In 2015, Nuclear Monitor published a detailed analysis of the many ways nuclear industry insiders and lobbyists trivialise and deny the connections between nuclear power – and the broader nuclear fuel cycle – and nuclear weapons proliferation.

Since then, the arguments have been turned upside down with prominent industry insiders and lobbyists openly acknowledging power-weapons connections. This remarkable about-turn has clear origins in the crisis facing nuclear power and the perceived need to secure increased subsidies to prevent reactors closing and to build new ones.

The new sales pitch openly links nuclear power to weapons and argues that weapons programs will be jeopardised unless greater subsidies are provided for the civil nuclear industry. The US Nuclear Energy Institute, for example, tried in mid-2017 to convince politicians in Washington that if the only reactor construction projects in the US ‒ in South Carolina and Georgia ‒ weren’t completed, it would stunt development of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.

The Nuclear Energy Institute paper wasn’t publicly released. But in the second half of 2017, numerous nuclear insiders and lobbyists openly acknowledged power-weapons connections and called for additional subsidies for nuclear power. The most important of these initiatives was a paper by the Energy Futures Initiative ‒ a creation of Ernest Moniz, who served as energy secretary under President Barack Obama.

The uranium industry jumps on the bandwagon

Even the uranium industry has jumped on the bandwagon, with two US companies warning that reliance on foreign sources threatens national security and lodging a petition with the Department of Commerce calling for US utilities to be required to purchase a minimum 25 percent of their requirements from domestic mines.

Decades of deceit have been thrown overboard with the new sales pitch linking nuclear power and weapons. However there are still some hold-outs. Until recently, one nuclear lobbyist continuing to deny power-weapons connections was Michael Shellenberger from the ‘Environmental Progress’ pro-nuclear lobby group in the US.

Shellenberger told an IAEA conference last year that “nuclear energy prevents the spread of nuclear weapons”. And he claimed last year that “one of FOE-Greenpeace’s biggest lies about nuclear energy is that it leads to weapons” and that there is an “inverse relationship between energy and weapons”.

Shellenberger’s backflip

In two articles published in August, Shellenberger has done a 180-degree backflip on the power-weapons connections. “[N]ational security, having a weapons option, is often the most important factor in a state pursuing peaceful nuclear energy”, Shellenberger now believes.

A recent analysis from Environmental Progress finds that of the 26 nations that are building or are committed to build nuclear power plants, 23 have nuclear weapons, had weapons, or have shown interest in acquiring weapons.

“While those 23 nations clearly have motives other than national security for pursuing nuclear energy,” Shellenberger writes, “gaining weapons latency appears to be the difference-maker. The flip side also appears true: nations that lack a need for weapons latency often decide not to build nuclear power plants … Recently, Vietnam and South Africa, neither of which face a significant security threat, decided against building nuclear plants …”

Here is the break-down of the 26 countries that are building or are committed to build nuclear power plants according to the Environmental Progress report:

·         Thirteen nations had a weapons program, or have shown interest in acquiring a weapon: Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Iran, Japan, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE.

·         Seven nations have weapons (France, US, Britain, China, Russia, India and Pakistan), two had weapons as part of the Soviet Union (Ukraine and Belarus), and one (Slovakia) was part of a nation (Czechoslovakia) that sought a weapon.

·         Poland, Hungary, and Finland are the only three nations (of the 26) for which Environmental Progress could find no evidence of weapons latency as a motivation.

Current patterns connecting the pursuit of power and weapons stretch back across the 60 years of civilian nuclear power. Shellenberger notes that “at least 20 nations sought nuclear power at least in part to give themselves the option of creating a nuclear weapon” ‒ Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, France, Italy, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Libya, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, West Germany, Yugoslavia.

Shellenberger points to research by Fuhrmann and Tkach which found that 31 nations had the capacity to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium, and that 71% of them created that capacity to give themselves weapons latency.

Nuclear weapons ‒ a force for peace?

So far, so good. The pursuit of nuclear power and weapons are often linked. That’s a powerful reason to eschew nuclear power, to strengthen the safeguards system, to tighten export controls, to restrict the spread of enrichment and reprocessing, and so on. But Shellenberger has a very different take on the issues.

Discussing the Fuhrmann and Tkach article (and studiously avoiding contrary literature), Shellenberger writes:

“What was the relationship between nuclear latency and military conflict? It was negative. “Nuclear latency appears to provide states with deterrence-related benefits,” they [Fuhrmann and Tkach] concluded, “that are distinct from actively pursuing nuclear bombs.”

“Why might this be? Arriving at an ultimate cause is difficult if not impossible, the authors note. But one obvious possibility is that the “latent nuclear powers may be able to deter conflict by (implicitly) threatening to ‘go nuclear’ following an attack.” …

“After over 60 years of national security driving nuclear power into the international system, we can now add “preventing war” to the list of nuclear energy’s superior characteristics. …

“As a lifelong peace activist and pro-nuclear environmentalist, I almost fell out of my chair when I discovered the paper by Fuhrmann and Tkach. All that most nations will need to deter military threats is nuclear power ‒ a bomb isn’t even required? Why in the world, I wondered, is this fact not being promoted as one of nuclear powers many benefits?

“The answer is that the nuclear industry and scientific community have tried, since Atoms for Peace began 65 years ago, to downplay any connection between the two ‒ and for an understandable reason: they don’t want the public to associate nuclear power plants with nuclear war.

