When I talk to other people about climate anxiety our experiences are often the same. First, there’s a heavy feeling of powerlessness, which can be overwhelming, but often this is followed by a sense of grim determination. Perhaps this is where courage comes from.

In the words of Harper Lee’s Atticus Finch, “real courage” is when “you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what”. Now, more than ever, we need to muster our courage to make a change.

The latest edition of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now!

From Heathrow airport in the UK to Germany’s Hambach Forest and the Zone to Defend in France – as well as the growing non-violent movement Extinction Rebellion – the actions of peaceful activists across the world featured in the following pages show that feelings of dread can be transformed into optimism and hope.

Sneak peak

Non-violent protest isn’t the only way to do this, of course. Natalie Bennett writes in the Ecologist section: “Everyone has a role, from promoting actions on social media and answering questions from family and colleagues… to baking quiches and cakes for the protesters…”

In our Arts section, Alice Kettle writes about a project bringing together refugees, asylum seekers and concerned people across the world to create incredible textile landscapes and stitched ‘forests’ to form a “unique kind of activism”. “I’m just an artist. I can’t resolve these issues,” she writes, “but I can show that I care.”

The future doesn’t have to be worst-case scenario, and if we work together it can be something to celebrate.

In our Keynotes feature, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson lay out ways we can do this by addressing the inequality that is currently crippling society. “Change on the scale needed can only be achieved if large numbers of people commit themselves to achieving it,” they write.

“We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it,” WWF UK chief executive Tanya Steele said on the launch of their Living Planet report in October. The end of 2018 may be remembered as the moment the realities of climate breakdown hit the mainstream. There’s still a chance 2019 will be known as the year we began to change things for the better. 

This Author 

Marianne Brown is editor of Resurgence & Ecologist. The latest edition of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now.

The future landscape of the energy industry is set to be transformed by technological innovations that drive towards a more convenient, efficient and ecological infrastructure.

Energy systems of the future will be vastly different to what we know and use today. The scale of change over the next couple of decades will be considerable.

It’s common knowledge that burning fossil fuels as a way to harbour energy is both dirty and bad for the environment. Technological advancements in the energy sector will look to leave this approach in the past.

Decentralised production

As we stand, the burning of fossil fuels takes place in a small number of large-scale plants. These currently work at about 50 percent efficiency and waste a significant amount of heat. Future energy plants will be smaller in scale and far more commonplace.

These producers of low-cost renewables will bring energy to a local level, allowing the everyday person to generate and trade energy.

A significant benefit of bringing energy production to a local level is the reduction is waste. Surplus heat from localised producers will be passed on to nearby homes and businesses. By taking a local approach, we are also likely to see a reduction in waste as energy has less distance to cover.

This shift towards a new greener way of producing and consuming energy will only be possible if major consumers are on board.

For instance, the cold chain in the UK is believed to currently consume around 14 percent of all electricity, with food retailers operating large networks of machines distributed throughout the UK.

Internet of energy

The Internet of Things is an emerging tech industry which is already receiving a significant amount of press and attention. This type of technology is starting to be utilised to deliver a greener approach to energy use.

The ‘internet of energy’ will make use of connected digital systems to control how we use and store energy. Modern appliances are being designed with a level of interconnectivity. This means we can programme each item to use or not use energy when we choose. 

An example of this will be the flexibility to allow for power surges or lulls. For instance, at half time of major football matches, there’s usually a surge of energy demand when people make drinks or food. To meet this demand, we can either utilise the power from a local power station or alternatively, power down other appliances for as little as ten minutes to satisfy the excess needs in an eco-friendly way. 

This goes a step further. If you have a surplus of energy (such as an electric vehicle), it will be notified of the demand and, if programmed to do so, sell some of its stored energy back to the grid to make you money. 

Energy as a service

It’s important for energy to become part of the circular economy. This is where resources are kept in use for as long as possible, recovered, regenerated and re-used wherever possible.

For this to be a reality, there will need to be a shift away from buying energy in kWh and towards buying energy as a service.

Buying energy as a service means that consumers won’t purchase energy from a supplier. They’ll instead pay a company for energy at the best price, get the best value from the energy they generate and will actively improve the efficiency of their homes so they use less.

Free energy

Energy doesn’t have to be a drain on the environment – or people’s wallets.

It has become easier than ever for us to generate green energy. The cost of renewable equipment is falling while the amount of energy on the grid is increasing.

The UK is now home to so many renewables that on particularly sunny or windy days, there’s actually a surplus of energy on the grid. 

This can have a negative effect on wholesale prices, meaning you could actually be paid to use or store the energy. Essentially allowing consumers to enjoy free green energy.

Focus on consumers

One of the largest changes that will take place is that consumers will find themselves at the very core of the energy industry.

The control will be placed in their hands and it’s important for users to be educated on how to be as eco-friendly with this as possible. An active user of energy in the future will be able to play a vital role in ensuring our energy isn’t having a detrimental impact on the Earth.

If you’d like to see more videos like this, you can subscribe to Innovate UK’s YouTube channel here.

Additionally, you can follow @InnovateUK on Twitter here.

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from Innovate UK. 

Veganism is vogue. Democracy is de rigueur. So was it just the feeling that being pescatarian was simply not cutting edge enough that prompted me to let readers of The Ecologist vote on whether I should go vegan for January?

