Three anti-fracking protesters – Simon Blevins, Richard Roberts and Richard Loizou – were sentenced to 15 and 16 months in prison for ‘causing a public nuisance’ in late September this year. A fourth protester, Julian Brock, received an 18 months suspended sentence after pleading guilty to the public nuisance charges.

The ‘Frack-Free Four’ had been arrested during a ‘month of protest’ in the summer of 2017 that aimed to disrupt exploratory drilling activities at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road fracking site in Lancashire. The four climbed onto lorries that were delivering part of a drill rig and remained there for up to four days impeding the vehicles’ movement to the fracking site.

Their sentences were overturned, with the judge acknowledging that they were “manifestly excessive”.  It was a huge victory for the anti-fracking movement, and for everyone concerned about the right to protest in the UK and beyond. 

Continued protest

Since the harsh sentencing, people across the country have stood up and spoken out against the ruling.

More than 23,000 people signed a petition for a parliamentary inquiry into the shrinking space for civil opposition against fracking, backed by 1,500 academics – including scientists, policy experts, ethicists, legal scholars and others – who expressed their serious concerns about the excessive punishment and increasing criminalisation of protest in the UK.

Most importantly, the anti-fracking movement has shown that it is not intimidated by the ruling. On October 1st, just days after the sentencing, nine individuals blockaded the same site (now ‘protected’ with an injunction) for three days, by climbing and locking onto two tripods.

In the same week, less than a kilometre away, people lorry-surfed trucks heading for the site.

On October 15th, the day Cuadrilla began fracking operations at PNR and two days before the appeal hearing, four protectors blocked the entrance to the same site once again.  

Cultures of resistance

The prison sentences for the three lorry surfers represented the first jail sentences handed down to environmental defenders for charges of “public nuisance” since 1932. But imprisonment for environmental defenders is by no means new. 

For example, in 1993, seven defenders were imprisoned for 28 days for putting their bodies in the way to stop the building of the M3 highway through Twyford Down. Others were jailed for taking action against the M11 link road in east London and the Newbury bypass.

Yet others have been jailed for protesting field trials of genetically modified organisms or nuclear energy. What distinguished the prison sentences for the anti-fracking campaigners was the length: they were told that would spend almost one and a half years behind bars.

The exceptionally harsh sentencing of Roscoe Blevins, Richard Roberts and Richard Loizou is important for what it signalled, and for the moment at which it occurred. The judgement has shocked many people, but should not come as a surprise when viewed in light of the tensions generated by the government’s backing of fracking, despite rising concerns about climate change and growing public opposition to this highly controversial form of energy production.

Only around 16 percent of the British public support fracking development. The original judgement highlights worrying trends in the suppression and criminalisation of protest and dissent in the UK that particularly affect environmental defenders.

Moreover, the success of the appeal should be seen as a response to the effectiveness of direct action not only in raising public awareness, resisting and stopping harmful industrial developments, but also in creating cultures of autonomy and resistance that constitute a threat to the status quo.

Climate chaos

Unconventional extraction of shale gas or oil through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, constitutes the frontier of extreme energy extractivism in England. Advocates have praised fracking for ending dependence of foreign (in particular Russian) oil and gas, and the UK government included fracking in its “clean growth strategy”.

However, fracking methods are extremely risky, leading to bans or moratoria in Scotland, Wales, France and Germany, amongst others.

Peer-reviewed scientific studies and testimonies of local residents in fracking areas confirm that the risks to human and ecological health are immense. Well-documented local environmental consequences of hydraulic fracturing include the spillage of methane and leakage of toxic chemicals from drilling wells, contaminated drinking water, radioactive waste and earthquakes (including in Lancashire in 2011). 

In addition, as climate chaos is increasingly felt – the heat wave blistering the UK this summer being one obvious example – the continued reliance on fossil fuels seems ecocidal.

Indeed, the fact the fracking at the Lancashire site was resumed just one week after the publication of a landmark intergovernmental report from the IPCC about the need to accelerate action on climate change by abandoning fossil fuels shows the level of indifference and hypocrisy shown by the government to the threat of climate change and its impact on the world’s most vulnerable people.

Government backing

Fracking is not, as advocates often claim, a pathway to achieving energy security. Nor is it more ‘sustainable’ than conventional techniques of extraction: when including the emissions from fracking production processes as well as consumption, the acclaimed net greenhouse gas benefits disappear.

The development of fracking is incompatible with the 2 degree, let alone 1.5 degree target. It does not promote, but rather hampers a much needed sustainable energy transition and fundamental changes to our political economic system, further entrenching (fossil) capital interests.

Yet, the British government is backing fracking at all costs. In recent years, it has been working hard at the policy level to clear the way for fracking development.

According to the website of the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial strategy: “Shale gas has the potential to provide the UK with greater energy security, economic growth and jobs, and could be an important part of our transition to a low carbon future … and government will ensure the right framework is in place to support industry and local communities as [this] exploration, and in some cases production, moves forward”.  

Amendments to the 2015 Infrastructure Act were made to facilitate drilling without landowners’ consent. After local councils rejected seven out of eight drilling plans in the first months of 2018, the government initiated a set of measures aimed at pushing projects rapidly through the planning system. 

Conflicted interests 

Under plans announced by business secretary Greg Clark, initial stages in the fracking process would be classified as “permitted development”, which means that no local planning application is required.

In addition, fracking sites could be labelled as “nationally significant infrastructure”, which would allow fracking operations to bypass local-level approval. At the same time, the energy secretary announced a few days ago that established health regulations around earthquakes, a frequent effect of fracking operations, might be eroded.

