Plastics pollution, that ultimate symbol of egregious fossil fuel consumption, has triggered a wave of public anger that has shown, once again, people’s instinctive concern about our relationship with the natural world.

Public revulsion at plastic waste was stoked by Blue Planet II, the UK’s most watched TV series in 2017, with its shocking scenes of sea creatures being starved, choked, enmeshed and tortured by plastic waste. It also had an international impact: when an internet-based TV channel in China screened it, 80 million people downloaded it.

Media coverage of plastics has focused on individual consumption. Appeals are made to people not to buy plastic bags, and coffee chains seek public approval by promising to use fewer plastic cups. The larger picture – of farm-to-supermarket supply chains, of industrial uses, of the petrochemicals industry that produces most plastics, and of the corporations that control these processes – is often ignored.

Embedded systems

Petrochemicals and plastics is just one of the technological systems through which most fossil fuels in the world are consumed. Others include electricity networks, aviation and military systems, car-based urban transport systems, urban built environments and industrial agriculture systems.

Thinking about these systems and their history can sharpen our understanding of how fossil fuel use has risen to levels associated with dangerous global warming – and of how a transition away from the fossil-fuel-intensive economy might happen.

The ways in which these technological systems are embedded in the social and economic systems in which we live also matters.

Decisions made by those who control these systems have ratcheted up fuel consumption consistently. Consumption growth accelerated during the post-war boom – and accelerated again in the 1990s and 2000s, after the world’s governments had acknowledged the danger of global warming at the Rio summit of 1992. Throughout, consumption has reflected widening social inequalities.

The history of plastics illustrates these points well. The availability of cheap fossil fuels in the post-war economic boom produced the first jump in output. Global plastics output was one million tonnes in 1949, six million tonnes in 1960 and 100 million tonnes in 1989. 

After the 1973 oil price shock, oil products demand fell, and with it the fortunes of the petrochemicals industry. But globalisation in the 1980s, and the “roaring nineties” economic boom, not only pushed plastics consumption to new heights in rich countries, but saw it proliferate in parts of the global south too. 

Wasteful consumption 

Most plastics are used in packaging, and construction. In the 1980s, their use in rich-country supply chains mushroomed. Glass milk bottles, paper milk cartons and other recyclable forms of packaging were replaced by plastics.

Research in the UK showed that most of this plastic never reaches the consumer: larger volumes are used in moving goods between farms, factories, warehouses and supermarkets. As any supply-chain worker will tell you, the just-in-time packaging and transport strategies that gulped down more plastics were aimed above all at cutting costs, including labour costs, and reducing workforces.  

In rich countries, the 1980s also heralded throwaway culture. It became cheaper to buy new than to repair – again, at least partly because of labour costs.

Consumption became more wasteful: for example, American researchers found that $29.4 billion worth of plastic toys had been bought in the US in 2001, about 69 per child under the age of 12. Even here, though, it was not just about individual consumers: many of the toys were given away with fast-food meals, an advertising tactic to rope children into eating unhealthy, industrially-produced food.

The 1980s also heralded the international trade in waste, most of which is produced by rich-world industry (rather than final consumers), much of which is plastic, and much of which ends up in oceans. 

The complicity of the world’s governments also has a history. The Norwegian ocean explorer Thor Heyerdahl – who older readers may remember for his voyages on wooden rafts – raised the alarm about plastics pollution of oceans in the 1970s.

The recycling symbol, introduced in 1983, became a fig-leaf for polluting businesses: 40 years later, in 2013, only 14 percent of plastics were being recycled. Regulation was, and remains, laughably inadequate in most countries.

Transforming systems

In Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption (Pluto, 2018),  I have looked not only at the most egregious examples of fossil fuel use, such as plastics manufacture and aviation, but at the larger ones that account for most of the world’s fossil fuel use: electricity systems (about one third), cars and roads (probably one quarter or more) and urban heating.

Another question any historian has to tackle is how the international climate negotiations that began at the Rio summit in 1992 have failed so spectacularly to reverse rising fossil fuel use – which rose by nearly three eighths in the quarter century 1990-2015.

We all have opinions about this, of course – but we must beware of normalising it. It is a failure of the world’s leading states, potentially more serious than the breakdown of the 19th century geopolitical order that paved the way to the first world war in 1914.

One key theme is that, insidious and reactionary as climate science denial is – just look at the White House in 2018 – it never dominated the Rio process.

What counted, much more, was principled opposition to binding targets, which united both Republicans and Democrats in the US, and the belief that market mechanisms should be used to constrain fossil fuel consumption, to which almost the entire European political elite also subscribed.

This led to the wasted years of claims that the Kyoto protocol was working. Meanwhile, governments were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies into both production and consumption of fossil fuels. Counting those is a much better guide to governments’ priorities than listening to politicians’ speeches.

History shows that global fossil fuel use has been driven up by the expansion of technological systems, in the context of the expansion of the global capitalist economy since the mid twentieth century. There are no easy formulas for the transition away from fossil fuels. It means transforming not only the technological systems, but social and economic systems too.

This Author 

Simon Pirani is senior visiting research fellow at the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies and author of Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption (Pluto, 2018).

John Blundell – then director general of free market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) – opened his second major conference Environmental Risk: Perception and Reality at the four-star Stakis St Ermin’s Hotel on Caxon Street in London in October 1995.

The advertised speakers included Blundell’s old friend Fred Smith, the founder of the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), who had flown over from the United States along with the coal-funded sceptic scientist Dr Patrick Michaels.

Piers Corbyn, a former Marxist student radical and increasingly eccentric climate denier, was also among the panellists with Mike Fisher, IEA trustee and the son of the libertarian think tank founder Antony Fisher.

The conference was the first major event where climate denial was promoted in England, but they were included among a series of other environmental issues for which scientific findings had prompted public health officials to recommend tough new regulations.

Lavish affair

The £160-a-ticket event was a brilliant example of the strategy set out by the American tobacco companies where industries united in their opposition precisely because single-issue campaigns by vested interests would be distrusted by experts and members of the public.

One attendee remembers: “It was fairly lavish for an academics type of conference … a decent amount of money was splashed on it.”

Among those named on the attendee list were: Richard Ritchie from BP; his counterparts at Shell and Esso; representatives from energy giants British Gas, United Gas, Scottish Nuclear and Yorkshire Electricity; tobacco companies British American Tobacco and R J Reynolds; and Chevron.

The representatives of Britain’s most deadly industries were about to experience a masterclass in public relations.

The conference presented the most convincing and compelling arguments for why businesses should be allowed to continue to produce products that endangered the lives of their customers and posed a serious risk to the natural environment.

‘Busy-body regulators’

Blundell had imported from the United States the latest arguments against state regulations in Britain, where the European Union was about to impose limits on tobacco and where support for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and climate mitigation was almost universal.

Blundell and his cohorts presented safety regulations as the imposition of busy-body regulators consumed by their own ambition and power.

