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

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

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

For hope

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

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

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

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

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

Imprecise policies

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

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

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

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

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

Sustainable future

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Author

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

There is a rather large elephant in the newsroom:

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

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

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

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

Media influence

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

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

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

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

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

Funding crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carbon footprint

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

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

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

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

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

Your footprint

Here are some carbon footprint calculators: 

WWF

Resurgence

CarbonFootprint

Carbon Trust

This Author 

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

Much of our daily life is deeply embedded in an economy obsessed with growth and compulsive consumerism. In our capitalist system, a drop in Apple’s value sees ripples across the financial sector. 

Many of the reactions to my recent piece about the superficiality of green consumerism comprised a staunch defence of the possibilities of corporate environmentalism and for consumer choices to have the power to halt climate change. Some even argued that environmentalists should drop any anti-capitalist argument to appeal to a wider audience.

There are some fundamental contradictions inherent in creating a sustainable version of a system that values financial growth above everything else. But supporters of green consumerism overlook something else: the overwhelming grip of marketing, which stifles any glimmer of consumer power.

Psychological manipulation

Marketing is big business. For most companies their success will rest on the strength of their marketing rather than the product itself. Coca Cola – a globally established brand whose products have been largely unchanged for decades – still spends roughly four billion dollars a year on advertising.

Part of the reason for these substantial investments is the psychological analysis that goes into making consumers feel they need to shop, as well as creating a specific, recognisable brand which becomes almost like a close household friend. 

Advertisers feed on our susceptibility to make content that manipulates our emotions. In a study by the University of Southern California, 31 percent of the adverts that performed well appealed to people on an emotional level.

Marketing expert Martin Lindstrom argues that fear overrides all other emotions. Our sense of fear is most clearly targeted by insurance companies or other products which directly affect our sense of security. Our response to fear is also fooling us into unnecessary purchases – banner adverts, relentless sale seasons and other marketing techniques create a false sense of urgency that further plays on fear. 

These marketing tricks were often used to appeal not only to our impulsiveness, but also our self-destructive behaviour, as outlined in Vance Packard’s influential book The Hidden Persuaders. 

Planned obsolescence

While in the fifties these behaviours were used to entice consumers to addictive substances such as cigarettes, they are now used to continue the global destruction of our planet. The urgency created by advertisers overrides that of climate scientists.

In the early years of the twentieth century consumer culture was born and encouraged, with New York retailers telling shoppers to ‘Buy what you need now!’ Not much has changed 100 years later, and a buy now, throwaway later mindset has been firmly entrenched and continually spurred on. 

One of the most troubling offenders are those technology giants such as Apple. E-waste is a monumental issue, around 20 million tons of e-waste are generated globally every year and only 40 percent of this is recycled.

Although Apple have made some admirable steps towards reducing their carbon footprint and environmental impact there is still a long way to go. The most considerable issue they have left to surmount is their encouragement of constant consumption of their products.

Planned obsolescence has been built into Apple’s marketing strategy, creating dedicated customers who will rush to grab the newest upgrade every year.

Coercive advertising 

This is of course not an approach unique to Apple. Technology companies pump out new phones, tablets, smart TVs, smart watches and other “innovative” products continuously.

It is notable that technology adverts are often only shown for a comparatively short time which furthers the image of them as fleetingly trendy, throwaway objects. Mobile networks further encourage a mindset of necessary renewal by encouraging users to upgrade their devices.

It is not unusual for users who resist the urge to comply to find themselves offered a new software “update” which actually begins to slow down their device. 

There is no reason that these devices can’t be made to last for years longer than they currently do. The decision to force and coerce us into upgrades is one consciously made by the companies which undermines any attempt at sustainability and instead favours sustained growth at the expense of the environment.

These companies will not stunt their profits for the benefit of the natural world. Rather than bowing to any consumer demands they will instead convince us to continue shopping and replacing.

Alternative systems

If we want to save the planet we need to move to a system based on common ownership, repair, reuse and recycling as much as we can. But these concepts run counter to the ethos of a company which sold 217.73 million iPhones last year and whose products are notoriously closed to the owner being able to make any fixes to the hardware or software themselves.

Environmentalists cannot kid themselves that climate change can be stopped dramatically or quickly enough (or possibly at all) within capitalism and through consumer demands.

