduction of the buffer zone gains the company an additional 14.4 hectares of land and enables them to access the highest quality and lowest cost deposits of the mineral necessary for the project to remain a going concern. 

In Rio Tinto’s own words, without reducing the buffer by 30 metres “a 9 percent reserve loss would be incurred and the extraction sequence would be non-optimal”. This means without the additional access to mineral wealth, the project is simply not viable. 

The company claimed that QMM’s project changes afford “protection of the ecosystem and as community access.” However, their violation of the buffer and encroachment onto the lake bed has compromised the pre-existing forest ecosystem.

Local people gain nothing from the buffer reduction, whereas QMM, a mine that struggled to deliver a dividend in 2015, is not viable without it. In reality, QMM has adjusted the perimeters of the mine to accommodate its own interests and passed the environmental costs on to local people.

Long-term concerns

There is no discussion in QMM’s SEMP that demonstrates Rio Tinto/QMM has given any consideration as to what will happen when the current dredging operation is complete and groundwater levels return to normal. 

There are already countless outstanding questions in relation to the buffer violation, the radionuclide content of mining basin water discharge, the management of water levels, dam construction criteria, and the actual width of the dam. 

Questions need answering for the local populations who rely on local rivers and lakes as a substantial natural resource to meet their daily needs.

Under its sustainability commitments, Rio Tinto states its vision “to be a company that is admired and respected for delivering superior business value and for being the industry’s trusted partner.” Part of building that trust, it says, is to find “ever smarter answers to complex global and local issues.”

It is hard to see how QMM reflects Rio Tinto’s aspirations when their operational plan has failed to provide for an 80-metre legal buffer zone and an area for its mine infrastructure, or when nobody wants to admit the gross errors at play or consider the risks they present to local people. 

The Authors 

Yvonne Orengo is an independent communications practitioner and director of the Andrew Lees Trust, a British charity set up following the death of its namesake in Madagascar in 1994. Based in Madagascar for over six years, she developed the Trust’s strategic programme and has followed the evolution of Rio Tinto’s QMM project for over 20 years.

Dr Steven H. Emerman is the owner of Malach Consulting, which specialises in evaluating the environmental impacts of mining on behalf of mining companies, as well as governmental and nongovernmental organisations. Dr Emerman has 31 years of experience teaching hydrology and geophysics and has 66 peer-reviewed publications in these areas.

The Ecologist contacted Rio Tinto. Although the company responded, it has not yet provided a comment. 

The tiny house movement in the United States – which trades traditional homes for much smaller alternatives – is growing in popularity but still represents a small share of homeowners. As the movement continues, some are asking whether it’s a fad or something that will last and become mainstream.

There is some disagreement regarding this question. In fact, there’s even confusion about how one defines a tiny house.

Tiny houses are — as their name suggests — small dwellings, typically between 100 and 400 square feet, according to the website the Tiny Life. They’re often mobile but can also have a foundation, and they are available in many shapes and sizes.

Tiny houses are as much a movement as a type of structure. They’ve come to represent simplifying, self-sufficiency, freedom and environmental awareness.

Zoning Headaches

The above definition is not official, per say. Most zoning rules don’t include a definition for the term tiny house, and most local governments don’t really know what to do with them. In fact, in many areas, they are technically illegal.

Several cites have passed ordinances in support of tiny homes, but even in many of these leading cities, it’s only legal to have one as a secondary dwelling. In most places, they’re in a legal gray area. Sometimes they fall into the RV category, and sometimes state and local laws conflict.

This uncertainty forces many tiny homesteaders to live off the radar and sometimes move from place to place.

If the tiny home movement is going to stick around, local governments will have to come around and pass the necessary rules. Although some have done so, many cities seem reluctant.

Sustainable Lifestyle?

Moving into a tiny home requires substantial lifestyle changes. This is, of course, part of the whole idea, but it’s what makes living in these small spaces challenging.

Living in such a small space often requires getting rid of belongings and keeping only the essentials, part of a lifestyle often referred to as minimalism. This requires a substantial change in thinking for many people.

