Around half the millions of birds shot during the new pheasant shooting season – which opens on today – will never make it to a ‘game’ dealer, according to independent research.

According to the Savills ‘Shoot Benchmarking Survey 2017/18’, on average only 48 percent of the birds shot will be taken by game dealers.

With the number of pheasants being bred to be killed estimated as at least 27 million each year – though potentially much higher – the number of birds killed ‘purely for fun’ is at an alarming level.

Chris Luffingham, director of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “Shooting estates are churning out millions of factory-farmed pheasants and partridges into the British countryside, only for the birds to be gunned down and thrown in the incinerator, buried or fly-tipped by the roadside.

Falling prices

“Even if you’re happy to have pheasant for dinner, there can be no justification for this massive waste of life – all in the name of ‘sport’.”

The report also points out that prices received for ‘game’ birds have fallen by 50–60 percent over the last six years, and fell 35–38 percent between the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.

The report states: “The market situation also meant not all shoots were able to sell their shot game, last season 46 percent were supplying their game dealer free of charge and 12 percent were paying the game dealer to collect them. There was some variation but typically payments were 20–30p per bird.”

The shooting industry has set up the British Game Alliance, in an attempt to get more people to eat ‘game’ meat. But Countryside Alliance polling showed that 85 percent of people had never bought pheasant or partridge to eat at home – in spite of the meat being regularly available.

Incinerated, buried

Pressure on shooting has continued to increase. Last week, pheasant shooting was banned on public land in Wales. Meanwhile, polling during the summer by the League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid showed that nearly seven out of ten people (69 percent) in Great Britain want ‘game’ bird shooting made illegal.

Luffingham added: “You can’t shoot millions and millions of pheasants then claim it’s one for the pot, when it’s blindingly obvious that most people in this country don’t put pheasant in their pot.

The shooting industry is out of control. It’s purely about money – breed as many targets as they can then let the punters blast them to bits. Any claim that this industry cares about the birds it raises is patently nonsense.”

In recent months senior industry figures have publicly slated “greedy” shoots following game birds being incinerated, buried in pits and fly-tipped after being gunned down for ‘sport’.

Public opposition

Pheasants and partridges are routinely confined to barren, wire-floored battery cages on game bird breeding farms across the UK and France, undercover investigations by the League show.

The birds are not the only animals to suffer, as hundreds of thousands of other animals and birds are trapped, snared and killed to ‘protect’ the pheasants and partridges which will then be shot.

Luffingham concluded: “For many years the extreme cruelty and environmental damage inflicted by the ‘game’ bird shooting industry has gone on unabated, despite clear warnings and unprecedented public opposition.

“It is clear the game bird shooting industry is rotten to the core and a ban must be introduced. The public expect nothing less.”

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. 

Around half the millions of birds shot during the new pheasant shooting season – which opens on today – will never make it to a ‘game’ dealer, according to independent research.

According to the Savills ‘Shoot Benchmarking Survey 2017/18’, on average only 48 percent of the birds shot will be taken by game dealers.

With the number of pheasants being bred to be killed estimated as at least 27 million each year – though potentially much higher – the number of birds killed ‘purely for fun’ is at an alarming level.

Chris Luffingham, director of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “Shooting estates are churning out millions of factory-farmed pheasants and partridges into the British countryside, only for the birds to be gunned down and thrown in the incinerator, buried or fly-tipped by the roadside.

Falling prices

“Even if you’re happy to have pheasant for dinner, there can be no justification for this massive waste of life – all in the name of ‘sport’.”

The report also points out that prices received for ‘game’ birds have fallen by 50–60 percent over the last six years, and fell 35–38 percent between the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.

The report states: “The market situation also meant not all shoots were able to sell their shot game, last season 46 percent were supplying their game dealer free of charge and 12 percent were paying the game dealer to collect them. There was some variation but typically payments were 20–30p per bird.”

The shooting industry has set up the British Game Alliance, in an attempt to get more people to eat ‘game’ meat. But Countryside Alliance polling showed that 85 percent of people had never bought pheasant or partridge to eat at home – in spite of the meat being regularly available.

Incinerated, buried

Pressure on shooting has continued to increase. Last week, pheasant shooting was banned on public land in Wales. Meanwhile, polling during the summer by the League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid showed that nearly seven out of ten people (69 percent) in Great Britain want ‘game’ bird shooting made illegal.

Luffingham added: “You can’t shoot millions and millions of pheasants then claim it’s one for the pot, when it’s blindingly obvious that most people in this country don’t put pheasant in their pot.

The shooting industry is out of control. It’s purely about money – breed as many targets as they can then let the punters blast them to bits. Any claim that this industry cares about the birds it raises is patently nonsense.”

In recent months senior industry figures have publicly slated “greedy” shoots following game birds being incinerated, buried in pits and fly-tipped after being gunned down for ‘sport’.

Public opposition

Pheasants and partridges are routinely confined to barren, wire-floored battery cages on game bird breeding farms across the UK and France, undercover investigations by the League show.

The birds are not the only animals to suffer, as hundreds of thousands of other animals and birds are trapped, snared and killed to ‘protect’ the pheasants and partridges which will then be shot.

Luffingham concluded: “For many years the extreme cruelty and environmental damage inflicted by the ‘game’ bird shooting industry has gone on unabated, despite clear warnings and unprecedented public opposition.

“It is clear the game bird shooting industry is rotten to the core and a ban must be introduced. The public expect nothing less.”

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. 

The stunningly biodiverse Ryukyuan island chain has been garnering international headlines for its local protests, election manoeuvrings, and the planned relocation of the US Futenma military base to Oura Bay, Okinawa.

