“It’s about low tax, low regulation — an economy fit for hedge fund owners”. That’s how Peter Jukes, an investigative journalist with Byline Media, describes the aims of a network of shadowy thinktanks and campaign groups operating out of offices on Tufton Street, just around the corner from the Houses of Parliament.

DeSmog UK has previously mapped all the key connection between the organisations, many of which are leading voices in for Brexit and climate science denial.

One of the Tufton Street groups, the Institute of Economic Affairs, recently hit headlines after undercover reporters filmed its Director appearing to suggest funders could get access to government ministers through the think tank.

Launder the money

Another Tufton group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), is the UK’s premier climate science denial campaign group. DeSmog UK has previously revealed the organisations ties to government, the media, and US think tanks with ties to President Trump.

Jukes made the comments as part of a new exposé from Real Media. He was joined by myself and OpenDemocracy UK co-editor, Adam Ramsay, who pointed out that the end game for all these organisations was pushing for a hard Brexit, cutting environmental regulation, and protecting the assets of the rich.

Ramsay said, “rather than having a close association with the EU and regulations around the food we eat, and protecting the environment and the climate and so on, [the network] wants us instead to do a trade deal with America, which means much less regulation”.

Alt-right press

“Tax havens are very keen to ensure Brexit is postive for them, and they can essentially continue to be a hub for money laundering — so they’re paying probably for reports from these groups to make that case for them through the Brexit process.”

“For the very rich people in the world, they want to push Britain further offshore and move it away from the regulations in the EU and make sure we can continue to launder the money for the very rich.”

And this goal is supported by an alt-right press in which “there is definitely an anti-deomcratic tendency”, Jukes said. The alt-right messages are then parroted by a mainstream press that is largely owned by the people the Tufton St network’s agenda is designed to favour, Jukes said.

“Because of their money, they are having a big influence on contemporary discourse in this country”.

This Author

Mat Hope is editor of DeSmog UK, where this article first appeared.

People don’t usually associate England’s countryside with crime. Crime happens everywhere, but there are big differences between urban and rural crime.  

For instance, quad bikes are a common sight in rural areas – they’re used by farmers, gamekeepers, and terrier men attached to fox hunts. They’re just the thing for narrow lanes, rough tracks, crossing fields and riding through woodland. 

This year has seen a huge rise in quad bike theft right across the country.      

Rural crime

What makes rural crime challenging is that so much of it is unseen. Not every farmyard has a neighbour watching and helping to prevent the theft of valuable farm machinery. Not every field has a house beside it to deter the theft of animals. Not every stable is secure enough to prevent expensive saddles and bridles being stolen.  

Poaching is common, particularly deer and game birds. Fish stocks disappear from ponds, fruit and vegetables from gardens and lawnmowers from garden sheds.  

One constant headache for both police and local authorities is fly-tipping.  Rather than take your old fridge to the local council tip, why not dump it in the countryside?  Or pay someone to do it for you.

Rural areas cover a lot of ground. The population of an urban policing area might perhaps cover 4 square miles. Policing a similar population in a rural area could cover 100 square miles or more – that’s a lot of driving for rural police who are also policing the local towns.

Cuts to resources

Farmers complain about a lack of police response. Hunt saboteurs and monitors, facing physical violence from hunt supporters, also complain that when they report an incident, the police often don’t turn up, or come too late.  

Getting to rural locations can be a big challenge off the main road.  Also, when a police presence is needed elsewhere or a major incident is being dealt with, not many officers are available.  

They don’t have that many, full stop. Since 2010 police forces in England and Wales have lost around 21,000 officers. Between 2010 and 2015 they suffered a cut of 20 percent in their funding, some forces taking a bigger hit than others. But all are asked to do more with less money and fewer people.  

In addition, some forces have also had to deal with policing the badger culls. Apparently, during the 2017 culls, Dorset officers doing 12-hour shifts had to provide/pay for their own food. Money is that tight. Of those forces dealing with culling in the western region:

• Avon & Somerset lost 672 police officers and 115 community support officers
• Gloucester lost 254 police officers and 35 community support officers
• Dorset lost 210 police officers and 78 community support officers
• Devon & Cornwall lost 635 police officers and 35 community support officers

Policing and politics

In 2012, Police and Crimes Commissioners (PCCs) were introduced.  This was not popular with a lot of people, police included, who felt that politics should not be brought into policing (most of the PCC candidates ran under a party ticket).  

What is interesting is that those counties that were first scheduled to have badger culling (Somerset, Gloucester and Dorset) all voted for independent PCCs.  

There were some benefits. In 2014 28 PCCs with largely rural constituencies formed the National Rural Crime Network (NRCN) and county forces set up rural rime teams.  

The NRCN website states: “The impacts of rural crime are many and varied. The Network is concerned with all crime and anti-social behaviour occurring in rural areas and recognises that the challenges and solutions are often different to those in cities and urban areas.”

Indeed. When the badger culls started in 2013, both Avon & Somerset and Gloucester police forces had to use urban police officers to police the culling.  To those trying to protect the badgers it quickly became clear how unfamiliar urban officers were with rural ways. 

Unfamiliar territory 

Gloucester badger patrollers reported that police knew little of the Countryside & Rights of Way Act so patrollers were arrested for what was perfectly legal behaviour; police were often not equipped with suitable clothing – an absence of welly boots for one thing – and were uneasy working in the dark, due to the absence of street lighting).  