The programme from the event gives an indication of how this was done. It stated: “Hazards exist all around us. Each day we make numerous judgements as to the level of risk posed by the hazards with which we come into contact … even the scientific community often lacks consensus as to what levels of risk are acceptable.”

It went on to ask: “What are the implications for business, which must respond to the continual changes in our perception of risk and the responding regulatory climate? And how do we craft policy in the face of uncertainty?”

Fred Smith’s talk was titled “Is the precautionary approach itself risky?” He set out the highly counterintuitive arguments that asbestos should not be considered dangerous, that airline safety standards were resulting in more deaths, and that huge American cars should be promoted as being safer.

‘Death by regulation’

He told the audience: “At the CEI we are promoting this more balanced viewpoint, seeking out examples of overregulation that are, literally, lethal.

“We refer to the project as our ‘death by regulation’ project to dramatise the effect that the failure of government to consider the risks that are created by regulation are serious.”

He concluded: “Regulating ourselves into poverty is tragic.”

Michaels gave a talk shortly after lunch titled “Are claims of man-made climate change exaggerated, or are the risks as significant as predicted? Is there really scientific consensus on global warming?”

He had recently published The Satanic Gases: Political Science of the Greenhouse Effect. During this talk, Michaels set out the arguments that would be used by British sceptics repeatedly over the coming decades.

Dangerous climate

He complained that the treaty signed in Rio just three years prior failed to define “dangerous” climate change and demanded emissions must be cut if Bangladesh were to be badly hit – “even if the net benefit is positive” around the world.

He said the document “allows the United Nations to dictate energy policy to sovereign nations” and was “designed to transfer massive quantities of wealth from producer to non-producer nations”.

He said the IPCC procedures were “clearly a recipe for scientific disaster” because reviewers and lead authors were often funded by the same agencies.

He introduced the allegation that the average global temperatures recorded by Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), could have been distorted by the fact thermometers were surrounded by growing towns and cities, which produced their own localised warming.

This argument would become a favourite attack on climate science and provided much of the ammunition around Climategate almost 15 years later when leaked emails from UEA found their way into the hands of climate denier bloggers.

Significant warming

Michaels added: “Given the volume of arguments about recent global warming, one remarkable fact emerges: even in the global land based record there is no statistically significant warming from 1978 to 1993.”

The fact that global warming progresses in fits and starts was pointed out by the IPCC’s first report.

However, this argument would be used again and again by the sceptics. Lord Lawson and his climate denial charity the Global Warming Policy Foundation repeatedly state that there has been no warming from 2000 to 2013 without acknowledging the long-term warming trend and the fact we are experiencing the warmest decade on record.

Hired by Blundell to head up the IEA’s new Environment Unit, Roger Bate wrote in the IEA’s in-house journal published in conjunction with the conference: “Patrick Michaels considers the huge uncertainties surrounding global warming and the risks we actually face.”

“His assertion that the risks are negligible is supported best by his discussion of scientific impropriety at the [IPCC]. Michaels repeatedly asked for the data resulting from the much heralded latest forecasting model. He alleged it was still predicting too much warming.”

The war that would explode in the Climategate hacking scandal many years later.

Funded by coal

It was unclear whether the conference delegates were aware that Michaels was funded by coal companies. But the programme did thank Procter & Gamble, ARCO Chemical Europe and Virgin Atlantic Airways for sponsoring academic bursaries for the conference.

BHP Minerals, which mines coal, copper and iron, was recognised for “their generous contribution to this event”. Bate’s close friend Julian Morris and his IEA colleague Mark Pennington were both named among the “ARCO Chemical Europe Inc. Environment Fellows”.

The event was considered by many delegates as a huge success, although many failed to recognise the significance of Michael’s contribution to attacking climate science.

Bate, however, used the conference as the perfect spur to a new round of fundraising efforts, writing to tobacco, oil and chemical industry representatives that attended the conference.

Bate’s assistant wrote to Dr Sharon Boyse of British American Tobacco sending his Wall Street Journal article attacking global warming and inviting her to lunch at the IEA on Valentine’s Day.

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. 

If you go down to the woods today, you’ll find a pair of ghostly white and charcoal black monoliths rising through the early-morning mist, mournfully reminding us that ash trees are under grave threat.

This hauntingly beautiful tree installation Ash to Ash went on display this month at White Horse Wood, Maidstone, shining a light on the plight of one of our best-loved and most significant species. 

The piece has been commissioned by The Ash Project, formed as an urgent cultural response to ash dieback in the Kent Downs and the potential devastation the deadly fungus could have on this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Joining forces

The charity couldn’t have found more fitting artists to take up their cause because, incredibly, the sculpture’s creators, Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey, have been researching their latest artwork for a total of more than eighty years. 

Ackroyd studied with the pioneering artist David Nash in 1978, just after he had planted his iconic Ash Dome installation, a ring of twenty-two ash trees planted in a secret location in north Wales and intended to stand for centuries. 

As a young student at the Royal College of Art in the 1980s, Harvey made arrows and pitched fork sculptures from ash. The duo combined forces in the nineties and the tree has continued to inspire them ever since. 

Their in-depth arboreal knowledge makes Ackroyd and Harvey the no-brainer choice to produce an emblematic piece in response to the life and imminent death of one of our most important cornerstone species.

The Ash Project is part of the campaign to highlight the sad prediction that up to 98 percent of Britain’s 150 million mature ash trees may be struck down by dieback disease in the next decade.

Research by Natural England found that 1,058 different species from beetles to birds, lichens to mammals are dependant in some way on ash. All will be affected by the trees’ demise.

Living sculpture

Ecology is intrinsic to Ackroyd and Harvey’s textural work, and has driven them on to produce many award-winning and iconic ‘living’ pieces including the striking ‘History Trees’, a series of ten mature trees holding huge engraved rings at the entrances to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Other memorable and thought-provoking commissions include large-scale artworks built into the David Attenborough Building at Cambridge University

The central pillars of their new Ash to Ash sculpture are two ten metre high trees, one stripped of its bark leaving a ghostly pale smooth surface. Its dark twin is blackened by fire. The limbs of both are truncated and carefully pierced by 10,000 arrow shafts.

The artists explained: “The arrow, cleaved from ash, is integral to our artwork, stripped of feather flight and steel head, it is impaled in its thousands into the monolith form of the two trees.”

The effect creates a softened halo around the structures. They continued: “The two forms seem to mirror each other, one casts a dark shadow of loss. Ash to Ash is our way of inviting people to connect emotionally with the landscape, to help them find a way of mourning the loss of this tree and the way that it will change the land forever.”

Landscape restoration

The Kent Downs is one of Britain’s most densely wooded landscapes, with the ash tree its most common species. Recent drone footage of the leaf-cloaked hills is shocking, revealing the skeletons of thousands of dead ash hidden deep within the forests, making the county the hardest hit by dieback disease, at least so far.

