While millions of climate activists took to the streets to demand immediate and far-reaching action to protect our environment and advance social justice, world leaders and government officials have been attending a series of summits at the United Nations.

These include a summit to discuss climate action and another to find ways to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and move towards a “fair globalisation,” in the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

A number of child and youth activists were invited inside the UN’s hallowed halls, including Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swede who spearheads the global Fridays for Future movement, which started just a year ago as a one-girl protest outside the Swedish parliament.

Scientific

“People are suffering; people are dying; entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” Thunberg told governments at the climate summit. “The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line.”

As if to underline her seriousness, Thunberg and 15 other children and minors filed a groundbreaking complaint to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in which they describe national governments’ inaction on global warming constitutes a violation of their rights as children.

Although some patchy progress has been made, Thunberg is right when she says that current commitments are woefully inadequate to face up to the challenge, especially with the notable absence of some of the world’s worst polluters, such as the United States and China.

“For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight,” Thunberg said at the Climate Summit.

Indeed, the science has been clear for a long time. And as the smog in the air thickens, the scientific insights become ever clearer: humanity is on an unsustainable path to mass destruction and neither business as usual nor patches and bandaids will save the day. Only holistic policies that take account of the ecological, economic and social crisis can tackle the mammoth challenges facing us.

Carbon capture

The United Nations understands the magnitude of the climate crisis facing humanity. “Science tells us that on our current path, we face at least 3°C of global heating by the end of the century,” António Guterres said on the occasion the climate summit. “The climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win.”

And, with the right changes and policies, it most certainly is a race we can win. Some promising initiatives were floated at the climate and sustainability summits, including the commitments taken by 30 countries to “power past” coal, the drive to conserve 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030. However, a lot of this is too little, too late.

More troublingly, some of the proposed solutions smack of ‘business as usual’ or exhibit too much optimism in the anticipated gains future technologies can deliver.

The industrial transition track propose at the climate action summit still talks about “growth plans” and appears to rely heavily on private-public partnerships to implement low-carbon technologies. However, as a number of recent studies have suggested, ‘green growth’ and its promise of decoupling resource use from economic growth is simply not delivering the goods, or not fast enough to meet the magnitude of the challenge ahead. In the long term, there is one thing that is also crystal clear: sooner or later our economies will have to stop growing, since we do not live on a limitless world and there is no such a thing as human activities with zero energy use and zero ecosystem impacts.

The energy transition track lists carbon capture and storage as one area of interest, despite the fact that CCS technology uses an extraordinary amount of fuel to transport emissions for storage, has delivered disappointing results and is being used as a fig leaf by the coal industry to claim that it can become “green”.

Evolve

Improving storage technologies for renewable energies is also a focus of these transitions. However, it is unclear whether, for example, the minerals required to build high–density batteries will be available for more than a generation of electric cars if we continue throwing away rare and valuable elements, such as lithium, cobalt or manganese, with almost zero recycling.

Then, there is the environmental impact of the mining of minerals required to produce batteries and we should not forget that the batteries we have today store almost 100 times less energy per unit of mass than petrol. Moreover, we do not know if their technical features will ever evolve enough to rival presentday fuels.

We have built a society based on fossil fuels with amazing technical features. All the renewable alternatives, though better for the environment, are a lot less efficient and versatile. The transition to a world with lower–quality renewable energy sources which seeks to protect our overexploited ecosystems will be especially difficult if we continue to try growing our economies.

One major challenge is that many solutions rely on models that do not represent the entire reality of the situation, thereby assessing the sustainability and feasibility of future scenarios inaccurately. This is because most economic models are blind to or do not take adequate account of the natural limits and limitations of the biosphere, and assume that there is no feedback relationships between the monetary world of the economy and physical and biological ecosystems.

This implies that the Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) used by institutions and policymakers need to evolve and be adapted. This is precisely what our project LOCOMOTION is working on.

Malaise

We are developing IAMs that make allowance for the finite nature of mineral and fossil fuel reserves and, above all, the natural limitations of ecosystems. LOCOMOTION seeks to address the reality that our economic activities profoundly damage ecosystems, but also the fact that the future shortage of energy and the damage done to the biosphere, have the potential to hurt the economy as well, in a kind of vicious cycle, unless we find ways to cushion the transition.

Integrating all the economic, technological and biological factors at play, and the complex interactions between them, is crucial to empower policymakers and civil society to assess the relative merits of the various technological and policy options on offer, and to choose the right one. To ensure that LOCOMOTION’s models meet the needs of stakeholders we will involve them in defining some of our models and we will develop a user-friendly interface to allow them to customise our models to their specific purposes.

Informed decisions based on sound science and data are vital if we want to avoid being lured by excessive techno-optimism down a path to further destruction. We can only find solutions in those technologies that are themselves sustainable, i.e. they meet the three basic requirements of sustainability: they recycle close to 100% of the minerals used; they use 100% renewable energy; and they limit their flows of waste residues and their extraction of natural resources to the regenerative capacities of the biosphere.

Like when fever strikes, global warming is a symptom of a deeper malaise. Climate change is telling us loud and clear that our growth–based economy is unsustainable, and that we must correct the underlying structural problems, rather than simply administer temporary painkillers.