In 2014 Gloucester’s policing improved as their liaison team was in contact with GABS as well as the cullers.  

Dorset’s cull started in 2015.  Dorset’s police had wisely noted the mistakes in policing in the previous two years and were consulting with DBBW well before the start of Dorset’s cull.  

Even better, two of Dorset’s most admired wildlife officers, PCs Dave Mullins and Phil Sugrue, were on the liaison team.  They were so good at their job that it is rumoured that Devon & Cornwall police sought their advice.

The policing wasn’t perfect in the first year and there were some contentious issues, but Dorset’s badger protectors could count themselves lucky that they were dealing with unbiased, well-informed officers who would follow up any reports of harassment or intimidation by farmers and culling contractors as well as incidents reported by farmers.   

Hidden inhabitants

But at a 2016 meeting at Avon & Somerset Police headquarters, the Silver Commander of their police liaison team was challenged by a woman complaining that she was tired of her car being pulled over by police at night during the culls. 

Demonstrating how little their rural policing had moved on, the reply was astonishing: “Well, if you’re driving around in the countryside after 10pm you must be up to no good.” 

Was it that kind of attitude surfacing during the culls that highlighted the need for rural crime strategies and trained wildlife officers. Those strategies should meaningfully include those largely hidden inhabitants of the countryside, the wildlife. 

The Essex Police Rural Strategy (2017) mentions hare coursing and has a photo of a badger.  

However, their Rural Crime page says this: “Essex Police also has a force wildlife officer supported by specialist wildlife officers covering our three local policing areas; North, West and South. They specialise in investigating wildlife and environmental crime and work closely with the RSPCA to protect wildlife.”

Specialist skills?

West Mercia Police, highlighting their wildlife crime officers, seem protective of wildlife, but then say this: “We work with partner organisations like the Angling Trust and the NFU”, neither of which are known for their love of wildlife.  

The NFU is a major backer of the badger culls.  When beavers appeared on Devon’s River Otter the Angling Trust wanted the right to shoot them as an ‘invasive species’, despite non-fish eating beavers benefiting fish populations.  

Dyfed & Powys Police cover over half the land mass of Wales, much of which is rural. They ‘have a dedicated wildlife crime officer’ – for half of Wales?  

Their 2017 Rural Crime Strategy booklet says that specialist rural skills and knowledge will be developed and officers will receive “enhanced training”.  Wildlife crime is featured only at the bottom of a list of rural crime challenges.

On the plus side, considering that Dyfed and Powys are home to many fox hunts, the list does include illegal hunting.

Fox hunting 

Lincolnshire has always been a fox hunting county.  Lincolnshire Police has a brief page on hunting and poaching which cites illegal hunting as a crime, but its list of organisations that can offer help and support includes the Countryside Alliance.

Thames Valley Police cover three counties – Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. An article describing the rural crime strategy of the combined counties makes no mention of wildlife or hunting, even though this area covers part of the Kimblewick Hunt territory. 

In 2017 Kimblewick Hunt euthanised over 90 hounds because they were infected by bovine TB. 

The Thames Valley website says: ‘Most forces have at least one wildlife crime officer and many have dedicated units. We also work with partner agencies to investigate, prevent and tackle wildlife crime.” Asked for more detailed information, they confirmed that each Local Police Area (LPA) has one wildlife officer, totalling 11 officers across three counties.

After a late start, Gloucester Police (covering 1216 square miles) are doing well. In June this year they officially launched their rural crime team.  They say, “Rural and wildlife crime has always been investigated in Gloucestershire, but many of the officers responsible have been doing so alongside other roles and in their own time.” 

Controlling wildlife 

But what  Gloucester Police have now put together is impressive: “The team comprises four Rural Crime Officers (RCOs), one in each rural policing area, who will be led by a co-ordinator and supported by 23 Rural and Environmental Crime Officers (RECLOs) and volunteers”.

Avon & Somerset Police (Somerset is 1610 square miles) said it that currently has “six trained Wildlife Officers who have all received national wildlife training. Three officers are awaiting training and three have been locally trained, however, this training is not nationally accredited”. 

The Devon and Cornwall Police (11 trained officers covering 3965 square miles) appear fairly anti-wildlife.  Their advice page opens with a description of how wildlife damages farmland (starting with badgers) and advice on how to ‘control’ wildlife.  

Not listed as a wildlife crime but under a section titled “People being cruel to animals” their website states: “Violence towards badgers, which includes being buried alive or being ripped apart by dogs”, which seems a gleefully gruesome description.  

‘Being ripped apart’ should be properly listed as the crime of badger baiting.  ‘Being buried alive’ is the crime of interfering with a badger sett, in this particular instance known as sett blocking.  Countrywide, sett blocking is done by hunt terrier men to stop illegally hunted foxes going to earth. 

Wildlife training

There is no mention of illegal hunting. According to hunt monitors in Devon, the police do not support their efforts to stop illegal hunting, can be unwilling to intervene in assaults on monitors and take the view that, to quote: “none of this would happen if you lot went away.”

Cheshire (another county policing badger culls) has a comprehensive strategy for rural crime policing, and sends officers on Wildlife Foundation courses to train them to become Wildlife Crime Officers, but their stance on illegal hunting is not that firm.

And then there’s Dorset. Despite the culls and despite the cuts, Dorset’s Rural Crime Team is a winner.  Dorset has the smallest area (1024 square miles) with the most wildlife-trained officers.