Local resentments are mounting against forty pre-existing military bases and the ecological destruction they have caused, but these local voices have not been represented in global conversations. 

Prior to annexation by Japan, Okinawa was an independent kingdom. It is home to indigenous people whose traditions have kept the area’s interconnected ecosystems in balance. But construction is endangering Okinawa’s aquatic and terrestrial environments. 

Endangering species

The Oura Bay alone is home to 262 endangered species. The military facility plans to dump 21 million metric tons of sand and soil mixed with the alien invasive Argentine ant and Red-back spider into its waters. 

In this distinctive natural environment, 26 newly discovered endemic species have been found since 2006.

These islands are home to the Sekisei Lagoonresides, Japan’s largest – and dying – coral reef. Corals currently on Japan’s ‘red list’ – Okinawensis veron and Sargassum carpophyllum – could be crushed by the construction works. It is a sad irony this would occur in our International Year of the Reef, 2018.

The area’s seagrass is the last northern feeing ground for the critically endangered dugong and it will be buried. This revered marine mammal is part of Okinawa’s creation story, held-up as a Japanese National Monument and protected by the US Historic Preservation Act. It will face extinction if further construction goes through.

Regular local protests and prefectural efforts such as the ‘Okinawa’s treasure, World’s treasure: Let’s Pass it on to the Future’ symposium have tried to demonstrate the disastrous ecological consequences of this project. 

The past governor, alongside the Centre for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice, recently lost the court battle against the US Department of Defence. The department claimed that the construction has “taken into account” the relevant issues, and that the Japanese government had fulfilled its obligations surveying the situation. 

Deforestation and contamination

Sea turtles will lose their egg-laying grounds and the temporary offshore yards will disturb marine animals. The large base – approx. 1,800m in length – will rest on an extremely fragile seabed that is vulnerable to earthquakes. 

As a possible solution, François Simard, a Deputy Director of the IUCN, called for declaring the bay a protected marine area in accordance with the Aichi Biodiversity Target 11. However, the protection of an area to prevent military expansion has not worked well on these islands in the past.

The Yanbaru forest, which is a rare and rich subtropical evergreen forest with 11 endemic species, was slated to be put on the UNESCO World Natural Heritage list for its’ biological uniqueness. Yet, it hosts the US Jungle Training Warfare area. An expansion of this site in 2016 introduced six helipads for the upgraded MV 22 Ospreys, and lead to the felling of 24,000 trees and to the disturbance of endangered species such as the Okinawa rail.

Since 1998, there have been over 415 incidents of toxic spills and dumping from the military facilities. Polluted matter has flowed into rivers and embedded itself into the ecosystem. It’s horrific to imagine this occurring yet again, especially amidst seeming efforts to house nuclear weapons in the the Oura Bay.

Extreme contamination 

The investigative journalist Jon Mitchell and the Okinawan organization, Informed Public Project, have found sewage and diesel leaking into rivers that provide drinking water at levels that far exceed maximum EPA recommendations. 

This level of exposure poses severe threats to wildlife. Near one base, mongoose and habu snakes were found to have respectively high levels of PCBs and DDTs, an internationally banned chemical. DDT is a poisonous insecticide that magnifies through the food chain.  

Local populations live in fear of these high levels of contamination, particularly because fish make up a large part of their diet. 

Added to this, it was uncovered in 1996 that US aircrafts were test-firing over 1,500 depleted urranium shells near an important fishing ground in Torishima. 

In 2015, the Pentagon’s release of US Marine Corps’ documents from the 1970s revealed “large fish kills” in the waters near Camp Kinser. Inspections demonstrated a high concentration hazardous compounds in the sea.

No accountability 

Shinako Oyakawa, co-founder of the ASCILs, an anti-base group advocating for Okinawa’s self-determination and sustainable indigenous environmental practices, said: “To tell the truth we don’t know how much contamination we are facing from the past, the present and even into the future.”

This opacity around the exact amount of contamination is due to the level of secrecy around US military practices abroad, and the current US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement which prohibits the inspection of bases and removes accountability for its’ environmental mismanagement.

Now that the anti-base Governor Takashi Denny has won the prefectural elections, the central government is planning to bring the prefecture to court. 

However, in this international dialogue on the matter, it is fundamental that these issues aren’t only approached from political angles. We need a strong framework for environmental protection, itself an important – though neglected – aspect of ensuring our future security. 

This Author 

Temo Dias is a journalist and researcher in East Asian political affairs, environmental issues and governmental corruption. 

For the first time anti-fracking protectors have been jailed in the UK. This is no fleeting, symbolic sentence. Three friends and comrades to so many in the climate movement have been denied up to 16 months of their freedom.

All for sitting on top of lorries outside Cuadrilla’s Lancashire site where they are attempting to frack for shale gas for the first time in the UK.

Unusually they were charged with public nuisance while the majority of the 300 anti-frackers arrested at Preston New Road (PNR) have been charged with obstruction of the highway. With public nuisance comes the possibility of jail time at the whim of a judge.

Disrupting Cuadrilla

It seems clear that in this instance our imprisoned comrades were made an example of by the forces of our criminal (in)justice system to deter future disruption to Cuadrilla as they move rapidly closer to actually beginning to frack.

Indeed, the action of our imprisoned friends was no mere protest. We do not passively request the Government or Cuadrilla suddenly change their minds. Its too late for that. Our strategy is to frustrate and disrupt Cuadrilla to stop fracking ourselves.

