Vampire bats help their neighbours in need even if there is no benefit to them –  not what one might expect from the blood-sucking creatures.

Scientists found the flying mammals develop social bonds during captivity which they maintained when returned to the wild.

Researchers say vampire bat co-operation is rare in that individuals pay a cost to help others. They were observed regurgitating their food – ingested blood – to feed non-relatives.

Reciprocal

Study co-lead author Gerald Carter, assistant professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University, said: “What’s quite common in animal co-operation is doing something where we both benefit simultaneously: let’s live together, let’s hunt together. I’m benefiting, you’re benefiting. 

“Here, there’s a kind of risk. If you have a co-operative trait that helps other individuals and costs you, natural selection should wipe that trait out unless the co-operative individual benefits somehow.

“With vampire bat food sharing, there must be a benefit. It must be that by helping others I’m also helping myself.”

He added that scientists think the bats must have long-term reciprocal relationships, but it is not yet clear how that works.

Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) housed female vampire bats and their captive-born offspring in a closed laboratory colony for 22 months.

Shared

This created conditions that prompted social bonding behaviours of food sharing and grooming.

The bats were then returned to their natural outdoor home roost of a hollow tree, equipped with sensors that recorded how close they were to each other every two seconds.

Those same sensors were placed on a control group of wild bats.

Over eight days, researchers collected enough data from the sensors to suggest that relationships between the previously captive bats persisted when they returned to the wild.

According to the study published in the Current Biology journal, from an evolutionary standpoint this suggests that whether bats maintain a relationship can be attributed in part to their shared history.

Social networks

Researchers returned 23 captive bats wearing sensors to their hollow tree and glued sensors to 27 wild female bats living in the same roost.

According to the data, the test bats had closer bonds with each other than they did with control bats.

The findings suggest that even with about 200 potential partners in the roost, the bats that had connected in the lab stuck together in the wild – a sign that they had formed social bonds.

In order to conduct the research, Simon Ripperger of the Museum fur Naturkunde, Leibniz-Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science in Berlin and colleagues had to develop the sensors.

These tiny devices, which are lighter than a penny, were attached to the bats like backpacks and allowed scientists to capture social networks of entire social groups of bats.

This Author

Nina Massey is the PA science correspondent.

Major oil and gas firms must cut production by more than a third by 2040 to meet global targets to tackle climate change and prevent shareholder losses, analysis warns.

Under the international Paris Agreement, countries committed to keep global temperature rises to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit them to 1.5C to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

But the latest report from climate finance analysts Carbon Tracker warned that global-proved reserves of fossil fuels still significantly exceed the amount that can be burned to stay within Paris limits.

Investment

Since 2011, global-proved reserves of oil and gas have increased and amount to 50 years at current production, Carbon Tracker said.

Global emissions from fossil fuels need to come down swiftly and reach net zero in the second half of the century to prevent dangerous climate change.

According to Carbon Tracker analysis that looked at which projects would still be economic in a world on track to limit rises to 1.6C, the world’s seven oil and gas majors must cut their production by an average of 35% and emissions by 40% by 2040.

Different companies will have to do more or less depending on what projects they are exploiting and have in the pipeline.

A failure to curb production would mean the world misses its targets to limit rising temperatures or shareholders lose out as investment in projects becomes “stranded” in the face of lower demand for fossil fuels as countries meet their goals.

Production

Company targets to reduce emissions often exclude the final use – such as burning petrol in combustion engine cars – which accounts for the majority of the pollution from the fuels, or do not focus on total carbon cuts.

None of the companies have “Paris-compliant” goals, the analysis suggests.

Mike Coffin, oil and gas analyst at Carbon Tracker and report author, said: “If companies and governments attempt to develop all their oil and gas reserves, either the world will miss its climate targets or assets will become ‘stranded’ in the energy transition, or both.

“The industry is trying to have its cake and eat it – reassuring shareholders and appearing supportive of Paris, while still producing more fossil fuels. This analysis shows that if companies really want to both mitigate financial risk and be part of the climate solution, they must shrink production.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

The Formula 1 racing world witnessed some ugly infighting recently, but this time it wasn’t over pit stops, early breaking or contracts. It was a food fight.

First-place champ Lewis Hamilton was the recipient of a stream of verbal attacks taking aim at his vegan and environmental advocacy.

Hamilton’s former teammate Fernando Alonso implied that Hamilton is a hypocrite because, like most F1 drivers, he must fly to races around the world. He also suggested that Hamilton should just keep his mouth shut about his vegan beliefs.

Positive influence

He got flak from announcer Will Buxton, too, as well as from fellow driver Romain Grosjean. So why is there so much hate for a man who is trying to do good?

Hamilton is making an effort to do something positive for animals and the Earth – and he’s succeeding. Like every vegan, he’s saving nearly 200 animals a year from a painful, terrifying death. He’s also reducing the amount of greenhouse gases his diet contributes to climate change by up to 60 percent.

By using his spotlight to promote vegan eating, Hamilton is influencing legions of fans to consider leaving animals off their plates – a ripple effect that can have a massive impact.