As a result, the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is collaborating with more than twenty national and local partners via The Ash Project to develop a wide-ranging programme of walks, talks and workshops along with a Kent-wide plan for landscape restoration.

Part of the project is The Ash Archive, an exhibition currently touring Kent that celebrates the human relationship with ash trees and the woodland environment.

Works by artists and designers include Ackroyd and Harvey, Colin Booth, Adam Chodzko, Sebastian Cox, French and Mottershead, Magz Hall, Sheaf + Barley and David Nash (in collaboration with Common Ground) and a collection of objects made of ash wood for Rob Penn’s book The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees.

Ackroyd and Harvey drew inspiration from Penn’s work. His book tracks his search for a veteran ash tree growing in a forest near to his Welsh hillside home, that he then felled and made into more than 40 objects.

Remarkable history

From hurley sticks to sledges, Penn captures the essence of the tree and its remarkable history through the art of craftsmanship.

Ackroyd explained: “Rob’s generous support to shape our understanding of how the ash tree in its myriad of wooden forms has manifested itself in so many objects and weaved itself through so many place names that its presence, and now inevitable absence, in our landscape is something we can never take for granted.”

Ash has played a significant role in many cultures for millennia, including our’s. The sap (manna) was fed to newborn babies as their first food to protect them.

Ash has also featured in Chinese medicine for thousands of years, as well as being used to make everything from cart wheels through to Routemaster buses. It has many mythical properties, too: snakes were said to go through fire to avoid ash leaves.

Today research has shown ash to have positive effects in the treatment of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and HIV.

Distinct challenge

Part of the artists’ investigations uncovered a huge industry in arrow production between 1300-1500. Defeats of medieval armies by arrow-storms where English archers could unleash twelve arrows per minute intrigued the duo. The arrow is light enough to shoot a good distance, yet heavy enough to maintain its high, initial velocity and cause damage when striking the target.

Harvey concluded: “We hope that Ash to Ash becomes part of an urgently needed wake-up call for the preservation of tree life generally and the future of the British landscape.”

This is a distinct challenge given the pervasiveness of the fungal infection Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, which is affecting millions of ash trees across the country. As well as mature specimens, vulnerable seedlings also easily succumb to the infection. 

The disease is no respecter of art either as it spreads through the UK. Even Ackroyd’s early inspiration, the wonderful Ash Dome planted and conceived by Nash and intended to outlive the Royal Academician, has now been struck with the fungus. 

The Forestry Commission has embarked on research to identify the genetic factors that allow some ash trees to tolerate or resist infection, with a long-term view to breeding new disease-resistant ash trees for the future. 

In the meantime, if you go down to the woods at Maidstone, you’ll be sure of a big, very artistic, surprise.

This Author

Gary Cook is an environmental painter who was the senior artist for The Sunday Times for twenty six years. He exhibits regularly in the south west and London including with the Society of Graphic Fine Art and at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colour. Gary tweets from @cookthepainter.

The Ash Archive exhibition is on show from 11 to 20 October at the Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery, Sevenoaks TN13 1HW

A decade on from the global financial crisis, we can partly understand its cause as a crash in the subprime mortgage market.

Banks began offering mortgages to people increasingly unlikely to make their repayments; packaged all those new lower quality ‘sub-prime’ mortgages up into bundles; and traded them pretending they were low-risk, all explained with far more detail and humour by Oscar-winning film The Big Short.

Eventually, people began defaulting on their mortgages, the sub-prime bundles became worthless, and trillions of dollars were lost.

Money heist

More instructively, we can understand the crisis as having multiple roots in the marketisation of housing, the limitless drive to accumulate wealth with little interrogation of longer-term consequences, and the deregulation of the financial sector which held the health of the global economy in its hand.

The story has been often told of how the gains of this reckless system were privatised and its losses socialised. This was a crisis of capitalism in decay and yet it was the fundamental logic of capitalism – enriching the richer and impoverishing the poor – which defined its winners and losers.

Bankers still received their bonuses while ‘austerity’ was imposed on the masses under the guise of fiscal prudence covering for an ideological crusade of wider deregulation and increasingly scandalous privatisation.  

Earlier this year, a Spanish TV show, Money Heist, took Netflix by storm – becoming the platform’s most watched non-English language TV series on Netflix ever. It even rocketed Italian anti-fascist song Bella Ciao up the music charts globally.

Indeed, Bella Ciao was not featured in the show apolitically. The legacy of the partisan’s resistance defines the series’ underlying politics. It articulates a popular dissatisfaction with the financial system and the double standards applied to it compared with ordinary citizens.

Viewers are steered to join the show’s fictional public in sympathising with the heist which occupied The Royal Mint of Spain and printed nearly €1bn in protest.

The heist’s orchestrator explains how little cash they actually printed compared to quantities printed in recent years by the European Central Bank and sent directly to the pockets of bankers. “Did anyone say that the ECB was a thief? No. Liquidity injections they called it.”

Bankers’ bonuses

Compare the bonuses received by bankers responsible for the 2008 crash to the militarised police response, SWAT teams and gun fire directed at the heist. Compare the crimes.

The obvious point that this fictional heist is not a coherent response to this unjust financial system in crisis doesn’t need to be laboured. However, it is significant that such protest so strongly captures the imagination of Money Heist’s fictional public and real viewers.

There has been no coherent alternative to the prevailing system of injustice on the table. For them, the poetic justice of a heist committing the same crime as the bankers and getting away with it just as they did will do.

This political helplessness may have been true in the setting, time and context of Money Heist – Spain, still feeling the effects of deep austerity. For many it still feels true.

But as movements for democratic socialism surge globally and the climate justice movement gets serious about what to do with power beyond protest, our critique of financialised capitalism need not end with unreconstructed expressions of disdain for its flagrant injustices – whether the protest movements of the early 2010s or Money Heist.

It may be 10 years later than ideal, but the proposal for fossil free finance is part of a wider program of radically transforming the role that finance plays in society. It must be an important part of our radical response to the financial crisis designed to capture popular imagination.

Carbon bubble

Underlying demands for fossil free finance is our analysis identifying the striking parallels between the financial crisis of capitalism in 2008 and today’s climate crisis.

Capital’s fundamental drive to accumulate by any means pushed the housing market to the brink punishing society’s most vulnerable – just as it pushes the climate to its limits while the poorest bear the brunt of its breakdown.

By financing the extraction of ever more fossil fuels and creating unnecessary markets to meet demand not for energy but financial speculation – knowing what they do about the consequences of unrestrained fossil fuel extraction – investment bankers are gambling with our climate just as they did so irresponsibly with our homes. It will end the same.

The market valuation of fossil fuels currently assumes all known reserves will be extracted and their value realised. The idea of a ‘carbon bubble’ recognises that to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown over 80 percent of reserves must stay in the ground. Citigroup predict the economy will haemorrhage over $100 trillion.

