Heavily redacted reports recently released by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) revealed a catalogue of safety concerns at the Fife Ethylene Plant at Mossmorran and its neighbouring Braefoot Bay terminal.

As DeSmog UK reported back in April, after years of complaints and locals suffering the ill-effects of flaring from the Fife Ethylene Plant run by ExxonMobil and Shell at Cowdenbeath, residents celebrated the ‘final warnings’ given by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).

But the ruling raised deeper questions of regulatory failure and corporate power in a small community.

Corporate culture

Now the documents, released under a Freedom of Information request made by Green MSP Mark Ruskell, reveal ongoing concerns about the safety management system at the plant, and a series of incidents over the last three years including:

• A gas leak from a compressor which was allowed to continue for several years;
• Damage to fire proof coatings which were deemed ‘not safety critical’ and not repairs;
• Ongoing water leaks at Braefoot Bay which could be causing the pier to corrode.

Failed seals on two gas tanks, with the operators deciding to run on back-up seals and push back repairs for another two years.

The reports also reveals that the plant often relies on manual intervention by staff to deal with a major hazard incident, rather than having automatic trips or shutdowns in place, and that the HSE has major concerns about staffing levels, which have been reduced in recent years.

The plant and the neighbouring terminal are jointly operated by Shell and Exxonmobil, and have been in operation since 1985. An increase in flaring incidents in recent years has raised concerns in the local community that the aging plant is not being maintained properly.

Mark Ruskell MSP stated: “These reports reveal a corporate culture where health and safety compliance sits at a bare minimum and where actions demanded by the regulator are allowed to drift from year to year.

Regularly inspected

“It’s clear that the operators have, like the plant itself, failed to move with the times with an under-investment in corroding infrastructure, safety systems and specialist staff.”

“Mossmorran and Braefoot are major employers in Fife, the operators have a responsibility to stop the corner cutting and get the plants operating at a higher standard. I expect the joint investigation launched by SEPA and HSE last month to thoroughly consider these ongoing concerns, alongside community issues like flaring.”

A spokesperson for Shell told DeSmog UK: “Earlier this year, Shell identified an issue with a historical emissions reporting calculation, corrected the calculation and immediately disclosed updated data to SEPA to rectify the error. 

“We very much regret this situation.  Shell prioritises the safety of our staff, community and care for the environment. The inadvertent reporting error had no impact on actual levels of carbon dioxide emitted by the plant.”

As Rob Edwards at The Ferret reports: “The sites are regularly inspected by HSE as ‘major accident hazards’ because of risks that gases could leak, catch fire and explode. According to the HSE, ExxonMobil has identified 38 major accident hazards at Mossmorran and 14 at Braefoot Bay.”

Fear and stress

“HSE has released 17 files amounting to nearly 200 pages on its inspections of Mossmorran and Braefoot Bay in 2015, 2016 and 2017. They listed 23 ‘issues’ at Shell plants, one of which was said not to have been completed, and 10 issues at ExxonMobil facilities, four of which were described as ‘ongoing’.

“HSE has withheld files on the uncompleted problems, but has provided detailed information on some of those that have been resolved. HSE was particularly worried in July 2016 about Shell’s failure over ‘a number of years’ to repair flawed seals on a gas compressor that could have resulted in leaks.”

But while regulatory bodies seem to be engaged in endless prevarication, local residents are both angry and upset.

Local resident James Glen is unimpressed by how little communities are being told about the issues at the plant. He told DeSmog UK:

“Easy apologies from ExxonMobil bring no comfort to residents suffering the fear and stress created by yet another emergency flaring period when the operators are under a final warning and are still under investigation for two other emergencies in the last year.”

Terrible accident

“As usual, no one appears to know how long the flaring will last, and the operators and regulators are tightlipped about the causes and extent of the emergency.”

“After SEPA blamed a previous recent emergency flaring on negligence by ExxonMobil, we want to know the full extent of the current ‘equipment failure’, what exactly was leaked, how the spillage is being treated and what risks it has presented to emergency workers and local residents.”

“Seven appliances at such an emergency may be protocol, but as these emergencies are increasing, questions should also be asked about the cost, to both the public purse and the ability of the Fire Service to respond to concurrent local incidents.”

This ongoing crisis points to a lack of transparency, accountability and regulatory control. As one resident told DeSmog UK:

“There’s a growing fear that nothing will happen until there’s a terrible accident.”

Community trust

Reacting to a community notice acknowledging the fine, seen by DeSmog UK, a spokesperson for the Mossmoran Action Group said the fine “illustrates the pitfalls of relying on self-reporting by Shell and ExxonMobil to monitor and regulate pollution from Mossmorran.”

They added that the letter being sent to residents now “begs the question why communities weren’t told about this omission when Shell discovered it last year.

“As ever, Shell’s PR machine is seeking to control the narrative, since the fact of a £40,000 fine means the story can no longer be kept from public view”.

“How many other things have the operators failed to report? After all, the plant is aging and becoming ever more prone to breakdown, so that emergency flaring is now a regular occurrence.”

“Community trust in what Shell and ExonnMobil say is zero.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

What’s the single most important aspect of the natural world in Britain? The inspiring beauty it offers us? The way it can prompt creativity? The fact that it is often a haven of peace in an increasingly fractious world?

Nope. None of those. The key thing is, we’ve destroyed more than half of it in the last 50 years.

The second most important thing to get your head around, when considering Nature in our country, is the weird and startling fact that although the mass wildlife destruction of recent decades has left much of the land sterile and lifeless, this is neither perceived nor comprehended by the public at large. People instinctively think the countryside is still Blake’s green and pleasant land. But it isn’t.