In addition to being vegan, Hamilton is working toward being carbon neutral by the end of the year. He sold his private jet and now flies commercially (when he must fly), and he’s pushing Mercedes-Benz to replace its leather interiors with vegan leather or vegan suede. It’s a start… 

Hamilton has remarked that it breaks his heart that more people don’t immediately see the suffering of animals who are used for meat, milk and eggs and do something to help stop it. That is a wonderful reaction – one that should be praised, not mocked. Or is the goal to discourage him from doing anything at all to help?

Deep-seated defensiveness

No one is the Buddha. Instead of tearing down people who are doing their best to make a difference, we should support and applaud them.

So what prompted these hateful anti-vegan tirades against Hamilton? Was it jealousy or competition spiralling out of control? I suspect it’s something even deeper than that.

There is a great cartoon that gets at the heart of this issue. It depicts a clearly upset little fellow – eyes bulging and hands waving in the air – ranting at another character, who is wearing an “I <3 cows” shirt. “Everything was fine until you pointed out I ruined it!” the angry one fumes. The cartoon goes on to explain: “You may think you are fine eating meat – but if vegans make you angry, then you are not fine with it at all.”

Underlying many anti-vegan outbursts is a deep-seated defensiveness. And Hamilton isn’t the only one to be subjected to such bullying.

When freelance journalist Selene Nelson suggested a series of articles on the rise of vegan eating last year, it prompted an infamous tirade from food critic William Sitwell, who suggested: “How about a series on killing vegans, one by one.” 

Treat lightly

People who attack others for making kind choices are likely trying to quiet their own guilty conscience. 

As writer George Reynolds recently opined: “We are conditioned to like animals and decry animal cruelty, and yet we are also brought up in a culture that revels in the bacon sandwich, the Sunday roast, fish and chips.

“One simple explanation for why people don’t like vegans is because they show how confused humankind is about food choices and how illogical its decision-making can be.”

People love to smirk, “But … bacon!” But no one feels good about the way animals are abused and killed for meat – their tails and testicles are cut off without painkillers, they’re crammed en masse into filthy sheds, and they’re dunked into scalding-hot water for feather or hair removal at the abattoir.

No one is proud that their food choices contribute to the crisis our Earth is facing, from the Amazon going up in smoke to rivers and lakes polluted with factory farm runoff to climate change, which threatens the very future of life on this planet.

Perhaps, instead of getting defensive, those who are not yet vegan should take a hard look at the consequences of their choices and make a change.

The good news is that it’s never been easier to take a step towards going vegan. And while no one is perfect and there is much work to be done, striving to tread lightly on the planet is something to commend, not condemn.

This Author

Ingrid Newkirk is the president and founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world’s largest animal rights organisation.

Image: jen_ross83, Flickr.

Solutions found in nature should be our first line of defence against the increasing number of climate change-related natural disasters. 

Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), led by Professor Prashant Kumar, is working with collaborators across Europe as a part of the OPERANDUM project that aims to manage the rising impact of severe weather and climate related hazards across European and non-European territories using nature-based solutions (NBS).

In a paper published by the journal Environment Research the team from GCARE categorised natural hazards into four groups – geophysical, meteorological, hydrological and climatological – to understand their causes and  associated risks. They found that some hazards could trigger others simultaneously or cumulatively in a cascading manner over time, causing multi-hazards and huge damage to humans, economy and infrastructure.

Natural hazards 

Natural hazards – such as floods, landslides, heatwaves and droughts – have increased globally in the last 30 years, with more than 18,000 disasters taking place during the period of 1980 to 2018, resulting in €4.8 trillion of damage.

In the same period, Europe experienced nearly 3,000 disasters which caused €631 Billion of losses. Particularly, heatwaves and floods have caused significant loss of life and economic damage across Europe and other parts of the world. 

The team at GCARE analysed nearly 300 case studies where NBS were used to combat the effects of natural hazards. They found that floods were the most frequent type of hazard in Europe, while droughts were the most complicated in terms of triggering risks of other disasters.

The researchers also found that earthquakes and storms were the most destructive globally in terms of damage such as deaths and economic losses.

The team identified that 56 per cent of NBS in Europe were used to combat flooding. While the most used methods were ‘hybrid’ solutions such as green roofs and rain gardens, the most effective flood management solutions were in fact ‘blue’ constructions such as small ponds for river floods.

Knowledge gap

Similarly, the deadliest heatwaves were mostly managed by green approaches, such as urban parks, trees and grasses.

The effectiveness of any NBS depends on its location, architecture, typology, green species and environmental conditions. Therefore, design and deployment of NBS against hydro-meteorological hazards needs special care.

The team also compared NBS with structural and non-structural measures, and highlighted that about 85 per cent of the hydro-meteorological risk management using NBS were cost-effective. As further knowledge becomes available, the cost-effectiveness of NBS will increase in future compared to structural and non-structural adaptation measures.

In another paper published by the Science of the Total Environment journal, GCARE critically evaluated thevarious ways to monitor, assess and manage hazards such as floods, droughts and heatwaves. The paper looks at how NBS such as wetlands, grasslands and sand beaches can be used as efficient, cost-effective, long-lasting and sustainable approaches to disaster risk management. 

In both the published papers, the authors are calling on politicians, decision makers and researchers across the globe to fill the knowledge gap that is hampering the further development and deployment of NBS by green-lighting onsite monitoring and undertaking research that compares the effectiveness of NBS with grey or structural and non-structural approaches.

