Every once in a while a new eye-catching catastrophe grabs the public consciousness and we the sense that environmentalism is going viral. 

This article wasfirst published on EcoHustler.

Unexpected online friends share an emotional video from a seemingly well-meaning company. For a second you believe that this might be the turning point. Then, the interest wanes and disaster becomes the everyday once again.

This time it is the turn of supermarket middleweight Iceland to wade into the spotlight with their banned Christmas advert highlighting the destruction wreaked by palm oil farming.

Breaching rules

The short film, originally created by Greenpeace, tells the story of a baby orangutan driven out of its rainforest home by deforestation. It was deemed to be in breach of political advertising rules. 

Politicians and commentators were quick to leap into outraged defence of the supermarket, which is also the first in the UK to drop the controversial ingredient from all their own-brand products. 

A petition for the advert to be released has already reached over half a million signatures.

The environmental impact of palm oil farming can never be understated. However, cynical minds cannot help but question how much the decision is led by environmental concern, and how much by the growing trend for ‘green’ lifestyles.

Although the entry of environmentalism into the public consciousness is to be applauded, it seems to be increasingly predicated on individual purchasing power.

Purchasing power

Rather than demanding change from the 100 companies that cause 71 percent of global emissions, the general public is told that they must change their own buying habits to save the planet.

This mentality is shown in the current WWF advert in which an explosion of plastic products flies at the viewer, as a voiceover claims that we can “win the biggest battles in the smallest moments” by considering “the food we eat, the things we buy and the way we live”.

While individual actions such as recycling and conscious purchasing will have some impact, they are always severely limited.

Take recycling as a well known example. Although recycling rates in the UK have shown great improvements over the last couple of decades – raising from an abysmal 11.2 percent in 2000 to 43.7 percent – in recent years the improvement rates have plateaued.

There has been no significant rise in the last five years, making it doubtful that we will reach the national target of 50 percent before it’s too late.

Consumer aspirations

An emphasis on individual action has cemented the rise of green consumerism – the pitfalls of which have already been outlined – but this trend seems to have reached new heights: ‘green choices’ are sold back to us, often in ways that lack environmental credibility.

Reusable plastic bottles and tote bags have become the go-to giveaway products, creating cupboards full of supposedly eco-alternatives which actually consume far more energy in their production than their single-use counterparts.

The larger companies that create these increasingly ubiquitous products have to drive new models and designs so that they can encourage consumers to keep coming back.

As with any social movement, environmental slogans are printed onto t-shirts, bags or anything else ready to be flogged to the public. In short, environmentalism is being sold as a consumer aspiration which in the end only encourages us to buy more rather than cutting our waste production.

Iceland has made significant steps to brand themselves as the environmental choice. Picking them over Tesco becomes like choosing Ecover instead of Persil.

Shifting impacts

Green capitalists will argue that by consumers purchasing these brands over their less sustainable counterparts the necessary environmental shift will be set in motion. But this growth in choice only serves to hold back the real changes we need.

Instead of moving towards local and independent shops and services we continue to rely on the national, or even global giants whose size will always guarantee a level of environmental destruction. 

Minds can slowly be changed. Perhaps Iceland’s first steps will encourage the global brands that they still stock to join them and stop using palm oils. But any progress will be slow and each similar battle will have to be won on its own.

The process will be nowhere near quick enough for the level of change we need to see, and in a financial system based firmly on growth it may never happen. This is the fundamental issue: capitalism is an unsustainable system.

If we move away from using palm oil the environmental impact will simply be shifted. Rather than decimating Indonesian forests with oil palms, deforestation will move to other areas of the world inhabited by endangered species, as we begin to rely on crops which demand more land than palm.

New path 

The global demand, and producers’ methods to meet it, cannot be sustainably managed under the current system.

We can rebrand capitalism in hundreds of ‘green’ guises but it will always be led by individuals who value growth in profits over protection of natural resources.

Initiatives such as Iceland’s palm oil advert are more likely to increase their profits rather than significantly reverse the precarious position the world finds itself in. It may even do more damage by sedimenting beliefs that dramatic and systematic changes are not needed.

We must stop just reshuffling the deck and choose a new path to reverse our fate.

This Author

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

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote is often taken out of context – this being no exception – however, what if taxes could actually be used to prevent deaths? Or at least reduce harm to ourselves and the planet?

Scientists at Oxford University calculated that a red and processed meat tax would prevent many premature deaths while simultaneously raising millions in tax revenue and reducing NHS costs. This would mean that products like sausages and bacon would double in price, when taking into account the harm they cause to people’s health.

The Vegan Society welcomes a proposed meat tax, but only if implemented alongside other policies.

Very unhealthy

Red and processed meats have been shown to be very unhealthy; the World Health Organisation classifies processed meat as a carcinogen – unprocessed red meat is also classified as probably carcinogenic. Diets high in red and processed meats have also been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and strokes.

It is estimated that diet-related ill health costs the NHS £5.8 billion annually – more than smoking, alcohol, or physical inactivity. Businesses and the economy as a whole suffer through missed work days due to sickness.

Red meat also has a detrimental impact on the environment due to high levels of land use, water use and greenhouse gas emissions. A recent study in the journal Science concluded that cutting consumption of meat is “the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact”.

A meat tax would encourage people to make healthier, more environmentally-friendly, longer-term diet choices whilst also saving £700m in NHS costs and an estimated 6,000 premature deaths every year in the UK.

So why is a proposal with such clear benefits not met with unanimous approval?

Vegan tax

Martin Daubney, former editor of Loaded magazine, offered his considered contribution to the debate: “We should tax vegans, because this is an absolute nonsense.” Details of Martin’s ‘vegan tax’ proposals and how they would benefit public health or the environment remain unclear at the time of writing.

Other commentators raise more coherent concerns, for example, that a meat tax would be regressive, unfairly impacting the poorest in our society. We do not advocate for a regressive tax. Instead we would want to see a meat tax combined with other changes to reduce prices on healthier products and to increase understanding of healthy cooking. Incentivising healthy food would mean that individuals do not need to spend more on food overall. 

