Parents worried about being penalised with fines for their children striking from school over climate change inaction today have vowed to defend their decision in court if they have to.

Thousands of children in more than 50 UK towns and cities were expected to down pens and join the first national Youth Strike For Climate today, defying warnings from some head teachers.

Schools are taking mixed views of the protest, with teachers saying on the one hand they understand the importance of the message on climate change and activism, but some are feeling restricted by safeguarding and absence rules imposed by the Department for Education. Children can only take ‘authorised absences’ for ‘exceptional circumstances’ which are not defined.

Their future

Parents often face fines from local education authorities for unauthorised absences. Some parents told The Ecologist they had received letters from their school head teachers warning the strike would not be authorised, and that children should be in school.

Sam Wiltshire said he had written to his daughter’s school in advance, notifying them of her desire to strike, but was not met with support from their school.

“It’s clear from letters that parents have received this week from head teachers that not all schools here in Bristol are showing support for the strike,” he said.

“Regardless of that I will support my two children striking and having the courage to stand up for something that they can see is incredibly important.

“We are in exceptional circumstances. Not enough is being done to prevent the climate change that will affect their future. The threat of a fine won’t stop us, we’ll fight it.”

Fined

One 15-year-old Oxfordshire student, blogger and author, Alex White, tweeted: “I’ve been upfront with school and told them I will be walking out tomorrow lunch. I’ve been told the doors will be locked especially to stop students leaving. Therefore I have no choice but to have the whole day off.”

He said he knew there were school safeguarding concerns: “I’m sure some teachers are fully supportive, and I completely understand the position the school has to take, but I’m striking for my future.”

Other primary and secondary schools, including some in Oxford and Bristol, have promised to support the strike by giving authorised absence marks in the register to pupils going on the strike. Cathedral Choir School in Bristol is even taking whole classes along to the protest on College Green, with teachers.

Legal experts say that under the Human Rights Act 1998, children have a right to gather peacefully to protest, and that there cannot be a culture of ‘pay to protest’ – you should not have to pay for your human rights.

One human rights barrister told The Ecologist that parents had been in touch with concerns about being fined for the strike, and that the right to protest should not be restricted to those who can afford it.

Positive light

“Our children as much as any of us have a human right to peaceful protest and assembly, and it is important that State institutions such as schools do not interfere with those rights,” she argued.

Parents had told her they were considering not paying any fine, and crowd funding to support a legal defence if necessary.

Layla Moran is the Oxford West and Abingdon MP,  the Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman and also a former science teacher.

She urged school leaders to be supportive of any striking pupils: “I hope schools, colleges and universities see this in the positive light it is meant and equally hope those students act sensibly with making sure adults know where they are and making up the missed work.”

Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for south west England and Gibraltar, one of 200 scientists who signed a public letter of support for strikers.

Climate justice

She said: “Far from being disengaged, many young people do care passionately about our planet and the welfare of our neighbours across the world.

“They deserve our unreserved support and I hope that, rather than punishing students who take part, head teachers encourage them to share their experiences of active citizenship with their peers.”

The National Association of Head Teachers said school leaders should ensure children attend school, are kept safe and receive a good quality of education, but added: “Individual school leaders can decide how best to respond to any proposed protest by students in their school on Friday.”

School strikes have been inspired by 16-year-old Swedish school girl Greta Thunberg’s protests outside her Parliament buildings last year, with copycat actions taking place in Australia, Holland and Belgium. More protests are planned, including a global strike day on March 15.

The striking children have a list of demands on the government, including: a UK-wide declaration of a climate emergency; more active steps to achieve climate justice; a reform of the national curriculum to make the ecological crisis an educational priority; mass public communication about the climate and ecological crisis; the inclusions of youth views into policy making; a lowering of the voting age to 16.

Climate crisis

Jake Woodier, a UK Youth Climate Coalition strike co-organiser,  said interest in today’s strike has grown rapidly over the past fortnight: “It’s fantastic to see so many passionate young people standing up for their futures.

“The evidence is clear that urgent action is needed now, to decarbonise all parts of the economy, and young people around the world are aware of this. Today’s young people have been let down by those in power for the previous few decades.

“I think that fears surrounding potential fines are natural for a lot of students in what may be their first taste of climate action. Schools and the education system should be about learning and empowering students to make positive change in the world, so it would be a massive shame if schools were to threaten punishment for those wanting to fight for their future.

“Schools have a policy of only allowing absences for medical reasons or under exceptional circumstances. Young people the world over see the climate crisis as an exceptional circumstance.”

Jake said many teachers had personally pledged support for the strike: “Teachers may be in a bit of a tricky situation to promote it too actively, but we’re living in a world where the climate crisis is an urgent reality.”

