Results from the latest government survey on fracking shows that public opposition has risen to its highest level so far and support dropped to a record low.

The quarterly Wave tracker survey indicates that opponents regard fracking as a risky or unsafe process and are concerned about earthquakes and the impact on climate change.

The survey was conducted in March 2019 at a time when the shale gas industry was calling for a relaxation of regulations on fracking-induced earth tremors. There were also continuing discussions about government proposals to make non-fracking shale gas schemes permitted development, avoiding the formal planning process.

Opposition

According to the latest results, 40 percent of participants opposed fracking, up from 35 percent in the most recent survey conducted in December 2018, and up from 21 percent in December 2013.

This survey saw the largest increase in opposition since it was first carried out and the third consecutive rise in opposition. Strong opposition was also at record levels, up to 16 percent, compared with 13 percent in the previous survey.

As in previous surveys, the results found that opposition was higher among people who knew more about fracking. Among people who said they knew a lot or a little about fracking, 16 percent of people said they supported the process and 56 percent said they opposed.

Opposition to fracking was highest in north-west England (50 percent), Wales (49 percent) and Scotland (49 percent). It was lowest in London (30 percent), east England (31 percent) and the west midlands (32 percent).

The main reasons why people opposed fracking were:

• Loss or destruction of natural environment – 57 percent, (down from 62 percent)
• Risk of earthquakes – 45 percent (up from 40 percent after a previous rise from 26 percent)
• Risk of contamination to water supply – 23 percent (up slightly from 22 percent)
• Too much risk/uncertainty – 26 percent (up from 20 percent)
• Not a safe process – 29 percent (up from 24 percent)
• Use of chemicals – 16 percent (up from 15 percent)

Peak

Support for fracking fell to 12 percent of participants, down slightly on 13 percent in the previous survey. This is the lowest level recorded by the survey so far and is 17 percentage points below the peak in March 2014. Strong support for fracking remained unchanged at two percent.

The gap between support and opposition is now at its biggest so far. The 28 percent difference increased six percentage points from the previous survey and passed the previous high of 23 percent reached in September 2017.

The main reasons people gave for supporting fracking were:

• Need to use all available energy sources – 35 percent (up from 34 percent)
• Reduces dependence on other fossil fuels – 33 percent (up from 26 percent)
• Reduces dependence on other countries for UK energy – 26 percent (up from 25 percent)
• May result in cheaper energy bills – 21 percent (unchanged on the previous survey)
• Positive impact on the UK economy – 17 percent (down from 19 percent)

A total of 45 percent of participants neither supported nor opposed fracking. This was two percent down on the previous survey and the lowest figure since December 2015. And three percent said they did not know whether they supported or opposed, down one point on the previous survey.

The survey found that 77 percent of people who knew less about fracking said they neither support nor opposed it. Among this group, support was six percent and opposition was 17 percent.

Overwhelming

As many as 78 percent of participants were aware of fracking for shale gas. This was unchanged on the previous survey.

13 percent said they knew a lot about fracking (up 2 points from the previous survey). 45 percent said they knew a little and 19 percent were aware. 22 percent said they had never heard of fracking, unchanged on the previous survey.

According to the findings, awareness of fracking was higher among:

• Men (82 percent, compared with 73 percent of women)
• People aged 55+ (91 percent, compared with 58 percent of those aged 16-24)
• Social grade AB (90 percent, compared with 64 percent of respondents in social grades DE)

Friends of the Earth clean energy campaigner, Jamie Peters, said: “With support for fracking at all all-time low and overwhelming public concern about climate change, it’s time to pull the plug on this destructive, unnecessary and unwanted industry.

“Ministers must listen to the mounting scientific evidence on climate change, huge backing for renewable energy, and growing demand for tougher action This means abandoning support for climate-wrecking fracking and fossil fuels and instead championing energy saving and power from the wind, waves and sun. This is what the science requires and the public demand. It’s time to stop dithering and get on with it.”

Indicative

A spokesperson for Frack Free Lancashire said: “The results are indicative of the battle the shale gas industry has faced since appearing in communities where they are not wanted. The long-term trends are clear: fracking is continuously and increasingly failing to win the support of communities, in spite of the intensive green-washing efforts by the industry.

“Support for renewable energy remains high, with 84 percent of respondents polled expressing support, and with strong support surging from 30 percent to 37 percent.

“With the damning report by the IPCC released last month, urgent global action to decarbonise is now needed. This also means there is no need or room for a new dirty fossil fuel industry like fracking. We require urgent political action on climate change and investment on clean energy sources if we are to mitigate the impending impacts of climate change.”

The fieldwork was carried out for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 13-24 March 2019 using the Kantar TNS Omnibus. The results of the Wave 29 tracker were based on face-to-face home interviews with a representative sample of 4,224 households in the UK.