Anti-fracking campaigners have documented that close links to the fracking industry exist at the heart of the British state. This is exemplified by the judge who sentenced the anti-fracking campaigners, John Robert Altham, whose family’s business J.C. Altham and Sons is part of the supply chain for UK-based energy multinational Centrica, which has invested tens of millions of pounds in fracking.

Furthermore, at a time the government was developing its pro-fracking policies, energy industry figures like Centrica chief executive Sam Laidlaw and BG Group director Baroness Hogg were holding senior advisory positions in government.

The consequence of these close ties and patterns of patronage is that the government has systematically prioritised the demands of the fracking industry over the demands of communities, sacrificing local landscapes, human health concerns and the climate. As such, it is simultaneously “fracking democracy”, eroding the basis of any claim the government might have to democratically legitimate policy making by denying space for local public consultation. 

Radical communities

For years, people have been taking action against the fracking industry, in hundreds of local groups across the country, and it has been working.

Environmental defenders have worked with local communities, obstructed every step of the legal process, and have taken direct action when people’s concerns were silenced. They have effectively slowed the growth of the fracking industry, despite the best efforts of companies and their government partners. 

 John, from the radical political theory magazine Aufheben, wrote about the famous anti-road campaign in the early 1990s, which laid the foundation of the ecological direct action movement to which the lorry surfers belong. 

He said: “[B]y adopting direct action as a form of politics, we … look to ourselves as a source of change … Therefore the key to the political significance of the … campaign lies less in the immediate aims of stopping the road and in the immediate costs we have incurred for capital and the state (although these are great achievements and great encouragement to others), and more in our creation of a climate of autonomy, disobedience and resistance.

“Thus, this life of permanent struggle is simultaneously a negative act (stopping the road etc) and a positive pointer to the kind of social relation that could be: … a community of resistance.”

Extractivist ideology

The harsh sentencing of Simon Blevins, Richard Roberts and Richard Loizou should be read as a backlash against the widespread and growing resistance to fracking, and as the latest example of the increased stifling and criminalisation of dissent in the UK to make way for such dangerous extractive industries.

The sentence was so absurd that it was quickly overturned, only hours into the appeal hearing. Yet, we need to stay alert. The continuation and intensification of extractivism lies not only at the heart of the industrial system, but also at the heart of modernist ideology and the state-system.

Extractivism involves not just the mining of (fossil) resources, but also ways of controlling people by force, fear or by capturing the “hearts and minds” of the population so that they never think to question the claims made by powerful proponents of harmful extractive technologies. 

Charm offensives are increasingly difficult in countries like England, where the “industrialisation of the countryside” and ever more extreme extraction processes have become increasingly unpopular with the public. As a result, powerful alliances between fracking companies and the British government are resorting to increasingly repressive legal means, aggressive policing and erosion of local democracy.

The trend is visible in developments like the granting of injunctions to pre-empt protest and protect profits; government efforts to associate opponents of fracking with political extremism and domestic terrorism; the increasingly militarised policing of protesters; and harsher punishments and compensation payments given to environmental defenders charged with minor crimes such as aggravated trespassing.

Structures of power

All this is taking place while government itself continues to erode one of the key tenets of ‘democratic’ legitimacy upon which this country’s political system is alleged to rest: meaningful public consultation.

Ecological direct action against extractivism represents a threat to the state, because it questions the very ideology of the state and its belief in growth.

Many anti-fracking protectors demand radical changes that would undermine this ideology, calling for ecological justice that represents a rupture with the current concentration of economic/political power and the structures that uphold this power, and that facilitate the ecocide we are witnessing. 

More importantly, however, direct action challenges the role of the state to trigger and manage social change, empowers and creates autonomous and disobedient populations, and, in an example like fracking, arguably represents the public’s only recourse in the face of the erosion of so-called democracy.  

These Authors  

Andrea Brock, Dr Amber Huff, Dr Judith Verweijen, Professor Jan Selby, Professor David Ockwell, and Professor Peter Newell are researching the political economy of energy, resources conflicts, development and extractivism at the University of Sussex.

David Henderson was a fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) where he is valued as an eloquent and modest advocate of radical free market capitalism. But, his engagement with climate scepticism “came about in an entirely unplanned and fortuitous way.”

The former head of the economic division of the state-funded international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was, in April 2003, spending his retirement busily devising a book which he planned to call False Consensus: Dark Visions and Collectivist Remedies.

Henderson wanted to attack scientists and environmentalists for their “failed prophecies of doom”, which he would contrast with “the actual record of economic performance” in order to make the face for free market capitalism.

Castles in Australia

He proposed writing the book with Ian Castles, the retired head of the Australian state’s Bureau of Statistics – living in Canberra, Australia – who he described as a “kindred spirit” and fellow classical liberal. The book synopsis made no mention of climate change and neither man had any interest in the subject.

By happenstance, Dr Rajendra Pachauri (pictured above) visited Canberra in his new role as chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the following July. Pachauri was seen by some as ExxonMobil’s pick after Dr Bob Watson was removed from the post. 

Castles was invited to the Canberra event and decided to use the meeting to raise his concerns with the climate panel on how the third assessment report from 2000 was “technically at fault” in the way that it compared the gross domestic product (GDP) of different countries.

Castles believed the method used by the IPCC to compare the GDP of different countries in the third assessment report was fundamentally flawed. He persuaded Henderson to join his cause and “these two strange old gentlemen” became the Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau of climate scepticism.