This Author

Alex Morss is an independent ecologist, freelance journalist, educator and author. 

A while back, it struck me as remarkable that no-one had written a book about the UK’s tiny but well-connected cabal of climate contrarians. Especially given the extent to which they shaped political discourse on energy and climate change for a decade.

Such a book didn’t appear to exist. So I wrote one.

I first encountered the contrarian community about 15 years ago, as a science and environment correspondent at the BBC.

Scientific evidence

Many will remember some of the events highlighted by contrarians that took place during that period – the theft and release of emails from the University of East Anglia in 2009, the IPCC’s erroneous statement two years earlier that Himalayan glaciers could be melted by 2035, and the debacle of the Copenhagen climate summit.

However, years previously, contrarianism’s belly was already cram full of self-righteous fire – arguing that the scientific establishment was crooked, and politicians such as Al Gore leading the world down a path of expensive and unreliable clean energy for a cause that was just hot air.

The so-called ‘ClimateGate’ episode was just – if you’ll forgive the expression – the tip of the iceberg. But it allowed Nigel Lawson to launch his Global Warming Policy Foundation in a blaze of publicity – and amid the heat, something fundamentally flipped in parts of the UK media, with concomitant changes in political discourse too. It would take years – a series of very warm years –before the majority of coverage returned to the evidence-based.

Denied: The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism tells the story of how contrarian discourse came to the fore in media and politics. How some newspapers and magazines bought the arguments, and gave them a shop window well beyond the point where credibility vanished. And it tells the most important and fascinating part of the story: how and why the contrarians lost.

Why ‘contrarian’ rather than ‘denier’ or ‘sceptic’? As I outline in the book, I’m unhappy with both terms. ‘Denier’ is uncomfortable because of its Holocaust connection, and in any case many people who are often labelled ‘deniers’, including Lawson, don’t deny that man-made climate change is real, instead arguing about the quality of scientific evidence, economics and policy options.

New normal

The term ‘sceptic’, on the other hand, must be earned, as being genuinely sceptical is generally a virtue. It cannot sensibly be applied to a group of people who show absolutely no scepticism towards their canonical arguments, even when those arguments have clearly been overtaken.

And overtaken they have been, as I show in Denied. Arguments as familiar as that climate change is natural, that the lights will go out if we build more renewable energy, and that no other country is doing anything to decarbonise.

All have been lost, in the real world where evidence rules. Yet… the contrarian community has not followed the evidence. Instead it has taken up further fantastical arguments – the US is decarbonising faster than any other major economy because of shale gas (it isn’t), or small modular reactors (SMRs) will be cheaper than renewables (we have no idea).

Exactly how and why parts of politics and journalism veered down these cul-de-sacs will always, I suspect, remain unknown. Certainly I don’t claim to have found the precise answers.

But there is little doubt in my mind that the events of 2008-9 – the now-disproven ‘global warming pause’, the email hack, the failure of Copenhagen – created a ‘new normal’, in which figures such as Nigel Lawson, Christopher Monckton and Chris Booker could claim to have been proven right all along.

Onshore wind

The ‘new normal’ persisted for years – as recently as 2017, Lawson told the BBC Today Programme audience that the global temperature had fallen over the last decade, David Rose in the Mail on Sunday attempted to keep alive the trope that climate science is a conspiracy, and Matt Ridley assured us in The Times us that an industry that hardly exists in the UK and in which few investors are interested, shale gas, would definitively provide energy ‘at a cost well below that of renewables’.

If such examples seem extraordinary on their own, one thing that emerged to me while writing the book was how much more extraordinary the picture looks when the sheer volume of output along these lines is laid together.

We have here some of the most prestigious titles in Britain – all prepared to give houseroom to lines of argument that cease to stack up once one applies the first fork of genuine scepticism.

To anyone who would argue ‘so what, it doesn’t matter’ I offer some cautionary statistics, derived from my current work running the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

A recent survey of MPs found that only eight percent know onshore wind is the UK’s cheapest new form of electricity generation. The same percentage thought the answer was SMRs – which do not actually exist in commercial form.

Ministers

A few years back, we found – as have many other polls – that renewable energy enjoys the support of around four in five Britons. But only one in 20 of the population knows this – most think renewables are unpopular.

If media distortion of reality isn’t at least partially responsible for these misinformed states, it’s hard to know what is. And it’s hard to have evidence-based policymaking on energy when such a tiny proportion of our elected representatives knows the important basics.

Whatever the factors behind the contrarians’ rise, Denied’s most fundamental conclusion is that they have lost. In the media, writers as formerly influential as Matt Ridley and David Rose have evidently mislaid the ears of their editors.