This Author

Margarita Mediavilla has a PhD in physical sciences from the University of Valladolid (Spain) and is an associate professor of systems engineering and automation at the School of Industrial Engineering. She is also a very active in awareness raising about the limits of economic growth, participating in all kinds of publications and conferences in the Spanish-speaking world. Her personal blog is Habas Contadas. With additional reporting by Khaled Diab.

I’ve ducked out of Design Week for some years, consciously opting out of an obsession with branding and gentrification. Perhaps I’d grown embittered by a dearth of affordable housing for locals. 

But this year, the festival instilled great optimism through art, aestheticism and functionalism, environmentalism and considerate design. That’s to say, it wasn’t all privileged entrepreneurial millennials making fortunes in their pursuit of ‘design for design sake’.

The festival platformed activist designers and biodiversity projects, coupled with a signature stance on international collaboration. All this makes for an exciting time in the design world, even for this old cynic. 

Coming of age

Designers hold the keys to a new future in a country made increasingly precarious by Brexit and climate crisis. 

London Design Festival (LDF) has excelled itself, growing annually into a gargantuan entity. The festival is divided into organised and accessible ‘design districts’, each area loaded with installations, events, talks, presentations and innovations that represent the best in UK and international creativity.

These extraordinary offerings restore a sense of pride in being British at a time of great confusion. Far from sentimental, design reveals itself as elemental, progressive, tech-aware and bold. LDF offers something for everyone, particularly as it goes above and beyond in its platforming of all areas of design, even in its incorporation of Artificial Intelligence. 

This year’s Emerging Design Medal winner is Ross Atkin, who focuses on disability and is a designer to follow.

Renowned creative Yves Behar’s keynote asked ‘How can designers build a better future?’ Behar’s work combines commercial briefs with democratised design to empower communities. His long-term work with the homeless, providing sustainable shelters in Latin America, showcases design committed to communities’ needs and cultures. 

Sustainability 

100% Design,  the UK’s largest and longest-running trade event for designers, celebrates a quarter of a century. It never fails to platform futuristic design, ahead of the times and in turn, on-trend – a must-go for anyone interested in design and in need of inspiration.

Designers here know the double edged sword – tempting consumers with stupefyingly beautiful and useful designs, all the while knowing that ‘less is more’. In addition, its several topical talks hone in on wellbeing, and present special guests such as design maverick Marcel Wanders who gave a typically off-beat and philosophical talk.

Speaking to several creatives and punters reveals how LDF is impacting positively and widely. International collaborations inform key environmental decisions, while the ‘design districts’ place significant emphasis on the environment, sustainability, heritage and localised ways of working. However, what arose from several fertile discussions is the necessity to work collaboratively across industries.

Thee V&A (Victoria&Albert) museum was ‘Home-Zone’ for the week. This globally-renowned  icon of culture hosts LDF events and the ‘Thought Leadership Programme’; the associated ‘Global Design Forum’ in 2018 drove 170,000 visitors to the Museum during the festival’s tenure. The V&A’s day of sustainability proved popular with punters, high profile designers and activists. 

Social design

Listing top recommendations is almost impossible. Many are worthy. But Paul Cocksedge’s Please Be Seated was a personal favourite, and is on display in Finsbury Square until 11 October. 

The large-scale installation comprises everything social design should be. Using recycled wood from scaffolding – it was love and lust at first sight. Organic-style design, curvaceous, fluid, functional and utterly beautiful – its hybrid nature at once both feminine and masculine.

Beckoning with welcoming ‘arms’, its cool, polished, soft and sinuous wood whispers, come hither. Like a flower in which to find your own little corner to curl up and dream. An escape from urbanism and the urbane.

London’s East End is now hyper ‘design wise’ – but this installation breaks barriers that gentrification sets up, with local workmen lying cradled in its curves, scoffing sandwiches and watching the world go by.

As Cocksedge notes: “Every aspect of the installation is tailored to its environment as well as the function it serves. The curves raise up to create back-rests and places to sit, with space for people to walk under, or pause and find some shade”.

Working with interiors company White&White to re-imagine and re-use building wood, different ‘dwellers’ occupy the installation throughout day. It will be missed in the area. (Why can it not stay?)

Waste not 

The already established Design Junction welcomed Kings Cross as the latest addition of design geography across the city, with Granby Workshop launching the world’s first ceramic tableware made from 100 percent waste.

The workshop comprises an installation and pop-up shop in Coal Drops Yard, with products available to order exclusively on KickStarter.

The Liverpool ceramics studio researched a wide range of post-consumer and industrial waste streams through experimentation and chemical analyses, to then reproduce the physical and aesthetic properties of conventional glazed stoneware. 

Brompton Biotopia is a series of animal habitats designed to support urban biodiversity. Marlene Huissoud at the Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths University worked with the Material Architecture Lab to design habitats from an animal’s perspective. The project explores applications of natural materials with designers at the forefront of innovative material research, architecture and technology.

Designers’ dedication to fully reflecting on global ecological challenges was in evidence throughout.