Mistaken inferences

Henderson recalls: “We argued that in consequence [of the error] these growth projections for poor countries were biased upwards: and we inferred from this, though we were mistaken, which it took us some time to realise.”

The two men were invited to present at IPCC events and encouraged to engage with the scientists writing the reports but, after some months, Pachauri failed to respond to their almost impenetrably technical letters.

Henderson was frustrated and insulted by the lack of concern paid to his statistical analysis and came to question the panel’s processes and climate findings more fundamentally. He sent his criticisms to his close friend Clive Crook, then deputy editor of the Economist, who published an article that “put our arguments better than we had put them ourselves”.

Political agenda

Henderson then sent the entire correspondence with Pachauri to Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, the editor of Energy and Environment, which has become the house journal of the climate sceptics with a reputation for publishing papers that do not meet the basic scientific standards.

Boehmer-Christiansen would explain her general editorial practice some months later: “I’m following my political agenda – a bit, anyway. But isn’t that the right of the editor?”

Henderson conceded that “few editors would have acted as she did.”

Purveyors of disinformation

Pachauri appears to have assumed that the publication of letters in a notoriously sceptic journal was a hostile act.

He called a press conference during the Conference of the Parties (COP) held in Milan in December 2003 and, according to Henderson, “said that we should be classed as purveyors of disinformation.”

The two men continued to lobby the IPCC to amend its statistical analysis and, in doing so, became unwitting heroes of the sceptic movement.

“Ian and I had chiefly focused on economic and statistical aspects of the work undertaken and published under IPCCauspices. But as time went on, our involvement broadened in ways that we had neither planned or anticipated,” Henderson explained.

IPCC foe

Henderson soon discovered the complaints about the IPCC and statistical critiques of the climate science set out by McIntyre and McKitrick.

He became convinced that “their writings, and later those of David Holland, not only placed in question widely accepted and influential results of IPCC-related work in climate science, but also exposed serious professional flaws in the conduct of that work.”

Had Pachauri been less combative and, instead, established whether Henderson had in fact discovered a statistical flaw, then perhaps the old IEA fellow may not have become one of his most able and determined foes.

Henderson passed away on 30 September 2018 aged 91. Myron Ebell of the ExxonMobil funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote: “I had the good fortune to work with him in the climate debate for over a decade and also when the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2004 republished his The Role of Business in the Modern World, originally published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in London.

“I shall miss him, as will Fred Smith, Iain Murray, Marlo Lewis, Ivan Osorio, and all of us at CEI who had the pleasure to work with him over the years.”

John Henderson, his son, wrote on the Global Warming Policy Foundation website: “A great mind he was also a wonderful family man and will be much missed by his son John, sister Jane and four grandchildren.”

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. A version of this article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

There is a complete lack of public policies in place to ensure the food sector is part of the solution to climate change, a new report from the Changing Markets Foundation and Mighty Earth has revealed. 

In many EU countries and in the US, meat consumption is more than double the recommended levels for healthy diets.

However, the report – Growing the Good: The Case for Low Carbon Transition in the Food Sector – argues that government policies universally support unsustainable agricultural production systems dominated by intensive meat and dairy farmers and producers.

Global emissions 

In contrast, the report highlights positive market trends, notably the growth of plant-based foods and ground-breaking innovation in meat alternatives.

The number of vegans and vegetarians is also growing rapidly and many more people, particularly among the younger generations, are reducing their meat intake.

Instead of fuelling such societal trends, politicians are succumbing to pressure from meat producers by introducing new legislative measures aiming to restrict market growth for alternatives, such as the recent French ban on terms like ‘vegan burger’.

Nusa Urbancic, Campaigns Director at the Changing Markets Foundation, commented: “The lack of public policies in this sector is alarming.

“If meat and dairy consumption increases as forecast, there will be almost no room within the total allowable global emissions budget for any sectors other than agriculture by 2050. 

“The window of opportunity to address climate change is closing, while its consequences are already being felt. This year’s droughts resulted in food price increases and even more public subsidies to this polluting sector – mostly to finance feed imports.

“Unsustainable bail-outs should end, and governments should instead finance the transition towards a low emissions food system with more environmentally friendly farming methods and healthier diets for all.”

Sustainable models 

Animal agriculture is responsible for around 16.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, equivalent to the emissions from combustion of all transport fuels. The sector is also responsible for a third of potent methane and nitrous oxide emission.

A managed reduction in demand for meat and dairy could increase humanity’s chances to stay below 1.5°C temperature increase and avoid climate the ‘cliff edge’ as highlighted by the last week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Low carbon transition in the food sector is also crucial to reduce the pressure on land. Currently, 70-80 percent of agricultural land is dedicated to animal agriculture, either directly for grazing or to grow increasing quantities of feed. Reducing the number of animals is key to put this land to use for reforestation, climate sequestration and also to more sustainable farming methods.

Anahita Yousefi, Mighty Earth campaigns director, said: “The complete absence of public policies to promote a shift towards plant-based diets means that this critical dietary shift is left to the whims of the market and personal choice.

The public is being forced to foot the bill for environmental impact of animal agriculture and the market is being denied opportunities for more sustainable models of food production and healthier diets.”

Key recommendations 

Bérénice Dupeux, policy officer for agriculture at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), said: “This report is yet more evidence that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, the agriculture sector needs to significantly reduce meat and dairy production to reduce overall emissions – just as many other industries are doing.