The housing bubble burst. The carbon bubble will burst. When it does, the severity of consequences for a global economy built on the foundations of assets suddenly stripped of value may mean we can never return to business-as-usual.

Real justice

Let’s be clear. Climate catastrophe could well precipitate a financial crisis unprecedented in scale if the transition to decarbonisation is left too late and rushed in the wake of catastrophe as tipping points are passed.

In this case, the story of climate injustice thus far would likely be reproduced. The financial sector and fossil fuel industry would be bailed out and the costs of financial collapse and climate breakdown laid at the feet of the poor.

Whereas Money Heist represents an unreconstructed discontent with this system nevertheless evoking sympathy of systematically disempowered and disposed public, there is only real justice in a radical transformation of the financial system and who it works for.

To avoid a climate change-induced financial crash, banks must divest themselves of finance for new fossil fuel infrastructure locking our economy into carbon intensive production.

Banks financing operations must be repurposed to fund a far-reaching program of investment in zero-carbon research and infrastructure to decarbonise the economy while empowering workers and communities whose livelihoods capital so readily gambles with.

More on how next time.

This Author

Chris Saltmarsh is co-director of climate change campaigns at People & Planet. He tweets at @chris_saltmarsh.

Dr Fred Singer and his sceptic Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) would become an increasingly important platoon in the army assembling against climate science.

Along with the late Dr Frederick Seitz – a founder of the Marshall Institute – the SEPP would use PR tactics developed by the tobacco industry to question and undermine climate science.

Seitz, for example, accused the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of producing scientific summaries “exaggerating risk… solely – we suspect – to satisfy an ideological objective of aggressively constraining the use of energy.”

Meanwhile, Singer (pictured) was busy raising money. He proposed to one oil industry PR firm that they should support a $95,000 project. This would include lectures and publications designed to attack the IPCC and help “stem the tide towards ever more onerous controls on energy use.”

Shortly after, Singer testified at the US House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that “there is no scientific consensus on ozone depletion or its consequences.”

Industry funded

Singer also appeared on the popular American programme Nightline to tell viewers that the climate change science had been exaggerated, but when pressed he was forced to admit that he had in the past received funding from oil companies Exxon, Shell and ARCO.

Ross Gelbspan, the American investigative journalist who first exposed Singer’s oil funding, at the time raised serious concerns about the “profound conflict of interest” which arises when a scientist claiming climate change is not happening is funded by Exxon.

He asked: “What would happen if the industry-funded ‘greenhouse skeptics’ just happened to stumble on a clue that the warming of the planet is, indeed, intensifying – and that the findings of the IPCC have validity? Would they be willing to change the direction of their research and, in the process, risk of cutting off their industry funding?”

But Singer used the SEPP not only to attack climate science but also to aggressively attack the latest research showing that even passive smoking could cause cancer, leading to millions of painful deaths – all the while being paid directly by the tobacco companies.

Tobacco benefits

The eminent scientist drafted a report called The EPA and the Science of Environmental Tobacco Smoke, which was commissioned and funded by the industry’s Tobacco Institute via the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.

A private memo sent to Walter Woodson, senior vice president at the Tobacco Institute, provided Singer’s curriculum vitae and suggested the industry lobby pay $20,000 for support in challenging the impacts of environmental tobacco smoke. A further internal document shows that the Tobacco Institute forwarded the cash to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute.

Singer also benefited less directly from the millions of dollars the tobacco firms were providing to American think tanks.

In January 1995, he moved into the offices of the Atlas Foundation, which had been set up by the libertarian think tank founder Antony Fisher in his tireless crusade against totalitarianism, the state and regulations.

Atlas posted on its website: “For those who believe public policy should be based on sound science, Dr. Singer offers a wealth of information, credibility and encouragement.”

The think tank was paid $475,000 by Philip Morris, the tobacco giant engaged in a fierce legal and public relations battle to deny the scientific consensus on tobacco smoke.

While Singer was just one pawn in a much bigger game being executed by the tobacco industry, it did not stop him learning from their public relations strategies. Later, he would apply their tactics to the task of undermining the public trust in climate science.

‘Sound science’

In June 1994, a year prior to Singer moving to Atlas, Philip Morris began working with the public relations firm APCOAssociates to launch The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). This coalition falsely claimed to be a “grassroots” organisation advocating “sound science” in policy decision making.

Burson Marsteller – the same PR company advising the oil industry – was hired to organise and promote seminars as part of what they called the Sound Science Project. The public relations experts told the tobacco company that funding would have to be found from other interest groups if the project was to have any chance of succeeding in influencing scientists.

“It is absolutely vital that we succeed in getting funding of the seminar from a broader group of sponsors than just PM[Philip Morris],” stated one secret memo. “Otherwise we would not be able to ensure the credibility of the seminar in relation to the scientists.”

“And if the seminar has not got that credibility, then outcomes of the meeting will not have great value,” it continued. This advice would prove hugely significant.

Corporate America

The tobacco companies took it on board. They began to reach out to other corporate giants whose profits were threatened by scientific research proving their products were dangerous to public health and the natural environment.

Corporate America began to resist the calls for regulations, and in the process discovered the tremendous value of free market ideology with its distrust of the state, as promoted by Friedrich Hayek, John Blundell, Fisher, the Koch brothers, and so on.

The arguments presented by tobacco to protect its financial interests would echo the sincere beliefs of the libertarians.

“Science should never be corrupted to achieve political ends,” they planned to tell the public. “Economic growth cannot afford to be held hostage to paternalistic, overregulation.”

Big Tobacco spent $100,000 setting up the Restoring Integrity to Science Coalition “to educate the media, public officials and the public about the dangers of ‘junk science’.”

The industry would also “create a shadow version of the US Competitive Council… It would promote the need to balance environmental regulation with economic growth.”

British regulations

Across the pond, the tobacco industry in Britain found some firm friends at free market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). The pipe-smoking Lord Harris of High Cross had formed FOREST to directly challenge the government’s attempt to set increasingly stringent regulations to reduce smoking in the interests of public health.

The measures being suggested were a ban on advertising and also the curtailing of smoking in offices, pubs and public spaces. FOREST argued that such regulations would undermine the economy, close down businesses and, most importantly, were a totalitarian infringement on the rights of the private individual to choose to smoke if they so wish.

FOREST published Through the Smokescreen of “Science”: The Dangers of Politically Corrupted Science for Democratic Public Policy in December 1994.

Harris also chaired the advisory council with his IEA colleague professor David Myddelton, the popular author and journalist Auberon Waugh, and the soon-to-be disgraced MP Neil Hamilton.

Obvious partner

The IEA, with its long history of receiving funding from tobacco, and institutional ties to the Atlas Foundation in the US, would be an obvious partner in any initiative to bring the Sound Science initiative to Britain.

Tom Hockaday from APCO sent an internal memo to Matt Winokur at Philip Morris in March 1994, advising that a “TASSC-like group” should also be formed in Europe to counter the formulation of regulations of smoking.