The public, despite being told for 10 years that it hates renewable energy, stubbornly refuses to think what it is told it thinks; support for clean energy is overwhelming and concern about climate change rising. In politics – recalling that climate contrarianism is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of the Right – it has lost even more spectacularly.

Just five years ago, former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson MP’s attempt to get the Climate Change Act repealed received a certain amount of traction from his peers. Now, the live question is not whether to repeal the Act but how to strengthen it – and this is being led by ministers, not backbenchers.

As I remark in my introduction, Denied shouldn’t really have been needed. In a rational society, evidence would form the basis for both policymaking and media discourse. But… when powerful forces come to play, evidence does not always win. Denied was needed.

I end it with a suggestion to contrarians: admit where you’re wrong, regain some credibility, and apply real scepticism to real arguments. We will see.

This Author

Richard Black is director of the Environment and Climate Intelligence Unit and former BBC science and environment correspondent.

The need to develop human societies appropriate to natural systems has never been more urgent. Can natural systems themselves provide the information and examples necessary to develop these new societies? This question is very much in vogue.

Read our On The Nature of Change series here.

There is today a need for philosophy – and in particular a philosophy of need. This philosophy should inform practice: the practice of developing our societies towards meeting the needs of its members directly, in an unmediated and unalienated way.

This philosophy requires and necessitates a much clearer understanding of human needs: the need of the individual, the group, our society – and the natural world that we have created and on which we depend. The philosophy of need presented here is predicated on dialectics and systems thinking (or dialectical systems) as methods of understanding and interpreting a complex world.

Ability

Dialectics – a theory of natural and social change – is resurgent after a century buried under distorting ideologies. Systems theory – a century in evolution – is emerging as a new metascience. Biomimicry is currently the zeitgeist. Nature can provide the information needed for humans to return to nature, to live within its patterns and limits.

But does any of these mean in practice – and, in particular, what does it mean for people working within organisations that are trying to make the world a safer, better place?

Brian J Robertson, in his book, Holacracy, sets out in detail a management system that is consciously and deliberately based on an interpretation of natural systems, and in particular cells and the human body. Robertson invites readers to evolve, to develop, his system. I have accepted that invitation.

Ecolocracy is therefore an iteration of Holacracy informed by the philosophy of need. It adds three vital components: firstly, the organisation as a whole must have as its purpose the meeting of human needs. This means the purpose cannot be profit making, or ‘economic growth’ and the organisation cannot enact a net harm, either socially or ecologically.

Secondly, the structure is designed so that the needs of the members of the team, the staff, are met. This allows them to contribute to the purpose to the best of their ability. Finally, space is created when needed so that the emergent qualities of social and group work can be developed.

Unelected

Ecolocracy is a practice of organising a group of people in the structure of life – an autopoietic, conscious, open system. It is autopoietic in that it is responsibility of the organisation as a whole to ensure it is self making, or sustainable. It is a consciously open system in that it senses, understands and regulates its relationship with its immediate and broader environment.

Read our On The Nature of Change series here.

But again, what does all this mean? Ecolocracy is a way to organise any group in a way which is fair, transparent, effective – and based on the way that atoms, cells, human bodies, society and the biosphere works. It has the potential to develop a new way of organising any group of people which is exactly in keeping with nature.

We have many organisational forms. One is hierarchy, another democracy and a third consensus. Each is flawed. But each contains the seed of a new way of being in a group. A synthesis between all three may prove to be precisely the form we need.

Hierarchy is resisted because it is inherently a form of inequality. Those at the top of the hierarchy have power: decision making power, privileged access to information, control of budgets. More importantly, it reduced the amount of human thought – imagination – which is brought to decision making. This is often reduced to a single mind.

Democracy is designed to limit or mitigate hierarchy. We live in a representative, political democracy. We elect those who then assume roles in the hierarchy. Often, these representatives in turn elect those at the very top. We elect MPs, who elect a party leader. In Britain, the Queen, the unelected head of the monarchy – the classic hierarchy – appoints the leader of the largest party Prime Minister.

Successful

In this model, democracy is almost identical to hierarchy in form, function and outcome. However, there is also direct democracy. A popular form is majority voting, or ’50 percent plus one’. This allows for a vote of all those who are eligible on any one decision, or policy (a cluster of decisions).

The primary flaw with this system is it requires perfect knowledge, or highly distributed knowledge. That is, if decisions are going to be based on evidence rather than, for example, party allegiances. That level of education does not exist today. The other major problem is 50 percent of people minus one can feel alienated and coerced by both the decision and the process (for example, the 48 percent today).