Opponents also object on the grounds that this is another unnecessary government intervention – the ‘nanny state’ argument. What they seemingly forget is that the government already intervenes and taxes many products with undesirable outcomes, like tobacco, alcohol and, more recently, sugar. The public widely accepts government interventions in cases where the market is clearly producing unwanted outcomes – cancer, alcoholism, childhood obesity.

There is debate on whether a meat tax would actually reduce red and processed meat consumption, however, examples in other areas show that taxes can be highly effective at instigating behavioural change.

The plastic-bag levy, although very small at 5p per bag, has resulted in a dramatic decline in the number given out by supermarkets. This shows that nudges towards favourable outcomes can be influenced by even relatively modest taxes. When considering just health outcomes, the Oxford report calculates the optimal meat tax for the UK at 14 percent for red meat and 79 percent for processed meat, far higher than the 5p plastic bag levy, indicating it would have a major impact on consumer behaviour.

More affordable

Another argument against, is that a meat tax is too unpopular with voters for it to be politically viable. Research from Chatham House in 2015 found that opposition to a meat tax significantly softened when the harms were explained. Respondents also expected governments to take the lead action on issues that are for the global good, including in food policy. Additionally, meat tax revenues could be used to make healthier foods more affordable, further sweetening the deal for the consumer.

Despite the clear benefits for public health, the environment and the public purse, a meat tax alone is not enough to induce the changes required. We would like to see a meat tax implemented alongside complimentary policies designed to elicit the most benefit from our food and farming system. Ultimately, healthy foods should be more affordable than unhealthy foods.

The Vegan Society and New Economics Foundation’s Grow Green report, highlights a range of policy measures to fix the UK’s broken food system. The report focuses on increasing protein crop production (peas, beans, lentils etc.) which are simultaneously affordable, ethical, sustainable and healthy – neatly described as a ‘win-win-win-win’.

The recommended measures include incentives encouraging farmers to switch from animal protein, funding research for crop development, a farm entry scheme for budding protein-crop farmers and increasing availability of protein crops on menus in hospitals and schools. These policy recommendations encourage a shift away from animal agriculture towards a plant-based system, which is healthier and more sustainable than our current failing model.

An alternative to a meat tax, which has similar outcomes, is an economy-wide carbon tax. This would be levied relative to the amount of carbon emissions associated with each product’s production. In terms of food, the highest carbon emitters are ruminant livestock such as cows and sheep. This would increase the price of the worst offending products, thereby reducing consumption of red meat, whilst raising tax revenue.

Environmental catastrophe

It is clear that we need to make drastic changes to avert major public health and environmental catastrophes. 

A meat tax would make a good starter. However, it would be best served with our accompanying suggestions. 

This Author

Mark Banahan is Campaigns and Policy Officer at The Vegan Society and a keen vegan and political activist. If you would like to learn more about veganism, sign up to the 7-day challenge here.

Brazil’s president-elect Jair Bolsonaro has named an anti-globalist diplomat to lead on foreign affairs and his country’s relationship to the Paris Agreement.

Ernesto Araújo has praised US president Donald Trump and accused the political left of appropriating climate change to serve an ideological agenda. He currently runs Brazil’s US and Canada department, a relatively junior position in the foreign service, and only became an ambassador this year.

On Twitter announcing his new minister, Bolsonaro called Araújo a “brilliant intellectual”.

Greenhouse gas

During the election campaign, Araújo started a blog, which he used to question the moral underpinnings of internationalism. In a post on 12 October, Araújo wrote that the left twisted legitimate causes “to serve their political project of total domination”.

Thousands of studies by hundreds of scientists agree that climate change is real, serious and driven by human activity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report warned that only radical action can avert dangerous impacts.

Araújo has dismissed that body of evidence, claiming it is selective and politically motivated. “The left has appropriated the environmental cause and perverted it to the point of paroxysm over the last 20 years with the ideology of climate change, the climatism,” he wrote in the blog post.

This movement gathered data “suggesting a correlation” between rising temperatures and CO2, he claimed. They “ignored data suggesting the opposite… and created a ‘scientific’ dogma that no one else can contest or he will be excommunicated from good society – exactly the opposite of the scientific spirit.”

His claims contradict not only the vast majority of climate scientists but also the consensus among world leaders. To date, 184 countries – including Brazil under a previous administration – have ratified the Paris Agreement, agreeing to cooperate to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Election campaign

In 2017, Araújo wrote in a diplomatic journal that “only Trump can save the west” – a bastardisation of Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger.

Like Trump, Brazil’s president-elect comes to power amid uncertainty about whether he will leave the Paris Agreement. Early in his campaign, Bolsonaro threatened to quit the deal, then in the days before the election took a softer stance.

Araújo, who shares Bolsonaro’s suspicions about the international order, will take charge of the department that oversees Brazil’s position at international climate negotiations.

Brazil is in line to host next year’s UN climate talks. Bolsonaro has given no indication whether his administration will pursue this initiative.

On Wednesday, Climate Home News reported that the election campaign saw a near 50 percent rise in deforestation compared with the same period last year. Federal environment agents said emboldened criminal gangs had warned them “things will change” under Bolsonaro.

This Article

This article first appeared at Climate Home News. 

Narratives matter. They establish the architecture for the telling of stories about the state of the world and how we should act.

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

A powerful environmental narrative emerged during the mid-twentieth century  that has shaped institutions and cultural understandings of our relationship with nature, the planet and different actors in society.

At its root this narrative adopts a simple state-cause-consequence structure. Nature is in crisis due to human fecundity, greed and ignorance, and catastrophe looms. The activist generation of the 1970s populated this narrative with villainous, innocent and heroic characters and called on governments to act to regulate the perpetrators of harm and for companies to change their immoral ways.

Enhance and restore

This narrative is powerful and has achieved much, but it mobilises action through a combination of anxiety and blame.