Impoverished landscape

“In the 20th century the British drained their landscape of wildlife, otherness, meaning, cultural riches and hope,” writes Mark Cocker in Our Place, his impassioned account of this extraor­dinary historical event.

“Yet because it is central to our purposes and our relationships with each other, we continue in denial, and what we have done to the country becomes the truth that dare not speak its name.”

It’s bizarre: in what seems like a display of obtuseness on a nationwide scale, it is still not generally realised or admitted that across huge swathes of the land, the biodiversity that at the end of the second world war was giving animation and vibrant life to the countryside as it had always done has simply vanished.

By the government’s own admission, farmland birds have declined by 56% just since 1970; and the wild flowers have gone, and the butterflies have disappeared in their turn.

Farewell to the spotted flycatcher, adios to the corncockle, goodbye to the high brown fritillary: what remains may be green, at least in spring, but that is mainly the pesticide-saturated crops; in wildlife terms, the landscape is now grossly impoverished, beyond any other one in Europe.

The great divide

In his important new book, Cocker, one of our leading Nature writers, tackles head-on this remarkable twin phenomenon of destruction and ignorance, and he does so on an ambitious scale, seeking to explain and understand it by looking back in detail over a century of growing conservation efforts by individuals, charities, quangos and governments.

How have they failed? In particular he is preoccupied with a paradox: how can our Nature have been so devastated, when there are more people who are members of green organisations in Britain than anywhere else? How can it have happened at the very moment in history that saw the rise of a new popular philosophy, environmentalism?

The simple answer is that this moment in history also saw the rise of intensive farming, a juggernaut beyond the power of green groups to control – and indeed beyond the power of individual governments once the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union was fixed in place.

It is modern industrial agriculture, above all by its immense reliance on poisons to boost crop yields, that has wiped out the wildlife of our countryside on a scarcely believable scale.

But there are other, more complex reasons why our biodiversity has proved hard to defend, and on these Cocker is enlightening.

By digging deep into administrative history – it makes for a dense read – he identifies convincingly what he calls “the great divide”, which was the bureaucratic separation of landscape protection (in the national parks) from wildlife conservation (in the national nature reserves), diffusing focus and purpose and weakening both.

Furthermore, the government’s wildlife watchdog, the Nature Conservancy (later the Nature Conservancy Council), which told truth to power for 40 years after its foundation, was put to the sword by Conservative environment secretary Nicholas Ridley in 1989: he split it into three national agencies, which were never as formidable as the unified body had been.

Sense of loss

There are yet more reasons, Cocker suggests, why the defenders of Nature have not made their case more widely heard.

One is a failure of language, firstly in the complexity of the environmental nomenclature with which we have saddled ourselves: how many people know the difference between an SSSI, an AONB, an SPA and an SAC? 

Many would agree with him on this, but perhaps not on his further suggestion that the Latin scientific names of species should all be anglicised – for Latin is an international lingua franca, and your Brazilian botanist would give this idea short shrift.

And there are subtler causes still, on which Cocker is eloquent, such as the challenge of communicating what Nature means to us: just why we feel it is special and worth saving.

It has to be said, however, that his extensive excursion into bureaucratic history might begin to seem a tad long were he not such a superb writer – he seems incap­able of composing an inelegant sentence.

But there is another side to Our Place: Cocker also explores the successes and failures of conservation in an intermingled personal narrative, a journey through six landscapes that have fascinated him, from Upper Teesdale with its ice-age relict flora, to the Flow Country peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland.

And in his personal responses to Nature lies the best of this fine and timely book, above all in the terrible sense of loss occasioned by the steady disappearance of the wild flora and fauna he and so many of us loved as children.

 “For statistics and columns of figures do not begin to express the effects of the changes at a personal and interior level,” Cocker writes.

“For some people, agricultural intensification has triggered an emotionally charged, even visceral response, at the root of which is a baffling confrontation with local extinction and loss of meaning.

“The event is powerful enough to alter an individual’s personality and their entire view of life. It amounts to a persistent low-level heartache, a background melancholia, for which there is little remedy short of emigration…”

The green and pleasant land, alas, no longer.

This Author

Michael McCarthy was formerly environment editor of the Independent, and is the author of The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy.  His book, Our Place: Can We Save Britain’s Wildlife Before It Is Too Late? is available online. He tweets at @mjpmccarthy.

This article was first published in the current issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, which is available now. 

Insects are at the heart of our ecosystems. They make up about two thirds of all life on earth, and their decline is being described as catastrophic. The BBC’s Chris Packham recently called this ‘an ecological armageddon’.

This decline is not confined to the insect world; farmland birds have seen considerable fall in numbers since the 1970s, and the number of hedgehogs living in the British countryside has plummeted by more than half since 2000.

Many factors are at play in the decline of insects; habitat destruction, climate change and pesticide usage are clear drivers, and now evidence suggests that even light pollution is a factor.

Insects are critical to life on earth, but it is pollinators that perhaps have the most obvious contribution to human society. Pollinators are estimated to contribute around £650m a year to the UK economy and we would struggle to feed ourselves without them.

Animal pollination (mostly insects) directly affects yield and quality of approximately 75 percent of globally important crops – and without pollinators we wouldn’t see many wildflowers.

Despite providing such obvious services, pollinators are facing hard times; 35 UK bee species face extinction, while two-thirds of UK moths and 75 percent of butterflies are in decline.