“The number of extreme climate events is increasing. As this summer’s droughts showed us, we cannot afford to pour money into continuing the type of agriculture that is exacerbating climate change and leave environmental ambition to good will. Given the immense scale of the problem, our political leaders cannot turn a blind eye on climate change and they must address it within the current reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

“Farm ministers and MEPs have a moral obligation to put the rights of future generations first.”

The Changing Markets Foundation has drafted a series of recommendations to governments around the world to ensure that food production plays its part in the low carbon transition:

1. Updating climate targets to include the mitigation potential of animal agriculture and to reflect the 1.5 degree temperature increase pathway.
2. Updating fiscal policies to reduce meat demand and consumption. So-called meat taxes have been recommended by several reputable institutions, as tax on goods deemed to be unhealthy and/or damaging to the environment.
3. Establishing implementation strategies for dietary guidelines for the shift to healthier diets including the reduction of animal products.
4. Shifting subsidies away from polluting intensive animal farms and addressing negative externalities of animal agriculture.
5. Incentivising the production of diverse and underused protein crops, such as pulses, for human consumption.
6. Funding the research and development of plant-based and other meat alternatives, such as clean meat.

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Changing Markets Foundation. 

The video How Wolves Change Rivers, narrated by George Monbiot, begins with the sentence: “One of the most exciting scientific findings of the past half-century has been the discovery of widespread trophic cascades. A trophic cascade is an ecological process which starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom”.

The video progresses with the marvellous description of the reintroduction of wolves in the Yellowstone National Park in the United States in 1995. Wolves are believed by many to be sanguinary animals (causing much bloodshed).

However, as they indeed killed some of the deer and coyotes, they also provided means for rodents and birds of prey to have their way in the local ecosystem. Systems thinking can reveal the unanticipated role of wolves as ecosystem engineers.

Rejuvenating forest 

The significant and unsuccessfully managed populations of deer were blocking the flux of energy in the local food chain.

By changing the behaviour of the deer that started avoiding certain parts of the park, wolves offered trees a chance to increase their size by five times in a short period, attracting many species of birds.

Beavers came too, feeding on the trees and managing their growth by building aquatic dwellings also used by hundreds of other creatures such as muskrats, otters, ducks, fish, amphibians and reptiles.

Bears were feasting on the increasing number of berries. Surprisingly, the behaviour of the rivers also changed – they meandered and eroded less, narrowed channels, increased numbers of pools and riffle sections that are great wildlife habitats.

The rejuvenating forest stabilised river banks, and less soil erosion occurred. Astonishingly the wolves not only restored the Park’s local ecology but also changed its geography.   

Today’s story is, unfortunately, a degenerative one. An incredibly biodiverse ecosystem is systematically shattering because of a species that ignores its interconnectedness with the whole web of life.

Agricultural expansion 

I was born in Brazil, the fourth biggest emitter of global warming gases, and perpetrator of severe deforestation. This is done in the name of profit: corporations cut down trees, contaminate soil and water, consume the majority of hydric resources and frequently run their activities on slave work.

The meat industry emits the same volume of global warming gases as all the cars, trucks, planes and ships of the whole planet together, and in countries such as Brazil, it is directly related to suspension in the rights of workers, indigenous peoples and other traditional communities.

Apart from areas for grazing cattle, the increase in soy production is driving agricultural expansion – essential for the highly profitable and poorly assessed activity of producing meat. 

The world’s 1.5 billion cattle are frequently vilified. A single animal produces more than a hundred various polluting gases, more than 100 kg of methane per year and consumes about 990l of water to outcome a litre of milk. Moreover, their manure causes “dead zones” in the ocean.

To get to know the issue in depth, it is necessary to understand its broader context. 

Interconnected web

What would ‘How Wolves Change Rivers’ look like if we were to blame the deer? We would probably focus on their adverse effect and miss facts that open the doors to more systemic perspectives. 

The delicately interconnected web of relationships of the Amazon rainforest took some millions of years to reach its current state.

A large tree’s daily job is to pump up about 1,000 l of water to the atmosphere, where water encounters plant produced substances that facilitate its condensation and assures abundance in rain formation. That means that like ocean algae they “seed clouds” while the whole forest is the releasing agent of 20 billion litres daily – a number that exceeds the Amazon river’s water flow by 3 billion litres.

Besides, the forest keeps the moving air humid and like a biotic pump sucks damp air above the sea back to the continent thus maintaining rains under any circumstances. The air currents carry all the water released into the atmosphere to the interior of the continent, forming a flying river.

Other services include the prevention of desertification by delivering humidity, stabilisation of the water cycle and determent of climatic events, such as tornados.

Extending limits

None of this is possible if the cattle becomes a substitute for trees – the result is a long-term blockage of ecological flows caused by the absence of the fundamental functions that plants perform, indicating their significance for the planetary climate system. Plants exist in an intimate relation to the water cycle, as well as to the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles at local and global levels.

Deforestation leads to extreme weather events, loss in biodiversity, habitats and the degradation of near and far environments, sooner or later. For instance, the meat consumption increase in Germany threatens South-American ecosystems, since two thirds of the soy fed to livestock in the European country comes from Brazil.

Unfortunately, we are not encouraged to learn the stories that lie behind what we consume. We can start to change this by expanding our education beyond the limits of linear causation – eco-systemic thinking ought to be thought in schools. 

An outrageous environmental debt is neither transferred to the final consumer, not paid with money – we all pay it with the loss of human lives, malformation of foetuses, human intoxication by heavy metals, chronic diseases, cancer and the destruction of the very fundamental conditions for all life on the planet.

The so-called “business as usual” strategy destroys commons, often irreversibly.