Pervasive marketing coupled with constant production mean that any efforts are effectively neutered.

We must consider alternatives which have started to become more widely advocated by influential commentators, such as George Monbiot in his recent book Out of the Wreckage. The system we currently endure is not the end, a fairer and greener future is possible.

This Author 

Liz Lee Reynolds is a freelance writer focussing on place and the environment. She tweets @LizzieeLR. 

Image: Diariocritico de Venezuela, Flickr.

Picture the scene: a cold January evening and we have just arrived at a small village hall in Staffordshire. It is packed with a hundred angry, jostling farmers bearing pitchforks and glaring at my colleague and I, who are sitting on the stage trembling. We volunteered to take part in Blymhill Agricultural Discussion Group’s debate on veganism, and the intensity is sinking in. 

I am guilty of more than a little bit of hyperbole here. The audience were not angry and there were no pitchforks in sight.

This is just how I imagined the scene before I arrived, especially with recent news stories of animosity between farmers and vegans. As It happens the debate was amicable, entertaining and enlightening.

Powerful evidence 

We opened with our case that non-human animals have rights because they are sentient beings, just like us, that are capable of feeling pleasure and pain.

It follows that their interests should be considered when making decisions concerning them. Only in exceptional circumstances could you argue that it is in an animal’s interests to be killed, for example, if they are seriously ill or injured and in great pain.

The overwhelming majority of animals that are killed and used for food do not fall into this category, so being killed or used is not in their interests and violates their rights. 

On the environment, our case drew upon a large quantity of scientific evidence that reveals the harm caused by the livestock industry. Animal agriculture is responsible for a significant amount of global deforestation, fresh water use, greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and biodiversity loss.

Additionally, animal agriculture takes up far more land than plant-based products require and is very inefficient as from every 100 calories fed to livestock, only 12 percent are retained in their food products, like meat, dairy and eggs.

Cultural attachments 

Researchers at Oxford University conducted a study last year which concluded that eating a vegan diet is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the Earth – this is more than reducing the amount of flights you take or switching to an electric vehicle.

On health we explained that the NHS and the British Dietetic Association (BDA) confirm that you can get everything your body needs from a vegan diet and that it is suitable for all ages. Diet-related ill health costs the NHS a staggering £5.8 bn annually and the UK is on average well short of meeting the recommended 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Vegan diets typically contain more fruit and vegetables, making it easier to hit this target, whilst also containing plenty of fibre. Some research also indicates that vegans have lower blood pressure and cholesterol, and lower instances of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer.

Despite this powerful evidence, our other panellists didn’t agree. Their case was expressed by a local NFU official and a veterinary surgeon, focusing on the essential nature of animal farming for health and cultural reasons.

As per the NHS and BDA’s statements, it is clear that animal products are not essential for human health. It is harder to refute cultural attachments to animal farming, however, just because something has been happening for a long time does not mean that it should continue. What is considered acceptable changes over time; for example, slavery, women’s right to vote and child labour. 

Green transition

The audience’s questions revealed a desire to know more about veganism and the consequences arising from the current shift in dietary choices.  

The Vegan Society does not want conflict with farmers. We are keen to collaborate and advocate for policies that help farmers transition to a more sustainable and kinder system. It is the system that is at fault, not individual farmers, who are just trying to make a living like everyone else.

We don’t want farmers to lose their jobs, their farm or to move away from the areas their families have lived in for generations, but rather to transition away from animal agriculture. Consumer demand for plant-based food is rising rapidly which presents an opportunity for British farmers and we want to see them benefit. 

Our Grow Green campaign calls for a package of policies designed to make this transition easier and reduce the risk that farmers take when seeking to change.

We want to see greater education around the environmental and economic benefits of plant protein production. Pulses like beans, peas and other protein crops take nitrogen from the air and store it in their roots, ensuring soil quality does not diminish.

Grow Green

Our campaign also calls for subsidies to be directed more towards protein crops than their animal alternatives; designated funding for market research and development; the use of climate finance to support rewilding for land that cannot be used for plant-based food production; and a package of support for farmers transitioning away from animal agriculture.

All of these issues and more will be discussed at the inaugural Grow Green Conference on 11 April at The British Library, London, exploring the potential challenges of the shift towards farming more plants and looking at the environmental, public health and animal benefits.