It also limits things that are more impactful than physical belongings. Tiny homes may work well for individuals or couples, but if you decide you want to start a family, you may need to move to a larger place. It also limits what you can do in your home. Having guests over, for instance, would prove difficult.

Tiny home advocates would say these challenges are just part of the lifestyle. It forces you to choose what items are truly important to you, which helps you simplify. If you want to have guests, you just have to spend more time with them outside your home.

For some, this way of living might be perfectly sustainable. Many, though, grow tired of this eventually, often after they decide they want to have children.

Cost Considerations

The affordability of tiny homes is one of their biggest draws. It’s much easier to afford a small house rather than a large one. Because the space is small, energy bills will likely be low, too. It’s even easier to go solar and produce your own energy.

If you’re buying land on which to put your tiny house, it will be a significant factor in determining cost. This means they’ll typically be more affordable in rural areas than urban ones.

If cost remains a major consideration, we may see people moving out of tiny homes when they start making more money. For instance, a recent college grad may opt for one but move out when they start earning more. This high turnover rate could prevent tiny homes from being seen as more legitimate.

Small Market

Perhaps in part because of these limitations, the tiny home market remains relatively small. It’s difficult to get exact numbers on small homes because of their ambiguous definition, but records suggest that less than one percent of homes sold are less than 1,000 square feet.

While the fact that the tiny house market is small isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does present some challenges to the compact home movement. The small market makes it harder to sell, making a tiny home a riskier investment.

Until more people choose small homes and they become more mainstream, their legal status will likely remain foggy. Without concrete legal status, the future of the tiny home movement will always be a bit uncertain.

However, that legal status is one of the biggest reasons the tiny house market is as small as it is, making this a challenging problem to solve for small house lovers.

Will the tiny house movement stick around? Only time will tell. It’s especially hard to say because it is such new, unexplored territory. The movement does face some significant challenges, though. For the tiny house trend to become sustainable, it will need changes to laws and a substantial shift in the way we as a society think about what it means to have a home.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

The tiny house movement in the United States – which trades traditional homes for much smaller alternatives – is growing in popularity but still represents a small share of homeowners. As the movement continues, some are asking whether it’s a fad or something that will last and become mainstream.

There is some disagreement regarding this question. In fact, there’s even confusion about how one defines a tiny house.

Tiny houses are — as their name suggests — small dwellings, typically between 100 and 400 square feet, according to the website the Tiny Life. They’re often mobile but can also have a foundation, and they are available in many shapes and sizes.

Tiny houses are as much a movement as a type of structure. They’ve come to represent simplifying, self-sufficiency, freedom and environmental awareness.

Zoning Headaches

The above definition is not official, per say. Most zoning rules don’t include a definition for the term tiny house, and most local governments don’t really know what to do with them. In fact, in many areas, they are technically illegal.

Several cites have passed ordinances in support of tiny homes, but even in many of these leading cities, it’s only legal to have one as a secondary dwelling. In most places, they’re in a legal gray area. Sometimes they fall into the RV category, and sometimes state and local laws conflict.

This uncertainty forces many tiny homesteaders to live off the radar and sometimes move from place to place.

If the tiny home movement is going to stick around, local governments will have to come around and pass the necessary rules. Although some have done so, many cities seem reluctant.

Sustainable Lifestyle?

Moving into a tiny home requires substantial lifestyle changes. This is, of course, part of the whole idea, but it’s what makes living in these small spaces challenging.

Living in such a small space often requires getting rid of belongings and keeping only the essentials, part of a lifestyle often referred to as minimalism. This requires a substantial change in thinking for many people.

It also limits things that are more impactful than physical belongings. Tiny homes may work well for individuals or couples, but if you decide you want to start a family, you may need to move to a larger place. It also limits what you can do in your home. Having guests over, for instance, would prove difficult.

Tiny home advocates would say these challenges are just part of the lifestyle. It forces you to choose what items are truly important to you, which helps you simplify. If you want to have guests, you just have to spend more time with them outside your home.

For some, this way of living might be perfectly sustainable. Many, though, grow tired of this eventually, often after they decide they want to have children.