The survey dropped a question on attitudes to fracking in July 2018 but reinstated it in September 2018.

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

My decision to attend and support the Edinburgh School Strike, like my arrival, was late.  

As I left Waverley Station I listened intently for the sound of protest but the city gave up only its regular sounds; the beat and grind of petrol and diesel engines busy pumping out their invisible death, the whoosh of air brakes, the tourist chatter.  Had anyone shown up? 

Then I heard it.  A roar that seemed to travel through the oldest part of the city from parliament to castle.  I raced up the steep stone-stepped close that leads from the station to the centre of the Old Town, the muscles in my legs forming their own protest at this unfamiliar effort, my lungs tugging in traffic fumes even as my eyes began to register a flow of people.  

Roaring and applauding 

Protestors moved like a canalised river, rolling down the centre of the Royal Mile where stewards kept them from rebelliously overflowing onto the pavement.

Children and young people of all ages, some proudly holding their placards aloft and loudly shouting, others, more timid, holding their home-made signs almost apologetically, their lips unmoving as those around them chanted.  

They wanted their voices heard but not necessarily audibly.  Even this reticence disappeared when the roar started again from the front of the march. It travelled up the Royal Mile like a Mexican wave and almost everyone joined in.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, had already passed my arrival point by the time I got there, and hundreds, possibly another thousand more were still to pass.  I began to applaud and then to join them.  

We chanted: “Hey-hey, ho-ho, climate change has got to go.” And then a new chant started: “No more coal, no more oil”.  This brought me up sharp.  This bathed me in my own complicity.  

Complicity

I thought of my coal-fuelled heating system at home.  At the time of installation it seemed better than the dirty oil heating system it replaced but now it feels like a bad decision that we don’t have the means to amend.  

Every day I wince at my guilt.  And yes, I drive a car, had driven one that morning for the hour’s drive to the train station to get to Edinburgh.  

How many decisions like this have we grown-ups made?  These young people were laying my, indeed our, hypocrisy bare. And that, of course, is their aim.  

I am of the generation that has grown up when scientists already knew that we were damaging the planet.  I am of the generation who made endless bad, if unconscious, decisions in the name of economic growth and consumption.  

I am of the generation which has been wholly complicit in the poisoning of air, sea, and soil. I am of the generation who looked the other way while we encroached on every habitat, cut down most of our trees, filled the oceans with plastic. 

Visceral pain

These students were protesting against me and my generation. And I support them.  They are absolutely right to demand action.  

We wound our way round to the assembly point in the luckily sun-drenched green and terraced space beside the Scottish Parliament building.  

The speakers addressing us included the teenage organisers, scientists and politicians. Among them was a young man called Dylan. At fourteen years old he had already felt the pain of this world more viscerally than most of the aging politicians he was raging against.  

Dylan has been striking from school every Friday since March.  He does this despite sometimes being alone and despite the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that can make it difficult for him to move at all.  

Dylan proved to be an emotive and powerful speaker.  He told us how aged twelve he was already worried about the many injustices in the world – racism, sexism, poverty, homophobia, the all too familiar list goes on. But then Dylan learned about climate change and focused in on this, for even a twelve-year-old boy can figure out that none of those other injustices can be fixed without a home to live on.  

Powerful lesson

Dylan described how, as he learned more about the terrible damage being inflicted on our planet and the predictions of catastrophe we were racing towards, he sank, he said, into depression. 

What kind of grown-up world creates an environment that seems so hopeless that our young people sink into depression at the mere thought of it?  

Dylan’s thoughts had tumbled round and round in his head with a relentless mantra-like quality– ‘someone needs to do something’.  Then, at just fourteen years old, Dylan had the epiphany that has so sadly passed many so-called adults by.  Dylan realised that he is somebody.  We are all somebody.

This sensitive and eloquent young man was teaching us grownups a powerful lesson.  His was not the language of division and hate we hear daily from our politicians, our media, ourselves.

He was not pointing a finger of blame.  It wasn’t the fault of the other party.  “We are all in this together,” he said, “there are no borders in climate change”.

System change

Dylan’s plea was for unity and action. His was a demand for non-partisan system change. His was one of the most adult, reasonable and honest political proclamations I have heard in months, with the only exception being that other eloquent teenager Greta Thunberg.  

Like so many of my generation, and those older and slightly younger than me, those present and absent on the day, I was being shown up as no more than a child hiding behind a cushion so I don’t see the scary stuff.

I was not a grown-up awkwardly attending a school strike. I was a child watching the march of the real grown-ups.  

This Author 

Candy Robinson is a subscriber to The Ecologist weekly newsletter, and responded to a shout out for first hand accounts of the school strike. 