This strategy – sitting happily alongside the movement building, lobbying and litigation of other organisations – is necessary because the UK’s regimen of environmental regulation and democratic processes have failed to stop this egregious imposition of extraction by fossil capital on a Lancashire community that loudly repeats again and again its firm stance against fracking: “WE SAID NO!”

The state has taken political prisoners of the anti-fracking movement because we are winning. Our strategy had successfully frustrated Cuadrilla’s efforts to frack for the first time and lay the groundwork for a UK fracking industry.

For the state so intimately bound up with fossil capital and private finance which stand to profit so much from a new domestic gas industry, deploying its capacity to withdraw individuals’ freedom and terrorise a grassroots movement is common sense when it comes to defending private profit.

Neoliberalism

I am one of the 300 anti-frackers arrested and charged as part of the state’s offensive against our peaceful democratic movement. I can say from experience that police conduct has been consistently violent and the (in)justice system punitive.

Many of us have been assaulted, beaten and taunted by sneering cops who use trade union legislation to collect our data during arrest, while the courts charge us with obstruction of the highway for actions where traffic has been allowed to continue to speed by or where the police have themselves closed the road.

In many ways the story of fracking in the UK is archetypal of our decaying neoliberal regime. Using plucky start-ups like Cuadrilla and Third Energy (backed by venture capital) to pave the way for a new frontier of accumulation, corporate giants like Shell and BP wait in the wings to descend on and rapidly expand the market when the time is right.

This model’s reliance on financial capital is no clearer than the ownership of Third Energy – seeking to frack in North Yorkshire – by Barclays. The bank pledged in 2017 to sell the company but still haven’t. Regardless, the rogue profiteers of British stand to gain as much as the fossil fuel industry as they provide support for this new industry.

Indeed, it is only fossil capital, finance and their representatives in the Tory party that stand to benefit from a UK fracking industry. For them, their need to maximise the value they realise of the UK’s untapped gas reserves trumps any concerns by local people of what fracking will do to their communities. Let alone the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground to avoid climate chaos.

(In)justice system

Local democracy was trampled on by central Government in defence of the interests of capital. The police repress peaceful disruption at the site. The courts inflict significant costs on protectors and have begun to take their prisoners.

These various factions of the state operate as a very well oiled machine protecting the fledgling fracking industry. This is definitive neoliberalism: ideological appeals to the total sovereignty of the free market, rolling back the state’s protections for the many; while in practice there is a total reliance on unregulated finance and repressive state power to protect and create markets for capital as it fails to viably expand its sphere of accumulation by its own stated logic.

Of course the Tory Government has actively supported a UK fracking industry. But the imprisonment of three anti-frackers underlines the deep relationship between the state and finance and fossil capital. Who has the keys to the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy alone does little to determine the culture of our criminal (in)justice system.

When Labour goes into Government, they will ban fracking. But a much harder challenge eco-socialists in this country must prepare for is restraining the deeply embedded commitment to protect capital’s interests held by the state’s many agencies.

Too far

As Labour prepares to repeal decades of anti-trade union law, the base of the labour movement and social movements must prepare to unleash unprecedented backlash against British capital through industrial and direct action.

For this to be successful and not repressed, finance must serve the transformative program of a government led by the many. The (in)justice system can no longer defend finance’s dispossession of communities globally. It must be made turn its attention holding it to account.

In the anti-fracking movement we give great care to the welfare of our comrades, from those taking disruptive action to the communities we act in solidarity with.

The state has demonstrated a total disregard for the welfare of protectors defending their community and the climate. They’ve gone too far this time. This may have been a move to silence us. In due course, they will understand they just made us more resolved than we ever thought possible to stop fracking as the first step of irreversibly transforming our society and economy.

This author

Chris Saltmarsh is co-rirector of climate change campaigns at People & Planet. He is active in the anti-fracking movement as a member of Reclaim the Power Oxford. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

In 1997, BP’s British boss, John Brown, stunned the world by endorsing the science of climate change and calling for government regulation to reduce carbon emissions. Exxon’s Lee Raymond however, was an entirely different beast: brash, bullish and brutal.

This real life J.R. Ewing came from working class stock all the way from the Great Plains and fought his way to the top of the oil giant Exxon.

Raymond lived in a 8,642-square-foot, five-bedroom brick-façade home in Dallas, had around-the-clock access to the Exxon fleet of nine corporate planes for personal and work trips, and enjoyed the protection of an armed bodyguard and chauffeur who was a former New York police officer.

‘Oil and gas purist’

According to Steve Coll, the author of the award-winning Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, Raymond ruled the company with a “drill sergeant-inspired ethos” and he “considered himself unabashedly to be a ‘free-market capitalist’ and resisted government intervention and regulation instinctively.”

Raymond was also an “oil and gas purist” and, in taking over the company, ended the brief flirtation with environmentalism that had taken place under the former chairman Clifton Garvin, who had installed solar panels to heat his home’s swimming pool.

“It seemed the worst thing an Exxon manager could be in Raymond’s eyes was dishonest, but the second-worst thing was to be stupid,” according to one senior colleague. “‘Stupid shits’ was one of the direct phrases by which he conveyed his judgements.”

Raymond simply believed that “the scientists on the other side are wrong”. This formed the core of his speech before the Fifteenth World Petroleum Congress hosted in Beijing by the People’s Republic of China in October 1997. This took place just six months after BP’s Browne declared his conversion to the climate cause.

Fossil fuel

The captain steering the Exxon ship, however, refused to see danger ahead and defiantly told the international delegates that climate change was not, in fact, taking place.

He used the speech to express his sincere concerns about the poorest in society and concerns that developing countries would be denied the opportunity to experience wealth and growth if they were not allowed to use fossil fuels unabatedly.