The relentless retelling of ‘doom and gloom’ stories may have alienated many ordinary people from the envir­onmental movement: the issues seem so big that people feel powerless to make a difference within the constraints of their everyday lives.

Early in 2019, the UK government will introduce the first broad environmental bill in 20 years. Campaigners are calling for it to be ambitious, but in what way?

The established environmental narrative frames ambition in terms of halting loss through more powerful regulation, targets and watchdogs.

Significantly the consultation document states that the government’s ambition is to “enhance and restore habitats and landscapes”, not just protect and conserve them.

Ecological abundance 

The new bill may be the first in the world to include a legal duty to leave the environment in better shape than we found it.

This ‘restoration’ ambition raises an important set of questions: what do we want to restore? What natural processes, attributes and types of value do we wish to enhance or recover? Who should decide on these questions?

Mobilising this ambition will require a new environmental narrative: one that empowers collective imaginings of the future environments we wish to create.

I recently published an article in the journal Ambio suggesting that in rewilding we are seeing the emergence of a new environmental narrative, which I labelled “Recoverable Earth”. In structure, ethos and ambition it is quite different from the established environmental narrative.

It is characterised by fresh and compelling stories telling of the return and recovery of European megafauna, the restoration of natural dynamics and ecological abundance: stories of reassessment and refinding the self, and working with restored forces of Nature to create novel solutions to the challenges of environmental and social change. These are stor­ies of what can be achieved rather than what needs to be done.

Mental health 

Interestingly, these new stories of envir­onmental recovery map onto the narrative structure of accounts of mental health recovery.

These commonly incorporate four narrative components: accounts of (1) despair, anguish and hopelessness, (2) awakenings and reassessments, (3) decisions to act, often in the company of others, leading to (4) the recovery of hope and wellness.

Rewilding stories assemble these components in a synergistic manner. For example, the story of Gelderse Poort, located immediately upriver from the city of Nijmegen (Europe’s 2018 Green Capital) begins with accounts of despair concerning the loss of natural values in the Dutch delta.

It continues with two key ecological awakenings: that, given space, nature can spontaneously recover; and that grazing aids the development of rich and diverse ecosystems.

This inspired a pilot project to acquire agricultural land in the floodplain and introduce grazing with ‘wilded’ ponies and cattle.

Restoration questions 

This radical new vision attracted funds and interest: it prompted WWF-Netherlands to reassess its attitude towards aggregate mining. WWF-Netherlands formed a partnership with brick companies, which purchased more agricultural land and excavated the accumulated silt and clay to restore the river.

The story continues with accounts of the rapid and unexpected recovery of nature and how this has enhanced the life quality of Nijmegen’s citizens: rare species have returned, dune and freshwater systems previously known only from coastal or higher areas have appeared, and citizens benefit from reduced flood risk, low insurance costs and the many outdoor recreation opportunities the restored landscape offers – from beach sunbathing to wildlife watching.

Gelderse Poort is a story of the recovery of socio-ecological wellness. New stories of envir­onmental recovery and restoration lack the blame and catastrophic consequence components of the older narrative.

They adopt a more pragmatic worldview: we are where we are, there is no way back, and there is little value in feeling guilt and attributing blame.

Interpreting the ‘re’ prefix as ‘again’ rather than ‘back’ creates the flexibility to envision better, yet different environmental futures. It creates the architecture to explore and discuss the restoration questions noted above and the policy principles that should follow.

Collective wellbeing 

Adopting a new environmental narrative does not mean abandoning the old.

Twenty-first-century environmentalism could adopt the strapline “Protect the best, recover the rest”. The first part of the couplet refers to the regulations and natural areas established in the twentieth century; the second part refers to new policy, projects and campaigns that take inspiration from mul­tiple pasts to restore degraded landscapes and ecological processes and recover wellness for people and Nature.

There is talk of the UN declaring 2020–30 as a decade of ecosystem restoration. The Recoverable Earth narrative offers a structure for telling environmental stories that are fresh, hopeful, intriguing and empowering.

Adopting this narrative in environmental policy, communication and marketing could instil people with the confidence to act with an independence of spirit and vision to restore their landscapes and ecosystems and recover a sense of collective wellbeing.

This Author 

Paul Jepson is course director of the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management at the University of Oxford, and Senior Research Fellow with the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment. The latest edition of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now!

Kesang Choedon has created an innovative organic and heritage food enterprise near Thimphu, the Bhutanese capital. Formerly a police officer, Choedon employs and trains 30 young women in processing and marketing of Bhutan’s local food treasures.

The enterprise includes the processing of nearly 150 different organic food ingredients from a wide range of local products including dried fruit and vegetables, cereals, pulses, health drinks, herb teas and spices. These products are sold in an organic shop, and offered in a Folk Heritage Restaurant in the capital.

Choedon is eager to further expand her facilities, products and training to young Bhutanese people. Her intention is to create and strengthen a new organic food movement that builds upon food traditions but also brings healthy and tasty food to Bhutanese people

Some people in Bhutan consider you as pioneer of a new food movement. Would you agree?

I am not sure whether I am a pioneer in the literal sense. The nature of my work led to working directly with farmers and the need to be supply our people with naturally grown good food. 

If Bhutan is to be turning toward 100 percent organic, then farmers, processors and consumers need to work together. Some may believe that our food is already organic, because most of our farmers do not use any chemicals or fertilizers. But in fact there is only a very small organic market and there is a risk that non-organic methods come sneaking in.

I consider my food business as an invitation to farmers to create their own organic market and as an invitation to consumers to value what we have in Bhutan: very nutritious and tasty local food.

You started your food business ten years ago to preserve and develop Bhutanese food culture. Was it difficult to find farmers who would work with you?

Not at all. The problem was getting started and getting the quantities right. Sometimes I would have far too much, sometimes far too little.