Cause for optimism

The meat industry must be watched closely by civil society. While committing to be more responsible and transparent in their operations, giants like the Brazilian JBS must adopt production models based on the circular economy if they want to avoid being regulated by the government.

It might be challenging to grasp the interrelatedness of all life on the Earth in a world where nature has been commodified.

The overlooked disruption of local water cycles caused by environmental degradation can be compared to the failure of the circulatory system in the human body; we are failing the blood vessels of our extended body, the planet Earth.

Despite this, we can be optimistic because we carry the potential of being wolves, which means creating a niche for other species and giving life back by being who we are. Who knows which rivers we will change? 

This Author 

Rafaela Graça Scheiffer is a Brazilian biologist who recently concluded her MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College.

People believe that manufacturers are still using too much packaging and that it’s not always clear what can and can’t be recycled, a recent study has shown. But becoming plastic free or just reducing the amount of plastic used in the UK is not getting any easier. 

An online label manufacturer surveyed more than 3,000 people aged over 18 asking them what frustrates them most about recycling to find out what irritates people the most about recycling in the UK.

They found the biggest issues were: manufacturers using too much packaging (39 percent), not knowing what you can and can’t recycle (24 percent), lack of local recycling options (11 percent), and the fact the onus has been put on the consumer and not manufacturers (11 percent).

Inconsistent and unresponsive

The majority of people are frustrated with the amount of packaging manufacturers use.

Many respondents commented on the fact that lots of products come in packaging that isn’t currently recyclable, and manufacturers still use black plastic that cannot be recycled for food products despite complaints from consumers.

The research showed that a lot of people struggle to know what can and can’t be recycled and that this varies around the country because different councils recycle some packing that others don’t, meaning that you need to search to find the correct information for your area.

The feedback showed a lot of people feel that councils are guilty of not providing enough local recycling options and many argue that items which are sent for recycling actually end up in a landfill or shipped abroad.

Following on from this survey, Seareach asked respondents what they thought would be useful solutions to the current recycling situation in the UK.

Shifting the onus

The survey found that people most wanted: recycling at supermarkets for all packaging (68 percent), consistent and understandable labelling (67 percent), councils to be more transparent about recycling (65 percent) and apps to scan barcodes for recycling info (38 percent).

The study showed that a lot of people want to be able to recycle where they buy their items – at the supermarket – and better labelling that makes it clear what can and can’t be recycled, along with consistent recycling systems across the country.

Consumers also wanted to see a change in what materials can be recycled, such as wrappers and foil packaging, and an end to foil-plastic hybrids that can’t currently be recycled.

People also want to see the onus on manufacturers and councils to help consumers recycle. Ideas suggested include: more recycling points in towns and cities, different bins for recycling on the high street like in cities such as Toronto adopted in the UK, and more or better options for people living in flats and sheltered accommodation to have more recycling bins which are easily accessible for disabled and elderly.

Complete ban

Respondents saw technology as a tool to help people recycle more and more efficiently, and supported the idea of apps that can scan product barcodes that also show how to recycle the packaging and where. 

Speaking about the in-depth study on recycling, Stuart Jailer of Seareach said:“The feedback we got from this study was eye-opening with a huge amount of ideas people have and what they want to see in the UK.

“Everyone wants to be able to recycle effectively, however, they find this increasingly harder to do despite numerous campaigns on plastic and pollution. Improved labelling, more places to recycle various packaging types and ways to utilise technology were key points people wanted to see changed.

“A lot of people were concerned that even though we sort our packaging at home, once it gets to councils, we don’t know that it’s getting properly recycled. Instead, people worry that a lot of it is heading to landfills or being shipped abroad.

“Consumers want to have more transparency and also want to see manufacturers actually being proactive about the problem, with many people sick of the onus being on the consumer. It would be good to see a complete ban on unrecyclable packaging and a reduction in non-essential plastic products.”

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from Seareach.

Fifteen leading organisations working with migrants have written to the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, to express deep concern over hundreds of cases of MPs reporting their constituents to the Home Office’s immigration hotline  for immigration crime.

The letter, which has been signed by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, Doctors of the World and Bail for Immigration Detainees among others, describes the revelation as a “fundamental breach of trust” which leaves many migrants fearful of approaching their MP.

Home Office figures uncovered by a parliamentary question show that 723 people have been reported by MPs for immigration enforcement since the government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy was introduced in 2012.

Right to confidentiality 

Despite migrants often having “nowhere to turn” for help with immigration cases following years of legal aid cuts, the advice groups say they can no longer recommend people approach their MP for support unless the MP has signed a pledge promising not to report them to the Home Office.

The ‘MPs not Border Guards’ pledge was launched by Migrants Organise, one of the signatories of the letter, and campaign group Global Justice Now in the summer. It has been signed by more than 100 MPs from all political parties, including shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott.

Satbir Singh, chief executive of Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “Everyone has  the right to seek advice from their MPs in a confidential and safe environment.

“Parliament must clarify whether passing constituent data to immigration enforcement breaches data protection. It must also  explain to the country, under what circumstances is this practice taking place?  MPs should not be taking it upon themselves to act as “border guards”, betraying the trust of their constituents and perpetuating a culture of hostility towards migrants.

“Have we not learnt  anything from the scandal and tragedy of Windrush? MPs acting as border guards puts highly vulnerable people at risk, driving them further underground and into the shadows.”

Hostile environment 

Akram Salhab, campaigns and advocacy officer at Migrants Organise, said: “The demand that MPs represent all their constituents equally is a basic principle of how Parliament works. Sadly, this is yet another pillar of our democracy that has been sacrificed at the altar of the Government’s Hostile Environment policies.