“Energy use and economic growth are inextricably linked,” he told the people of China. “The countries with the highest economic growth and the highest standards of living are also those with the highest energy use per capita. Today, most of that energy, both in Asia and the world as a whole comes from fossil fuels – about 85 percent.

“I know there are some people who argue that we should drastically curtail our use of fossil fuels for environmental reasons … my belief is that such proposals are neither prudent or practical … their use is essential both for economic growth and for the elimination of poverty, which is itself a worse polluter.”

Climate science

Much of the speech was dedicated to attacking the climate science as often holding up straw men such as apparent claims of certainty about the impacts of and threat from global warming.

Raymond relied on many of the attacks first set out by the climate deniers du jour, including Fred Singer, Patrick Michaelsand Richard Lindzen, along with other coal and oil-funded scientists. “Many people, politicians and public alike, believe that global warming is a rock-solid certainty, but it’s not,” he said.

He argued that changes in the climate were merely natural variability, that human-produced carbon makes only a small contribution to the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, and that climate models are “notoriously inaccurate”.

“The case for so called global warming is far from airtight,” he argued. “You might think that all this uncertainty would give political leaders pause. Unfortunately, it hasn’t.”

Free markets

The American business leader called on China to follow “the free market approach”. He said climate mitigation would inevitably involve taxation and regulation, and “all of us would suffer from these proposals … I hope the governments of this region will work with us to resist policies that could strangle economic growth”.

The speech drew to a close with a quote from the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu: “Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish – do not overdo it.”

The Beijing speech was perfectly timed to undermine the Clinton administration and its negotiating position at Kyoto. It also provided the hymn sheet for Exxon-funded sceptics to sing from during the next 20 years.

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. 

One upside of our ageing population is that there are millions of people in Britain who experienced the 1960s, and are still alive and kicking today: I’m one of them. As we move steadily through the fiftieth anniversaries of this critical decade, it’s a good chance to see what we can learn now.

For environmentalists, your view of the sixties probably depends on whether you’re a pessimist or optimist.  Was this decade a crucial chance ignored?  Did it lay foundations for the progress since then?  Probably both.

Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, published in 1962, is widely seen as the start of the environmental movement.  It gained widespread interest from President Kennedy down, and some major green initiatives grew from it.  The US Environmental Defense Fund, set up in 1967, started to bring lawsuits over pollution issues.

The Environmental Protection Agency, formed in 1970, gave credit to Carson’s inspiration, and its early policies were guided by her book. The formation of Friends of the Earth, in 1969, was another example. The Ecologist was first published the following year.

Pivotal moments

Another key catalyst was The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, but growing from the environmental concerns of the sixties. It is tragic that world leaders in the sixties and seventies did not make radical changes in environmental policies back then, when the issues were less overwhelming.

Why was this? The power of big corporations and vested interests was massive back then.  And although mass protests were a feature of the time, most focussed on other pressing issues: the threat of nuclear annihilation (the Cuban Missile Crisis was in 1963), the Vietnam war, racial tensions, Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, and lots more.

One way to find the essence of this moment is to explore a pivotal month in a pivotal year: October 1968. To do this, you need to look not only at political and social events, but at music, for the two were truly interlinked in the 1960s.

Here are a few of the major events that took place that month:

• 2 October: in Mexico City, police and troops fire on a studentled protest, killing or wounding thousands
• 5 October: Civil Rights March in Derry, Ireland is stopped by Royal Ulster Constabulary and leads to two days of rioting often considered the start of troubles in Northern Ireland
• 16 October: Two African American sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, create a firestorm when they defiantly raise their fists in a black power salute at a ceremony awarding them their medals in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City
• 18 October: Police find 219 grains of cannabis resin in John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s apartment and fine them for possession
• 24 Oct: Mick Jagger & Marianne Faithful are busted for pot and are released on £50 bail
• 27 October: 25,000 people in London march in a demonstration against the Vietnam War
• 31 October: US President Lyndon Johnson calls a halt to all bombing of North Vietnam

Already you can recognise iconic themes: violent protests and violent responses; an interplay between demonstrations, mass protest and political decisions; and an establishment struggling to adjust to social changes.

Darker mood

And what about the music?  Top UK singles and albums in this month included:

• With a Little Help from My Friends: Joe Cocker
• Those Were the Days: Mary Hopkins
• Sunshine of Your Love: Cream
• Folsom Prison: Johnny Cash
• Bookends: Simon and Garfunkel

In his superb book devoted to the music of 1968, Behind the Music, Wayne Robins highlights a darker mood in American music, a big shift from the Summer of Love in 1967.  The UK hits above suggest more a mix of nostalgia, escapism and lostness. The musical response came a bit later, in 1968, for example Beggars Banquet by the Stones, and Revolution by the Beatles.

A simplistic view of the Sixties calls up Flower Power in California, Swinging London, mini skirts and Carnaby Street.  The reality is subtler, in both positive and negative ways.

Perhaps the best social history of Britain in the Sixties is White Heat, by Dominic Sandfield, which unpacks the subtleties brilliantly.

Hope and action

There was undoubtedly much progress on many fronts, from the sweeping away of outdated laws on abortion and homosexuality, to the many burgeoning ideas and ideals that have become mainstream today, such as nuclear disarmament, human rights, animal welfare and renewable energy, to name a few.

There was also a dark strand though the Sixties: hopes of radical change that were dashed on many fronts, such as big political reforms in France, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere.  The drug culture produced outbursts of craziness. It’s tempting to dismiss the decade.

A striking feature of 1968 was deep anger and frustration combined with hope and action. Many people were willing to get out on the streets for mass demonstrations, to name their hopes and call for change.  A big gift for our times from the sixties would be a renewed belief that positive change is possible, and that collectively we have a real influence.