The fact that there is no substantive difference between animals that live in the sea and those that live on the land had, after all, not been enough to get me over the line. I gave up squid immediately on seeing the extraordinary intelligence and playfulness of the sea creature that appeared on Blue Planet II. My empathy for salmon took longer to finally manifest itself in a full-on fish-fast.

I became pescatarian when I was 14 years old, and vegetarian some six months later. More recently, I realised I was both lactose and gluten intolerant and decided to add fish and seafood back to my diet. Giving up cheese was so much easier than I expected, but North Devon haddock and chips, and Whitstable oysters had seemed impossible to forgo.

Increasing commitment 

Until now. The Ecologist has been publishing more and more stories about veganism since I have been editor.

Louise Davies and her colleagues at the Vegan Society publish articles regularly, and we’ve also been promoting Veganuary – 14,000 signed up to the vegan pledge on Saturday alone. I read every word with interest and compassion. I started to feel that to publish such powerful arguments, but then essentially to ignore them was inconsistent at best.

But I also felt that my edginess was blunt, I was behind the times. That younger versions of me had come to expect a higher level of commitment to animal welfare and climate change action. Claiming the moral high ground of a non-meat diet while contributing to the dramatic decline in sea populations just didn’t cut it any more. I believe completely that Simon Amstell’s Carnage is the future.

So I wanted to reach out and speak to the readers of The Ecologist directly. I gave the subscribers to our newsletter the chance to vote on my diet, on what is for many a solely personal choice. Hundreds of people voted. Democracy in action, on a one-human scale. The results were quite close, but decisive nonetheless. 62.8 percent have so far voted in favour of my going 100 percent vegan.

That’s me committed for Veganuary. If my health and happiness is maintained, I will carry on from there. I feel well prepared. I have a cupboard stuffed with tins of various types of beans, and another brimming with fresh spices. The challenge is to make sure you get enough protein and nutrients, and some nice treats of course.

Over to you 

To help me on this culinary journey I turned again to readers of The Ecologist and asked them for their advice on how best to change my diet in a way which was conscious and also fulfilling. I have been overwhelmed by the response and now share the very best advice with you all.

Focus on gradual reduction in animal products first rather than going completely vegan. It’s more sustainable, gentler on the body and has more overall benefit for animals and the environment than lots of people trying a crash course in veganism and quickly abandoning it because it’s too hard. – Kirsten Campbell, 40, a Pesca-vegan who works in education in Southend.

Get into the habit of viewing every product as the impact it has, not just as the food you see in front of you. For example, I can’t see anything beef-related without seeing images of deforestation. – Benjamin Wragg, 19, a vegan student from York.

For lazy / treat nights –  the most delicious ready made frozen meals (especially their amazing macaroni cheese) from a vegan company called allplants.com. – Louise Lumb, 49, a ‘very happy vegan’ from Hertford who works in mental health.

Cook everything you eat yourself from scratch – as much as possible. You will notice how much more time and money it consumes to actually prepare meat dishes that can at all be considered healthy enough to eat. Or the other way around, you will notice how easy it is to cook vegan (and how much money you have left over!) if you set your minimum requirement to fair and healthy already before going vegan. – Suule Soo, 30, a freegan student.

‘Fry everything’

I always tell people I’m 90 percent vegan. This usually gets a question: what does that mean? I’m vegan, but not puritanically so. If I can’t find anything else to eat, or if someone gives me a meal and there’s fish or dairy in it, I’ll eat it because they gave it to me. Oh, and I don’t preach about being vegan, because it’s so tedious to be preached to… – Lucy Weir, 52, a residential support worker and writer from Enniskerry.

Find a good source of omega-3 fatty acids: chia seeds, brussels sprouts, algal oil, hemp seeds, walnuts, flaxseeds, perilla oil. Spend the money you save on eating meat on good quality chocolate. – Angie Burke, 51, a vegan and the trust manager at Resurgence Trust, owner and publisher of The Ecologist.

Fry everything possible in homemade vegan butter before adding to soup, stew, pudding, etc – or eat straight from frying-pan!  Fried mashed potato superb delicacy – from Humberside. – Edith Crowther, 64, a secretary from Carlton-on-Trent.

Shopping, a chore at the best of times, is so much easier and quicker when you get to leave out the meat, fish and dairy isles in the supermarket.– Mark Bevis, 55, a writer and doomosphere walker from Burnley.

I tend to like health shop vegan food better than supermarket versions – although I’ve found some products I really enjoy like Tesco veggie bacon, which surprised me. Good old fashioned TVP is my veggie mince of choice, rehydrated with stock or passata. A bag from the local health food shop for about £1 lasts ages. Wild mushrooms have high vitamin D if you are confident in picking them. I’ve found thinly sliced mushrooms that are really well-fried, almost to the point of over-frying, taste very bacony. The best vegan cheese spread I’ve found is Sheese by Bute Island. I shop around and have even found vegan products in Poundstretcher recently at a fraction of the price of health-food stores. Good flavoured firm tofu can be found in Chinese supermarkets. – Lauren Foster, 44, a recent MA graduate from Loughborough.

Addicted to cheese?

Be gentle with yourself and adventurous with your new food discoveries. – Diana van Eyk, 61, a self-employed vegan from Nelson.

Stop looking at meat as chop/burger/nugget and think instead of the innocent lamb, cow, pig, chicken herbivore flesh/body part that once served the same functions as your own but was then  slaughtered to feed you: we are all animals. – Stella Lee, a vegetarian.