“Many of our members are now afraid of approaching their MPs lest their reaching out for support be used to detain and deport them.  All political parties, whether in Government or not, can end this practice today by instructing their MPs not to share their constituent’s data for immigration enforcement purposes.”

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Global Justice Now. 

The climate deniers’ greatest success during the early 2000s was the apparent conversion of Margaret Thatcher – when she abandoned the climate cause she so forcefully and eloquently championed as the British prime minister.

Thatcher published her autobiography Statecraft in 2002, shortly before she stepped out of the limelight due to her failing health. The autobiography included a long passage in which she renounced her former beliefs and even revised the meaning of her original 1990 address.

In her 1990 speech, Thatcher praised the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), called for precautionary action, and argued that economic growth must benefit “future as well as present generations everywhere.”

Economic Growth

But, her autobiography states: “By the end of my time as Prime Minister I was also becoming seriously concerned about the anti-capitalist arguments which the campaigners against global warming were deploying.

“So in a speech to scientists in 1990 I observed: whatever international action we agree upon to deal with environmental problems, we must enable all our economies to grow and develop because without growth you cannot generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment.”

The Iron Lady‘s complete and dramatic U-turn meant that her free market admirers could reclaim her legacy and erase from history her arguments that economic growth must be environmentally sustainable while the public seemed to have mostly forgotten that one of the earliest champions of legally binding international agreements was, in fact, a staunch Conservative and economic Liberal.

Environmental Enemy

The cause of this volte-face was very evidently the belief that environmentalism was simply the old enemy of Socialism in a new guise, as presented by free market economists Friedrich von Hayek and Antony Fisher, and the think tanks they inspired.

“The doomsters’ favourite subject today is climate change,” she wrote. “Clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.”

She attacked former US vice president Al Gore directly and argued that “Kyoto was an anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-American project which no American leader alert to his country’s national interests could have supported.”

Free Market Inspiration

Thatcher, in her notes, expressed gratitude for the fact that “the issues have been clearly analysed and debated by scholars in the United States.”

She informed her readers that her revised position on climate change was based on reading Julian Morris’s Climate Change: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom published by her old friends at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Richard Lindzen’s Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus from the Koch- and Exxon-funded free market Cato Institute and Fred Singer’s Climate Policy: From Rio to Kyoto: A Political Issue for 2000 and Beyond put out by the right wing Centre for the New Europe.

All three men were members of free market think tanks and were funding recipients from the fossil fuel industry. And so the former prime minister, in turning to scepticism, relied almost entirely on publications put out by free market lobby groups, rather than relying on the scientific literature.

Successfully neutralised

Her new denial of the science rested on a pamphlet from the Reason Foundation published in December 1997 and titled A Plain English Guide to Climate Science.

The guide claimed that: “It is widely acknowledged that the potential temperature changes predicted by global warming theory do not pose a direct threat to human life. Human beings, and a myriad of other organisms, exist quite comfortably in areas with temperature ranges more extreme than those predicted by global warming models.”

The Foundation received $70,000 the following year from ExxonMobil to “assess public policy alternatives on issues with direct bearing on the company’s business operations and interests.”

And so, the political consensus – that the science of climate change had alerted the world to the need for urgent and dramatic improvements to the clean production of energy – had been broken, and one of the earliest and keenest advocates had been successfully neutralised by the sceptics.

Thatcher’s legacy would simply be the rapid and controversial implementation of the free market in Britain, which would reverberate through the economies of the world and have serious ecological implications.

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.

Food sovereignty involves people cultivating self-determination, solidarity and social, political, economic, environmental and gender justice.

It brings together and builds on different sensibilities, and counters the homogenising discourse of agribusiness, while resisting its physical expansion. For Friends of the Earth International, strengthening food sovereignty is key to achieving peoples’ emancipation.

But how can we make progress in the current context of the unbridled expansion of fascism? To change the system, it is imperative to cast out fascism.    

Post-truth distortions

Fascism, according to Umberto Eco‘s characterization, is a social, political and cultural ideology that it is racist, xenophobic, misogynist, male chauvinist, homo-lesbo-transphobic, acritical, simplistic, anti-pacifist, elitist and aporophobic, antipolitical and antidemocratic, totalitarian, and homogenising.

It’s a social practice that some European comrades describe as necropolitics, whereby those in power decide who should die and how people should live in order to sustain the system.

Resisting fascism is a categorical imperative and an urgent tactical necessity that requires organised unity. In this post-truth era, unified peoples must acknowledge the diversity of struggles, while avoiding falling into antagonistic traps. 

‘Post-truth’ refers to “the deliberate distortion of reality to influence public opinion and social behaviors”. Such distortions increase and strengthen the hold of agribusiness giants on the global food and agriculture system and its profits.

Undeniably, the agribusiness model has resoundingly failed, leaving in its wake a global swathe of social, economic, environmental and nutritional destruction. This has even been acknowledged by the director-general of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Anti-capitalist movements

The lie, repeated ad nauseam, that agribusiness is necessary to feed the world is no longer effective. The proponents of agribusiness are now recognising the failure of their model – as the World Economic Forum recently did – only to advance alternatives that further entrench their power.

This year’s FAO State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report illustrates this failure. It acknowledges the links between the climate and food crises, but the ‘alternative’ it advances is climate-smart agriculture – agriculture with no people on the land. The report makes no mention of agroecology, which is a real alternative practised by those who grow the vast majority of the food we eat.  