Pressing crisis 

Professor Prashant Kumar, director of GCARE at the University of Surrey and the corresponding author of these studies, said: “Here at GCARE, we firmly believe that if we are to successfully combat climate change – the pressing crisis of our time, which is surely increasing the frequency and severity of many natural hazards – then NBS have to be the first line of defence.

“Scientists can play a significant role in increasing the adoption of these natural solutions by helping decision makers and politicians understand their effectiveness and their cost over time.

“OPERANDUM project brings 26 organisations from 13 countries together, and offers an impressive platform to support the exchange of knowledge and collaboration among science, practice and policy actors. 

“These first studies build a solid foundation for further research in the project to take forward the concept of NBS for devising novel, practical, cost-effective and environment-friendly solutions.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the University of Surrey.

Two thousand people gathered in Parliament Square in London a year ago today. They declared a rebellion against the UK Government and its ‘criminal negligence of the climate emergency’.

It seemed to be yet another climate protest, a common occurrence over the past decades and something unlikely to have raised the eyebrows of the MPs travelling in to another day at a major seat of power. 

But this one turned out to be very different. Among those who declared rebellion was a then fifteen year old Swedish girl who had travelled from her home in an electric car driven by her mum and dad. In her speech to the gathered crowd, Greta Thunberg stated that the climate crisis set to devastate her future and demanded nothing less than an full-on rebellion to address the threat: “We’re facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children. We need to wake up and change everything”.

Global phenomena

Few people knew Greta’s name then, and nobody had heard of the new climate movement that had encouraged her to travel all that way.

A year later, both Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion (XR) are global phenomena. They had  come out of nowhere but have since captured the world’s imagination.

XR have large groups in 53 countries, and are particularly big in Germany, France, Netherlands, the US, Australia, Argentina and Ghana. They have a presence in over 70 countries.

In the UK alone, 120,000 people have signed up to take action with the rebellion, their column inches run into miles, their symbol is ubiquitous and, like Greta, they have become a household name. All of this has been achieved without any significant support from the main environmental NGOs or major political parties, nor from many in the established climate activist world, which has often either ignored XR or has been critical of the movement.

Support is on the rise now that XR has grown so significantly, and since rebels have responded positively to criticisms and made changes accordingly. 

Bursting the bubble

Naivety and mistakes are inevitable for a group that is still so young. A notable example was an early slide presentation depicting incarceration as a relatively pleasant experience in which prisoners can enjoy yoga among other things. Activist groups highlighted that neglecting the harsh realities of prison, particularly for people of colour, and the prison advice was replaced by a comprehensive guide by a highly respected legal rights organisation that was passed through an equally respected panel.

XR have managed to force the climate emergency onto the news and political agenda amid Brexit, and have inspired people from across the UK – many of whom had never taken part in climate activism before – to take action.

XR has effectively burst the ‘activist bubble’ by attracting support from people from all walks of life, at an exponential rate that has not been seen in a generation. A recent report shows that the climate emergency has become a top issue of consideration for voters in the UK in the lead up to the December general election.

The rebels’ remarkable success may simply have been down to timing, as their declaration on 31 October was not long preceded by a UN report evidencing that the world had twelve years to avoid climate catastrophe. 

Sir David Attenborough began to make several statements and broadcasts that likewise raised the alarm about the existential threat to life on earth presented by man made global warming, coinciding with Extinction Rebellion’s first major day of action, during which they closed five bridges in central London. 

International solidarity 

Extinction Rebellion is avowedly non-party-political. Their third demand asserts that party politics and representational democracy as it currently exists is moribund and incapable of dealing with the crisis. This argument may explain Extinction Rebellion’s success  and broad appeal. Retired senior police officers, bankers, farmers, Olympic gold medalists, teachers and doctors have all joined in with actions.

At the same time, XR’s strategy of strictly non violent acts of mass civil disobedience has been controversial, but has also served to keep their cause central in the news.

In the April international rebellion we saw record breaking numbers of arrests that alarmed the serving metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick, who said that the scale of arrests was “unprecedented” in her 36 years of police service.

Many attributes of this sprawling movement have yet to become more well known. The XR Internationalist Solidarity Network, partly inspired by the New Internationalist, works with grassroots activists from the global south in creating the narratives and avenues by which authentic internationalist solidarity can be achieved.

This exciting network was established in November 2018 and still developing. It indicates that there is much yet to come from this most needed of movements.

Up to you

So, can Extinction Rebellion survive the roller coaster ride that has been their first wave of success? Will they grow into the global movement that can force the paradigm shift necessary to avert the catastrophe of climate breakdown?

Really, the best answer to that is to say that it’s up to you. If not now, then when? If not you, then who?

This Author 

Jamie Kelsey Fry is the author of the Rax Active Citizenship toolkit, a broadcast media news commentator, teacher and activist. 

Image: Thomas Katan, Extinction Rebellion. 

Located on a hilltop overlooking the Irish west coast lies Moy Hill Farm, a cooperative that produces organic food for over a hundred families each week.

Moy Hill’s yearly revenue is close to 100,000 euros, but getting there has been a steep uphill – literally and figuratively. It all started with a good surf wave on the other side of the mountain.