Neonicotinoids

The impact of pesticides on pollinators is now undeniable and the world’s most commonly used insecticides neonicotinoids have been at the centre of a debate across Europe for many years.

In light of the evidence, the European Council recently voted for a full ban on the use of the systemic pesticide on all outdoor crops which has subsequently been reinforced by the UK Government in the 25 Year Environment Plan.

Most worryingly for pollinators, this evidence showed concentrations of the chemicals have been greater in the very places that are intended as wildlife havens, such as hedgerows and field margins.

There has been a partial ban on neonicotinoids since 2013, with some positive results. Oil seed rape, a crop that is widely considered reliant on the use of the chemical, has in fact seen some increases in yields since the partial ban came into effect.

Wider studies back up this evidence, showing that neonicotinoids can reduce yields for a number of reasons, including killing predatory beetles which allows slugs to eat crops, increased usage creating pest resistance to chemicals and the reduced pollination services as the insecticides impact wild pollinator numbers.

Banning neonicotinoids is a positive step, but it will not solve the wider problem if they are simply replaced with another pesticide. What is required is a transition to ecologically sensitive ways of farming that support insects and ecosystems to thrive, such as organic farming.

A National Strategy

Making this shift is complex, which is why we work to influence policy change on a range of issues including support for agroecological farming systems and pesticide regulation.

As part of the Pollinator Advisory Steering Group (PASG) the Soil Association has been calling for pesticides to be recognised as a driver in the decline of pollinators. Until now, Defra’s National Pollinator Strategy has failed to make this link, separating the two issues as if they are unconnected.

But the tide is turning and we are encouraged that Defra’s Expert Committee on Pesticides will be ‘updating their evidence base to include pesticides as a driver of pollinator status and trends’, a move that we applaud but consider long overdue.

Bees Needs

Influencing policy change is only one part of the puzzle to protect pollinators. Farmers across the UK can be part of the solution to support a shift to alternative systems of farming, to find environmentally-sensitive ways of producing food while reversing the recent terrifying collapse in insect populations.

Organic farming offers opportunities boost pollinators, supporting 50 percent more abundant wildlife, a third more species including almost 50 percent more pollinator species and 75 percent more plant species.

The impact of public campaigns against the use of neonicotinoids demonstrates how we all have a part to play. A recent UK poll revealed that an overwhelming majority of the public want tough EU controls on pesticides to continue after Brexit; the public have a crucial role to play in pushing the role of pollinators up the agenda.

This author 

Sam Packer is the Soil Association’s policy officer for farming and land use. You can find him tweeting at @samtpacker.

The environmental impact of coffee is becoming a major concern – from the impact of single-use cups, to the splash of milk that is linked to the emissions of the entire dairy industry.

In Costa Rica, it is the emissions and the energy used to make the coffee itself that are of most concern – but there is a solution at hand thanks to the pioneering Nama Café project.

The programme is the world’s first Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (Nama) project in agriculture, working with 3,000 producers across the country and with a total investment of €8 million from several international partners.

Warmer temperatures

The concept was developed at the 2007 United Nation’s climate change conference in Bali, as a blueprint for sustainable growth in developing countries. It’s also part of Costa Rica’s overall aim to become the first country in the world to become carbon neutral by 2021.

At a training workshop in the Coto Brus province in southern Costa Rica, there are around 12 representatives from a range of coffee mills across the region, including a large co-operative, an organic specialist and a micro coffee mill run by women.

“We want to produce more coffee in a more sustainable way, and defend a Costa Rican tradition,” says Gisele Solis, from the Women’s Association of Biolley (Asomobi), a coffee co-operative and social enterprise close to the Panamanian border.

“It is important for our growers that we work with them to change, and I think it’s possible for them to adopt different practices and produce coffee in a more sustainable way.”

For many growers, Nama Café was a chance to tackle something they had already been experiencing. The area of planted coffee in Costa Rica has reduced from around 110,000 ha to 84,000 ha over 20 years, according to figures from the National Institute of Coffee, as warmer temperatures force production into higher altitudes where there is less available land.

Greenhouse gases

Stephanie Novoa, technical manager at another co-operative, Coopesabalito, says growers are witnessing climate change on their own farms.

She said: “They can see it in the kind of diseases they are getting in their coffee plantations, and also in the rainy season, which is no longer predictable. These kinds of things really affect the production of coffee.

“The coffee growers in Costa Rica aren’t going to reduce climate change, but they can set an example, and they feel like they are trying to solve the problem that is affecting them so much.”

As part of the Nama project, producers learn to measure their environmental impact through two ways: water use and disposal, and carbon footprint.

On farms, growers are encouraged to plant trees to absorb more carbon dioxide, and optimise fertiliser use, while at the processing and roasting stage, most emissions come from waste coffee shells, or pulp, which release greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide and methane.

Measuring and reducing

Coffee mills are encouraged to invest in a specialist technology to capture these gases and create a green composting process.

Another area of focus is the viscous waste water left over from processes such as removing the shell and washing the beans, which have a sticky coating.

“The most common way of disposing of waste water is in big lagoons, and they use a lot of water,” says environmental engineer Alexia Quivros, explaining that instead they could use a plant called Pasto Estrella that can absorb the waste water.

Exactly what changes they make depends on the size of the business. Co-operative Coopesabalito, which buys coffee from over 1,000 growers, was able to invest $24,000 in new machinery to reduce its water use by 80 per cent, as well as updating roasters to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and planting over 1,800 trees.

Other smaller businesses don’t have the means to invest, and so the emphasis of Nama Café is on understanding, measuring and reducing environmental impact, and there are no compulsory certification costs.

