Fred Smith, founder of the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), was frustrated that oil companies were almost universally failing to recognise the climate agenda as a threat.

But he soon came up with a plan to rid organisations of the stigma of being publicly linked to oil companies in the campaign against climate science.

“It’s the Baptist and the bootlegger,” Smith told me.

“In counties that are dry, that means you can’t sell alcohol legally, there are still illegal sales of alcohol purveyed by people we call bootleggers.

“Then there’s a reformer who comes along and says, ‘this is ridiculous, we’re losing sales, we’re rewarding bad people, we’re selling adulterated alcohol, with tough consequences, let’s legalise, let’s get rid of the prohibition and legalise alcohol sales’.

And of course the bootleggers don’t like that because they’re enjoying a monopoly profit situation.”

Smith continued: “But they’re not very reputable so they’re not the ones who will lead the fight against prohibition repeal so they use the Baptists, fundamentalist Christians, who really do believe that if you allow drinking it might lead to dancing and things like that.

“So effectively you get that alliance, for very different reasons, of a moral intellectual group and an economic entity.” He concluded: “[This] is a part of, for good or bad, about almost every political change.”

Anti-climate gospel

Smith would call his contacts and friends at oil giant ExxonMobil and present the same argument. He also called big tobacco, pharmaceutical and car companies: “It’s Baptist-bootlegger,” he would say.

“We can provide the moral intellectual arguments that you find difficult to make and we can make them more if we have more resources to do it.”

The pitch seemed to work. Particularly on his close friend at the time John Blundell, a member of the Koch-elite.

Smith managed to secure financial support from the Charles G Koch Charitable Foundation and the Claude R Lambe Charitable Foundations – both of which Blundell controlled.

The CEI called companies and trusts donating $10,000 or more “competitive allies”. These included the David H Koch Charitable Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Earhart Foundation.

The oil firm Texaco, the tobacco company Philip Morris and carmakers Ford were also major contributors.

The funding allowed Smith and his colleagues to preach the anti-climate gospel in the US, Europe and at the major conferences which were now taking place all over the world.

Smith explained that he would attack climate initiatives on three levels. First he would assert the science was “not proven”, then present the economic argument that the costs of mitigation were too high.

Finally, he argued that the bankrupt political process would prevent any effective action. His formula would be repeated by climate skeptics for the next 25 years – including in Lord Nigel Lawson‘s short book, An Appeal to Reason.

Apocalyptic warming

The CEI published a collection of papers titled The True State of the Planet as a “major challenge to the environment movement” with funding from the Olin Foundation.

One essay claimed that “scientific evidence argues against the existence of a greenhouse crisis, against the notion that realistic policies could achieve any meaningful climatic impact, and against the claim that we must act now if we are to reduce the greenhouse threat.”

The CEI would also be among the first think tanks to claim that “there is no scientific consensus to support the proposition that human activity will produce an apocalyptic warming of the Earth’s atmosphere”.

Smith even sent American politicians his Environmental Briefing Book for Congressional Candidates.

This made the remarkable, if often repeated claim, that “the likeliest global climate change is the creation of a milder, greener, more prosperous world”.  

The CEI was by 1994 no longer operating from a kitchen table, but turning over almost $6 million a year.

A third of the money came from major corporations that “appear to approve of the CEI’s opposition to environmental legislation”  

These included oil giant Texaco, tobacco king Philip Morris, and carmakers General Motors and Ford.

Blundell may well have been a huge help to Smith in securing Koch funding. But it was Smith’s inspiration that would make Blundell the most significant person in the history of Britain’s climate sceptic cause.

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. 

Sian Berry is replacing Caroline Lucas as co-leader of the Green Party alongside Jonathan Bartley, the party has confirmed.

Bartley and Berry jointly won 6,239 out of a total of 8,379 votes cast by the party membership. They have vowed to make the party the third biggest political party in Britain, and get a Green in every council chamber.

The party will stand as “the opposite of vapid, old school centrist politics”, they said, and promised to put forward “bright Green ideas” to answer the big challenges facing the country, including Brexit, climate change, housing and how automation is effecting the world of work.

They also promised “fiercer Green resistance” to projects such as fracking and the HS2 rail link, and to practices such as deportation and indefinite detention.

Berry has been a councillor at the London Borough of Camden since 2014. She was elected Green London Assembly member in 2016, when she also came third in the London mayoral race. Bartley has led the opposition on the London Borough of Lambeth since being elected a Streatham councillor in May this year.

Lucas, who co-led the party with Bartley since 2 September 2016, announced in May that she would not be standing in the party’s leadership contest.

Party is “buoyant” 

Leadership contenders Shahrar Ali and Leslie Rowe received 1,466 and 495 votes respectively. Amelia Womack was re-elected deputy leader of the party for a third term after winning 3,981 of 7,369 votes. She will continue work on women’s rights, including the campaign to make misogyny a hate crime, as well as work on sustainable communities and the environment.