Like many people, I was addicted to cheese, and giving it up was my biggest worry. When I found myself craving it or being offered it I focused my mind on the mother/child bond being violently broken, and how much emotional and physical pain it causes both cows and calves. Within a couple of weeks of not eating dairy I wasn’t craving cheese any more. – Michelle Waters, an artist and vegan from Santa Cruz Mountains, California.

Spend a week or three watching Youtube vegan video travelogues – especially of London vegan cooks. As for The Ecologist editor’s love for fish – why not visit some of the best vegan Vish and Chip places in London recommended by Youtubers. By Chloe looks very tasty and Hackney Downs vegan market/eateries have real street cred and fairly low prices. – Paul Govan, 43, an electric vehicle campaigner from Gloucester.

Always keep in mind the reason you are doing it. For me it was to contribute to creating a world free as far as possible of intentional harm committed by humans to other animal species. I found it helpful to remember veganism is not about perfection but about living more kindly and mindfully. Be patient with yourself while transitioning, be prepared for trial and error in finding new animal free substitutes that you like. Joining local online vegan communities can help give feedback about decent vegan food and products in your area. The free-from aisles and vegetarian freezer sections in your local supermarkets have an increasing number of good options. Be prepared to shop around if you do not like cooking from scratch. The food can be both expensive and inexpensive – depending on if you purchase ready made meals or cook from scratch. There are low budget options.  It is getting easier all the time. Fiona Farrell, who works in purchasing in Edinburgh.

Animal cruelty

Go vegan for a while, and then notice how it feels and how your body reacts to it! I tried vegan myself but discovered that I feel much better on a “vegan-ish” diet – meaning that I eat mostly veggies but incorporate good fats, some eggs and a little bit of organic meat. Going vegan gave me brain-fog and fatigue, and it made me realise that what works for some might not work for everybody. There are tons of ways of supporting a healthier planet and animal welfare while still having a bit of animal protein. And if we can make everybody cut their animal protein consumption and choose organic and C02 friendly products when they do eat animal protein, then it will have a huge impact. But most of all, it’s up to each of us individually to take some responsibility for what we eat and look at how our food was produced. The great thing about going vegan is that it forces you to reconsider what you eat. So trying it is a great thing. But if a 100 percent vegan diet doesn’t work for you, tweak it until it does. – Hannah Geismar, 47, an independent Krusaa and a ‘vegan-ish paleo flexitarian with a twist of LCHF’.

Find an experience or image of farmed animal cruelty that appals you, and keep this to hand for every time you start to waiver. The first time I went vegan – in the mid 80s to the mid 90s – it was the experience of waiting for a herd of Devon dairy cows to pass me that were being driven by one man and his bad temper and a stick. He frequently hit the cows at the back of the queue who couldn’t move forward fast enough because of the crush of bodies in front, and one cow in particular who was rolling her eyes in fear, and kicking herself in the udder when she tried to run, causing even more pain. She had been bred to produce so much milk that her teats were nearly scraping the ground. She was trapped by her man made biology and trapped by a man and his beatings of her. I thought of her every time I wanted a Snickers bar, and thought, ‘not in my name’. – Ama Menec, 53, a vegan and sculptor from Totnes.

Eating dhal. Pulses generally are healthy, filling and a good source of protein, and there are so many ways of preparing them, eastern and western. Dhal is pretty easy to whip up, and with rice and salad or other vegetable makes a tasty meal. For minimal prep try the Spice Sailor brand.- Shehana Gomez, a flexitarian law tutor from Bath.

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. The photograph above is of an art installation at the Unity Diner in Hoxton by @tallys_art.
 

Dolphins are picky about who they are friends with and shun rival groups. However, groups still managed to cooperate by sharing the sea, taking turns to inhabit particular areas. 

A new study by an international team of researchers, led by the University of St Andrews, and published in Marine Biology, investigated the social network of dolphins in the northern Adriatic Sea.

It showed that dolphins living in the Gulf of Trieste form distinct social groups, and some don’t like each other.

Best friends

It is widely known that dolphins usually live in groups, and in the case of the common bottlenose dolphin the composition of these groups changes often, with members often joining or leaving.

However, these groups are not random. Rather, it is individual dolphins preferring to spend time with other individuals who could be described as their “best friends”.

The researchers, from the Morigenos Slovenian Marine Mammals Society and the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) at the University of St Andrews, studied the dolphins in the region for more than 16 years.

They found that the dolphin society in the Gulf of Trieste comprised three distinct groups: two large social groups with stable membership and long-lasting friendships, and a smaller third social group, nicknamed “freelancers”, with much weaker bonds and no long-lasting friendships.

Although the two large groups tended to avoid each other, they did manage to share particular areas of the sea, with each group using them at different times of the day. Such temporal partitioning based on time of day has not previously been documented in whales and dolphins, nor in other mammals.

Animal behaviour 

Tilen Genov, of SMRU at St Andrews, said: “We were quite surprised by this. It is not uncommon for dolphins to segregate into different parts of the sea, but to have certain times of the day in which they gather is unusual.

“We would sometimes see one social group in the morning and then the group in the same area in the late afternoon.”

The study demonstrates how different segments of the same animal population may behave very differently. In turn they may react differently to human behaviour.

This article 

This article is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews.

The operators of industrial-scale livestock farms have received millions of pounds of public funds in the last two years, The Guardian has revealed, despite concerns over the spread of US-style factory farming across the British countryside.