“But in seeking to deny the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, the nuclear community today finds itself in the increasingly untenable position of having to deny these real world connections ‒ of motivations and means ‒ between the two. Worse, in denying the connection between energy and weapons, the nuclear community reinforces the widespread belief that nuclear weapons have made the world a more dangerous place when the opposite is the case. …

“Nuclear energy, without a doubt, is spreading and will continue to spread around the world, largely with national security as a motivation. The question is whether the nuclear industry will, alongside anti-nuclear activists, persist in stigmatizing weapons latency as a nuclear power “bug” rather than tout it as the epochal, peace-making feature it is.”

Deterrent effects

Shellenberger asks why the deterrent effect of nuclear power isn’t being promoted as one of its many benefits. Nuclear weapons can have a deterrent effect ‒ in a uniquely dangerous and potentially uniquely counterproductive manner ‒ but any correlation between latent nuclear weapons capabilities and reduced military conflict is just that, correlation not causation.

On the contrary, there is a history of military attacks on nuclear facilities to prevent their use in weapons programs (e.g. Israel’s attacks on nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007). Shellenberger points to the same problem, asking whether latency could “also be a threat to peace?” and noting Israeli and US threats to take pre-emptive action against Iran. He doesn’t offer an answer or explore the issue further.

Shellenberger argues that Iran should be encouraged to develop nuclear weapons. He cites long-term nuclear weapons proliferation enthusiast Kenneth Waltz, who claims that the “decades-long Middle East nuclear crisis … will end only when a balance of military power is restored”. He cites a German academic who argues that a nuclear-armed Germany “would stabilize NATO and the security of the Western World”. We “should be glad that North Korea acquired the bomb” according to Shellenberger. And on it goes ‒ his enthusiasm for nuclear weapons proliferation knows no bounds.

‘Shellenberger has gone down a rabbit hole’

Nuclear Monitor has previously exposed the litany of falsehoods in Shellenberger’s writings on nuclear and energy issues. In his most recent articles he exposes himself as an intellectual lightweight prepared to swing from one extreme of a debate to the other if that’s what it takes to build the case for additional subsidies for nuclear power.

A dangerous intellectual lightweight. Environmental Progress attorney Frank Jablonski writes:

“From Shellenberger’s article you would conclude that, for any “weak nation”, or for the “poor or weak” persons within such nations, things are bound to improve with acquisition of nuclear weapons. So, for humanitarian reasons, the imperialistic nations and hypocritical people standing in the way of that acquisition should get out of the way. No. The article’s contentions are falsified by … logical untenability, things it got wrong, and things it left out. While Shellenberger’s willingness to take controversial positions has often been valuable, a “contrarian” view is not always right just because it is contrarian.”

Sam Seitz, a student at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, argues that Shellenberger’s argument is “almost Trumpian in its incoherence”. He takes issue with Shellenberger’s claims that no nuclear powers have been invaded (“a pretty misleading statistic” and “wrong”); that battle deaths worldwide have declined by 95% (“fails to prove that nuclear weapons are responsible for this trend … as we are frequently reminded, correlation and causation are not equivalent”); that Indian and Pakistani deaths in two disputed territories declined sharply after Pakistan’s first nuclear weapons test in 1998 (“doesn’t account for non-nuclear factors like the role of outside mediation and domestic politics”); and that Nazi Germany invaded France because the French lacked a credible deterrent (“makes very little sense and conflates several things … also silly”).

Hostile response

Responding to Shellenberger’s more-the-merrier attitude towards nuclear weapons proliferation, pro-nuclear commentator Dan Yurman puts it bluntly: “Here’s the problem. The more nations have nuclear weapons, the more dangerous the world will be. Sooner or later some tin pot dictator or religious zealot is likely to push a button and send us all to eternity.”

Shellenberger’s about-turn on power-weapons connections provoked a hostile response from Yurman:

“Shellenberger has crossed a red line for the global commercial nuclear industry, which has done everything in its power to avoid having the public conflate nuclear weapons with commercial nuclear energy. Worse, he’s given opponents of nuclear energy, like Greenpeace, a ready-made tool to attack the industry. …

“In the end he may have painted himself into a corner. Not only has he alienated some of his supporters on the commercial nuclear side of the house, but he also has energized the nonproliferation establishment, within governments and among NGOs, offering them a rich opportunity promote critical reviews of the risks of expanding nuclear energy as a solution to the challenge of climate change. …

“Shellenberger has gone down a rabbit hole with his two essays promoting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Given all the great things he has done to promote commercial nuclear energy, it is a perplexing and disturbing development.

“It’s ok to be contrarian, but I fear he will pay a price for it with reduced support from some of his current supporters and he will face critical reviews from detractors of these essays. In the end public support and perception of the safety of nuclear energy may be diminished by these essays since they will lead to increased conflating of commercial nuclear energy with nuclear weapons. The fatal attraction of the power of nuclear weapons has lured another victim. It’s an ill-fated step backwards.”

Power-weapons connections

No doubt there will be more acknowledgements of power-weapons connections by nuclear industry insiders and lobbyists. As Shellenberger notes, the nuclear ‘community’ today finds itself in an increasingly untenable position denying the connections.

There is a degree of domestic support for nuclear weapons programs in weapons states … but few people support generalised nuclear weapons proliferation and few would swallow Shellenberger’s arguments including his call to shred the non-proliferation and disarmament system and to encourage weapons proliferation.

Understanding of the power-weapons connections, combined with opposition to nuclear weapons, is one of the motivations driving opposition to nuclear power. According to Shellenberger, the only two US states forcing the closure of nuclear plants, California and New York, also had the strongest nuclear disarmament movements.

There is some concern that claims that the civil nuclear industry is an important (or even necessary) underpinning of a weapons program will be successfully used to secure additional subsidies for troubled nuclear power programs (e.g. in the US, France and the UK). After all, nuclear insiders and lobbyists wouldn’t abandon their decades-long deceit about power-weapons connections if not for the possibility that their new argument will gain traction, among politicians if not the public.