Officers are encouraged to do wildlife training.  North Dorset’s PCs Mullins and Sugrue said that being a wildlife officer is “just one more hat to wear”, one more duty added to the workload, then added that what is encouraging is how many choose to do the training, and choose to stay with rural policing.  

Inspector Danny Thompson, head of the North Dorset rural team, when asked about the 25 wildlife-trained officers listed on their website, said: “I think we are up to 31 now.”

Freedom of information

In recent years two wildlife issues have been dominating the work of the North Dorset team – policing the badger culls and illegal hunting with hounds.  

They are determined to put a stop to illegal fox hunting, and are often seen monitoring the hunts in their area.  They take seriously residents’ complaints about hound faeces on village streets, and uncontrolled hounds running across busy roads.

Here’s something that really shows the thought that Dorset puts into wildlife policing. In 2015 the government held a consultation on changing the criteria for badger culling.  Among those organisations that responded were Gloucester, Avon & Somerset, Devon & Cornwall and Dorset police.  

Anna Dale, known for her Freedom of Information requests, and her refusal to accept DEFRA’s and Natural England’s ‘No’ answers, finally got a copy of the police responses. Most comments were about restricted budgets, too few officers and whether the proposed changes would make policing the culls less or more difficult.  

Could the police cope and would they be listened to?  A Devon and Cornwall response to a question on lengthening culling periods went so far as to ask “why not decriminalise the possession or taking of badgers in cull areas.”

Protecting badgers 

Of all the police comments, a Dorset officer was the only one to mention something that would protect badgers and remove them from the argument about bovine TB: “If there is a need to reduce the Policing footprint and reduce cost, I believe this can be achieved if DEFRA were to consider an extension of the vaccination (of badgers) process already in being in Dorset.  

“I would argue that while the NFU may be displeased, there would be reduced protest activity and confrontation.”

As I said, Dorset’s rural crime team is a winner.

This Author

Lesley Docksey is a freelance writer and has written on politics, war and peace, environmental issues and her great love, British wildlife.  Her work is published by various national and global outlets. 

The UK’s continued funding of a controversial chain of private schools in Africa is a sign of the fundamental flaws in its new approach to international aid, anti-poverty campaigners have said.

It comes a week after the Theresa May, the prime minister, signalled a major shift in that strategy during a trade delegation to South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, based around greater private sector involvement in UK aid spending.

Global Justice Now has written to International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt on behalf of a range of groups to call on the UK to halt funding for Bridge International Academies, which runs over 500 private schools in India, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, and Uganda.

Multiple failings

The schools have been criticised for their poor teaching methods including the use of invariable, scripted lessons to be read out from tablets.

The letter recounts a series of failings by Bridge documented by independent observers and media reports, as well as by governments since 2015, which include:

• Independent research showing BIA’s fees and practices exclude the poor and marginalised
• Repeatedly failing to respect the rule of law, including minimum education standards, over several years
• Poor labour conditions
• Reported concerns about freedom expression and lack of transparency
• Absence of valid evidence of Bridge’s positive impact
• Negative impacts on education quality, equity and social segregation and stratification

Universal education

Ed Lewis, aid campaigner at Global Justice Now, said: “The Prime Minister’s dance moves last week looked like they’d been taught at a Bridge Academies School. Rigid, inflexible and poor quality, these private schools are an embarrassment.

“How on earth did we get to a point where our aid spending has funded schools which two African countries are trying to shut down, and which have been criticised by UN human rights bodies?

“If this is what private sector involvement in aid means, the Prime Minister is dancing with disaster. The UK needs to use aid money to support free, quality, public and universal education and healthcare around the world.”

The letter is supported by civil society groups in Kenya, Uganda and Liberia. These include the Right to Education Initiative, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social & Cultural Rights,  East African Centre for Human Rights (EACHRights-Kenya), Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER-Uganda) and Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education (COTAE-Liberia).

The UK has funded BIA with over £20 million in direct and indirect funding.

This Author

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

Santander has been forced to distance itself from a climate science denial conference after its logo was published on the event’s website without the bank’s knowledge.

The bank, which is one of the world’s biggest, told DeSmog UK it was not a sponsor of the climate science denial conference taking place in Porto, Portugal, at the end of this week.

However, Santander admitted giving money to the University of Porto, where the conference is being held, to “support investigation and research” but added that it did not oversee how the money was spent.

Official position

The conference, called “Basic science of a changing climate: How processes in the sun, atmosphere and ocean affect weather and climate” says it is “open to different opinions and interpretations of changing climate”.

Held at the University of Porto’s Faculty of Humanities, the conference has been organised by Maria Assunção Araújo, a professor at the geography department, who is due to address the conference on sea level rise in Portugal and ice retreat in Greenland.

Speakers include prominent climate science deniers Piers Corbyn, Philip Foster, Christopher Essex, Nils-Axel Mörner and Christopher Monckton, who will give the two-day conference closing speech before participants are invited to take part in a “cheese and port mingle”.

The conference also includes a session for students to ask speakers questions. Santander’s logo is featured on the conference’s website, alongside the University of Porto’s logo.

A spokesman for the Univeristy of Porto told DeSmog UK that the conference was not organised by the university despite being held on its premises and that views expressed at the conference “do not refelect the official position of the University of Porto about the subject”. 