You know you are winning an argument when your opponents go after your background. When they start going after your tone, you know you’ve won.

This is one reason why the supposed bourgeois hypocrites of Extinction Rebellion should be congratulating themselves: not only has their campaign won broad support, it has managed to ruffle feathers in just the right places.

In the past few months, two grass-roots movements for action on climate change have had a remarkable degree of success in capturing hearts and minds, not to mention column inches. Youth Strike 4 Climate, begun by Greta Thunberg, and Extinction Rebellion’s succession of mass acts of civil disobedience have done a great deal to start conversations about the failure of governments to take meaningful action to forestall the environmental crisis already causing mass upheaval across the world.

Punching down

The backlash against this energetic and inspirational new wave of dissent has been led by a familiar gallery of supertrolls, who have mocked Thunberg as both a bourgeois elitist and a ‘cultish’ doom-monger. 

The same critics have cast Extinction Rebellion as the reaction of the privileged few, punching down at the emerging beneficiaries of mass consumer culture by promulgating ‘hair-shirted Leftyism’ instead of their preferred ‘technological optimism’.

The obvious reality is that Thunberg – far from being the agent of a lofty globalist cabal – is a concerned school student, and Extinction Rebellion focusses its pressure on governments while avoiding criticism of individual citizens.

What’s more, Extinction Rebellion is building coalitions that transcend the global North-South divide.

That cynical commentators have chosen to return to these off-the-peg tropes – despite their fitting so poorly – speaks volumes about the bankruptcy of their position. 

Politics of difference

A critique has also been levelled against the movement’s whiteness – this take has come from the left, although it has been embraced with uncharacteristic eagerness by commentators who usually declare themselves enemies of identity politics.

It is cause for concern that two young black women commenting on the Oxford Circus occupation observed: “If this was anything but Caucasian people, there would have been armed police officers and a big problem”.

These movements are the imperfect product of an imperfect society, and the acknowledgement by some members that they are attempting to use their privilege for the greater good does not absolve them from the responsibility to keep doing better.

But we should not lose sight of the fact this is, at worst, a critique of the movement’s organisational structure and tactical choices. It does nothing to undermine its objectives.

Power relations 

Extinction Rebellion is among several campaign groups that have made the decision to paint climate change as the great unifier, rather than the great divider.

This is not inaccurate: climate change will touch people in all regions of the globe, and all sections of society.

The wildfires that swept through California last year, destroying the homes of Hollywood celebrities (among many others), and causing $24 billion of damage according to reinsurance industry estimates, were a prominent reminder of this.  

The harmful effects of climate change will, however, also be determined by the pre-existing pattern of vulnerability across societies, meaning they will reflect power relations both geopolitically and within particular countries. 

The important thing to recognise is that these framings are not inconsistent with one another. By all means, we should be open to careful debate about which is likely to be most effective in motivating the appropriate form of action in different contexts.

But we have no right to conclude from the fact an organisation chooses to characterise the fight against climate change in universalistic terms that it is blind to the politics of difference.  

Social emancipation 

To unmask the cynical opportunism of attacks on the green movement’s social credentials, we need only look to the reaction the Green New Deal bill has faced in the USA.

This platform is championed Congresswoman and alleged bourgeois elitist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the daughter of a Puerto Rican housekeeper, whose last job before running for Congress was serving in a Mexican restaurant. 

The key insight behind the project lies precisely in its recognition that the transition to a zero-carbon economy, if it is to be successful, cannot be conducted in a way that asks the worse-off to make sacrifices to protect the interests of the rich. The programme’s proposal to guarantee jobs and provide universal healthcare while transforming the US economy is therefore a fundamental plank of its evidence-based project.

The accusation that the green movement is a bourgeois reaction against the improving condition of the ‘masses’ clearly holds no traction here: exactly the reverse is true.

The plan is inseparable from the demand to ensure that the burden of transition is not distributed in a way that puts social emancipation in jeopardy.  

Unconscionable trade-off

Predictably, however, the project has been accused both of utopianism, and of being a Trojan horse for a socialist conspiracy that has nothing to do with climate change.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the right’s critique of the green movement is purely reactive: it will demonise greens whatever framing they give the crisis, and whatever means they propose to pursue necessary changes.

There is a libertarian variant of the anti-elitist critique that is in one sense more sophisticated than generic denialism – it at least flirts with a kind of intellectual honesty about the trade-offs we face. There is a strand of thought that, deep down, is prepared to accept that the potential destruction of the earth’s life support system is a fair price to pay for a few glorious years of consumer-capitalist luxury. 

The prophets of progress find it difficult barefacedly to deny the results of mainstream science, given they take them to be the foundation of human advancement. They therefore choose to bite this rather awkward bullet. 