The growing acknowledgement ‒ and public understanding ‒ of power-weapons connections might have consequences for nuclear power newcomer countries such as Saudi Arabia. Assuming that the starting point is opposition to a Saudi nuclear weapons program, heightened sensitivity might constrain nuclear exporters who would otherwise export to Saudi Arabia with minimalist safeguards and no serious attempt to check the regime’s weapons ambitions. Or it might not lead to that outcome ‒ as things stand, numerous nuclear exporters are scrambling for a share of the Saudi nuclear power program regardless of proliferation concerns.

More generally, a growing understanding of power-weapons connections might lead to a strengthening of the safeguards system along with other measures to firewall nuclear power from weapons. But again, that’s hypothetical and it is at best some way down the track ‒ there is no momentum in that direction.

And another hypothetical arising from the growing awareness about power-weapons connections: proliferation risks might be (and ought to be) factored in as a significant negative in comparative assessments of power generation options.

This Author

Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter, where a longer version of this article was originally published.

Liz Truss told a right-wing US think tank that “a thicket of regulation and control” is holding back business and called for a new “Anglo-American dream” while the group published details of a proposed deregulatory US-UK trade deal.

Her speech – given at the Cato Institute during a taxpayer-funded trip to Washington – came as Cato and other right-wing think tanks launched a major report at joint events in London and US outlining an “ideal” free-trade agreement after Brexit.  

The proposed deal would threaten environmental regulations, remove current rules on imports of chlorine chicken and hormone-fed beef and open up the NHS to competition from the American healthcare industry.

Close ties

At the Washington DC launch of the report yesterday, Truss delivered a speech entitled ‘Market Millennials’ in which she described Brexit as a “huge opportunity” to “shape a new relationship with America” and “turbo charge freedom”.

The DC launch was also attended by former UK environment secretary Owen Paterson, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, and MEP Daniel Hannan, who edited the report.

Speaking at the London launch of the report in Westminster, the Cato Institute’s Daniel Ikenson said workplace and environmental rules do not belong in trade agreements, insisting that companies can be “self-regulating” when it comes to environmental standards.

Ikenson also suggested “local farmers” had been “scaring” people about chlorinated chicken and suggested that “incumbent” providers such as the NHS should be opened up to competition as part of a de-regulatory trade deal. 

I don’t think labour and environmental provisions belong in trade agreements

That report, an “ideal” version of a US-UK trade agreement, was a collaboration between 11 influential right-wing US and UK think tanks – including the Institute of Economic Affairs, which enjoys close ties to trade secretary Liam Fox and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, and the Initiative for Free Trade.

Carve-outs

The report calls for an extensive free trade deal between the US and the UK, with no tariffs on any goods, reductions in regulation, and equivalence between the UK and USA’s rules, which could open up the UK to the sale of chlorinated chicken, hormone beef, and other products.

In remarks at the report’s London launch, its primary author Daniel Ikenson, the director of Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute was blunt about its effects – and his view on regulation.

“Healthcare is a service, we call for opening services to competition,” he said. “And I know some people are worried about what happens to the NHS, for example. We think competition is a good thing and it would lead to better quality healthcare.”

Ikensen noted the report would allow the UK government to protect up to 10% of its service sector from the full effects of competition – but noted that even if this full allocation was used on the NHS it might not be enough to shelter it, given the organisation’s scale.

“If the UK government were to choose to want to insulate the NHS or other services they have an allotment of 10% of the economy, though that might not be enough to cover all of the NHS but there is room for carve-outs,” he said. “But this is a free trade agreement, the purpose of liberalising trade is to expose incumbent business to competition, including healthcare.”

Ikenson also admitted the “ideal” trade agreement the 11 think tanks had drafted included no protections for workers or the environment, and was dismissive of their existence.

Post-Brexit trade

“Labour and environmental provisions are in most trade agreements nowadays, I don’t think they belong in trade agreements,” he said. “Couple of things the left insists on having that I disagree with … I would like to have a much cleaner, smaller set of rules that gives maximum flexibility to transact as they wish.”

Ikenson continued: “Are there labour violations on occasion involving Western companies? Yes. Are there environmental issues and externalities? Yes. But I’ve got to say they’re the exception and not the rule and these companies, for a lot of these companies, their most important asset is their brand, and they want to do their utmost to avoid these things, and so they make amends – I think it’s self-regulating.”

Amy Mount of the Greener UK coalition responded to Ikensen’s remarks to Unearthed. 

“This is a depressing vision for our future. Flooding our supermarkets with chlorinated chicken, undercutting our farmers and lowering standards for chemicals would be a strange way to take back control,” she said.

“The UK has benefited from trade deals that embrace high standards, and enjoyed high quality food and safer products as a result. Our blueprint for post-Brexit trade should be defined by a lighter footprint on the global environment, not a low-standards free-for-all.”

Chlorinated chicken

At the launch, the report’s authors noted trade deals provided an opportunity to lock-in rules and prevent “backsliding”, dismissing concerns around trade deals and food as lobbying and scaremongering, attacking UK farmers in the process.

“There’s a lot of politics involved [in trade deals],” Ikenson noted. “A lot of bootlegger and Baptist stories where you have interests that want protection … and they enlist the support of unknowing groups who have social consciences, for example they don’t want to eat chlorinated chicken – and chlorinated chicken, there’s nothing wrong with it scientifically, it’s available for sale.

“The local farmers who benefit from scaring people about chlorinated chicken have won them to their side, to do their bidding for them. There’s a lot of that going on in trade policy.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

Climate science denial campaign group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has apparently been left with a hole in its finances after a major donor did not renew its funding.

