Fossil fuel companies like to be seen to be doing good. That’s why you’ll see their logos splashed across school resources, kids’ sports team’s jerseys, and all kinds of ‘STEM’ celebrations. And it’s much more targeted than you might think. 

DeSmog UK’s new greenwash database – launched today – tracks fossil fuel companies’ involvement in local communities through funding and sponsorship. The entries come from hours of trawling through corporate twitter feeds and corporate social responsibility reports to find out where Big Oil companies are targeted their resources.

It shows that over the last two years, five major oil companies have been involved in more than 100 local programmes and events.

Billion-dollar

If that seems a lot, there’s a good reason why – their involvement allows the companies to greenwash their image and cheaply purchase a social license to operate within communities in which they have a vested interest.

The deals let companies look like good social actors, while keeping communities locked into their economic dependence on the fossil fuel industry, campaigners say.

Chris Garrard, co-director of campaign group Culture Unstained, says government budget cuts put an unfair burden on communities to accept such deals:

“I think it places the community in a very difficult position because there are pressures on funding within the arts and pressures on funding within schools and education so any support that’s being offered is going to be really welcome.

“It’s very much tokenistic, and to the community they are being offered what might be a significant amount, but it’s a drop in ocean compared to the billion-dollar budgets of these fossil fuel companies.”

Sponsorship deals

They give companies the opportunity to appeal to parents through their kids’ schools, while getting their logo in front of potential future consumers at an early age (even when it’s not needed). And they help companies to appeal to younger generations, at a time when jobs in the sector are unpopular.

Anna Markova, campaigner with Platform, says it’s important to remember that the deals aren’t set up just to be good for society, they’re also good for business:

“All these sponsorships are business decisions. They work out which audiences they want to buy the trust of and then they’ll think ‘ok, how do I buy that trust’. Or they might think a particular MP is important on the foreign affairs committee and we want that support so let’s sponsor something in the MP’s constituency.”

“One of the longer term impacts of this overall is that it sucks the life out community events, in the sense that it’s a kind of corporate takeover of something that ought to be in a public space by people, for people.”

That’s why DeSmog UK’s new database is needed — to keep track of where fossil fuel companies are spending their resources, and who or what they are trying to influence.

The database will continue to be updated as new sponsorship deals are announced. If you know of any fossil fuel sponsorship happening in your community, please get in touch by emailing database@desmog.uk

This author

Mat Hope is editor of DeSmog UK, an investigative journalism outlet dedicated to unveiling corporate wrongdoing on climate change and the environment. He tweets @matjhope. Full disclosure: Brendan Montague, editor of The Ecologist, is a former editor of DeSmog UK.

The production, sale, consumption and disposal of single-use plastics could all be targeted through new tax rules with the revenues raised ploughed back into innovation, chancellor Philip Hammond said in his spring statement yesterday.

The “call for evidence” follows up the pledge Hammond made in the autumn budget, and prime minister Theresa May’s commitment to end “avoidable” plastic waste by 2042 in the government’s 25 Year Environment Plan.

Hammond said: “The call for evidence will look at how the tax system can drive the technological progress and behavioural change that we need, not as a way of raising revenue, but as a way of changing behaviour and encouraging innovation.”

Act now

He also announced a £20 million innovation fund for businesses and universities to develop ideas for slashing plastic waste. The government is separately considering incentivising recycling of drinks containers, including plastic bottles, through a deposit return scheme and is due to report its findings soon.

The publication of the call for evidence follows growing evidence of the harm plastic waste has done to the environment. This week, researchers at the University of Manchester found that UK rivers are heavily contaminated with broken down plastic debris.

They examined river sediments from 40 sites across Greater Manchester, including rural streams in the hills and urban rivers in the city centre. Microplastic contamination was discovered in all parts of the network.

Reacting to Hammond’s statement, Friends of the Earth tweeted: “We’ve been advising the government about resources including plastic since at least 2010. Now at least they’re listening – but will they act?”

Tatiana Lujan, a lawyer at ClientEarth, said: “We are pleased the government is at least considering taxing single-use plastics but it should be taking firm action, now, to stop plastic pollution not delaying yet further. MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee have provided plenty of evidence that is sufficient for the government to act now. Our oceans can’t wait.”

Deposit return

The government last week rejected a recommendation by the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee for a 25p surcharge on single-use coffee cups. The “latte levy” was impractical, it said, claiming that resources would be better spent looking at more holistic approaches to waste, given that coffee cups make up 0.7% of paper packaging waste in the UK.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party co-leader,  criticised the government for not taking the action needed to meet its rhetoric on protecting the environment. “They’ve stalled the latte levy and proposed action on plastic that will take 25 years! Not good enough”, she tweeted.

Greenpeace said that taxes on plastic could change behaviour and reduce single-use plastics, pointing to the 5p levy on plastic shopping bags. However, more pressure was needed on producers and sellers, Greenpeace UK senior political adviser Rebecca Newsom said.