Finally, consensus. This is another form of democracy, where every effort is made to get everyone to vote the same way in any decision making. This was the model that made – and then broke – the Occupy movement. It has the advantage of inclusivity. But it retains the problem of perfect knowledge. Further, if 100 percent consensus is required then a lone individual can prevent collective action. It is vulnerable to sabotage, intentional or otherwise.

None of these organisational methods are both ethical and effective. For those of us intent on changing the world, there are three options: A. We can give up, walk away. Bury ourselves in theory and ignore the challenges to practical organisation.

B. We can accept the limitations of what we have. Keep trying. Hope that objective forces – events – will create such a need for action that any and all organisational forms can prove successful. This may happen.

Human adult

The final option, C, is to come up with something new. This new thing needs to meet very human needs: fairness, collectivity, practical outcomes. It needs to sit within the laws, tendencies, rules, rhythms, limitations of nature. This is where I am today. And this is why I am trying to evolve and implement ecolocracy in the groups within which I work.

I first came to systems theory when learning about climate science. I was interested in how claims made by dialectical materialism seemed to fit the evidence of climate change so well.

This includes the fact that the atmosphere as it is constituted now coevolved with oxygen based life – one was not the cause or the preexisting context for the other. The fact that the steady state of the Earth’s temperature is the result of the amount of carbon in the air, a product of countervailing forces: volcanoes and other sources adding carbon to the atmosphere, trees and life in various forms taking it back out.

I then became interested in how this relates to systems: the carbon in the atmosphere is controlled through an evolved system of homeostasis. An increase in carbon results in higher rates of growth of vegetation, which in turn results in carbon being removed from the atmosphere. This creates the steady state, the steady temperature, that allowed for human evolution.

Then I came to General Systems Theory through the work John Bowlby, who claims that personal anxiety is a cause of a crisis of attachment – and attachment is a system of homeostasis in which the human child develops the need to be within a certain distance of an attachment figure, a human adult.

Manifesto

The swift journey from global to personal was deeply compelling. I am now interested in materialist dialectics as a universal, philosophical ontology and epistemology. And nested within this a metascience, a general systems theory which provides knowledge of systems: physical, psychic and cultural.

Read our On The Nature of Change series here.

I believe that natural systems – the human body is often the metaphor used – can provide a clear, exact structure for the group – a number of people who have come together to achieve a purpose (for example, social change). The group is the system. A group that consciously, deliberately adopts practices from other systems will be equitable, knowledgeable, fair, effective and resilient.

Holacracy can be adopted by almost any organisation. Like some forms of life – for example, a virus – it does not have at its core an ethics or consciousness. It could be used to run an arms manufacturer or oil business. Ecolocracy has evolved. It has evolved consciousness. Like human beings, it has evolved a consciousness of its impact on its environment.

Ecolocracy requires the group to ensure that its own environment remains a source of energy, or life. This is written into its code, it’s DNA. Ecolocracy has developed an immunity to autocratic power, which is not the case with Holacracy in its pure form. However, Ecolocracy is one iternation, one generation, away from Holacracy and therefore retains much more than it loses and gains.

Here, I will set out a ‘manifesto’ for ecolocracy. It will begin with the first question that my systems discussions illicit from friends: how is this practical. I set out the core principles of Holacracy as it exists today, and the three changes that transform this into ecolocracy.

Conscious nature

This is an ‘essential oil’ extracted from the original book by Robertson and advanced. It retains what is necessary, and leaves out the persuasive arguments, the compelling examples, and the hypotheticals. These are vitally important, and any reader who would consider adopting this practice should read and refer to this book. But there is no point rehearsing these arguments here.

I will also examine the theoretical context of Holacracy, the philosophy (or, indeed, ideology) in which it is situated. Robertson presents himself as a man of pragmatic action who has discovered his way of organising through praxis. He believes himself to be ideology free.

It seems from the text that he exists within the ideology of free market capitalism. I suggest this means the following misconception: his organisational programme does not need – as a necessity – a social or environmental consciousness. It sits within the spontaneous equilibrium of life and of economic life. I will examine this in the fourth article.

Finally, I want to situate Holacracy in a conscious, chosen ideology. This is a worldview that states that humans must exist within the context of nature and that to do so requires us to understand how nature functions in reality. We are a conscious animal that knows the impact its behaviour has on the biosphere. We need to act on that knowledge if we are not to become extinct.

I will suggest that we can benefit from knowing, learning, mimicking, acting – functioning – in the same way as nature. But we must be conscious nature, self conscious nature. This new form provides an ideal organisational form for environmental, ethical organisations. Ecolocracy is Holacracy by nature, in nature, for nature.

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.

Read our On The Nature of Change series here.