The Atkin Charitable Foundation had given the GWPF £20,000 each year between 2012 and 2016. But the foundation pulled its funding in 2017, its latest accounts filed with the Charity Commission show.

The GWPF was founded by climate science denier Nigel Lawson in 2009 with the purpose of combating what the foundation describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to mitigate climate change.

Network of politicians

The Atkin Charitable Foundation was set up in February 2006 to fund efforts towards the “relief of poverty, distress and sickness, the advancement of education, the protection of health and for any other charitable purpose”, according to its annual trustees’ report.

Edward Atkin sits on both the Atkin Charitable Foundation and GWPF’s board of trustees. He made his money through selling his baby-feeding business Aventa for £300 million in 2005.

Atkin is a major Conservative Party donor, having donated almost £230,000 to the party since 2002, according to Electoral Commission data.

Atkin also donated £2,000 to Boris Johnson’s London mayoral campaign in 2008. Johnson is a significant part of a network of politicians and lobbyists pushing disinformation on climate change and for Brexit, which DeSmog UK previously mapped.

‘Great physicist’

Johnson has flirted with climate science denial over the years. In a Telegraph column in 2013,he said a cold snap in weather casts doubt on the science. Then, writing in the Telegraph in December 2015, he argued recent warm winter weather had nothing to do with climate change.

In both columns he referred to the “great physicist and meteorologist Piers Corbyn” – brother of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and a well-known climate science denier.

The Atkin Charitable Foundation and GWPF have been contacted for comment.

This Author

Mat Hope is editor of Desmog.uk, where this article first appeared.

Roger Bate, when head of the Environment Unit at the free market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), was an extremely energetic man.  

Not only did Bate help to organise the first major climate denial conference in Britain, hosted by the IEA in 1995, but he also established his own think tank, the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), by turning the contacts he made into funders and contributors.

One of these contacts was Dr John Emsley, a chemist at Imperial College London who wrote a regular “Molecule of the Month” column in the left-liberal Independent newspaper. The idea behind his column was to explain to the public the benefits that chemicals brought to people and the planet.

Bate’s recruits

Emsley attended IEA events where he met Bate and his friend Julian Morris. “I must say I did enjoy talking to and arguing with Roger and Julian, mainly because I was at the opposite end of the political spectrum,” Emsley told me.

Bate invited Emsley to join the ESEF and help edit his forthcoming book, What Risk? Emsley explained: “I was mainly involved in editing the two climate change books it produced, which echoed my thoughts at the time about the relative importance of CO2 as a greenhouse gas.”

Bate also persuaded professor Frits Bottcher, the director of the Global Institute for the Study of Natural Resources in The Hague, to come on board. “The issue of climate change was the initiation for the meeting,” according to ESEF’s promotional material.

The charity set out its aim on its website as being “to inform the public about scientific debates” and to “provide a forum for scientific opinions that are usually not heard in public policy debates”.

Bate would place comment articles across the international media under headlines like A Myth Stubbed Out, Is Nothing Worse than Tobacco? and Global Warming, Don’t Believe the Hype. Bate even attacked attempts to reduce lead in drinking water.

‘Imposing consensus’

He set about sending out press releases and helping maverick scientists to write articles for the popular press. He offered to “advise scientists [on] how to present their findings to the media, and how the media will perceive, and may use, the information”.

The ESEF joined the deniers’ vitriolic attack on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in March 1996 with the headline “Scientists attack ‘official consensus’ on global warming”. The article accused the IPCC of “imposing consensus” on scientists, retarding research and relying on dodgy climate models.

Bate also drew up a comprehensive plan for the ESEF project that year. The think tank produced a paper for publication in the US and Europe under the headline “Why regulate nicotine when caffeine is more addictive?” which was described as “a follow-up to the work done by the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in the US where they petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ‘regulate caffeine’”.

Bate wanted to show that the regulation of nicotine “has nothing to do with the science and a lot to do with empire building by the FDA”. In his carefully prepared notes, he warned that the article “needs careful handling”.

The ESEF then published a monograph attacking the scientific warnings that environmental tobacco smoke could cause cancer in March 1998. In August, Bate appeared on the BBC’s Today programme to attack the “junk science” of passive smoking.

But the charity was in danger of being accused of acting as a public relations company for tobacco and other industry interests.

‘Maintain independence’

According to the corporate responsibility campaigners Lobbywatch, the original ESEF website stated: “To maintain its independence and impartiality, the ESEF does not accept outside funding from whatever source, the only income it receives is from the sale of its publications.”  

Promotional material sent to a tobacco company was only slightly different, saying: “To maintain its independence and impartiality, ESEF accepts funding only from charities, and the income it receives is from the sale of its publications.”

Bate approached the second largest tobacco firm in the US, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, asking for £50,000 in cash for a book about environmental risks including a chapter on passive smoking. But the company turned him down and the money was never paid.

That, however, did not slow Bate down. Over the next two years he would recruit the coal-funded sceptic scientists Robert Balling and Patrick Michaels to the academic board of ESEF, as well as renowned climate denier Fred Singer in the United States.

IEA lobbying

There has been an assumption among environmentalists that the tobacco industry deliberately created think tanks that would attack regulations and the restrictions on smoking.

But one former industry insider who agreed to speak to me said the relationship was often the other way around. Bate and his colleagues at the IEA were actively lobbying the tobacco companies to do more to attack regulation and saw their apparent inaction as short-sighted and a betrayal of principle.

Moreover, it was the IEA and other think tanks that were seeking funding from tobacco, not the other way around.