So I decided to dry food so that I would be able to balance what I received and what I could store – fruit, vegetables, pulses, cereals. That gave me time to find outlets. The shop helped and of course the restaurant.

There was no organic certification and control at that time. How could you trust that you got the quality you wanted?

I was relying on my own sense and the sense of friends who helped me to find farmers who were ready to cooperate.

Bhutan is a big family you know. And in the villages we keep an eye on each other. With the help of the government’s extension service we had quickly built up a group organizing and checking the buying up.

We have the Bhutanese organic certification now but I would like to say that certification may not be necessary for the local market (but would be necessary for exports). 

You were a police officer before you started your food business. Why did you leave your career in the civil service and go it alone?

I was very lucky to be one of the first women offered a career when the government decided to employ women in security services.

It was an exciting time. I love investigations. At that time, it was still an adventure to be officer in the countryside: no roads, no cars, walking in the mountains, crossing rivers at night, sleeping in cowsheds on farms in the forest and so on.

And it was already during that time that my sense for food had emerged from the food that we were offered at the farms. Then there was my grandmother’s food that was irresistibly good. Both, my grandmothers’ and our farmers’ food were the reasons that I dropped the job.

It was not an easy decision at all. I think it was the day when I had read some reviews about the bad image Bhutanese food has. I was suddenly sure that my passion for our own Bhutanese food was stronger than remaining in the police services.

I had no bad conscience that I would not properly serve my country any more – you know we feel very responsible in Bhutan to serve our country – I was just sure my service for our country would be to preserve our food.

You are passionate about drawing young people into a new food movement – you employ and train thirty young women. Is food still best taken care of by women?

I have only employed young women. Girls are in general more ambitious and innovative then men.

Women often do not find jobs when it comes to plumbing, fixing electrical lines and cement works, as they are risky and require physical strength. I focus on young women who are jobless for some reason, including school drop-outs. And I want them to understand how important and fascinating working with food is.

The girls in my staff stay with me between three to ten years. They like the teamwork and I encourage them to take their own projects and initiatives in hand and develop them further.

I always said to myself: if you feel like doing it, go for it, be your own master. My daughter and two nieces are managing the shop and the restaurant by the way. I believe women will do the job of bringing our local food and organic farming right into the center of Bhutanese culture.

You are building your business and your ambition for an organic food movement on food heritage and on food education. Do you also believe that a change of Bhutan’s farm and food policy could help to achieve the declared goal to become the first country in the world with 100 percent organic farming?

Policies can help, if the people carry them. We have the advantage that our King and our Government want to go that way. But people seem to believe that we are already there, and that is not the case.

Our subsistence farmers farm without chemicals but not necessarily organic. There are practices missing like crop rotation and good water management that make farming resilient on the long run.

But also consumers are not aware of how important it is that they choose local and seasonal food from Bhutan to support farmers in their effort to go organic.

Finally it is an educational job. We have to teach food culture at schools and talk more about it.   I was very lucky because I could tap into my grandmother’s vast cooking, preservation and food knowledge. She lived to 110 years old, so I had time to “absorb” her treasure of recipes and I could build upon that to develop my enterprise.

I am very keen to hand that on to my daughters and to the young people working with me. I believe our food culture is deeply linked also to our religion and our strong relation to nature.

We are doing a religious offering called “du-na-gu”, the nine cereal grains. They stand for common wealth, for diversity and for generosity, in a sense for what we get from nature and what we share. I have offered these nine cereal grains in my shop, and I teach people how to cook them. This is how we build upon tradition and move towards a healthy and sustainable future.

This Author 

Hannes Lorenzen is senior adviser to the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg.

The new national strategy to combat imported deforestation, released by the environment ministry on Wednesday, will use trade to help decouple economic development from tree-cutting and unsustainable agriculture in poorer countries.

France also plans to help companies meet their own goals for combatting the import of products linked to deforestation, and encourage financiers to take environmental and social issues into account for investment decisions.

Europe’s imports of agricultural products – ranging from beef and soybeans from Latin America, to palm oil from southeast Asia, to cocoa from Africa – are responsible for more than a third of deforestation, according to the French strategy.

Environmental laws

“The EU, a major global economic player, bears an important responsibility to set an example,” it stated. The European Union, as well as France, therefore should “rapidly” adopt measures to reduce the impact of their consumption on deforestation.

The European Commission is under growing pressure from some EU capitals, European Parliament members and civil society to address the bloc’s contribution to deforestation in other countries.

“The EU and others need to follow suit, because France can’t tackle deforestation alone,” Nicole Polsterer, campaigner at the Brussels-based environmental NGO Fern, said on Wednesday. “Only the European Commission can ensure that all member states’ trade is free from violations of land tenure rights and deforestation.”

France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, the UK, Denmark and Norway sent a letter to EU commissioners earlier this month asking them to come up with a bloc-wide action plan to combat deforestation, based on a feasibility study the commission published in March.

The French strategy also comes amid growing concern about rising deforestation in the world’s largest tropical rainforest – the Amazon – following Brazil’s election of Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation in the Amazon jumped by nearly 50% during the three-month presidential election season, according to preliminary figures. The incoming president has talked about putting a highway through the forest and weaken environmental laws in favour of farmers and loggers.

Polsterer argued on Climate Home News during Brazil’s election campaign that the best way for the EU to resist Bolsonaro’s impact would be through trade. The EU is the largest foreign investor in Brazil and its second-largest trading partner, with a share of 18.3%, she said.

Forests shelter more than 75% of the world’s biodiversity, absorb climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions and help protect soil and freshwater, said the French strategy. Global forest cover shrunk by 129 million hectares, or twice the size of France, between 1990 and 2015, it said, citing the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

This Article

This Article first appeared on Climate Home.

A group of hard-Brexiters is working together to launch a “Museum of Communist Terror” with the aim to “keep alive knowledge and understanding of the deaths, terror and economic failure that took place under Communist regimes, primarily in the 20th century”.