Another example – as Filardi and Prato state in this year’s Right to Food and Nutrition Watch – is that we are facing “processes of dematerialisation, digitalisation and financialisation [that] are deeply changing the character of the corporate food system.

The result of this includes the shifting of power to new actors who are often increasingly distant from food production [and] are altering the conception of the food market, and food consumption habits within urban centers and beyond”.

Social movements have been resisting agribusiness and its post-truths for decades, and instead promoting food sovereignty – a project by and for those always left behind: peasant, indigenous, family farmer, fisher folk, rural and urban men and women. Food sovereignty is an anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchy project that transforms the living conditions of the working and popular classes.

Peasant to peasant 

We need to learn from Cuba, which reinvented its food production in the wake of the crisis of the socialist block and the aggravation of the inhumane US blockade. 

This reinvention was led by the knowledge and methodologies of “de campesino a campesina” (peasant to peasant), with supportive public policies and investments.

Cuba and its peasantry have become engines for the development of agroecology, demonstrating that this paradigm can indeed feed the masses and generate dignified living conditions in rural areas.  A pathway by and for the peoples.

Fascist projects, on the other hand, always serve the interests of the elites and ignore or attack any form of organisation that defends the interests of the people they claim to represent and that proliferate with the consent – whether by active support or by omission – of the dominant mainstream media.     

Strengthening the convergence of the peoples is essential to halt this expansion of fascism and transform our realities.

It will require political will from organisations, and resources and dedication from every comrade, to work around the nuances and differences of opinion on the basis of the common agreements that unite us.

It also requires formation, and the generation of information and communication tools created by and for the people, powered with technological sovereignty and digital security that enable us to bypass the media responsible for spreading lies to serve the system’s interests.   

Antifascist front 

Can we not, now, recognise fascism when we see it coming? Do we need to put our bodies on the line – the final frontier of adversity – to resist the expansion of fascism?

We must take bold and solid steps towards unity, without forgetting the urgent threat we are facing.

Fortunately, many voices in the popular camp are rising to the challenge. We may need to urgently build an international antifascist front, as Victor Baez, the secretary general of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) recently commented. 

Let’s make “No Pasarán” – they shall not pass – a reality. 

This Author 

Martín Drago is Friends of the Earth International’s program coordinator for Food Sovereignty. He is a member of REDES/Friends of the Earth Uruguay and works closely with La Via Campesina, TUCA, World March of Women and other social movements.

Food sovereignty involves people cultivating self-determination, solidarity and social, political, economic, environmental and gender justice.

It brings together and builds on different sensibilities, and counters the homogenising discourse of agribusiness, while resisting its physical expansion. For Friends of the Earth International, strengthening food sovereignty is key to achieving peoples’ emancipation.

But how can we make progress in the current context of the unbridled expansion of fascism? To change the system, it is imperative to cast out fascism.    

Post-truth distortions

Fascism, according to Umberto Eco‘s characterization, is a social, political and cultural ideology that it is racist, xenophobic, misogynist, male chauvinist, homo-lesbo-transphobic, acritical, simplistic, anti-pacifist, elitist and aporophobic, antipolitical and antidemocratic, totalitarian, and homogenising.

It’s a social practice that some European comrades describe as necropolitics, whereby those in power decide who should die and how people should live in order to sustain the system.

Resisting fascism is a categorical imperative and an urgent tactical necessity that requires organised unity. In this post-truth era, unified peoples must acknowledge the diversity of struggles, while avoiding falling into antagonistic traps. 

‘Post-truth’ refers to “the deliberate distortion of reality to influence public opinion and social behaviors”. Such distortions increase and strengthen the hold of agribusiness giants on the global food and agriculture system and its profits.

Undeniably, the agribusiness model has resoundingly failed, leaving in its wake a global swathe of social, economic, environmental and nutritional destruction. This has even been acknowledged by the director-general of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Anti-capitalist movements

The lie, repeated ad nauseam, that agribusiness is necessary to feed the world is no longer effective. The proponents of agribusiness are now recognising the failure of their model – as the World Economic Forum recently did – only to advance alternatives that further entrench their power.

This year’s FAO State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report illustrates this failure. It acknowledges the links between the climate and food crises, but the ‘alternative’ it advances is climate-smart agriculture – agriculture with no people on the land. The report makes no mention of agroecology, which is a real alternative practised by those who grow the vast majority of the food we eat.  

Another example – as Filardi and Prato state in this year’s Right to Food and Nutrition Watch – is that we are facing “processes of dematerialisation, digitalisation and financialisation [that] are deeply changing the character of the corporate food system.

The result of this includes the shifting of power to new actors who are often increasingly distant from food production [and] are altering the conception of the food market, and food consumption habits within urban centers and beyond”.

Social movements have been resisting agribusiness and its post-truths for decades, and instead promoting food sovereignty – a project by and for those always left behind: peasant, indigenous, family farmer, fisher folk, rural and urban men and women. Food sovereignty is an anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchy project that transforms the living conditions of the working and popular classes.

Peasant to peasant 

We need to learn from Cuba, which reinvented its food production in the wake of the crisis of the socialist block and the aggravation of the inhumane US blockade. 

This reinvention was led by the knowledge and methodologies of “de campesino a campesina” (peasant to peasant), with supportive public policies and investments.

Cuba and its peasantry have become engines for the development of agroecology, demonstrating that this paradigm can indeed feed the masses and generate dignified living conditions in rural areas.  A pathway by and for the peoples.

Fascist projects, on the other hand, always serve the interests of the elites and ignore or attack any form of organisation that defends the interests of the people they claim to represent and that proliferate with the consent – whether by active support or by omission – of the dominant mainstream media.     