Looking north from the farm, a mountain can be spotted in the distance. It is the world-famous Cliffs of Moher, a Mecca for surfers. It was here that the professional surfers Mitch, Matt and Fergal, together with Fergal’s wife Sally, decided buy some land five years ago.

The vision was to create a place where people can learn about agriculture while also providing people in the area with good food.

Community farm 

Fergal Smith grew up on an organic farm and at an early age learned that life is hard work. He began dreaming of leaving the farm to become a professional surfer, riding the best waves of the world.

Fergal succeeded – he got a sponsorship with a big surfer brand and flew around the world surfing for several years. But one day after injuring his knee on a coral reef in Tahiti, he heard on the news about the nuclear disaster in Japan and it sparked an epiphany that would change his life forever.

Fergal suddenly realized that he did not want to live the surfer dream. He wanted to go back to his country and do something that was real, something that made a real difference for people. He figured he would use the gift he had been given by his parents: the know-how to grow healthy food while at the same improving the quality of the soil. Like this, he would inspire and teach others what he had learned and provide his local community with food.

But Fergal had no desire to take over his parents’ farm. It was too far from the sea and the people.

Fergal said: “To become lonely and isolated is the typical farmer’s fate, and the suicide statistics among farmers is very high. I wanted to create a community – a community farm”

Planting projects 

Together with friends and co-surfers Mitch Corbett and Matt Smith, and his wife Sally, Fergal began with a small plot of a few thousand square meters in the valley. They borrowed the land from a local Irish farmer and soon began reaping the fruits and quickly expanded the farm to include pigs and tree planting projects. 

It wouldn’t feed the whole world but it was a start. And it was near the sea. The income from their surfing careers allowed them to work the farm without the pressure of making a profit straight away.

They founded a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), a cooperative where customers pay in advance to take part in the harvest every week. The CSA model, or cooperative agriculture, is a way of self-organizing food distribution, breaking off from long retail chains and putting sellers and buyers in more direct relation to each other.

Soon however, the owner wanted the land back. So what next? They had already established a good production and a collaboration with the local community so it would be a shame to stop now. They discovered that another piece of land was for sale on the hilltop and decided to buy it.

The land was boggy, almost marsh-like, but with much regenerative work and soil improvement methods, they converted the hill into highly fertile farmland.

Regenerative work

The word ecological has become more of a brand than a technology. Meanwhile, it is more important than ever to actually rebuild soils. 

Fergal explained: “we use regenerative cultivation methods, like preparing the soil with livestock grazing that speed up the process of soil improvement naturally. And we don’t use tractors.”

Another example of Moy Hill’s regenerative farming is that, when harvested, the roots of beans and sugar peas are left in the ground (as opposed to pulling out the whole plants with roots and all) as they bind vital nitrogen in the soil.

In 2018 another 24 hectares of land was for sale on the hilltop. Apparently, three different forestry companies were trying to outbid each other to buy the plot. The plan was to plant spruce, a type of monoculture that Fergal calls “an ecological desert”, a place where nothing else likes to grow. He also points put that the spruce is definitely not a native plant.

Moy Hill then went around to the neighbors to check if anyone was interested in buying the plot. But no one could afford it. At the same time, no one wanted to be neighbor with a spruce plantation.

Financing 

Fergal shakes his head at the memory: “We didn’t know how to do it, but we called the real estate agent and told him we want the land – we would outbid the forestry companies. Then we were in a hurry. 

“The land landed at 300,000 euros and I think we had about 3000 euros in the bank at the time.”

With a loan of 100,000 euros from an ethical bank and private loans from friends and family, the group managed to get the money and buy the land. After selling three parcels to neighbors and a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised almost 60,000 euros, they have now managed to pay off the bank loan and only the private loans remain.

Today, Moy Hill is divided into two pieces of land, the bottom farm down in the valley and the top farm up on the hill – all and all almost 26 hectares. On top of the hill you find a row of large polytunnels, cultivation beds and an orchard, as well as the kitchen, storage rooms, shower, toilet and communal areas.

The wind is inexorable and it was raining every single day of August. Still, the farm manages to grow about eighty varieties of vegetables, from fennel, celery, broccoli, beetroot, onion, pumpkin, garlic, dill, parsley, thyme and coriander to tomatoes, passion fruit, sage, figs and all kinds of cabbage.

Harsh weather

There is currently closer to twenty people living on and around the farm in camper vans and semi-permanent tents. Others rent houses further down the valley. The working day is just about to end and some are going down to swim in the nearby lake. Others grab the chance to go surfing in the unusually sunny weather.

Fergal explained: “This is primarily a working farm. We do not have much planned activities in the evening, says Matt, one of the farm owners.”

Many would say that Western Ireland is one of the most difficult places to grow food due to the rain, harsh winters and short summers. But Matt claims it is actually one of the world’s best sites for cultivation.

Fergal continued: “We have both sun and rain. In Spain and Southern France they have a lot of sun, but also having this much rain is unusual.”

The crops are sold in markets and so-called “box schemes”, were customers subscribe to boxes of vegetables from the farm which they receive every week during the summer months. This way, the customer has a constant access to fresh produce while the farmers have a secured income.

Currently, hundred families or so subscribe to the boxes. The farm is also part of Ireland’s first REKO-circle, an increasingly popular Finnish concept where growers and buyers skip the middleman and trade directly with each other at specific delivery points.