Farms supplying some of the largest and most influential food companies that now dominate the UK’s meat and dairy sectors are amongst those receiving support.

A data analysis by the Guardian and Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that recipients of almost £70 million in subsidies in 2016 and 2017 include individuals and companies running feedlot-style beef units, rearing thousands of cattle in outdoor yards; so-called megadairies, with herds of up to 1,800 cows; intensive egg producers using cage housing systems; poultry megafarms and pig units which keep thousands of animals permanently indoors; livestock units that have been found guilty of pollution and animal health breaches. 

Financial support

As revealed by the Bureau, the number of intensive pig and poultry farms in the UK has increased by more than a quarter in recent years. Coupled with a rise of intensive production in the dairy and beef sectors this has raised concerns over water pollution with livestock faeces, disease and animal welfare.

Opponents claim that smaller farms could be pushed out of business by the trend, leading to the takeover of the countryside by large agribusinesses, with a loss of traditional family-run units.

The data showed that individuals and companies linked to intensive poultry farms across the UK received the most money in subsidies, at 32 million pounds. The operators of pig and dairy factory farms were given 18 million and 16 million pounds respectively, while the figure for intensive beef farms was two million. The total sum received could be higher.

In many cases, subsidies are indirect, with a farmer receiving financial support for one aspect of their business – crop growing, for example – rather than the factory farm itself.

Environmental standards

The shadow environment secretary, Sue Hayman MP, said the subsidy payments “were encouraging more, and larger, intensive livestock farms”.

She continued: “This is not the way to build a thriving and sustainable food sector.”

Dr Taro Takahashi, a researcher at the University of Bristol and Rothamsted Research, said the payment of subsidies to intensive farms may be justifiable if they were found to be improving environmental standards. 

He said: “It is unreasonable to preclude megafarms from the public payment system purely because they are already large-scale. The question, though, is whether these funds are indeed improving the environment and ecology of our countryside to sufficiently justify the investment – and research to date has been inconclusive either way. There is definitely an urgent need to examine this issue further.”

Labour has pledged to investigate the effects of megafarms on animal welfare and the environment, and to design post-Brexit farm subsidies that “move away from intensive factory farming and bad environmental practices”.

Animal welfare

Dr Nick Palmer, head of Compassion in World Farming UK, said: “These astonishing findings fly in the face of the attempt to establish Britain as a world leader in welfare standards and to maintain a sustainable British farming industry in the uncertain years after Brexit.”

The industry says that strict controls on industrial-scale farms mean that disease, pollution and the carbon footprint can be kept to a minimum. They also point out that such farms can produce for consumers at a lower cost than small-scale farms.

The National Pig Association (NPA), which represents pig farmers, says only farmers operating mixed farms – for example, keeping livestock and growing crops – receive subsidies. Defra confirmed that farmers who only farm pig or poultry are not eligible subsidies where the animals are always kept indoors. 

Dr Zoe Davies of the NPA said: “We continue to disagree with the sentiment that ‘intensive’ production automatically equals poor welfare. High quality well trained stock people and sufficient resource and vet support are the most important attributes which determine an animals welfare, not the number of animals present or the system within which they are reared.

“British pig welfare standards are some of the highest in the world and farmers take pride in providing affordable, quality food for all consumers.”

Researching subsidies 

The British Poultry Council said that “indoor poultry production does not attract subsidies under CAP or its proposed replacement.”

The sum of subsidies payments paid to those running intensive farms was calculated by cross-referencing registers of intensive UK farming operations for pig and poultry, and other databases of intensively-reared UK beef and dairy cattle, with the Defra register of Common Agricultural Payments payments made to farmers in 2016 and 2017.

Defra and the Environment Agency (EA) maintain a public register of all permit-requiring “intensive” pig and poultry farms, which are classified as such if they can house indoors at least 40,000 poultry birds, 2,000 pigs grown for meat, or 750 breeding pigs.

The database of intensive beef and dairy operations was compiled through earlier research by the Bureau.

The actual amount of subsidies is likely to be higher, principally because large numbers of pig farms in the UK are believed to fall below the size threshold for requiring a Defra/EA permit. Many such farms house their pigs indoors and would therefore be considered intensive by most experts, but are absent from the data.

Direct payments 

The march of American-style “megafarms” or CAFOs – defined in the US as facilities housing 125,000 chickens for meat, 82,000 laying hens, 2,500 pigs, 1,000 beef or 700 dairy cattle – has previously been revealed in an investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau.

Most of these farms have gone unnoticed, despite their size and the controversy surrounding them, in part because many farmers have expanded existing facilities rather than seeking new sites. 

Defra responded to the findings by pointing to the government’s plans for subsidies post-Brexit. “At the moment, Direct Payments are allocated according to the size of individual land holdings, not the way in which that land is farmed. Our proposed new system will move away from this, rewarding farmers for delivering public goods such as environmental protection and the health and welfare of livestock,” said a Defra spokesperson.

“This will help farmers to grow food in a more sustainable way and it will ensure public money is spent more efficiently and effectively.”

Vicki Hird of the food system campaign group Sustain warned: “The Agriculture Bill, as currently drafted, is an empty vessel as it contains powers not duties and no budget. So unless it is amended, Michael Gove is really not obliged to deliver much – the opportunity to either encourage sustainable, high welfare farming or to discourage the most polluting, intensive forms of megafarms.”