The 1980s Save the Rainforest campaign stirred people in the way that the crusade against plastic and its lethal impact on oceans has today.

Sting travelled the world drumming up support for the cause with Chief Raoni. Save the Rainforest t-shirts were de rigueur among environmentalists. And saving the Amazon became synonymous with saving the planet.

Forests’ status as an environmental issue may have waned in the public imagination in the years since. Lately though, this has begun to change.

Vanishing

Not only is there a growing awareness that forests can be a natural bulwark against the impending calamity of climate chaos, but consumers are increasingly conscious that their supermarket shelves heave with goods which destroy forests.

Shopping without adding to the planet’s burden can be bewildering.

How can you be sure that your steak doesn’t come from cattle reared on land cleared of forest in Argentina? That the palm oil in your shampoo isn’t responsible for wiping out rainforests in Indonesia? That your chocolate isn’t helping turn the dense tropical forests of Ghana into desolate, barren moonscapes.

What about your car tyres? Was the rubber grown on a plantation in the Congo Basin which was once pristine rainforest?  And do you know whether your milk is from cows who were fed soy produced on land razed of forest and illegally seized from indigenous people in Brazil?

Forests around the world are vanishing at a startling rate, but these days the chainsaws and bulldozers are out less to harvest timber, and more to clear land for agriculture – which accounts for 80 percent of deforestation worldwide.

Supply chains

But if the concerned consumer looks to companies for assurance on how and where their goods are made, they are likely to end up even more baffled; especially if it means navigating their way around the 463 eco-labels which exist across 25 industry categories.

And if the public is confused, so are companies.

While more than 470 food and agriculture companies have responded to consumer pressure by pledging to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains by 2020, not only are these commitments generally weak, but they are, as many companies themselves concede, difficult to fulfil.

This is because – incredible as it may seem –  companies are largely blind to where some of their most damaging products are grown. Only 14 percent of all soy companies can trace their goods back to their farm of origin. For palm oil companies the figures are even worse, with only 2 percent able to trace their products back to where it was grown. They need help.

Unravelling the opaque, tangled supply chains carrying many of our agricultural goods from their sources to our supermarkets shelves, requires a level of transparency which can only be enforced through law.

Agricultural deforestation

Some countries, including France and Norway, have already started to act. But they cannot do it alone: and just as in the finance sector, there’s a risk that companies bypass the laws of one country by operating in another.

This is why the solution must come from the European level. Collectively, the European Union (EU)  is the second biggest importer of agricultural products resulting from deforestation. An area of forest the size of Portugal was lost globally between 1990 and 2005 because of EU consumption of commodities grown on deforested land.

So if the EU passes regulations to tackle this the global impact will be profound.

And right now, the long campaign for such regulations is at a critical juncture. The European Commission is currently running a public consultation on how to stop deforestation. This will be followed in the spring by a Communication in which it will outline its plans.

The groundswell of support for action has gathered pace: EU Member States, hundreds of thousands of citizens, the European Parliament and even companies, have called for EU regulations to tackle the scourge of agricultural deforestation. Yet, so far, the Commission has failed to heed their call.

Land grab

Now the public has the chance to ramp up the pressure on the Commission, and ensure the simple act of shopping no longer means walking an ethical tightrope.

We need laws that guarantee that neither products sold in the EU, nor the financial markets underpinning them, are destroying the planet’s forests and driving land grabs and other human rights abuses.

Only then will the vast swathe of people who care deeply about forests have something to cheer, and the aims of the Save the Rainforest slogan of yesteryear come closer to being realised.

This Author

Nicole Polsterer is the sustainable consumption campaigner at Fern, the Brussels-based forests and rights NGO.

The installation of a community water ReFILL station on the town centre Triangle in Bude, Cornwall, is being welcomed as the high water mark local action to tackle global environmental problems.

The water station was an idea that came from the local ReFILL movement, who have already had such an impact on minimising the use of non-recyclable and single-use plastics in our town through their cups and bottles.

The campaign began in Bude and has grown on a national scale: Michael Gove, the secretary of state for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has been seen out and about with his ReFILL cup.

Power as consumers

Deb Rosser, founder of ReFILL, said: “I launched ReFILL in 2014 with Neil Hembrow, from Keep Britain Tidy’s project. It was a really simple idea – just take a refillable, reuseable water bottle into café or a restaurant or such, and get pure Cornish tap water, for free.

“We began producing the ReFILL cups and bottles that have become so well-known in our town. And these have taken off – we have sold thousands, and all of the profits from these go straight back into our local community – into the charity Friends of Bude Sea Pool.