“The main problem with single-use plastic is that we produce far too much of it in the first place. As well as charges, the government should introduce measures to fundamentally reduce the amount of plastic waste being produced and sold,” she said.

Illegal and harmful

There should be more pressure on supermarkets and food giants to cut down the amount of throwaway plastic they put into circulation, together with a deposit return scheme for all drinks containers, she added.

Hammond also announced a consultation on reducing vehicle excise duty for the cleanest vans to help cut air pollution.

Andrea Lee, senior clean air campaigner at ClientEarth, said that while it was a welcome move, the chancellor “should be getting on with it now”, not launching another consultation.

“The government knows that it needs to encourage cleaner forms of transport in order to clean up illegal and harmful pollution.

If he was serious, the chancellor would have found money to help British industries develop cleaner van technologies and give people and business more options to reduce their emissions,” she said.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Vast quantities of scarce metals  worth hundreds of millions of euros are being lost each year due to the lack of incentives for recycling vehicles.

This – coupled with an increase in demand for rare metals for green technologies, such as electric cars, solar cells, LED lighting and wind power – puts pressure on the supply chain and risks causing a strategic and economic problem for the EU.

In 2015 there were an estimated 400 tonnes of gold in Europe’s vehicle fleet, while the vehicles that left the fleet contained in the region of 20 tonnes of gold, none of which was recycled.

Urban mine

Maria Ljunggren Söderman, a researcher at Environmental Systems Analysis at Chalmers University of Technology, is part of  an extensive European research project Prosum, which has now compiled a new database with which to address the problem.

The Urban Mine Platform, the only one of its kind in the world, charts what is known as the urban mine: the metals that are already in circulation and could be recycled from our end-of-life vehicles and electrical and electronic equipment.

Further to carrying out a  survey of the 260 million light-duty vehicles in Europe’s vehicle fleet Ljunggren Söderman noted that the quantities of critical and scarce metals  have increased substantially, and that vehicles also now include many new metals.

She said: “This is mainly because we are constructing increasingly advanced vehicles, with a great deal of electronics, lightweight materials and catalytic converters.

“The increase in the numbers of electric vehicles adds to this development, even though they so far represent a small proportion of the vehicle fleet.”

Precious metals

One such example is neodymium, one of the rare earth metals (REM). It is estimated that by 2020 there will be nearly 18,000 tonnes of neodymium in the active vehicle fleet – nine times the amount present in the year 2000.

Gold is another example – and the researchers were surprised by just how vast the quantities of hidden gold in our vehicles actually are.

Ljunggren Söderman says: “Our calculation shows that the quantity of gold in end-of-life vehicles is now in the same order of magnitude as the quantity in electrical and electronic scrap. This is an increase that cannot be ignored.”

Very little of the critical and scarce metals in vehicles is recycled because they are spread out in small quantities; in a new car, for example, there may be a gram or two of gold distributed over several tens of components.

No incentive

But while the EU has clear requirements for the recycling of precious metals in electrical and electronic equipment, such stipulations are lacking as regards vehicles.

Ljunggren Söderman said: “There are no requirements or incentives for recycling gold from vehicles, but there are clear economic values here the extent of which people are yet to realise.”

She hopes that the research findings will spur on a change: “Automotive manufacturers and the recycling and material industries need to work together to ensure that something happens. It must be possible to do more than at present,  after all  this has been achieved with electrical and electronic equipment.”

“Having said that, gold is a comparatively low-hanging fruit, and the prospects for recycling other critical and scarce metals are from both vehicles and electrical and electronic equipment are significantly less favourable.  If we want to alter this, policy changes may be necessary.”

“The critical and scarce metals in our products have increased substantially, and in most cases we only use them once. This must be addressed, especially because these metals are required for many of the sustainable technological solutions that we currently have on the table.”

This Author

Catherine Harte is contributing editor of The Ecologist. This story is based on a news release from Chalmers University of Technology.

Hidden cameras targeted at criminals trapping songbirds on Cyprus have succeeded in reducing bird killings on a British military base by more than 70 percent in a single season, according to bird conservation charities the RSPB and Birdlife International.

The birds – predominantly blackcaps and robins – are sold through the black market to restaurants in Cyprus, who use them in an expensive local delicacy called ambelopoulia – a plate of cooked songbirds. Most of the trappers are local people, but criminal gangs – including the local mafia – also earn millions from the illegal activity elsewhere on the island.

The birds fly over the island during their migration in the autumn and are particularly common over the south east of the island, where the military base is located.

Investigations team

Killing of the birds was outlawed on the island in 1974, but the RSPB was alerted to the blackmarket by an expat in 2000. A visit to the island by the investigations team revealed that the trapping was happening on an “industrial scale”, according to Guy Shorrock, senior investigations officer at the charity.