Meaningful work

So far, everyone working on the farm is doing so on a voluntary basis, but hopes are that in the future, their work will give a good pay. But first, the loans must be paid.

Matt said: “We earn about 100,000 euros a year on our agricultural production. But until we have paid for the land, none of what we make is a profit. Right now I have a salary of about one euro an hour, he says, smiling with a frown. 

“What do I get out of it? That’s a good question. But it is meaningful work. And when we have paid off the loans, we hope that it will be able to provide a good salary as well.”

Recently, Fergal, Sally, Mitch and Matt decided to hand over major decision-making to a voluntary advisory board. Previously, all decisions were made on the basis of consensus, but in the end there were too many decisions.

Matt continued: “When there is no spiritual community it becomes more difficult to make decisions because there is never a clear path forward, everyone’s opinions weigh just as heavily. So instead of breaking up, we simply chose to pass the decisions on to others.

Elections

On Tuesdays, volunteers come and work in the farm, usually a dozen extra hands or so who, for their work get lunch and a box of fresh veggies to take home. The day begins with a yoga class for those who want. Porridge and tea is served outside the kitchen at nine. Then the work begins.

It is difficult to get a chance to chat with the owners, but while planting fennel, Fergal reveals that he ran for the Irish election a few years ago. Why? Because there was no other candidate for the green party in their area.

Fergal said: “I got to raise some issues and give voice to many people, but I am glad I wasn’t elected in the end. Then I would have been in Dublin now and not here. It wouldn’t suit me. Although some say that the most powerful political act you can do is grow your own food, he adds with afterthought.”

Patrick, a volunteer who moved to the area with his wife after they retired, explains that the winters are tough. He is shovelling manure into the bed were some seedlings are to be planted.

Fergal interjects: “On the contrary!”. He is now planting pak choi: “In wintertime you can take it easy, sleep in. In the summers we work at least seventy hours a week, seven days a week. In winter there is less to do. It’s great.”

Producing energy 

For their own consumption, they have enough vegetables to manage all year round, but the main growing season is four months a year.

The rainwater on the top farm is collected and used for irrigation as well as washing dishes and clothes. If there is not enough rain, they pump water from the small lake nearby.

All the electricity comes from sun and wind but they are about to connect the lower part of the farm to the electricity grid. The growing need of hot water, hot planting beds and certain tools exceeds their ability to produce energy.

Moy Hill also runs a charity called HomeTree, where they plant trees for people or companies that buys their service. So far they have planted 14,000 trees, all native varieties such as oak, hazel and birch and over three hundred apple trees.

Fergal said: “Last summer we were thirty-five people living here. It was too many. But of course, the idea from the start was that people could come here to be inspired and learn. I’m sure that If we were six experienced farmers in the farm we could probably manage. But it would probably be less fun too.

“It is the diversity of people passing here that makes the place so interesting. And ultimately, it’s all about community and doing it together.”

This Author 

Sonya Oldenvik Cunningham is a journalist and ecologist from Sweden currently living in Portugal. 

Image: Sonya Oldenvik Cunningham.

Climate change is likely to play a key role in determining the next government with a majority of Britons saying that it will influence the way they vote. 

Thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent weeks to call for action to avoid climate catastrophe, and a survey for environmental lawyers ClientEarth has confirmed that concern is prevalent among the wider public.

Seven in ten people believe that the climate emergency demands more urgent action and almost as many (63 percent) say it is now the biggest issue facing humankind.

Climate snapshot

A majority of all adults (54 percent) say that climate change will influence the way they vote at the next general election, but nearly two-thirds (63 percent) say politicians are not talking enough about it. Young people under 25 feel even more strongly with 74 percent and 72 percent agreeing respectively.

Opinium surveyed more than 2,000 people to take the temperature of the nation for ClientEarth’s Climate Snapshot 2019. It found that most (58 percent) believe that the UK government has done too little to prepare for the impacts of climate change and reveals widespread support for policies championed by opposition parties. Britons want the government to: 

• Bring forward the 2050 deadline for reducing UK emissions to net zero (61 percent);
• Do more to encourage a shift to electric and other low-emission vehicles (61 percent);
• Introduce a ‘Green New Deal’ or ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ with large-scale, long-term investment in green jobs and infrastructure (63 percent); and,
• Plant more trees or reforest land (64 percent).

Demanding action

The public wants more action from local government, too. They say councils’ top priorities should be to plant more trees, set carbon reduction targets aligned with all planning decisions, and enforce energy efficiency standards for rental properties.

Those surveyed also want councils to invest more in footpaths and bike lanes and prioritise public transport improvements over building new roads. 

ClientEarth lawyer Jonathan Church said: “From the student strikes to Extinction Rebellion, people across the UK are demanding greater action to address the climate crisis. Importantly these demands appear strong enough to make a difference at the next election, with more than half of adults saying that climate change will impact how they cast their vote.

“It’s clear the public want to see more from the UK government: more ambition to achieve the goal of zero net emissions and more concrete action to stop current carbon reduction targets from going unmet.

“The public also wants more action locally – investment in cleaner transport and more energy efficient homes – and they want councils to fulfil their legal obligation to make carbon reduction central in local planning decisions to truly green their communities.”