It is only a kind of honesty, however, because they neither openly state the view, nor systematically defend it – recognising, presumably, its potential to appal the sensibilities of decent people. They prefer rather to employ the techniques of negative campaigning, sardonically redescribing their opponents as dour, patrician and misanthropic enemies of progress and humanism.

It is this retreat into the territory of superficial mockery that exposes them: it reveals that what they lack is a good argument.  

After denialism

The monster of denialism has almost been decapitated.

As David Wallace-Wells argues, outright denialism is now predominantly US-based phenomenon, which has rightly come to be viewed as a form of ideological extremism in both the developed and the developing world.

But new heads are growing: those of misdirection, cynicism and devil-may-care anti-moralism. 

When we have understood what science tells us, the libertarian doctrine of the individual’s unlimited right to acquisition is simply incompatible with our common concern for human welfare (to say nothing of our concern for non-human nature).

Those who put ‘progress’ before people would have us preserve consumer capitalism, just so that its ruins can stand as a monument to its own hubris in the desert it has wrought. They are no humanists worthy of the name.

This Author 

Bennet Francis is a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholar in Climate Justice at the University of Reading,

Image: Maximus, Extinction Rebellion. 

Ospreys were lost as breeding birds from the UK early in the twentieth century, following years of persecution. These fish-eating birds of prey were deliberately killed because they had been taking too many trout and salmon, and also because the Victorians had developed a taste for dramatic-looking stuffed wildlife displays in their houses.

As their numbers plummeted, osprey eggs became even more desirable to egg collectors. The raiding of eyries for these highly collectable prizes further hastened the birds’ decline.

The last ospreys nested in England in 1840 and managed to hold on in Scotland until 1916. Between the two World Wars there were occasional reports of breeding ospreys, but no proof of their return emerged.

Early conservation 

Ospreys still passed through the UK on migration between Scandinavia and West Africa, Southern Spain and Portugal, even though they weren’t nesting here.

The RSPB and other conservation-minded landowners knew there was potential for them to return. A close watch was kept on likely nest sites after a pair successfully raised two chicks in Strathspey in 1954, including around Loch Garten, part of the Seafield Estate.

Here there were many of the lofty pines that ospreys are fond of nesting on, and plenty of decent sized fish in the nearby lochs and the River Spey. Messages were relayed between potential nesting sites on bicycle, with updates telegraphed to RSPB HQ.

After the successful breeding in 1954, things were looking up, but over the next few years the tentative osprey return hit several setbacks.

The egg collectors were back in the Highlands and now posing a serious threat to the ospreys trying to breed in Scotland. A pair settling at Loch Garten in 1955 deserted their nest and it seems likely their eggs had been stolen. The same happened again in 1956, and the following year one osprey was shot, and its mate failed to find a new partner.

Determined conservationists

Fortunately, some very determined conservationists were even more relentless in protecting the birds than the egg collectors were in destroying their chances to recolonise.

George Waterson, the RSPB’s Scotland representative, was such a keen ornithologist that during World War II he’d continued his fascination with birdlife even when held as a Prisoner of War. Here he was imprisoned and worked with Peter Conder, who would later become RSPB Director, and other notable ornithologists.

George, along with RSPB Secretary  Philip Brown and their colleagues would draw on the steely determination honed during those terrible years to ensure there was enough protection for returning ospreys.

They were helped by, among others, Lt Col Grant of Rothiemurchus, neighbouring the Seafield Estate, who provided equipment and manpower to help spot potential nesting sites. Gradually the operation grew from pushbikes, to a motorbike with a sidecar, to four-wheeled vehicles.

In 1958, when the ospreys settled on the nest south of Loch Garten, the 24-hour nest watch began in earnest, from a cramped, make-shift hide. But disaster struck, when despite the nest-watchers giving chase, the nest was raided one misty night by an egg-collector and the osprey eggs were substituted with chicken eggs daubed in boot-polish.

Tourist attraction

The culprit was never caught, and the team were devastated. After this loss, the ospreys built a second nest, known as a “frustration eyrie” at the current Loch Garten nest site, but the 1958 season had failed.

The 1959 season saw the nest-watchers even more determined to succeed in protecting the returning ospreys and much to everyone’s delight, the hard work paid off when three chicks were hatched at the Loch Garten nest.

The RSPB then took the brave decision to open the nest to the public, instead of keeping it secret, and thereby gain support for the ospreys. The plan worked, and people flocked from across the country to see the UK’s only osprey family from a special “Observation Post”.  

Incredibly, that first summer, 14,000 people came to watch Loch Garten’s ospreys! Over the next few years, the Loch Garten ospreys grew in popularity and became a must-visit tourist attraction in Strathspey – numbers of visitors peaked at around 90,000 over the five month season in the 1970s.