Low-carbon technology

But even for larger businesses there is little incentive to invest in often expensive new green technologies without the possibility of charging a premium for the final product.

Costa Rican coffee already receives higher prices than the global average due to its high quality, but Quivros says producers need a further surplus if low-carbon coffee is to become financially viable.

The problem is the lack of consumer awareness around what it actually means. “We did a survey last year and found that in Germany only two per cent of consumers are interested in low-carbon coffee,” she explains. “They don’t know what the difference is, and a higher price puts them off.”

Part of the Nama Café programme has looked at different ways of marketing low-carbon coffee, with a new logo in the pipeline that could help flag it up on shelf. There is also a credit service that has been established alongside the project to help smaller producers invest in green technologies, but it’s clear that price remains a major barrier.

“It’s expensive to change actions and invest in low-carbon technology,” says Quivros. “Producers only get $20 more per sack for low-carbon coffee, and that is not enough. Maybe $50 extra would do it.”

Major achievement

For some, the biggest success of the Nama Café project has been the organisation of an entire industry geared towards one goal.

“The project has caused a type of awakening in our ministry,” says Gabriel Umana, head of coffee at Costa Rica’s ministry of agriculture. “The concept behind Nama has made us think about subjects that we were not used to thinking about, like for example climate change, and how to adapt to it.”

As it draws to a close in 2019, there are possibilities of expanding the impact of Nama Café to other agriculture sectors.

A small-scale project is looking at turning waste pulp from the coffee process into cattle feed, and there are also rumours of a similar ‘Nama Banana’ programme.

“In the short-term, the major achievement has been to generate a conversation around low-carbon coffee. And it has also helped producers think more long-term in their goals,” says Umana. “The hope is that we can share information and help make the country a more sustainable place.”

This Author

Nina Pullman is a freelance journalist specialising in food, supply chains and sustainability. She has travelled extensively and has just returned from South and Central America.

When I first came to Ta Phin Village, three years ago, I had to dismount my moped at the base of a muddy slope. It was about a mile away from my destination. However, by the look on the faces of a small crowd of local people there was no other way to get through.

So, somewhat reluctantly, I parked my bike along with another half a dozen others and squelched onwards. I have regularly visited this region since, but upon my most recent visit things are beginning to noticeably change – a bigger road is coming.

Ta Phin is situated in the mountains of Northwestern Vietnam, bordering China. The village is near the former French hill station town known as Sa Pa. These verdant hills and valleys consist of iconic rice terraces, some of the world’s most stunning scenery, and are inhabited by a colourful collection of Vietnam’s myriad ethnic minorities. 

Diaspora tales

A total of 87 percent of the Vietnamese people are known as Kinh (Viet), however, there are fifty-four separate ethnic groups living within these borders.

This complex assemblage of communities in Vietnam has an equally diverse historical background: some groups are thought to have arrived over 2,000 years ago, whilst others more recently, from over the last five hundred years or so.

Those in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and the Mekong Delta region have migrated from the west, whilst those farther north have migrated southwards from China.

Each ethnic group has its own diaspora tales; whatever their story — these communities have found home and settled in Vietnam.

Embroideries translated

Ta Phin village is predominately Red Dao (pronounced zow). The settlement itself is a mere crossroads of two muddied tracks.

Ethnically garbed women sit in clusters embroidering their wares. The Red Dao women are easily identified by their distinctive bright red and white headscarves, their indigo dyed hemp jackets and trousers — at times fronted by complex silver jewellery — all elaborately embroidered with distinct colours and motifs.

I was privileged to have some of the stories of their embroideries translated for me and was surprised to hear that many of the intricate patterns depicted their diaspora.

Journeys over mountains, changes in trees from fruits to pines and curiously bright yellow and gold swastikas. “What are these?” I enquire. “Ah, they are the tiger’s footprints in the snow.” 

Land labourers

One particular family I have stayed with over time have allowed me great insight into their ancient way of life. Their homestead on the outskirts, down by the river, is where my lovely friend Tan Ta May and her husband Sieu live.

May is a Red Dao medicine woman: the Dao are renowned for their wisdom in regard to plant medicine.

Here the extended family run a small business for herbal bathing. Wooden tubs are filled with an extremely hot brew concocted from local plants and trees.

One immerses into the sweltering hot tub and slowly sinks into the medicinal infusion. It’s a heady and steamy experience.

As hot as one can bear, yet with windows open to views of rice terraces, lush hillsides and water buffaloes — all accompanied by the babble of the adjacent stream; it’s a simple paradise.

Whether to alleviate the aching limbs of hard worked land labourers, to detoxicate or simply to relax – this ‘therapy’ is at least locally a well-known cure-all; and May and Sieu have the reputation to run a good business. 

Commercial operations

However, traditionally the main ingredients for this treatment have been locally foraged – but visitors are coming from further afield, and the demand for the baths is increasing.

Larger commercial operations are also in the main town and surrounding areas. In addition, the concentrated liquid for these baths can now be bought by the bottle.

Other vital ingredients have been concentrated into essential oils and now soaps are also being made. It’s proving very popular amongst the Vietnamese and trade is increasing into the northern cities such as Hanoi and even as far south as Saigon.

All good for business – but nonetheless, the forest’s supply is finite. And here is the positivity I encountered.

Through an amalgamation of a recently formed Red Dao cooperative (2015), a Vietnamese NGO and funding from the Vietnamese government and some foreign investment — a little bit of cash is hopefully going to go a long way to protect at least one of the essential herbal ingredients being utilised by this group.