Bate attended several meetings at the offices of British American Tobacco in Staines, Surrey to discuss the work of the Environment Unit and his own forum. He worked closely with Keith Gretton in British American Tobacco’s corporate communications department, who sent out an internal memo: “Should the [Risk Assessment (RA)] programme take off fully in the UK or EU, the IEA is a good ally. A current thrust of its work is on RA (initially re global warming etc, widening its net later in 1996).”

It continued: “An RA publication is planned to which we could input. When a decision is made on the appropriate strategy for going forward on RA, we should meet Roger Bate head of IEA Environment Unit.”

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.

Pollination by insects, particularly bees, is vital to food production and humans because it affects the yield or quality of 75 percent of globally important crop types. In recent years there has been increasing concern about the long-term stability of this service due to widespread declines in some species.

Despite the negative impacts of agricultural intensification on plants and insect pollinators, researchers at Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Reading found the species that remain in parts of the UK with a higher proportion of farmed land are more likely to survive a variety of potential environmental changes.

However, the research suggested that this was because these landscapes have already lost their most vulnerable species, retaining those insect and plant species that are more able to take whatever is thrown at them.

Ecological networks

The study drew on six million records from more than 30 years of citizen science data from thousands of volunteer naturalists, relating to sightings of species and visits to plants by pollinators such as bees, hoverflies and butterflies.

The latter records enabled researchers to identify 16,000 unique interactions between plants and pollinators across Great Britain and, for the first time, the extent of how these ecological networks vary with different types of landscapes across the country.

John Redhead of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the lead researcher of the new study, said: “We think that the plants and pollinators that remain in these landscapes represent the toughest species that can handle the stresses of intensive agriculture – the vulnerable ones are already long gone.

“This means that they’re also able to cope with many future changes, so although we hear about reported declines our wildlife, this may buy conservationists some time before we start to see the remaining plants and pollinators in agricultural areas really suffer.”

The plants that have survived intensive agriculture include common weed species like brambles and thistles, which can cope with increased soil fertilization and reduced water availability.

Restoring biodiversity

The insects that have fared better are ‘generalist’ pollinators that can feed on a wide variety of plant species, including crops and weeds, plus can cope with fewer and more scattered floral and nesting sites.

Professor Tom Oliver of the University of Reading, one of the co-authors of the paper, said: “It is good news that the catastrophic loss of all species is less likely, but we still need to work hard to restore biodiversity to give these ecosystems the best chance under growing threats of climate change and pollution.”

The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. 

The meeting on the future of sustainable farming held last week by Waveney Green Party in Beccles, Suffolk, had been planned for many months. We didn’t know it would be the day Michael Gove unveiled the long awaited Agriculture Bill, setting out the government’s plans for replacing the Common Agricultural Policy if we leave the European Union.

I was joining a panel of two farmers and a wholesaler, chaired by an agricultural journalist, to see where we could find common ground on views of the future of our food supplies. The aim was to talk philosophy and practices, rather than political detail, and I was a little concerned that the timing meant we might get derailed into the detail of the Bill rather than the broader issues.

I needn’t have been. As the National Farmers’ Union has also been pointing out, the Bill so failed to engage with the issues that it hardly featured in last night’s discussion, after general agreement was quickly reached that it didn’t represent any kind of vision for the way forward.

Disneyland countryside

Some of this, it might be fairly said, isn’t Mr Gove’s fault. As Green MEP Molly Scott Cato has said, “access to market has a far greater impact on the viability of farms than the subsidies they receive”. With a total lack of clarity about what could happen if we Brexit in March, the way forward cannot be clear.

And there is some good in the bill. Moving away from payments based on area towards rewards for how the land is managed and cared for is something the Green Party has long called for, as is capping CAP payments (although something that always could have been, and still could be, achieved as a member of the EU).

There’s also value in suggestions of support for farmers getting together to research and develop new methods and practices, to provide an alternative to one agribusiness giant being the chief source of information, and of talk of providing access to new entrants to farming (although none of the reform of land ownership that is only way to genuinely open up the opportunity for a flood of new entrants into the business of farming).

But overall, the picture the Bill represents is of a kind of Disneyland countryside, being managed a bit better for wildlife, soil and flood prevention, but not as the location for thriving small businesses producing the healthy, diverse foods their communities need in an increasingly food-insecure world. It entirely fails to even acknowledge that we’re talking about a food system – in which farming practices, distribution, education and training for farmers, workers and consumers, poverty and health are all interlinked.

As chair Jez Fredenburgh said, food appears to be almost entirely missing from the Bill. Professor Tim Lang has described it as a “finance plus land-management bill”.

Sustainable and diverse

So the discussion last night quickly moved on to the issues facing farmers and food consumers (ie all of us) not covered in the Bill.

The wonderful possibilities for change towards a system producing healthy food in sustainable ways with decent rewards for its producers were on display for all to see. There were Hodmedod’s pulses and grains – reflecting the move to produce diverse vegetable proteins in the UK to replace unsustainable factory farmed meat. There was a fine selection of local fruit and vegetables (which can be delivered to locals’ door in a box scheme), high-welfare dairy products and grass-fed local meats, all supplied by small independent producers.

And there was general agreement at the meeting that making food primarily local – a word seemingly lacking in Mr Gove’s vocabulary – has to be key. That means local producers, supply chains, retailers and other distribution systems – not our food supply dominated by a handful of supermarkets wielding their market dominance against producers with a severely underpowered regulator doing her best to introduce a modicum of fairness). 

There was also agreement that our food needs to be far more diverse. With more than half of the calories in the human diet coming from just four crops from an extraordinarily narrow range of varieties, as Josiah Meldrum from Hodmedod’s pointed out. We need to vastly expand that range, in the interests of human health and resilience against shocks caused by disease or crop failure. And this is also very much what the ecology of our countryside needs.