Winokur confirmed that he knew Roger Bate at the IEA’s Environment Unit, but claimed that after almost 20 years he could not remember he worked with him to establish the European Science and Environment Forum during the ‘90s.   

He told me: “This sounds like a bad line from a movie but I really have no recollection.”

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.

The long awaited Agriculture Bill finally made its first appearance this week when it was introduced before Parliament. This is the UK Government’s plan on what UK farming will look like post Brexit.

There is no reference to the protection of human health or public health in the Agriculture Bill as regards to farmers, the main users of pesticides – despite the DEFRA Consultation that preceded the publication of the Agriculture Bill being called Health and Harmony.

In fact, it seems that the only notable references to the health of ‘people’ are in relation to the functions of public authorities.

Human health

There is no specific mention of pesticides except in three places when defining persons “closely connected” with an agri-food supply chain as including those supplying pesticides.

Further, there does not appear to be any specific mention of agro-chemicals or chemicals at all.

There is only a vague reference in a couple of places to “preventing, reducing or protecting from environmental hazards” – but with no definition of those hazards and so as said nothing specifically on either pesticides or human health and certainly nothing in relation to protecting human health from pesticides!

Therefore, there is no recognition or even any specific reference in the Agriculture Bill – or Mr Gove’s statements – to the continued risks associated with the continued use of pesticides and other agro-chemicals on crop fields across the UK.

Pesticides remain the biggest contributor of damage, pollution, and contamination of the air, soil, water and overall environment in agricultural areas, as well as damaging human health. 

Agricultural pesticides

This means that much of the perceived benefits of the proposed new Agriculture Bill that Michael Gove and DEFRA are advocating simply will not materialise.

The widespread use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals in our existing farming system appears to be the Government’s ‘elephant in the room’ because of DEFRA’s reluctance to mention it – let alone focus on it.

Agriculture accounts for more than 70% of land use in the UK, and has a major influence on our environment. Considering that currently only around 3% of farmland in the UK is organic, then the vast majority of the 70% of land that is used in the UK for agriculture will be land that is regularly sprayed under the existing chemical intensive conventional farming system.

Latest Government statistics show that regarding just pesticides alone (ie. not including chemical fertilisers and all the other agro chemicals used in conventional farming), in 2014 the total area treated with pesticides on agricultural and horticultural crops was 80,107,993 hectares, with the total weight applied 17,757,242 kg.

The reality of crop spraying in the countryside is that it involves cocktails of pesticides, as agricultural pesticides are rarely used individually but commonly sprayed in mixtures – quite often a mixture will consist of 4 or 5 different products.

Rural citizens

There are approx. 2,000 pesticide products currently approved for UK agricultural use and each product formulation in itself can contain a number of active ingredients, as well as other hazardous chemicals, such as solvents, surfactants, co-formulants (and many of which can have adverse effects on human health in their own right, even before considering any potential synergistic effects in a chemical mixture).

Therefore if the Government continues to permit the release of innumerable cocktails of pesticides and other harmful chemicals over the majority of UK land then how will farming change in a post Brexit landscape? The answer is simple. It won’t.

The pollution and contamination of our health and the environment must be stopped at the highest level, which means if such harmful farming practices are no longer permitted by the Government then farmers would have to adapt and find alternative methods that do not put public health and the environment at the risk of harm.

It is concrete and definitive action that is needed to clean up UK agriculture. This is very long overdue, especially regarding the protection of human health and lives.

For over 7 decades rural residents and communities have not been protected from the risks that pesticides pose to us and our families, and there have been no mandatory measures in the UK specifically for the protection of rural citizens.

Chemical-intensive

While operators generally have protection when using agricultural pesticides – such as use of personal protective equipment, respirators, and will be in filtered cabs – rural residents and communities have absolutely no protection at all. In any event residents would obviously not be expected to wear such equipment on their own property and land!

There are many thousands of known cases of adverse health impacts reported by rural residents across the UK, but which the Government has continued to blatantly ignore. Obviously with millions of rural residents exposed in crop sprayed areas there will undoubtedly be many more unreported cases.

A few examples of the truly harrowing experiences from other affected rural residents can be seen within my ongoing petition which calls on the Prime Minister Theresa May, and DEFRA Secretary Michael Gove, to urgently secure the protection of rural residents and communities by banning all crop spraying and use of any pesticides near residents’ homes, schools, and children’s playgrounds.

The campaign petition has also been signed by a number of prominent figures including Hillsborough QC Michael Mansfield, Stanley Johnson, Jonathon Porritt, Gordon Roddick, Ben Goldsmith, Caroline Lucas MP, among others.

A number of recent major international reports have detailed the damage to human health from existing industrial and chemical-intensive conventional food and farming systems.

For example:

• The United Nations report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food in March 2017 that found that chronic exposure to agricultural pesticides has been associated with several diseases and conditions including cancer, developmental disorders, and sterility, and that those living near crop fields are particularly vulnerable to exposure from these chemicals;
• The IPES-FOOD report that outlines the unacceptable harm caused by the current chemical farming systems; exposes just some of the astronomical health costs externalized by the current system; and finds an urgent and “overwhelming case for action.” The report found that many of the severest health conditions afflicting populations around the world – from respiratory diseases to a range of cancers – are linked to industrial food and farming practices, including chemical-intensive agriculture;
• The Lancet Commission on pollution and health report on the global deaths and chronic diseases from outdoor air pollution, and which included from the use of pesticides. In fact the lead author was reported as saying that his biggest concern is the impact of the hundreds of industrial chemicals and pesticides already widely dispersed around the world.

Wiped out

The 2017 UN Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food concluded that moving away from pesticide-reliant industrial agriculture to non-chemical farming methods should now be a political priority in all countries globally.

The new post Brexit UK Agriculture Bill and policy provides a real opportunity for the UK to adopt such a non-chemical farming policy in order to no longer use toxic chemicals in the production of our food.

This would then protect not only the health of rural residents and communities, as well as other members of the public, but also the environment, wildlife, pollinators, other species, and biodiversity.

So here’s hoping that Parliamentarians will amend the Agriculture Bill to reflect the health and environmental protections that are so urgently needed.

The origins of traditional farming methods did not include dependence on chemical inputs for mass production. Such poisons should never have had any place in the air we breathe, food we eat, and environment we live in.

Therefore it is a complete paradigm shift that is needed to move away from the use of pesticides in farming/agriculture altogether. Such a move is absolutely integral to the health and existence of all those living in the British countryside, as well as other species that are being wiped out from the continued use of such toxic chemicals.

This Author

Georgina Downs is a journalist and campaigner. She runs the UK Pesticides Campaign, which specifically represents rural residents affected by pesticides sprayed in the locality of residents’ homes, as well as schools, playgrounds, among other areas.

McDonald’s has gone great lengths to paint itself as an ethical company in recent years. But does it need a refresher animal welfare course?

Keith Kenny is McDonald’s Vice President, Sustainability. He has been working for McDonald’s for nearly 30 years.