Creative economy

The festival underscored the importance of looking holistically at design projects’ wider impact –     including sourcing and styling products. This work is urgent but cannot be done overnight.

LDF Director Ben Evans is a man on a mission. It’s apparent that he ‘lives and breathes’ LDF, determinedly raising its profile and funding: “London has the biggest creative economy in the world, and design is a key part of it.

“LDF celebrates and promotes London’s design excellence in a period when showcasing creativity is even more important.”

For an event lasting only a week and taking the year to plan, such vast choice can also be overwhelming. Impressively the fest is well organised, with maps (on recycled paper) in each district, endless informed volunteers, a stellar media team and an general eagerness to help, as well as listen to suggestions from professionals and punters alike.

All this is incorporated into future strategy. The festival annually raises the stakes, encircling ever widely what constitutes an already burgeoning discipline. Here’s to LDF 2020 and an added Design Biennale. I for one, can’t wait.

This Author

Wendyrosie Scott is an anthropologist, journalist & stylist focusing on design & creative communities. She looks at positive partnerships between lifestyle trends & the natural world.

Image: Martin_VMorris, Flickr. 

With his guests gathered around a white folding table last May, Tim Little cut his oven-bake cake into squares, excavating pieces from the foil wrapper, and handing them around on paper plates.

An assortment of china mugs brought out from the house wait for coffee from a pot teetering on a pile of farming books. Shafts of morning sunlight peeked through small windows, illuminating the inside of the steel barn – a classic John Deere tractor, a car lift, and mechanical tools.

This photo essay was written and photographed by Spike Johnson in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. Read: Shrinking the Gulf Coast ‘dead zone’: Part I

Little and his friends grew up here, on family farms in Bridgewater Township, just an hour from the Mississippi River. Now in their 60s, they’ve formed a loose collective to pool resources, and share knowledge. Over the last decade they’ve been measuring increasing losses in topsoil, and a decline in soil health generally, aware of their connection to local rivers and streams, and subsequently to the rest of America. 

Now Little and his friends are pushing the boundaries of their industry to develop more efficient ways of farming locally, and towards solving a greater national problem – a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Little said: “We need to protect our land, our water, and our seas for future generations. We’re all connected through industry and ecology, and change will require a huge group effort.”

Little’s home state of Minnesota gives birth to the Mississippi River, its cold water bubbling over football sized rocks that edge the glacial lake of Lake Itasca. Here it begins a walking-paced meander, 2,320 miles towards New Orleans, collecting water from 31 states, along with leftover agricultural chemicals that are blamed for a growing dead zone spanning the Louisiana and Texas coastlines.

Dead zones begin when farm fertilizers wash off fields and into rivers, eventually concentrating in the sea, where they promote algae blooms that absorb oxygen needed by marine life. Escaping fish are forced to migrate out of natural habitats, and oysters perish where they lie.

Globally, dead zones have quadrupled since 1950, according to the journal Science. As the human population rises and increases its reliance on large-scale farming, the problem is expected to continue.

This year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Gulf dead zone is 6,952 square miles, roughly the size of New Hampshire. That’s slightly smaller than their earlier prediction of 7,829 square miles, but much larger than the 5-year average of 5,770 square miles.

In 2008, The Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, organized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), promised a 20 percent reduction of the dead zone by 2025, and along with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), have granted millions of dollars to agricultural and conservation groups for the development of nutrient reduction strategies, which are beginning to bear fruit.

In the Midwest, farmers are experimenting with new methods of agriculture, taking advantage of federal cost-share incentives and co-operative arrangements to limit the spread of fertilizers into rivers and streams. They’re bucking the trends of an entrenched industry, aware of their connection to the coast.

Little said: “We’ve got to do something different, something more environmentally friendly. We need to find ways of keeping our soil on the land, reduce the chemicals we use, to protect our watersheds.”

A convoy of scuffed work trucks turned left off the single-lane county road and bounced over the uneven dirt of Little’s land in Bridgewater Township. In a line, they made a wide arc over the stubbled field, heading for the middle. Dead vegetation burned on the horizon, sending columns of white smoke drifting across a flat landscape, dotted with grain silos and lonely trees.

Little climbed from his cab, well-worn work boots treading the dusty earth. For five years Tim has been planting cover crops across his 2,000 acre farm, a method of reducing fertilizer runoff and increasing soil health that’s quickly growing in popularity among conservationists and farmers. 

The process works by sowing new seeds (a cover crop) into mature corn or soybean fields (the primary crop) before the primary crop is harvested. When the primary crop is cut, the cover crop sees the sun and grows through the stalks of the primary crop. The decaying stalks return nutrients to the soil as worms break them down, boosting nitrogen levels for the next rotation of primary crop.

Cover crops mean that fields have year-round vegetation, without any periods of bare earth. They protect the ground from the summer heat, their new root systems improving drainage so that rain and soil stay on the land rather than washing off the top. Any fertilizers left in the soil are used by the cover crops as they grow. After five to seven years farmers report better soil health, and a higher yield in their primary crops. 

“It’s really opening up the ground, restarting the soil biology,” Little said. “Now it’s giving the nitrogen back to the soybeans. We’re seeing increased growth because of the nitrogen uptake.”