Berry said: “We’re excited to take on leading a buoyant Green Party at this crucial time for our country and party. With Brexit on the horizon and our planet burning, the last thing people need is the stale centrism of the past, which brought us austerity and privatisation – and totally failed to tackle climate breakdown or give people real security and quality of life.”

The Green Party currently has 39,350 members, according to data published this week by the Commons Library. The Labour Party has around 540,000 members, while the Scottish National Party has just under 125,500, the Conservatives 124,000, and the Liberal Democrats around 99,200.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She was formerly the deputy editor of the Environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76. 

“Dissent is not a crime”. That is the battle cry of a group of six women campaigners defending their right to protest against a fossil fuel company which sought a wide-ranging injunction to restrict direct action at drilling sites.

Known locally as the “Surrey and Sussex Six”, the campaigners backed by Friends of the Earth opposed an injunction issued by UK Oil and Gas (UKOG), a company which plans to develop onshore oil drilling in the south east of England.

The injunction, which was described by campaigners as “draconian” and an attempt to stifle free speech and peaceful protest, was scaled back by a judge in the High Court on Monday but still granted to UKOG.

The decision was greeted with mixed reactions by activists who are seeking to appeal the court’s decision.

“It seems to me like anyone with money can take out an injunction to protect its commercial interests,” said Jacqui Hamlin (second from right in the picture), one of the six defendants in the High Court case against UKOG.

“People have been frightened into silence — what sort of society is that?”

“The right to protest and assemble is a cornerstone of our democracy. If the suffragette had protested in a manner that was acceptable to the authorities, would anything have changed?,” she asked.

Warning about the impact of such injunctions of people’s rights to protest and to free speech, three of the campaigners who fought the injunction told DeSmog UK about their hopes and fears for the future of their campaign.

Injunction

The injunction, which is addressed to “persons unknown” — an all-encompassing term used in a similar injunction granted to leading fracking company INEOS last year — was the most far-reaching in a series of similar court orders sought by onshore oil drilling and fracking companies over the past 12 months.

Although the most restrictive clauses were removed, the injunction outlaws a range of direct actions in order to protect UKOG’s commercial interests. This includes a ban on obstructing the entrances of the sites at Broadford Bridge in West Sussex and Horse Hill in Surrey as well as the highway leading to them, slow walking in front of vehicles, targeting contractors and blocking vehicles coming in and out of the sites.

But the judge reduced the scope of the injunction from four to two sites and excluded UKOG’s head office in Guilford. He also refused to grant the injunction against those “instructing or encouraging” protest, which could have acted as a blanket ban on publicising and promoting protest activities — fearing this would impede on free speech.

Language referring to those “watching” the site was also excluded from the injunction on the basis this could be an attempt to prevent people protesting outside the sites or monitoring the company’s activities, which are both lawful.

‘Chilling effect’

For Hamlin, the judge’s decision to grant the injunction to UKOG has opened up more questions than answers.

“The law is there to be respected and we respect the law,” she said, adding: “But I don’t do legal jargon very well and I am finding this very worrying.”

Hamlin said the injunction was complex and did not clearly set-out what opponents to UKOG could and couldn’t do but instead created a raft of legal details that campaigners would have to carefully analyse and understand in order to avoid breaching the court’s order.

“There will be people who will be too afraid of taking part in any more protests by fear or breaching the injunction and others like me who might get into situations without realising this breach some part of the injunction,” she said.

Vicki Elcoate (second from left in the picture), of Dorking, another member of the “Surrey and Sussex Six”, agreeds Describing herself as a seasoned activist, Elcoate, a Green party member, said the injunction “allowed some forms of protests and restricted others” and that campaigners will need time to understand what the ruling means in practice.

“The decision to grant the injunction remains very chilling for protesters because breaching an injunction is a very serious matter which can be punished by a significant fine or even a prison sentence. This is a real dissentive to protest,” she said.

Hamlin knows about the risks of protest.

In January 2017, she was arrested in Brockham, near UKOG’s Horse Hill site in Surrey, for slow walking and obstructing a lorry. Charges were eventually dropped but the memory of that day has stuck with her.

“Spending 14 hours in a cell is certainly no piece of cake and I don’t think anyone is prepared for that,” she told DeSmog UK. But despite the risks, Hamlin is not ready to give up just yet.

“I would certainly like to appeal the injunction. If it is legally robust, it should stand up to a bit of challenge — only what is flimsy will fall through,” she said.  

‘Clamp down strategy’  

A retired deputy head-teacher, Ann Stewart (third from left in the picture), became involved in the campaign against UKOG’s activities when the company put in a planning application to drill under the South Downs National Park at Markwells Wood near Chichester in West Sussex.

Although UKOG withdrew its application in May last year, Markwells Wood was included in the injunction despite the fact no direct action has ever taken place at the site.

“UKOG has pretended it was faced with an extremely dedicated campaign and lots of people ready to take direct action at the Markwells Wood site, but that is far removed from the reality here,” Stewart said.