Over the last month, individuals from high-profile and opaquely-funded organisations advancing free-market and libertarian ideology have joined the venture founded by journalist and writer James Bartholomew.

This included senior members of Vote Leave such as the campaign’s founder Daniel Hannan, who later founded the IFT (previously Institute for Free Trade), technology chief Thomas Borwick and head of social media Chloe Westley, now a campaign manager at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which was founded by Vote Leave’s chief executive Matthew Elliott.

A historian

The group also includes Eamonn Butler, the co-founder and director of the Adam Smith Institute, another libertarian think tank which together with the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the IFT are part of a network of free-market organisations and climate science deniers pushing for a hard-Brexit.

DeSmog UK has extensively reported on this network which is based in and around 55 Tufton Street, an office near Westminster.

The office is also home to the climate science denial group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson.

Earlier this weekend, the Taxpayers’ Alliance conceded that it had coordinated with eight other organisations pushing for a hard-Brexit as part of their political campaign. The revelations came as the Taxpayers’ Alliance admitted to illegally sacking BeLeave whistleblower Shahmir Sanni for raising the alarm over Vote Leave’s electoral spending.

The nine groups include the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Leave Means Leave, Brexit Central, the IEA, the Centre for Policy Studies, Civitas and the office of former Ukip leader Peter Whittle.

Out of eight of the museum’s current directors, only one is a historian.

Activities and messaging

According to its website, the museum team is currently working to “acquire artefacts” from former Communist countries to create a collection and create one or more small museums “leading up to the development of a full-size museum in London”.

The museum’s message will also be disseminated through social media, films for schools and universities and “lobbying for improvements in the teaching of the history of Communist regimes”.

At time of publication, the museum’s website includes short videos of people sharing their life experience under communist regimes in Cambodia and eastern Europe.

The “Museum of Communist Terror” Twitter account is also followed by a number of climate science deniers and key members of the Tufton Street network, including Breitbart writer James Delingpole, MP Owen Paterson and coal baron Matt Ridley.

DeSmog UK contacted the museum for comment but it did not receive a response in time for publication.

Museum directors: Who’s Who?

The museum founder is James Bartholomew, a journalist for the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Spectator and the author of The Welfare of Nations, his second book which argues that welfare and nanny states are damaging prosperity.

Bartholomew registered a private limited company by guarantee named “Museum of Communist Terror”based in Bath with Companies House in September last year.

Writing in the Spectator in 2016, Bartholomew said he developed the idea of creating the museum after visiting the House of Terror in Budapest, Hungary, a museum and memorial to the victims of the country’s fascist and communist regime of the 20th century.

Bartholomew wrote that “the generation that has grown up since the collapse of the Berlin Wall does not seem to understand the connection between communism and terror”, adding “the far left is experiencing a surge of popularity” across Britain and the US.

The museum’s website was created by Kanto Systems, a company which describes itself as a political campaign consultancy and whose founder and director is Thomas Borwick, Vote Leave’s former chief technology officer who previously worked for Cambridge Analytica.

Kanto Systems also built the website for the Save The 8th campaign in Ireland which opposed amending the constitution to legalise abortion.

Borwick is also tightly connected to former Ukip MP Douglas Carswell and together run a campaigns communication management company called Disruptive Analytica.

Borwick joined the museum company as a director last month, along with a number of new recruits.

Chloe Westley, a campaign manager for the TaxPayers’ Alliance – which was founded by Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott – also joined the company last month.

Westley was head of social media for Vote Leave and founded the grassroot campaign “Change Britain” which aimed to deliver on the EU referendum result.

In the summer 2016, she also advised environmental minister Michael Gove during his Tory leadership campaign.

Daniel Hannan joined the “Museum of Communist terror” earlier this month. Hannan is a Conservative MEP for the South east of England, known for his hardline pro-Brexit views.

Last year, Hannan was a speaker at The Liberty Summit to discuss “the dark legacy of the communist system and the developments of post-communism”. The event was organised by the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe(ACRE), a European eurosceptic political movement.

Hannan made headlines in September last year when he launched the IFT (previously the Institute for Free Trade) at the Foreign Office, which was attended by international trade secretary Liam Fox and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson.

The IFT is based at 57 Tufton Street, sharing an office with the anti-renewables thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies, and next door to many of the organisations DeSmog UK previously revealed to be at the heart of a UK climate science denial network in 55 Tufton Street.

The IFT was set up after the Brexit referendum to promote free-trade deals between the UK and other countries. Earlier this year, the IFT engaged in “shadow trade talks” with a range of libertarian groups from the UK and the US to set-out what a US-UK trade deal could look like post-Brexit.

These talks resulted in the publication of an alternative Brexit plan, known as the “Plan A+”, which was largely produced by lobbyist Shanker Singham, director of the international trade unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).  

The plan called on the UK government to cut EU environmental regulations to secure free-trade deals with the US, China and India after Brexit, describing environmental protection as “frequently they are disguised methods of protectionism”. The plan was widely criticised by environmental groups.

Eamonn Butler is an economist and the co-founder and director of the Adam Smith Institute, another free-market organisation which is based at 55 Tufton Street.

Butler is strongly affiliated to the Atlas network.

In the 1970s, Butler worked in the US on pensions and welfare issues for the House of Representatives.

Giles Udy is a historian whose work has focused on the Soviet gulag system and its influence on the Labour movement in the UK. His latest book is called “Labour and the gulag”.

Roger Scruton, is a writer and philosopher who has long defended conservative values.

He came under scrutiny in 2002 after having written extensively about smoking, including for the IEA, without disclosing he was receiving regular donations from Japan Tobacco International.

Jean-Paul Floru is a writer and a senior research fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. He is a former conservative councillorat Westminster City Council and stood as a Conservative candidate in the 2009 European Parliament election.

He describes himself as a libertarian conservative, a “Boris [Johnson] backer” and a eurosceptic.

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

Each morning at Camp Constitution’s summer camp, the kids and parents go off to classes while staff members do a room inspection. “What we look for is not just cleanliness, but a patriotic and Godly theme,” says camp director Hal Shurtleff in a video of the 2016 camp.

“We are looking for creativity — are they learning what we are teaching them?”

And what are they being taught? Conspiracy theories about the United Nations (UN) and how climate change is a hoax, and they’ve drafted in two of the world’s most notorious climate science denialists to do the job.

Pushing conspiracy

The rooms — named after “places of refuge in the old testament” — are covered with U.S. nationalistic garlands and flags. A “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) hat is perched on a wooden bunk post.

Children take quotes they’ve learned from classes, and turn them into posters. One encourages the United Nations to keep out.

Another lists “buzzwords” including CO2, climate change, environmental justice, and endangered species.

“You hear these buzzwords and you know the bad guys are behind the scenes,” says a commentating Shurtleff.

Shurtleff is a former regional director of the John Birch Society — the UN-hating, right-wing conservative group known for, among other things, pushing a conspiracy that the UN’s promotion of environmental sustainability was in fact a sinister plot to install a world government.

But as well as learning about the evils of sensible resource use, the kids at this summer’s Camp Constitution attended classes by climate science deniers Lord Christopher Monckton and Dr. Willie Soon.

World government

In an interview on conspiracy-loving Infowars, Shurtleff said how Soon had spoken to campers the previous year and would “bring his whole family” to the event at Lakeside Christian Camp and Conference Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

At the camp’s 2017 event, Soon gave a talk claiming that the sun was controlling the world’s climate, and dismissing the role of CO2. NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt has been among the scientists to carefully unpick Soon’s claims, describing his scientific contributions as “singularly poor.”

In 2018, the camp schedule shows Soon was to give two talks — one about the “climate change hoax” and another that attempted to undermine the measurements showing sea levels around the world are rising, and how that rise is accelerating.

Research from Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center has shown Soon’s work to be heavily funded by fossil fuel industry interests, including more than $1 million from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, American Petroleum Institute, and Charles G. Koch Foundation.

Also on the agenda was former John Birch Society president John “Jack” McManus, who told the youngsters, some who stay with their parents, how the U.S. should “Get Us Out of the United Nations” while explaining his full anti-UN “world government” conspiracy theory. He even sold them a booklet for the discounted price of $2.

Freedom of speech

Eccentric British climate science denier, Lord Christopher Monckton, was also at the camp to regale the kids with tales of how climate change science is one big con-job. 

Monckton has been claiming for about two years to have discovered a fatal flaw in climate science (the world’s temperature gauges and polar ice don’t seem to have gotten Monckton’s memo) and he did not spare the youngsters any detail with a slideshow chock full of formulas.

While Monckton might sound like he knows what he’s talking about, actual climate scientists have long-debunked his claims.

In 2015, scientists looked at one of his very few scientific papers to make it into the peer-reviewed literature and found it was “riddled with errors” — and published a response in the same journal.

Camp Constitution’s Facebook page shows Monckton sitting down for a meal with some of the young campers, perhaps to discuss the themes of liberty and freedom of speech.

You have to wonder if he told them about the various people he’s threatened to sue or have arrested (none of the threats ever seem to materialize) for saying or doing things he didn’t like.

All in the spirit of freedom, of course!

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

Attributing climate change to capitalism is hardly mainstream thinking, but it is also no longer taboo.

Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein certainly helped popularise this argument, but it is being echoed now in more unusual quarters. In August 2018, a group of Finnish scientists commissioned by UN Secretary General warned that the current economic system cannot address the multiple unfolding social and ecological crises.

The vice-chair of the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock, admitted earlier this year that in the face of climate change “We have to change capitalism. This is really what’s at stake here.”

Military spending 

It is clearly a welcome development that ever more people are connecting the dots between our economic system and ecological destruction. There is much less attention, however, to the links between environmental issues and militarism and security.

It’s a surprising omission given how much power the military has and the way it has increased its power dramatically over the last decades. When you consider that climate change will dramatically increase instability and insecurity, examining the role of the military in a climate-changed world becomes ever more critical.  

While politicians have proved unable to make the decisions necessary to stop worsening climate change, they have not found it difficult to find funding for ‘security’ needs.

Global military spending amounted to 1.74 trillion US dollars in 2017, equivalent to 230 US dollars for every person on earth – and almost double what it was at the end of the Cold War.

The events of 9/11 in particular fuelled an all-encompassing war against ‘terror’ and an almost limitless military spending spree. As governments spent more, they also reinforced the power and influence of military corporations (such as Lockheed Martin in the US and Elbit in Israel)  which now help draft and write worldwide security policies  from which they further profit. 

Growing market

Naomi Klein has drawn attention to the “epic case of historical bad timing” of the global neoliberal revolution gaining pace just when we needed corporate regulation and a planned transition to low-carbon economies.

I would argue that an equally important case of bad timing has been the massive growth of the military-security-industrial complex at the time climate change’s impacts have become more and more obvious. It will almost certainly lead to the military playing an ever more significant role in responding to climate change – with consequences for all of us. 

To understand the power of the military today, it is important to go beyond constantly growing budgets and never-ending wars – such as the now 17 year war in Afghanistan – and challenge the consensus it has created that supports ever more pervasive ‘security’.

The big arms firms today not only sell arms, they sell all varieties of ‘security’ solutions from CCTV cameras in urban neighbourhoods, to biometric databases for storing fingerprints, to high-tech radar systems at increasingly militarised borders.

This market has grown massively: a modest estimate suggests that the  global homeland security industry will be worth $418 billion by 2022.

Increasing criminalisation 

Some of the new security giants are perversely involved in both creating insecurity and providing the solutions to it.

A report by Transnational Institute in 2016 showed that three of the top European arms traders to North Africa and the Middle East – Finmecannica, Thales and Airbus – are also some of the principal winners of contracts to militarise EU borders. In other words, they profit twice – from fuelling the wars that lead to refugees and then providing the technology and infrastructures that stops refugees from finding safety.

It is therefore an artificial distinction to define militarism as only concerning wars abroad; it also concerns the increasingly militarised responses at home – those that initially target marginalised communities (Muslims, immigrants), then activists, then humanitarians and ultimately everyone.

This militarisation and accompanying criminalisation unfolds every day worldwide. In the UK for example, in 2015, 4,000 people were reported as potential extremists under a massive surveillance programme – more than a third of whom are children.

Both Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock protesters in the US have found themselves facing off against Mine-Resistant Armor-Protected vehicles as well as drones. In Honduras, more than 120 people were murdered between 2010 and 2016 by paramilitary groups for standing up against logging, mining and dams. 

Huge emissions 

The influential US media commentator and neoliberal advocate Thomas Friedman explained the reasons for this militarised response – and rather more honestly than you would expect: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

In other words, capitalism and militarism (particularly US imperialism) are not just parallel forces, they are inextricably intertwined.

What Friedman failed to draw attention to though is that the hidden fist is not just out there in the ‘world’, it is also at home too. 

The close links between capitalism and militarism can be seen in the operations of the US military.  Deploying most military assets today requires huge emissions of greenhouse gases, which means the Pentagon is the single largest organisational user of petroleum.

Just one of its jets, the B-52 Stratocruiser, consumes roughly 3,334 gallons per hour, about as much fuel as the average car driver uses in seven years. Despite its huge carbon ‘bootprint’, the military’s contribution is not even properly assessed by industrialised countries and remains exempt from the UN Paris agreement.

Strategic deployment 

Of course if their emissions were properly accounted for, we would be even further from meeting the goal of keeping global temperature rises under two degrees centigrade. 

Their role is even more significant if you you consider what most military forces are mobilised for – in particular the US’s vast military infrastructure of more than 800 bases and their navy and air fleets across the globe.

It’s clear that they are principally deployed in oil-rich and resource-rich regions and near strategic shipping lanes that keep our globalised economy humming.

This focus is not unique to the US. The research group Oil Change International calculates that up to half of all interstate wars since 1973 have been about oil. 

Police violence against populations is also often concerned with protecting fossil fuel projects, industries and infrastructures from resistance. We see it time and time again that environmental activists are faced with violence when they take on extractive industries.

Removing regulations

The human rights organisation Global Witness noted in 2015 that three people were killed each week defending their land, forests and rivers against extractive industries.

Capitalism’s hidden fist is not a new phenomenon – economic power has always used violence to protect itself – but it has also accelerated in recent decades.

One impetus was certainly the aftermath of 9/11 that legitimised a massive rise in military expenditure and state violence. But it is also likely that the broader ecological crisis has fuelled a military response. 

The Stockholm Resilience Center’s research shows that there are nine core ecological processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the earth on which we depend. Humanity has already crossed two boundaries related to biodiversity loss and shifts in nutrient cycles (nitrogen and phosphorus) and is in a perilous condition in terms of climate change and land use. 

Underpinned by a corporate ‘race to the bottom’ – in which transnationals constantly seek to remove regulations and costs that limit profit – it has led in particular to extractive industries crashing up against our ecological boundaries and moving into the last remaining territories free from exploitation.

First Nations

People are forced to resist, not just to prevent pollution or corruption, but in order to survive. Their fierce resistance has met with harsh repression.

Recent events in Canada bring this reality home. In 2013, energy corporation Kinder Morgan announced it would build a new pipeline from Alberta to British Colombia straight through an environmentally sensitive region and through the  territories of more than 100 ‘First Nations’.

The announcement led to massive resistance, so much so that the company eventually announced it would abandon the project due to the ‘legal risks’. Yet rather than back off from a toxic oil project, the state doubled down and ended up effectively nationalising the pipeline. 

A court case in August 2018 declared in the protesters’ favour– noting the lack of constitutional consultations with First Nations and the lack of environmental review of expanded marine tanker traffic in the Salish sea.

It is an important delay, but it is clear that a Canadian state dominated by oil interests is unlikely to back down – and will ultimately use force to impose the project. As they have in countless fossil-fuel and extractive projects around the world.

‘Declaration of war’

And those faced with the violence feel no alternative but to resist. As Kanahus Manuel of the Secwepemc Nation in Canada noted: “Everything flows from the land. If the land is destroyed, we are also destroyed.”

It’s understandable therefore that Manuel, along with a coalition of indigenous organisers, called the Canadian government’s actions a “declaration of war.” She added: “We mean it literally. The military will be called. It is the national pattern to use criminalization, civil action, and other penalties to repress Indigenous resistance to these policies by bringing to bear the weight of the law and police forces against Indigenous individuals and communities.”

As climate change impacts hit home ever harder, this tendency towards a militarised response is likely to grow. Trump may not believe in climate change, but his military does and they are already making plans to deal with its consequences.

The speed of melting in the Arctic led the US Navy this year to announce it is revising its strategy for the region with a likely increase in armed ships and troops.

This Author

Nick Buxton is a communications consultant, working on media, publications and online communications for TNI. He has been based in California since September 2008 and prior to that lived in Bolivia for four years, working as writer/web editor at Fundación Solón, a Bolivian organisation working on issues of trade, water, culture and historical memory.

Australia recently joined the European Union and US in declaring climate change a ‘security’ threat and warning of dangers of “migration, internal instability or intra-state insurgencies … terrorism or cross-border conflict” that would necessitate a “a wide spectrum of Defence responses”.

Militarising borders

When the military and security forces are the strongest and best-funded institutions in our society, we can’t be surprised when they become the default institutions for dealing with climate change impacts. 

The predominant US and EU state responses to refugees is one of the most disturbing portents of what militarised climate adaptation could look like.

The default response by rich industrialised nations to refugees has not been one of solidarity or compassion, but increasingly one of doing everything to keep refugees out – whether that is militarising borders, supporting dictators, holding refugees in concentration camps or forcing people to make journeys so treacherous that thousands die in the attempt.