Numbers of osprey pairs nesting in the UK grew very slowly as ospreys take a long time to recolonise areas naturally.

Ospreys today 

The now banned insecticide DDT had a negative effect on many birds of prey like ospreys, finding its way into their bodies through their food and causing females to lay eggs with incredibly thin shells, which broke easily on the nest.

By 1976 there were still only 14 pairs here but that number would climb to 71 fifteen years later. By 2001 there were 158 pairs, mainly in Scotland, and the first ospreys would nest in England for 160 years.

A pair settled in the Lake District while a reintroduction programme saw ospreys breeding at Rutland Water.

There are now around 250 pairs of ospreys in the UK. Sadly, this year, the Loch Garten nest has not been successful as neither long-standing female ‘EJ’, nor her new partner from 2018, ‘George’, returned, but we anticipate a new pair will claim the nest for their own this year, ready to return and breed in 2020.

The best places to see ospreys this summer are around lakes and rivers. These include the RSPB’s Loch of Kinnordy and Loch Lomond, Leicester & Rutland Wildlife Trust’s Rutland Water nature reserve, and the Glaslyn Osprey Project near Porthmadog in Gwynedd, Wales. 

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the RSPB. 

Image: Chris Gomersall.

A significant overhaul of the current global food system is needed to meet the challenges of feeding a growing world population and many stress that this is only achievable by changing diets, food production and reducing food waste. 

How do we mitigate the ‘climate crisis’ while delivering productive, resilient, nutritious and sustainable food and farming? 

A new paper in World Archaeology weighs into this debate, suggesting that looking to the past can offer important insights for future agricultural and food security strategies.

Inscribing memory 

Archaeology, history and anthropology have been largely neglected in discussions on climate change and agricultural sustainability. However, our past contains a rich, diverse, and global dataset resulting from the successes and failures of numerous societies and their interactions with the environment. 

This research provides an important source of information on food security and agricultural development over a much longer period than current studies allow and under a range of different challenges.

The memory of agriculture and food is carried by landscapes, seeds, animals, people, and technologies, as well as by oral traditions, languages, arts, rituals, culinary traditions, and unique forms of social organisation. 

In many regions around the world landscapes and agricultural systems have developed often distinctive, ingenious practices that have stood the test of time in their robustness and resilience. 

The value of understanding these cultural and environmental contexts is increasingly recognised by researchers, organisations and policy makers as important for addressing issues of agricultural sustainability. 

Inherited systems 

An example of this is rice-fish farming practiced in Asia, where a sustainable symbiotic environment provides farmers with higher crop yields and an important source of protein.

This agricultural system has a long history with models of rice-fish farming dating back to the later Han Dynasty (25–220 AD), however, more recently these systems have been increasingly challenged.  

Recognizing the vulnerability of these agricultural systems, FAO started an initiative for the conservation and sustainable management of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) in 2002, which has allowed farmers to increase their income from marketing their products and tourism, while preserving their ancient traditions. 

Understanding these traditions is important because cultural values are not always integrated within existing policy research and implementation, resulting in many interventions failing due to a lack of understanding of their cultural and historical contexts and poor reception by the very people and societies they are intended to benefit.  

Agricultural resilience

The number of crops we grow for food is also presenting challenges for agricultural sustainability across the globe. 

Of Earth’s estimated 400,000 plant species, 300,000 are edible, yet humans cultivate only around 150 species globally, and half of our plant-sourced protein and calories come from just three: maize, rice and wheat. 

As large commercially valuable monoculture crops are grown in greater numbers around the world crop diversity is under threat. 

Dr Philippa Ryan, a Research Fellow in Economic Botany at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said: “Traditional forms of farming across many areas of the globe are rapidly changing or disappearing due to major social, political, economic and environmental changes. 

“This not only poses problems for agricultural resilience but also cuts down on people’s ability to eat or afford foods that are culturally significant to them.” 

If we continue to restrict the types of food we grow and its genetic variation we increase the risk of climate change, droughts, pests and diseases wiping out parts of our food supply. Think the Irish potato famine of the late 1840’s!

Cash crops

Ryan’s anthropological and archaeological work in northern Sudan on past and present crop choices highlights this point. 

As ‘cash’ crops have moved in more traditional cereals, such as hulled barley (Hordeum vulgareL), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor(L.) Moench) and the pulse crops lablab (Dolichos lablabL.) and Lupinus albusL., became marginalised. 

Yet, these native crops are more suited to the local environment, requiring less chemical fertilisers and being more arid and heat tolerant, and as the archaeology has shown, have supported people in the region for hundreds of years. 