Subsidies explained

The European Common Agricultural Policy – or CAP – began in 1962 with guaranteed prices for farmers, the aim being to guarantee the security of Europe’s food supply.

In the 1970s and 1980s the policy resulted in overproduction, resulting in “milk lakes” and “butter mountains”. This led to an eventual shift from market support to direct subsidies for producers in the early 1990s, in an attempt to decouple support for farmers from the amount of food they produced.

The CAP has been controversial in the UK partly because the country receives much less from the budget than it contributes. The EU-wide mechanism for distributing subsidies also means large landowners get more money just for owning more land. 

In September 2018, the environment secretary Michael Gove launched his proposed Agriculture Bill, setting out future support for UK farmers after Brexit.

The bill sets out a seven year transition period from 2021, during which farmers will potentially be rewarded for public goods such as high environmental standards, ending direct payments after 2027. 

These Authors

Andrew Wasley is  an award-winning investigative journalist specialising in food and farming issues. He is the co-founder of the ethical investigative agency Ecostorm and was editor of The Ecologist magazine between 2010 and 2012. Alexandra Heal is a reporter with the Food and Farming project. She has freelanced for BBC News in Paris and London and has written for The Guardian and The Ecologist. Additional reporting by Emma Snaith.

A fortnight ago at Winter’s Solstice protests were held by Extinction Rebellion across the UK to protest the BBC’s inadequate treatment of dangerous climate change.

One of these took place in Glasgow, on the same day as the anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing. This is an edited version of a speech that I gave that morning. It’s a springboard, perhaps, to carry the debate, action and reflection into the new year.

Persistent denial 

I find it painful to have to stand with this protest outside the BBC today. The founding motto of the BBC, displayed in the coat of arms at Broadcasting House, is “Nation shall speak peace unto nation”. 

It paraphrases the radical biblical passages from the prophets Isaiah and Micah, in which we read that we shall beat our swords to ploughshares, and learn war no more. That’s not exactly neutral – it’s on the side of justice, love, and impartiality in the sense of fairness but not of yielding unto falsehoods.

Ten years ago I wrote a book on climate change. While doing the research, I had been greatly helped by the BBC’s coverage of both the science and policy. That’s the reason why it pains me to have to stand outside the BBC today. Especially here at BBC Scotland, which going back to the days of Louise Batchelor and Drennan Watson’s broadcasts has been such a good educator on environmental issues. 

The wider problem is not in the people in the building behind us. It is, I believe, handed down from higher levels, and that, as part of a general chill that penetrated the mass media around ten years ago. 

As growing scientific concern about climate change gained political traction, populist politicians and lobbyists set out to roll it back. First they denied it was happening. Now these merchants of death deny that there’s anything we can do. They’ve done this by demanding not just free speech – fair enough – but by requiring, in the name of “impartiality” a pulpit into the bargain. 

Everyday consumerism 

I remember being invited onto a BBC radio discussion programme around 2010. It was not, I might say, the Scottish branch of the BBC. The producer had prepared me to discuss climate change ethics. Instead, I found myself pitched against a climate change denier. My air time got taken up with rebutting his Flat Earth claims. It felt like being on American talk radio rather than a reputable BBC programme. 

This experience does not help speaking peace, nation unto nation. And we all know why it’s happening. Climate change challenges the profligacy of the well-to-do. It brings discomfort into everyday consumerism.

What is consumerism? In my last articlefor The Ecologist, I pointed out how consumerism, as consumption in excess of what is needed for dignified sufficiency in life, was wilfully created. 

It was created after the first and second world wars by corporations that used insights from wartime propaganda and depth psychology – not to satisfy fundamental human needs, but to drive the creation of wants. It hooked in to our hopes and fears. It also hooked into our hubris, our excessive pride and egotism – and “hubris” is a word that comes from the Greek root, hybris, meaning “violence”. 

Consumerism exploits our being self-centred, rather than being centred selves. What, I ask, can be the antidote? What, when the problem is partly in the political and economic systems around us, but more disturbingly, partly in ourselves?

Higher consciousness 

If our activism, our rebellion, our protest as pro testari – in the Latin, what we protest for – is to be effective; and if it is not to hit out at the wrong targets, we must decolonise the soul. 

We must create heart space for community and spaces for holding the emotional process of our times. Let us show not just what we’re against, but more importantly, show them what we’re for. Such is, indeed, “a basic call to consciousness”. Even, a call to higher consciousness.

Where might be our allies, our guides and inspiration? We’re gathered here on Solstice day, a time of year with robins on the Christmas cards. 

The robin is the totem of this City of Glasgow. Along with the salmon, you see it on the coat of arms. The city’s founding patron, Saint Mungo or Kentigern, revived a robin that had been injured by boys who were cruelly throwing stones at birds. There you have it. Mungo as the patron saint of Extinction Rebellion! But the story’s got behind it even more than that.

Nature and folklore

One of those who lost her life in the Lockerbie bombing was Flora MacDonald Margaret Swire, the daughter of Dr Jim Swire. He’s the figure who has campaigned tirelessly for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the alleged bomber, believing that there had been a miscarriage of justice. His mother was the Isle of Skye folklorist, Otta Swire, and she wrote about the legends of the Hebrides.

From the Isle of Eriskay, Otta Swire recounted the tale that the robin used to be just another little brown bird, indistinguishable from all the rest. It happened to be watching on the day when, in that old Bible story so beloved of Christian fundamentalists who don’t bother to study the nuances of the original Greek, Lazarus the good man went to heaven. Who should he see on peering down into hell, but Dives, the boardroom baron, the Trumped-up politician, the warmonger or the grasping corporate wrecker of the Earth. 