Not aware

He added that the conference had been organised at the initiative of one of the faculty’s professors who applied to a programme sponsored by Santander aimed at supporting international events being held at the university. 

The spokesman said the programme “demands that such events exhibit the source of funding, which explains the presence of the Santander logo on the website”.

“It is our conviction that the universities should be a space of open debate and discussion, where the presentation of conflicting ideas and perspectives should be valued.

“We also believe that censorship of opinions — even the ones that we do not agree with — should not be part of the activities of any university and it is in this context that the University of Porto will host this conference,” he said, adding that this “does not conflict with the university’s commitment to figt against climate change”. 

In an email to DeSmog UK, Santander said it supported the University of Porto as part of its universities programme but that it was not aware that its logo had been used on the conference’s website.

Protect the environment

“Santander is not a sponsor of this conference,” a spokeswoman told DeSmog UK. “Santander has always and continues to do all it can to support sustainable growth and combat the impact of climate change, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges we face.”

She added that the money Santander gave the university could be used in any way the university saw fit.

“We do not instruct Porto University how to use funds it receives from Santander. It can use funding resources to support investigation and research at their sole discretion and decision, to respect the university’s academic independence,” she said.

In its climate change policy, Banco Santander — the parent company of the Santander group — states that “climate change and resource scarcity are two of the biggest challenges faced by society”.

It adds that the group’s efforts to protect the environment were based on the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Conventions on Climate Change (UNFCCC) now re-branded as the UN Climate Change.

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

Energy independence has become a popular position in the United States recently. On both sides of the aisle, politicians are calling for increased domestic energy production and reduced importation of fuels like oil, which often come from places fraught with political tensions.

To be truly energy independent, the United States would need to produce enough energy to sustain the entirety of its population and industry. Such independence seemed like a far off goal not too long ago. However, innovations in sustainable energy and the recent shale gas boom have made the idea of an energy independent future seem more attainable.

As it seems more and more possible for the United States to achieve energy independence in the not-so-distant future, it’s important to remember that this process is complicated. Though it can be achieved in different ways to different effects, energy independence will require the US to radically re-envision the way it supplies and uses energy.

That being said, this article will consider how — and why — the United States and other countries might choose to become energy independent.

Eco-political Benefits

The United States is already a leader in the $6 trillion global energy market. Though the US imports about 20 percent of its energy, that number has been declining since new technology allowed for the extraction of shale oil and gas that was previously inaccessible.

The natural gas boom has freed up space in the American economy. Instead of purchasing barrels of oil from other countries, the US is able to supply more of its own needs, which allows money to be cycled more easily back into the American economy.

Seeing the impact that natural gas extracted from US territory made on the economy, many investors and politicians took notice and began advocating for energy independence. Indeed, the money to be made from natural gas amidst growing demand is one tempting reason to strive for energy independence.

Energy independence also boasts possible geopolitical benefits. The United States imports most of its energy from countries where political tensions run high. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, China and Russia are all huge exporters of energy, and this has put the United States in more than one awkward position over the years.

In addition to the amount of defense money spent protecting US oil interests abroad, relying on foreign oil has prevented the US and other countries from intervening in conflicts around the world. Europe’s lack of intervention when Russia annexed Crimea is just one example of energy stability influencing foreign policy decisions for the worse.

Energy independence could free the United States from fear of trade retaliation when making foreign policy decisions. This would make it easier for the US and other energy independent countries to boycott or otherwise intervene in unjust systems and governments.  It would also give other oil producers more claim over their own energy.

Environmental Sustainability

Though energy independence fueled by the recent natural gas boom may have economic and political benefits for the US, it could end up hurting the country’s chances at environmental sustainability in the long run. It’s important to remember that “energy independent” doesn’t always mean sustainable energy.

Though natural gas is somewhat cleaner than other sources of energy like coal, it is not renewable — eventually, like all other fossil fuels, its reserves will run out. Time-bomb energy like this does not equate to long term energy independence. At best, it would be a temporary solution to a long-term problem.

In order to battle climate change while working towards energy independence, the US must reduce demand for fossil fuels and invest in renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydropower.

A large-scale switch to this sort of energy would come with the same benefits as gas-fueled energy independence while also being cleaner and removing the need for transportation of heavy fuel across oceans and lowering risk of oil spills and other disasters.

Luckily, it is possible to make the US and other countries energy independent through use of renewable energy. Though it will require large investments in place of more established energy like oil and natural gas, renewable energy is the best way to ensure long-term energy stability at home and around the world.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

To forestall the global collapse that now is well in train requires a total rethink. Fortunately, some excellent thinkers, doers and activists are on the case, as evidenced now by Food Sovereignty, Agroecology and Biocultural Diversity, edited by Michel Pimbert, director of Coventry University’s Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience.

In particular, says Pimbert, we need to take seriously the traditional knowledge that is still manifest in Indigenous societies worldwide. This knowledge often proves to be factually accurate and is of great practical use – not least in agriculture, which we must get right.

The world needs small, low-input, complex and skills-intensive farms of the kind that are still the norm worldwide – more than 70 percent of farms are one hectare or less. Such farms are the world’s biggest employers and still feed most of the world’s people even though they have largely been forced onto the most difficult land. 

The world as a whole could gain enormously from their know-how, but the small farms are being swept aside as fast as big industry and governments, including here in the UK, can do the necessary deals and grab the land, while the farmers and their families head off for urban slums.