There are many reasons why the youthful idealism of 1968 is hard to find now. One reason youth culture was so dynamic back then is simple demographics: the baby boomers made my generation a big one.  Now we’re older, but are we wiser?

Deluged by decades of materialist pressures, and now manipulated by social media, it seems that the collective mood is of scepticism and meeting individual desires. 

The truth is subtler: as Paul Hawken’s book, Blessed Unrest, beautifully describes, there are millions of people working for the greater good, but they’re largely invisible.  We have to seek them out, and pull ourselves into an idealism that was far easier in 1968.

Creative ageing

We now have plenty of powerful ways to see life more positively, without using drugs: for example, mindfulness, deep ecology, forest bathing.  But the reminder from the sixties is – get up, stand up, chose for yourself.  And let’s be kind to ourselves: these days we have to live with far greater awareness of the damage humanity is doing to the earth, and a constant deluge of bad news across the globe.

Joanna Macy was a strong voice in the US protests of 1968, and has been a passionate activist for decades.  Her deep ecology approach is very relevant for our times, showing us a way to face, feel and share with others our feelings of grief, despair and complicity at the state of our world: Moreover, it enables us to act on these feelings instead of being stuck in denial.

In 1968, 83 precent of the UK population was under 45: now it’s only 58 percent.  I’ve been exploring creative ageing for some years for my workshops and books.  It’s worth considering what the 1960s can teach us about this topic.  I believe that the period of midlife and beyond requires us to go through a process of shipwreck and re-invention, even “breakdown – breakthrough”; a dismantling of who we thought we were, and choosing again.

The 1960s were in one sense a series of shipwrecks, a dismantling of innocence.  The late 1950s were a time of rising affluence underpinned by the Welfare State – the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, famously told Britain, “you’ve never had it so good”. 

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, probably the closest the world has come to a nuclear war, brutally highlighted everyone’s vulnerability. And sixties’ Britain was plagued by rising levels of strikes and inflation, leading to the humiliating devaluation of sterling in 1967.

The way people re-invented themselves in the sixties, amid all these shocks, could inspire us today.  There was a real belief in love, freedom, brotherhood and sisterhood, a sense that together we can fulfil our hopes and dreams.

Lived wisdom

In 2018, we have an ageing population who need to rekindle the idealism of the sixties, and who need the skills of reinvention.  It’s clear that government and business won’t deliver the world we dream of: we have to do more as individuals and local communities.

I think it’s useful to all age groups to consider what we can learn from the 1960s, particularly baby boomers.  Relatively healthy and affluent, they are a large sector of society and would be a considerable force for positive change if they could be mobilised.  I’ve been deeply contemplating this for my book, Not Fade Away, which is a guide to creative ageing for this generation.  The baby boomers aren’t given much of a role or a voice in our society, but they have the potential to be the elders that society lacks.

I use the term “elder” here to describe the lived wisdom of the older generation, and of our ancestors.  Traditional indigenous cultures, like the Native Americans, the Bedouin desert tribes and the Celts had great wisdom, including the role of the elders.

In these cultures, the elders often had a powerful role as a group.  Alongside the chief, they would guide the tribe in a crisis, uphold values, mentor the young and dream the way forward.  Evidently, we live in a different kind of society, but I believe the role of the elders is something we would do well to learn from and update.  And today’s elders have the capacity to embody and recapture the best of the spirit of the sixties.

If we could show early eco warriors like Rachel Carson the world of 2018, what would they think?  In many ways, they’d see great progress: the mainstream understanding of recycling and sustainability, the level of environmental regulation, are massive progress.

And we also know that the situation is desperate.  Crisis fatigue doesn’t help. As in the sixties there are so many huge issues competing for our concern.  I need to turn to writers like Thomas Berry (The Dream of the Earth) to keep myself from despair.  Berry was hopeful for the future, and his reasons link deep into Sixties values: we have to hope, to dream, speak out, and do it together.

This Author

Alan Heeks is a natural happiness writer and workshop leader specializing in resilience and wellbeing.  His new book, Not Fade Away: Staying Happy When You’re over 64, is now available. Alan will be leading an Elder’s Circle at Hazel Hill Wood near Salisbury on Silver Sunday, 7 October (a day celebrating older people), where he will share his vision for a new form of Eldership.

Last week, three environmental activists became the first people to be sent to jail for protesting against fracking. Their crime? Boarding some lorries heading for a nearby frack pad in Lancashire.

The sentencing represented a step-change in the battle between the local community and the fracking company, Cuadrilla Resources, which has been getting gradually more fraught over the past two years.

It also fits with a worrying trend of criminalising environmental protest in western democracies – from police violence against the Sioux at Standing Rock protesting against the Dakota Access pipeline in the US, to the forcible removal of anti-coal protestors from the Hambacher forest in Germany, and private security firms undertaking deep Facebook surveillance of fracking protestors in the UK.

Environmental protest

Given the stakes, how many mainstream journalists do you think were at the Lancashire fracking site the day of the now infamous action, which came in the middle of a month-long effort to draw attention to the plight of the people of Little Plumpton? None. Not one.

Fortunately, the media outlet I edit, DeSmog UK, and a handful of other independent journalists, were on hand to document, record, and photograph it all. Without these smaller, independent, outlets (and platforms like The Ecologist willing to publish the material), we wouldn’t have a record of the day protesting against fracking became a jailable offence in the UK.

It is illustrative of a broader problem facing environmental journalism in the UK and elsewhere that the burden for documenting this fell on those who often do their work for little money – or sometimes no pay at all.

How many times have you read a story about an environmental protest that seems to go out of its way to find the next Swampy, and then puts their quote next to a polished press release from a fracking or oil and gas company?

These articles, often from good journalists bound to their desks by circumstance, make it seem like it’s always just Greenpeace versus a legitimate business. In my experience, that is almost never the real story.

Trained professionals

Quality journalism on the UK’s vibrant activist scene requires sending reporters into the field to meet and get to know real local people with genuine concerns. Concerns that often get lost in mainstream news coverage.

And that’s exactly what DeSmog UK does. We’ve reported from the frontlines of some of the UK’s most significant fossil fuel resistances – from mine shutdowns, to anti-fracking protests, and coal extraction resistances.

It’s not ‘us’ versus ‘them’; independent media and the mainstream press can function as part of a happy reporting ecosystem. But we’ve found that when independent media is at the vanguard, giving activist voices a platform, the mainstream press is more comfortable at approaching and including them – and subsequently painting a more accurate picture of local concerns around fossil fuel extraction.

But embedding a reporter even for a few days is expensive – DeSmog UK’s most recent reports cost around £1,000 to produce. And communities across the UK are facing more of these threats than ever, whether it’s Cuadrilla Resources in Lancashire, INEOS in Scotland, or UK Oil and Gas in Sussex and Surrey.

Our reporters are not activists, but they understand activism. They are also trained professionals, and deserve to get paid.

With your help, we can send more reporters to more locations to do more reporting. In the process, we can act as a counterweight to media narratives that paint activists as outsiders – telling the real story of local people deeply concerned about the impact fossil fuel extraction has on their community.

This Author

Mat Hope is editor of DeSmog UK. The news website is crowdfunding on Indiegogo. Please donate what you can to keep their journalists reporting from the frontline of environmental activism.

On Tuesday 25 July 2017, four protestors stopped a convoy of lorries going to a fracking site in Lancashire. This week, three of the activists were sentenced to custodial sentences.

Residents of Little Plumpton have been fighting Cuadrilla Resources’ plans for years. What started as a handful of local residents bemused that a new fossil fuel industry was about to start in their village escalated into a resistance of national symbolic importance. 

Today’s ruling represents a trend of escalation between environmental protestors and the police — from mass arrests of Dakota Access pipeline protestors in the US, to UK police abusing their powers when going undercover in environmental movements, and mass online surveillance of fracking activists via Facebook.

Read DeSmog UK’s coverage of the Preston New Road fracking protests:

• How 25 Metres of Country Road Became England’s Fracking Frontline
• Revisiting the Resistance on England’s Fracking Frontline
• Fracking Month of Action Unites Local and National Campaigners in Lancashire

Rich Loizou, Simon Roscoe Blevins, and Richard Roberts all spent between two and four days on top of the lorries that were making their way to the Preston New Road fracking site.

All three were found guilty of a public nuisance offence by a jury on 22 August 2018. A fourth protestor, Julian Brock, pleaded guilty at a separate hearing so did not face trial. 

Breaking through a police convoy accompanying the lorries, they managed to climb on top vehicles as they passed the local anti-fracking camp at Maple Farm.

Blevins and Roberts were sentenced to 16 months, while Loizou was jailed for 15 months. They are to serve half of their sentences in jail, with the remainder on license. Brock, who pleaded guilty, received a 12 month suspended sentence. 

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

In October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release its landmark 1.5 degrees report. It’s likely to simultaneously communicate the terrible dangers and impacts of letting average global temperature rise exceed 1.5 degrees, while warning that drastic systemic change on a scale never seen before will be needed to prevent these temperature rises.

In the same year the term ‘Hothouse Earth’ first came into use – a dire prediction by some scientists that even if temperatures are stabilized at 2 degrees (the Paris Agreement commitments could mean up to 4 degrees of warming) there may already be so much warming in the system that irreversible tipping points could be crossed.

Forests, permafrost and oceans, which typically store carbon and methane, could suddenly release them, driving further temperature and sea level rises. This would make parts of the Earth uninhabitable – a terrifying prospect.

Planetary emergency

We are in a planetary emergency. We must rise up. We must play our part in seeking to stop climate change and bring about transformation. The challenge is so huge that it requires nothing less than system change – a radical overhaul of our energy, food, political and economic systems.

We have seen what action around the edges of our current political and economic system has achieved – and it is not enough. It has allowed runaway climate change, inequality and hunger. It has allowed false solutions like carbon offsets and REDD monoculture plantations to steal land from people while not reducing emissions. We need people power to push for system change.

Governments are influenced by intense lobbying by the powerful Dirty Energy industry, which fears threats to its profits. Fossil fuels, including oil, coal and gas, are the primary cause of global warming.

Even now, when we know so much about the dangers of climate change, more than 1,600 new coal plants are planned or under development in 62 countries. Some countries are even looking to expand into coal for the first time. The quantity of new conventional gas infrastructure Europe is planning is also staggering—it’s heading for a 58 percent increase in EU gas import capacity. Coal, gas and other fossil fuel technologies, including oil, fracking, tar sands and unconventional coal technologies, should be dead. 

Yet the exploration and exploitation of fossil fuels continues at a relentless pace. Indonesia, one of the world’s largest coal exporters, is plagued by the detrimental effects of coal and communities in Indonesia are uniting to stop coal mining. Bangladesh is also at risk, and the World Heritage Sundarbans area could be blighted by a coal plant.