Another point of broad agreement was on the need for far better education about food – growing, cooking and eating — for students and the general population. “Bring back home economics” was the cry – but as I pointed out that would require the pressure to be taken off schools to be exam factories, to allow them to return to providing education preparing their pupils for life.

Transforming practices

And there was, if not always agreement about the detail, an understanding of the need to transform agricultural practices, away from a heavy reliance of pesticides and the plough, towards approaches such as agroecology, permaculture and no- or minimum-till, that rely on nature, and particularly healthy soil, to produce the healthy food we need.

Those are the foundations the Green Party believes are needed for a proper Agricultural Bill – or perhaps more properly for clarity, a Food, Health and Agriculture Bill. 

And then we need to make sure that everyone in our society has the income to buy high quality food at a decent return to the producer – and to have the time to cook it.

This Author 

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

“Intimacy with the planet in its wonder and beauty and the full depth of its meaning is what enables an integral human relationship with the planet to function. It is the only possibility for humans to attain their true flourishing while honouring the other modes of earthly being. The fulfillment of the Earth community is to be caught up in the grandeur of existence itself and in admiration of those mysterious powers whence all this has emerged.” – Thomas Berry 

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

How do we maintain an intimacy with the Earth and the natural world? How do we keep a depth and freshness in ourselves that allows us, even in a busy city, to be fully aware of Nature’s gifts of sustenance, of the gentle caress of leaves, of birdsong, of rolling clouds? 

Mystical traditions, since antiquity, encourage practitioners to become intimate with the benevolence and generosity of our universe. The Sufi mystical tradition, for example, speaks of an “Earth of True Vision”, implying that our depth of perception is necessary to see and remember the Earth that is our home and nurturer.

Sufi insights can be helpful to all, as a reminder of ways to maintain our natural capacity of deep perception so we can be of greater service to the safekeeping of our Earth. 

Creative intelligence 

Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916–2004) emphasised that continually tuning ourselves to our own inherent clarity, creativity and sense of possibility is vital in meeting the ecological challenges we now face.

This is vital for anyone who undertakes a path of social action, as it is easy to be overwhelmed by the severity of the problems around us. Pir Vilayat suggests that we simply use the natural world as our teacher: nature does not retract from roadblocks to evolution, but instead experiments with novel behaviour and new structures to meet difficult conditions. When something is not working, Nature unlearns a certain behaviour and tries another.

In the same way, we are always being challenged to unlearn: for example, to suspend habitual reactions to circumstances and thereby allow creative alternatives to emerge. In this way, Sufis use meditation as the vehicle for unlearning, likening it to the work of a farmer who must clear a field of rocks and stubble before tender seeds, or in this case new possibilities, can spring up. 

Meditation, instead of being an obscurity and an abstraction, can best be understood as a simple tool for appreciating our world and aligning with Nature’s rhythms and imagination. Explaining this further, physicist David Bohm (1918–94) emphasisesd that meditation reveals a sense of the interconnectedness and an underlying “implicate order” behind physical reality.

Bohm suggested that from this experience arises an informed creativity that can help bring discernment and effective action to the world.

Making a difference

Given the scale and intensity of the issues we face, can an individual’s meditation and other pathways of cultivating fresh and creative perception really make a difference in our world? Is it true that, as the Persian poet Jalālu’d-dīn Rūmī exclaimed, “The clear bead at the centre changes everything”?

Sufis accent that our collective human evolution is “worked out” within the details of our individual lives.

In this regard, Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan observes that our attention to our planet’s own intelligence is opened via meditation, and that such an opening has a profound effect: “The collective working of many minds as one single idea, and the activity of the whole world, are governed by the intelligence of the planet, and unlock the doors opening up into a glorious future.” 

C. G. Jung identified a similar principle in his studies of the alchemy of human consciousness, describing a contagious action of multiplicatio. He characterised this as akin to a homeopathic-renewing power within a tincture, the effect of which spreads dramatically.

A parallel to this multiplicatio, operating in the psyche, is found in the natural world. For example, biologist Lynn Margulis observed that, by the profound interconnectedness within all living matter, a change in the genetic structure of a single microbe will, within a few years, affect the entire gene pool of all life forms on our planet.

Radiant intelligibility

Extending beyond the Sufi tradition, Indigenous teachers and other contemplatives have recognised Nature to be a sacred manuscript capable of providing the guidance that we need to survive and flourish.

Many have also emphasised that our individual perception and vision play a critical role in our evolution. 

Clear and luminous perception obtained via a deep practice of reflection or meditation sparks creativity and opens new possibilities. Such perception is a significant human contribution to the flourishing and vitality of our Earth.

It may help us to realise and be more responsive to what Thomas Berry called Earth’s “radiant intelligibility”, and better serve and safeguard our natural world. 

These Authors 

Felicia Norton is International Head of the Ziraat, a school of sacred ecology. Charles Smith teaches sustainability at Hofstra University. Their book An Emerald Earth: Cultivating a Natural Spirituality and Serving Creative Beauty in Our World is published by Twoseasjoin Press (2008). This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

The relationship between the young Roger Bate and the Big Tobacco companies is intriguing.

Bate was recruited as head of the Institute of Economic Affairs’ (IEA) Environment Unit. As such, he midwifed British climate denial, offering to place stories in the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal as a representative of a health charity.

Yet all the while, he was being paid by Big Tobacco. A free market zealot, Bate acted in the interests of a major international monopoly despite their product being proven to be highly addictive and responsible for killing millions of people.

Cancer Lawsuit

Bate hid his funding from the scientists he worked with and, it seems, was concerned about his office colleagues seeing his letters to the tobacco companies.