Speakers from across agricultural, academic and food policy areas will discuss how we can meet climate change targets and adapt food production to mirror consumer demands. Ecologist readers can benefit from a 10 percent discount on the delegate rate by using code GROW10. 

Jay Wilde, from the BAFTA-winning documentary 73 Cows, will also be sharing his experiences. Jay gave his livestock to an animal sanctuary with help from The Vegan Society and is now building infrastructure on his land to produce organic vegetables with hopes to open a vegan bed and breakfast as well. 

More and more farmers are contacting us saying they want to do the same. Things are changing and to be effective we all need to work together.

Whilst it is doubtful that many of the audience will have changed their minds following Blymhill Agricultural Discussion Group’s event, I am optimistic that everyone will have left with the knowledge that vegans and farmers can engage meaningfully on these issues. This gives me hope for a successful, peaceful transition to a more sustainable and kinder agricultural system. 

This Author

Mark Banahan is Campaigns and Policy Officer at @TheVeganSociety and a keen vegan and political activist. Follow him on Twitter: @MarkBanahan. 

To find out more about the inaugural Grow Green conference visit the website, and use discount code GROW10 to book your ticket.

President Juncker was present as Greta Thunberg, initiator of the school strikes, explained why the EU was not doing enough to prevent climate breakdown. Juncker responded to her magnificent speech with some inadequate promises – and a strange rant about toilet flush regulations.

What Junker did not tell Thunberg last week is that he is working hard to get more climate-wrecking liquefied natural gas to Europe from a rogue state that has pulled out of the Paris Agreement. I’m talking about the USA.

The EU’s trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström declared at the informal meeting of EU Trade Ministers in Bucharest, Romania, that she wants to conclude a limited agreement on the trade of industrial goods between the US and Europe “as soon as possible” and “during this Commission’s mandate” – which means in the coming months.

Strong unanimity?

Malmström also claimed that there is “strong unanimity that we should have a positive agenda with the US”.

But is there really strong unanimity among EU citizens? Aren’t Europeans smart enough to see that the Commission pushing this agenda in response to Trump’s threat to slapp tariffs on EU-made cars? Don’t most Europeans believe in taking climate action seriously and playing fair on the international stage?

Sadly, German car-makers in particular want to avoid US tariffs and it is no secret that they are rather influential in German and European politics.

The US under Trump is going all out for fossil fuel extraction. Coal, tar sands, fracked gas: Trump is hell-bent on digging out as much as he can. The US now needs markets to sell their dirty fossil fuels to and it seems Juncker and Malmström are eager to give Trump just what he wants.

It begs the following questions: where are the European leaders such as Macron, who have declared they would not make trade deals with countries that are not committed to the goals of the Paris Agreement?

And where are the European decision-makers that are really listening to what the young people of Europe, many leading scientists and over 100 civil society networks like the European Environmental Bureau are saying?

Global commitments

Tens of thousands of citizens – especially school children – are currently marching in the streets of Europe, week after week, demanding immediate bold action on climate change.

There should be no trade negotiations with countries that are not even willing to sign up to the minimal commitments of the Paris Agreement. Global commitments towards stopping climate change must come before the interests of the car industry lobbyists.

Hard-won standards that protect people and the planet should come before trade deals.

As a minimum, EU decision makers must keep their word, uphold the Paris Agreement and not mandate new trade negotiations with the USA. But the situation is urgent, and they must go much further.

It’s simply not enough to stop the situation from worsening, we need to make progress. Some years ago, over 20,000 scientists warned that we face mass extinction if we don’t dramatically slow down resource use. Some global trade is needed, but it needs to be limited, balanced and fair and its goal must be to protect the planet and to serve people.

Radical transformation

Europe needs to be slapping trade tariffs on US products, rather than trying to expand our trade with them, after it pulled out of the Paris Agreement.

Scientists have described the great potential for so-called “border carbon adjustments” (BCAs) to strengthen climate action in the current tariff standoff between the US and the EU. But where is the leader who argues for this?

Civil society organisations are calling on the European Commission, national governments and EU parliamentarians to use every political and financial tool at their disposal to speedily and justly end the fossil fuel age now. The next European budget can’t be 25 percent ‘climate proof’ and 75 percent ‘climate wrecking’.