“This was a sign of their efforts to suppress any effective opposition,” she added.

Elcoate said UKOG’s injunction was more evidence of the oil and gas industry’s willingness “to clamp down on protests and any opposition to its activities”.

“These injunctions are becoming more and more restrictive.They have become part of a strategy for some companies. But peaceful protest is a legitimate part of the democratic process,” she added.

“The government has said it was pro-fracking. But companies have no social licence to carry out these activities which are deeply unpopular. I think the government should go back to the drawing board. All that money and energy could be directed to promote a green, low-carbon economy rather than promote fossil fuels.”

The judge’s ruling on the injunction brought predictably contrasting responses from campaigners and the company.

In a statement, UKOG chief executive Stephen Sanderson, said he was pleased the judgement “firmly upholds the company’s collective human, legal and democratic right to conduct its lawful business without hindrance from the unlawful actions of activists whose intent is to cause physical, psychological and financial harm to our company, staff, contractors, supply chain and local residents.”

He warned that UKOG will seek “swift and appropriate redress from the High Court against activists who openly breach the injunction”.

He said the injunction “did not seek in any way to remove the right to peaceful protest, freedom of assembly, or freedom of expression” and that “those who wish to assemble and express their views peacefully and lawfully outside our sites will remain free to do so, as they have always been able to do”.

The campaigners certainly have no plans to give up their fight.

Commenting on the news of the injunction, the Weald Action Group, an umbrella network of organisations fighting against onshore oil drilling and fracking in the south east of England, said they were “going to fight on.”

“We do not believe that powerful private companies should be able to use the law to silence  and intimidate campaigners concerned about the dangers and damage to the environment and our communities”.

“Oil companies cannot be allowed to set the legal framework for protest in this way.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

This summer, the world is experiencing devastating climate change impacts: record heat in Pakistan and India have caused 4,000 deaths, flooding in the Philippines due to torrential downpour has caused 54,000 people to evacuate from their homes.

More and more countries are experiencing the worst of climate change. In Japan and South Korea, a heatwave has killed 200 people.

In Europe, record-breaking temperatures have destroyed farmers’ crops while the wildfires in Greece killed 92 people.

Feeling helpless

Scientists have said that climate change made this heatwave twice as likely.

Media reports about a recent scientific study  painted a doomsday scenario for the planet, saying that we are close to the tipping point of a “Hothouse Earth”, a point of no return where climate change will be uncontrollable.

I started working on climate change over 20 years ago and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt helpless about the impacts. But this year I’ve seen and experienced firsthand the impacts of climate change in a wealthy country, rather than in India, my birthplace.

While cycling through the British countryside I have met farmers who worry that they will lose their whole crop for the year.

In Bern, where I live, the Aare River recorded its highest temperature ever, 23.8C. This is dangerously close to the upper limit that many freshwater fish species can handle. On a mountaineering tour, we did not need our crampons because the glacier had receded so much. 

Business as usual 

What sealed my concern was a large article in the newspaper on the frontpage about farmers not being prepared to deal with climate change.

Switzerland, despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world and one that prides itself on  being prepared, has been caught off guard by climate change. Can you imagine farmers in poorer countries? What about farmers in India, about 60,000 of whom have already killed themselves because of crop-damaging temperature increase in the country?

Fossil fuel companies like Exxon and Shell have known about the dangers of climate change brought about by their products as far back as forty years ago. However, these companies have continued with business as usual and even seeded doubts on climate science through the media.

The climate change impacts we are experiencing today are a result of the fossil fuel industry’s neglect to act when they needed to and their willful deception, using climate deniers and the media to mask what the science said.

Rising up 

This reckless drive for profits at any cost has made fossil fuel companies the most profitable and powerful corporations in history. Their influence over our political processes keeps governments from constraining their climate-destroying operations.

Where governments fail, ordinary people are rising up to the challenge. Local communities have been leading the rapid transformation of our entire energy system to renewable energy from the bottom-up, taking control over their own energy.  

All over the world, people take action to stop fossil fuel projects in their tracks.

And people everywhere organise locally to remove the public acceptance and funding of the fossil fuel industry, to weaken their political influence.

This grassroots movement has already led over 900 institutions including major cities, universities, faith and medical groups, and the heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune to pull their investments out of fossil fuels. 

Fossil free

While the majority of media coverage about the ‘hothouse’ report made it seem like we are on a hopeless and inevitable path to a dystopian catastrophe, the study itself clearly states that it is one possibility.

The scientists emphasise that it is within our power to stop this from happening and call for what the climate movement has long been advocating for: get out of fossil fuels as fast as possible and transition to 100% renewable energy.

This is exactly what the Fossil Free campaign is pushing for and what tens of thousands of people will demand at hundreds of actions around the world on 8 September.

The ‘Rise for Climate’ day of action will see people all over the globe take action in their local communities for a fossil-free world that puts people and justice before profits. 