Trappers had started using “mist nets”, which are long lines of nearly invisible netting, he said. The nets kill more birds than the traditional practice of coating branches with sticky lime.

They are placed between acacia bushes, and speakers playing bird calls are used to attract birds down as they fly over. The trees were grown by the trappers specifically for this purpose, and they even placed irrigation pipes to encourage the trees to flourish, Shorrock said.  

Both the police from the military base and the Cypriot government supported enforcement of the law, which initially resulted in a reduction in bird killing. However, there has been a huge escalation in recent years, with deaths reaching a record level of around 880,000 in 2016, Shorrock said.

The RSPB investigations team and the military police from the base then launched a new crackdown, using hidden cameras to film trappers. “It was like shelling peas, none of the trappers were expecting it so we were catching them all over the place,” Shorrock said.

Illegally planted

“We filmed 19 trappers at seven different sites. The police identified every single person, and every single person was prosecuted,” he said. The criminals were fined up to €6,600, compared with previous levels of around €500, and some received suspended jail sentences, meaning they will be automatically imprisoned if caught again over the next three years.

Last year, trappers started using metal detectors to find the cameras, but still more were caught and cases are ongoing, Shorrock said. The police on the base have introduced other penalties such as banning people from the land and seizing vehicles to keep the pressure on the trappers, he added.

They had also removed irrigation pipes in an effort to kill the acacia trees. Seven restaurants were prosecuted for selling ambelopoulia, which was probably more than in the previous ten years combined, he said.  

Numbers of illegally killed birds fell to around 260,000 last year, a reduction of around 70%, according to the bird charities.

However, in order for the birds to be protected in the long term, the illegally planted acacia trees need to be removed, Shorrock said. This is expensive – the Ministry of Defence (MoD) claims that clearing an area of around 25 hectares cost around €400,000 – but a further 36 ha remains.

The charities have appealed for help to the MoD, and are currently waiting for a response. The area around the base has been designated a Special Area of Conservation, which is increasing the pressure on the government to fund the removal of the trees, Shorrock said.

Cyprus is a hotspot for illegal bird killing, which is rife in parts of the Mediterranean. Birdlife International estimates that around 25 million birds are being slaughtered for food, sport or pest control in the region every year, with Italy and Egypt the worst offenders, according to Birdlife International.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Renewable energy sources are becoming increasingly more easily available every year. The clean energy revolution could not be timelier – with the effects of global climate change and our planet’s resource scarcity coming into full view.

Despite the confluence of these forces — green energy technology and a heightened public perception of climate change — the movement toward personal renewable energy sources has been sluggish. People are still wary of making the switch. Why is this?

There are a few primary obstacles consumers face when making the green transition. This article will explore a few of the most challenging ones.

Electric company

The assumption for many would-be green energy converts is that the initial price ceiling is high. If you have money saved, then investing in green energy and negating an electric bill would be an obvious next step.

But misinformation and shifting prices leave many people confused on exactly how much renewable energy costs, much less how it works. Many consumers fail to investigate properly and assume that installation and maintenance costs of green energy are far outside their budget. 

In reality, the prices of renewable energy are highly variable but rarely backbreaking. The basic package for personal solar panels, for instance, typically runs between $9,000 and $12,000 after tax credits, and covers both panels and installation. Though the return on investment may take years, the package cost is much less than many imagine. 

Studies have shown time and again that people remain concerned about the environment in the abstract but are not willing to personally modify their lives.

In the case of switching to renewable energy, the perceived shift is a large one: the electric company has to be called, the installation will take time, and then there’s the aforementioned investment.

Solar gear

The ordinary fossil fuel system is streamlined and accessible enough that people don’t want the inconvenience and uncertainty of switching. 

Today, however, the switch is significantly easier than most people think. If you want to save money by self-installing, it may take a bit longer.

Lucky for you, there are plenty of online resources which can smooth the entire process. Most converts opt for the assisted installation packages which cost more, but they also cut out the hassle of drilling through your roof.  

Solar is a highly modular system, meaning it can be customised or improved on the go. Starting with a small package of panels can be a good start for those unsure of their options, and can be added to as the prices of solar gear drop.

Likewise, changes to the roof of your house can be made without damage or hassle to the system in place. Changing from classic shingles to a metal roof allow for a more durable panel anchor, and can cut summer cooling costs by up to 20 percent as well.

Biggest culprit

Of course, this only refers to solar energy, and there are plenty of other clean energy solutions with varying degrees of difficulty for installation. Geothermal — better known as “heat pumps” for individual use — are nearly impossible to DIY, but also have a developed and cost-effective system for assisted installation. 

Wind turbines, like solar panels, depend on the size and ambition of the project. However, wind farms have begun sourcing their energy to far-off cities and individual residences, meaning very little has to be done on the part of the individual. Prices here are typically competitive with standard electricity costs.