As he roasted in the flames, Dives looked up and begged Lazarus for just a drop of water that might cool his tongue. A drop that might allow him, we might imagine, to speak for once the truth. 

Such was the distance between them, however, that Lazarus was unable to help. However, in the Eriskay folk-telling of the story, the robin was stirred to pity. It flew down to an island holy well, took a sip of ice cold water in its beak, and dived down through the very fires of hell.

When it came back up, the heat had burned its breast to red. And that – if you’ll forgive the imagination of our culture – is the reddening of the breast, the heart, that we too need today. 

Bridging divides 

Like the robin, we too must dive where others fear to go. We too must bridge divides that seem unbridgeable across the gulfs of power, wealth and capacity for feeling. If doing so does break rules, then let it be so sacramentally. 

As the English road protesters of the 1990s put it, “Break the rules like bread”.

We need in the world today the compassion and the courage of the robin redbreast. I leave you with these images to think about this Christmas time, this dreaming dark Midwinter’s Solstice. 

Mungo as a patron saint, a rebellion of gentleness against the stone throwers. The Robin Redbreast as a totem of the bridging between worlds, diving even through the very jaws of hell. 

I leave you with this vision that transcends the powers that drive extinction – extinction of the plants, the animals, of nature’s beauty and of all that’s greatest in the human spirit. A path of giving life. A way that lifts us up into a higher human consciousness. For that, alone, can see us through these coming times.

This Author 

Alastair McIntosh is author of books including Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition (Birlinn 2008) and Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service (Green Books, with Matt Carmichael).

Nick Breeze (NB): Thinking back to the beginning of the Potsdam Institute, and where we are today, how do you feel society has responded to the threat of climate disruption?

John Schellnhuber (JS): It is actually paradoxical: society, in the beginning, was more attentive of climate change and global warming, than it is today. I recall very well, in 1988 I was a visiting professor at the University of California, and in the Spring of 1988 there was a famous Senate hearing in the US where Jim Hansen said, ‘this is 99 percent due to anthropogenic global warming’.

At that time it made headlines all over the planet because it was a distant threat. It is a threat where you can play around a little bit. ‘Wouldn’t it be terrible if it happened?’ Today we are in the midst of global warming. You can see it everywhere, and because it is so overwhelming, people just try to push it out of their consciousness.

And this is the problem, actually. We have waited so long to tackle it that we now seem to be overwhelmed and we declare defeat, and this is the worse thing that can happen because still, we can, not solve the problem, but we can minimise it to something that we can still manage.

If we now find reasons to give up, when it will turn into an outright catastrophe, and now I know as a scientist based on the papers we have published in the last two or three years, that we really face the question of whether human civilisation can be sustained over the next century.

NB: You have said that we are in a position where we can manage the situation, but on the flip-side, we are questioning whether civilisation can be sustained. There is a very stark difference!

JS: Okay, if we get I wrong, do the wrong things, policy, economics and psychology, in science, then I think there is a very big risk that we will just end our civilisation. The human species will survive somehow but we will destroy almost everything we have built up over the last two thousand years. I am pretty sure.

NB: What sort of timeframe would you put on that?

JS: Oh, it can happen pretty soon and pretty quickly, because, you see, if a minor conflict in Syria is sending so many shockwaves, through migrants for example, to Europe, so, it is all about nonlinearity. 

It’s the nonlinearity stupid, huh?

This goes in both ways. On the one hand, we can have climate disruptions coming very soon, but in the medium term, clearly, if we don’t do a lot now, we will send the Greenland ice sheet into irreversible collapse, and so on, you talk about all of these.

So, the nonlinearities are our biggest enemy when it comes to the Earth System. On the other hand, why I am still optimistic, is that in society, you also have nonlinear dynamics. Tipping points that are social, economic and psychological. 

You know the German feed-in tariff was a tiny little law which was done at the margins of this government. It instigated a landslide development in renewable energies. So we are currently writing a paper where we identify eight or ten socioeconomic tipping points, and if we transgress these lines, we can instigate a nonlinear dynamic which will deliver change, reducing emissions within the next thirty years.

So, you see, you have good nonlinearities and bad nonlinearities, and the question is, if we use our policies and our imagination wisely, the good nonlinearities will win!

NB: And this is the management side isn’t it? How we overcome this horrible situation?

JS: Yeah, you have to identify a portfolio of options, you know, disruptive innovations, self-amplifying innovations. You cannot predict precisely. You need to look into whether there are high nonlinear potentials, whether it is in electric cars, construction for wood instead of concrete, instead of cement, and so on. 

Then you have to bet… say you identify twenty horses, you then have to send all of them into the race, and maybe three of them will make it across the finishing line. But they will instigate the change you need.

The other thing which is very important, the conventional economist will want to be efficient but efficiency is the enemy of innovation. You have to strand assets, you have to waste capital, because you invest into the wrong things, because you cannot know beforehand. But you also invest in the right things.

So I would say that we somehow trapped in this efficiency thing, and we dig deeper and deeper. So we have to have the courage to squander money. To throw money at things that have potential.

It is venture-capital at a global scale we have to muster. We cannot efficiently get ourselves out of this predicament. So we have to save the world but we have to save it in a muddled way, in a chaotic way, and also in a costly way. That is the bottom line, if you want to do it in an optimal way, you will fail.