Dirty energy

The fossil fuel industry is wrongly promoting gas as a ‘transition fuel’ solution. As a result communities in Northern Mozambique have seen a dash for gas which is, according to Friends of the Earth Mozambique, already “leaving entire communities landless, with no livelihood, and insufficient resettlement and compensation, if any. Many miles of pristine beaches will be irreversibly destroyed. Unique ecosystems such as mangroves and endangered species of sea life and ocean flora will be put at great risk of complete destruction.”

And oil and unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands also continue to wreak havoc on our climate and the environment. There is danger of a new tar sands frontier opening up in Nigeria, a country already devastated by oil companies who continue to abuse the people and environment with no sign of cleaning up. Togo is threatened with exploitation of offshore oil, as well, which would have dire impacts. Fracking (the extraction of oil or gas by fracturing underground shale rock) is a reality, or is threatened, in Argentina, Colombia, South Africa and the UK, even though some other governments have completely banned it.

Non-fossil fuel forms of Dirty Energy that need to go include nuclear power and large-scale hydropower, which have devastating impacts on people and the environment. Nuclear is dangerous. Despite this around 30 countries are considering, planning or starting nuclear power programs, including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ghana, Nigeria, Paraguay and Chile. 

Large scale hydro projects also fall under the Dirty Energy category. They frequently result in land grabbing, diverted rivers, and the undermining of water and food sovereignty. The impact of hydroelectric dams on climate change has also been underestimated – rotting vegetation in dam waters emit around a billion tonnes of greenhouse gases every year. I

n 2015, 57,000 large dams choked more than half the world’s major rivers. These projects also cost lives. In 2016 Berta Caceres was murdered for opposing the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras. In 2017 Berta Zúñiga was attacked for continuing her mother’s work. Madre Tierra/Friends of the Earth Honduras works alongside communities to resist large scale hydro projects.

Dangerous technologies

The influence of the Dirty Energy industry is backed by right-wing regimes, which deny climate change and promote fossil fuels while closing down political debate and restricting activists’ freedom to mobilize.

Friends of the Earth groups around the world are fighting Dirty Energy projects alongside communities. And we are tackling the influence of corporations who continue to push dirty energy – as an example of this Friends of the Earth Netherlands is taking Shell to court to stop its climate wrecking activities. This historic case could set a powerful legal precedent: if we win, one of the world’s biggest polluters will be stopped in their tracks.

Dirty Energy has been encouraging ‘climate deniers’ where it can, but promoting risky and potentially unworkable false solutions to climate change that offer alternative profit-making opportunities where it can’t. 

These ‘false solutions’ — untested, profit-driven techno-fixes — are dangerous distractions that risk diverting us from real solutions when there is no time left to waste. But governments and others are being seduced by the prospect of an easy-fix. The IPCC report will include 1.5 degree ‘pathways’ that assume the use of risky, unproven technologies that claim to suck carbon out of the atmosphere—such as Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS).

Friends of the Earth International says no to these dangerous technologies and mechanisms. We can and must solve the climate crisis without creating new environmental catastrophes. There are pathways that can lead to a 1.5 degree future without reliance on BECCS and Dirty Energy, but these require enormous and radical change right now.

Community energy

The IPCC itself comes close to recognizing that the pace of change needed for a future below 1.5 degrees is nothing less than radical system change.

We need to usher in a new people-led energy system that works for everybody. Tackling climate change now, in a fair and just way, will enable us to avert catastrophe, at the same time as creating a better quality of life for everyone, in harmony with nature.

Communities around the world are already implementing solutions that challenge the system and bring us closer to the model of sustainable societies that we need. Friends of the Earth International communities, in Scotland, Denmark, Palestine and Ireland, are controlling their own energy generation, looking to clean sources such as wind and solar, and promoting their independence and economic well-being at the same time.

Governments in Scotland, Ireland and Victoria, Australia, joined those in France, Bulgaria and parts of the United States and Canada, with outright bans on fracking, in response to people power.

A real, fair and viable future, based on decentralized, people-centred community energy, and involving practices such as agroecology and community forest management, could and should become the new norm. Such alternatives must be scaled up, strengthened and replicated so that they are accessible to everyone, so that they benefit everyone, and so that they are commensurate with demand.

People power 

We need to act now, with justice, to ensure that developed countries are held to account for climate change. Just 10 percent of the world’s population are responsible for 50 percent of emissions, whilst the poorest 50 percent are responsible for only 10 percent. The rich must make the deepest emission cuts rapidly, and pay for emissions reductions and sustainable development in the global South.

It is deeply unfair that we risk exceeding 1.5 degrees and crossing tipping points—into irreversible climate change—because of longstanding inaction by the global North, which has benefited most from the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels that caused the climate crisis in the first place.

A safe and just pathway demands a radical and immediate shift away from fossil fuels everywhere and a huge flow of finance from the global North to the global South to fund the transition. 

Friends of the Earth International believes that only radical system change offers a pathway towards hope and out of despair. We need to — and can — transform our energy, food and economic systems to prevent temperature rises exceeding 1.5 degrees, and fend off climate catastrophe. But only if we do it now.

The global North must reduce its emissions to zero as soon as possible, while ensuring a Just Transition for workers and communities. The global North must cease all new fossil fuel projects, rapidly phase out existing reliance on fossil fuels, and stop funding fossil fuel extraction in the global South.

Energy revolution

The global South must forge clean, sustainable futures — free from the corporate control and Dirty Energy infrastructure that bring local pollution, land grabbing and human rights abuses, in addition to climate change. 

To win this climate justice fight we need to act together

We, the people, must oppose Dirty Energy, case by case, battle by battle, using all the tools and tactics at our disposal. We need to find innovative ways to defeat Dirty Energy. We need to connect the dots for a comprehensive fight, connect the fossil fuel headquarters with their operations and their financial backers.