Accountability 

The poll also reveals widespread support for radical action to ensure that the government, banks, and businesses actively support the Paris Agreement to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees and to pursue a 1.5 degree target.

Three in five under-25s  and nearly half of all adults would support taking the government to court “if it looks like the UK is breaking its Paris Agreement pledges to reduce its emissions as quickly as possible.” Only 26 percent of all adults disagree.

Nearly half of all adults would support rules requiring all companies traded on the London Stock Exchange to have business plans that are compatible with the Paris Agreement or face delisting, a policy backed by Labour. Only 20 percent of all adults disagree.

Three in five under-25s believe that financial institutions and banks should no longer invest in fossil fuels and that they should be legally accountable if they choose to do so. A majority of all adults believes the same (59 percent and 60 percent) with only one in five disagreeing (20 percent and 18 percent).

Low-carbon transition

Two in three people expect investment funds held by major institutions and local authority pension funds to positively support the transition to a sustainable economy, and to consider the climate change impacts of companies they invest in.

A majority believes that investing in fossil fuel companies could be risky if their long-term strategies are not aligned with the Paris Agreement.

People expect their own pensions and investments to avoid these (55 percent) and would consider moving to another provider if their current fund was significantly exposed to coal, oil, and gas (52 percent).

Nearly two thirds of the public also believe that fossil fuel companies, whose products contribute directly to climate change, should help pay for the tens of billions of pounds of damages caused by extreme weather events.

Climate impacts 

Britons see the impact of climate change all around them. They believe the UK is already experiencing it in air pollution, extreme weather, flooding, species extinction, coastal erosion, and heat waves.

Beyond this, 59 percent say climate change is causing political instability in the UK, 46 percent believe it is increasing regional conflict and national security risks, including increased immigration, and 32 percent think it is affecting food and water supplies, for example through shortages and price rises.

The survey found that nearly three quarters of the public believe people are becoming much more fearful and anxious about climate change. Many say they have been personally affected by changing weather patterns, and by extreme weather events.

Large numbers have already taken action in response to climate change, making their home more energy efficient (48 percent), replacing appliances with more energy efficient models (30%), and installing smart metering (30 percent).

However, government support could generate much more action. If incentives were available more than half would like to install solar panels and home batteries, and almost half would switch to an electric or low-carbon vehicle.

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth. 

Image: Alex Lee, Wikipedia

I headed to Barcelona last year with a friend to attend the two week degrowth summer school, a rite of passage in the degrowth community.

It takes place at the intellectual center of degrowth, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and at a degrowth-in-practice house, Can Decreix.

Read the latest issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine: ‘Where do we grow from here?’

We travelled there slowly, by ferry and train. We discussed degrowth. On the ferry we read a paper by Blühdorn ​et al ​titled, ​’The Social Theory Gap in Narratives of Radical Change’​. It made us somewhat disillusioned with the narrative of degrowth and its potential for a social ecological transformation. The movement seemed to be missing a key element: ​how ​to achieve systemic change.

Strategy

We took this impression with us through the summer school and worked with colleagues there to make a short presentation on the need for a re-consideration of the role of strategy in the degrowth movement.

We developed our argument that degrowth suffers from strategic-interderminism. This means that there are many strategies but all strategies are valued equally in the movement, without any criteria for evaluating them.

However, clearly some strategies fail while others succeed, and it’s the ​responsibility ​of degrowth scholars and practitioners to better understand and investigate why and how strategies differ in their outcomes across contexts (e.g. sectoral, spatial, scalar, etc.). This culminated in a short and somewhat convoluted ​blog post​ on degrowth.info, which then became a blog series.

Back to Vienna last summer, I and the broader degrowth-community of academics and activists discussed applying for the call to host the 2020 international degrowth conference. We were new to the field, all still struggling through our Masters theses, but this did not deter us. An application was hastily written and sent off.

Then, a few months later I travelled with friends slowly to the international degrowth conference in Malmö. This time taking a bike tour through Northern Germany and Denmark on the way. Our friend who earlier that year took the ‘pilgrimage’ with me to the summer school did not join for the conference, he was increasingly disillusioned with the possibility of degrowth. We went to Malmö to represent the Vienna conference organizers and make a short presentation of our argument on the need for strategy in the degrowth movement.

Deliberation and openness 

In Malmö, we had a casual dinner with some members of the Support Group, a small body of representatives from degrowth conference organizers. We ate, shared our ideas, and happily saved the left-overs from the buffet – maybe out of eco-consciousness or just out of mere hunger.

The Support Group was excited about our application but asked us if we could host a thematic conference instead of the international conference. This was to reduce the feeling of competition between the applicants and to make possible the first international conference in an English speaking country.

We agreed, and it was informally decided that in 2020 both an international conference would take place in Manchester and a thematic conference in Vienna. Such openness and consideration of the larger movement was simply cool.

We returned to Vienna with the informal mandate to organize a thematic conference on a theme of our choosing. Then a process of deliberation and ideation began. 

At this point, my colleague and I sensed a chance to bring forward our earlier critique, that degrowth lacked a comprehensive consideration of strategies in its understanding of transformation. We proposed the thematic focus on strategies. The topic was appealing to many of the conference organizers as well as the Viennese degrowth community, and consensus was quickly reached.