Longing to be with Nature

At least equally to the point, traditional ways of thinking are not rooted in the felt need to dominate Nature, or to increase personal wealth, as is de rigueur in the modern west. They are rooted in values – albeit values that may sometimes be difficult for westerners to appreciate.

Oxford University’s Nina Isabella Moeller describes an attempt by a German pharmaceutical company to persuade the Kichwa people of Ecuador to allow bio-prospecting – with of course shared profits, leading to wealth and modernity. The negotiations broke down. In the early meetings the Kichwa were simply bored – the men grabbed the opportunity to get drunk on free western booze. 

The trappings of modernity held no allure. What did appeal was a song that a woman made up on the spot that expressed her yearning to fly like a toucan.

This may simply sound bizarre – the kind of fantasising that brings out the cynic in western hard- heads. Yet it is not a million miles from the sentiments to be found in Coleridge and Blake: a longing to be with Nature, or again to be part of it. 

But although English Romanticism occupies a significant slice of conventional western education, it has very little influence on the strait-laced, “conventional” thinking that shapes economic and political strategy.

The power of intuition 

The cultural contrast runs deeper. For, says Moeller, when a Kichwa healer was asked how he acquired his knowledge of medicinal plants, he said that when his grandmother was sick the plants themselves came into the house and danced and told him what they could do and how they should be prepared. 

Such accounts reinforce the conventional western conviction that traditional peoples should be brought up to date for their own good – but we should surely be asking instead what such a story really implies.

To me it suggests that all human knowledge, the things we take to be true, rests ultimately on intuition; that intuition needs to be cultivated; and that the intuitions of peoples closer to a state of Nature may be far more refined than ours. 

In large part we have exchanged our intuitive powers for what Pimbert calls the “lens vision” of materialism and logical positivism: the conviction that nothing is worth taking seriously that we cannot stub our toes on and mathematicise. We have gained by this – antibiotics and IT – but how much have we lost along the way?

Flawed reasoning

Since the modern western paradigm is so obviously failing – threatening indeed to kill the whole world – we should ask, “How come?” Why have we, obsessively rational beings, allowed ourselves to be so led astray? Why do we put up with the status quo, which so obviously sells the world short and treats so many people, and other creatures, so cruelly? Why don’t we kick out the oligarchs who have brought the world to such a pass?

Gaëtan Vanloqueren and Philippe V. Baret provide at least part of the answer. The ideas that catch on in the world are not necessarily or even usually the ones that come closest to the truth or benefit the most people, but are rather those that enrich and empower the people who believe in them. 

So it was that in the early 1970s in agricultural circles agro-ecology and genetic en­gineering were taken equally seriously, as promising newcomers. Since then, genetic engineering has been vaunted in high places as the world’s saviour: the only possible source of the new crops and livestock that the world is deemed (erroneously) to need. 

The reasoning is flawed at every turn, and after nearly four decades of hugely expensive biotech research and development it is hard to find a single example of a GMO that is unequivocally good for humankind or for the biosphere.

Rethinking the world 

Yet, even though GM crops cannot yet be raised commercially in Europe, they are the prime focus of Britain’s agricultural research strategy. Agro-ecology, by contrast, receives hardly any support at all.

Agro-ecology imitates Nature: farms are treated as ecosystems, diverse and low-input, demonstrably sustainable and resilient, and, when properly supported, just as productive as the industrial kind, and certainly productive enough. 

Truly the world needs rethinking across the board. Truly the western post-Enlightenment paradigm needs to be challenged. As Vanloqueren and Baret acknowledge, we cannot simply “roll the clock back” but it is very foolish indeed to suppose that we have nothing to learn from traditional practices, or to assume a priori that “modern” western ways must be superior, or that the people who have adopted those ways are themselves superior and have a right to impose their will.

Food Sovereignty, Agroecology and Biocultural Diversity is essential reading for all who can see that the dominant paradigm has run its course. We need both to rethink, and to rethink the way that we think.

This Author 

Colin Tudge is co-founder of The College for Real Farming and Food Culture. His latest book is Six Steps Back to the Land (2016). This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist. Download a free sample copy of online. 

The free-market libertarian John Blundell was at home in Fairfax, Virginia, when late one afternoon he received a phone call from his old friend Mike Fisher, the younger son of Antony and a trustee of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), from London.

There had been a putsch at the free-market institute and the trustees were recruiting a new leader.

Graham Mather, a 36-year-old lawyer, had until then been the director general. But the trustees were worried that he was using Fisher’s think tank as a political springboard rather than a disseminator of ideas – he was, at that time, being tipped as the new leader of the advisory team to John Major, the newly elected prime minister, at Number 10 Downing Street.

There was also a serious rift at the IEA, with some furious that Mather was so close to the Eurosceptic faction of the Conservative party.  

Forced to Resign

“Mather endured an uncomfortable tenure as he fought a guerrilla war with old vanguard about the appropriate role that the IEA should play in the new, post-Thatcher era of politics,” the British historian and journalist, Richard Cockett, wrote in an authorised history of the institute. Mather was forced to resign in 1992.

This act of regicide was not popular with everyone at the IEA. Patrick Sheehy, the chairman of British American Tobacco, knew exactly how to make his feelings known.

He told the IEA’s Lord Harris in a letter dated 17 March 1992: “I was very disturbed to read in the press that Graham Mather will be leaving the institute as he was quite right to try to bring the institute’s policies into the 1990s and I am sorry to see him go.”