The laws of thermodynamics will not be fooled, the climate will not be fooled and neither will the people of Europe.

Now it is time for true leadership and radical transformation to avoid the chaos, droughts and rising tides of 1.5 degrees or more of global warming, and to bring about a safer, fairer, and cleaner Europe. Now is the time to protect not just Europe, but humanity and the living world we depend on to thrive.

This Author

Nick Meynen is policy officer for environmental and economic justice at the European Environmental Bureau. He has authored several books on the environment and he comments on global environmental and economic issues on Facebook and Twitter. For more details, visit the Atlas of Environmental Justice.

This article was first published on Metamag.

The fate of a key insect habitat in Essex could have been different if Natural England had gone ahead with plans to designate it as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), according to campaigners at Buglife.

The government last week gave the go-ahead to the Tilbury 2 project, which will see a new port terminal built on the site of the former Tilbury Power Station on the north bank of the River Thames in Essex.

The site is one of the nation’s best brownfield sites for invertebrates, Buglife says. Among the 1,397 species of insect using the site are 159 species designated as being of conservation importance, and 31 of which are rare and threatened.

Natural England

The insects effected include the Shrill carder bee (Bombus sylvarum), Brown-banded carder bee (Bombus humilis), Sea aster mining bee (Colletes halophilus) and Five-banded weevil-wasp (Cerceris quinquefasciata), according to Buglife.

These species and the unique habitats which support them are now expected to be lost for ever, it says. Some 75,000 members of the public signed a petition led by the charity to save the wildlife on the site.

The loss could have been avoided if the government’s conservation body, Natural England, had followed its own advice that the site was of high enough quality to be designated a SSSI, which would have given it extra protection in the planning system, it said. Natural England had said it would add the site to its pipeline of designations, but never progressed the site, Buglife claimed.

Jamie Robins, projects manager at Buglife, criticised the decision in the light of a recent scientific study warning of a massive decline in insects worldwide: “Buglife is disappointed that once again, a site of SSSI quality is going to be lost while Natural England stood by without acting to protect it, like an ostrich with its head in the sand.

“Unless Natural England step up and fulfil their duty to protect our best wildlife sites, we are going to continue to lose our precious invertebrate species.”

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Today, the energy markets in most states in the USA are what are called regulated monopolies, meaning consumers only have one choice for where they get their electricity.

This setup has its roots back in the early 1900s, and the US energy market has operated under regulation since that time, although numerous changes were made along the way.

The energy market became dominated by monopolies because of the massive costs of building infrastructure to deliver energy to customers. Few companies can make such huge investments, and having duplicate infrastructure would be less than ideal.

Electricity generation

For these reasons, the government allowed energy companies to become monopolies. Because monopolies have no competition, however, they can charge whatever they want.

To prevent utilities from increasing prices by too much, the government set up commissions to regulate them and decide the prices that utilities charge.

This system worked well for some time, but it also had drawbacks. Monopolies are less likely to innovate and find ways to reduce prices, and consumers have no choice in where they get their energy. By the 1990s, people began calling for reduced regulation of the energy market.

Today some states have deregulated energy markets, although it is still not the norm. Less than half have deregulated both their gas and electric markets. Some have deregulated just electricity, some have deregulated just natural gas, and they’re deregulated to varying degrees.

The National Energy Policy Act of 1992 helped pave the way for deregulation. It made it easier for companies to enter the market and compete in electricity generation.

Competition

Order 888 from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission helped separate power plants from electricity transmission businesses. This meant that private electricity generators could sell their energy wholesale to utilities who would then transmit it to customers.

Deregulated energy markets operate more like the markets for most other goods. They’re open for competition, and customers can choose where they want to buy their energy from.

The utilities that send electricity to customers are like retail stores, which sells goods from numerous suppliers to customers. Generation companies that sell power to utilities are like the suppliers that sell goods to the retail stores.

In a deregulated energy market, customers pay the utility for their electricity but can choose which supplier provides that energy.

Energy deregulation has several benefits. The presence of competition encourages utilities to innovate to win over customers.

Renewable energy

Companies are encouraged to differentiate themselves from the competition by introducing unique programs, improving their customer service and offering energy from alternative sources. It also incentivizes them to lower their prices to beat out the competition.