The plant is known locally as Chu Du (pronounced chew zoo) Elsholtzia penduliflora. A relatively tall plant of the mint family, with a delightful aroma and almost magical properties, indeed I personally call it ‘magic oil’.

I use the concentrated form on a daily basis. I live in one of the most polluted cities in the world, Hanoi. The oil can be rubbed on your chest, face and head and it immediately relives breathing, blocked sinuses and gives a sense of calm – a wonder it truly is.

Deftly scythed

So, on my most recent visit – the main question on my mind was — ‘how was money going to help protect an endangered plant?’

Upon arrival, May walks us up and down some serious hills and deep into the forest. Here we arrive at extremely isolated small holdings, only women and children at home, the men are out ploughing the terraces for the next season of rice.

Surrounding these large, dark and smoky old wooden houses are farms that simply blend into the surrounding forest. From the chickens in the wood pile to the pigs in their sties, all seemingly merge quite naturally.

As we step into the forest I saw pots of orchids under the canopy, one essential source of income for these mountain dwellers. And then through marshy areas and onto the forest edge and I am introduced to patches of Chu Du.

I witnessed the careful harvesting of this wild plant. Deftly scythed to ensure regrowth and a quick demonstration of how easily it is to propagate by simply taking a stem and sticking it back in the mud. 

‘How then is cash going to prevent overharvesting?’ It is simply a matter of land and time management amongst the entirely female cooperative.

With some money and an emphasis on the importance of these forest plants, the Dao women are able to prioritize attention to their foraging activities.

It gives value to the wooded area where the Chu Du grows and may prevent forest clearance for future arable growth or livestock grazing. The investment will also allow for simple fencing to protect against the free-range buffaloes.

Last year May’s own operation required 14 tons of Chu Du, 700kg of the plant is needed to make 1 litre of essential oil. She is not alone, many people in this region are commercialising their plant medicine enterprises, I am so grateful to have witnessed the sensible sustainable management of these wild herbs. 

This Author

Grant J Riley is a writer, photographer and freelance ecologist from the south-west of England.  He is the author of A Journal from the End of Times and Marginal. To find out more, visit www.lulu.com.

For those of us who have been looking into the impacts of fracking over the years, the timing is striking. Fracking is an extremely water-intensive process. So Cuadrilla could be set to frack it’s first well while the rest of us are looking at our yellow lawns and dirty cars.

Of course, any analysis of water usage has to factor in the massive inefficiencies caused by leakage in United Utilities’ creaking network, but the contrasts between domestic consumers having their water rationed and unpopular and invasive industries being allowed free rein would be remarkable to say the least.

For an industry desperately struggling to find a social licence to operate, having the general public joining the dots could be catastrophic.

Water rationing

Those of us with long memories will recall that the 1976 hosepipe ban didn’t end with the first rains and that the Drought Minister, Dennis Howell, became deeply unpopular for insisting that the country would face rationing until that December.

So why should Lancashire residents be concerned?

Cuadrilla currently plans to use about 34,000 cubic metres of water to frack the first well – about half a day’s local supply.

But the first well is somewhat unique. If Cuadrilla’s fracking plans go ahead – with longer well lengths across hundreds of wells – the annual water requirement rises into the tens of millions of cubic metres for 20 years.

So, while the issue of Cuadrilla’s test frack at Preston New Road in the middle of water rationing might be seen as largely symbolic, the reality is that this industry’s water usage could dwarf domestic consumption for the next two decades.

Millions of gallons

In the event that recent unusual weather patterns become the norm rather than the exception the implications are as obvious as a standpipe on a street corner.

Neither is this a problem that is going to go away, quite the opposite in fact. 

A US Geological Survey study in 2015 told us: “Oil and natural gas fracking, on average, uses more than 28 times the water it did 15 years ago, gulping up to 9.6 million gallons of water per well and putting farming and drinking sources at risk in arid states, especially during drought.”

Pressure on the water supplies in provincial areas is already being increased by demands from the affluent South East. Back in 2011 Boris Johnson proposed moving water from Scotland and Wales via rivers and canals to supply the water stressed South East.

At the time this was dismissed as “tripe” by the water companies, however in June this year the GMB union called for millions of gallons to be pumped to the South East via canals ‘at times of low rainfall’.

Distribution problem

There is clearly a water supply and distribution problem in this country, and against that background, allowing an invasive and unwanted industry to use double the amount of water required by domestic consumers in their licence area would seem extremely questionable.

The North has already been described as fit for fracking because it is “desolate” by Lord Howell. We must not allow it to become the “dehydrated” North as well.

This Author

John Hobson is a management consultant from Lytham in Lancashire, UK. He is the Chair of the local campaign group Defend Lytham and has campaigned on local development issues for over 10 years. He also runs the Refracktion website, commenting on fracking issues with particular reference to developments in the North West of England. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

The Chinese government may be effectively cracking down on some forms of air pollution – but toxic ozone levels are rising rapidly, according to an Unearthed analysis of official data.

The country’s average ground-level ozone pollution hit a new high in June, up 11 percent from the same point last year and 21 percent from the year before.

This alarming trend – pollution records were consistently broken in 2017 as well – has seen ozone emerge as an emerging health threat in China, causing 70,000 premature deaths in 2016.

While ozone in the upper atmosphere protects life on earth from deadly UV radiation, ozone on ground level is a corrosive, dangerous pollutant that directly harms lung tissue, causing respiratory symptoms and contributing to premature deaths from respiratory diseases.