Cost Considerations

The affordability of tiny homes is one of their biggest draws. It’s much easier to afford a small house rather than a large one. Because the space is small, energy bills will likely be low, too. It’s even easier to go solar and produce your own energy.

If you’re buying land on which to put your tiny house, it will be a significant factor in determining cost. This means they’ll typically be more affordable in rural areas than urban ones.

If cost remains a major consideration, we may see people moving out of tiny homes when they start making more money. For instance, a recent college grad may opt for one but move out when they start earning more. This high turnover rate could prevent tiny homes from being seen as more legitimate.

Small Market

Perhaps in part because of these limitations, the tiny home market remains relatively small. It’s difficult to get exact numbers on small homes because of their ambiguous definition, but records suggest that less than one percent of homes sold are less than 1,000 square feet.

While the fact that the tiny house market is small isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does present some challenges to the compact home movement. The small market makes it harder to sell, making a tiny home a riskier investment.

Until more people choose small homes and they become more mainstream, their legal status will likely remain foggy. Without concrete legal status, the future of the tiny home movement will always be a bit uncertain.

However, that legal status is one of the biggest reasons the tiny house market is as small as it is, making this a challenging problem to solve for small house lovers.

Will the tiny house movement stick around? Only time will tell. It’s especially hard to say because it is such new, unexplored territory. The movement does face some significant challenges, though. For the tiny house trend to become sustainable, it will need changes to laws and a substantial shift in the way we as a society think about what it means to have a home.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

One evening John Blundell arrived at the Hickory Farm neighbourhood watch meeting in Virginia, and to his surprise discovered he was living close to Dr S Fred Singer, who he had met on the free market think tank circuit.

Singer was with his new wife Candice Crandall, who Blundell had met separately as a press officer at the Koch funded George Mason University (GMU).

Singer is the most persistent and persuasive, and some believe pernicious, sceptical scientist in the world. He was aware of the science from as early as 1968 but it was at the same time that he met Blundell among the community of Koch funders and funded think tanks around GMU that he became the most important activist in the field.

Singer was a rocket scientist with outstanding credentials. While serving in the US Navy during the Second World War he designed computer technology to help ships avoid mines. He then designed instruments for satellites and produced the first calculation of methane increases due to human activity.

Exxon, Shell, Sun Oil and ARCO all hired Singer as a consultant during the late 1970s. And he was among the first to challenge the science of acid rain and by 1989 had become interested in the emerging science of climate change, leading to his attack on the scientists as well as the campaigners.

Ideological paranoia

Around this time he also became a good friend to Blundell: “One evening, when I was a volunteer on neighbourhood watch, I suddenly realised Fred was a close neighbour” Blundell told me before he passed away.

“By bizarre coincidence Fred lived in the same sub-division. For ages I had no idea. His wife was better known to me as a public relations person at GMU. She kept her maiden name so I had no idea they were even a couple.”

He added: “I really spent more time with Fred when I was at the IEA and he was in London and at a loose end on a weekend. I took him to lunch at the Morpeth Arms I recall.”

As well as being close neighbours, Blundell and Singer were ideological allies.

Singer was the founder and inspiration for the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), and would dedicate his retirement years attacking science and environmental policy through the offices of the project.

Linda Whetstone, Fisher’s eldest daughter and a trustee of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, confirmed in one document that “SEPP was founded in 1992, receiving early support from Atlas [Economic Research Foundation] at a crucial stage.”

Yet, SEPP claimed never to have lobbied and set out that it would only “respond when requested by Congress or administration officials”.

Self proclaimed messiah

Singer shared Fisher’s almost paranoid concern about communism. He wrote: “There are probably those with hidden agendas of their own, not just to save the environment, but to change our economic system.”

He warned: “Some of these coercive utopians are socialists, some are technology hating luddites; most have a great desire to legislate on as large a scale as possible.”

Blundell and Singer found common ideological ground. Shortly after meeting Blundell, Singer was made a distinguished research professor at the Institute of Humane Studies.

He could also boast of being “distinguished research professor” at GMU. Such proximity to the Koch nexus suggests he may have also received oil funding.