Deregulation also means more choice for consumers. In markets with competition, customers can purchase green, renewable energy if they like. Even if these choices are more expensive than others, some customers may choose them to reduce their carbon footprints and encourage the growth of the renewable energy industry.

So, what would a future with completely deregulated energy markets look like? It’s difficult to say precisely what would happen in this scenario, and this uncertainty has slowed the transition to full deregulation.

On the one hand, deregulation may result in a future in which utilities serve mainly as transmission and distribution companies.

Private companies would handle generation and sell their energy wholesale to utilities. The markets would likely have more renewable energy and other non-traditional energy sources. Consumers may also enjoy lower prices brought about by competition.

Farmers

Some worry, however, that deregulation could lead to price increases and unreliable electricity. This is what happened in the deregulated market of California in the early 2000s.

Several flaws in the design of retail choice programs caused this. The law prevented utilities from owning generation or signing long-term contracts, forcing them to buy energy on the short-term market. This left them vulnerable to price spikes.

California also left wholesale prices unregulated but put a cap on what utilities could charge customers, meaning that, in some scenarios, utilities could lose money. Because of these rules, manipulations of the market led to rapidly rising prices and blackouts.

Since then, states have learned from these mistakes. Eliminating rules such as those that caused California’s energy crisis has resulted in deregulated energy markets that lower prices and give consumers more choice.

Low-income customers

Some markets, such as that of Germany, have been successfully deregulated for some time. In Germany, deregulation has encouraged smaller energy producers, such as farmers who install renewable energy resources on their farmland, to enter the market.

Meanwhile, some note that while competition is beneficial, leaving energy companies completely unregulated can result in other issues. If no regulations are present, energy companies may start using cheap, environmentally harmful sources of energy.

They might also stop offering programs such as those that help low-income customers afford energy. A potential solution to this is to leave the markets open to competition but require certain amounts of renewable energy, low-income program and other initiatives.

Even if we don’t ever see an energy market with absolutely no regulation, we can still gain benefits from reducing regulation and encouraging competition. That seems to be the way the energy market is heading.

This Author

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

The era of throwaway fashion must end, and government must penalise companies who do not act responsibly and reward those that do, according to MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee.

The committee scrutinised the impact of the fashion industry, inviting evidence from brands, retailers and campaign groups. The inquiry found that UK consumers buy more new clothes per person than any other country in Europe, with more than one million tonnes discarded each year.

Although some parts of the industry are making progress in reducing their carbon and water consumption, these improvements have been outweighed by the increased volumes of clothing being sold, the MPs found. Some 1,130,000 tonnes of clothing was purchased in the UK in 2016, an increase of almost 200,000 tonnes since 2012, MPs found.

Mandatory targets needed

A voluntary approach to improving the sustainability of the industry is failing, it said. Just 11 retailers have signed up to reduce their water, waste and carbon footprints through waste advisory organisation WRAP’s Sustainability Clothing Action Plan.

WRAP’s targets should be made mandatory for all retailers with a turnover of more than £36 million as a ‘licence to practice’, the MPs said. Their report also recommended that government work with retailers to increase use of digital supply chain technology to improve traceability. 

A 1p charge on fashion retailers to pay for better clothing collection and recycling, and that the government uses the tax system to incentivise reuse, repair and recycling of clothes, it suggested. Children should be taught how to design, create, mend and repair clothes at school, they added.

The MPs also want the government to publish a list of retailers who are required by law to report under the Modern Slavery Act that their supply chains do not contain forced labour and illegally low pay, and apply a penalty for companies to fail to comply.

Committee chair Mary Creagh MP said: “Our insatiable appetite for clothes comes with a huge social and environmental price tag: carbon emissions, water use, chemical and plastic pollution are all destroying our environment.”

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

The government is supporting plans by Shell to leave leftover oil and chemicals in some of its installations in the North Sea, according to an investigation by Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism team.

Oil and gas operators in the UK are decommissioning their infrastructure as it reaches the end of its life. This has cost companies in the sector more than £1 billion each year since 2014, according to a report by government spending watchdog the National Audit Office.