We only know of his work with tobacco because millions of internal documents were released by American court order after a class-action lawsuit by cancer sufferers.

Oil companies, however, have never been forced to disclose their documents in the same way.

There are two possibilities: either Bate offered the same clandestine services to Esso, BP and Shell, or he was demonstrating a particular zeal for working with tobacco.

It would be easy to characterise his behaviour as morally indefensible. But Bate believed that all individuals are merely motivated by self-interest.

That, in lining his pockets with tobacco money, he was only doing what everyone else would do if they were smart enough. In turn, the oil and tobacco companies were simply protecting their profits and shareholders in the same way.

‘War of Ideas’

Regulators were just bureaucrats creating a new gravy train, he explained in one press release, and environmentalists were merely clandestine socialists intent on attacking businesses like cigarette companies and ultimately seizing power for their own wicked ends.

“The war of ideas fought between socialists and laissez-faire adherents swung decisively to the latter with the demise of the socialist states in the late 1980s,” he argued in an article headlined ‘Post-Environmentalism’ published in the IEA journal.

He continued: “The intellectual battleground has shifted. The Left has retreated and regrouped into its heartland … the environment.”

This logic would fuel Bate as he set out to establish his own organisation, the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), to continue fighting the “war of ideas”.

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. 

Pacific Islanders believe that knowledge from their ancestors will prove crucial in solving the world’s most critical problem: how to protect ourselves against the imminent threat of climate change.

The Pacific Islands are acutely vulnerable to climate change.  Islands such as Kiribati and Tuvalu have an average elevation of only 2 metres, meaning rising sea levels threaten to destroy their very existence. Residents are facing the terrifying reality that they may have to abandon their homelands as they are slowly swallowed by the sea.

The islanders, however, are refusing to play victim. As the slogan of environmental activists The Pacific Climate Warriors put it: “We are not drowning, we are fighting”. 

Sustainable vessels 

A number of innovative environmental enterprises have emerged across the islands, that are pairing traditional knowledge with modern green technology to create sustainable solutions to climate change. 

Samoan architect Carinnya Feaunati believes that the intimate partnership indigenous people have always had with their local environment means they may hold “the main source of information for how we can tackle climate change”. This information may prove invaluable for global environmental research; if only the rest of the world will listen. 

As an Oceanic people, Pacific Islanders have travelled vast distances across the sea in ships made from natural materials for hundreds of years. They are hoping they can use their expertise to show that ocean travel does not have to mean the mass consumption of harmful fossil fuels.

Through merging modern technology with traditional boat-making techniques, a group of Fijians have created a large sea vessel that runs purely on solar and wind energy. It is called the ‘Uto ni Yalo’, which translates as ‘Spirit of the Sea’.

Dwain Qalovaki, Secretary of the Uto ni Yalo trust, said that the ongoing aim of the project is to encourage sustainable ocean transport. He is hoping that eventually, projects like his own will “replace ships that rely on fossil fuels”. He has already circumnavigated the world in his sustainable sea vessel, encouraging investors to incorporate his technology into their own ocean transport.

Protecting culture

Current plans are more locally focused, as Qalovaki and his team sail around the South Pacific promoting sustainable travel and initiating community-based ocean clean up programs.

Preventative measures, however, are not enough to combat an issue that is already happening. Recent decades have seen a huge increase in the number of cyclones and tsunamis hitting the islands. 

In 2009, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake caused a devastating tsunami to crash upon the shores of Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga. Samoa was particularly badly hit, with 150 people losing their lives. More recently in 2016, one of the worst recorded cyclones hit the Pacific Islands, destroying over 90% of the buildings in Vanuatu.

Feaunati said that this is particularly troubling because so many aspects of Pacific Island culture are inherently linked to the ocean. A rapidly changing environment not only poses the grave threat of forced relocation but also threatens the destruction of her community’s lifestyle and culture.

People no longer live in harmony with the environment, but fear it. Feaunati said that Samoans “live in anxiety” because “they feel like they have lost their age old connection with the ocean”. 

In response, residents of different Pacific Islands are banding together to form ideas that will protect their culture against these increasingly frequent environmental disasters. By sharing traditional farming practices, they hope to aid and strengthen each others communities when faced with an unpredictable and volatile environment.

Accumulated knowledge

Isso Nimhei, a farmer from Futuna Island, has been teaching agricultural workers on neighbouring islands a traditional way of preserving edible bananas. This preservation technique is intended to help in the case of food shortage during the aftermath of a natural disaster.

Similarly, Samoan native Joseph Afa has been teaching the ‘Laufasa technique’ to people living in Vanuatu. His technique uses a single banana shoot to grow up to fifteen new planting sprouts, rapidly multiplying banana propagation. 

Both of these techniques demonstrate how residents of the Pacific Islands are sharing years of accumulated knowledge, passed down to them by their ancestors. The shared threat of climate change has opened an important dialogue, uniting the pan-Pacific community under a common purpose.

Together, the islands have a louder global voice than they would each have on their own. For this reason, members of fifteen different Pacific Island nations have grouped together to form the ‘Pacific Warriors’. Hoping to gain support from the international community, the youth-led grassroots enterprise organise campaigns against the use of fossil fuels.

On 8 September 2018, they embarked on their most ambitious campaign to date: ‘Rise for Pacific Pawa’. With 18 events across 14 different nations, the organisation plans to pressure local governments into signing pledges committing to 100 percent renewable energy by 2020.

Legitimate solutions

This goal is within reach – the Samoan government have already shown considerable dedication to achieving a green future, and other islands are enthusiastic to follow.