In most places suffering from severe ozone pollution, such as Mexico City, northern Italy or Los Angeles, transport is the dominant source. In China, due to the country’s vast manufacturing sector, both industry and transport are important sources.

Beijing rising

Ground-level ozone pollution in capital city Beijing increased by seven percent in June compared with last year, and levels for the second quarter by nine percent.

This indicates it could be heading for its worst month on record in July, when ozone levels typically peak, depending on the weather.

Neighboring megacity Tianjin already registered its worst 30-day ozone level in June.

Beijing’s average ozone level in June was approximately 120ug/m3, while the highest average concentration of 150ug/m3 was measured in nearby Qinhuangdao, the city where the Great Wall of China meets the sea, and home to the world’s largest coal terminal.

These levels are more than twice that of the highest concentration found in the US (55.5ug/m3 in San Bernardino, California) and significantly higher than the heavily ozone polluted Mexico City (64ug/m3 in 2017).

What is ozone?

Ozone is formed in chemical reactions between nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the presence of sunlight.

The largest sources of VOC emissions in China are industry and transport; largest emitters of NOx are power plants, industry and transport. Both industrial output and oil demand have been rising in 2018, largely due to a construction surge resulting from stimulus policies.

PM2.5 remains the pollutant causing the most harm to public health in China, but rising ozone levels have become a major concern — ozone exposure was responsible for approximately 70,000 premature deaths in China in 2016, according to the authoritative Global Burden of Disease.

An increase in ozone exposure by more than 20% in two years can therefore have very tangible impacts on public health.

Likely reasons for surging ozone levels include stubbornly high nitrogen dioxide emissions from heavy industry and transport, and increasing VOC emissions from a wide range of industries from petroleum refining, plastics manufacturing and other chemical industries, construction, and from cars and trucks.

Increasing summertime temperatures boost ozone formation.

Air pollution crackdown

While China has made very impressive progress in reducing SO2 and particle emissions, progress on NOx has remained elusive.

NOx is more challenging to control with end-of-pipe measures than the two other pollutants, and so far increasing fossil fuel use has offset gains from improved emissions control technology, emphasizing the need for reforming the country’s economic and industrial structure, along with increased efforts to implement and enforce stronger emissions standards.

Ironically, lower particle and SO2 levels also increase ozone formation by allowing more sunlight to penetrate to the lower atmosphere.

China doesn’t have a target for controlling ozone levels currently, but one could be set as a part of a new national air pollution action plan that is reportedly being finalized. New policy measures include accelerated implementation of new emissions standards.

This Author

Lauri Myllyvirta writes for Unearthed, the investigations website from Greenpeace UK, where this article first appeared.

A hot summer day in Paris this month saw the birth of the International Science Council (ISC).  The inauguration event was held at le Maison des Océans, in the heart of the Universté de Paris. About 400 scientists and policymakers from around the world witnessed something special, and genuinely exciting. 

The ISC has grown out of two preexisting organisations. The first is the International Social Science Council (ISSC), formed in 1952 to promote the social sciences, including the economic and behavioural sciences.

The second is the International Council for Science (ICSU), formed in 1931 devoted to international cooperation in the advancement of science. For many years there has been pressure to merge these two important bodies. What, after all, is science for if it does not fill a social need?

The new ISC President, Professor Daya Reddy, from the University of Cape Town, is an inspired choice. His opening pitch was upbeat: “The ISC will protect the voice of science and will have the ear of the public, the government and the scientific community”. 

At the same time, Reddy admits that science cannot ignore public opinion and that the ISC will work to halt the spread of misinformation and, as overly cited by certain politicians, the reduced trust in institutions and experts. 

Post-normal science and the explosion of knowledge

“Science is not like it once was”, says Gluckman.  “Do you remember rote-learning the periodic table?  That was when science was based on certainty.  Now science is all about managing and understanding uncertainty.” He calls this post-normal science where certainty is replaced by probability. 

Take climate change, for instance, where the role of science is to provide clear and unambiguous input to the debate. Science doesn’t give the answers but it grounds the discussion in evidence. Management of knowledge is the key.

Gluckman again: “Interpreted knowledge for decision making has been displaced by non-interpreted knowledge – or no knowledge at all”. 

But management of knowledge is not straightforward. “Global connectivity”, says Reddy, “brings both opportunities and challenges. It has led to the spread of misinformation and reduced trust in institutions and experts”.  

Professor Tolulla Oni from Cambridge said: “There’s a discrepancy between government policy on science and the new science that we need for a changing world.”

She adds: “There is now an opportunity for the ISC to articulate these new skills.”

There has tended to be a high level of distrust towards science when it involved engineers trying to come up with ideas and experiments that could lead to solutions for the worlds major problems. 

The ISC has many partner organisations representing engineers. I spoke with Marlene Kanga, the president of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO).

She said: “Engineering is science for the public good.” As a chemical engineer herself, she adds: “Young people need to know that engineering is a career with tremendous impact.” 

Time is running out for science

The ISC will have to make a difference. The big issues facing the world today, such as global food security, water, energy, climate change, need to be driven by government policy based on sound science and well-interpreted knowledge. 

All of these issues have potential in the coming decades to deal devastating blows to our expectations of civilization. If science is to have the impact on policy that is required, then the ISC needs to be quick off the blocks. If ever there was urgency then it’s now. “As the largest NGO in the world”, says Reddy, “our mission is to protect the voice of science.”

The day ended with some inspirational words from the all-star award-winning mathematician Professor Cédric Villani, nicknamed the Lady Gaga of mathematics.

There was a gasp of breath as he walked in, sporting the widest of ties and an enormous spider broach:  “Politics needs science more than ever,” he said, “and science has to be at the core of every great project today”. 