Many of these conversion barriers are perception-based, which is no surprise. There is an overwhelming amount of misinformation and misconception regarding renewable energy.

While the two obstacles above are both rooted in misconception, the biggest culprit is that of reliability, a stigma that has stuck with clean energy since its popularisation.

You have solar panels strapped to your roof — so what happens when it rains? Obviously, during that period, there is no solar energy for the panels to absorb, and the meter will continue to run up.

Daunting task

However, even during periods of overcast skies, panels can operate — though tougher when not at full capacity — and the energy generated during the sunny days is enough to offset the cost.

As for wind, the power generated is often even more reliable than solar and sourced energy will remain as steady of a cost as standard electricity. 

However, the reliability fear cuts deeper than this. Stories continue to circulate from the early days of solar energy, including issues with electrical grids powered by clean energy.

Today, with the continued research and advancement in the field of renewable energy, grids powered in part or fully by renewable sources are typically as reliable as those using standard power generation. In fact, a 2017 Department of Energy in the US report confirmed clean energy as a reliable and safe source of power for American homes and businesses.

Making the switch to clean energy can be a daunting task, and there will inevitably be some lifestyle modification and monetary investment involved.

However, given the amount of misinformation floating around, anybody who is even marginally interested in switching to green energy should complete some research on the topic. You might be surprised at how easy and accessible the process truly is.

This Author

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

Butterflies and moths are the barometer of our environment. They are sensitive to change and considering they have four stages of life – egg, caterpillar, pupae and finally the butterfly – it’s no wonder they are so affected. 

If you’d like more information about how to make your garden more butterfly friendly, visit Clive’s ultimate guide to butterflies. 

The State of the Nations Butterfly report which is published every five years shows long term and ten year trends – and it’s waving a danger flag. 

The most recent report published in 2015 indicates that overall a staggering 76 percent of our butterflies declined in abundance and occurrence over the past 40 years – indeed some species such as the Large Blue are protected by law. 

Pollinated by insects

Four species of butterfly have become extinct over the past 150 years and the rest face an uncertain future. Our moths are doing no better as the total number over the past 40 years has declined overall by 28 percent, even as low as 40 percent in southern areas.

The 56 species of UK butterfly and 2500 species of moth are under threat from habitat loss and climate change and it matters a great deal for three main reasons.

Firstly, butterflies and moths give us a meaningful glimpse into our current biodiversity and future environmental state – the government recognises them as indicators. 

They pollinate our food sources along with bees and other flying insects. Butterflies don’t have the furry bodies that bees have so they take less pollen, but they cover greater distances, strengthening the genetic variation of DNA in plants.

This makes our plants tougher and less likely to fall prey to disease. It’s thought 84 percent of EU crops are pollinated by insects – and our activities are putting them in danger. 

Open spaces

And butterflies and moths form part of the natural food chain. Birds, bats, and spiders amongst others eat caterpillars and blue tit chicks exist almost entirely upon them. Removing a step in the food chain can have unforeseen consequences on our wildlife. 

Habitat loss is one of the major problems for our butterflies. 

Farming practices have changed beyond recognition. No longer do we have wildflower meadows meant for hay which our butterflies thrived in, but intensive farming of mono-crops such as rapeseed and long grass with little diversity. 

Farming pesticides that kill insects and disease may also have an effect on our beneficial insects. Research continues into the effects of pesticides on farmland butterflies. Our own garden pesticides certainly destroy the resident butterflies in the form of eggs and caterpillars.

Our woodlands, hedgerows and open spaces are fragmented and isolated, and we’re influenced by the epidemic of ‘garden improvement programs’ promoting decking and hard landscaping – where are the flowers in all this? 

There are simply fewer places for our butterflies to hibernate, breed, shelter and eat, and those that still exist are often of poor quality. 

We know habitat loss is a factor because when habitat management is put into place butterfly populations recover. The Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Heath Fritillary are two of the most threatened species to recover in sites where their habitat is purposely conserved.  

Climate Change

Shifts in climate have an almost direct effect on sensitive butterflies and moths.

On the one hand warm temperatures have allowed some species such the Peacock to extend their range into Scotland, and the Red Admiral, a migrant butterfly, has started to over-winter here, creating a native population. 

However, wetter summers and shifts in temperature are causing havoc with butterflies in general who are failing to cope with climate change.

Warmer winters disrupt hibernation, increase disease and predation. Colder springtime temperatures mean they are late to emerge leading to a shorter lifespan and less time to breed.

What Can We Do?

We can become more aware of our impact on the environment. Use less plastic, recycle, walk more instead of using the car, and support initiatives to re-green Britain. 

It’s not just butterflies that will benefit from improved environmental practices. Bees, hedgehogs, all our native creatures are having a hard time. 

The government gives subsidies to farmers to sow wild flowers in fields instead of crops, and research is looking into pesticide use, but it’s not enough –it’s like putting a sticking plaster on a broken leg.