People power is a powerful tool. This has been proven time and time again; in fracking bans in Victoria state, Australia, New York state, states across America, Ireland, France, Scotland, Bulgaria and provinces in Canada.

We need to act globally to support and protect people whose resistance is met with repression. We must usher in an energy revolution; just, sustainable, climate-safe energy for all. This transition must happen fairly. No country can be excluded or disadvantaged because they have not exploited their fossil fuels.

All over the world, the climate crisis is deepening. We must act now. The fight against #DirtyEnergy is growing, and calls for an energy transformation are getting louder. But time is short. Join Friends of the Earth International 6-13 October for our global Week of Action. Together we can fight the climate emergency.

This Author 

Sara Shaw is Friends of the Earth International’s Climate Justice and Energy program coordinator. Sara has worked on land grabs, as a lawer for refugees in the UK ad for a human rights NGO in Mexico City. This article was first published by Friends of the Earth. 

The think tank behind the pro-US free trade plan launched this week by leading Brexiteers went on a “lucrative” American tour to raise money for its Brexit work.

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and its trade policy chief, Shanker Singham, launched the “Plan A+” report in London on Monday with the backing of Boris Johnson and David Davis, as well as the European Research Group, an influential faction of Eurosceptic MPs led by Jacob Rees-Mogg.

An Unearthed investigation this summer revealed that IEA boss Mark Littlewood had been on what he described as a “lucrative” US tour in February to raise funds for the IEA’s new trade policy unit.

Donors’ privacy

The investigation also showed the IEA offering to broker access to senior ministers for an undercover reporter posing as representative of US agribusiness investors. IEA director Mark Littlewood said the think tank, which is registered as an educational charity, was in the “Brexit influencing game”.

The high-profile Plan A report has been widely touted as the arch-Brexiteers’ alternative to Theresa May’s Chequers plan. It calls for the UK to move away from the EU’s strict regulations to “capture the Brexit Prize” and strike free-trade deals with other countries, particularly the US.

This could see the UK forced to loosen environmental standards and accept controversial products such as chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-treated beef.

Sticking to EU rules for agri-food, as the Chequers plan demands, “means that the UK is severely constrained in its ability to change rules in the area of goods and agri-food, as well as in certain horizontal areas such as labour, and the environment,” the IEA report says.

An IEA spokeswoman declined to reveal who had funded the report, saying: “We respect the privacy of our donors and do not place a list of them in the public domain.”

She added that IEA reports are independent of their funders, saying: “We make independent editorial decisions and then seek funding. Any received funding does not, under any circumstances, influence the conclusions of reports and our rigorous peer-review process means we are confident that our output is independent and free from conflict of interest.”

However in a meeting at the IEA’s offices in June, Littlewood told an undercover reporter that if they sponsored a report on “green Brexit” for £42,500, they would be able to influence the “content” and “salience” of issues that were relevant to their business.

US fundraising

Littlewood sought funding for the IEA’s trade policy unit, which wrote the Plan A+ report, during a tour of the US in February. He later said he had visited various US think tanks explaining the benefits of a US-UK free trade deal “and almost saying to them, you know, I don’t think you guys have realised how big this opportunity is yet.”

The trip, which he later described as “lucrative”, included stops at conservative think tanks with links to “dark money” donors such as the Koch brothers, the reclusive oil and gas billionaires who have pumped millions of dollars into climate scepticism and other libertarian causes.

The IEA has an established US fundraising arm, American Friends of the IEA, which since 2010 has funnelled more than $500,000 donated in the US to support the UK think tank’s work, according to OpenDemocracy. During his US tour, Littlewood invited donations to the organisation.

In a speech at an event in Florida, Littlewood called for the UK to join Nafta – the free trade deal between the US, Canada, and Mexico – saying the idea had support from senior Cabinet figures.

At a Manhattan event hosted by the Atlas Network, which acts as an umbrella group for right-wing think tanks around the world, he described Brexit as an opportunity to “shred” EU regulations.

Koch brothers

At a meeting in Florida, he issued a “plea” for donations, adding: “I’m looking to establish in the next few weeks over in London a trade unit at the Institute for Economic Affairs that will have as its top priority pushing for US-UK free trade,” he said.

The following month, Shanker Singham, who has been nicknamed “Brexiteers’ brain”, left the Legatum Institute and joined the IEA.

Littlewood’s tour included a private fundraising breakfast with agriculture and energy tycoons in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The breakfast was organised by Michael Carnuccio, chair of the E Foundation, a pro-business Oklahoma think tank.

“We got a bunch of money people around the table, Mark did the speech… and we talked about what was possible,” Carnuccio told Unearthed’s undercover reporter. He added: “Some of them were ag [agriculture] guys… and some of them were in oil and gas, and then two of them were just big donors to this cause, freedom, free markets, capitalists,” he said.

Carnuccio said the E Foundation’s supporters had committed to donating $35,000 to the American Friends of the IEA.

Elsewhere on the tour, Littlewood was hosted by the Illinois Policy Institute, a think tank that ProPublica reports has received funding from conservative donors including the Koch brothers and the Mercer family. Greenpeace USA recorded $113,000 in donations to the institute from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2015-16.

The IEA boss was also hosted by the Mackinac Center, a Michigan-based think tank that has received millions of dollars from the Donors Capital Fund, which aims to provide anonymity for donors, as well as donations from libertarian foundations including those linked to the Koch, DeVos, Bradley and Scaife families, according to DeSmog.

The IEA’s spokeswoman told Unearthed it does not usually comment on the funding of other think tanks.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.