“This has definitely been a success, but it is important for us to keep encouraging locals and visitors to ReFILL bottles instead of buying disposable ones. And so, the next logical part of our campaign was to install a local water station for all to use, for free! Anyone in our town can access water at any time, free of charge, and without harming the environment.”

She added: “We created a crowdfunding campaign to raise the funds for the station, and it proved hugely popular – we managed to raise £3,905 in just 28 days, which has enabled us to purchase a state-of-the-art water station, which has three taps – one for refilling cups and bottles, one fountain for drinking on-the-go, and one to fill dog bowls, too.

“I hope everyone in our town can make full use of the water station. We have the power as consumers to help stop plastic going into landfill or ending up on our beaches! And, let’s remember, it’s not just about plastic, the production and transportation of bottled water costs ridiculous amounts of money and has a huge impact on carbon emissions. It’s all really unnecessary, especially since tap water is free.”

Healthy and hydrated

The water station is being installed voluntarily by local plumber Ali Gilbert. She said: “I’m so pleased to able to support this initiative organised by Deb at ReFILL. She has already done so much for her town, so I was glad to be able to help her with the pipework installation to get the station up and running.”

But to even get the plumbing done, there has been the requirement of a mini digger and a surprising amount of groundwork to secure a steady base for the water station, and luckily, local builder Jon Sleeman has also stepped in voluntarily, supplying the tools and people needed to organise this. Jon said: “Bude has a fantastic community, it’s so great that we can pull together with times like these to make our town an even more amazing place to live and visit.”

Bude-Stratton Town Council are paying for the water supply to the station, and are also covering ongoing maintenance. Mayor Bob Willingham said: “We think this is a fantastic idea, and that the Bude ReFILL team have done a great job taking it from concept to reality. We believe the town will make good use of the water station, and so we are glad to support the installation however we can.”

Avril Sainsbury, from 8ight Design – and also founder of the Bude Cleaner Seas Project – is also voluntarily designing a plaque to recognise the water station. She said: “Deb does so much for our town – she even recently won a Bude Heroes Award for her efforts to protect our environment – so I was really glad to help her with the plaque design for this water station. Everyone at Bude Cleaner Seas Project see this as a great initiative that will help protect our sea and beaches from nasty plastic.”

Alan Hyde, head of community relations at South West Water, said: “As a founding member of the Refill initiative in Cornwall, we are delighted to see the installation of a community water ReFILL station in Bude. The new station will help protect the marine environment from plastic pollution, and at the same time help keep people healthy and hydrated when out and about.”

The water station is going to be installed on The Triangle in Bude over the coming weeks, and there will be a grand unveiling on Saturday 16th February, at 10.30am in which all are welcome to attend.

This author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Bude-Stratton Town Council. 

Former Chancellor George Osborne’s 2015 decision to scrap the Zero Carbon Homes policy is costing occupants of new-build homes more than £200 per year on their energy bills, finds a new analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).

The £200 per year saving that would have resulted from the Zero Carbon Homes policy is nearly three times the amount sought by the Government’s recently-introduced energy price cap.

Since 2015, owners of new-build homes in England have collectively paid more than £120 million in additional energy costs – a figure that will rise to more than £2 billion by 2020 as more and more new dwellings are occupied.

Wasted

The Zero Carbon Homes policy was due to come into effect in 2016 after nine years of discussions with housebuilders and other stakeholders, but Treasury cancelled it six months before implementation. A poll of MPs conducted last year for ECIU by YouGov showed that more than half (55 percent) support re-introduction of Zero Carbon Homes, with only 18 percent opposed.

Dr Jonathan Marshall, ECIU Head of Analysis, said: “Successive governments have struggled to devise effective domestic energy efficiency policies, meaning carbon emissions from homes are rising, but Zero Carbon Homes could have made a real difference.

“As well as future-proofing new homes, the policy would have saved families money, reduced Britain’s vulnerability to energy supply shocks, and cut carbon emissions.

“Tackling new build homes is one of the easiest ways of improving the UK’s leaky housing stock, and reintroducing this policy could also deliver a boost to firms involved in insulation and low-carbon heating.”

The UK does not currently have an extensive domestic energy efficiency scheme, meaning that carbon emissions from UK homes have risen over the past two years. Although decarbonising heat is challenging, government advisors such as the Committee on Climate Change consider that reducing the amount of energy wasted from buildings is essential, as the UK has some of the most inefficient homes in Europe.

Low standards

Heating is responsible for around 40 percent of national energy consumption, and around 25% of emissions. Of this, homes are responsible for more than half (57 percent), with 80 percent of British homes currently heated by natural gas. Heating also represents the largest component of domestic energy bills and is therefore directly linked to fuel poverty concerns.