We need our wild spaces back, untouched. Lobby your politicians. 

Think about your garden

If it’s covered in decking, plant some butterfly friendly flowers in a container, a window box or a hanging basket. Look to spread your food and shelter sources throughout the seasons, so many gardens only cater for mid-summer. 

Early spring sources of nectar include hellebores and wallflowers, then in the summer open, native flowers like buddleia, scabious, red valerian, bird’s-foot trefoil, lavender and marjoram are all good choices. In autumn you can plant sedum for late season pollinators.

Leaving a wild patch with a ground level water source is beneficial for all wildlife including butterflies. Many of our native butterflies lay eggs on nettle and ivy, so plant some nettles in a sunken container to limit their spread and watch them take a drink from a shallow saucer of pebbles.

The human take over

Butterfly enthusiasts create conservation projects to support threatened species such as the Duke of Burgundy and the Dingy Skipper both of which are on a long term decline.

Small recoveries in butterfly populations have been made thanks to them, so we know it’s possible to reverse butterfly fortunes. 

In the name of housing, feeding and making life convenient for our ever-increasing human population we’re degrading our world.

It’s important to realise this and change our habits because one day these changes will impact us too, and I can’t think they will be good. 

Butterflies – indeed all our native creatures in decline at the expense of human activity – are all worthy of a place in this world.

We must remember the planet belongs to all of us and when we alter fundamental principles that have evolved over millennia, such as the pollination of plants, we are interfering in a field we know little about.

This Author

Clive Harris is  a gardener and blogger at DIY Garden. If you’d like more information about how to make your garden more butterfly friendly, visit Clive’s ultimate guide to butterflies. 

The British government says it wants to be seen as a world leader in phasing-out coal. But when it comes to the future of opencast coal mines here in the UK, the government is not sure what it really wants.

The mining company Banks Group is now seeking to start a new opencast coal mine in Durham. It  is one of the few mining companies trying to expand opencast coal mining in Britain. Coal Action Network and the local community have vowed to stop them. 

Banks already operates two large opencast coal mines close to the town of Cramlington in Northumberland. Shotton, England’s largest opencast coal mine, and Brenkley Lane are both situated on Lord (Matt) Ridley’s estate.

Granted permission

Ridley is a hereditary peer, known for his ‘lukewarm’ position on climate change. He says on his website. “I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future.”

Shotton opencast has been the site of protest. It is due to close this year. In Shotton’s place Banks hopes to start a new mine at Highthorn on the Northumberland coastline, close to the tourist destination Druridge Bay.

The planning application was approved in the summer of 2016. But then local residents group Save Druridge and Friends of the Earth persuaded Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, to ‘call in’ the decision.

The secretary of state was expected to announce the future of Druridge Bay by the 5th March, but this has now been delayed without a new date being set.

In a last ditched attempt to secure a new mine, Banks is seeking to start work at Bradley, a site between Dipton and Leadgate. The Bradley site was granted permission when it was owned by the now defunct UK Coal. Planning runs out on the 3rd June 2018 so for Banks it is essential it starts work this spring. 

Badgers and bats

Pitch Wilson, a local resident and Secretary of the Derwent Valley Protection Society, said: “For 50 years we have battled to save the Derwent valley. Prior to the last appeal there were ten other appeals by mining companies, each was dismissed as every inspector said the environment is more important than the need for coal, even during the miners strike and the oil crisis in the 70s.”

In February, a final attempt to use the legal system to stop this mine was made. 25 residents and three local groups, along with the Coal Action Network appealed to Sajid Javid to revoke planning permission on this mine.

The government could stop this mine and put into action their coal phase-out promises. Now the race is on to see if the secretary of state will stop the mine at Bradley before Banks pushes ahead to start work before the planning runs out. 

Both Bradley and Druridge Bay are beautiful greenfield, rural sites. As were Shotton and Brenkley Lane. The site at Bradley is partly within an Area of High Landscape Value. 

It includes two local wildlife sites and hosts a wealth of wildlife including great crested newts (a European Protected Species which infuriates Matt Ridley), reintroduced red kites, common blue butterflies, badgers and bats. The area is extensively used by walkers, runners and children playing. 

Removing trees

The Banks Group’s strapline is ‘development with care’. It certainly cares more about its public face than many mining companies, but so far they have shown no regard for the strong ‘no’ from this community to mining at Bradley. 

In June 2015, the planning inspector said that “the projected supply of coal should be taken to represent a national benefit carrying great weight”.

The local people do not agree. Their letter to the secretary of state argues that coal’s contribution to the UK’s energy mix is down to just 7 percent. It is expected that by the time ‘coaling’ starts at Bradley, UK consumption will be down 75 percent from when the application was approved. 