But decommissioning hundreds of North Sea oil and gas rig will also cost British taxpayers at least £24 billion, due to tax reliefs granted to companies in return for decommissioning.

Infrastructure

Shell has proposed leaving portions of its Brent oilfield installations in the North Sea, including the contents of concrete storage cells containing oil and chemicals at three of the four installations – Brent Bravo, Charlie and Delta.

In a document seen by Unearthed, the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED), part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), has given its full support to Shell’s proposal.

However, this may undermine the OSPAR Convention, an international agreement designed to protect the marine environment, Unearthed claimed.

The German government has written to environment secretary Michael Gove to express concerns that Shell has failed to properly account for long-term risks to the environment and ship traffic, according to a document seen by Unearthed.

Consultations

The investigative team understands that it is discussing whether to formally object to the UK’s proposal to allow Shell to leave the infrastructure in the sea. If three or more countries object, the government will have to undertake further consultations.

A spokesperson for Shell told Unearthed that it had met with the German government to discuss its decommissioning plans. “Our recommendations are the result of 10 years of research, involving more than 300 scientific and technical studies,” it said in a statement.

A spokesperson for BEIS said: “Decommissioning proposals are considered on a case-by-case basis and only approved following appropriate consultation with stakeholders.”

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

The primary need of any system is an input of energy and information that will allow it to maintain its existence, its pattern or structure, despite entropy. Systems have developed, have become more complex, over billions of years in order to address this need.

Live forms are systems that have developed an extraordinary variety of methods of meeting this need, and these methods themselves are themselves and relate to other sub-level needs which in turn need to be met by the system. The primary need of energy therefore cascades out into a structure of needs. These needs are different for every system, depending on the methods developed to meet the need for energy.

The human being is an example of this living system, and arguably the most complex yet developed. The primacy of energy flow through the system is expressed through the need for food, water and oxygen, without which we cannot survive for very long.

Anatomy of needs

Humans meet the need for food not as isolated, single systems. They meet this primary need through complex social structures with other human beings. The newborn child cannot feed itself. The human mind continues to develop after birth during feeding from another human being, and the most primary and fundamental characteristics of that mind are created when this relationship exists.

This series of articles will examine in detail some universal characteristics of systems, and the universal presence of such systems in our universe. It will also discuss how the individual human is a system, exhibiting a particular form of these universal characteristics.

Humans exist in groups, and these groups coalesce into organisations and societies – smaller systems together forming global systems. Finally, I want to talk about how consciousness of our existence of systems can help us work collectively towards system change, or development.

I have argued that the starting point of this (dialectical systems) analysis is need. I therefore want to examine human need in particular, developing a sketch of a taxonomy of need for human beings. I will argue later that any one activist will better engage allies and communities by first demonstrating an understanding of others’ needs and how these can be met.

There have been many attempts to map human needs. By way of example. Jonathan Bradshaw published his anatomy of needs in New Society in which he provides four distinct categories: normative needs, felt needs, expressed needs and comparative needs.

Satisfying

Normative needs are the minimum level of adequacy as set down by society, or the state. This might include the British Medical Association’s nutritional standard. The felt need is the want of the individual. The expressed need is that which stimulates action, such as hospital waiting list. Comparative need is that which someone feels if they do not have the same as others. While these definitions are useful, the taxonomy I will be relying on is quite different.

Humans have absolute needs, below which the individual cannot survive. This includes the universal need to counter entropy, and the need general to all life for a flow of energy – in the form of food. Absolute needs also include warmth, and protection from the elements – which takes the form of clothing, housing and fuel. These material needs are entirely natural, in that other animals also need food and, to varying degrees, shelter.

Humans are among those living systems that have developed a central nervous system, which senses its environment, through sight, sound, touch and so on. We experience pleasure in relation to objects that satisfy our needs, and pain in relation to objects which threaten our safety.

Further, we experience positive feelings such as joy when we know our needs can and will be met, and anxiety when the reverse is true. Feelings and emotions form part of the methods we as systems experience so that we satisfy our needs.

The human being in the process of satisfying these material needs has evolved to work collectively, and in the process has developed further absolute needs which are socially produced needs. These needs are material and also psychological. An adult human being may be able to survive for some time growing food, but in isolation may experience psychosis and therefore no longer function.