With countries such as Paraguay and Iceland already running on 100 percent sustainable energy the message is clear: it is possible. By pledging to join them, the Pacific Islanders hope to build momentum for a global switch to renewable energy. They believe that “if Pacific communities at all levels can lead a transition to a Fossil Free future then the world must follow suit”. 

The Pacific Islanders are proving to be proactive pioneers in designing a sustainable future; but their success depends on the reaction of the international community.

For them, climate change is not a myth or a far away prospect, but a terrifying reality. Feaunati stressed that the international community need to listen to the “legitimate solutions” presented by indigenous voices, before it’s too late. 

This Author 

Emily Earnshaw is a freelance writer with a particular focus on environmental and human rights issues.

I’ve been thinking about something that Richard Layard, a leading scholar at the London School of Economics, said recently. An essential feature of school life, he argued, should be to teach our students to care for other people – to become compassionate and attentive young adults who will make our world a better place.

I couldn’t agree more. Watching my own university students grow into happy, fulfilled women and men who feel a responsibility to their communities has been one of the greatest joys of my teaching experience.

Yet if that is our mission, are we as university administrators and academics doing all we can to support it? If that is what we value, are we focusing campus resources in the most beneficial, student-centred way?

Sounding the alarm

Becoming a whole person is in part a function of the intellectual enrichment at which universities excel. But it is not enough to celebrate the life of the mind when students’ minds are overburdened by stress.

Numerous indicators show we have a crisis on our hands. In 2015, the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research found that the number of first-year university students reporting a mental health condition had increased since 2006 by nearly 500%. In that same time period, suicide deaths among students rose by 79 percent.

I’ve seen the way the alarm is being sounded, both at my university in Canada and across the UK. Students, faculty and administrators alike have organised, advocated and invested in critical services to promote student wellbeing and respond to crises when they occur.

According to one administrator at the University of Bristol, mental health is at the top of the agenda of vice-chancellors across the country.

Yet for all we’re doing, the data shows we still have far to go. Our universities are about to open their doors to a new class of bright young people. We owe it to them to create a campus system that addresses their mental health needs.

Many factors exacerbate mental health issues on campus – pressure to succeed, financial strain, the existential confusion of young adulthood, and more – but one place to start may be resting in the palm of our hands.

The American psychologist Jean Twenge of San Diego State University in California wrote in The Atlantic magazine last September, “The twin rise of the smartphone and social media has caused an earthquake of a magnitude we’ve not seen in a very long time, if ever.”

Twenge’s work is part of a growing body of research that finds screen time less fulfilling and more anxiety-inducing than good old-fashioned face-to-face time. That’s a problem for young people in the UK, who have been estimated to spend almost four hours a day on their phones.

Vicious cycle

What’s worse, research suggests that, developmentally, young people are especially susceptible to the isolating effects of smartphones and social media.

Earlier this year, an article published in Nature pointed out that adolescence is a time when peer acceptance becomes paramount, meaning that not only are young people more likely to follow their friends onto social media platforms, but they’re also more sensitive to the feedback they receive on those platforms.

The cycle is vicious. According to researchers at the University of Sheffield, “spending an hour a day chatting on social networks reduces the probability of being completely satisfied with life overall by approximately 14 percentage points” for 10–15-year-old children.

Statistically, that’s more significant than the comparable effects of skipping school or being raised in a single-parent household.

Young people are well aware of the effects of smartphones and social media on how they feel. A 2017 Royal Society for Public Health study on the issue in the UK found that “young people themselves say four of the five most used social media platforms [Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter] actually make their feelings of anxiety worse.”

And they’re taking action. A recent survey by the research group Origin found that 34 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 24 have deleted one or more of their social media platforms, in part because of the negativity they experienced.

These young people want an overhaul of their relationship to technology – and universities can be allies in helping students to unplug and reconnect. Fortunately, students, faculty and administrators have already put forward solutions we could implement right away.

The academic Donna Freitas surveyed more than 1,000 college students about social media. In a School Library Journal article summarising her findings, Freitas wrote:

“Over and over, at every university, I heard stories like this: “There’s this one spot in the third-floor sub-basement of the library? By the wall past the elevators? I always go there to study, because the Wi-Fi doesn’t reach. You have to get there early – it’s always jammed.”

Student experience 

Following their lead, Freitas recommends wifi-free zones on campus, where students can give unmitigated attention and care to friends, check in with their own thoughts, and reconnect with Nature.

Similarly, in their essay ‘Elevating the Student Experience’, Amy Aponte, an expert on campus infrastructure, and Gay Perez, executive director of housing and residence life at the University of Virginia, have called for “deep attention spaces” – device-free dining halls and dorm rooms, optimised with natural light and tranquil aesthetics.

More provocatively, they suggest that tech-friendly spaces “be made intentionally less desirable to inhabit for longer visits”.

Inside the classroom, professors must do their part to help students engage, not only with the material, but also with the community around them.

Technology may be an aid in the modern classroom, but the work of building meaningful relationships requires a human touch. This isn’t supplemental to our work as educators: it’s integral.

The best learning happens in caring classrooms where people feel secure, respected, valued and seen. And in my experience, a deliberate effort to foster interaction between professor and student, and among students as peers, enriches the classroom experience in all directions, making it more rewarding to teach as well as learn.

Of course, systemic change on a critical issue like mental health requires concerted leadership from the top. In addition to investing in traditional mental health services and exploring student-centred approaches like the ideas described above, school administrations should commit to tracking the determinants of their students’ wellbeing.

To paraphrase a refrain from Layard, if you treasure it, measure it. Consistent, reliable data will help us assess, adjust and improve our efforts to make universities places where students can be happy, healthy and whole.

This Author 

Kim Samuel, a former Resurgence trustee, is founder of the Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness and is Professor of Practice at McGill University, Montreal. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.