The effects of climate change that we are already witnessing and the dire scenarios for our future can make me feel despair. But it’s also a motivation to fight and set us on a different path. Knowing that I am a part of a global movement of people who are prepared to do just that is what gives me hope that not all is lost. 

This Author

Payal Parekh is the Global Program Director at 350.org, leading the organization’s international campaigning and mobilisation work. She holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. This article was first published by DeSmog UK. 

Fires have broken out on peatland inside palm oil concessions in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.

The concessions belong to suppliers of some of the biggest household brands in the world including Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever, new documentation from Greenpeace Indonesia shows. 

There has been a huge increase in the number of fire hotspots across Indonesia in 2018. As many as 9,819 fire hotspots have been identified this year so far, nearly three times the number identified in all of 2017 (3,488).

Major industries

The number of fire hotspots has been growing steadily throughout August, with Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) warning that the increasingly dry weather could see fires continue to increase through September.

One of the concessions, PT Sumatera Unggul Makmur (PT SUM), has burned every year since 2013. It belongs to Gama, a palm oil company closely connected to the world’s largest palm oil trader, Wilmar. 

Fire hotspots have also been recorded in concessions belonging to Bumitama and First Resources. All three producers have been supplying palm oil to major brands, including Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever, via Wilmar and other palm oil traders and all three are members of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil, the industry’s sustainability certification body.

As palm oil producers clear trees and drain marshes for new plantations, the dried out peat becomes dangerously susceptible to catching fire. 

Specialist prevention

Annisa Rahmawati, forest campaigner fo Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said: “People in Indonesia are sick and tired. The Indonesian Government promised to stop rogue companies but the palm oil industry still isn’t listening.

“It’s early days yet and we hope the fires don’t get worse, but the haze is already shutting down schools and putting people’s lives at risk.” 

Greenpeace Indonesia has its own Forest Fire Prevention team, which was established in 2016 and is made up of specially trained volunteers and former victims of forest fires and haze.

Prevention is the team’s central focus. They are trained to detect fires and put them out before they become more dangerous and widespread. They also investigate where there is potential for fires to break out, work to raise awareness of the importance of forest and peatland protection for local communities and extinguish fires whenever possible.

They working alongside a special firefighting team from the Ministry of Forestry and Environment, local communities and local NGOs and are supported by Greenpeace Russia’s forest fire experts.

Governmental negligence 

Arif Setiawan from Rasau Jaya in West Kalimantan has been impacted by the fires every year since 2008, which is why he joined the Greenpeace Forest Fire Prevention team. He said: 

“Out on patrol, the peatlands are dry. When the wind blew we watched the fire engulf land and vegetation. We can smell the smoke as it spreads to Pontianak, it’s been thick in recent weeks, and my hometown is close to the hotspots so it’s even worse there.

“When it’s this bad children stay at home. The sad thing is people are getting used to living life wearing masks.”

Last Saturday, Indonesia’s President, Joko Widodo, was found guilty of negligence by a Palangkaraya High Court for the Indonesian Government’s handling of the deadly 2015 fires. The Government is appealing the decision at the Supreme Court. 

Arie Rompas, one of the principal plaintiffs and forest campaign team leader of Greenpeace Indonesia, said: “Instead of appealing this verdict, the government needs to accept it messed up and fix the problem by bringing the palm oil industry to heel.

“President Jokowi must take charge of the situation and enforce the law against companies that don’t protect their land from fire.”

This Author

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

Dr Fred Singer is the architect of one of the most controversial episodes in climate science, accused of using the infirmity of an old man to discredit his life’s work on climate change.

He attended the Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in New Orleans during February 1990  where Dr Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was speaking.

Revelle helped to establish that carbon levels in the atmosphere were steadily rising and also taught science to a young Al Gore in the 1960s. As Revelle wrote in 1992: “There is a good but by no means certain chance that the world’s average climate will become significantly warmer during the next century.”

Singer approached him off the back of this statement, asking if the two men could collaborate on an article for The Washington Post.

Conned at death

That night Revelle suffered a heart attack and was rushed from the airport to a local hospital for a triple-bypass, and was not discharged until May that year.

Singer nevertheless continued to press the scientist to work on a journal article. “Whenever Singer sent him a draft, Revelle buried it under piles of paper on his desk. When Singer called, [Revelle’s secretary] would dig up the draft and put it on the top, and Revelle would bury it again,”  records American historian of Science at the University of Harvard professor, Naomi Oreskes, in her account of the episode.

“Some people don’t think Fred Singer is a very good scientist,” Revelle told his secretary.

Later that year Singer published his article, with Revelle named as second author, in the journal Cosmos. It stated boldly: “The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.”

The words were copied and pasted from an earlier article published by Singer – and directly contradicted Revelle’s own publicly stated views.

Revelle died of a heart attack the following July. Family members, friends and students all claimed that Singer had pressured or tricked the dying scientist into signing off a journal article which presented an argument opposed to his own.