As part of this role, he is responsible for ensuring products are responsibly sourced, and that the company’s policies and business practices align in order to have a positive impact on society.

Supersized chickens

In a recent post on the business networking site LinkedIn, he said: “Given our size and reach as the world’s largest restaurant company, McDonald’s has the responsibility and opportunity to take action on some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges in the world today.”

Keith Kenny and other McDonald’s executives hold a great deal of power over the present and future global agricultural landscape.

And indeed, the company has gone great lengths to appear ethical in recent years, using only free-range eggs and organic milk, and phasing out the use of plastic straws in the UK.

These efforts can only be lauded. However, the company’s attempts to position itself as an industry leader for sustainability and animal welfare truly feel like a slap in the face for those who care about animals, when you consider that it refuses to take meaningful action on the most pressing animal welfare issue of our time. McDonald’s still uses supersized chickens who grow so big, so fast, their bodies can’t keep up.

This is a chicken who has been bred to suffer, for the sake of producing as much meat as possible, as fast as possible. At every stage of his short, miserable life, he will be subject to a whole host of welfare issues.

With fast growth, he’ll be so top-heavy that his legs are weak. He will probably struggle to walk, suffering from pain, lameness and decreased energy levels.

You’ll see him sitting down to ‘rest’ most of the time, rendered practically immobile, but this is not normal. Young chickens are playful and inquisitive, and should be actively foraging and scratching for food for a large part of the day. They are also highly intelligent, despite common misconceptions.

Chickens bred in this way often develop Green Muscle Disease and Wooden Breast Syndrome. In the former, the cells of the breast muscle become necrotic and die from lack of blood supply to the muscle fibres, creating areas of green, unsightly flesh that is dead and decaying.

In the latter, the breast becomes tough and wood-like. This is due to the fast growth of the breast muscle. This barely scratches the surface in the long list of severe problems with fast-growth breeds of chicken, but it can’t be denied that it is profitable.

Stock response

McDonald’s says it cares about chicken welfare. In the stock response it has been sending out to every enquiry about this subject, it claims it requires its suppliers to provide enrichment such as items for the birds to perch and peck on.

If their bodies render them so immobile they can barely walk, you have to ask yourself, can these birds make meaningful use of these enrichments? Are they really going to be flying up on to a perch or hopping on a bale of hay?

Over one billion chickens are reared for meat in the UK every year. That number is seven billion for the EU, and worldwide, the number is almost unfathomable: over 20 billion.

McDonald’s sources chickens from the UK, the EU, Brazil and Thailand. How McDonald’s acts now will set the agenda for the future of these birds for years to come.

Meanwhile, Francesca DeBiase, the company’s Global Chief Supply Chain and Sustainability Officer, writes in Brink, a publication covering risk for investors and businesses, about land management and offsetting carbon emissions.

In the face of the immense suffering endured by the millions of chickens in McDonald’s supply chains, this feels like an astounding double-standard.

Companies such as Burger King and Subway in the US have committed to move away from these frankenbird breeds. In the UK, Prezzo, ASK Italian, and Pret a Manger have done the same.

Lack of supply is not a valid argument, since 2 Sisters—the UK’s biggest producer of chicken—has pledged to supply chicken with higher standards to any company which asks for it.

According to McDonald’s, chicken is now more popular than beef at its restaurants. Maybe that’s why it is unwilling to make meaningful changes for the most numerous animal on its menu—chickens.

Or maybe it simply thinks that not enough people care about chickens to make this a marketable selling point, like with paper straws.

But people do care. They just aren’t aware of the scale of the suffering. McDonald’s knows this, and is exploiting it. McDonald’s, it would appear, is prepared to do the right thing, but only when it suits their wallet.

Welfare course

Perhaps we should give them the benefit of the doubt. If someone in a position of power knows how much pain and misery McDonald’s sourcing policies are causing, why would they not do all they can to end that suffering?

That’s why this year, as students of all ages return to study, we’re sending Keith Kenny to do some learning of his own. We’ve enrolled him onto a highly-respected, 6-week online Animal Welfare course, created by the University of Edinburgh.

We hope it will be a chance for Mr Kenny to brush-up on all the negative implications of fast growth chicken breeds like those currently used in McDonald’s supply chain, and pass this on through the company. If you want to encourage him in his studies, visit www.imnotlovinit.co.uk.

This Author

Pru Elliott is Head of Campaigns for The Humane League UK. She has been working in the animal protection movement for seven years and lives in Cornwall with her partner and their rescue animals.

McDonald’s has gone great lengths to paint itself as an ethical company in recent years. But does it need a refresher animal welfare course?

Keith Kenny is McDonald’s Vice President, Sustainability. He has been working for McDonald’s for nearly 30 years.

As part of this role, he is responsible for ensuring products are responsibly sourced, and that the company’s policies and business practices align in order to have a positive impact on society.

Supersized chickens

In a recent post on the business networking site LinkedIn, he said: “Given our size and reach as the world’s largest restaurant company, McDonald’s has the responsibility and opportunity to take action on some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges in the world today.”

Keith Kenny and other McDonald’s executives hold a great deal of power over the present and future global agricultural landscape.

And indeed, the company has gone great lengths to appear ethical in recent years, using only free-range eggs and organic milk, and phasing out the use of plastic straws in the UK.

These efforts can only be lauded. However, the company’s attempts to position itself as an industry leader for sustainability and animal welfare truly feel like a slap in the face for those who care about animals, when you consider that it refuses to take meaningful action on the most pressing animal welfare issue of our time. McDonald’s still uses supersized chickens who grow so big, so fast, their bodies can’t keep up.

This is a chicken who has been bred to suffer, for the sake of producing as much meat as possible, as fast as possible. At every stage of his short, miserable life, he will be subject to a whole host of welfare issues.

With fast growth, he’ll be so top-heavy that his legs are weak. He will probably struggle to walk, suffering from pain, lameness and decreased energy levels.

You’ll see him sitting down to ‘rest’ most of the time, rendered practically immobile, but this is not normal. Young chickens are playful and inquisitive, and should be actively foraging and scratching for food for a large part of the day. They are also highly intelligent, despite common misconceptions.

Chickens bred in this way often develop Green Muscle Disease and Wooden Breast Syndrome. In the former, the cells of the breast muscle become necrotic and die from lack of blood supply to the muscle fibres, creating areas of green, unsightly flesh that is dead and decaying.

In the latter, the breast becomes tough and wood-like. This is due to the fast growth of the breast muscle. This barely scratches the surface in the long list of severe problems with fast-growth breeds of chicken, but it can’t be denied that it is profitable.

Stock response

McDonald’s says it cares about chicken welfare. In the stock response it has been sending out to every enquiry about this subject, it claims it requires its suppliers to provide enrichment such as items for the birds to perch and peck on.

If their bodies render them so immobile they can barely walk, you have to ask yourself, can these birds make meaningful use of these enrichments? Are they really going to be flying up on to a perch or hopping on a bale of hay?