The hay-brown remains of Little’s soybean harvest lay in foot-long stalks on the ground, unplowed, and rotting where they fell. In patches the new green growth of his cover crops pushed through the old plants. They were a mix of cereal rye, radish, kale and purple top turnips sown by airplane between his soybean plants. With a dirt stained spade Little cut through the topsoil, pulling up clods of earth and prying them apart to show earthworms and new root systems. 

Through the 1950s and 1960s farmers in America were pushed to mechanize. The material shortages that hampered farm machinery production in World War II eased, but the resultant decline in war-time farm labor persisted. 

The purchase of machinery designed for specific functions — planting, plowing, or harvesting — pushed a natural tendency to find return on investment through crop specialization. In the Midwest, markets for corn and soybeans gained in demand as international trade developed, and the use cases for these high yield crops increased to include biofuels, animal feed, high fructose corn syrup, and bio-based plastics. Interest in alternative crops, dairy, and livestock waned, leading to farms planting corn one year, soybeans the next — a habitual duocrop rotation.

Little said: “Our fathers had diverse crops — oats, alfalfa, corn, what we needed for the hogs and the cows. But as the cows went we raised corn and soybeans only. We lost the crop diversity, and then we lost the soil health.”

In Keota, Iowa, Stefan Gailans, research and field crops director for the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), a 3,000-farmer organization, carried a battery powered microphone through a field of knee-high oats last [month], preparing with his host Tim Sieren to address group members about cover crop strategy. 

Gailans said: “At the moment the main economic opportunity to cover crops is as a food source for livestock.

Around them children played sword fights with ears of corn, and in the eaves of a wooden barn volunteers grill burgers on a steel smoker. 

Most PFI members plant cover crops on their farms, and between fifty and sixty run research trials, sharing their findings with the rest of the group. But the evolution of farming in America to a duocrop model has eroded markets for alternative species. Small grains are used less and less as animal food, and the limited markets that do still exist are already saturated with supply. 

Gailans continued: “Corn and soybeans are easy to find markets for. But stuff like wheat or rye isn’t grown here so much anymore, so there’s nowhere to sell.” 

The reintroduction of new markets would further incentivize farmers to adopt cover cropping. As well as contributing to conservation, farmers would have alternative income sources, and resilience against the economic fluctuation of the prominent duocrops. But this means competition for the dominant corn and soybean trade, and tough conversations all round.

From buyer to seller we’ve favored market over environment, voting with dollars through our supermarket carts and restaurant menus, unknowingly punishing farmers whose profits are half that of 2013, according to USDA statistics. Grinding tariff negotiations with China, one of the largest importers of American corn and soybeans, have damaged markets and plunged the price of US crops, highlighting an economic downside of such limited trade options — when the largest customer stops buying your only product, values tumble. 

PFI is making headway though, and recently enticed Pepsi and Unilever into the cover crop fold, both companies now offer financial incentives to farmers growing cover crops. And Target is buying oats grown as cover crops in perhaps the first building block toward new market creation.

Discussions about changing the way we use agricultural land arrive at similar stalemates. 

Laurie Nowatzke is measurement coordinator for the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, a state government initiative to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous from Iowa industry and agriculture that get into state waterways and, ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico. Nowatzke said: “Land use is something that we don’t talk about enough, and there’s political reasons for that. It’s hard to talk about changing our farming structure.” 

Nowatzke tracks conservation practices and water quality on farms across Iowa, one of the largest producers of corn and soybeans in America, and argues that switching corn and soybean fields to prairie after one rotation, using it to graze livestock, would help conservation efforts. The soil would have time to regain its natural nutrients, would need less fertilizer to support future crops, and with planned down-time there’d be less fertilizer on the land anyway. 

Nowatzke continued: “It could have a much greater impact on nutrient loss, but it’s a really difficult conversation.”

However if a dent in Gulf Coast hypoxia is the goal, Midwest agriculture is tip-toeing toward it. 

Earlier this year the Census of Agriculture published that in 2017, Iowa had nearly a million acres of cover crops planted, with a slight increase predicted for 2018, compared to just 10,000 acresten years before. 

“To put that in perspective though, studies in nutrient reduction strategy in Iowa show that we need 14 million acres of cover crops,” Nowatzke said. “We’re only just scratching the surface.” 

There is no national prediction from the EPA, the Hypoxia Task Force, or the USDA indicating the total fertilizer load that would lead to a reduction of the dead zone, or how long a reversal would take. The problem is too complex for definitives, its outcome relying on rainfall, ocean temperature, soil health, and crop growth rates. 

Guesswork is rife but well meaning, and alongside the Hypoxia Task Force’s promise to shrink the dead zone by 20 percent, Iowa’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy, written in 2013, also promised to make a 45 percent decrease in fertilizer runoff by 2035.

In July, a report by the Iowa Environmental Council found that at current implementation rates, it would take nearly 100 years to reach the Nutrient Reduction Strategy’s cover crop goal, and hundreds or even thousands of years to reach other key goals outlined in the strategy, according to a July report in the Des Moines Register.

Mike Naig, the state’s secretary of agriculture, told the Register that the report was unfair, pointing to hundreds of millions of dollars in new state appropriations and saying he anticipated that rates of strategy adoption were likely to speed up as a result. 

In Keota, the sun was grasping at the horizon. With Gailans’ talk finished, his guests ambled in the waning light, querying the talk’s finer points. Dressed in checkered shirts, blue jeans, and a spectrum of faded baseball caps they break off gradually toward their parked trucks. 

Gailans said: “There are practices that can improve water quality in the Mississippi River. But can agriculture have a positive impact on the dead zone? Absolutely we can, it’s a matter of do we want to?”

For now, the Gulf Coast Dead Zone remains, oblivious to swinging political pendulums, nutrient regulation negotiations, and cover crop incentives. An apex predator of our own invention, hungrily digesting fish and fertilizer alike, it swells onward in the deep.

This Author 

This photo essay was written and photographed by Spike Johnson in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

Spike Johnson photographs in the documentary style, exploring themes of social conflict that lie at the edges of the human experience. In the past his projects have received funding from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Protestors gathered outside Brazil’s Embassy in the UK last week to demand that Brazil’s environment minister Ricardo Salles stop destroying the country’s most biodiverse territories and stop threatening its indigenous guardians.

Activists from the UK Student Climate Network, Survival International, Greenpeace and others  stood in solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Brazil who are on the frontline of the fight to defend their land and to combat climate change.

They carried placards calling on Minister Salles to “Stop Brazil’s Genocide” and displaying messages of anger and resistance from indigenous people.

Declaring war

President Bolsonaro has virtually declared war on Brazil’s indigenous peoples. His administration is trying to strip them of their autonomy, steal their territories for logging, mining and agribusiness and “assimilate” them against their wishes. This is the worst situation indigenous peoples in Brazil have faced since the military dictatorship.

The number of attacks and invasions of indigenous territories is sky-rocketing, and the Amazon fires – many set by illegal loggers and ranchers – are destroying the forest at an alarming and heart-breaking pace. The survival of whole uncontacted tribes – the most vulnerable peoples on the planet – is at stake.

Minister Salles is central to this assault. He is in favor of using indigenous territories for large-scale plantations and agribusiness, and has denied that indigenous peoples are being attacked. Vast areas of Amazon rainforest continue to be destroyed by fire as he meets with companies with mining and fossil fuel interests.

Minister Salles’ visit to London is part of a tour of Europe, during which he has been met with protest every step of the way.

Indigenous peoples – nature’s best guardians and our best allies to combat the climate crisis – have fought to protect their lands from outsiders for over 500 years and they most definitely won’t stop now. They’re fighting back against Bolsonaro and Salles’ attacks, more united than ever before. As Sonia Guajajara says: “We’re putting our bodies and our lives on the line to try and save our territories.”

Shoulder to shoulder

In January, they led the biggest ever global protest for indigenous rights. In April, thousands gathered in Brasília to take their urgent messages to the heart of government.

On Amazon day activists around the world fought alongside indigenous peoples to make their voices heard, and now indigenous people and their allies are protesting again, to tell Minister Salles and President Bolsonaro to #StopBrazilsGenocide. Our anger only strengthens our will to resist.

APIB, the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, said: “We have the right to exist. We won’t retreat. We’ll denounce this government around the world.”

Indigenous peoples and their allies have fought shoulder to shoulder and won many victories over the last 50 years. We can win this battle too. Indigenous peoples’ survival, and the survival of all humanity, depends on it.

This Author 

Sarah Shenker is an activist at Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples.

Image: © Eleanor K. Russell/Survival International.

The decision by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to allow Drax Plc’s planning application for the UK’s largest ever gas-fired power capacity will lock the UK into dirty energy production for at least another two decades, climate campaigners have said.

Drax Power Station is already the world’s biggest biomass plant, burning over 7 million tonnes of imported wood pellets, many of them sourced from the clearcutting of forests that lie at the heart of a global biodiversity hotspot in the southern USA. 

Read: ‘You burn our trees to power your homes’

Drax now wants to replace its remaining two coal-fired units with far larger gas units. This will be the UK’s largest gas power capacity to date. For this project, Drax is asking for substantial new subsidies in addition to the £2.16 million a day it already receives for burning wood.

Public money

In April this year campaigners handed in a petition of over 96,000 signatures and an open letter signed by 92 organisations internationally to the then Secretary of State for BEIS, Greg Clark, asking him to reject Drax’s proposal. Drax was also targeted by protesters in July this year. 

Frances Howe from Biofuelwatch said: “We are disappointed by the Secretary of State’s decision. Drax already burns more wood than any other power station in the world, and now it will return to its former position as the UK’s largest fossil fuel burner, too.

“The public money Drax will require for this project needs to be spent on renewable power from wind, waves or sun.”

Ash Hewitson from Reclaim the Power said: “The Government has shown that it listens more to dirty polluting energy companies than the communities it claims to represent.

“Thousands of people have said that they do not want new gas infrastructure, including by taking to the streets and taking direct action at power stations. Today’s decision has no social license.”

Environmental injustice

Drax Power Station calls itself the ‘world’s largest decarbonisation project’; but in reality it is fuelling environmental injustice, accelerating the climate crisis, and driving forest destruction.

Last year, Drax burned over 14 million tonnes of wood from biodiverse forests in the Southern US and the Baltic States. Drax also burned 2 million tonnes of coal, and is expanding into another dirty energy source – gas.

But Drax isn’t just a disaster for the climate. Communities have suffered deeply from Drax’s burning, from the siting of wood pellet mills in US towns already at the sharp end of environmental injustice, to the entire villages destroyed and poisoned from coal mining in Russia.

Drax is representative of a centralised energy model and a wider extractivist system that pushes up energy bills for the poorest, rips control from communities, and values forest destruction over forest protection.

Drax’s plans for large-scale Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) continue a corporate, colonial mindset of people and rights as expendable in the pursuit of endless profit and growth.

Get involved

Mark Knowles from a regional Green Party branch – who initiated the petition against the project – added: “This is a step in the wrong direction on climate change.

If the government was serious about meeting its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement and staying within 1.5 degrees of global warming, it would have rejected Drax’s application.”

Activists will hold a demonstration outside the Department for BEIS on 9 October at 12.30 to highlight Drax’s contributions to environmental injustice through biomass, coal and gas. Demonstrators will hear from those who have suffered from Drax and call out its crimes with chants, signs and singing. 

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on press releases from Biofuel Watch. 

Actress Juliet Stevenson is among the celebrities taking part in the Extinction Rebellion protests currently taking place at Trafalgar Square as part of the “international rebellion”, along with actress Ruby Wax and models Daisy Lowe and Arizona Muse.

The Metropolitan Police said that as of 12.30pm today, they had made 135 arrests as thousands of activists poured onto the streets of London, shutting down government buildings and nearby roads.

Ms Stevenson, the Truly Madly Deeply star, said: “It’s a very wonderful action today. We can’t any longer allow governments to do this so we have to make it clear that there is no more time.

Nuisance

“There’s a long tradition in this country of people saying governments are not acting, we have to make them realise how urgent this is. I’m optimistic about the energy there is amongst people to act but I’m not hugely optimistic about government stepping up to the plate.

“They’re [the government] talking about 2050 and scientists have said we have 12 years before we’re in a place where the climate is irreversibly damaging our planet and we won’t be able to repair or fix it. We need to make them realise that time is not on our side at the moment.”

Ms Stevenson said she was delighted to see so much engagement from young people and that her own son was at the protests and working for Extinction Rebellion.

The Metropolitan Police said that by 8am on Monday there had been 21 arrests in connection with the Extinction Rebellion protests.

The arrests are in addition to those over the weekend, with eight people arrested on Saturday – seven on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance, and the eighth on suspicion of obstructing police. All those arrested on Saturday have been released under investigation. 

Paint

On Sunday one woman and two men were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance. The woman has been released under investigation, the men remain in custody, the police said.

Extinction Rebellion protesters playing steel drums marched from Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square where they plan to kick off two weeks of disruption in the city.

A 25-year-old teacher from London who took the week off to join the protests said: “The plan is to shut down the whole of London. The issue of climate change is an issue for everyone, and it’s clear we can’t leave it to the politicians.

“I booked the week off work for this. The school kids are out protesting too. Everyone is.”

Police are searching anyone suspected of carrying paint.

Love

Extinction Rebellion said protesters from the XR Peace group arrested as they blocked Victoria Embankment outside the Ministry of Defence included 81-year-old Sarah Lasenby, a Quaker and retired social worker from Oxford.

She said: “For 21 years my main concern has been to help get rid of UK nuclear weapons. I am still keen to do this but once I came across XR I was so relieved to have something I could do about the ghastly state we have got our planet in.”

And she said: “The whole thing is so urgent that it is imperative the Government should take serious actions and put pressure on other states and Global Powers to radically reduce the use of fossil fuels even if this means we need to reduce our comfort at home and so much flying.”

Protesters have been carried away by police officers on Horse Guards Road. An onlooker said he saw at least five people arrested after they refused to let a van through the road.

Video of the moment shows people being carried off to chants of “we love you” from other protesters. Protesters have blocked Victoria Street and are now lying under a van while surrounded by police.

Passionately

An onlooker said: “Looks like lots of mini protests rather than a centralised area, huge range of people – if anything mainly middle-aged people.”

Extinction Rebellion protester Caroline Hartnell, 69, from London, said she will be attending the protests every day.

She said: “This is the start of two weeks of action. We are going to be surrounding all the Government ministries.

“We are going to be putting pressure on them what they are going to do mend the climate emergency, because we are running out of time.

“I have seven grandchildren and the youngest is three. I feel passionately for them (and worry) there is not going to be a world for them to live in.”

Oxford University student Fergus Green from St Albans was also amid the growing crowd of drummers, stewards and flag-waving protesters planning to “shut down Westminster”.

Yoga

He said: “People are coming from all over the country. I’m here to force the Government to take action on climate change. I’m a student, I should be at uni – my term has started. But I’m here to take action. People are missing work and school to be here.”

Police have managed to break into an Extinction Rebellion van on Westminster Bridge and have arrested the driver, an onlooker said.

James Bickerton told the PA news agency: “Protesters blocked Westminster Bridge with two vans and started building a stage. Police have broken into one van and surrounded the other (at least two arrests) but still a lot of protesters blocking the bridge.”

Two groups of protesters have blocked Westminster Bridge. One man climbed onto a van parked in the middle of the bridge, surrounded by police officers, and lay down on the roof, while other protesters did a yoga class in the rain.

Victoria Embankment remained closed outside the Ministry of Defence.

Arrests

And Victoria Street close to Westminster Abbey, and side roads by Methodist Central Hall, are being held by another group of protesters with banners that read “tell the truth” and “no coal mines, no fracking”.

On the first day of the two-week international protest, Extinction Rebellion protesters have made their way to Whitehall waving “XR” logo flags and marched with a steel drum band.

Protesters have said they plan to “shut down the whole of Westminster” and surround the ministries.

Hundreds have already filled Trafalgar Square and plan to shut down roads around Parliament Square and Whitehall.

Police are stationed outside the Houses of Parliament and have already made 21 arrests.

Camp

Two protesters have mounted a Land Rover and trailer at Trafalgar Square roundabout, one wearing a gas mask and trench coat and the other with an XR flag and a sign reading “stop ecoside”.

Police have surrounded the vehicle but have not moved the protesters.

Extinction Rebellion protesters are now performing yoga on Westminster bridge. James Bickerton said: “Protesters on Westminster Bridge have lit an incense candle and got mats out for yoga. It’s all gone very rainbow rhythms.”

Protesters are lying under a trailer parked in the middle of the road at Trafalgar Square. Others stacked a pile of items including a kitchen sink, pans, and camp chairs beside them on the pavement.

This Article

This article is based on copy provided by PA.

Dialectic is a process of discovery and pedagogy that takes place between two individuals using logical argument, according to Aristotle. To an extent, this is the same as the familiar “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” to which Aristotle’s dialectic is often reduced, but that formulation actually originated with Johann Fichte (1762 – 1814). 

Dialectic is the same as rhetoric in that it is an intellectual activity aimed at changing minds, and is the same as logic in that it relies on reasoning to validate (or invalidate) arguments. It differs from rhetoric in that only logic should be deployed to persuade, and that it is aimed at a particular individual rather than a group, or a crowd. It differs from logic in that it is not concerned with the pursuit of absolute truth, or first principles, but in convincing a person of an argument. 

Read ‘The nature of Aristotle’s dialectic’ here. 

Dr Evans explains that while dialectic is concerned with the individual and her perspective, logic is not: “Pure logic is not concerned with the vagaries of the individual’s reaction, and indeed in its search for objectivity it is positively prohibited from considering the individual as such.” (75) He adds later: “Aristotle is aware that the conditions of the exercise of dialectical skill are such that, although the dialectician is indeed required to argue his case purely by logical means, he must at the same time not ignore the various ways in which circumstances which are external to his argument can affect its character.” (92) 

Method

So what is the method of dialectic? Dialectic involves a dialogue between two people. These individuals do need an understanding of the logical method of reasoning – set out more fully here – and need to be seriously and genuinely engaged in the process. The concern is validating arguments on both sides. Dialectic is not a method for bad actors or the resolution of primarily emotional disputes. 

Aristotle asserts that dialectic does use logic to advance knowledge through the validation of arguments and through deductive reasoning through inference. “[W]e need to distinguish how many kinds of dialectical argument there are,” he writes in Topics. “One kind is induction, another is deduction. Here we discuss deduction, which is the essence of logic. 

The aim of both logic and dialectic is to validate the definition of things (indeed, everything from abstract concepts to physical objects). Logic seeks a true, absolute definition. Dialectic aims to validate or invalidate definitions presented in argument.

The beginning of any process of definition (of demonstration, and of argument) is actually very simple: we start with “this is the same is that,” and “this is different to that”: the human is the same as the bonobo in this way; the human is different to the bonono in this way. Dr Evans states: [T]here are certain things – same, other etc. – with which the dialectician is characteristically concerned…” (38). This is because ‘same’ and ‘different’ are the foundations of definition (of cognition and categorisation), which is how we come to recognise and define the things around us.

In both dialectic and logic, any one thing can only be defined by its relation to other things. The basic structure of a proposition includes a subject (the thing being defined) and an object (the thing it is defined in relation to) is. A proposition can be used as a premise in an argument, and through argument we can infer a new proposition, which is the conclusion. 

Definition 

Dialectic and logic both arrive at definitions by identifying the unique properties that belong to the subject – the properties that really make it what it is as opposed to superfluous detail, which Aristotle calls the accidents.

For example, in a definition humans we would want to include language, but not necessarily fingernails. It is the use of language that differentiates humans from other apes. Both humans and apes have fingernails. Language is a unique property in this instance, fingernails are accidents. 

Dialectic, like logic, is concerned with propositions that include a subject and a predicate, and the relationship between the two. The subject is the thing that is defined in any proposition. The predicate is the object and the relation to that object that defines the subject. An example of such a statement is, “all humans are animals”.