Strategies for transformation 

The official conference title is fixed: Degrowth Vienna 2020: Strategies for Social-Ecological Transformation.

The group of organizers, some fixed and some more fluid, began discussing the theme, organizational structure of the team, competencies of working groups, the role of plenaries, etc. We had many beers, pizzas, and socials to help the process along.

It was interesting: when new people joined they often wanted to renegotiate the structures as they looked for their role and place in the team, and to put it in their own ideas and approaches. It was often chaotic and exhausting.

Some people were called out for not listening to new ideas while others disliked the important but tedious discussion of decision making mechanisms. Ultimately the process was long but we rewarded with an enriched ​common​ understanding of what we, as a whole, wanted the conference to be.

This common understanding became the foundation for organizing to begin, the working groups to form, new members to be recruited, the organizing team to be expanded, and – to put it simply – to replace talking by doing. People from throughout Vienna’s vibrant community of socially and ecologically minded academics, activists, organizers, and artists joined the conference organizing team and brought new energy.

Achievements 

What has become clear through the organizing process thus far, is that Vienna is one of the emerging ‘centers’ of the degrowth movement in Europe. The various communities of artists, academics, practitioners, and activists who are passionate about degrowth and social ecological transformation greatly increases the potential of this conference.

So far, we have given several workshops in the last months to gather more activist and practitioner insights on strategy. We also hosted a recruitment event to introduce the conference to new people. We have created a simple ​website​ that will become much more. We applied and received funding and created paid positions on the organizing team. We secured a venue and imagined who could offer a keynote on the public opening night.

Additionally, we have started a thorough outreach process to bring in civil society actors active in the field of degrowth or social-ecological transformation, with the aim of increasing synergies between academics and practitioners. We have considered catering options and the prioritization of vegan, local and/or rescued food. We are cooperating with the University of Applied Arts Vienna to include an arts program that both supports exchange between participants and transfers results of the conference to the wider public.

We’ve also created a tentative program and drafted a call for papers, which will be circulated soon. And we have fixed a conference date: 29 May  – 1 June, so we hope to see you there.

Looking forward

We know that we have lots of work in front of us. But with the network that we’re slowly building up and the strong group of organizers that formed around the conference, we are confident and excited.

We are looking forward to the input of all the actors involved on strategies and hope for both a contribution for the degrowth movement to narrow the gap of knowledge on how to reach degrowth, and to further a social-ecological transformation in practice.

The conference is organized by a few coordinators, an advisory board of academics and various institutions, and numerous volunteers. They have all worked together tirelessly to advance the conference organizing process over the last year. Without everyone’s ongoing efforts this conference would not be possible.

If you would like to contribute to or support the conference in anyway, you can contact us.

This Author 

Nathan Barlow is recently finished his MSc in socio-ecological economics at Vienna University of Economics and Business where he is now a doctoral student. He is also an editor at degrowth.info and an organizer of the 2020 Vienna Degrowth conference. His research focuses on comparing US and European approaches to social ecological transformation. 

Image: Art Poskanzer, Flickr. 

We are on a little boat moving slowly through the Montlake Cut, a canal built to link the salty waters of Puget Sound with glacial Lake Washington, stretching ribbon-like along the eastern shore of Seattle.

In the distance, I know, are the off-ramps of the floating freeway. Some of the roads literally lead to nowhere – just massive truncated infrastructure built to carry even more cars, but left unfinished, providing perfect diving boards to plummet into the lake, or for paddling a canoe around their reedy passageways.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.

But today I can hardly make out the shape of the floating bridge as we pass it, unable to see much beyond the water skimming the boat. A veil of smoke hangs everywhere. It limits the normally expansive view across the long lake towards the Cascade Mountains, creating the sense that we are floating above more than just the surface of the water. We are out of time and place, out of civilisation, just suspended in heat and cloud.

State of emergency

It is an unreal version of a familiar view, but our eyes aren’t playing tricks. This forest-fire cloud is real. A state of emergency has been declared by the regional Washington State government. Seattle is thick with unfolding climate disaster, where smoke moving south from British Columbian wildfires converges with that from multiple blazes burning past the mountains in eastern Washington.

We’ve long feared this. It’s a consequence that’s been steadily emerging, despite the fact that this crisis is, or was, avoidable. Now this perilous cloud descends on the Pacific Northwest with frightening regularity.

Cascadia, as a region that prides itself on its natural beauty, on its love for the environment, on a desire for sustainability, is especially shocked. We have recycled. We are eco-friendly and have bought carbon offsets. Many of us have stopped driving cars or gone electric. We have voted for climate-conscious politicians. But it has proved nowhere near enough.

One hundred corporations have generated more than half of the world’s emissions. The man we refuse to call our president has pulled out of the already precarious political agreements keeping our global ecosystems from the brink of collapse.

People are in denial about the experience of entering a slow-motion breakdown; they can only look sideways at the smoke as it comes into focus for the second summer in a row. Climate breakdown is becoming our reality. A common question, half-panicked, half-resigned, asks: is this the new normal?

Dystopian atmosphere

When I was a child, I was taught nothing about the Indigenous peoples who valued, respected and lived off this land for thousands of years. The Duwamish people call the lake Xacuabš, or ‘great amount of water’.