Thomas Davison, 28, a resident living 300 metres away from the proposed opencast site told The Ecologist: “Banks’ desire to extract 550,000 tonnes of coal is driven by nothing more than profit and not at all by a genuine need for energy. We have moved on to other forms of cleaner energy for the good of our global climate. So why is it worth harming the local wildlife and the local economy for one last money grab?”

Banks Group have started to prepare for the access road by removing trees and an ancient hedgeline, this is preliminary to the work which is considered the ‘start’ of the site.

Pit villages

In response, hardy local residents and campaigners set up a protection camp to stop Banks during the ‘Beast from the East’ storm. Further work is expected at the end of March, campaigners vow to stop it. They are inviting people to join them at the camp to physically protect the area. 

If this opencast were to go ahead it would be the first new English coal mine since 2013. As the UK government seeks to be a world leader in phasing-out coal through the Powering Past Coal Alliance, this mine and the Banks Group could show them to be all mouth and no trousers. 

We need a “just transition” from fossil fuels to a sustainable climate for workers and communities. It’s time for the government to listen to those living in former pit villages and to implement a complete coal phase-out, including opencast mining – now. 

This Author

Anne Harris is a campaigner with the Coal Action Network, she co-authored Ditch Coal (2016) which looks at the mining impacts of the UK’s addiction to coal, and has been active against coal in the UK since 2008. She can be contacted on info@coalaction.org.uk

Add your support by signing our petition asking the secretary of state to stop the new mine. Come and visit the Pont Valley Protection Camp, pop in for a cup of tea or stay on the camp and resist the opencast. For more info see the Coal Action Network website.

The barbastelle bat has found a new way to sneak up on unsuspecting moths – by gradually emitting fainter calls as they approach. In an evolutionary bid to outsmart the bat, some moths had developed ears to detect echolocating bats and avoid being caught.

But new research by ecologists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany has found that upon detecting a nocturnal moth, this intriguing bat species can reduce its call intensity even further while closing in on its prey.

The barbastelle bat – with its characteristic bumpy face – is a very successful hunter that manages to almost exclusively feed on eared moths.

Stealth fighter

Comparable with stealth fighter jets, barbastelle bats use a ‘stealth echolocation’ tactic – echolocation at intensities that are inaudible to distant moths – to ambush prey. Their calls are more than 10 times quieter than those of other bats which hunt insects in the same way.

Consequently, call intensity heard by the moth only increases very slowly, delaying the time and shortening the distance at which it becomes aware of the attacker. Once a moth hears the calls, it is most likely too late to escape.

Dr Daniel Lewanzik from the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology said: “Barbastelle bats call with surprisingly low intensity, usually a characteristic of species that hunt in cluttered habitats and need to avoid distracting echoes from branches and leaves.

“Low intensity calls come at a cost though. They do not reach far and as a result, insects can only be detected from a close distance.” 

To test why the barbastelle can catch eared moths when other bats cannot, the authors closely investigated echolocation behaviour during pursuit and final attack.

They tethered moths – Noctua pronuba – to a long fishing rod with a miniature microphone positioned a few centimetres above, offering them to free-ranging barbastelle bats in a forest and to captive ones in a flight room. This allowed the team to analyse the echolocation calls from a moth’s perspective.

Echolocation behaviour

Simultaneously, the researchers recorded the calls of approaching bats with a four-microphone array in order to reconstruct three-dimensional flight paths and thus measure their distance to the moths.

Barbastelle bats can detect moths at about 1.6 m distance. Once approaching their unsuspecting prey, the bats lower their already faint calls by 4 decibels (dB) or 40% for each halving of distance. During the final buzz when they are less than 1 m away, call intensity decreases by more than 6 dB or 50% per halving of distance.

Echolocation call levels received by the moths remain almost constant during the attack (instead of doubling per halving of distance) as a result of the bats’ stealth tactic, keeping them low enough to prevent the moth from escaping.

Dr Holger Goerlitz, also from the research institute, said: “Our results suggest that barbastelle bats are able to outwit the hearing defence of moths and close in without triggering any last-ditch manoeuvres, making them very successful moth hunters.

“In fact, the evolution of moth ears might benefit barbastelles as they can avoid competition with other, louder bats.”

This Author

Sabrina Weiss works for the British Ecological Society. The full study is published on March 14th in the journal Functional Ecology.

It does not take much probing of the scientific data to come to the conclusion that urgent action on a societal level is required to avert a global ecological catastrophe.

Yet, looking around, we see little evidence that empowered people across the developed world are really steering us to a brighter future.

When George W. Bush was president, many of us craved a climate aware world-leader. Soon after, our prayers were answered with president Barack Obama, a man openly concerned with the state of the planets ecology, who liked to talk about climate change.

Unintended consequences

Yet still we waited and nothing significant happened – except the seemingly toothless framework of the Paris Agreement, towards the end of his second term in office. Emissions continue to rise, and rise.