Over one billion chickens are reared for meat in the UK every year. That number is seven billion for the EU, and worldwide, the number is almost unfathomable: over 20 billion.

McDonald’s sources chickens from the UK, the EU, Brazil and Thailand. How McDonald’s acts now will set the agenda for the future of these birds for years to come.

Meanwhile, Francesca DeBiase, the company’s Global Chief Supply Chain and Sustainability Officer, writes in Brink, a publication covering risk for investors and businesses, about land management and offsetting carbon emissions.

In the face of the immense suffering endured by the millions of chickens in McDonald’s supply chains, this feels like an astounding double-standard.

Companies such as Burger King and Subway in the US have committed to move away from these frankenbird breeds. In the UK, Prezzo, ASK Italian, and Pret a Manger have done the same.

Lack of supply is not a valid argument, since 2 Sisters—the UK’s biggest producer of chicken—has pledged to supply chicken with higher standards to any company which asks for it.

According to McDonald’s, chicken is now more popular than beef at its restaurants. Maybe that’s why it is unwilling to make meaningful changes for the most numerous animal on its menu—chickens.

Or maybe it simply thinks that not enough people care about chickens to make this a marketable selling point, like with paper straws.

But people do care. They just aren’t aware of the scale of the suffering. McDonald’s knows this, and is exploiting it. McDonald’s, it would appear, is prepared to do the right thing, but only when it suits their wallet.

Welfare course

Perhaps we should give them the benefit of the doubt. If someone in a position of power knows how much pain and misery McDonald’s sourcing policies are causing, why would they not do all they can to end that suffering?

That’s why this year, as students of all ages return to study, we’re sending Keith Kenny to do some learning of his own. We’ve enrolled him onto a highly-respected, 6-week online Animal Welfare course, created by the University of Edinburgh.

We hope it will be a chance for Mr Kenny to brush-up on all the negative implications of fast growth chicken breeds like those currently used in McDonald’s supply chain, and pass this on through the company. If you want to encourage him in his studies, visit www.imnotlovinit.co.uk.

This Author

Pru Elliott is Head of Campaigns for The Humane League UK. She has been working in the animal protection movement for seven years and lives in Cornwall with her partner and their rescue animals.

I’m not shy about my age. I am often asked, mostly in bars, and once recently when I stopped to buy petrol at a motorway services.

But faced with the question “How old are you?” I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t bring myself to break the silence which had become a companion. “Ravi. My name. Ravi. English not so good. How old?”

“24. Ah god, I’ve gone and done it. I’m 24. My voice rang out pre-pubescently in the heat haze, several tones higher than I remembered it to be, which perhaps explained the look of mild disbelief which flickered across the portly man’s face.

‘Noble silence’

Moments later, however, it creased into a smile and I looked away over his shoulder, a little abashed.

Across the courtyard, other faces were split in similar imitations of joy, a mob of grins with human bodies of all shapes and sizes attached.

I did not know so much as their names, but with each felt a deeply rooted connection. My love towards them could have been upheld by a decade of intimate friendship.

We had undergone a lot together in the past nine days. A lot of nothing. At times, too much nothing. And all that nothing had produced in us a kind of alchemy, transforming a ragbag crew of cautious strangers into the most open and joyful of communities. 

Enrolling on a Vipassana meditation retreat is not unlike sentencing yourself to a short period in a low-security prison. Sexes are segregated, and communication with the outside world severed.

Leaving the premises is forbidden, and recreational activity restricted to walking round a smallish compound during defined periods. And all this in the name of blissful happiness.

A recommended 10 hours sitting meditation per day is encouraged, during which you should continually scan the entirety of your body like some overly zealous airport security official, heeding close attention to the sensations that arise.

Not dissimilar to playing ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ over and over again in slow-motion and total silence.

Indeed, the entire course is conducted in ‘Noble Silence’ up until the morning of the last full day, meaning that no communication is permitted, be it speech, gesturing or eye contact. Reading materials, writing, exercise or any form of pastime are all likewise prohibited. You are not even allowed to wash your plate after eating.

The effect of several days of this routine can’t be said to have been pleasant – far from it.

With nothing to occupy it, my mind went into a sort of frenzied overdrive, dredging up memories, congenial or otherwise, drifting off into outlandish fantasies, conjecturing wild outcomes, and generally playing every trick in the book in order to avoid being still.

Mental workout

Not that this hadn’t happened before, but perhaps because there was so little else for this hyperactivity to blend into, it was exhausting. A non-consensual mental workout on an endless treadmill of thought.

As someone conditioned from birth to equate inertia with laziness and productivity with progress, inactivity was a difficult hurdle to clear. I have been busy most of my life, and now I could not be. One day I stripped bare and moisturized my entire body twice over. Just for something to do.

I don’t remember exactly when things shifted. I just know that they did.

If in some misspent hour of youth you watched Looney Tunes, it was a bit like the scene where the coyote runs off the cliff edge and keeps going for a while despite there now being no solid ground beneath him, before falling into the abyss below (if not, insert another – probably better – analogy).

Once deprived of stimulus, the mind keeps churning on what is left in the tank for a time, and like a petrol engine, burns the last morsel of fuel fiercest of all before petering out altogether. 

Boundless love

The resultant state is curious, cumulative, and not evident from any kind of external observation. Rather than a cessation of thought, it is a detachment from it that emerges, a capacity to step out of the flow of mental traffic and watch it from a quiet pavement.

It is a relaxation of the muscles of craving and of aversion that cause us to expend so much energy in the pursuit of certain outcomes and the avoidance of others. It is a willingness to be peaceful with the current state of things, to laughingly meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same.

And what arises in the absence of all else can only be described as a pervasive sense of calm, of joy, and of boundless love. 

Time to do a spot of myth busting. What I have written above sounds dangerously close to condoning apathy, as if meditation leads to blithe acceptance of all possible actions or states. Surely someone advanced in meditation could not also enjoy themselves, have preferences, or take strong action against certain outcomes?

This is a common trope levelled at practitioners, and misses a crucial but subtle distinction. It is not desire which becomes eroded through quieting the mind, but rather attachment to the upshot of that desire.

Benevolent engagement

A seasoned meditator might still do their utmost to influence an outcome, but would not undergo the same mental anguish if that outcome did not occur as someone in thrall to their mind. Instead they would quickly regain calm equilibrium, reassess, and adjust their efforts accordingly.

Similarly, meditation is not an isolating or self-centred practice. Conversely it increases our ability to engage benevolently in the world without the mind interfering with bias or judgement. Indeed, many Vipassana heavyweights could fill annals with altruistic acts committed during their lifetime. 

This all takes considerable practice, and certainly does not always resemble my own mental state. But I know it to be possible, having touched it with the lightest of strokes. I understand now that Vipassana – the original strain of Buddhism which Siddhartha Gotama developed in northern India – has nothing to do with religion, a label that has been clumsily slapped on it for centuries.