Experimental growing

Ancient management systems could also hold the key to providing small-scale farmers with relatively simple low-tech, low cost solutions.

In the mid-twentieth century, experimental crop growing in the Negev desert was able to survive extreme droughts, with little salinization of the soil, due to the implementation of Byzantine irrigation methods identified from the archaeology in the region.

The system also had a number of collection channels and underground cisterns that controlled flash floods, allowing silt to deposit and prevented erosion.

Adapting agriculture 

Plant breeders and researchers are also busy searching for sources of genetic diversity for our crops to make them more resilient to tough conditions, such as drought, flooding, high temperatures or poor soils. 

One project is the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives, launched in 2011. 

Managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust (Crop Trust) within the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew the project aims to preserve wild crop relatives, in order to store potential traits that could contribute to climate change adaptions in crops for the future.

For decades archaeologists have also studied the impact of climate change and disasters such as tsunamis, large-scale El Niño events and volcanic eruptions and are now able to map past climate variability, offer context for human-induced climate change, and even improve future climate predictions. 

The complexity of our global food system means that we must increasingly look beyond our ‘traditional’ sources of information in order to respond to global challenges. 

This Author 

Dr Kelly Reed is programme manager and researcher for the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food. She is also an archaeobotanist with interests in food systems, agricultural development, cultural adaptations to environmental change and global sustainability.

Seabird populations on a rocky island off Devon have soared following the eradication of rats that lived there, conservationists have revealed.

There has been a dramatic boost in the numbers of Manx shearwater, puffins and guillemots 15 years after a project to remove rats from Lundy, in the Bristol Channel, ended.

The RSPB said the population of seabirds on Lundy has tripled to 21,000 birds, with the Manx shearwater population growing from 297 pairs to 5,504 and puffins increasing from just 13 birds to 375.

Habitat

The project, which was launched in 2002 by Natural England, the Landmark Trust, the National Trust and RSPB, aimed to eradicate the rats because they posed the biggest threat to the survival of the birds.

After four years, Lundy was declared rat free and the seabird populations have been steadily rising.

Rosie Hails, director of science and nature at the National Trust, said: “We were really concerned as previous records showed that puffin numbers on Lundy had plummeted from over 3,500 pairs in 1939 to fewer than 10 pairs in 2000.

“And although around 75% of the global population of Manx shearwaters breed on UK islands there were only 297 pairs on Lundy in 2001, way short of its potential considering its size and available habitat.”

Vigilance

Helen Booker, senior conservation officer for RSPB in South West of England, said: “This study clearly shows how quickly and positively seabirds respond to the removal of non-native predators.

“Of course, we had anticipated major population increases when the project was launched, but the scale of this recovery has far exceeded our expectations.”

Lundy warden Dean Jones added: “It is exciting to see this level of recovery in Manx shearwaters, one of our most important seabirds.

“In spring the island comes alive at night with the sound of these amazing birds. The increases in puffins, guillemots and razorbills is also very encouraging for the future of seabirds on Lundy and we are maintaining our vigilance to ensure rats cannot return to the island.”

This Author

Rod Minchin is a reporter for the Press Association.

The escalating threat of climate change emphasizes the value of environmental law. With rising sea levels, fluctuating temperatures and an increasing frequency of natural disasters, these regulations are critical to the continued safety of citizens across the world. In 2018 alone, the evidence was impossible to ignore.

Hurricane Florence resulted in the fatalities of at least 43 people as rainfall surpassed statewide records in the Carolinas. Unprecedented wildfires swept through California, kindled by drought, wind and unusually warm temperatures. These are only domestic examples, but they speak to a far more extensive problem.

While it’s possible to mitigate the effects of climate change — and protect innocent people — the solution is more complex than suggesting a change. Regulatory bodies must demand a greater degree of accountability for carbon emissions and excessive waste. To that end, environmental law is indispensable.

Relevant Examples

Environmental law governs how human beings interact with their environment. It covers a wide variety of topics such as air quality, water quality, waste management, chemical safety, contaminant cleanup and hunting and fishing. Many of these areas are relevant to climate change, namely, air quality.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 serves as a fitting example. Because of the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set standards for what kind of toxic air pollutants that factories, cars and trucks can release into the “ambient air.” Their objective was to improve air quality and protect the ozone layer.

Other, lesser known laws are equally important. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 requires a time-consuming environmental-impact study every time the federal government intends to approve, build or renovate something. The Clean Air Act and NEPA both set a positive precedent and brought about change.

Concerning more recent changes, the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA needed to determine if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were harmful pollutants under the Clean Air Act. They now regulate them as such. Of course, this type of law doesn’t always occur at the level of the Supreme Court.

