When Susan Crawford was invited to study the knitwear at the archives of Shetland Museum she selected 27 pieces – some nearly a hundred years old.

She set about researching the makers, wearers and social history surrounding them, and painstakingly writing patterns for each one, in some cases even making her own yarn to ensure the recreation was as truthful to the original as possible.

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

It was the start of the “all-consuming” Vintage Shetland Project, recently published as a book, that was to dominate her life for the next eight years. 

Close attention

Much has been written about the history of the Shetland knitwear industry and how it has gained an international reputation. But Crawford’s project stands out because of the attention paid to individual garments.

Carol Christiansen, textiles curator at Shetland Museum said: “The knitting held in Shetland’s museums is exceptional because pieces are one-off creations, designed and executed by the knitter, applying the professional standards they practised for the export market to the knitwear they made for home use.” 

The colours and motifs of each garment appear to reflect not only the shades and contours of Shetland’s cra­tered peat hills, but also the personalities of the people who made them.

One tunic, which Crawford names the ‘Suffragette’, was knitted by local political activist Christina Jamieson. Christina was a well-known local campaigner for women’s suffrage, presenting lectures and writing.

In a letter to the Shetland News around 1909 – under the nom de plumeGirzie – she wrote: “As for women being weaker, I nivver fin it said at A’m weaker in mind or boady whin der work ta du…” (“I’ve never found it said that I’m weaker in mind or body when there’s work to do”).

Simply incredible

The elaborate tunic, in natural white, blue and yellow with red motifs, is knitted using a Fair Isle intarsia technique widely used in the 1940s but very rare in Shetland at the time.

Crawford said: “The garment is simply incredible, just like its owner. It is well worn and obviously loved, and in its every stitch reflects Christina’s outspoken nature and confrontational attitude.”

In another garment, a jumper knitted by Doris Hunter for her fiancé Ralph Paterson, the darning is as much a testament of love as is the knitting itself. It has a remarkable history.

Doris spun the wool from a full Shetland fleece and other natur­ally coloured wools to make this Fair Isle ‘all-over’ jumper – a style highly popular in the 1920s. This cherished garment ended up with Ralph in an internment camp in Hong Kong during the second World War.

With limited resources in the camp, items such as flour sacks were unravelled to repair clothing, as were socks donated by the Red Cross.

Resurgent interest

Crawford said: “It is very likely that the jumper was darned using threads from the thousands of unwound socks, along with other remains from clothing no longer usable.

“It’s a sobering thought that after his eventual release, in late 1945, he brought part of the camp home with him – woven into the very fabric of his jumper.” The jumper was kept in the family until after Doris’s death in 1987.

Crawford continued: “I hope that as a result of the project there will be many new versions of Ralph’s jumper, each of them living its own long life and with much love knitted into each and every stitch.”

The popularity of the book The Vintage Shetland Project– the first edition sold out after a few months – comes at a time when knitting is enjoying a full-hearted revival in the UK.

In Shetland too, despite concerns that knitting skills were not being passed down within families, there is a resurgence of interest.

Living heritage

After the local education authority stopped funding knitting classes in schools in 2010, local
charity the Brough Lodge Trust set up the group ShetlandPeerieMakkers to provide lessons on the island of Fetlar.

Following an injection of funding in 2017, the group now teaches in 27 schools across the archipelago.

This living heritage is something I deeply appreciate. My grandmother, born and raised in Shetland, was an incredibly skilful knitter.

I have memories of her knitting needles quiet­ly clicking away as we all watched Saturday evening game shows on television. Her eyes barely glanced down at the work in her hands, but slowly, miraculously, the separate strands of wool meeting between her fingers would transform into a beautifully patterned arm or neck.

Years later, after a stroke left her partially paralysed, she knitted my sister and me two intricate lace scarves out of sky blue wool, using just one hand.

Creative muse

For Crawford, writing patterns for the garments in the project was no mean feat, particularly because a number of pieces had been knitted in a weight of yarn not used today.

The details of the designs would be impossible to recreate without this fine yarn so Crawford decided to manufacture her own wool, including one type of yarn spun from the organic fleeces of a flock of sheep owned by two of her friends.

These friends, and their sheep, live on Vaila, an island on the west of Shetland, a place Crawford described as her “creative muse”: “It was a connection to Vaila and its landscape that spoke to me throughout the project.

“Its history and its own interconnectivity with the stories I was researching and writing about were a significant influence in how I approached the book.”

On her Instagram page, Crawford reposts images of the knitwear readers of the book have recreated for themselves: “Each time someone knits a new version of the original garments, they are keeping the story around that garment alive”.

Perpetual storytelling

She continued: “They will tell other people the story of the original, and in that way both an oral and a physical continuation of the story are maintained, and therefore the stories about the people behind the garments are also passed on and remembered.”

My own knitting skills will need quite a lot of honing before I could ever attempt knitting a lace scarf with just one hand, but I’m tempted to recreate Ralph’s jumper.