He is right, but it will take enormous effort for the public and policymakers to make his statement a reality.

This Author

Dr Hugh Hunt is chairman of the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series and a Reader of Engineering Dynamics and Vibration at the University of Cambridge.  He can be followed on Twitter at @HughHunt

The future of the Paris Agreement is unclear – with President Trump’s stance uncertain. Molly Scott Chatto and Jacube Dalunde MEPs proposed in The Ecologist the need for a European Climate Law – but law making is a slow and arduous process.

Meanwhile, far from the madding crowds of Washington, Brussels and other capital cities, a quiet revolution is underway.

A Spanish province – the Balearic Islands of Mallorca, Ibiza, Menorca and Formentera – operate as an autonomous community. Like other islands, they are especially vulnerable to climate change. But their government has devised a way to use the islands’ insularity to advantage.

Solar panels

Engineer Joan Groizard Payeras is Mallorquin by birth. He graduated from Cambridge University before working in renewables in the UK, where he gained knowledge and experience on the climate change act, carbon emissions and more.

Groizard was called home in 2015 to be the Balearics’ Director General for Climate Change and Energy. As he told The Ecologist: “They wanted people who could focus on the technical side and bring new points of view to the islands.”

The Balearics’ new climate law brings the global commitments of the Paris Agreement into local legislation, drawing a path towards the islands’ vision for 2050.

It commits them to zero emissions from energy or transport and 100 percent sustainable energy, using the islands’ natural resources of sun, waves and wind through specific graduated targets.

“As an island, it’s hard to find where to put renewable energy sources. The big car parks now have to incorporate solar panels as do all public buildings, enabling them to generate most of their own energy,” Groizard said.

Great destination

From 2020, car hire companies must incorporate a quota of electric cars within their acquisitions.

By 2035 every car they buy will be electric. From the same year, all new cars bought for the islands will also be electric or hydrogen and the government is working with petrol stations to incorporate charging points and repair shops to retrain their mechanics accordingly.

Mallorca’s public transport will be revamped by the close of 2018, offering 50% more including new buses and train lines with the three major tourist lines electrified and others using natural gas as the first stage of transition.

Residents in the same municipality as wind farms are entitled to buy shares, making them financially and socially invested – echoing Denmark. From 2020, large and medium companies will have to calculate their carbon footprint with an obligation to reduce it from 2025 onwards.

“Tourism is central to our economy,” Groizard tells us. “We don’t want to be a cheap destination. We want to be a great destination, which means being sustainable too.

Electric boats

“That’s good for the environment and provides a strong economic advantage. Being an island, we can do things that Madrid and Barcelona can’t. We know when tourists and cars come in and out. Hopefully we can soon put up a big banner saying come to the Balearics, it’s a nice place that’s sustainable too.”

Sometimes up to eight cruise ships dock simultaneously in Palma, each carrying the equivalent of a small town and using its own power source for lights, air con, etc.

Measurements at Palma’s Bellver Forest record the significant impact this has on the city’s air quality. In response, Palma’s tourism department is negotiating with the cruise companies to stagger arrivals. Cold Ioning will provide a massive plug in the harbour connected to the local energy grid and many cruise ships are converting to natural gas too.

Palma hosts Europe’s largest marina. To protect posidonia, the algae that grow around Mallorca, the Biodiversity and Natural Spaces departments are working on legislation to ensure that boats don’t anchor where they may pull up these plants, which support the environment by trapping carbon dioxide and returning it to the soil.

Around the island, other boats help yachts find buoys so that they can avoid using anchors completely. Beginning with ferries, the government is working to introduce electric boats.

Economists, scientists, engineers

Currently the only way into Formentera is by ferry from Ibiza, which is very polluting but the government is working with the port to make the ferry electric as soon as possible.

For decades, the islands have suffered from poor housing construction with speed taking precedence over quality and sustainability even though the climate is ideal for sustainable housing.

On Formentera, architect Carlos Oliver created a social housing scheme for fourteen houses prioritizing local materials including recycled wood and tiles created from sea plants that are manufactured by a company founded over a hundred years ago.

Only five percent more expensive than conventional building methods, these are A class, A grade energy efficient homes. As Groizard says, the scheme dignifies social housing while freeing residents from most utility bills. Unusually for a housing project, the EU funded the scheme due to its sustainable nature.

Vocational courses for sustainable practices are now so successful that it’s difficult to persuade trainees to complete their training, as companies are keen to hire them.

Global community

“Historically the Balearics have an employment problem with economists, scientists, engineers and others waiting tables as their only means of making a living,” Groizard said. 

“Once people see the advantages of these new jobs, both they and their families become invested in the environmental benefits too. Not only are the islands becoming less dependent on tourism, but those who retrain have greater opportunities for work elsewhere.”

In addition, there is a commitment to sustain, revive and encourage traditional crafts such as using local carpenters to make wooden windows rather than importing PVC ones from China. In preference to a carbon tax, the new law makes it compulsory to incorporate locally sourced materials with certification used to ensure this happens.

Important elements of this law are its focus on creating a just or fair transition with easy to understand guidelines and a graduated process of change that ensures that private citizens, businesses or other entities are not left behind.

The Govern Iles Balears wants civil society, citizens and the media to shine a light on what’s happening in the Balearics. Hopefully the islanders will recognize how they are as much a part of Europe and the global community as anywhere else and fortunate to be so well known internationally due to their many residents and visitors from around the world, which is both a privilege and a responsibility to be used intelligently.