Silencing the critics

His student, Justin Lancaster, said in a written statement to a Harvard memorial symposium in memory of the late scientist: “Revelle did not write the Cosmos article and was reluctant to join it. Pressured rather unfairly at a very weak moment while recovering from heart surgery,Revelle finally gave in to the lead author.”

Not happy with these criticisms, Singer issued a ‘SLAPP’ lawsuit designed to silence and intimidate opponents. Lancaster was forced to issue a retraction or face an expensive and lengthy court trial.

While Lancaster has since recanted the retraction the damage remains, Singer successfully silenced the truth as he continued to wage a war against climate science.

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.

In April 2017, The Ecologist published concerns about the violation of an environmental buffer zone by the mining group Rio Tinto’s subsidiary, QIT Minerals Madagascar (QMM). 

Recent studies undertaken by Rio Tinto (RT) and independently by Dr Steven Emerman, the hydrology and mining expert for The Andrew Lees Trust and an author of this article, confirm that QMM’s mine activity on the Mandena site has extended well beyond legal permissions and encroached onto the lake bed where people fish, collect reeds and other water products.

The Andrew Lees Trust reports are available in French and English.

After three months, Rio Tinto has failed to produce an official statement about the buffer violation, or answer related questions raised by The Andrew Lees Trust.

Sensitive environment 

QMM is mining ilmenite, an industrial whitener, from coastal sands of southern Madagascar.

Situated alongside an estuary along the southeast coastline, the mine is operating in a sensitive environment with highly variable weather conditions, including cyclones and seasonal flooding, and a volatile water table.

The extraction of ilmenite leaves behind ponds of water and tailings enriched with radioactive substances (radionuclides). There are concerns that radionuclide-enriched water from the mine tailings will flow into the estuary by flooding or seepage. 

Malagasy law requires an 80-metre buffer zone between any investment activity – such as mining – and sensitive areas such as lagoons, marshy areas and wetlands, so as not to disturb the ecological balance. This means an 80-metre area should be left between the lake edge and the mine activity.

QMM claims it was unaware of the national 80-metre buffer restriction until 2013. 

Reducing the buffer

QMM therefore applied to the Malagasy Government to waiver the 80-metre restriction for their operation. Their proposed changes were presented in a Social and Environmental Management Plan (SEMP 2014-2018).

QMM proposed to reduce the legal buffer limit by 30 metres, from 80 metres to 50 metres. In reducing the buffer, QMM also proposed to build a “berm” or dam between the edge of the mining operation and the revised 50-metre buffer delimitation.

More egregious than the decimation of an additional 14.4 hectares of unique littoral forest acquired from the buffer reduction, is the fact that QMM’s mine has not respected the revised 50-metre limit and has extended onto the lake bed itself. 

There are restrictions to private legal ownership within natural public areas (domaines publics naturels) in Madagascar of which reserved lands (pas géométriques), such as river beds, are included. 

Malagasy law requires permissions from the local authority for extractive activities within these reserved lands. No evidence that such permissions have been sought and secured has been provided by Rio Tinto/QMM. 

Mine encroachment

Comparing two visual images of the same area of the mine site in question from 2009 and 2016 clearly shows the encroachment and destruction of original forest area.

The 2009 image illustrates the very marshy nature of the lake, which shows in dark pools between the trees.

QMM’s encroachment within and beyond the revised buffer has decimated the ecosystem. 

Original forest fragments have been destroyed, standing water areas of the original lake have been built over, and mine tailings have been piled into the lake, exposing the estuary to the risk of radioactive substances. 

QMM admitted to having “entered in this zone” and to having “stacked materials for a period of time.” However, QMM maintained that it is still compliant within the limits of the SEMP and that “no mining took place within the 50 metres.”

This is not the same as admitting that no “mining activity” has taken place, which is what their permission exacts, and which would include operational or construction aspects of the mine.

Water risks

In the ilmenite extraction process, zircon and monazite are present as by-products. Both minerals contain the radionuclides uranium-238 and thorium-232 and their decay products (other radionuclides such as radium-226).  These Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) are present in the mine tailings, and in water present in the dredge pond.

Any movement of water from the dredge pond into the lake risks transporting the water that is enriched with these radionuclides (relative to natural background levels), due to its contact with the tailings, into the adjacent waterways and the food chain of local people.  

There is nothing between the dredge pond, with its radionuclide-enriched water, and the estuary, except a “berm” made out of sand. 

The dam

The company’s proposal to build a 30-metre wide “berm” is primarily to afford the space needed for the mine anchorage and infrastructure, without which the dredging plant cannot function.   

This “mur de soutènement” (retaining wall), as QMM refer to it in their SEMP, can also be considered a dam in that QMM claims its purpose is also to prevent water transport between the mining basin and the lake.

The QMM dam is almost certainly composed of highly permeable, well-sorted beach sands and tailings – such as the company suggests they have used. 