Food and shelter

Humans have evolved as humans because of a high level of dependency on the group at birth. A new born child, as with a newborn penguin or bonobo, simply would not survive without the long term, intensive care of an adult. Humans, like other animals, have evolved to need proximity to an adult (a theme I will return to at greater length later). These needs are as absolute for a human being as food and water.

Humans through our advanced tool making, through production, have now inhabited parts of the world where our needs are more general and complex than other animals – indeed, this may be our key distinguishing feature. Central heating, transport, avocados have become for individual humans an absolute need.

These social needs have through history themselves become more complex and the systems that deliver the objects and processes that satisfy them more intricate and interconnected. These social needs remain absolute: the need for money extends to the need for employment, which will in turn result in a need for clothing of a particular kind, for haircuts and the instruments of work.

These needs are culturally determined, and some absolute need in one culture may seem luxurious or frivolous in another. Indeed, needs continue to multiply in form and in extent as the objects and services that can satisfy them. Societies with higher levels of production in turn produce higher levels of need. The need for spectacles is today absolute, but only appeared

Contemporary society has developed levels of production that it is at least possible for all absolute needs to be met: there is currently enough food and shelter in the world for everyone, were it evenly distributed. There are therefore needs that are not absolute, nor natural, but nevertheless remain needs rather than falling into the categories of wants and desires.

Access to food

Needs that are not absolute can be understood as luxury. But it is impossible to define what objects and processes fall within each category by attempting to find a particular quality or indeed list of qualities. This categorisation is historically and culturally contingent. Meat today is understood to be necessary to meet an absolute need, while artichokes would be seen as a luxury. This may be reversed as plant based diets become more popular, and then necessary.

We as humans are intensely social animals that experience emotions ranging from joy and pleasure to anger and anxiety in relation to our needs, Therefore, when we perceive that other human beings are having their needs met, and we are not, we can experience jealousy and shame. We have a visceral understanding that our needs are not fixed, but are contingent and varied.

The classification any need as ‘absolute’ is not based on the material quality of the object of need, but instead on the social, historical context of the human relation to any object. The definition of luxury then depends on the system of meaning in which they sit.

Among the most significant social contexts which impact on human needs, their satisfaction, and their classification, is production. Production is the mode and method of society in changing natural resources into objects that can satisfy human needs. The nature and classifications of needs change as the levels of production societies develop, and the complexity and abundance of these objects increase.

Industrial capitalism has created some societies where absolute, basic human needs are met and indeed satisfied. I personally have never missed a meal through lack of access to food, nor have I slept outside in the cold unless it was entirely voluntary. I have always enjoyed at least some social connection. Human beings in this context have not stopped needing, and the objects of that need are absolute and necessary to avoid anxiety and other emotional (and physical) harms.

Accumulation

This is why an iPhone could not have represented an absolute need before it was invented, but in some contexts and for some individuals today does represent an absolute need (whether as a non-negotiable tool for work and therefore sustenance, or to maintain a place in a social group such as a school). This in turn explains intergenerational conflict as a parent who never had an iPhone (or indeed reading glasses) at school struggles to understand how this can be the object of absolute need in today’s context.

So far, I have described human beings as systems and discussed their needs on this basis. Human beings are open systems (they take in energy and material from outside, and also excrete material as waste). They are autopetic living systems, self making systems both in terms of generating themselves and in giving birth.

Almost all human beings today organise themselves within another system: the capitalist system. This system also has needs, it takes in energy and produces waste as a necessary activity in generating and regenerating itself as a system.

The capitalist system came into being and evolved (and could only evolve) through meeting the needs of the individual human beings that sustain it, much like the human being has evolved through meeting the needs of the individual cells from which it is made.

Capitalism has, however, evolved its own needs (the creation of profits and the accumulation of value). These needs are different to, and now clearly antagonistic to) the needs of the individual humans that constitute capitalism as a system.

Profit

We are all born into a capitalist society, and as such our needs are met through engaging with capitalism as a system. We use money to buy food, and pay the rent, see a film. We earn money through work. When the system works, and our needs are met, it seems fair. The system is based on the fact that we need money to meet our needs.

The inverse of this is that if we do not work, if we do not play our part in the capitalist system as  a whole, our needs will not be met. When we struggle to find work, we face hunger and exposure. The system then starts to feel extremely unfair. It is at its essence a system of coercion (supported by the violence of the debtors’ prison and bailiff).