When I do, I will be thinking of him, of my grandmother, and of the wind-driven landscape of Shetland.

The Vintage Shetland Projectis published by Vintage (2018).

This Author 

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

The global economy was in a death spiral and Britain was at the centre of the financial tornado. The legacy of chancellor Nigel Lawson – reliance on the deregulated and seemingly craven denizens of the City of London – meant Britain, in particular, was in serious peril.

At the same time, environmental groups and campaigners had finally persuaded the Labour Government to address the serious risk that profit-seeking oil companies posed to the global ecology.

The Climate Change Bill passing through Parliament in 2008 would introduce statutory reductions in carbon emissions.

Puffed-out

It was at this moment that Lord Lawson – who had retired to a picturesque and sleepy French village and who was conspicuous through his long absences from the House of Lords – decided to stage a remarkable political come back.

Lawson chose the traditional platform for his bid to return to the international political stage: a book.

An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming was published by Duckworth Overlook, which had a long history of producing works by authors associated with free market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

Indeed, the Appeal was a puffed out version of a pamphlet Lawson authored for the Centre for Policy Studies. As recounted previously on DeSmog UK, the CPS was originally a spin-off of the hardline free market IEA set up to lift Margaret Thatcher to power with the support of both tobacco and oil backers.

Lawson on completing his manuscript dedicated the work to David Henderson, the IEA fellow who first approached the one-time chancellor and persuaded him to join the curious cause of climate denial. (Henderson recently passed away).

Julian Morris, the IEA intern turned $100,000-a-year director of the climate denying pioneers at the International Policy Network was also praised in the short acknowledgements – although his involvement seems to have caused embarrassment in some quarters.

The former chancellor complained bitterly that his small book had been turned down by other, more prestigious publishing houses, assuming conspiracy was afoot. This was a historical echo of Friedrich von Hayek’s publishing frustrations in the 1940s before The Road to Serfdom became a bestseller.

Dubious arguments

Lawson’s book itself was little more than a rehearsal of the same attacks on climate science, economics and policy: manufactured and distributed mostly by American free market think tanks funded directly or otherwise by oil-vested interests from Koch to ExxonMobil.

And, it contained at least one excruciating error. It seems Lawson was unable to translate temperatures between Celsius and Fahrenheit, leaving the book peppered with hilariously daft claims about the heat in various cities around the world.

This flaw was graciously passed over by most reviewers. But some were in any case scathing about Lawson’s efforts. “But the best that can be said about this book,” Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute wrote, “is that it is mercifully short.”

Ward adds: “But his account of the science of climate change still sucks – it is a highly idiosyncratic and partial account, seemingly driven by ideology rather than by reason… Lawson parades most of the dubious arguments constantly reversed by the free market lobby groups in the United States.”

Michael Meacher, the former Labour environment minister, was kinder. “Nigel Lawson has provided a valuable antidote to the sloppiness surrounding climate change,” he wrote. “But he wants to go further than tilting his lance at the sillier eccentricities of what he sees as the climate-change establishment.”

He told Daily Mail readers: “He wants to demolish the entire infrastructure of climate change theory. Here his arguments are badly flawed.”

Lawson would send his book to the chief scientific advisor to the Labour Government – and elicit a response. But Professor John Beddington appeared to be singularly unimpressed by his interlocutor’s contribution to knowledge.

“There are a number of points related to the underlying science of climate change that are incorrect or presented in a misleading way,” he explained patently in private correspondence – since released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the book was attacked by Richard Lambert, the then director general of the Confederation of British Industry. He claimed Lawson’s argument was “based on two dangerous assumptions”: that the risks are small and the costs of mitigation are unfathomably high.

“This is the kind of analysis you might have developed in 1913 to tell the people of western Europe not to get too fussed about the threat of imminent war… Lawson resorts to the kind of hyperbole that would make the most fanatical environmentalist blush.”

Conervative Influence

The clangers and scientific muddles of An Appeal to Reason did not stop it from becoming an influential pamphlet. Christopher Booker, the Sunday Telegraph columnist who appears only to believe in things he already agrees with, praised Lawson as the only “senior political figure in Britain [who has] dared stand apart from this stifling orthodoxy.”

The book was also read by Conservative politicians. Ann Widdecombe was among the Tory right-wingers to confirm she had been influenced by Lawson’s appeal – she would later become one of just five Parliamentarians to oppose the Climate Change Act in the House of Commons.

She complained: “…there was an orthodoxy which was enforced with all the rigour of communism or fascism or, for that matter, the Spanish Inquisition. Dissenters must not be heard and global warming became a religion.”

And that was precisely the point of the book. Lawson never intended to persuade anyone who understood the science of climate change, and certainly was not appealing to environmentalists or, to a significant extent, the public at large.

Instead, his short polemic was designed as a briefing note for free market advocates and the right wing of the Conservative party.

It allows them to present what appears to be reasoned and considered opinion to disgruntled constituents when they attacked climate science. And leaves them free to act in alignment with the interests of the oil industry.

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. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk. 

Graphic new footage of a stag killed by a hunt in the West Country has led to renewed questioning of the hunt’s claim they are taking part in ‘research’.

Professional investigators from the League Against Cruel Sports were joined by the BBC as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds chasing a red deer stag across nine miles of moorland.

At least two gun shots, separated by over a minute, rang out indicating the kill was botched. Footage was later obtained of the hunt ritually carving up the carcass of the animal.

Illegal hunting 

Martin Sims, director of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports, former head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit and a serving police officer for 31 years, said: “The idea that this hunt is undertaking research and observation is ridiculous.

“This is simply illegal hunting but with a lame excuse not dissimilar to the Japanese Government’s rationale for butchering whales.

“It’s a cruel and unnecessary spectator sport with horrible parallels to trophy hunting only the long chase makes it even worse.”

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds have been using a loophole in the hunting law which they claim allows them to hunt under the guise of ‘research and observation’, though the League believes this is a cover for illegal hunting.

Sir David Amess MP, for Southend West and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, said: “I am appalled to see the hunting of deer with hounds still taking place across the British countryside.”

‘Truly shocking’

Amess continued: “The pursuit of deer to exhaustion, ending with a bullet to the head and being carved up for trophies, is truly shocking and the public expect such cruel and macabre bloodsports to be consigned to the history books.

“The Hunting Act must be strengthened as a matter of urgency – including by removing the ‘research and observation’ exemption – so that there can be no cover for this cruelty.”

The incident happened in the last week of October 2018, thirteen years after hunting with dogs was banned in England and Wales. It featured on the South West BBC regional news with presenter Ben Woolvin who accompanied League investigators as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds.

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds were followed by hundreds of people on horseback, in cars, and on quad bikes and motor bikes.

Hunt officials were caught on camera collecting the ‘cap’, the fee that is charged to people who follow the hunt as spectators throughout the day.

Extreme stress

Martin Sims said: “We sadly witnessed a magnificent creature being hounded for miles across Exmoor before being shot and carved up for trophies.

“There is no excuse for what happened and sadly this is going on week in, week out for most of the year. We have evidence that hundreds of deer are being killed by the hunts each season in a cruel and barbaric fashion that has no place in a modern and compassionate society.”

Prior to the hunting ban coming into effect in 2005, the chasing of deer was proven to cause deer extreme physiological stress along with mental distress in a major study by Professor Patrick Bateson.

Unable to sweat, the deer often end up in water at the end of the chase –this particular stag was killed in the river Barle.

League Investigators heard two shots after the three-hour chase and then filmed the dead deer being loaded up onto the back of a four-wheel drive.

Carve-up

The carve-up, which was filmed by the BBC at the end of the hunt, involves the deer’s entrails being fed to the hounds and the hooves, known as slots, and the teeth given out as trophies to supporters of the hunt. You can see footage of a carve-up taken by the League in March 2018.

The heart is normally given to the owner of the land where the deer was killed and the head and antlers given to the Master of the Hunt as a trophy.

Three hunts are currently chasing and killing red deer in Devon and Somerset – the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds.

A further two hunts – the Exe Valley Buckhounds and the Cheldon Buckhounds – are chasing and killing roe deer, the eponymous hero of the Bambi novel. The red deer hunts have just finished their stag hunting season and are about to switch to killing hinds – sometimes pregnant and often accompanied by calves.

A League petition calling for an end to the killing of animals by hunts in the UK has attracted over 100,000 signatures.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

Graphic new footage of a stag killed by a hunt in the West Country has led to renewed questioning of the hunt’s claim they are taking part in ‘research’.

Professional investigators from the League Against Cruel Sports were joined by the BBC as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds chasing a red deer stag across nine miles of moorland.

At least two gun shots, separated by over a minute, rang out indicating the kill was botched. Footage was later obtained of the hunt ritually carving up the carcass of the animal.

Illegal hunting 

Martin Sims, director of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports, former head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit and a serving police officer for 31 years, said: “The idea that this hunt is undertaking research and observation is ridiculous.

“This is simply illegal hunting but with a lame excuse not dissimilar to the Japanese Government’s rationale for butchering whales.

“It’s a cruel and unnecessary spectator sport with horrible parallels to trophy hunting only the long chase makes it even worse.”

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds have been using a loophole in the hunting law which they claim allows them to hunt under the guise of ‘research and observation’, though the League believes this is a cover for illegal hunting.

Sir David Amess MP, for Southend West and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, said: “I am appalled to see the hunting of deer with hounds still taking place across the British countryside.”

‘Truly shocking’

Amess continued: “The pursuit of deer to exhaustion, ending with a bullet to the head and being carved up for trophies, is truly shocking and the public expect such cruel and macabre bloodsports to be consigned to the history books.

“The Hunting Act must be strengthened as a matter of urgency – including by removing the ‘research and observation’ exemption – so that there can be no cover for this cruelty.”

The incident happened in the last week of October 2018, thirteen years after hunting with dogs was banned in England and Wales. It featured on the South West BBC regional news with presenter Ben Woolvin who accompanied League investigators as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds.

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds were followed by hundreds of people on horseback, in cars, and on quad bikes and motor bikes.

Hunt officials were caught on camera collecting the ‘cap’, the fee that is charged to people who follow the hunt as spectators throughout the day.

Extreme stress

Martin Sims said: “We sadly witnessed a magnificent creature being hounded for miles across Exmoor before being shot and carved up for trophies.

“There is no excuse for what happened and sadly this is going on week in, week out for most of the year. We have evidence that hundreds of deer are being killed by the hunts each season in a cruel and barbaric fashion that has no place in a modern and compassionate society.”

Prior to the hunting ban coming into effect in 2005, the chasing of deer was proven to cause deer extreme physiological stress along with mental distress in a major study by Professor Patrick Bateson.

Unable to sweat, the deer often end up in water at the end of the chase –this particular stag was killed in the river Barle.

League Investigators heard two shots after the three-hour chase and then filmed the dead deer being loaded up onto the back of a four-wheel drive.

Carve-up

The carve-up, which was filmed by the BBC at the end of the hunt, involves the deer’s entrails being fed to the hounds and the hooves, known as slots, and the teeth given out as trophies to supporters of the hunt. You can see footage of a carve-up taken by the League in March 2018.

The heart is normally given to the owner of the land where the deer was killed and the head and antlers given to the Master of the Hunt as a trophy.

Three hunts are currently chasing and killing red deer in Devon and Somerset – the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds.

A further two hunts – the Exe Valley Buckhounds and the Cheldon Buckhounds – are chasing and killing roe deer, the eponymous hero of the Bambi novel. The red deer hunts have just finished their stag hunting season and are about to switch to killing hinds – sometimes pregnant and often accompanied by calves.

A League petition calling for an end to the killing of animals by hunts in the UK has attracted over 100,000 signatures.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

Graphic new footage of a stag killed by a hunt in the West Country has led to renewed questioning of the hunt’s claim they are taking part in ‘research’.

Professional investigators from the League Against Cruel Sports were joined by the BBC as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds chasing a red deer stag across nine miles of moorland.

At least two gun shots, separated by over a minute, rang out indicating the kill was botched. Footage was later obtained of the hunt ritually carving up the carcass of the animal.

Illegal hunting 

Martin Sims, director of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports, former head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit and a serving police officer for 31 years, said: “The idea that this hunt is undertaking research and observation is ridiculous.

“This is simply illegal hunting but with a lame excuse not dissimilar to the Japanese Government’s rationale for butchering whales.

“It’s a cruel and unnecessary spectator sport with horrible parallels to trophy hunting only the long chase makes it even worse.”

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds have been using a loophole in the hunting law which they claim allows them to hunt under the guise of ‘research and observation’, though the League believes this is a cover for illegal hunting.

Sir David Amess MP, for Southend West and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, said: “I am appalled to see the hunting of deer with hounds still taking place across the British countryside.”

‘Truly shocking’

Amess continued: “The pursuit of deer to exhaustion, ending with a bullet to the head and being carved up for trophies, is truly shocking and the public expect such cruel and macabre bloodsports to be consigned to the history books.

“The Hunting Act must be strengthened as a matter of urgency – including by removing the ‘research and observation’ exemption – so that there can be no cover for this cruelty.”

The incident happened in the last week of October 2018, thirteen years after hunting with dogs was banned in England and Wales. It featured on the South West BBC regional news with presenter Ben Woolvin who accompanied League investigators as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds.

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds were followed by hundreds of people on horseback, in cars, and on quad bikes and motor bikes.

Hunt officials were caught on camera collecting the ‘cap’, the fee that is charged to people who follow the hunt as spectators throughout the day.

Extreme stress

Martin Sims said: “We sadly witnessed a magnificent creature being hounded for miles across Exmoor before being shot and carved up for trophies.

“There is no excuse for what happened and sadly this is going on week in, week out for most of the year. We have evidence that hundreds of deer are being killed by the hunts each season in a cruel and barbaric fashion that has no place in a modern and compassionate society.”

Prior to the hunting ban coming into effect in 2005, the chasing of deer was proven to cause deer extreme physiological stress along with mental distress in a major study by Professor Patrick Bateson.

Unable to sweat, the deer often end up in water at the end of the chase –this particular stag was killed in the river Barle.

League Investigators heard two shots after the three-hour chase and then filmed the dead deer being loaded up onto the back of a four-wheel drive.

Carve-up

The carve-up, which was filmed by the BBC at the end of the hunt, involves the deer’s entrails being fed to the hounds and the hooves, known as slots, and the teeth given out as trophies to supporters of the hunt. You can see footage of a carve-up taken by the League in March 2018.

The heart is normally given to the owner of the land where the deer was killed and the head and antlers given to the Master of the Hunt as a trophy.

Three hunts are currently chasing and killing red deer in Devon and Somerset – the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds.

A further two hunts – the Exe Valley Buckhounds and the Cheldon Buckhounds – are chasing and killing roe deer, the eponymous hero of the Bambi novel. The red deer hunts have just finished their stag hunting season and are about to switch to killing hinds – sometimes pregnant and often accompanied by calves.

A League petition calling for an end to the killing of animals by hunts in the UK has attracted over 100,000 signatures.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

Graphic new footage of a stag killed by a hunt in the West Country has led to renewed questioning of the hunt’s claim they are taking part in ‘research’.

Professional investigators from the League Against Cruel Sports were joined by the BBC as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds chasing a red deer stag across nine miles of moorland.

At least two gun shots, separated by over a minute, rang out indicating the kill was botched. Footage was later obtained of the hunt ritually carving up the carcass of the animal.

Illegal hunting 

Martin Sims, director of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports, former head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit and a serving police officer for 31 years, said: “The idea that this hunt is undertaking research and observation is ridiculous.

“This is simply illegal hunting but with a lame excuse not dissimilar to the Japanese Government’s rationale for butchering whales.

“It’s a cruel and unnecessary spectator sport with horrible parallels to trophy hunting only the long chase makes it even worse.”

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds have been using a loophole in the hunting law which they claim allows them to hunt under the guise of ‘research and observation’, though the League believes this is a cover for illegal hunting.

Sir David Amess MP, for Southend West and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, said: “I am appalled to see the hunting of deer with hounds still taking place across the British countryside.”

‘Truly shocking’

Amess continued: “The pursuit of deer to exhaustion, ending with a bullet to the head and being carved up for trophies, is truly shocking and the public expect such cruel and macabre bloodsports to be consigned to the history books.

“The Hunting Act must be strengthened as a matter of urgency – including by removing the ‘research and observation’ exemption – so that there can be no cover for this cruelty.”

The incident happened in the last week of October 2018, thirteen years after hunting with dogs was banned in England and Wales. It featured on the South West BBC regional news with presenter Ben Woolvin who accompanied League investigators as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds.

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds were followed by hundreds of people on horseback, in cars, and on quad bikes and motor bikes.

Hunt officials were caught on camera collecting the ‘cap’, the fee that is charged to people who follow the hunt as spectators throughout the day.

Extreme stress

Martin Sims said: “We sadly witnessed a magnificent creature being hounded for miles across Exmoor before being shot and carved up for trophies.

“There is no excuse for what happened and sadly this is going on week in, week out for most of the year. We have evidence that hundreds of deer are being killed by the hunts each season in a cruel and barbaric fashion that has no place in a modern and compassionate society.”

Prior to the hunting ban coming into effect in 2005, the chasing of deer was proven to cause deer extreme physiological stress along with mental distress in a major study by Professor Patrick Bateson.

Unable to sweat, the deer often end up in water at the end of the chase –this particular stag was killed in the river Barle.

League Investigators heard two shots after the three-hour chase and then filmed the dead deer being loaded up onto the back of a four-wheel drive.

Carve-up

The carve-up, which was filmed by the BBC at the end of the hunt, involves the deer’s entrails being fed to the hounds and the hooves, known as slots, and the teeth given out as trophies to supporters of the hunt. You can see footage of a carve-up taken by the League in March 2018.

The heart is normally given to the owner of the land where the deer was killed and the head and antlers given to the Master of the Hunt as a trophy.

Three hunts are currently chasing and killing red deer in Devon and Somerset – the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds.

A further two hunts – the Exe Valley Buckhounds and the Cheldon Buckhounds – are chasing and killing roe deer, the eponymous hero of the Bambi novel. The red deer hunts have just finished their stag hunting season and are about to switch to killing hinds – sometimes pregnant and often accompanied by calves.

A League petition calling for an end to the killing of animals by hunts in the UK has attracted over 100,000 signatures.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

We’re on a six-month voyage across the Pacific to test for microplastics in remote archipelagos where this type of data has never been formally recorded, in partnership with the 5 Gyres Trawl Share Program.

Eighty-five miles to the west of Tahiti, Tim was the one who spotted it first: plastic — or rather microplastic — intermixed with bits of natural debris that had made their way into the “manta trawl” deployed off the stern of our sailboat.

Even out here in the wide open blue – where Raratonga lay two days ahead and Tahiti two days behind – humanity’s bits of commercial convenience have made the ocean sick.

New insights 

When our six-month voyage – dubbed Eat Less Plastic – set out in May from California, on a path toward Auckland, New Zealand, the goal was to not only test for plastics encountered along the journey, but also gain insight into ways that plastics are affecting South Pacific communities in some of the world’s smallest corners.

Though weeks still remain before our sailboat, Today, secures its dock lines in Auckland, the results thus far have been potent and humbling:

We need to make changes. Now.

On idyllic beaches through Tonga and Fiji, plastic waste from industrialised nations is washing up on the shorelines.