Younger generation

It’s clear how ambitious a task the government has set itself.  Still only twenty-eight today, it was a brave move to chose Groizard to lead their commitment to the Paris Agreement.

With over a hundred companies and a great many initiatives in the sustainable sector on Mallorca and more on the other islands, there are grounds to be hopeful.

Like Catalonia, the Balearics have experienced conflict with Madrid. On occasion, it has taken considerable courage to stand against the national government over issues such as closing the coal-fired power station at Alcudia, but the message is clear. 

“We don’t want conflict. We’re Spanish islands, please use us as a window and example to the world. Madrid can now go to Europe and say look what we’re doing. It’s still controversial but hopefully that will change,” Groizard tells us.

Led largely by the younger generation, 1968 was an iconic moment in the struggle for civil rights, racial and gender equality, the anti war movement, the sexual revolution and student power but the UN International Year of Human Rights also cost the world the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy.

An inspiration

Fifty years later, the biggest and most constant threat to our planet is climate change. While the world continues to focus on economic growth not the climate, Groizard reminds us that, “Just as the Balearic Islands are finite with   finite resources, so is the planet. Hopefully the similarity is clear.”

Young, handsome and charming, it’s easy to compare Groizard to those who led the cultural changes of the 1960s but each of those movements targeted the rights of specific groups.

Here in the Balearics, perhaps what is most exciting of all is the very inclusive nature of what is happening. Not only those living on the islands but by default, the world at large will benefit.

This is no Don Quixote moment for the Balearic Islands, but a tangible opportunity to be both an inspiration and an example of how together we can move towards a better future for each and every one of us and Planet Earth herself.

This Author

Rosalinda Much’s career spans film production, creative consultancy, writing, radio presenting, the charitable sector, television, publishing, festivals and advertising.  Work has taken her to every continent except Antarctica. She first visited Mallorca on a production for actor/producer Michael Douglas. She is now based in Palma, the capital of the Balearic Islands.

The UK has long been a welcoming habitat for a number of white elephants. Normally, these rare and massive beasts roam freely, grazing on political expediency. However, now and again their existence is threatened by outbreaks of political honesty and economic necessity.

This week saw calls for the humane culling of one species of white elephant in particular, namely our political obsession with nuclear energy.

This is an obsession that continues despite the industry’s inability to reduce the risks of construction, costs of production and – most importantly – find a sustainable and morally acceptable way to deal with long-term storage of radioactive waste.

Wind and solar energy

What makes this especially worrying for our nuclear white elephants is that these calls didn’t come from environmental lobbyists but from a select body of experts charged with coming up with a plan for the future of the UK’s infrastructure.

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) is a group of eminent, independent experts whose long-term plan for developing UK infrastructure looks beyond short-term political concerns and provides a clear policy direction for government and investors about what the country needs to thrive and compete sustainably in the 21st century.

Professor David Fisk CB, one of the commissioners, summed it up, “Falls in the prices of renewable technologies have made them increasingly viable as one of this country’s main sources of electrical power.

“Nuclear power stations will not be coming onstream before the 2030s– so we need to continue encouraging development of wind and solar energy sources to meet our legally binding climate change targets.

“By investing now in built infrastructure, and finding the best low-carbon sources for heating our homes and businesses, costs will be kept down, helped by savings from the switch to low carbon electric vehicles.”

Nuclear is dead

In other words, the sums on nuclear no longer add up when faced with the progress made in the economics of renewables – and the future potential for those trends to continue.

A potentially fatal dose of economic logic that trumps the politics of so-called ‘strategic industries’; we can’t have it both ways, either markets dictate how we deal with our society’s problems or they don’t.

By contrast the Green industry has spent its time getting its economic house in order. This goes well beyond discussions around the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon.

There has been a quiet revolution taking place at the grass roots which has turned the tide of evidence – so to speak – towards renewables as a viable option for delivering the lion’s share of the energy mix – a phrase that was itself invented by the nuclear industry to justify the huge costs of building and decommissioning a nuclear reactor.

That is not to say that nuclear is dead as an option, but it forces what has been a relatively protected industry sector to assess whether it can compete in the real world.

Ethical choice

The analogy here for me is the UK finance sector. High street banks enjoyed a relatively privileged and protected existence until the economics of that political strategy began to backfire on the health of the economy from which the banks drew their profits, and inflicted their losses when the system fell into crisis.

A thriving alternative finance sector – which Abundance is part of – is now forcing banks to innovate and change.

We need the same spirit of competition in the energy market. Onshore wind and solar in particular need to be rewarded for their success in bringing down costs and reducing the impact on energy bills of transitioning to a clean growth economy.

This means opening auctions for long-term capacity provision to all technologies, not just selecting a few winners. Rumours of such a policy shift have been blowing through the industry for some time now. It can’t come soon enough.

The environment debate is often characterised as purely an ethical choice held back by the regressive politics of nimbyism and protectionism.

Just transition

Now an independent body of experts is making the case for renewable energy to government which highlights the bigger political concern of rising energy bills in a time of relatively flat wage growth.

Importantly the NIC doesn’t stop there. It also recommends a massive public investment in the energy efficiency of social housing.

The wider economic and political agenda recognises the impact that the transition to green has on a key driver of inequality: exposure to above inflation rises in the cost of fossil fuels and global volatility in energy prices fuelling economic shocks.

For once the experts are aligned with the people. As the government’s own surveys show, support for the growth of renewables as a source of energy for the UK is at an all time high.

For the sake of a few white elephants we can start the process of a just transition to a low carbon economy.

This Author

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