Environmental lawyers can advise clients in areas such as renewable energy generation and distribution, debt and equity finance, tax credits, capital formation and structuring, clean technology and “green” marketing. Well-intentioned individuals who partner with a reputable law firm can also contribute to the solution.

Pressing Issues

Though the value of environmental law is difficult to argue, it’s still the subject of controversy. Lawmakers must give thought to the necessity, fairness and cost-effectiveness of their regulations, which isn’t always simple. A cost-benefit analysis of an environmental regulation is often challenging to calculate.

Furthermore, people may disagree about the benefits of a regulation. Even with a calculation of its costs, the argument is far from over. A certain amount of diplomacy is necessary for environmental lawyers who have to explain the details of a complicated regulation to local and municipal governments.

The enforcement of environmental law also presents an issue. Many countries have environmental regulations, but not all of them comply. The alarming rates of deforestation, rising global temperatures and loss of biodiversity reflect a lack of progress, even with initiatives to manage these pressing issues.

Fortunately, regulatory bodies have strategies they can employ to strengthen enforcement, and, by extension, combat the issue of climate change. They can improve legal tools for civic engagement, fortify government institutions, increase access to all human rights and strive toward a better application of justice.

In making these changes, governments across the world can maintain their commitment to environmental protection. Though they’ll likely encounter resistance, their continued efforts will prove integral to restoration. Otherwise, the natural disasters that devastated the country in recent years will grow in frequency. ​​​​​

Future Efforts

When government officials prioritize and enforce environmental conservation, they effect change on a global scale. The laws, regulations and agreements which preserve the environment are more than legislation. They represent something far more significant — the rehabilitation of a damaged world.

As the U.S. EPA and legal professionals fight the rising threat of climate change, their victories have far-reaching implications for the future. The safety and security of generations to come may depend on the work of environmental lawyers. With the challenges ahead, they’ll have an important role to play.

This Author

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

A landmark study from Aberdeen University has shown that exposure to air pollution is linked to the stunting of babies’ growth during pregnancy.

A smaller gestational birth size is associated with conditions later in life, including, coronary artery disease, type two diabetes and asthma.

Paediatrician, Professor Steve Turner, who led the study, said: “The Government has taken action to improve health with tobacco and there are rising concerns about food and alcohol. The next public health beast is tackling air pollution.”

Air toxicity 

Turner continued: “Anything that increases air toxicity is putting peoples’ health at risk. A bigger airport would mean a greater amount of combustible fuels from planes and cars which would intensify exposure. The less fossil fuel we burn the better for future health.”

Bristol Airport, owned and run by the Canadian-based Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is seeking permission to handle up to 12 million passengers annually by 2025 with a potential to increase to 20 million.

The expansion would mean 97,373 aircraft movements in a 12-month calendar period: a flight almost every three minutes and an average of 9,500 extra vehicle movements every day.

Talullah Gaylard, 31, of Wrington, who is eight months pregnant, said: “I can take multi-vitamins, not drink alcohol, go to pregnancy yoga but air pollution is completely out of my control. I don’t want a massive expansion at Bristol Airport that is going to impact on my child’s health. My brother hasn’t flown for the last seven years because he believes it is unsustainable.”

Legislation and taxation

The Aberdeen University scientists reviewed more than ten years of global research to establish the extent to which mothers’ exposures to air pollution affects foetal growth.

They discovered evidence that nitrogen dioxide – primarily generated by vehicle traffic, resulted in smaller foetal head size in the last three months of pregnancy.

Professor Turner added: “It could possibly happen before the last trimester but we would not be able to monitor this. The air pollution studies were from Australia, the USA and countries in Europe.  In all, the evidence was clear that in the third trimester, exposure to nitrogen dioxide reduced foetal growth.

“There is nothing a pregnant mum can do about air pollution – you can eat healthily, exercise and reduce stress but you can’t do anything about the quality of air you breathe, or your unborn child takes in. Nobody knows the baseline of the amount of pollution that can cause harm. This needs legislation, taxation and someone to champion cleaner air.”

Professor Turner called for public health measures to minimise pregnant women’s’ risks.

Stop expansion

Wrington Parish Councillor Donna Robertson, said: “Bristol Airport seems to be tinkering around the edges of the environment with bland PR about litter pick-ups and paper cups. This is about a serious danger to health and not just in our own backyard.

“If the airport expands and permanent airspace change proposals are agreed, a greater number of communities in Somerset will be flown over by thousands more planes. Approaches and descents will start from many other directions across the region, affecting wide areas of the South West.

“This can be viewed on the Civil Aviation Authority website under Permanent Airspace Change Proposal CAP 1616, Bristol. Along with this, millions more cars will pour through the region.

“It is imperative District Councillors and the Government stop this expansion, not only for the environment and climate change but for public health.”