Dr Emerman deemed this structure unfit for purpose and observed that the safety criterion used by QMM for the dam ”is similar to the criterion that would be used for the design of storm drains at a shopping mall parking lot”. 

In response, QMM argued that it is only temporarily mining this area, and that the area of the mining basin is “much smaller in volume than the neighbouring lakes.” They said, therefore, that they are not required to observe or apply internationally recognized safety criteria for a dam.

Unacceptable standards

Based on rainfall, Dr Emerman has calculated the annual probabilities of seepage from the basins and of overtopping of the dam to be “unacceptably high.”

Rio Tinto/QMM claimed that management of water levels is ongoing and asserted, “the dredge pond is generally operated at an elevation below the neighbouring lakes and below the natural topography.” The term “generally” compromises the commitment of rigorous monitoring of water levels, required under the permissions granted against QMM’s SEMP. 

Equally concerning is when the dredge pond is dewatered by discharging radionuclide-enriched water into the environment without treatment; then current safety protocols for confining radionuclides to the mining basin are completely irrelevant.

The company’s repeated assurances that the QMM mine poses “no risk” in respect of its radioactivity levels have yet to be substantiated. 

The Andrew Lees Trust has commissioned an independent review of the mine’s radioactivity levels and aims to release it later this year. 

Greenwashing

Inevitably the question arises as to why QMM would risk its ‘green’ award winning profile by violating a legal buffer and placing the environment and local people at risk.

The reduction of the buffer zone gains the company an additional 14.4 hectares of land and enables them to access the highest quality and lowest cost deposits of the mineral necessary for the project to remain a going concern. 

In Rio Tinto’s own words, without reducing the buffer by 30 metres “a 9 percent reserve loss would be incurred and the extraction sequence would be non-optimal”. This means without the additional access to mineral wealth, the project is simply not viable. 

The company claimed that QMM’s project changes afford “protection of the ecosystem and as community access.” However, their violation of the buffer and encroachment onto the lake bed has compromised the pre-existing forest ecosystem.

Local people gain nothing from the buffer reduction, whereas QMM, a mine that struggled to deliver a dividend in 2015, is not viable without it. In reality, QMM has adjusted the perimeters of the mine to accommodate its own interests and passed the environmental costs on to local people.

Long-term concerns

There is no discussion in QMM’s SEMP that demonstrates Rio Tinto/QMM has given any consideration as to what will happen when the current dredging operation is complete and groundwater levels return to normal. 

There are already countless outstanding questions in relation to the buffer violation, the radionuclide content of mining basin water discharge, the management of water levels, dam construction criteria, and the actual width of the dam. 

Questions need answering for the local populations who rely on local rivers and lakes as a substantial natural resource to meet their daily needs.

Under its sustainability commitments, Rio Tinto states its vision “to be a company that is admired and respected for delivering superior business value and for being the industry’s trusted partner.” Part of building that trust, it says, is to find “ever smarter answers to complex global and local issues.”

It is hard to see how QMM reflects Rio Tinto’s aspirations when their operational plan has failed to provide for an 80-metre legal buffer zone and an area for its mine infrastructure, or when nobody wants to admit the gross errors at play or consider the risks they present to local people. 

The Authors 

Yvonne Orengo is an independent communications practitioner and director of the Andrew Lees Trust, a British charity set up following the death of its namesake in Madagascar in 1994. Based in Madagascar for over six years, she developed the Trust’s strategic programme and has followed the evolution of Rio Tinto’s QMM project for over 20 years.

Dr Steven H. Emerman is the owner of Malach Consulting, which specialises in evaluating the environmental impacts of mining on behalf of mining companies, as well as governmental and nongovernmental organisations. Dr Emerman has 31 years of experience teaching hydrology and geophysics and has 66 peer-reviewed publications in these areas.

The Ecologist contacted Rio Tinto. Although the company responded, it has not yet provided a comment. 

The tiny house movement in the United States – which trades traditional homes for much smaller alternatives – is growing in popularity but still represents a small share of homeowners. As the movement continues, some are asking whether it’s a fad or something that will last and become mainstream.

There is some disagreement regarding this question. In fact, there’s even confusion about how one defines a tiny house.

Tiny houses are — as their name suggests — small dwellings, typically between 100 and 400 square feet, according to the website the Tiny Life. They’re often mobile but can also have a foundation, and they are available in many shapes and sizes.

Tiny houses are as much a movement as a type of structure. They’ve come to represent simplifying, self-sufficiency, freedom and environmental awareness.

Zoning Headaches

The above definition is not official, per say. Most zoning rules don’t include a definition for the term tiny house, and most local governments don’t really know what to do with them. In fact, in many areas, they are technically illegal.

Several cites have passed ordinances in support of tiny homes, but even in many of these leading cities, it’s only legal to have one as a secondary dwelling. In most places, they’re in a legal gray area. Sometimes they fall into the RV category, and sometimes state and local laws conflict.

This uncertainty forces many tiny homesteaders to live off the radar and sometimes move from place to place.

If the tiny home movement is going to stick around, local governments will have to come around and pass the necessary rules. Although some have done so, many cities seem reluctant.

Sustainable Lifestyle?

Moving into a tiny home requires substantial lifestyle changes. This is, of course, part of the whole idea, but it’s what makes living in these small spaces challenging.

Living in such a small space often requires getting rid of belongings and keeping only the essentials, part of a lifestyle often referred to as minimalism. This requires a substantial change in thinking for many people.

It also limits things that are more impactful than physical belongings. Tiny homes may work well for individuals or couples, but if you decide you want to start a family, you may need to move to a larger place. It also limits what you can do in your home. Having guests over, for instance, would prove difficult.

Tiny home advocates would say these challenges are just part of the lifestyle. It forces you to choose what items are truly important to you, which helps you simplify. If you want to have guests, you just have to spend more time with them outside your home.

For some, this way of living might be perfectly sustainable. Many, though, grow tired of this eventually, often after they decide they want to have children.

Cost Considerations

The affordability of tiny homes is one of their biggest draws. It’s much easier to afford a small house rather than a large one. Because the space is small, energy bills will likely be low, too. It’s even easier to go solar and produce your own energy.

If you’re buying land on which to put your tiny house, it will be a significant factor in determining cost. This means they’ll typically be more affordable in rural areas than urban ones.

If cost remains a major consideration, we may see people moving out of tiny homes when they start making more money. For instance, a recent college grad may opt for one but move out when they start earning more. This high turnover rate could prevent tiny homes from being seen as more legitimate.

Small Market

Perhaps in part because of these limitations, the tiny home market remains relatively small. It’s difficult to get exact numbers on small homes because of their ambiguous definition, but records suggest that less than one percent of homes sold are less than 1,000 square feet.

While the fact that the tiny house market is small isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does present some challenges to the compact home movement. The small market makes it harder to sell, making a tiny home a riskier investment.

Until more people choose small homes and they become more mainstream, their legal status will likely remain foggy. Without concrete legal status, the future of the tiny home movement will always be a bit uncertain.

However, that legal status is one of the biggest reasons the tiny house market is as small as it is, making this a challenging problem to solve for small house lovers.

Will the tiny house movement stick around? Only time will tell. It’s especially hard to say because it is such new, unexplored territory. The movement does face some significant challenges, though. For the tiny house trend to become sustainable, it will need changes to laws and a substantial shift in the way we as a society think about what it means to have a home.

This Author

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

The tiny house movement in the United States – which trades traditional homes for much smaller alternatives – is growing in popularity but still represents a small share of homeowners. As the movement continues, some are asking whether it’s a fad or something that will last and become mainstream.

There is some disagreement regarding this question. In fact, there’s even confusion about how one defines a tiny house.

Tiny houses are — as their name suggests — small dwellings, typically between 100 and 400 square feet, according to the website the Tiny Life. They’re often mobile but can also have a foundation, and they are available in many shapes and sizes.

Tiny houses are as much a movement as a type of structure. They’ve come to represent simplifying, self-sufficiency, freedom and environmental awareness.

Zoning Headaches

The above definition is not official, per say. Most zoning rules don’t include a definition for the term tiny house, and most local governments don’t really know what to do with them. In fact, in many areas, they are technically illegal.

Several cites have passed ordinances in support of tiny homes, but even in many of these leading cities, it’s only legal to have one as a secondary dwelling. In most places, they’re in a legal gray area. Sometimes they fall into the RV category, and sometimes state and local laws conflict.

This uncertainty forces many tiny homesteaders to live off the radar and sometimes move from place to place.

If the tiny home movement is going to stick around, local governments will have to come around and pass the necessary rules. Although some have done so, many cities seem reluctant.

Sustainable Lifestyle?

Moving into a tiny home requires substantial lifestyle changes. This is, of course, part of the whole idea, but it’s what makes living in these small spaces challenging.

Living in such a small space often requires getting rid of belongings and keeping only the essentials, part of a lifestyle often referred to as minimalism. This requires a substantial change in thinking for many people.

It also limits things that are more impactful than physical belongings. Tiny homes may work well for individuals or couples, but if you decide you want to start a family, you may need to move to a larger place. It also limits what you can do in your home. Having guests over, for instance, would prove difficult.

Tiny home advocates would say these challenges are just part of the lifestyle. It forces you to choose what items are truly important to you, which helps you simplify. If you want to have guests, you just have to spend more time with them outside your home.

For some, this way of living might be perfectly sustainable. Many, though, grow tired of this eventually, often after they decide they want to have children.

Cost Considerations

The affordability of tiny homes is one of their biggest draws. It’s much easier to afford a small house rather than a large one. Because the space is small, energy bills will likely be low, too. It’s even easier to go solar and produce your own energy.