Paula Higgins, chief executive of the Homeowners Alliance said: “One of the most regular concerns that people raise with us is energy bills. Britain’s leaky homes mean that people can struggle to manage their bills while keeping their homes comfortable and warm.

“For the less well off, this can have a real impact, with the threat of fuel poverty and very real health risks.

“One of our long-running campaigns is for better new-build homes; low standards, thin walls and inadequate heating are problems that we see time and again. Homes should be built to the highest standards to be fit for this and future generations; Government and industry need to recognise that it’s in everyone’s interest to get this right.”

This Article

This article is based on a press release from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

Fossil fuel giant Royal Dutch Shell is facing legal action from environmental and human rights organisations if it fails to align its growth plans with global climate goals aimed at averting catastrophic global warming.

The seven organisations will hand over a court summons on 5 April if Shell fails to change its business model to align with the Paris Agreement and set out a plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 – in what would be the first case of its kind.

ActionAid Netherlands, Greenpeace Netherlands, Fossielvrij NL, part of the 350 network, Both ENDS, Wadden Sea Forum and Youth Environment Active (JMA) are joining Friends of the Earth Netherlands in delivering these demands to the company.

Destructive

Shell is the largest polluter based in the Netherlands and one of just 100 fossil fuel producers responsible for 71% of all harmful industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.

The groups say in a letter to the company they will handover a court summons if Shell fails to meet their requests. More than 13,000 Dutch citizens have signed up to become co-claimants in the potential legal case. Hundreds of co-claimants will join the seven organisations as they hand over the court summons at Shell’s headquarters in The Hague on 5 April.

Shell spends billions on oil and gas exploration each year, with current plans to invest just 5% ($1-2 billion) of its budget in sustainable energy and 95 percent ($25-30 billion) in exploiting fossil fuels. Shell’s destructive plans are simply incompatible with the goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C of warming set out by the Paris Agreement.

Maria van der Heide, head of policy and campaigns at global justice organisation ActionAid Netherlands, says: “From severe droughts in Africa to extreme flooding in Asia, millions of people we work with are seeing their lives and livelihoods torn apart by climate change. Shell’s refusal to kick its fossil fuel addiction, is sentencing them and many more to further devastation. We’re joining this case because we want to ensure that Shell finally puts humanity’s future above its bottom line.”

Joris Thijssen, director of Greenpeace Netherlands, said: “For decades, Shell has chosen to make big profits at the expense of the climate. Shell is deliberately obstructing the energy revolution that is so badly needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. We need to make sure that Shell takes responsibility for its actions and changes its destructive business model.”

Biggest threat

Danielle Hirsch, director of environmental group Both ENDS, said: “For Both ENDS it’s a logical step to become a co-plaintiff, because companies like Shell keep the world dependent on fossil fuels. In the meantime, millions of people in world are suffering from the extraction and use of fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry – and Shell in particular – is not taking their responsibility.”

Liset Meddens, director of Fossielvrij Netherlands, which is part of the 350 network, said: “This court case offers a historic opportunity to break the power of climate damaging companies such as Shell, and to stop their damaging activities. It is unacceptable that multinationals like Shell are still slowing down the transition from fossils to renewable, sustainable energy. We are very proud of the fact that we are taking Shell to court together with 13,000 Dutch citizens and Friends of the Earth Netherlands.”

Sibel Kurt, chair of the youth organisation Jongeren Milieu Actief, said: “In a time where the strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden, Shell continues to act in way that negatively impacts our planet and our future. It is time we stand up together, raise our voice and make sure that Shell’s activities are supporting a sustainable future.”

Lutz Jacobi, director Wadden Sea Forum, says: “Climate change is the biggest threat for the Wadden Sea, the Netherland’s only World Heritage Site. Shell is one of the 100 fossil fuel producers who together are responsible for 71% of the emission of greenhouse gases worldwide. Shell can really make a difference for the climate, and also for the Wadden Sea. It is only by working together we can make sure to stop climate change. That’s why we are joining the law suit.”

This article

This article is based on a press release from Friends of the Earth, Netherlands. 

Sweden’s shipping sector is preparing to end the use of fossil fuels domestically by 2045, in line with national climate goals.

The Swedish Shipowners’ Association is developing a roadmap to net zero greenhouse gas emissions in partnership with Fossil-free Sweden, a government initiative. It follows similar plans for nine industries, to implement a law passed in 2017.

With the right incentives, the shipping industry can radically improve efficiency and switch to low carbon biofuels or electricity, leaders of the two organisations wrote in an opinion article for financial newspaper Dagens Industri.

Ambitious players

A national target to cut emissions from domestic transport 70% by 2030, on the way to net zero in 2045, is “challenging but not impossible”, wrote Rikard Engström and Svante Axelsson.