Strengthening the convergence of the peoples is essential to halt this expansion of fascism and transform our realities.

It will require political will from organisations, and resources and dedication from every comrade, to work around the nuances and differences of opinion on the basis of the common agreements that unite us.

It also requires formation, and the generation of information and communication tools created by and for the people, powered with technological sovereignty and digital security that enable us to bypass the media responsible for spreading lies to serve the system’s interests.   

Antifascist front 

Can we not, now, recognise fascism when we see it coming? Do we need to put our bodies on the line – the final frontier of adversity – to resist the expansion of fascism?

We must take bold and solid steps towards unity, without forgetting the urgent threat we are facing.

Fortunately, many voices in the popular camp are rising to the challenge. We may need to urgently build an international antifascist front, as Victor Baez, the secretary general of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) recently commented. 

Let’s make “No Pasarán” – they shall not pass – a reality. 

This Author 

Martín Drago is Friends of the Earth International’s program coordinator for Food Sovereignty. He is a member of REDES/Friends of the Earth Uruguay and works closely with La Via Campesina, TUCA, World March of Women and other social movements.

Food sovereignty involves people cultivating self-determination, solidarity and social, political, economic, environmental and gender justice.

It brings together and builds on different sensibilities, and counters the homogenising discourse of agribusiness, while resisting its physical expansion. For Friends of the Earth International, strengthening food sovereignty is key to achieving peoples’ emancipation.

But how can we make progress in the current context of the unbridled expansion of fascism? To change the system, it is imperative to cast out fascism.    

Post-truth distortions

Fascism, according to Umberto Eco‘s characterization, is a social, political and cultural ideology that it is racist, xenophobic, misogynist, male chauvinist, homo-lesbo-transphobic, acritical, simplistic, anti-pacifist, elitist and aporophobic, antipolitical and antidemocratic, totalitarian, and homogenising.

It’s a social practice that some European comrades describe as necropolitics, whereby those in power decide who should die and how people should live in order to sustain the system.

Resisting fascism is a categorical imperative and an urgent tactical necessity that requires organised unity. In this post-truth era, unified peoples must acknowledge the diversity of struggles, while avoiding falling into antagonistic traps. 

‘Post-truth’ refers to “the deliberate distortion of reality to influence public opinion and social behaviors”. Such distortions increase and strengthen the hold of agribusiness giants on the global food and agriculture system and its profits.

Undeniably, the agribusiness model has resoundingly failed, leaving in its wake a global swathe of social, economic, environmental and nutritional destruction. This has even been acknowledged by the director-general of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Anti-capitalist movements

The lie, repeated ad nauseam, that agribusiness is necessary to feed the world is no longer effective. The proponents of agribusiness are now recognising the failure of their model – as the World Economic Forum recently did – only to advance alternatives that further entrench their power.

This year’s FAO State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report illustrates this failure. It acknowledges the links between the climate and food crises, but the ‘alternative’ it advances is climate-smart agriculture – agriculture with no people on the land. The report makes no mention of agroecology, which is a real alternative practised by those who grow the vast majority of the food we eat.  

Another example – as Filardi and Prato state in this year’s Right to Food and Nutrition Watch – is that we are facing “processes of dematerialisation, digitalisation and financialisation [that] are deeply changing the character of the corporate food system.

The result of this includes the shifting of power to new actors who are often increasingly distant from food production [and] are altering the conception of the food market, and food consumption habits within urban centers and beyond”.

Social movements have been resisting agribusiness and its post-truths for decades, and instead promoting food sovereignty – a project by and for those always left behind: peasant, indigenous, family farmer, fisher folk, rural and urban men and women. Food sovereignty is an anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchy project that transforms the living conditions of the working and popular classes.

Peasant to peasant 

We need to learn from Cuba, which reinvented its food production in the wake of the crisis of the socialist block and the aggravation of the inhumane US blockade. 

This reinvention was led by the knowledge and methodologies of “de campesino a campesina” (peasant to peasant), with supportive public policies and investments.

Cuba and its peasantry have become engines for the development of agroecology, demonstrating that this paradigm can indeed feed the masses and generate dignified living conditions in rural areas.  A pathway by and for the peoples.

Fascist projects, on the other hand, always serve the interests of the elites and ignore or attack any form of organisation that defends the interests of the people they claim to represent and that proliferate with the consent – whether by active support or by omission – of the dominant mainstream media.     

Strengthening the convergence of the peoples is essential to halt this expansion of fascism and transform our realities.

It will require political will from organisations, and resources and dedication from every comrade, to work around the nuances and differences of opinion on the basis of the common agreements that unite us.

It also requires formation, and the generation of information and communication tools created by and for the people, powered with technological sovereignty and digital security that enable us to bypass the media responsible for spreading lies to serve the system’s interests.   

Antifascist front 

Can we not, now, recognise fascism when we see it coming? Do we need to put our bodies on the line – the final frontier of adversity – to resist the expansion of fascism?

We must take bold and solid steps towards unity, without forgetting the urgent threat we are facing.

Fortunately, many voices in the popular camp are rising to the challenge. We may need to urgently build an international antifascist front, as Victor Baez, the secretary general of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) recently commented. 

Let’s make “No Pasarán” – they shall not pass – a reality. 

This Author 

Martín Drago is Friends of the Earth International’s program coordinator for Food Sovereignty. He is a member of REDES/Friends of the Earth Uruguay and works closely with La Via Campesina, TUCA, World March of Women and other social movements.