If you’re buying land on which to put your tiny house, it will be a significant factor in determining cost. This means they’ll typically be more affordable in rural areas than urban ones.

If cost remains a major consideration, we may see people moving out of tiny homes when they start making more money. For instance, a recent college grad may opt for one but move out when they start earning more. This high turnover rate could prevent tiny homes from being seen as more legitimate.

Small Market

Perhaps in part because of these limitations, the tiny home market remains relatively small. It’s difficult to get exact numbers on small homes because of their ambiguous definition, but records suggest that less than one percent of homes sold are less than 1,000 square feet.

While the fact that the tiny house market is small isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does present some challenges to the compact home movement. The small market makes it harder to sell, making a tiny home a riskier investment.

Until more people choose small homes and they become more mainstream, their legal status will likely remain foggy. Without concrete legal status, the future of the tiny home movement will always be a bit uncertain.

However, that legal status is one of the biggest reasons the tiny house market is as small as it is, making this a challenging problem to solve for small house lovers.

Will the tiny house movement stick around? Only time will tell. It’s especially hard to say because it is such new, unexplored territory. The movement does face some significant challenges, though. For the tiny house trend to become sustainable, it will need changes to laws and a substantial shift in the way we as a society think about what it means to have a home.

This Author

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

One evening John Blundell arrived at the Hickory Farm neighbourhood watch meeting in Virginia, and to his surprise discovered he was living close to Dr S Fred Singer, who he had met on the free market think tank circuit.

Singer was with his new wife Candice Crandall, who Blundell had met separately as a press officer at the Koch funded George Mason University (GMU).

Singer is the most persistent and persuasive, and some believe pernicious, sceptical scientist in the world. He was aware of the science from as early as 1968 but it was at the same time that he met Blundell among the community of Koch funders and funded think tanks around GMU that he became the most important activist in the field.

Singer was a rocket scientist with outstanding credentials. While serving in the US Navy during the Second World War he designed computer technology to help ships avoid mines. He then designed instruments for satellites and produced the first calculation of methane increases due to human activity.

Exxon, Shell, Sun Oil and ARCO all hired Singer as a consultant during the late 1970s. And he was among the first to challenge the science of acid rain and by 1989 had become interested in the emerging science of climate change, leading to his attack on the scientists as well as the campaigners.

Ideological paranoia

Around this time he also became a good friend to Blundell: “One evening, when I was a volunteer on neighbourhood watch, I suddenly realised Fred was a close neighbour” Blundell told me before he passed away.

“By bizarre coincidence Fred lived in the same sub-division. For ages I had no idea. His wife was better known to me as a public relations person at GMU. She kept her maiden name so I had no idea they were even a couple.”

He added: “I really spent more time with Fred when I was at the IEA and he was in London and at a loose end on a weekend. I took him to lunch at the Morpeth Arms I recall.”

As well as being close neighbours, Blundell and Singer were ideological allies.

Singer was the founder and inspiration for the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), and would dedicate his retirement years attacking science and environmental policy through the offices of the project.

Linda Whetstone, Fisher’s eldest daughter and a trustee of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, confirmed in one document that “SEPP was founded in 1992, receiving early support from Atlas [Economic Research Foundation] at a crucial stage.”

Yet, SEPP claimed never to have lobbied and set out that it would only “respond when requested by Congress or administration officials”.

Self proclaimed messiah

Singer shared Fisher’s almost paranoid concern about communism. He wrote: “There are probably those with hidden agendas of their own, not just to save the environment, but to change our economic system.”

He warned: “Some of these coercive utopians are socialists, some are technology hating luddites; most have a great desire to legislate on as large a scale as possible.”

Blundell and Singer found common ideological ground. Shortly after meeting Blundell, Singer was made a distinguished research professor at the Institute of Humane Studies.

He could also boast of being “distinguished research professor” at GMU. Such proximity to the Koch nexus suggests he may have also received oil funding.

Crandall would confirm some years later: “SEPP has never received funding from ARCO, Sun Oil or Shell. Exxon is the only oil company that gives a regular grant – $5,000, no strings.”

Singer then recruited Professor Frederick Seitz, the founder of the George C Marshall Institute to his new think tank.

But by the time Seitz was appointed by Singer, at the age of 86, he was in failing health. A manager at a tobacco company paying the scientist to attack cancer studies around this time said: “Dr Seitz is quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice.”

SEPP was also affiliated to the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, which in turn was funded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a self proclaimed messiah, manufacturer and radical conservative.

Dr John Mashey, an independent researcher who publishes with the environmentalist DeSmogBlog in the US, has analysed Singer’s tax returns. He noted: “SEPP’s finances were curious. SEPP paid no salaries, even for Singer’s 60-hour work weeks. Money flowed oddly. Asset trades often exceeded normal income and they accumulated to $1.5 million, tax free.”

Singer would become the most influential climate denier of his generation. But his methods would prove hugely controversial and, for many, well beyond academic ethics.

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.