Starting a new paragraph, he added: “Having looked at the level of our subscriptions over the last five years it seems to me it is about time that market forces were brought to bear on the affairs of the institute. I have therefore given instructions that any future donation will be reduced by 50 percent.”

This was the second time in the history of the IEA that the funders had directly expressed their views about who could and could not run the IEA.

But the trustees had much more urgent matters to deal with: they needed a new director. And with that, Mike Fisher called his close and trusted friend in the US: Blundell.

A New Director

Blundell recounted: “He said they had just done the interviews for the final three for the director general job and not one of them excited them – would I fly over and be interviewed on the understanding that in the view of all who knew me I was a shoe in… I flew a couple of weeks later just after Lord Harris’s second son committed suicide.”

Lord Vinson, who had set up the Centre for Policy Studies with Margaret Thatcher 18 years earlier, was on the board of trustees and made the decision to hire Blundell.

“He’d made himself well known through his writings and general approach, you may call him a market economist.” Vinson told me. “We looked at his background – and he did the job [for] about fourteen years.”

Blundell handed in his notice at the Institute for Humane Studies, a hardline neoliberal think tank funded by oil billionaire Charles Koch, where he remained a trustee. He also left Antony Fisher’s Atlas Economic Research Foundation but retained the post of chairman of the executive committee.

Behind the Scenes

Mark Pennington, a member of the IEA’s academic advisory board, said Blundell was a new broom, creating a new casual and relaxed atmosphere while also converting the dusty library into a conference room.

“John is quite a laid back sort of person,” he said. “He wasn’t someone who wanted to be in the media [and] he gets very nervous appearing in public. So it was very much, kind of, behind the scenes type of an approach, not in a clandestine way just because he thought that was where his strengths lay.”

Most of all, Blundell was a man of principle and morals. Pennington continued: “He certainly believes that the state is a malevolent force. He doesn’t have any yachts, he’s not poor by any stretch of the imagination but he’s not driven by the desire to accumulate huge volumes of cash or anything like that.”

“He’s very much driven by believing that government is a bad thing. Some of them are verging on anarchists. Their kind of economic ideology leads them to think that it’s inefficient, but also it’s kind of something sort of deeply, almost sinister about it.”

Blundell would also remain close friends with the Kochs. In his own history of the IEA, Waging the War of Ideas, Blundell observed: “Without… Charles and David Koch… without their far-sighted commitment, we would not be here today and we would not be witnessing a world-wide move toward freedom and free markets.”

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 UK government is set to host the first large-scale global summit on electric cars – a welcome break from Brexit.

The summit takes place in Birmingham, both a hub for the UK’s car industry – electric and otherwise – and a region troubled by air pollution. One of the focuses of the event will be how zero emission vehicles can tackle both air pollution and climate change.

It may or may not work out for the UK, given the precarious position of the UK’s car industry in the Brexit haggling, but the fact a beleaguered government has chosen to invest political capital in talking about electric cars shows how the industry has changed over the past decade.

Here are five things you need to know:

1. Some people are finally buying electric cars

For years electric cars were more of an idea than a reality. They still account for a very small percentage of the global car fleet but sales are now growing rapidly, as clean energy installations did a decade ago.

In 2010 there were a few thousand electric cars on the road worldwide. In 2017 the numbersurpassed 3 million and rose to 4 million six months later. More than half of global electric car sales were in China, followed by Europe (20%) and the US (17%) in 2017. In the UK sales reached a new record in August – spurred on by higher petrol prices.

2. Government policies are driving the rise of electric car sales

Various key countries have announced plans to stop the sale of cars that rely on fossil fuels. Norway set out the earliest ban on all fossil fuel cars by 2025.  Netherlands, Ireland, and Slovenia have put 2030 as the target year and India is reportedly mulling something in the same time-frame.  France, the UK, and Sri Lanka committed to phasing out the sales of ICE vehicles by 2040, and Sweden by 2045. China has reportedly proposed a ban – but it is yet to be confirmed.

Whilst these policies look impressive, they may not mean a great deal – depending on how they are implemented. In the short term most electric cars are sold in cities and city plans to phase out fossil fuels – or limit diesel emissions – are arguably a bigger driver of sales.

In 2017 12 cities announced phase out dates for gasoline and diesel cars. In 2016 four major cities introduced diesel car access restrictions. And 14 mayors signed the Fossil-Fuel-Free Streets Declaration committing them to ensure all busses are zero emission by 2025 and cities have zero emission zones by 2030.

Finally, and crucially, direct subsidies still play a crucial role in electric car sales – as they did in the rise of renewable energy.

China, Norway, the US, UK, Germany and Sweden all offer some kind of financial incentive for electric car ownership. In Denmark, meanwhile, electric car sales dropped by 60% in 2017, after the government announced it would phase out tax exemptions.

Even more directly many governments, including Canada, France, China and India are simply buying lots of electric cars whilst cities such as London move to bring in electric taxis.  

3. People drive electric cars in places where they can charge them

The growth of electric cars depends on the availability of charging points. Norway and Netherlands has ten times more chargers per capita than the average market – and a lot more electric cars.

Getting charging points in place, however, has been pretty slow. New public-private partnerships between utilities, local and national governments – and moves by oil companies to put chargers on forecourts – could change that, but so far it’s pretty piecemeal.