This was largely expected when we departed Los Angeles, considering the same problem is plaguing Hawaii, where our non-profit sponsor Love The Sea is based on the island of Maui. 

Homegrown threats

Perhaps the largest surprise has been realizing how much of the plastic threat isn’t foreign, but rather homegrown.

Tim Lara, whose company Hawaiian Paddle Sports runs eco-tours in Hawaii, said “For years villagers in places like Raratonga have been burying or burning their garbage. Then all this stuff started showing up in packaging and suddenly that doesn’t work anymore.” 

In Raratonga, where we toured a landfill, we were told the ground was pretty much full and there’s nowhere to put the trash. We spoke with elders in the Tuamotos, and offered all the different alternatives to simply gathering and burning their plastic, which is the current means of disposal. 

Lara said: “A lot of these indigenous cultures really got blindsided by this stuff.  Really, everyone did.”

In Western nations like the UK and US, where there’s still more space than people who live there, the ability to move waste to somewhere out of sight is a geographic luxury. 

Next generation

Considering the waste isn’t right in our face, or literally outside our door, it’s easier to also push it out of mind and kick the can toward the future. 

As we’re rapidly starting to realize, however, that future is getting closer. 

Microplastics are entering our food chain and have infiltrated our tap water. It’s in everything from beer to our very own bowels, and there’s a growing fear that the next generation will live on a plastic planet. 

For Phil Somerville, the captain of this voyage, that’s something he just can’t accept. 

A lifelong surfer and sailor from New Zealand, Somerville said that the ocean is “life force”. The thought that his children and future generations won’t be able to enjoy it as he has is what’s led him to spearhead this mission.

Since casting the bowlines off in Los Angeles, he’s petitioned the French Polynesian government for a ban on plastic bags, and met with non-profits from Niue to Nadi to help clean the beaches, lobby for change, and educate school groups on alternatives to plastic, so it never shows up in the first place. 

Positive solutions

While the world is finally starting to wake up to the real severity of this crisis, our crew agrees there’s been enough alarm, and it’s time to start finding solutions. 

That search for real, actionable progress led us to seek out Adrian Midwood as we brought the boat into Tonga. Midwood’s organization, Ocean Ambassadors, has been taking bold, innovative steps to take the plastics plaguing these waters and put them back to good use.

In one of their most successful campaigns, the group worked in Fiji to install a commercial grade processor, which can take 1kg of mixed plastics and convert it to 1 liter of oil.

The process consumes about 1 kWh of electricity, but Midwood notes that with 1 liter of oil you can generate up to 10 kWh, so you gain about ten units of energy.

In another move meant to power individuals, they’ve also launched a Pirate Pack program where members get boxes of zero waste products delivered right to their door step. 

Final leg

We’ve also partnered with conservation groups like Bags Not and Algalita South Pacific, and received word while sailing across the Pacific that the New Zealand government passed a ruling in August against single use plastic bags.

While there’s no doubt that plastic pollution is a threat of global proportions, this sail has taught us that progress is born not solely from legislation, but action on a small, individual level to the point where together we really can make a difference.  

It’s empowering and exciting to see how many people have been galvanized, inspired, and committed to change over the course of our six-month voyage.

A school we visited in Raratonga has agreed to eliminate single use plastics from all operations on campus, and hundreds of people have joined us in cleanups across the South Pacific. 

As we prepare to leave Fiji for the crossing to Auckland, plans have been drawn for a landing event to take place in Auckland Harbor, where government officials and local non-profits will welcome the crew, take part in a cleanup, and discuss the growing importance of keeping plastic out of our seas.

A journey of a thousand miles, they say, begins with a single step, or in our case a single breath of wind that propels us closer to the next set of people we can teach about making a change.

This Author

Kyle Ellison is a freelance writer who lives in Maui, Hawaii. He’s a recipient of the Hawaii Ecotourism Association Travel Writer of the Year award, and you can follow on Twitter @eatlessplastic for more info on the voyage.  

Nature-based sustainable prescribing could result in savings for the NHS and improved water quality for all, a new study has found.

The project was delivered by environmental consultancy Eunomia Research & Consulting Ltd, with support from South Gloucestershire Council and Bristol Avon Rivers Trust, and funded by the Environment Agency.

Eunomia was commissioned by the Environment Agency to develop an evaluation framework for collecting primary research results to see if they could find evidence of the value of nature-based prescribing – whether in benefits to health, or raised awareness of pollution in the natural environment.

River remedies

To deliver the framework, Eunomia identified and facilitated relationships with relevant stakeholders including South Gloucestershire Council, Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership, and Bristol Avon Rivers Trust.

Working closely with these organisations, the consultancy put together a six-week programme called River Remedies: Improving Wellbeing through Nature which offered vulnerable adults and teenagers the chance to engage with nature at sites on the Bristol Frome River.

Project partner Bristol Avon Rivers Trust co-ordinated river access and risk assessments whilst the public health team from South Gloucestershire Council sourced participants likely to benefit from taking part.

Participants were invited to sessions made up of a variety of activities including looking at river samples, testing for phosphates and nitrates, litter picking and yellow fish campaigning.

Wellbeing scores and pollution awareness levels were recorded before and after the sessions. Although it’s unlikely researchers will be able to estimate NHS savings until South Gloucestershire has tracked whether GP and secondary medical visits decline over time, or if there is a reduction of medication used. 

Social prescriptions 

The accompanying project report shows the small sample size indicated positive wellbeing following activities, and a potential crisis was averted thanks to early intervention with a participating individual. An increased awareness of pollution to the natural environment was also recorded.

David Baxter, head of natural economy at Eunomia and project director, said: “I believe projects on rivers should be part of a portfolio of social prescriptions available for everyone, particularly those who are dealing with issues of depression, anxiety or isolation.

“They are suitable for all ages but, as mental health is a growing problem for young people, it is worth noting that they are a particularly accessible and relevant therapy for teenagers.

“Rivers Trusts exist in every part of England. I would encourage them to consider the learning we developed in this programme to develop their own offering.

“There is no need to feel daunted by questions around health and safety or risk assessments, if you find the right partners amongst public health professionals they’ll look after these things for you.”

Improved wellbeing 

Damian Crilly, manager of strategic catchment partnerships at the Environment Agency, added: “The 25 Year Environment Plan promotes the use of the natural environment as a resource for good health and wellbeing, including through nature based social prescribing.

“Our overall aim for the project was to contribute to the evidence base on the benefits of nature based social prescribing and to show the practicalities that could be followed by catchment partnerships.

“This study has provided valuable, practical insight into the delivery of a social prescription on connecting people with nature.

“It found that river based remedies, a kind of nature based social prescription, has a positive effect in terms of increased engagement with the river, it helped manage mental health risks and improved wellbeing.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from Eunomia Research and Consulting Ltd.

The idea of the conscious consumer – or prosumer – has been explored at length – but much less attention has been given to the ‘conscious company’.

Would you shop more in your local community if you held shares in your local farm or pub? Would you care more about the carbon intensity of your electricity if you had invested in your energy company?

Would you support improvements in your local infrastructure – even if they didn’t benefit you directly – if you could invest in the projects themselves?

Building relationships

Would you change the way you ran your business if your customers and local community were co-invested as your shareholders? 

Abundance took the major step of offering shares to our customers (and other small investors) this month. More than 500 have signed up so far and we are well on the way to our target of raising £1.2m.

We now understand what it means to build a relationship with our customers based on shared interests as co-investors, as well as providing the means for people to invest for their future.

It feels both emotional and enlightening, as our own motivations are dissected and discussed by our investors – the ‘so-called’ crowd (although I prefer ‘peers’).

The best way I can describe the experience is to imagine BBC Question Time where the audience has actual money riding on your ability to respond to their questions. 

Patient capital

Small businesses (according to the Department for BEIS and the Federation of Small Businesses) account for more than 60 percent of private sector employment in the UK and 51 percent (£1.9 trillion) of private sector companies’ turnover.

The way they are run and managed (including how they invest in productivity and sustainability) matters if you care about creating not only a more sustainable world but also a more equal one. 

SMEs often claim they need the support of their communities against the threat of global corporations. Yet only a tiny proportion consider raising “patient capital” (i.e. selling shares) that addresses the very long-term objectives which are important to communities.

Small businesses also find it harder to make the long-term investments which would boost their productivity leading to both higher wages and profits.

This underinvestment, endemic to small businesses, is a major disadvantage for the UK compared with other countries in terms of business investment. 

Conscious investors

After six years, having helped ordinary people to invest over £77 million in 34 different sustainable and social infrastructure projects– ranging from wind turbines to social housing – the management team at Abundance decided we needed a step change to grow our business.

That meant bringing our customers in as investors and stakeholders to raise the long-term capital we need to achieve our long-term objectives.

Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice have a lot to answer for! They reinforce a view of equity investors as selfish and short term in their pursuit of profits and “exits” driven by financial markets rather than socially-conscious motivations (Deborah Meaden being the exception…).

But if shareholders are the customers and community the business aims to serve, that changes the relationship between the company and its public.

As conscious investors, our capital should help the business community to grow a stronger conscience of its own.

Social purpose

There are a few misconceptions to clear up first. There is often confusion about what it means for a company to “go public”.  It’s no longer the realm of sharp-suited stockbrokers and numbers flashing on a screen.

Since 2012 in the UK it has been possible for any company to go public directly with their customers and investors, with offers of shares or bonds from just £5. 

There is also a strange distinction between a “social enterprise” and a “normal” one. Large corporations with a strong social, environmental and governance record outperform those without.  This can and should apply to small and medium companies too.

It’s axiomatic that any normal business will suffer if its profit and purpose become disconnected from the society within which it operates. For the most part, businesses profit by providing something of value to their local community. If purpose and function are aligned with the needs of that community they are more likely to succeed. 

Then there’s the idea that somehow making a profit and doing good are exclusive outcomes. The best a profitable business can do is “don’t be evil” (Google’s unofficial motto until recently).  

But Abundance’s experience – and of our investors who also use our company to invest in projects with a social or environmental purpose – is that it is good business to serve the greater good. 

This Author 

Bruce Davis is managing director of Abundance Investment, which advertises with The Ecologist. Any investment is a risk and can result in financial loss. The Ecologist does not make any recommendations with regard to investments. 

Barack Obama’s decision to give Shell permission to drill for potential oil reserves in the Arctic undermined his legacy as the American president who took climate change seriously.

The public outcry as he comes to the end of his second and final term in the White House was hoarse with disappointment because of the audacious promises he made when first running for office: that he would challenge coal, oil and gas monopolies and deliver international climate deals.

Obama did warn during his first presidential address that it would be an uphill struggle and, over the coming weeks, the American electorate will have to assess how far they have really come. Had ExxonMobil and the Koch oil billionaires successfully tamed the man who was supposed to be the most powerful in the world?

Oil Money

The future president was a virtual unknown when he announced his election campaign in February 2007 in Springfield, Illinois. The Hawaii-born Harvard Law School graduate had been a community organiser in Chicago and a civil rights attorney.

The Senator was also among the few American legislators who had not (yet) received millions in funding from coal, oil and gas companies trying to spread their bets by funding both Democrat and Republican politicians who might get in the way of their drilling and refining.

“I don’t take money from oil companies,” Obama boasted at the beginning of 2008. This was technically true, but oil money did bleed into his campaign.

According to FactCheck.org he received $213,000 from oil and gas workers and their spouses. This included $66,000 from employees of the most well-known oil majors, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP.

In fact, the company formally known as British Petroleum and its employees had donated $77,051 to Obama during his time at the Senate and as a presidential hopeful. The total given to federal candidates exceeded $3.5 million in the two decades before his election.

By the end of the race, $916,162 was piped to Obama by the oil and gas industry, according to the OpenSecrets website. His Republican rival, John McCain, was awash with oil money – raising $2,666,842 from the industry.

Epochal Threat

During the campaign, Obama raised $745 million and spent $730 million, so the oil money was a drop in the ocean and seemingly not enough to buy his silence.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, the future president described climate change as the “epochal, manmade threat to the planet.” Later he alerted Americans to the potential of “a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands”.

In October 2007, he supported a climate change bill and was calling for a graduated cap on carbon dioxide emissions and an auction to sell ‘pollution credits’. “No business will be allowed to emit any greenhouse gas for free,” he asserted boldly.

A campaign advert, run in March 2008 in Pennsylvania and Indiana, signalled war against the monopoly of the American oil companies. Obama warned about over-reliance on foreign imports and championed energy independence, praising alternative fuels.

He said: “Since the gas lines of the 70s, Democrats and Republicans have talked about energy independence, but nothing’s changed – except now Exxon’s making $40 billion a year, and we’re paying $3.50 for gas.

“I’m Barack Obama. I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore. They’ll pay a penalty on windfall profits. We’ll invest in alternative energy, create jobs and free ourselves from foreign oil.”

ExxonMobil Candidate

Steve Coll, in his brilliant biography of an oil behemoth, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, provides a dramatic account of how Obama attacked oil while out on the stump, challenging the most powerful vested interests in the world. Coll notes that Obama “spoke most pointedly about ExxonMobil…”

Obama said at an early primary debate: “It’s not going to be easy to have a sensible energy policy in this country. ExxonMobil made $11billion last quarter. They’re not going to give up those profits easily.”

And he told a rally in North Carolina: “Think about that: at a time when we’re fighting two wars, when millions of Americans can’t afford their medical bills or their tuition bills, when we’re paying more than four dollars for a gallon of gas, the man who rails against government spending wants to spend $1.2billion on a tax break for ExxonMobil. That isn’t just irresponsible. It’s outrageous!”

As voters went to the polls his attack on the energy industry began to crescendo. In August 2008, he announced at the Austintown-Fitch High School: “For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time.”

He attacked George W. Bush for his reliance on oil, and the fact that gas prices for drivers had exploded. “They had a plan,” he said. “Problem was it was the oil company plan. It was the gas company plan. We need a people plan! And that’s why I’m running for president.

Yes we can

“The oil companies have placed their bet on Senator McCain, and if he wins, they will continue to cash in while our families and our economy suffer and our future is put in jeopardy.”

And he was not joking. At the same time, he was promising that the US would produce enough clean energy to end Middle East oil imports within a decade.

The oil companies certainly took the threat very seriously. One senior ExxonMobil executive told Coll: “We were like a candidate. Both parties were mentioning us by name… we were a candidate and we clearly knew that we were not electable.”

Now a decade has passed, with emissions still rising, will Obama supporters be able look back on the hope and the mania and say, “Yes, We Did”?

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. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.