Here, the human is the subject and animal the predicate. We know that those properties that are universal to animals (for example, the property of needing to eat to survive) will also be true for us humans. The object of the sentence – the animal – is used to describe the subject – the human. Both unique properties and accidents are predicates, but only the former is useful in establishing a higher level definition. 

To define something skillfully, we need to understand the wider class of things to which our subject belongs. This, in Aristotle’s terminology, is its genus. A genus is a class or category of things that share the same property. The genus ‘vehicle’ will include modes of transport including busses, cars and bicycles.

We then need to establish what properties distinguish it from the other things in its genus. These properties Aristotle calls differentia. The subject that is differentiated within a genus is the species (from specific). The bus is a public mode of transport used by many, the car a private use of transport used by a few.

The mode of ownership and use differentiates the specific car, and specific bus, which are both in the genus, or category, vehicle. Dr Evans states: “Aristotle argues that only if the definition contains the genus and the differentia, can it indicate the essence of the subject” (114). We define our subject by placing it into the correct place in a wider system of categories. 

Essence

A true definition of any subject states its essence: the essence is those properties that allow us to categorise it in its genus, and then differentiate it from other members of that genus. We arrive at the essence of any thing through this double-sided process of classification. This is why for Aristotle the pursuit of the essence of things is primary and paramount. As Dr Evans writes: “[T]he requirement that the definition indicate the essence is an unargued premiss to the discussion in Topics…elsewhere in Aristotle’s work the axiomatic character of this requirement can be seen.” (107). 

We can see here the influence of Aristotle’s interest in biology, and the natural world provides a useful range of things that can give us concrete examples of what we mean. Let’s begin with what is most familiar: ourselves.

Humans are a species. The species human belongs to the genus of ape. One of the many differences between humans and other animals is that we have a complex language. Therefore, through this double process of establishing our genus (the general group that we belong to) and our differentia (that which is specific to our species) we are able to develop a definition of human: an ape with language. This definition describes the essence of what it means to be human. 

The process of defining a thing through its genus and species is derived from, but not limited to, the practice of biology. We can use the same process to define concepts, such as “true” and “false”. These terms appear to be entirely the opposite of each other. However, both are concerned with the validity of whatever they happen to describe.

They belong to the genus of statements about validity. Yet the differentia is one is positive and one is negative. The definition of “true” is therefore “a positive statement about validity”. This provides us with the essence of what we mean by true. 

Syllogism

In dialectics, and in logic, when we define any object we are not required to fix the genus and the species. The choice we make depends on what exactly we are trying to define and – in dialectic – for whom.

For example, we can also say that all humans are systems. Here, we may be concerned about universal claims about all systems. These claims would logically be true of humans. The terms we chose in our propositions depend very much on what we are hoping to establish. With dialectics (but not logic) it also depends on the premises that we can agree with our interlocutor.

This process of establishing definitions and validating arguments is enhanced through the use of the syllogism. (A longer definition of syllogism is provided in this Endoxa article). In short, a syllogism is a method of arriving at (or inferring) a valid conclusion from two valid premises.

There is – Aristotle establishes – a particularly useful from of syllogism where the first premise states the general (or universal); the second states the specific (the individual) and the third the relationship between the two (the particular). The classic syllogism would look like this:

1. All humans are animals

2. Eve is a human

3. Eve is an animal

If we agree that the premise that “all humans are animals” and also that “Eve is a human” then we can infer that the statement “Eve is an animal” is valid. This is the basis of formal logic. Dialectic uses the syllogism because it is compelling: it is highly likely to convince the person you are in conversation with, whereas logic utilises the same technique for slightly different purposes – the pursuit of absolute truth.

A sortie – a long chain of syllogisms – is the aim of rational thought. Aristotle argues in Topics: “[F]or it is impossible to demonstrate something if one does not start from the special foundations and link one’s reasoning in a chain until one reaches what is at the end” (34/35).

Premise

This begs the question. What are these “special foundations”. For the syllogism, we need premises. Dialectic begins with “the securing of premises”. As we can see above, valid premises should provide us with valid conclusions, an invalid premise can conversely result in an invalid conclusion.

The house we build is only as sound as the foundations on which it sits. The securing of premises – according to Aristotle – includes 1. The detection of ambiguity; 2. The discovery of differences, and 3. The consideration of similarities. This follows tidily from our exploration of definition, above.

In this article I have attempted to give a brief definition and overview of Aristotle’s dialectic, setting out its aims, scope and method. Now that we have a working understanding of dialectic I want to follow Dr Evans in developing a dialectical definition of dialectic itself. This involves establishing the genus, or category, to which it belongs and setting out what properties define all the members of this category. Then I want to discuss how it is different to the other members of the category – it’s differentia. This will focus on the difference between dialectic and logic. 

The difference between dialectic and logic can be briefly and broadly explained by the fact logic (such as pure logic, formal logic) seeks absolute truth developed from true premises and sound argument, where dialectic seeks to persuade and calibrate arguments from the foundation of common sense.

Dialectic is therefore concerned with what people already understand, what is absolutely understandable, and how a person can guide her interlocutor from the first to the second position.

In the next article I will establish the essence of Aristotle’s dialectic.

This Author 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is part of the Endoxa.review project.