Their ancestors came to this area at the end of the last glacial period, moving on and off the shores with the seasons. It’s hard to reconcile their centuries of peaceful stewardship of this region with Seattle’s founding in the mid-19th century, an act of colonialism locally lionised on the walls of settler-themed bistros around the city with old-time portraits of lumberjacks chopping down big trees. In just a few centuries, we’ve almost destroyed this paradise.

As the little boat moves out onto the vast lake, it dawns on me how foolish we seem. Breathing this air for a day is akin to smoking ten Marlboro cigarettes, the air quality deemed ‘very unhealthy’. Symptoms of being out in it too long include stinging eyes, a sore throat, irritated sinuses. Recommendations are to stay indoors.

There are no other boats around, the dystopian atmosphere choking any hope for normal late-summer recreation. The bright red glowing sun shimmers across the surface of the lake, seeming to bleed above the distant city. But perhaps this sense of doom is why I felt so stubborn about the need to swim today. 

Urgency

Neither the local nor the national news in the United States ever uses the phrases ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’ or ‘ecological disaster’ to describe what is happening. The heat, the dry, the forest fires destroying habitats – even the disastrous flooding and hurricanes in other parts of the country – are reported in a manner unconnected to human impact, as if the weather were a magical phenomenon, created by a complex deity, that people are merely forced to navigate.

Nonetheless, the spike in wildfires has been linked to rising temperatures in the region, but also to more than a century of preventing forests from burning naturally, together with the endless sprawl of suburban development encroaching on wilderness. The state predicts that by 2040 more than a million acres might burn each year.

So it feels urgent to be swimming now, in this smoky, impossible lake: not only to enjoy this world while it still exists as it is, but to face the reality of what is happening.

I remember days I spent out on the lake as a child, on a boat just near this spot, a memory enshrined as perfect summer bliss: standard bright-blue sky and normal hot-yellow sun, Mount Rainier a perfect white pyramid towering over us to the south. Back then I believed the mountain, the lake, the fish – the world – would go on forever.

Remember this

Our group, like an odd band of pirates wearing bikinis, with bandanas tied around our faces as makeshift filters, slowly moves towards the centre of the lake, near the middle of the floating bridge that carries an endless stream of cars from Bellevue to Seattle.

From the boat, I gaze at the murky outline of the cars on the bridge beginning to slow to a halt, brake lights illuminating as the road clogs to a stop.

I jump into the water. I’m unsure how long we’ll last out here. The lake envelops my head, my scalp tingling from the welcome, cooling water. I roll around, turning onto my back, my face now unmasked, my eyes closed and turned up to the red orb hanging in the sky. 

I listen underwater to the hum: the enclosed sound of millions of gallons of water, gently mixing and flowing. I think about the bottom of the lake, so deep, and I imagine that I can hear the quiet sounds of fish. I hope they are safe. I hope the depth is endless for them. I say a silent prayer of protection for the Earth, which echoes in my head, even though I think prayer is probably hopeless. And I bless the water, and the beautiful mountains that I can no longer see for the ash.

In a few days’ time, doubtless the smoke will clear. The collective panic will subside, and everyone will talk about something else. But I promise myself that I will remember this. That I will continue to rise to accept some kind of challenge, to do whatever I can to stop this mess, if only just by resisting apathy.

With my arms spread wide like an angel, I float over the deep, ancient lake and shallowly breathe in the filthy air, savouring this beautiful and bitter moment, floating into the apocalypse. 

This Author

Alexis Wolf lives in London, where she researches women’s lives and lectures on literature. She is working on a collection of essays about swimming. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Image: Nomeato, Wikipedia. Sunset over Loon Lake, Washington. Atmospheric conditions created by forest fire about 1 mile from location photo was taken.

The environment department is considering introducing laws to prevent the burning of peat, the UK’s largest terrestrial carbon store, Zac Goldsmith has revealed.

During a debate on natural solutions to climate change and rewilding yesterday, several MPs spoke out about the burning of peat. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said: “Ministers could make a decision right now to ban the burning of blanket bog, ending the release of huge amounts of emissions that could otherwise be captured by peat.”

Several environmental campaign groups have called for peat burning to be banned, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and Friends of the Earth. Last year, over 150 estates signed up to a voluntary initiative supported by government to scale back the fires.  

“Careful burning”

However, Goldsmith said that the voluntary approach “had not proven 100 percent successful as had been hoped. We are developing a legislative response to the problem and we will come back to the House in due course with our plans.

“There is no disagreement with the honorable members who have spoken today about the need to address the issue, but we have to do that through legislation, because the alternative simply has not worked.” 

Amanda Anderson, director of the upland landowners’ group the Moorland Association, said: “There is a world of difference between severely damaging wildfire and careful, skilled burning. Grouse moors are delivering a substantial environmental benefit, particularly in terms of carbon capture on peatland, and we believe strongly that this should be taken into account by government.”

Government figures suggest that carbon emissions from heather burning in the uplands account for two percent of peat emissions, she added.

A spokesman for Defra said that the government would publish its strategy on peat by early 2020. 

The debate on rewilding was secured by Rewilding Britain, after more than 100,000 people signed a petition supporting large-scale restoration of nature.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.