Developing and installing low carbon equipment costs more: an extra 5 billion Swedish kroner ($500 million) on the estimated SEK 25 billion value of 50 vessels on order by Swedish companies, according to the industry group. They called on government to fund innovation and tweak the tax system to favour low carbon technology and practices.

It is worth it to gain a competitive advantage, the article argued, and “show the way” for international shipping. Last year countries at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed to halve the sector’s global carbon footprint by mid-century.

Scandinavian shippers are among the more ambitious players in the industry.

Global industry

Norway launched the first all-electric ferry in 2015, tapping into the country’s bountiful hydropower resources.

Danish giant Maersk made waves in December by declaring its intention to go carbon neutral by 2050. Due to the long lifespan of vessels, that means making zero-carbon ships commercially viable by 2030, the company explained.

Efficiency improvements alone will not be enough, said chief operating officer Søren Toft at the time: “The only possible way to achieve the so-much-needed decarbonisation in our industry is by fully transforming to new carbon neutral fuels and supply chains.”

Other elements of the global industry are less ready to embrace the challenge. Major commodities exporters like Brazil and Saudi Arabia have resisted specific carbon-cutting measures at the IMO, citing concerns about the impact on trade and development.

This Article

This Article first appeared on Climate Home News.

Dale Vince and Guy Singh-Watson – two of Britain’s greenest entrepreneurs – have come together to appeal for businesses to refocus on people and the planet over profit. 

Vince, who is the founder of green energy company Ecotricity, and Singh-Watson, who established the organic veg box company Riverford, have called for different measures of success, and said the short-term pursuit of profit damages both people and the environment. 

It comes in a week of yet another reminder of how human activity is harming the environment with news that more than 40 per cent of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, primarily due to agricultural intensification.

Motivates

On a global policy level, there is little evidence that world leaders are truly committed to the scale of change needed. David Attenborough told the recent World Economic Forum in Davos that humans are wrecking the planet, but the leaders he addressed arrived on 1,500 private jets and some are already planning how to capitalise on the impacts of climate change.

Dale Vince, Ecotricity founder, said: “Capitalism has become a force of evil in the world and I don’t think it originated in that way and it doesn’t need to be that way.

“The pursuit of profit has taken priority over people, over the environment, over everything.

“I’m not motivated by money. I want to change the world. Everything that motivates me is about creating change because I can see so much scope for that – so much change that we need to bring so that we all live more sustainably.”

Veg boxes

Guy Singh-Watson, Riverford founder and organic farmer, said: “The quest for short-term profits is what’s wrong. For some reason we don’t measure success in the things that really matter so we measure it with money.

“It should be measured in what you can do – what you can do for other people, what you can do for the environment. That’s the shift we need.”

Riverford is the first veg box company in the world to have all their operations powered by 100 per cent green electricity, and saves 665 tonnes of CO2 annually by being supplied by Ecotricity –the equivalent weight of 133,000 veg boxes.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from Riverford.

Dale Vince and Guy Singh-Watson – two of Britain’s greenest entrepreneurs – have come together to appeal for businesses to refocus on people and the planet over profit. 

Vince, who is the founder of green energy company Ecotricity, and Singh-Watson, who established the organic veg box company Riverford, have called for different measures of success, and said the short-term pursuit of profit damages both people and the environment. 

It comes in a week of yet another reminder of how human activity is harming the environment with news that more than 40 per cent of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, primarily due to agricultural intensification.

Motivates

On a global policy level, there is little evidence that world leaders are truly committed to the scale of change needed. David Attenborough told the recent World Economic Forum in Davos that humans are wrecking the planet, but the leaders he addressed arrived on 1,500 private jets and some are already planning how to capitalise on the impacts of climate change.

Dale Vince, Ecotricity founder, said: “Capitalism has become a force of evil in the world and I don’t think it originated in that way and it doesn’t need to be that way.

“The pursuit of profit has taken priority over people, over the environment, over everything.

“I’m not motivated by money. I want to change the world. Everything that motivates me is about creating change because I can see so much scope for that – so much change that we need to bring so that we all live more sustainably.”

Veg boxes

Guy Singh-Watson, Riverford founder and organic farmer, said: “The quest for short-term profits is what’s wrong. For some reason we don’t measure success in the things that really matter so we measure it with money.

“It should be measured in what you can do – what you can do for other people, what you can do for the environment. That’s the shift we need.”

Riverford is the first veg box company in the world to have all their operations powered by 100 per cent green electricity, and saves 665 tonnes of CO2 annually by being supplied by Ecotricity –the equivalent weight of 133,000 veg boxes.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from Riverford.