It is a mental technique, a carefully applied psychological science aimed at releasing us from mental binds, and thus, from suffering. There is no faith required, which is why many Buddhists also devoutly follow a religion without there being a clash of any sort.

It is a purely empirical exercise, much like going to the gym to get fit, to practise a way of being – hence meditation is commonly referred to as a practice – where each act becomes one of love and intimacy with all things. 

Enlightened thought

If that sounds far-fetched, that’s because it is. This pre-mental state, often termed “enlightenment”, is fiendishly tricky to achieve because the mind is like a despotic government: supremely powerful, and not at all willing to be overthrown.

The mind creates the illusion of thought as reality to perpetuate its own dominance. The trick of thought is to externalise meaning, to convince us that it’s what’s out there that defines us.

However, there is an important difference between fiendishly tricky and laughably idealistic. Meditation is a tool to chip away at this apparent reality.  Just as we can accept that our clothes do not sum us up (though the mind is inclined to receive any comment about an item we are wearing as if it does, hence we feel good when someone compliments our trousers), we can further grasp that the same is true for our physical body, our opinions, feelings and thoughts.

With exploration, it becomes more and more difficult to isolate any defined sense of self. Identity becomes a constantly changing and thus meaningless concept, and the only reality we are left with is the absolute unshakeable truth of what we find under our noses at a given moment.

Both Eastern and Western schools of thought have arrived at this conclusion using the diametrically opposed methodologies of science and spiritually. The Buddhist term “annica”, meaning constant change (and thus no concrete reality) strikes a remarkable chord with Einstein’s proclamation that “reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

‘Healthy discernment’

As a stalwart empiricist and pragmatist, the central appeal of the technique is its practicality.

I tend to approach spiritual traditions with what I hope is a healthy discernment, wary of the ease with which they can lose sight of meaning in deference to ritual, ceremony, and jargon.

I have witnessed spirituality being used as a vehicle to provide an identity, sometimes to vulnerable or isolated people. For me, as soon as style becomes more important than substance, alarm bells start ringing.

It’s a huge relief then, that meditation requires next to no particulars: you don’t have to wear distinctive clothing, enter a special building or practise in a certain position. The centre was completely devoid of symbolism or iconography – no shaved heads or smiling statues of chubby Buddhas adorning the gardens. The whole place was decidedly neutral in atmosphere.

For it is not the tone that matters. It is the work – the practice. Trying to achieve an enlightened state without this is like trying to learn to swim by reading lots of books about swimming.

‘Greedy for peace’

Coming back into the world, the pull of busyness has been as strong as ever.

The mind is eager to regain its sovereign rule and re-establish the belief that reality is external, that we can draw and measure meaning from what we see outside. But having stripped back to the bare bones of daily activity, I have stretched my capacity for nothingness and set a benchmark which, even as the cogs of life start whirring again, I do not forget.

I cannot forget the kernel of stillness unearthed during those 10 days, and knowing that it is possible to live with this underpinning my every waking moment has made me ambitious. I am greedy for peace. 

As such, I continue to meditate. Beforehand, it never seems as if I have time, and afterwards, as if I have all the time in the world. It is a curious thing, but having sat for an hour the day feels more spacious, despite the “lost” time. I get more done and enjoy doing it more. This is the paradox neatly phrased in the adage “If you don’t have time to sit for 10 minutes, sit for an hour”. 

‘Deliberate intensity’

In the original Pali, Vipassana means ‘to observe things as they really are’. This is a far cry to achieve in 10 short days, but that is not the course’s intention.

Instead, it is to ingrain the technique and habit strongly enough that it might withstand modern life’s circus of noise and colour vying for our attention.

There are no short cuts to happiness, no quick fixes or magic beans – this is made abundantly clear from the get-go. But the course’s deliberate intensity is enough to give you the faintest glimpse of the possible rewards should you continue to practise.

And thanks to the efforts of S. N. Goenka, who set up over 100 course centres across the world, you don’t have to put yourself behind bars in order to try. Crime burdens the taxpayer and would probably result in a fair whack of bad karma.

Vipassana does neither, is free to attend, and might just do what it says on the tin. In any case, I would recommend prising the thing open to have a look. There’s nothing magic about the beans inside, but they may still change your life.

This Author

Hugh Rose is a writer, facilitator, performance poet and storyteller based in Bristol. He runs workshops on the transformative power of stories both personally and politically, writes for The Hedge, and performs regularly at festivals and other spoken word events.

The heavy-handed attack from lobbyists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that arose during the 1990s presented a new risk: that the oilmen would become isolated from other leaders of industry.

As early as 1995, a deep divide began to open up between the chief executive officers and shareholders of major corporations in the United States and Britain who were anxious that their own operations and profits could be undermined by climate change.

The Delphi Group in London, a major investments advisor, published a landmark report that year, warning banks, insurers and institutional investors to immediately withdraw investments from oil and coal.

Mark Mansley, the report’s author, pointed out that “climate change presents major long-term risks to the carbon fuel industry [which] has not been adequately discounted by the financial markets.”

Major Threat

At the same time, Sven Hansen, vice-president of the Union Bank of Switzerland, spoke at a conference for finance capital: “Some of our clients are under major threat from climate change.”  

Then, in June 1995, Shell found itself in direct conflict with Greenpeace as the environmentalists launched an audacious campaign to prevent the dumping of the Brent Spar oil platform in the North Sea. The campaign turned huge swathes of the public against the energy corporation.

Shell performed a startling u-turn, however, and caved into the green crusade.

“On the very same afternoon that Prime Minister John Major was defending Shell’s right to dump the Brent Spar oil platform in the North Sea, the company itself announced that it would reverse its decision due to pressure from Greenpeace and German consumers,” wrote Cameron’s future chief adviser, Steve Hilton.

“Never mind that subsequent scientific analysis showed Shell’s original plan to have been the most environmentally responsible: the point is that the Conservative response was knee-jerk laissez-faireism while Shell understood that the world had changed.”

Environmental Concerns

The ordeal forced an institution-wide investigation on Shell and, as a direct result, the company decided it could no longer ignore environmental concerns. John Jennings, chairman of a Shell subsidiary, gave a speech to the World Energy Congress in late 1995.

“Some… organisations have, on occasion, shown that, through effective if unscrupulous use of the media they can influence public opinion significantly and with it the political mood to which democratic governments feel obliged to respond,” Jennings said.

“But I believe it is imperative that the debate is based in principle on sound science, honesty and objectivity… we have to start to prepare for the orderly transition to new, renewable forms of energy at the lowest possible economic and environmental cost while sustaining secure supplies of conventional energy as the world economy hopefully continues to expand.”

This was the first time a senior oil executive had publicly acknowledged the science of climate change and the seriousness of its consequences. While Shell would continue to be a key target for campaigners, there was now among the oil giants themselves opening up a fundamental chasm.

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.