The often repeated claim that we live in a free market where we have choice ignores the fact that we are not free to choose the type of market in which we live, where we must survive. It is extremely difficult to meet your needs without performing the function of the part in the capitalist system, the capitalist whole.

Capitalism like all other systems has needs, and has purpose. The capitalist system must fulfil certain functions for it to continue. The primary need of capitalism is to generate profit. In the capitalist system profit is generated through the investment of capital in the production of commodities – through the exhaustion of human labour in transforming nature (raw materials) – which are then sold in exchange for even more capital.

If any one investor within the capitalist system cannot get interest on a loan, or a return on their investment, they will withdraw the investment. If all investors withdraw their individual capitals then the system as a whole will no longer function. The result of capital returning a profit on investment across the whole system is an accumulation of capital. This means that over time fewer investors hold all the wealth of society, and need ever larger returns on that investment.

Credit cards

Capitalism, like a living organism without predation, reproduces itself, getting ever larger, until ultimately it exhausts its own supply of food and sinks for waste – its needs multiply until they can no longer be met by its environment.

The problem with capitalism, and the problem of capitalism, is the needs of this system are not the same as the needs of the human beings that enact it. Indeed, the needs of capitalism are diametrically opposed to those of the human beings that live in capitalist societies – including those with capital who need a return on their investment.

Capitalism needs to keep producing commodities for exchange, to make a profit. This need overwhelms and overrides human needs. Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, the first study of political economy assumed that the individual in working to meet their own need would unconsciously and naturally meet the needs of capital, of society, more generally.

But as we know, the advertising industry exists today in order to stimulate ever greater needs in us humans. If Smith’s ‘hidden hand’ was effective, there would be no need for advertising at all.

Capitalism needs us to keep buying, even when our fridges are full, our pillows are plump and our iPads are charged. The individual human being might have different needs: a rest from advertising, needs to save and pay off some credit cards, needs to spent more time at home with family, and less at work, and needs a stable environment where resources have not been exhausted and where landfill does not belch out climate damaging gasses.

Vital need

These needs are completely irrelevant to capitalism. Indeed, these particular needs are opposed to the needs of capital. It is the needs of capitalism today that win out, the system has greater purpose and agency than the individuals of which it is made.

Capitalism is the most productive economic system so far developed. It creates enormous wealth, which satisfies both necessary and natural needs and the artificial needs it has also created. The accumulation of capital in the hands of a small minority of the world population has meant that some individuals have extreme wealth.

Capitalism has satisfied almost all of the needs of those with the money to participate in effective demand. Therefore capitalism has to constantly generate new needs. These are artificial, as opposed to necessary or natural needs. These needs can include mouth wash, SUVs and private space travel. Capitalism needs and is very adept at ensuring these artificial needs are felt as, and indeed become, necessary needs. 

The environmental crisis we face is best understood from the standpoint of capitalism constantly creating artificial needs in real, living human beings in order to satisfy its systemic need for the accumulation of capital, and then destroying natural resources in the production of commodities that then satisfy these artificial needs.

Capitalism creates the environmental crisis – but it also creates its solution.

Freedom

The concentration and absolute levels of wealth in capitalism has created new needs, the most important and significant is freedom. There are human beings who never have to work, are not accountable to anyone, and can be reasonably confident that all their needs will be satisfied during the course of their lifetime, and that the same will be true for their heirs.

Freedom is also experienced by human beings who do not enjoy extreme wealth. Freedom from acute hunger is enjoyed by millions of people. Some countries have a significant cohort of human beings who have retired, have pensions, own their own homes and expect (and feel entitled to) a life of leisure.

They are also free to choose from an extraordinary variety of goods and services, which only centuries ago were beyond the wealthy of any individual.

Capitalism has created a form of freedom not previously enjoyed. However, it has managed this through violence and coercion. Humans who are unfree can see that other humans are free (often, because of our cultural practices, this is impossible to avoid even when desired).

Capitalism has created a vital need for freedom, for leisure, for creative time and space. This need is felt acutely by most human beings. But it is a need that capitalism itself cannot satisfy. I want to discuss this paradox (or contradiction) in my next article.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague.