It is a mistake to think of Donald Trump as a climate change sceptic. If we believe Michael Wolff’s new insider account of the Trump White House, it is a mistake to think that Trump has any fixed view on climate change at all. 



In Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Wolff paints a picture of a man who cannot or does not absorb information of any kind. A man who is too irritable and bored to talk about policy. And a man who is happy to leave complex decisions to anyone who seems able to take them off his hands. 



If we believe Wolff’s gossipy and salacious account, Trump is not a man on a mission to wreck climate policy. Rather, he’s a man who refuses to engage with it. A man who is happy to delegate ‘dealing’ with climate change to any of the bitter rivals surrounding him who will take the issue away. 



Reactionary populism

Wolff’s account leads us to believe that Trump is not a man with deeply held political views. Instead he argues we should understand Trump as a man with gut reactions that are as reactionary as they are random.

They are often – according to Wolff’s sources – not even in line with some of the most basic tenets of Republican thinking. Apparently during a meeting about how to repeal ObamaCare, Trump blurted out that free health care should be extended to everyone. 



Understanding the Trump administration’s approach to climate change is not about understanding Trump’s views on climate change. Instead it is about understanding how the power battles inside Trump’s White House shaped the administration’s decisions. 



Forming one part of the power battle around Trump is his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter, Ivanka Trump.

Kushner was part of the campaign team, and then appointed senior advisor when Trump entered the White House. Kushner is a man with liberal political views and is an ex-Democrat supporter. Kushner disliked Trump’s reactionary populism. But the post was a chance for Kushner to propel himself to the highest levels of  global politics and business.

Protest at airports

According to Wolff, it was Kushner and Ivanka who choreographed Trump’s more presidential moments. Their goal was to present a more moderate, restrained globally acceptable version of Trump.

This put him on a conflict course with Steve Bannon, Trump’s now departed chief stategist. Bannon’s goal was the exact opposite. He wanted to make sure that the heart and soul of the Trump White House was fully bought into his vision of Trumpism.

For Banon, Trumpism meant nationalist, identitarian and populist. He believed that Trump supporters had voted for the absolute disruption of Washington elites.  Bannon wanted to show them this by creating as much chaos and disruption as possible. 



Bannon was not just interested in pushing through policies. He wanted to do so in a way that would antagonise American liberals as much as possible. Wolff claims that Bannon deliberately carried out no consultation the first ‘travel ban’.

This was a deliberate attempt to maximise chaos at airports. The ban came in on a Friday to make sure that its opponents would be able to protest at airports over the weekend.

Angry and losing

The aim was to create chaos and to draw out Trump’s opponents into angry demonstrations. This was all for the benefit of what Bannon saw as Trump’s core supporters. 



It is in this context that we have to see the US exit from the Paris Accord. Trump didn’t decide to take the US out of the agreement because of deeply held climate scepticism.

Nor did he do it because he believed it was what his supporters wanted. Or because he believed it was holding back the US economy. Wolff discourages us from thinking that Trump himself did it at all. 



Rather, it was an instance in which Bannon won out over Kushner in their bitter rivalry. Leaving the Paris Accord was something that would send “Social Justice Warriors” into protest and outrage.

This was exactly what Bannon was hoping for. News coverage of protesting liberals would speak powerfully to Trump’s supporters. They would see liberals angry and losing, and Trump fighting their corner and winning. 



Object of hate

For Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the Paris climate agreement had been something they wanted to protect.  For them it was a chance to present the administration as more responsible and less reactionary.

It was a chance for them to present an acceptable face of the administration to the world on an important international issue. The fact that Kushner saw it as such only fuelled Bannon’s desire to make sure the US left the agreement.

Bannon pushed to leave the agreement partly to enrage liberals, but also partly to enrage Kushner and Ivanka Trump. 



In the aftermath of the US exit from the Paris Accord, Elon Musk – CEO of solar power company Tesla – resigned from Trump’s business advisory committee. According to Wolff this was exactly the kind of reaction Bannon was hoping for.

Musk represented the wealthy, liberal, coastal elites that had become an object of hate for Trump supporters. To see this kind of person offended, protesting and walking away was a key part of Bannon’s motivation. 



Fighting for power

We need to be careful with Wolff’s account of how all this happened. Most of the sources of the book are unnamed. The book has also been written to maximise intrigue and drama.

Wolff’s inside sources are extensive, but we shouldn’t imagine that the Bannon-Kushner war was the only thing driving the exit from the Paris Accord.

We know little – for example – about the rest the Republican establishment in this debate. Or about the involvement of any lobbyists in the decision. This version of events is compelling, it may be true but it probably isn’t the entire story of why the US left the climate change agreement.   


Fire and Fury gives some insight into how the Paris exit unfolded. But it doesn’t provide much insight into the underlying reasons climate change has become so polarised.

The focus of the book is dysfunction in the White House, rather than the political landscape of the rest of the US. 

Wolff’s account tells us little about the political shifts of the last few years that landed an Alt-Right nationalist (Bannon), and a Democrat (Kushner) fighting for power around a disinterested President.

Wolff’s focus on rivalries leaves little space for understanding how this assortment of people ended up fighting each other inside the world’s most powerful office.

So while Wolff’s account tells us the details of how the Trump administration exited the Paris Accord, it doesn’t really tell us why. 



Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
Michael Wolff
Henry Holt and Co
January 2018

This Author

Alex Randall is the programme coordinator at the Climate and Migration Coalition.

Theresa May has a moral duty as prime minister to ensure the country has good air quality, according to three quarters of the public who responded to a survey.

A total of 73 percent of those surveyed in the YouGov poll said they thought that the May had a “moral responsibility to ensure the UK has good air quality for future generations”.

The news comes as environmental lawyers at ClientEarth bring their third case against the UK government at the High Court over illegal and harmful levels of air pollution across the country.

Its lawyers will argue that government plans still fail to deal with the problem of toxic air, which is at illegal levels in 37 of 43 zones across the country.

The hearing is owned today in Court 2 of the High Court before Mr Justice Garnham. It will also see the Welsh Government defend its record on air pollution, after it was named as a defendant in the case.

ClientEarth won its other two air pollution legal challenges against the UK government at the Supreme Court in 2015 and High Court in 2016.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth. 

It is a mistake to think of Donald Trump as a climate change sceptic. If we believe Michael Wolff’s new insider account of the Trump White House, it is a mistake to think that Trump has any fixed view on climate change at all. 



In Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Wolff paints a picture of a man who cannot or does not absorb information of any kind. A man who is too irritable and bored to talk about policy. And a man who is happy to leave complex decisions to anyone who seems able to take them off his hands. 



If we believe Wolff’s gossipy and salacious account, Trump is not a man on a mission to wreck climate policy. Rather, he’s a man who refuses to engage with it. A man who is happy to delegate ‘dealing’ with climate change to any of the bitter rivals surrounding him who will take the issue away. 



Reactionary populism

Wolff’s account leads us to believe that Trump is not a man with deeply held political views. Instead he argues we should understand Trump as a man with gut reactions that are as reactionary as they are random.

They are often – according to Wolff’s sources – not even in line with some of the most basic tenets of Republican thinking. Apparently during a meeting about how to repeal ObamaCare, Trump blurted out that free health care should be extended to everyone. 



Understanding the Trump administration’s approach to climate change is not about understanding Trump’s views on climate change. Instead it is about understanding how the power battles inside Trump’s White House shaped the administration’s decisions. 



Forming one part of the power battle around Trump is his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter, Ivanka Trump.

Kushner was part of the campaign team, and then appointed senior advisor when Trump entered the White House. Kushner is a man with liberal political views and is an ex-Democrat supporter. Kushner disliked Trump’s reactionary populism. But the post was a chance for Kushner to propel himself to the highest levels of  global politics and business.

Protest at airports

According to Wolff, it was Kushner and Ivanka who choreographed Trump’s more presidential moments. Their goal was to present a more moderate, restrained globally acceptable version of Trump.

This put him on a conflict course with Steve Bannon, Trump’s now departed chief stategist. Bannon’s goal was the exact opposite. He wanted to make sure that the heart and soul of the Trump White House was fully bought into his vision of Trumpism.

For Banon, Trumpism meant nationalist, identitarian and populist. He believed that Trump supporters had voted for the absolute disruption of Washington elites.  Bannon wanted to show them this by creating as much chaos and disruption as possible. 



Bannon was not just interested in pushing through policies. He wanted to do so in a way that would antagonise American liberals as much as possible. Wolff claims that Bannon deliberately carried out no consultation the first ‘travel ban’.

This was a deliberate attempt to maximise chaos at airports. The ban came in on a Friday to make sure that its opponents would be able to protest at airports over the weekend.

Angry and losing

The aim was to create chaos and to draw out Trump’s opponents into angry demonstrations. This was all for the benefit of what Bannon saw as Trump’s core supporters. 



It is in this context that we have to see the US exit from the Paris Accord. Trump didn’t decide to take the US out of the agreement because of deeply held climate scepticism.

Nor did he do it because he believed it was what his supporters wanted. Or because he believed it was holding back the US economy. Wolff discourages us from thinking that Trump himself did it at all. 



Rather, it was an instance in which Bannon won out over Kushner in their bitter rivalry. Leaving the Paris Accord was something that would send “Social Justice Warriors” into protest and outrage.

This was exactly what Bannon was hoping for. News coverage of protesting liberals would speak powerfully to Trump’s supporters. They would see liberals angry and losing, and Trump fighting their corner and winning. 



Object of hate

For Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the Paris climate agreement had been something they wanted to protect.  For them it was a chance to present the administration as more responsible and less reactionary.

It was a chance for them to present an acceptable face of the administration to the world on an important international issue. The fact that Kushner saw it as such only fuelled Bannon’s desire to make sure the US left the agreement.

Bannon pushed to leave the agreement partly to enrage liberals, but also partly to enrage Kushner and Ivanka Trump. 



In the aftermath of the US exit from the Paris Accord, Elon Musk – CEO of solar power company Tesla – resigned from Trump’s business advisory committee. According to Wolff this was exactly the kind of reaction Bannon was hoping for.

Musk represented the wealthy, liberal, coastal elites that had become an object of hate for Trump supporters. To see this kind of person offended, protesting and walking away was a key part of Bannon’s motivation. 



Fighting for power

We need to be careful with Wolff’s account of how all this happened. Most of the sources of the book are unnamed. The book has also been written to maximise intrigue and drama.

Wolff’s inside sources are extensive, but we shouldn’t imagine that the Bannon-Kushner war was the only thing driving the exit from the Paris Accord.

We know little – for example – about the rest the Republican establishment in this debate. Or about the involvement of any lobbyists in the decision. This version of events is compelling, it may be true but it probably isn’t the entire story of why the US left the climate change agreement.   


Fire and Fury gives some insight into how the Paris exit unfolded. But it doesn’t provide much insight into the underlying reasons climate change has become so polarised.

The focus of the book is dysfunction in the White House, rather than the political landscape of the rest of the US. 

Wolff’s account tells us little about the political shifts of the last few years that landed an Alt-Right nationalist (Bannon), and a Democrat (Kushner) fighting for power around a disinterested President.

Wolff’s focus on rivalries leaves little space for understanding how this assortment of people ended up fighting each other inside the world’s most powerful office.

So while Wolff’s account tells us the details of how the Trump administration exited the Paris Accord, it doesn’t really tell us why. 



Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
Michael Wolff
Henry Holt and Co
January 2018

This Author

Alex Randall is the programme coordinator at the Climate and Migration Coalition.

Theresa May has a moral duty as prime minister to ensure the country has good air quality, according to three quarters of the public who responded to a survey.

A total of 73 percent of those surveyed in the YouGov poll said they thought that the May had a “moral responsibility to ensure the UK has good air quality for future generations”.

The news comes as environmental lawyers at ClientEarth bring their third case against the UK government at the High Court over illegal and harmful levels of air pollution across the country.

Its lawyers will argue that government plans still fail to deal with the problem of toxic air, which is at illegal levels in 37 of 43 zones across the country.

The hearing is owned today in Court 2 of the High Court before Mr Justice Garnham. It will also see the Welsh Government defend its record on air pollution, after it was named as a defendant in the case.

ClientEarth won its other two air pollution legal challenges against the UK government at the Supreme Court in 2015 and High Court in 2016.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth. 

It is a mistake to think of Donald Trump as a climate change sceptic. If we believe Michael Wolff’s new insider account of the Trump White House, it is a mistake to think that Trump has any fixed view on climate change at all. 



In Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Wolff paints a picture of a man who cannot or does not absorb information of any kind. A man who is too irritable and bored to talk about policy. And a man who is happy to leave complex decisions to anyone who seems able to take them off his hands. 



If we believe Wolff’s gossipy and salacious account, Trump is not a man on a mission to wreck climate policy. Rather, he’s a man who refuses to engage with it. A man who is happy to delegate ‘dealing’ with climate change to any of the bitter rivals surrounding him who will take the issue away. 



Reactionary populism

Wolff’s account leads us to believe that Trump is not a man with deeply held political views. Instead he argues we should understand Trump as a man with gut reactions that are as reactionary as they are random.

They are often – according to Wolff’s sources – not even in line with some of the most basic tenets of Republican thinking. Apparently during a meeting about how to repeal ObamaCare, Trump blurted out that free health care should be extended to everyone. 



Understanding the Trump administration’s approach to climate change is not about understanding Trump’s views on climate change. Instead it is about understanding how the power battles inside Trump’s White House shaped the administration’s decisions. 



Forming one part of the power battle around Trump is his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter, Ivanka Trump.

Kushner was part of the campaign team, and then appointed senior advisor when Trump entered the White House. Kushner is a man with liberal political views and is an ex-Democrat supporter. Kushner disliked Trump’s reactionary populism. But the post was a chance for Kushner to propel himself to the highest levels of  global politics and business.

Protest at airports

According to Wolff, it was Kushner and Ivanka who choreographed Trump’s more presidential moments. Their goal was to present a more moderate, restrained globally acceptable version of Trump.

This put him on a conflict course with Steve Bannon, Trump’s now departed chief stategist. Bannon’s goal was the exact opposite. He wanted to make sure that the heart and soul of the Trump White House was fully bought into his vision of Trumpism.

For Banon, Trumpism meant nationalist, identitarian and populist. He believed that Trump supporters had voted for the absolute disruption of Washington elites.  Bannon wanted to show them this by creating as much chaos and disruption as possible. 



Bannon was not just interested in pushing through policies. He wanted to do so in a way that would antagonise American liberals as much as possible. Wolff claims that Bannon deliberately carried out no consultation the first ‘travel ban’.

This was a deliberate attempt to maximise chaos at airports. The ban came in on a Friday to make sure that its opponents would be able to protest at airports over the weekend.

Angry and losing

The aim was to create chaos and to draw out Trump’s opponents into angry demonstrations. This was all for the benefit of what Bannon saw as Trump’s core supporters. 



It is in this context that we have to see the US exit from the Paris Accord. Trump didn’t decide to take the US out of the agreement because of deeply held climate scepticism.

Nor did he do it because he believed it was what his supporters wanted. Or because he believed it was holding back the US economy. Wolff discourages us from thinking that Trump himself did it at all. 



Rather, it was an instance in which Bannon won out over Kushner in their bitter rivalry. Leaving the Paris Accord was something that would send “Social Justice Warriors” into protest and outrage.

This was exactly what Bannon was hoping for. News coverage of protesting liberals would speak powerfully to Trump’s supporters. They would see liberals angry and losing, and Trump fighting their corner and winning. 



Object of hate

For Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the Paris climate agreement had been something they wanted to protect.  For them it was a chance to present the administration as more responsible and less reactionary.

It was a chance for them to present an acceptable face of the administration to the world on an important international issue. The fact that Kushner saw it as such only fuelled Bannon’s desire to make sure the US left the agreement.

Bannon pushed to leave the agreement partly to enrage liberals, but also partly to enrage Kushner and Ivanka Trump. 



In the aftermath of the US exit from the Paris Accord, Elon Musk – CEO of solar power company Tesla – resigned from Trump’s business advisory committee. According to Wolff this was exactly the kind of reaction Bannon was hoping for.

Musk represented the wealthy, liberal, coastal elites that had become an object of hate for Trump supporters. To see this kind of person offended, protesting and walking away was a key part of Bannon’s motivation. 



Fighting for power

We need to be careful with Wolff’s account of how all this happened. Most of the sources of the book are unnamed. The book has also been written to maximise intrigue and drama.

Wolff’s inside sources are extensive, but we shouldn’t imagine that the Bannon-Kushner war was the only thing driving the exit from the Paris Accord.

We know little – for example – about the rest the Republican establishment in this debate. Or about the involvement of any lobbyists in the decision. This version of events is compelling, it may be true but it probably isn’t the entire story of why the US left the climate change agreement.   


Fire and Fury gives some insight into how the Paris exit unfolded. But it doesn’t provide much insight into the underlying reasons climate change has become so polarised.

The focus of the book is dysfunction in the White House, rather than the political landscape of the rest of the US. 

Wolff’s account tells us little about the political shifts of the last few years that landed an Alt-Right nationalist (Bannon), and a Democrat (Kushner) fighting for power around a disinterested President.

Wolff’s focus on rivalries leaves little space for understanding how this assortment of people ended up fighting each other inside the world’s most powerful office.

So while Wolff’s account tells us the details of how the Trump administration exited the Paris Accord, it doesn’t really tell us why. 



Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
Michael Wolff
Henry Holt and Co
January 2018

This Author

Alex Randall is the programme coordinator at the Climate and Migration Coalition.

Theresa May has a moral duty as prime minister to ensure the country has good air quality, according to three quarters of the public who responded to a survey.

A total of 73 percent of those surveyed in the YouGov poll said they thought that the May had a “moral responsibility to ensure the UK has good air quality for future generations”.

The news comes as environmental lawyers at ClientEarth bring their third case against the UK government at the High Court over illegal and harmful levels of air pollution across the country.

Its lawyers will argue that government plans still fail to deal with the problem of toxic air, which is at illegal levels in 37 of 43 zones across the country.

The hearing is owned today in Court 2 of the High Court before Mr Justice Garnham. It will also see the Welsh Government defend its record on air pollution, after it was named as a defendant in the case.

ClientEarth won its other two air pollution legal challenges against the UK government at the Supreme Court in 2015 and High Court in 2016.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth. 

The World Economic Forum has conducted a survey of experts, business leaders and academics to find out what are the issues that are keeping them up at night, to inform the annual gathering of the global elite in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

This year the media coverage of the report has been dominated by an uptick in the worries around the prospect of warfare and cyberattacks.   But when you look at the results, what is most striking is that it is environmental concerns that dominate.

The issues are mapped out on a graph, with the upward axis showing how severe the impact of each issue would be should it strike, and the horizontal axis showing how likely it is to occur.  

Displaced millions

So low risk items will reside in the bottom left as they represent low impact and low likelihood. The really serious stuff are the risks which are both highly likely and highly damaging.

The top three of these are extreme weather events, natural disasters and failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation.  Not far behind in this top right section are water crises, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, large scale involuntary migration and man-made environmental disasters.

The only item not linked to environmental degradation of some kind is cyberattacks.  Common headline-grabbing issues like terrorism, interstate conflict and the failure of financial institutions are way down, on both impact and likelihood.

It’s certainly encouraging that the world’s top minds are giving proper weight to the ecological crisis which we are living through. But to address them we need to see those in Davos taking action rather than offering just warm words.

It’s no surprise that extreme weather and natural disasters topped the poll following the hurricanes which caused mayhem in Texas and the Caribbean and the flooding which displaced millions in South Asia.  

A safe climate

The obvious solution to these is to accelerate cuts to greenhouse gas emissions which are driving climate change. Another would be to invest more of our humanitarian aid budget supporting the local charities who are first on the scene after an emergency.  

One of the outcomes from the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 was the localisation of aid but this needs to start happening much quicker.

Likewise, the answer to the next biggest risk, the lack of mitigation and adaptation to climate change, is pretty clear.  

This year leaders will have an opportunity to act on this at the UN climate summit, taking place in the heart of Polish coal country in December.  

The pledges captured in the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 were not enough on their own to deliver a safe climate.  

Adaptation commitments

What made the agreement fit for purpose was the ratchet mechanism, which compels countries to review and upgrade their commitments so that action on climate change will accelerate exponentially.  

This year is the first opportunity for countries to do that, through the process which is now called the Talanoa Dialogue.  

It’s also worth noting that climate adaption has not been forgotten by the survey’s respondents.  

Although climate mitigation (the reduction of greenhouse gasses) is important, it needs to go hand in hand with support for those on the front line of climate change that need to adapt to the consequences.

Again, the summit in Poland this year will be a chance for countries to up their adaptation commitments, something that was lacking at last year’s meeting in Bonn.

Global risks

The year 2018 also offers a chance to address one of the other global risks from the top right section of the graph, large scale involuntary migration.

This September at the UN general assembly, member states will agree the compact on refugees and migration, outlining the rights of people facing displacement and creating a framework of how nations and UN agencies should respond to this growing problem.

It is right that the respondents to the Global Risk survey don’t limit this to refugees alone – of the 60 million people around the world that have had to leave their homes, 40 million do not have the protections that come with refugee status because they are internally displaced. It’s vital these forgotten 40 million get their voices heard in September.

The Davos jamboree may come in for plenty of ridicule and derision as the rich and famous swan about in their alpine resort.

But if it’s attendees listen to the findings of their own survey they could make 2018 a year when some of the most urgent global risks are addressed.

This Author

Joe Ware is a journalist and writer at Christian Aid. He is on twitter at @wareisjoe

The rocket stove roars in front of me. ‘Waste’ sweet potato, home-grown onion and my Christmas gift of local rice is on the menu tonight. My moneyless meals are simple. I like it like that. Apart from the smoke blowing in my face at times, the food tastes better cooked over fire. It feels good to know no fossil fuels were used in the cooking of my dinner.

The rocket stove is a stack of old bricks. Twigs go into the bottom creating a funnel of flame to sit my pot on. I’ve spread the rocket stove love around. Three friends now have them at home and there’s one at the local community garden. 

In front of me (almost within arm’s reach) are the experimental hugelkultur garden beds I’m building for Kim and me. She seems happy. My little blue wagon is parked up in her yard. I bring food growing, and a helping hand when needed, to the equation. We often sit in the yard near the fire pit and chat – about men mostly. I did give up a man I loved to do this moneyless experiment after all.

Special things

Dinner almost ready, I duck to wash my hands in my little outdoor bathhouse. Built with old pallets and whatever I could get my hands on, it’s well hidden and private behind the wagon. Later I must remember to empty my odourless bucket loo into my experimental, upcycled wheelie bin, humanure worm farm. A lot of what I do is experimental. It has to be when choosing to live without money. Thinking outside the box is all part of the fun. 

I grow or find food. I pick up sticks to fuel the stove. I pee in a bucket. I swap and make clothes. I hitch or walk or ride my bike.  Special things like annual phone credit, a trip to the movies, a bus ticket or local rice make my birthday and Christmas gifts more meaningful.

Other special things have a seemingly ‘magical’ way of appearing. Being picked up hitching and diverted via my ride’s home for the aged contents of her cupboard – including powdered milk when I had just run out.

A crop of bunya nuts being offered for foraging the same week the best local bins aren’t available for diving. A free taxi ride (he was already heading my way), when I was running late for a meeting one night – on foot, in a strange part of town, in the dark.

I take advantage of the waste and excess of the society I am part of. It takes very little to live a comfortable life. A wide network of friends helps. Community helps. This way of living naturally builds relationships. 

A Womble

Sharing is key. I help those around me and they help me. I give my time, friendship, a helping hand, and sometimes physical resources. They open their homes to me when I visit, and gift me their waste or excess, their friendship, and sometimes a helping hand.

We are always reliant on others. Using money can give the illusion of self-reliance. It usually puts distance between us (the consumer) and the producers (those on whom we are reliant). I am face-to-face with those I’m reliant on. Together we create beautiful win-wins while I take care not to use their new resources – defeating my purpose.

My friends seem happy. There’s no talk about me being crazy. They accept me and my unconventional decisions – as long as I don’t bang on about climate change too much (something I do in my darker moments when all seems lost).

They are reducing their own carbon footprints by reducing their meat consumption, flying less, getting rid of stuff, driving more economical cars and eating locally grown food. 

After almost three years, my nearest and dearest are well trained. ‘Don’t throw anything away until you’ve checked with Jo’ is their new motto. I’ve been called a Womble on more than one occasion.

Suddenly one day

They say they don’t feel judged by me. It was only three short years ago I was doing the working, rushing, stressed, ‘chasing my tail’ thing. I barely had the time or the energy to put into deciding which of the products on the shop shelf in front of me was the least destructive.

My judgement of others is confined to those who don’t give a damn. Fortunately, I rarely come across this kind of person. I hitched a lift recently with a friendly young man who was a climate denier.

The fact that his passenger’s door or window wouldn’t open gave some momentary cause for concern, but his views on the climate were more worrying. After a respectful chat we parted on friendly terms – maybe one less denier on the planet.

In my moneyed life, the realisation of the damage I was doing was incremental. Some form of violence against others (and the natural world) is inherent in the supply chains of all those things on all those shelves. 

Not so incrementally – very suddenly one day – I found my answer. People were making the choice to live simple, low-impact, and sometimes moneyless, lives all over the world. I would too.

Simplicity and non-violence

I made this decision out of love for my daughter. While this wouldn’t make a big difference, I would not be making things worse – for her and for those already suffering the effects of our consumption.

For now, I estimate 80 percent to 90 percent less new fossil fuels and 95 percent less new resources are used in my upkeep. I still have some negative impacts when I hitch a ride, use the internet, charge my laptop at a friend’s coal-fired home and ask for powered milk as a special birthday gift. I am still part of the problem. I wrestle with this.

Sitting here, eating my simple dinner, watching the vegetables grow in the garden, the busyness of the moneyed world buzzing around me, I long to be joined by others in a life of simplicity and non-violence. 

I know the day is coming. 

It must.

This Author

Joanne Nemeth is living a moneyless life to reduce her environmental and social footprint. With one loose rule to not use new resources, Jo tries to use the excess of the world around her. She is a fan of sharing and collaboration at a local level.

Critics of the World Economic Forum say that meeting of the global elite – that includes business leaders and heads of state – paves the way for corruption and behind the scenes deal making that are not in the interests of everyday people.

President Trump had previously scorned the event in Davos himself, but surprised the media by announcing that he would attend. It has been reported in the US that his attendance is little more than an opportunity to be with global business leaders who are pleased with his recent tax break for the richest 1 percent worth trillions of dollars.

Trump’s tax bill is predicted to boost stock markets in the short-term but then drive the US economy into deeper debt as they seek even more borrowing from China.

Gender equality

The demonstration in central Zurich has been organised by about 20 diverse organisations including the Green Party, Fossil-Free Switzerland, Women’s March Zurich and civil liberty groups.

I spoke to Edwin Moser, a representative from Fossil-Free Switzerland, who said: “About a week ago we heard that Trump is coming to Davos.

“This demonstration is to show that he is not welcome in Switzerland. We don’t agree with his racism, we don’t agree with his climate denying, we don’t agree with his America First policy, and we want to say loud and clearly that he is not welcome in Switzerland.”

Many of the placards on the protests at the event bare slogans that subvert Trump’s own comments referring to his “shit hole” comments in reference to developing nations that had traditionally received support from the US.

Protestors for gender equality marched with genital masks on their heads reflecting the objectification of women routinely displayed the President.

A future

Swiss people are usually very reticent when it comes to public protests and yet the turn out here is in the thousands. Police have lined the roads and set up road blocks to guide the protest through the centre of the city, even down the famous Banhoffstrasse where many of the world’s richest people are often seen shopping or going about their business.

A protester stated: “We want to show people that people in Switzerland are caring for the world and we care especially about climate change.”

The US President’s visit is sure to be unpopular with many other foreign world leaders as well as Swiss people themselves, but some protesters suggest this seems unlikely to upset him personally.  

Moser added: “I am sure that Trump likes it that so many people protest against him. He seems to like it but we don’t care about that. We care about the future after Trump and he is going to be gone very soon. I am sure about that!”

After people gathered at Helvetiaplatz on the edge of the city, the lively march proceeded towards the centre, even passing a number of strip clubs where workers came to the door to wave at the protesters in an odd show of unity.

Many talked of taking the protest to the World Economic Forum in Davos but due to the small size of the town and the heavy snowfall, that could be difficult.

Despite this, many here really believe that the extreme nature of Trump’s policies and rhetoric will, in the end, galvanise social movements for change with more and more people taking notice and demanding that their political leaders denounce inequality and policies that are destroying the global commons for future generations.

This Author

Nick Breeze is a climate change interviewer regularly posting at http://enivsionation.co.uk. He is also a cofounder of http://climateseries.com. He tweets at @NickGBreeze. 

Many of the world’s leading drug manufacturers may be leaking antibiotics from their factories into the environment, according to a new report from a drug industry watchdog. This risks creating more superbugs.

The report surveyed household-name pharmaceutical giants like GSK, Novartis and Roche as well as generic companies which make non-branded products for the NHS and other health systems.

None of the 18 companies polled would reveal how much antibiotic discharge they release into the environment, according to the independent report from Access to Medicines Foundation. Only eight said they set limits for how much could be released in wastewater.

Little progress

Only one disclosed the name of its suppliers – a move which is seen as important as it would make companies accountable for their environmental practices.

Dr Mark Holmes, a veterinary scientist at the University of Cambridge, said: “Antibiotic resistance is complex but if we are to deal with this challenge every sector must do their bit.

“The pharmaceutical industry has been a key player in improving public health but a failure to address environmental impacts of antibiotic pollution could undo much of their good work.”