NB: A moment ago you said that ignoring climate change is the worst thing that could happen, but when news comes out that the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia, are denying the latest climate science, a lot of people get very angry and say what’s the point?! What would you say to them?

JS: Sure, I will very silently work behind the scenes to maybe influence that, through my friends in science and so on. Let’s see what happens. But you see, giving up is not an option. Why? Let me give you an example: I have a ten years old boy and let’s assume he has an accident and the doctor says, ‘okay, we might save his life if we do this type of surgery but there is only a five percent chance otherwise he will die!’ Would you say, ‘no, we don’t do it’? Of course, you will do it.

So this is the situation we have now. I think we have more than a five percent chance of succeeding but it is definitely less than 50 percent, in my view. But what is the option? If we have a final chance to save our culture and our civilisation, I am just compelled to do it.

Here, clearly for the planet, there is no alternative. We definitely have a chance which is above zero, as I said, definitely we have no chance whatsoever if we want to be optimal. Optimality is the completely wrong paradigm for the situation we are in!

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate change journalist and interviewer posting also on envisionation.co.uk. He is also organises the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series (climateseries.com) where Professor Schellnhuber will be speaking on 21st February 2019. Follow Nick Breeze on Twitter at @NickGBreeze

The world was shocked by the viral video of fifteen year-old Jamal, a Syrian refugee who was pushed to the ground and had water poured over his face. As his GoFundMe page reaches more that £150,000 in donations, the public outcry is keenly felt.

However, the question still remains, why did no one come to his aid when so many people were present at the attack?

Research into “the bystander effect” might help us to understand this phenomena in its wider psycho-social context. 

Bystander effect 

An article published in March of 1964 can shine some light. The article was printed in The New York Times and reported on the death of a 28-year-old woman called Kitty Genovese. Kitty was stabbed outside of her home in Kew Gardens, New York. The article claimed that 38 neighbours witnessed the attack but none of them contacted the police or attempted to help her.

In spite of some inaccuracies, the article inspired decades of research into what turned out to be one of the most replicable phenomena in social psychology: “the bystander effect”.

The bystander effect is the idea that the more people present at an emergency situation, the less likely people are to offer help to a victim. A study by Latané and Rodin staged a situation in which  participants heard an investigator trip and then call out that she had hurt her ankle. When individuals were alone, 70 percent of them attempted to help the woman, however when another bystander was present, only 40 percent offered support.

This behaviour pattern has since been replicated many times in modern day settings, such as when individuals are a witness to cyber bullying. Many factors have been shown to contribute to the bystander effect, such as ‘diffusion of responsibility’ – when an individual assumes that other people are responsible for taking necessary action, and ‘ambiguity’ – when there is an element of uncertainty surrounding the situation.

IPCC report

The bystander effect evidently played a role in the sad story of Jamal. However, could it also be having an impact on a disaster happening on a far wider scale?

In 2018 we witnessed flooding in India, heatwaves across Europe, hurricanes in the United States, fires in Portugal and cyclones in the Philippines. The scientific reality was spelled out 8 October 2018: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report – its stark message leaving no space for doubt and the false comfort it provides.

Climate change is often spoken about as an issue that will wreak havoc for our children and grandchildren, but the IPCC’s report revealed that if we continue on our current trajectory, we will reach 1.5 degrees of global warming as early as 2030. This level of warming would bring a high risk of floods, drought, extreme heatwaves and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

The IPCC report outlined that if we want any chance of preventing climate breakdown we need fossil fuels emissions to peak as early as 2020 and to reach net zero by 2050.

What is clear from the report is that the threat outlined demands a response. Jim Skea, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III, warned: “Limiting warming to 1.5ºC is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but doing so would require unprecedented changes”.

Climate inaction

While some climate change campaigners spoke of experiencing anxiety, depression and grief following the release of the report, the considerable majority of the UK population went about their days pretty much as usual. It will probably seem strange to our children that there was more commotion about why the singer Ariana Grande broke up with comedian Pete Davidson. 

It is possible that our inaction on the issue of climate change is the outworking of the bystander effect on a global scale.

Ambiguity has spread as the scientific consensus is watered down by many media outlets. A diffusion of responsibility has also intensified as the UK government promises to tackle the issue, while at the same time virtually banning onshore wind power, scrapping solar subsidies, promoting fracking, cancelling zero carbon homes and reducing subsidies for electric cars.

The global community of bystanders remains unresponsive, while climate change has already taken many populations victim around the world and imminently threatens to take many more.

However, now is not the time for inaction. The question we need to ask ourselves is what am I doing to tackle climate change, or are we a symptom of the bystander effect – just standing by, watching as the tragedy unfolds?

This Author

Holly-Anna Petersen has a BSc in Biology, an MSc in Psychology and a Post Graduate Certificate in LI Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. She works in the field of mental health and delivers talks on the topics of empowerment and wellbeing. Holly-Anna is a trustee of charity Operation Noah and has eight years of experience working in the social justice and environmental fields.

Caroline Lucas recently warned that, 10 years on from the financial crisis of 2008, of the possibility of a “climate-induced financial crisis”. With banks’ significant exposure to climate-risk, the ecological shocks of climate breakdown may translate directly to shocks to the financial system. With that system foundational to the global economy in our neoliberal age, that’s kind of a big deal.