His climate denying successor could, ironically, be the most galvanising force of them all so far. Donald Trump’s overt contempt for decency has potential to deliver real systemic change. He is nothing but a law to himself of unintended consequences.

But, caught in the reflection of Trumpism, it is hard not to notice the broader incumbent generations who are stuck in a linear feedback loop of accumulation and pollution. Literally: resources in, pollution out! 

The elite 1 to 10 percent of society – that could partially include myself – cannot adapt to the challenges of averting dangerous climate change fast enough. This idea of the linear feedback loop of accumulation is lifted from Dr Robert Biel’s current article discussing Systems Theory in The Ecologist.

The result is a 20th century system that is dangerously out-dated and out of control. It is characterised by scaling up consumption, dominating the political agenda with cyclical post-war debates and exacerbating fear of the other. All the while, the emerging generation remain conspicuously absent, especially at the polls.

Self-organising

In an interview I conducted with Professional Schellnhuber at the Royal Society in October 2017, he responded to a question about post-Brexit UK and European collaboration on climate action by saying we needed to “self-organise” to overcome the political barriers arising.

It was this idea of self-organising that was my take-away from the interview as I headed to COP23 in Bonn a month later. The COPs are meant to embody the global effort to implement changes at a political level in order to avert the worst global impacts of climate change. 

Incumbent system failure

Despite this, the sum total of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC’s) proposed by every country on Earth, even if achieved – which is doubtful in itself – deliver a +3ºC globally average hotter climate. This warmer world was aptly anticipated by Professor Kevin Anderson at COP23 when he said on a panel: “We are going to hell in a hand basket”.

Emerging systems 

Despite such proclamations, the COP was crawling youth activists, converging, networking and sharing ideas. A local initiative, set-up by 27 year old Johanna Schafer, called the BonnLab embodied this idea of self-organisation.

The BonnLab, best described as a city-lounge, was a hive of activity with new people arriving, international friendships being forged, live-streaming across social media, as well reports on the COP itself.

There was energy and buzz. It was kind of like a pub for a new connected and open generation, demonstrating this self-organisingprincipal being put into action. 

Zombie systems

The penny dropped at COP23. A new generation is rising and they are not interested in the rhetoric of previous generations who still wield disproportionate power and consume too much of the worlds resources, from money to energy. 

As the clock ticks, we do need to resolve international and intergenerational differences, whilst at the same time listen and aid the emerging systems of a rising generation.

With their more sustainable new world outlook, they have the energy to forge a truly liveable world. 

I’ll end with the prescient words from my COP23 interview with Kevin Anderson: “My generation have fundamentally failed.

“We have chosen to fail on climate change, collectively as a whole. We don’t know what to do about it. I would rather that we hand over the baton to them [young people], that we allow them to take over the leadership.

“They may need some of the skill sets that we have. One of them of course, which we know very well and fundamentally: how to fail!” 

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate journalist living in London and a cofounder of http://climateseries.com. Inspired by Dr Biel’s article on system theory in The Ecologist, this piece is also a much shorter version of an article being published in the next Yes & No Magazine due out shortly. Follow him on twitter at @NickGBreeze

Ecosphere+ has been set-up as part of the Althelia Climate Fund, which has already invested €101million into land-use projects around the world.

Walker describes the business model as “aligning economy with ecology”. It involves everyone from the farmers who have to live among the rainforests we must preserve (environmental assets), to high emitting companies and, thanks to the arrival of new technologies like blockchain, consumers like you and me.

Nick Breeze (NB): In simple terms, what does Ecosphere + actually do?

Lisa Walker (LW): So at Ecosphere +, our job is two-fold: One is to create the market for those environmental assets, which, are mainly in the form of carbon credits. Secondly, as sustainable commodities come online within the fund, we hope they will actually get a premium in the market.

At the moment there isn’t really recognition in the market that anybody would pay a premium for, for example, coffee, that’s produced deforestation-free in a really sustainable way. So we are really out there trying to create a market where one doesn’t really exist.

NB: Can you explain how all this is supposed to contribute to action to reverse climate change?

LW: The land-use sector is absolutely vital to climate change and to the climate targets we have set ourselves. The latest science says that 37 percent of cost-effective reductions have to come from the land-use sector. The potential is huge, so at less than $10 per tonne of carbon reduced, there is over 2 gigatonnes of potential available, just from avoiding the conversion of forests.

And many more gigatonnes available from different parts of the land-use sector, whether it is reforestation, peat land protection, wetlands, savannah, etc. So the opportunity is absolutely huge and it is really cost-effective.

It is also obviously important from a water, food, ecosystem services and sustainable development perspective. We can’t reach our sustainable development goals (SDG’s) if we don’t take action in the land-use sector.

So never mind that the fact that it is absolutely critical from a climate perspective, it is also completely vital to the SDG’s. But for something that is such a huge chunk of the potential solution, it doesn’t get anyway near the same sort of attention. So it gets less than 5 percent of public climate finance investment.

The majority of the public climate finance, for example, is going into infrastructure and energy. Otherwise there would be lots of companies and lots of funds investing in this space.

NB: Is any of this possible without proper regulated carbon markets?

LW: I think our job would be much easier if there was a regulated price on carbon, or a global price on carbon. That’s a long way off. Are we ever going to get there? It’s unlikely.

Where we are, is that we are starting to see more ambitious targets being set with a price on carbon, or trading mechanisms by sector.

We are hoping we will see more voluntary action. We’ve started a coalition of companies in Netherlands who are willing to voluntarily put a price on carbon, and to pay a price on carbon. There are lots of companies that have an internal price for carbon, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are investing in emissions reduction.

NB: Is it really feasible to expect companies to take the lead on this ahead of regulation?

Even if we meet all the targets set out by governments in the Paris Agreement, which is a big if in itself, there is still a huge gap. So whether you are aiming for 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees there is a 12-17 gigatonne gap. That is additional emissions reductions that need to be found!

For me there is a very strategic conversation with companies to say, ‘now you are going to be transparent with investors [because] your investors are much more engaged’. That is where, I think, companies will have more license now to say, ‘well okay, we may have our emissions going up for a period of time but we are going to have to take really credible steps to compensate those emissions and have a net emissions pathway that is safe.’

So that companies in the private sector can demonstrate to their investors that they have a plan that aligns to 2 degrees. Particularly for companies who have very high cost of transition and a long time to transition.

The fact that we have a lot more attention now from the real economy, from investors, from the finance sector, that makes us far more likely to be successful. We are starting to have the right conversations and I think we are creating a supporting environment for companies to take the right steps.

The numbers are still terrifying. The concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is the highest it has been for 800,000 years, so it is absolutely vital now that we step up action in all those areas.

NB: How do you capture and store large amounts of carbon in land-use projects?

LW: Where Althelia has been very successful, is working in Peru. The Tambopata Project is an example where there is the creation of a really important biodiversity reserve and national park, coupled with an agroforestry system.

What the Althelia Climate Fund has done is that they lend money on the ground into communities that have these environmental opportunities but also have environmental degradation as another competing force locally.

The ultimate premise is that we put a value on the trees left standing and then we also invest in sustainable agroforestry systems which relieve the pressures long-term on that forest, because you have alternative livelihoods.

The way it works is that the low-cost loans are collatoralised by carbon credits. That is quite innovative of itself. Those environmental assets have a value and ultimately have to be bought by somebody to sustain that value but they are also investing in sustainable production alongside the forest. You really move that community onto a more sustainable footing for the longer-term.

NB: You’ve talked about consumers being involved in this, but how could that work?

LW: The part that is really exciting for Ecosphere + is the use of blockchain and we think this can make a huge difference in the whole of the carbon market! We believe it is essential. Given there is a carbon derivative to pretty much every decision and every financial transaction we make, this should be the biggest market in the world, you would think… but it is not.

It is nothing like that. There is a real lack of trust in the market. The point of pollution is completely disconnected from the point of sale or purchase of a carbon reduction, or payment for carbon services rendered.

It is also quite an inefficient market. So, at the moment it takes a long time to go through, manually, all of these checks and balances, and verifications. It can take years before the assets have actually come to the market. That’s obviously not good.

And Blockchain can change that. It can make the process of generating carbon credits much much more effective.

The part that is really personally exciting to me is the fact that you can have micro carbon pricing transactions. In the same way that blockchain is really disruptive to fintech because at the moment, sending a dollar to a farmer in Africa will cost me more than a dollar, so why would I do that? I wouldn’t, its insane!

But in the same way, when I drink my cup of tea, there is a carbon consequence to this, positive or negative, depending on the origin of the tea, whether or not I have milk, the energy used to boil the kettle, etcetera. There is no way to easily compensate that in an efficient way and that is multiplied across everything that I do.

Up until now that is. We’ve been working in partnership with a new venture called the Poseidon Foundation that has just launched, and really hopes to deliver end to end digital solutions using blockchain and smart wallets that will make this kind of micro carbon pricing possible.

So that, as a consumer, whether I am filling up at the pump, or I am buying my cup of coffee, or whatever, maybe there is half a cent in there that is being reinvested into carbon reductions, either within that project, or equally it could be invested into all these different other areas, that we know have huge potential for emissions reductions but that are currently horrendously under financed.

Through smart phones and through technology, we can actually see the impact on the ground, end to end with blockchain. My ten cents, or ten pounds, or whatever it is that was needing to be invested, I can see it actually in practice.

That is a huge leap forward. That wasn’t ever possible before and that put people off. How can you really trust the system? Blockchain creates trust!

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate change journalist and cofounder of Cambridge Climate Lecture Series (#ccls2018). You can follow him on twitter at @NickGBreeze.