Changing Markets, an NGO which has campaigned on the issue of pharmaceutical waste, added: “Pharmaceutical companies have a clear responsibility to tackle pollution in their supply chains, not least because of the considerable human health impacts associated with untreated waste from pharma manufacturing, prime among the creation of drug-resistant bacteria.

“From our own research in India and China, where most of the world’s generic drugs are made, we know this is an ongoing problem and that very little progress is happening on the ground.

Higher standards

“As the report also highlights, there is a crying lack of transparency about pharmaceutical supply chains which means that we know practically nothing about where our drugs are made. This is a scandal and pharmaceutical companies will face increasing calls to do something about it.”

“There is a crying lack of transparency about pharmaceutical supply chains which means that we know practically nothing about where our drugs are made. This is a scandal.”

Antibiotic waste from pharmaceutical manufacturing leaking into the environment is a neglected driver of antimicrobial resistance – or AMR – according to a global report published in 2016 by ex-finance minister Lord Jim O’Neill.

This is because residues of antibiotics in the environment expose bacteria to levels of the drugs that fuel the emergence of resistance. The ‘superbugs’ that form as a result can spread all over the world.

To tackle the problem, Lord O’Neill called for regulators to set minimum standards around the release of waste and for manufacturers to drive higher standards through their supply chains.

Resistant bacteria

AMR has been described as one of the greatest health problems facing the world. Without effective antibiotics, infections become more difficult to treat and common medical procedures like joint replacements, C sections and chemotherapy care for cancer – which rely on the drugs to kill infection – could become too risky to carry out.

Last year the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported on a study which revealed ‘excessively high’ levels of antimicrobial drugs – as well as superbugs – in waste water from a major drug production hub in the Indian city of Hyderabad.

The quantities found were strong enough to treat patients, scientists said. This followed an earlier report by the i and the Bureau of resistant bacteria in the wastewater of a factory there which supplies the NHS with antibiotics.

Table shows which pharmaceutical companies have a strategy to minimise the environmental impact of antibiotic discharge from manufacturing; whether they audit their own plants, third party suppliers or external waste treatment plants which they use to dispose of their waste; and whether they set limits for the amount of antibiotic discharge is released into wastewater (either at their own plants or across external suppliers and external waste treatment plants). It shows only eight companies have set limits for antibiotic discharge, and in the majority of cases these do not apply across their entire supply chains. Antimicrobial Resistance Benchmark Report 2018 by the Access to Medicines Foundation 

The Antimicrobial Resistant Benchmark 2018 report – released today at the World Economic Forum conference in DAVOS – evaluated how a cross-section of the pharmaceutical industry are responding to the threat of AMR.

It found none disclosed their actual discharge levels – information the authors said is ‘valuable and vital’ as it could allow governments and researchers to understand the relationship between discharge and the development of superbugs.

Considerable influence

Three generic drug companies – Cipla, Lupin and Sun Pharma – did not show any evidence of a strategy to minimise the impact of their antibiotic manufacturing on the environment, the report found, although Cipla promised to develop one this year.

Of particular concern were external companies that work for the main drug companies. Third-party companies manufacture and supply most drug firms with the key components of antibiotics, known as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs); and external waste treatment plants, which many drug companies use to process their discharge from antibiotic manufacturing. Some companies have on-site wastewater-treatment.

Only eight companies set discharge limits for antibiotic waste, and for half the companies these limits only apply to their own sites, rather than their suppliers’ too. Only two companies  – GSK and Novartis – require their external waste treatment plants to follow their limits. Sanofi and Roche, for example, do not monitor the discharge made by their external waste treatment plants, the report notes.

The Medicines Company was the only one willing to identify its third-party manufacturers, a move the report said would enable governments and researchers to assess the impact of individual manufacturers on antibiotic resistance.

The report notes that pharmaceutical companies that sell antibiotics “may be able to exert considerable influence over the environmental risk management of their suppliers.”

The large pharmaceuticals polled were GSK, Johnson and Johnson, Merck & Co, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Shinogi. The generic companies were Aspen, Aurobindo, Cipla, Dr Reddy’s, Fresenius Kabi, Lupin, Macleods, Mylan, Sun Pharma and Teva.

Access to Medicines is an Amsterdam-based NGO that receives funding from the UK Government, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

These Authors

Madlen Davies is an award-winning journalist who writes about health, food, the environment and international development.
She is investigating antimicrobial resistance at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. 

Sam Loewenberg is a journalist who covers the intersection of global health, politics, and public policy. He was a 2012 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. 

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