Many banks have billions of dollars tied up in fossil fuel assets. Continuing to exploit those assets will lead only to increasingly frequent and severe weather events like the fires that ravaged California this summer – predictably hitting the poorest hardest. As densely populated areas become increasingly unliveable, extracting fossil fuels will become even more apparently untenable.

These crisis moments will inevitably command commensurate responses, but with no guarantees of justice or sustainability. If these involve a sudden restriction of supply of fossil fuels, the value of much fossil capital could fall away abruptly.

Carbon bubble

When the housing bubble popped instigating the 2008 crisis, it was the poor who bore the costs of that crisis that the rich had spent years profiting from the cultivation of. The same story would be true of a climate-finance crisis if the carbon bubble pops.

Lucas’ response is to call for central banks like the Bank of England lead the finance sector in taking bold climate action. Her suggested reforms start with disclosures of the full extent of banks’ exposure to climate risk. She then proposes adapting regulations designed to avoid another 2008 to the challenges of climate change, alongside central banks guiding credit towards decarbonisation efforts. If the Bank of England lacks to bravery to take these reforms on voluntarily, politicians should force it to do so.

Our ambitions must extend beyond those central bank though. I’ve written about the opportunity that private banks like Barclays have to show climate leadership in this moment and laid out a roadmap for them to ditch all fossil fuels. However, we cannot cannot expect private banks to do so on their own.

The allure of short-term profit is too strong. Why exclude fossil fuels when there’s still money to be made? Its the rules of the game that need rewriting to allow banks to do all they must to contribute to decarbonisation.

Policy

We need strong policy to regulate the financial sector making future financial crises impossible, whether that’s a repetition of the events preceding 2008, or further exacerbation by banks of climate breakdown pushing the carbon bubble closer to bursting. The Labour’s party’s 2017 manifesto already commits to remaking the banking system. In Government, it will protect consumers by placing a ring-fence between investment and retail banking; break up RBS into local banks; and create a more diverse banking system, backed up by legislation.

As well as building a financial system that works for the many, not the few. Labour’s next manifesto must also seek to transform banking so it works for the climate too.

Labour should make it clear to banks that they are expected to:

• Disclose their exposure to climate risk and fossil fuels;

• Publish a Paris Agreement compliant time-bound plan to exclude all fossil fuels;

• Introduce policy immediately banning any new finance for fossil fuel companies or projects;

• Direct a significant portion of its investments towards research & innovation for decarbonisation or directly into renewables projects backed and approved by the government.

Banks’ long complicity in financing climate breakdown means they have surpassed the point of deserving a ‘carrot’ to incentivise this course of action. It must be all ‘stick’. If they fail to do abide by these regulations, a Labour government should be clear that their response will be to bring the banks into public ownership without compensation (they have stolen enough from us to not deserve any more), break them up, and directly mobilise those resources to finance just transition to a zero-carbon economy.

Our ambitions for our decarbonised economy should be grand – transforming society and economies both out of ecological necessity but also for the prosperity of the many and not the few – and that won’t come cheap! Its right that responsible for inflicting the climate crisis on us – banks, fossil fuel companies, etc – should pay for the transition. Assuming they won’t do so voluntary, its urgently time that we make them.

This author

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

A study by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) shows that over the last year, scientists have published at least 43 research papers looking at links between climate change and extreme weather events, of which 32 found that climate change made the events more likely or more intense.

Combining these numbers with findings from a similar report published last year shows that in the three years since the Paris Agreement, scientists have published 102 papers looking for a link, of which 73 found the fingerprints of climate change.

The figures suggest that the pace of investigation and the rate at which positive links are being uncovered are accelerating.

Vulnerable countries 

Commenting, report author Richard Black, director of the ECIU, said: “The rising incidence of extreme weather events was one of the factors in the minds of ministers who concluded the Paris Agreement three years ago – and since then, evidence for a link to climate change has undeniably grown.

“The studies that we document here show a climate change fingerprint on events including heatwaves, droughts and storms on every continent except Antarctica, confirming people’s real-life experiences of events like this summer’s North European heatwave.

“As the impacts of the changing climate are increasingly felt on people’s doorsteps around the world, this detailed understanding is going to become more and more important.”

Climate Analytics’ Bahamas-based climate researcher and IPCC author Dr Adelle Thomas, who will also be speaking about the report at COP24 in Katowice on 11 December, said that climate attribution studies are particularly important for the most vulnerable countries:

“Attribution of extreme weather events to climate change is critical for small islands, which are already facing increased intensity of tropical cyclones, prolonged periods of drought and more severe coastal flooding.

“Improved scientific understanding of how a warming climate drives or amplifies these events shows that climate-related loss and damage is occurring now, and that vulnerable nations, like small island developing states, need support to address these escalating impacts.”

Climate change

Dr Friederike Otto, Acting Director of the Environmental Change institute at Oxford University and co-investigator on the international World Weather Attribution (WWA) project, said that attribution research will become increasingly important for businesses, investors and insurers: 

“Attribution science is becoming faster and more reliable all the time, and in the last few years we’ve seen a marked acceleration in the number of analyses being done.

 “And what this shows more and more clearly is that climate change is increasing the odds and the impact of many extreme weather events, in virtually every part of the world.

 “In the coming years we can expect the pace of analysis to pick up even further – and that will be of huge importance for policymakers, businesses, insurers and the public, in forming a realistic picture of what climate change is doing right now.”

This Article

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