It’s an abhorrent display of inhumanity, yet it is becoming the depressing norm. When we know that climate change impacts will only add to the pressures to migrate, the future looks very bleak.

The truth is that we have normalised state violence. We no longer see the CCTV cameras on our streets, the barbed wire fences on our borders, the armour on the police, the refugees in camps because they are no longer unusual. This normalisation means that there is a growing danger security solutions to climate change will not just be the default response but largely invisible too.

‘Shifting baselines’

Unravelling this consensus in favour of security rather than solidarity will not be easy.

One tool that could help is the concept ‘shifting baselines’ as it can help us understand this process and can give us clues as to how we might start to forge another path.

The ecologist Daniel Pauly came up with the term to refer to the way fishery scientists would base their ‘norm’ for healthy fisheries as the depleted state in which they first encountered them rather than the untouched state they were originally. Most scientists could no longer remember seas teeming with large fish so had accepted a depleted sea as normal. 

However one response to this in the fishing world has been to establish marine reserves. If done properly and protected from commercial trawlers (rather than small-scale fisherfolk) they can lead to dramatic recovery in marine wildlife and habitats. Most importantly, they unveil the dangers of over-fished seas and the potential for a different approach.

We need a similar approach to security – creating local and state examples of alternative approaches to militarisation. We need to show that militarising our response to social and ecological issues will merely exacerbate their impact on the most vulnerable.

Prioritising solidarity 

We also need to argue and mobilise against this militarisation of a society in whatever form it takes and demonstrate the potential for a different approach.  

This can take many forms, from climate adaptation plans that prioritise solidarity rather than security – such as those pushed for by the Transition Towns movement – to the network of cities supporting sanctuary for refugees, to the Black Lives Matter protesters seeking to hold police accountable in the US.

All such efforts can start to slow down the relentless march towards militarising our planet. Climate campaigners have started to slow down the fossil fuel machine, we need now to start throwing grit into the gears of the military-industrial-security complex.

This Author 

Nick Buxton is a communications consultant, working on media, publications and online communications for TNI. He has been based in California since September 2008 and prior to that lived in Bolivia for four years, working as writer/web editor at Fundación Solón, a Bolivian organisation working on issues of trade, water, culture and historical memory.

Martin Dorey’s No.More.Plastic. is short and highly readable – and well timed. It captures the wave of public interest and concern over plastic pollution in our seas and oceans that followed the BBC’s Blue Planet series.

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

The premise of the book is that ocean plastic pollution is a truly terrible thing and that to combat it we all need to cut right back on plastic – or, better still, get it out of our lives altogether.

In line with the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid), author Martin Dorey has assembled a series of two-minute solutions (#2minutesolution) that set out simple things we can do.

Two minutes

Among the solutions: don’t buy water in plastic bottles; instead, just have your own refillable bottle and fill it from the tap.

Avoid cotton-bud sticks with plastic shafts like the plague – along with plastic cutlery and drinking straws, disposable razors and lighters, plastic bags, and anything packaged in plastic. Not forgetting wet wipes (almost all of which are made of plastic fibres) and synthetic clothes, which can shed millions of tiny fibres every time they are washed, to make their way through the sewerage system into the sea.

But it’s not all avoiding and doing without. You can also lobby your MP to push the government to stronger and more effective action (in a #2minuteemail perhaps), do a #2minutelitterpick in your neighbourhood, or join in a #2minutebeachclean. And that’s something we can all find time to do, argues Dorey, as “two minutes is no time at all.”

This is all good, but where to start? How about last night when, out tidying up a local playing field, I stuffed a carrier bag full with scraps for landfill, and a bin liner with cans and bottles for recycling?

It was the work, not of two minutes, but of over an hour. In a few weeks’ time it will need doing all over again. And what good is a #2minutebeachclean if it takes an hour to drive to that beach? And what about all the fuel you burned getting there?

Shifting impact

Of course if everyone were to spend two minutes a day, or maybe better still an hour a month, cleaning up their local environment, the litter problem would be well and truly whacked. But sadly there’s little sign of that happening, at least where I live.

Ocean plastic is a terrible thing, but it’s not the only environmental bad. And using plastic can reduce envir­onmental damage caused by other materials and activities.

For example, if we simply replace plastic packaging with cardboard and paper, that’s going to drive the mass conversion of natural forests into plantations to supply all the extra wood fibre we would need, with huge CO2 emissions, wildlife losses and hydrological disruption.

Stop using synthetic clothing, and we will instantly create massive extra demand for cotton, which by most environmental measures is far worse than polyester or nylon.

For example, it takes over 20,000 litres of water to grow a kilogram of cotton – against 17 litres for a kilogram of polyester – together with intense applications of pesticide and fertiliser.

Sustainable vision

With typ­ical yields of about 500 kilograms of cotton per hectare, the world’s 25-million-tonne-a-year cotton crop is already taking up some 50 million hectares – three to four percent of the world’s 1.4 billion hectares of arable land. Producing cotton also emits about twice as much CO2 per kilo as producing polyester.

Of course, most of the advice in this book is sound. Yes, let’s ban the worst examples of single-use plastic, from polyester wet wipes to plastic straws!

Let’s tax plastic packaging, and put deposits on plastic bottles! And if it’s the oceans we’re truly worried about, let’s have more (regularly emptied) bins along our rivers, streams and beaches, and litter traps in rivers and estuaries!

But the truth is that ‘no more plastic’ is an unattainable ambition and in many ways an undesirable one, at least for now. We must be guided by a broader, longer-term vision of the sustainable future we need to create, one that accounts for all environmental costs and impacts, not just the most fashionable ones.

That will involve drastically reduced material consumption across the board, and a planned transition to a zero-waste society. Bring this off, and the plastic problem will have solved itself.

This Author

Oliver Tickell is a regular contributor to Resurgence & Ecologist and is the author of the report International Law and Marine Plastic Pollution: Holding Offenders Accountable. The latest edition of the magazine is out now!