This Author 

Melanie Greenwood is a freelance journalist. 

The president of the University of California has banned the use of the pesticide glyphosate from its campuses – where 200,000 students attend – in the wake of health fears. 

The universities’ decision cites “concerns about possible human health and ecological hazards, as well potential legal and reputational risks associated with this category of herbicides.”

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the Monsanto weed killer products Roundup and Ranger, as well as over 700 other commercial herbicides. Glyphosate herbicides and the manufacturer Monsanto were just implicated in a third lawsuit, where the plaintiffs were awarded over $2 billion dollars. 

Herbicide ban

The suspension follows a campaign to end the use of herbicides across the University of California campuses by Herbicide-Free UC.

This initiative started out as an Herbicide-Free Cal campaign that was founded by two UC Berkeley student-athletes in 2017, Mackenzie Feldman and Bridget Gustafson, after they were made aware of herbicides being used around their volleyball court. 

At the UC Berkeley campus, the Herbicide-Free UC students worked with the Grounds Operations Manager to pilot herbicide-free practices on two large campus spaces and nine smaller spaces during the 2018-2019 school year. After graduating, co-founder Mackenzie Feldman expanded the campaign UC-wide. 

Feldman said: “It would be irresponsible for the University of California to not take action at this point, especially after three separate juries in the state of California have decided that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer.” She met with a UC Regent, who became interested in the issue. 

Feldman continued: “Being at the first trial, Johnson v. Monsanto, and hearing Lee Johnson’s story made me realize that I needed to expand this campaign beyond Berkeley. This work is too important not to do. If I can prevent even one groundskeeper from getting cancer and going through what Lee is going to, then I must.”

Organic practices 

Herbicide-Free UC released the following statement: “We are thrilled that the UC President and Regents have made the decision to ban glyphosate, but feel that there is no need to wait for more research to make the ban permanent. 

“The science is clear: a number of the chemicals utilized by the University of California or its subcontractors pose a serious health risk to students, faculty, and staff. The University of California’s own faculty were even involved in designating many of these chemicals as dangerous.

“We are asking for a permanent glyphosate ban, as well as a ban on all Proposition 65 pesticides and other herbicides that cause harm to human health and the environment.”

“There are many alternatives to harmful pesticide and herbicide use. Some costs are associated with adopting organic practices, yet when faced with the alternatives of legal liability, and the human cost of harming members of the UC community with these practices, we think the costs of maintaining our current policies far outweigh the costs of switching to organic land management practices. 

“We will keep working with the University of California to transition each campus to all-organic land management practices.”

The decision is effective from 1 June. 

This Author 

Jonathan Latham is a molecular biologist and former genetic engineer. He now edits the website Independent Science News.

Moths evoke negative feelings for almost three quarters of people – with many thinking of them merely as destroyers of clothes or as pests, a survey suggests.

A poll for wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation found 74 percent of people linked moths to negative things, including 64 percent who thought of them as eating clothes and a third (33 percent) who associated them with being pests.

Their reputation comes despite the fact that only two of the more than 2,500 UK species of moth in the UK are known to feed on fabrics, Butterfly Conservation said.

Caterpillars

And rather than being pests, most moths play an important role in the food chain and as pollinators, the charity said as it launched a new campaign to turn around the insects’ negative reputation.

The survey by YouGov of 2,064 people also found 17 percent thought moths were ugly and 12 percent thought they were scary, but more than one in five (21 percent) believed they were important and almost a third (29 percent) think they are interesting.

The new campaign, Moths Matter, will reveal how the insects are a key food source for many creatures, from bats to small mammals, and play an important role in pollinating wildflowers including orchids, and garden plants.

It is also highlighting some of the more unusual moths found in the UK, including the death’s-head hawk-moth which can squeak like a mouse, the Mother Shipton which has a witch’s face on its wings and the caterpillar of the puss moth, which can shoot acid out of its chest.

It will focus on a different theme each month, from spotting springtime caterpillars to planting a garden to attract night-flying visitors and hunting for hawk-moths in hedgerows.

Changing

Butterfly Conservation also warns that the UK’s moths are in trouble, as two thirds of common and widespread species have declined in the last 40 years.

Leading moth scientist Dr Phil Sterling said the experts were not surprised by the findings. “People may think of a few times a large moth has startled them and then write them off as annoying or unnecessary; that is wholly unfair,” he said.

“Think of the humming-bird hawk-moth you might see hovering around lavender in summer. It is a thing of beauty and of wonder as it feeds so precisely in each flower.

“Each of the 2,500 species tells a different story about the natural world of moths around us.

“Most of them get on with their lives at night and we don’t see them, but they are important to us, they pollinate many plants and they tell us about how the world is changing around us.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the Press Association environment correspondent.