In Europe, the UK  announced a £400 million investment fund for charging, in the US

New York Power Authority released a $250 million statewide EV charging plan and California Public Utility Commission approved a $738 million worth of EV charging projects for three big utilities.

The Chinese government plans to build 4.8 million charging points by 2022 with $1.9 billion of investment.

4. Manufacturers are going to offer lots of electric cars (and petrol and diesel ones too)

Car manufacturers are rushing to introduce electric models across their range – much as they once did so in Europe for diesel.

The number of EV models will increase from 155 in 2017 to 349 by 2025, according to estimates by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Major auto companies will releaselong-range EV models between now and 2025, and nearly half of the launches will be SUVs.

That comes with significant investment, around $140.7 billion into electric vehicles by 2022 according to BNEF. The only catch? Only a few companies, such as Volvo, have committed to stop conventional cars and even they plan to continue to sell “mild hybrids” which are, essentially, more efficient petrol cars.

“We could of course have prioritised [fully electric cars], but we would then of course have cars that are difficult to charge for our customers,” is what Volvo’s international chief executive Håkan Samuelsson told Unearthed last year.

As for big investors like VW? They plan to have an electric option for each model, but petrol and diesel options will persist too.

Electric cars displace oil – but how much is debated and there is always coal to worry about

Bloomberg has forecast that electrification could displace 7.3 million barrels a day of transportation fuel by 2040.That is a significant amount – leading analysts to speculate that it could punch a big hole in the oil price, potentially driving down oil production.

However, it seems unlikely to be enough to reduce emissions from transport in line with preventing catastrophic climate change (we understand calculations on this are being carried out in various places).

That said, forecasts about clean energy and electric cars have a very often been wrong with BP, Exxon and Opec all recently revising their predictions of electric car demand. Bloomberg tends to be a trifle more optimistic (after all, they don’t have skin in the game) but it’s safe to say the numbers could change wildly depending, it seems, on such mundane issues as whether anyone can get their head around building a global and cross-car compatible charging infrastructure.

Once that is in place there is a final key factor: where the power comes from. China is the world’s largest market for electric cars and it is also investing heavily in renewable energy. However, coal remains a key power source and the latest data reported by Unearthedsuggests China’s emissions are actually rising again.

Electric cars powered – even partially – on coal will not provide major benefits when it comes to climate change or air pollution.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

The annual political party conference season where politicians, party members, lobbyists and charities meet, exchange ideas and shape future party and government policy is upon us.

Expect lots of rousing speeches, interactive exhibition stands and interesting niche fringe events. This year The Vegan Society will be attending five of the main party conferences: Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green and SNP.

Here is a run-down of the impact key politicians have had on veganism, both at home and abroad…

Jeremy Corbyn

Committed vegetarian, Corbyn, was asked by a worker at Lush Cosmetics if he would take “the next logical step to veganism” this time last year. Mr Corbyn replied that he was “going through the process” of eating more vegan food.

This led to intense speculation that Corbyn was going vegan and presented the once unimaginable possibility of a future vegan PM. His office later clarified that he was in fact not going vegan, just eating more vegan food.

The impact a vegan PM would have is hard to imagine. Publicity and interest in veganism would likely increase many times over and the likelihood of positive legislative change for the environment and animal welfare would also greatly increase.

However, Corbyn’s office’s clarification is also a timely reminder that veganism is not currently considered a vote-winner – a call to action for all environmentalists, if we are to enact the real change required.

Michael Gove

Michael Gove, the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, has had a somewhat mixed impact on veganism. Positive points include admitting to being “predominantly herbivorous” and making some encouraging animal welfare changes like introducing CCTV in slaughterhouses and recently banning puppy-farms.

However, he also angered many doctors by stating: “Fresh dairy produce and protein sources such as fresh fish, offal and properly sourced meat are critical to human health.”

This is clearly untrue as both the British Dietetic Association and the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recognise that totally plant-based diets are suitable for every age and life stage.

There was also the furore that erupted when Caroline Lucas’ amendment to the EU withdrawal bill, which explicitly recognised that non-human animals are sentient, was rejected by Conservative MPs. Following a social media campaign by animal rights groups.

Mr Gove promised to make “any necessary changes” to UK law to recognise that other animals can feel pain. 

Kerry McCarthy

Kerry McCarthy is one of five vegan MPs in the UK and former shadow environment, food and rural affairs minister. She made headlines when she was first appointed to the role for claiming that “meat should be treated like tobacco with public campaigns to stop people eating it”.

Many tabloid newspapers and farmers groups reacted negatively to her comments, but Kerry’s comments appear sensible when considering the harm meat and dairy are doing to the nation’s health, the environment and of course the vast number of animals who are slaughtered and exploited every year.

United States

In 2013, Al Gore, prominent US environmentalist and former Vice-President to Bill Clinton, announced that he had switched to a vegan diet for environmental reasons.

Al Gore is an extremely-high profile environmentalist with his film, An Inconvenient Truth, receiving critical acclaim for highlighting the devastating impact of global warming.

His words and actions will have undoubtedly influenced a great number of environmentalists and inspired people to make the switch to a vegan diet worldwide.

Portugal

In 2017, Portugal became the first country in the world to introduce legislation compelling all public sector canteens to provide a strict vegetarian (vegan) option on their daily menus. This followed a campaign and petition promoted by the Portuguese Vegetarian Society that started back in 2015.