Crandall would confirm some years later: “SEPP has never received funding from ARCO, Sun Oil or Shell. Exxon is the only oil company that gives a regular grant – $5,000, no strings.”

Singer then recruited Professor Frederick Seitz, the founder of the George C Marshall Institute to his new think tank.

But by the time Seitz was appointed by Singer, at the age of 86, he was in failing health. A manager at a tobacco company paying the scientist to attack cancer studies around this time said: “Dr Seitz is quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice.”

SEPP was also affiliated to the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, which in turn was funded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a self proclaimed messiah, manufacturer and radical conservative.

Dr John Mashey, an independent researcher who publishes with the environmentalist DeSmogBlog in the US, has analysed Singer’s tax returns. He noted: “SEPP’s finances were curious. SEPP paid no salaries, even for Singer’s 60-hour work weeks. Money flowed oddly. Asset trades often exceeded normal income and they accumulated to $1.5 million, tax free.”

Singer would become the most influential climate denier of his generation. But his methods would prove hugely controversial and, for many, well beyond academic ethics.

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. 

Tree planting must be made easier to encourage investment in Northumberland and offer new opportunities in the uplands after Brexit, a forestry summit has been told.

Councillor Peter Jackson, leader of Northumberland County Council, told the meeting hosted at the EGGER forestry site in Hexham: “We have the UK’s largest man-made forest on our doorstep (Kielder) but we are not doing enough; we are importing millions of tonnes of timber.”

Despite Kielder, forest cover in Northumberland is just eight percent, below the English average (10 percent) and UK average (13 percent). The EU average is around 35 percent.

At the same time, the UK is the world’s second-largest net importer of wood products after China, with 80 percent of timber coming from overseas.

Post-Brexit

Councillor Jackson said: “We are not doing enough in terms of production and the potential for Northumberland and the whole of the Borderlands area to do that is enormous.

“We need to find a way to get through funding and bureaucratic issues because it’s not particularly easy to plant a new forest, for reasons that escape me.

“As a renewable resource, it seems to be common sense for us as a society to grow more timber.”

Councillor Jackson, a farmer, was speaking at an event to discuss the role of forestry and wood processing in the Borderlands Growth Deal, which aims to revitalise five areas either side of the English-Scottish border – Northumberland, Cumbria, Dumfries & Galloway, The Scottish Borders and the city of Carlisle.

He said farmers in the uplands clearly faced challenges after Brexit and that forestry had a big part to play in the future of those areas.

Manufacturing industry

Simon Hart, EGGER Forestry business development manager, said: “We support the need to plant more trees, as wood is one of the key raw materials required to manufacture our products. 

“At Hexham, EGGER has invested approximately £250 million in the site over the last decade to ensure it is one of the most technologically advanced chipboard plants in Europe.”

EGGER is the largest manufacturing employer in Northumberland, with over 600 employees and produces a range of wood-based material products for the furniture, interior design and housebuilding industries.

“More than 100 lorries deliver roundwood, wood chips, sawdust and recycled wood every day for the company to make its products.”

Mr Hart added: “Approximately  60 percent of the raw materials required to make EGGER high quality products are classed as ‘virgin fibre’ (that is roundwood from newly-harvested trees and woodchips and sawdust from sawmills).”

Modern and multi-purpose

He said there were investors ready to put money into planting modern, multi-purpose forests, with Forestry Commission grants to support the investment, but added: “The problem is that it is really difficult to get permission to plant trees in the North of England, so people go to Scotland, where it is easier.

“The North of England is letting the opportunity slip between its fingers. From EGGER and the wider industry’s perspective, it’s a simple message: PLANT MORE TREES.”

Stuart Goodall, chief executive of Confor, which represents 1,500 UK forestry and wood-using businesses, said: “There is a different attitude in Scotland. The presumption is that we should find ways to plant modern, multi-purpose and well-designed forests in the right places.

“It is recognised that such forests can deliver good-quality rural jobs and investment and provide timber to build attractive, efficient new homes very quickly. 

“At the same time, there are significant environmental benefits – tree planting helps mitigate the effects of climate change, reduces flooding and encourages biodiversity – as well as offering recreational opportunities.”

Investment zone

EGGER has produced a document asking for the Borderlands Growth Deal to recognise the significance of forestry and wood processing to the north of England and south of Scotland.

Other large wood processors in the Borderlands include A&J Scott near Wooler, BSW in Carlisle and James Jones & Sons in Lockerbie.

The document, supported by Confor and other forestry and wood processing businesses, calls for:  a Forestry Investment Zone to stimulate new planting in Northumberland; a Strategic Timber Transport Fund for northern England to match the one working successfully in Scotland, to create new forest roads and reduce pressure on fragile rural roads; a skills audit to plug future gaps in the industry, especially drivers of forest machines.

‘Opportunity mapping’ 

Janice Rose, who leads on the Borderlands Growth Deal for Northumberland County Council, said a skills audit for a range of sectors, including forestry, would be in a high-level summary of the deal, due to be launched this autumn by the UK and Scottish Governments and five local authorities. 

She said the team was also considering a timber transport officer role and that a pilot Forestry Investment Zone (FIZ) in north-west Cumbria could provide helpful feedback for future FIZs.

Ms Rose said forestry and wood processing was very much in the minds of the Borderlands Deal team. “It’s not just about a Forestry Investment Zone, it’s about how we embed forestry in everything,” she said.

This would involve ‘opportunity mapping’ local areas to examine how different land uses, such as farming, forestry and tourism, would work best in specific parts of the Borderlands – and how economic, environmental and social benefits would work together in those areas.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story was based on a press release from the Confederation of Forest Industries. 

James Corden – actor, TV comedian, and one of the many who believe Sweden is a clean, green, ecological paradise.

Here he is on The Late Show: “Guys, this is going to blow your mind. In Sweden, they burn waste in gigantic, state-of-the-art recycling plants and use that energy for heat.

“It’s really cool but there’s one problem. They’ve run out of trash and they’re having to import it from other countries.”

Climate-friendly

Corden picked up on a popular meme that Sweden is so clean that it even does garbage disposal for the rest of the world. Here’s his conclusion:

“Sweden is amazing, it’s incredible. The people are beautiful, they have no trash, nothing bad ever happens there.”

Sweden talks a good talk on the environment. In its latest green initiative to make the headlines, it enacted “the most ambitious climate law in the world”, aiming to make the country carbon neutral by 2045.

So what can the rest of the world learn from Sweden? There are some distinct features of the “Swedish model” – the way Sweden organises its economy – that facilitate climate-friendly reforms.

1. It pays to be green

First, let’s look at why got James Corden so excited. About 15 years go, Sweden banned dumping waste in landfill sites. As a result, the amount of waste sent to incinerators grew four times. In fact, Swedish incinerators developed overcapacity – so they started to import waste.

Huge investment has gone into making this a clean process, but the power companies still manage to make a profit. How?

In the 1960s, district heating – where a central boiler supplies heat to many homes – spread rapidly in Sweden, thanks to a basic acceptance of centralised, community-wide solutions to social issues.

So about half Sweden’s homes are heated by district heating systems. The plants are also used to generate electricity – so-called combined heat and power.

When concerns began to grow about greenhouse gas emissions, it was relatively easy to switch the district heating boilers from oil to garbage. The revenue from selling both heat and power meant operators could still make a profit, despite the high costs.

“This is one of the main reasons that Sweden performs so well on the environment,” says Per-Oscar Hedman of Fortum, a Finnish company that owns power stations together with the Stockholm city administration.

2. The public sector is strong

Stockholm city’s stake in power plants means it can prioritise climate goals.

“If you have a system you control, you can take measures to phase out greenhouse gas emissions,” says Björn Hugosson, head Stockholm city’s climate unit. “When power stations are [solely] in the hands of private owners, you can’t.”

Partnerships between the public and private sectors are necessary when large and risky investments are needed for the climate, says Oskar Larsson of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

“If we want that to happen, government has to team up with industry – it will cost tax payers’ money at the beginning,” Larsson says.

He points to a three-way collaboration developing a zero-emissions method for making steel. Called Hybrit, this project – if successful – could revolutionise steel production. Hybrit involves private Swedish steel company SSAB, publicly owned miner LKAB, and public utility Vattenfall, all backed by the Swedish Energy Agency.

“It is important to raise your sights and change perspective,” says Mårten Görnerup, boss of the joint venture formed by the three companies.

3. A tradition of consensus

Stockholm is investing about €2 billion over 25 years in a large-scale experiment in green living. This area – called the Royal Stockholm Seaport – has a strict limit on energy consumption, scoring all its buildings on a range of sustainability measures.

The better a company scores, the more chance it has of winning tenders to build. In return, companies get to work with universities to experiment with green design.

“By learning how to build low energy buildings they are ahead of the competition, it is an investment for them,” says Bo Hallqvist of the city development administration.

Since the project began, the city administration has changed hands twice from left to right, and back again. But this has not affected progress, pointing to another feature of the Swedish model – it takes consensus seriously, which is good for big, long-term projects demanded by climate change.

“We don’t start major projects until all the major parties agree – we cannot afford for changes in political leadership to affect them,” Hallqvist says.

4. Long-term focus

When Stockholm was trying to persuade private companies to run cars on ethanol, they encountered surprisingly little resistance.

“Companies said: we want long term rules,” Hugosson says. “If you provide us with the rules and strategy and tell us this will last for 20 years, then we can adapt.”

The city has also converted a quarter of its buses to biogas, a byproduct of human sewage. In 2006 the administration agreed to buy all the biogas produced by the municipal water company for the next 20 years.

This long-term agreement between two public bodies created the stability of demand necessary for private companies to step in and make fuel for buses.

A long-term outlook is also built into the Swedish economy through its unusual system of company ownership. Unlike shareholders in the UK or the US, who largely focus on short-term gains, most of Swedish business is still owned by “active” shareholders committed to the long term.

“Sweden has been extremely lucky to have the ownership model combined with responsible families that own companies for the long term,” says Mats Andersson, a senior Swedish financier. “It is a pretty unique system, and it has served us extremely well.”

5. It is easier to close dirty industries

A little known feature of the Swedish economy is its “transition system”, which helps workers move to new jobs when their employers make redundancies.

Each year, companies pay a percentage of their turnover into “job security agencies”, run jointly with the unions, who provide months of specialist training and counselling to prepare workers to re-enter the labour market.

As a result, around 80 per cent of laid-off workers are back in a job within a year. Sweden’s transition system therefore makes the country better equipped than most to cope with closing down parts of the economy that are an obstacle to achieving climate objectives.

Not everything in Sweden is as green as it could be. Use of private cars is soaring. The zero carbon target excludes the vast amounts of carbon generated by manufacturing goods abroad and transporting them to Sweden. Many specialists say Sweden needs to be going twice as fast on cutting its emissions.

But these features of the Swedish model have enabled the country to commit to carbon neutrality by 2045 – and have a decent chance of actually getting there.

This Author

David Crouch is the author of a new book, Bumblebee Nation: The Hidden Story of the New Swedish Model (Bonnier, 2018). He is also a former journalist at the Financial Times.

Tests on “squishy” toys have found high levels of hazardous chemicals, which can impair fertility, act as carcinogens, cause liver damage, and irritate the mucous membrane or eyes.

The tests were carried out by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency on 12 squishy toys, all of which were found to emit high levels of harmful substances, including dimethylformamide, styrene and toluene. These could harm children who sleep with their squishies or have several of them in their bedroom, the agency said.

The toys have been withdrawn from the shelves in Denmark, but the country’s environment minister has called into question the health implications of all squishies, and asked the toy industry to take action.

“When all twelve toys contain high amounts of harmful substances, alarm bells begin to go off.  This indicates that there may be an overall problem with all squishies on the market.

“All distributors and importers should take their responsibility seriously and remove all squishes from their shelves. They should not be returned to shelves until it can be documented that they do not emit chemicals that may be harmful to children”, said Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, Danish minister for environment and food.

Safety regime

The toys breach the EU Toy Safety Directive, which all EU member states are bound by. The Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark has confirmed that it passed the test results to all EU countries via the European Commission, and that it and the EPA are talking to authorities in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands about the issue. The UK government has not been in contact, it said.

BEIS, which regulates product safety in the UK through its agency the Office for Product Safety and Standards, did not respond specifically to a request for comment on the Danish ban, but said the UK standards were among the toughest in the world and allowed only the safest products onto the market.

However, Michael Warhurst, executive director of campaign group Chem Trust, said that the consumer safety regime in the UK was “very patchy” in regards to chemicals. “Everything depends on cash-strapped local authority environmental health officers taking samples and paying for analysis, after which they can take action and notify the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) if anything illegal is found. It is extraordinary that consumer protection is such a low priority for the UK government,” he said.

“Flimsy” research

Toy trade body Toy Industries of Europe (TIE) criticised the Danish authorities’ decision to ban the toys, and claimed that its research was “flimsy” as it used an inaccurate methodology and only assessed 12 toys.

“This small study should not have been used as the basis to determine whether squishy toys pose a risk to children and are compliant with EU Toy Safety Rules,” TIE said in a statement.

“We have consulted three independent toxicologists on the draft report, who find that the study ignores the accepted EU testing standards and disregards common understanding of children’s risk of exposure to chemical substances. They find the report’s conclusions are ill-founded and the resulting claims about the safety of squishy toys are unjustified,” it said.

Decisions to ban toys should be made in consultation with the EU’s scientific expert groups and not taken unilaterally by a single member state, it added.

It has raised concerns with the European Commission, and asked it to remind all member states to follow processes set out in the EU Toy Safety Directive if changes should be made.

But Warhust said: “Denmark has very experienced and active chemical regulators, so I would be surprised if there was a problem with the tests”.

Meanwhile, Wolverhampton City Council has seized 2,000 fake squishies after tests found “alarming” health and safety risks to young children. It tested them for phthalates – chemicals used to make plastics more flexible, but that are partially restricted in the EU for health concerns.

Although these tests were negative, they also found dangerous faults in the packaging, labelling and lack of warning labels required by law. The CE markings – which indicate conformity with health, safety, and environmental protection standards for products sold within the EU – were found to be fake.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She was formerly the deputy editor of the Environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76. 

If you are an economist, you might believe in the value of incentives to encourage people to act in ways that are rationally good for themselves and society as a whole.

Yet when it comes to housing we ignore the wider effects of incentives that produce unaffordable new homes, and contribute to growing wealth inequality and climate change. 

The market is incentivised to build homes that are both inefficient and expensive. But it is possible to change the ‘home economics’ of the UK and produce homes that are both affordable to live in and encourage developers to reduce the overall costs of running and heating them. 

Speculative value

While renewable energy generation continues to grow – despite the political headwinds – there’s been little or no improvement in energy efficiency in our homes.

We might moan about the cost and turn down the heating when times are tight, slowing our consumption of fossil fuels by a few percent. Meanwhile the new homes being built are out of the reach of first-time buyers except those few who can rely on the bank of Mum and Dad. 

Over a third of users of the government’s Help to Buy ISA had incomes of more than £50,000. 

The problem is that we no longer see homes as ‘somewhere to live’ but rather as investments through which ‘savvy’ buyers can build up equity for their retirement.

That’s exacerbated by the structure of the housing market which rewards developers building homes for their short term speculative value (in the underlying land), and not the long term ‘use value’ as a home. 

Alternative solutions

Renting your own home is now predominantly a private, relatively unregulated ‘peer to peer’ affair.

Tenancies are held on short-term leases with little incentive (or compulsion) for landlords to improve their properties beyond the minimum.

I’m a long-term private renter and my landlord is intensely suspicious of installing a smart meter, let alone a better boiler or any form of green generation on the south-facing roof. 

As often, the solution is right in front of us, if only we could see the wood for the biomass.

The UK needs to build thousands of new homes to keep up with demand caused by the growth in population and single person households. Rather than extending 30 years of mortgage credit to young people, it makes more sense to invest in homes with affordable rents, long-term assured tenancy, and minimal energy impact. 

Beyond profit

This means moving away from a finance model based on building and selling to one based on building to rent, with the ownership of the tenancy being held by a not-for-profit company.

These homes can be built and priced over the long term – up to 50 years – so that the costs of additional ‘green’ infrastructure can be included more efficiently and financed relatively cheaply.

They will be homes that are truly ‘built to last’, where profits are generated by the quality of the housing over its life and not derived from speculation on future land values. 

To achieve this we need to raise different forms of finance and work with enlightened developers who see the road running out for the short term speculators and see the value in creating properties that deliver value by giving people homes to live in not pensions to invest in. 

Abundance has done this with our latest investment that moves away from green energy to affordable housing.

Working with pioneering housing developer Octevo we’ve raised £4.2 million to fund 30 new-build affordable rental flats and houses in the Liverpool area. 

Each home will be built to last and fitted with energy and water saving technology, as well as onsite renewables where possible. Because living in a greener, more affordable home should be a right not a privilege.

This Author 

Bruce Davis is managing director of Abundance Investment, which advertises with The Ecologist.

If you are an economist, you might believe in the value of incentives to encourage people to act in ways that are rationally good for themselves and society as a whole.

Yet when it comes to housing we ignore the wider effects of incentives that produce unaffordable new homes, and contribute to growing wealth inequality and climate change. 

The market is incentivised to build homes that are both inefficient and expensive. But it is possible to change the ‘home economics’ of the UK and produce homes that are both affordable to live in and encourage developers to reduce the overall costs of running and heating them. 

Speculative value

While renewable energy generation continues to grow – despite the political headwinds – there’s been little or no improvement in energy efficiency in our homes.

We might moan about the cost and turn down the heating when times are tight, slowing our consumption of fossil fuels by a few percent. Meanwhile the new homes being built are out of the reach of first-time buyers except those few who can rely on the bank of Mum and Dad. 

Over a third of users of the government’s Help to Buy ISA had incomes of more than £50,000. 

The problem is that we no longer see homes as ‘somewhere to live’ but rather as investments through which ‘savvy’ buyers can build up equity for their retirement.

That’s exacerbated by the structure of the housing market which rewards developers building homes for their short term speculative value (in the underlying land), and not the long term ‘use value’ as a home. 

Alternative solutions

Renting your own home is now predominantly a private, relatively unregulated ‘peer to peer’ affair.

Tenancies are held on short-term leases with little incentive (or compulsion) for landlords to improve their properties beyond the minimum.

I’m a long-term private renter and my landlord is intensely suspicious of installing a smart meter, let alone a better boiler or any form of green generation on the south-facing roof. 

As often, the solution is right in front of us, if only we could see the wood for the biomass.

The UK needs to build thousands of new homes to keep up with demand caused by the growth in population and single person households. Rather than extending 30 years of mortgage credit to young people, it makes more sense to invest in homes with affordable rents, long-term assured tenancy, and minimal energy impact. 

Beyond profit

This means moving away from a finance model based on building and selling to one based on building to rent, with the ownership of the tenancy being held by a not-for-profit company.

These homes can be built and priced over the long term – up to 50 years – so that the costs of additional ‘green’ infrastructure can be included more efficiently and financed relatively cheaply.

They will be homes that are truly ‘built to last’, where profits are generated by the quality of the housing over its life and not derived from speculation on future land values. 

To achieve this we need to raise different forms of finance and work with enlightened developers who see the road running out for the short term speculators and see the value in creating properties that deliver value by giving people homes to live in not pensions to invest in. 

Abundance has done this with our latest investment that moves away from green energy to affordable housing.

Working with pioneering housing developer Octevo we’ve raised £4.2 million to fund 30 new-build affordable rental flats and houses in the Liverpool area. 

Each home will be built to last and fitted with energy and water saving technology, as well as onsite renewables where possible. Because living in a greener, more affordable home should be a right not a privilege.

This Author 

Bruce Davis is managing director of Abundance Investment, which advertises with The Ecologist.