Highlighting the gulf between UK and Portuguese politics, a relatively new political party, People-Animals-Nature (PAN), have a seat in the National Portuguese Assembly and a further seat in the Madeiran regional parliament.

PAN is a political party that is explicitly vegan; clearly, there is a lot more to be done before the UK reaches a position where a vegan political party could take a seat in parliament.

Germany

Founded in 2016, this new German political party is seeking to abolish the slaughter of animals by 2030. Federal President Roland Wegner states: “We are the new Greens, only brighter.”

Having only contested one election so far, V-Partei3 does not yet have any seats in the German Bundestag, but support and interest is building.

There are many reasons to be optimistic regarding politicians and veganism, however we acknowledge that there is still a long way to go before we are where we want and need to be. We are hoping that The Vegan Society’s activities at Party Conferences can be a good step towards making this happen.

Conference Season

The Vegan Society will be hosting a mix of exhibition stalls and fringe events at the conferences. The fringe events will take the form of panel discussions on healthy, sustainable food, and the impact of Brexit on UK agriculture in conjunction with SERA (Labour’s environmental association) and the Green Lib Dems.

Panellists will include: Social Association CEO Helen Browning OBE, WWF Campaigns Director Tony Juniper, Chair of The Real Junk Food Project Duncan Milwain, and Harvard University Researcher Helen Harwatt PhD. 

The Vegan Society, along with V For Life, already sponsor the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Vegetarianism and Veganism, which meets four times a year to discuss all things relating to veganism with politicians and other stakeholders. Previous discussions have included the pros and cons of a legal definition of veganism and issues around vegan rights.

Switching to a vegan diet could be the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the earth, according to researchers at the University of Oxford.

Personal levels of food-related greenhouse gases, acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use would all reduce dramatically. With this in mind, The Vegan Society’s work at party conferences is all the more important, as politicians have it within their power to make a big difference at societal level.

This Author

Mark Banahan is campaigns and policy officer at The Vegan Society and a keen vegan and political activist. If you would like to learn more about veganism, sign up to the 7-day challenge here.

I’m regularly told – on social media and in real life – that climate skepticism has failed. ‘Hardly anyone actually denies the climate is changing, or argues that humans aren’t causing it’, people tell me.

Indeed, after one of Europe’s longest and most intense heatwaves for decades, more people than ever seem to be joining the dots between the way we live – burning all those lovely fossil fuels – and climatic anomalies.

But as is so often the case – it’s not how many people believe something, but who, which matters. On climate change, the general public is considerably ahead of some influential policymakers.

Sufficiently resourced

Right now, the president of the United States is a man that famously called climate change a “hoax”, and pulled the world’s second largest emitter out of the world’s only functioning climate treaty.

It’s not just the US. In Poland, the country set to host the next major international climate talks, the environment ministry doesn’t appear at all convinced that climate change is caused by humans. And in the UK, climate science deniers continue walk the corridors of the House of Lords, and enable meetings between government and foreign fossil fuel and agriculture lobbyists.

Meanwhile, the UK’s mainstream press continues to publish swathes of nonsense on climate change – whether via a column in The Times by coal baron and hereditary peer Matt Ridley, a diatribe ghost-written by a blogger for Christopher Booker in the Telegraph, or yet another piece of IPSO-corrected fake news from David Rose in the Mail on Sunday.

So yes, in one sense, the scientists are winning – most of the public believe climate change is real and caused by humans. But those running newspapers, FTSE 100 companies, and some major economies are yet to be convinced.

And that’s why we can’t be complacent. Fake news on climate change will be defeated, but only if those checking it are sufficiently resourced.

That’s why the independent media outlet I edit, DeSmog UK, this week launched a crowdfunding campaign. We’re aiming to raise £20,000 by the end of October to allow us to continue calling out climate science denial, and provide the full picture on the shadowy networks pushing environmental deregulation.

What will that money get you?

Well, what do you do if you see one of your friends (or even worse your MP, or boss) sharing a report penned by a legitimate sounding organisation like the Global Warming Policy Foundation suggesting climate change really isn’t that bad?

Who wants to spend hours trying to factcheck each line themselves?

But you could use DeSmog UK’s database to alert them that they’re quoting a famed purveyor of climate science denial.

Then you could use one of DeSmog UK’s network maps to show them exactly where the organisation fits into a complex web of lobbyists pushing for deregulation that harms the environment.

That’s the fake news checked, with expert journalists doing the legwork (and you getting to look clever in the process).

Pursuit of transparency

DeSmog UK’s Disinformation Database contains almost 100 profiles of organisations and individuals that push climate science denial. The profiles allow anyone to combat fake news on climate change quickly and effectively.

But creating and keeping these profiles and maps up to date takes a lot of time and money – about £250 a pop.

Because DeSmog UK doesn’t have corporate sponsorship or make any money from advertising, we have to rely on the generosity of people who care to allow us to pay skilled journalists and make sure our work meets the highest editorial standards.

If we raise the full £20,000 we can double the size of our database. That’s twice the fact-checking fun (and you can even claim some swag in the process).

Our Database and regular reporting on the UK’s influential climate science denial networks remove any excuse anyone – media, politicians, friends and family – have to peddle inaccuracies on climate change.

It’s only with this relentless, well-resourced, pursuit of transparency in the face of denial that fake news on climate change can be defeated, once and for all.

This Author

Mat Hope is Editor of DeSmog UK. You can donate to DeSmog UK’s crowdfunding drive through Indiegogo.