Some corporations are paying more attention to how their practices impact the planet and revising their policies in line with sustainable development: we hear of universities banning meat in the name of climate change, organisations imposing a levy on plastic bottles and companies pledging to use sustainable materials.

These changes are coming about as more conversations are had about our impact on the planet. It is imperative that every one of us strives to help sustain the planet before it’s too late.

There are various actions big and small that we can all take to try to minimise our impact on the planet, but many of those actions pale in comparison to what’s on our plates.

Avoiding meat

Last year an Oxford University study – which is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet – found that ‘avoiding meat and dairy is the single biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth’.

So just how important is our diet in conversations around sustainability?

There are countless small sustainable actions we can take, such as taking shorter showers, using a reusable shopping bag or buying an energy-saving lightbulb. All these little things add up to effect real change but many people miss out one very important detail – the impact of what we eat.

A study published in Environmental Research Letters showed that eating a plant-based diet has three times more positive impact than washing your clothes in cold water; four times more than hang-drying clothes or recycling; and eight times more than upgrading light bulbs.

Natural habitats

When we think about sustainable food, the conversation is often dominated by local sourcing, organic produce or packaging use. However, the prevalence of meat, dairy and eggs in our diet is hugely damaging to the planet.

The United Nations, WWF, Greenpeace and Chatham House have all called for a move towards a plant-based diet and the recent Amazon fires led many to ditch animal products in favour of vibrant, nutritious plant foods.

Animal agriculture is the major cause of global deforestation and is responsible for up to 91 percent of Amazon destruction. Farmers set fire to trees so they can graze animals and grow crops to feed them. This deforestation is a contributing factor to climate change, removing the valuable C02 absorption and storage that trees provide.

Becoming vegan reduces the land needed to produce our food by between a third and a half. As well as saving precious habitats in the Amazon, we could be protecting wildlife here in the UK.

And yes, if everyone ate a plant-based diet, the UK would still be able to sustain itself – this is what the University of Harvard found in a study we reported on, which was launched at this year’s Grow Green Conference.

Diet’s impact

Animal agriculture is inherently unsustainable because animals eat much more food than they ‘produce’. For every 100 calories we feed to farmed animals, we only receive 40 calories back from consuming their meat and dairy products. By feeding ourselves with those crops directly instead, we could feed billions more people around the globe.

Even though it feels like just buying some food, there is a much deeper and more important story behind every purchase affecting not just our planet but also the lives of those who dwell on it. Here’s where individual action comes in.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Change is difficult and doesn’t come easily to many of us, so start by making small changes. There is no time for justifications and excuses.

If everyone ate a diet as close to a vegan one as possible, the planet would be in a much better state than it is today.

This author

Dominika Piasecka is media and public relations officer at the Vegan Society and a keen vegan activist. If you care about the environment, take the seven-day planet-saving vegan pledge at www.vegansociety.com/plateup.

The decision to censure presenter Naga Munchetty following her comments in relation to racist remarks by Donald Trump, the US president, has now been overturned by David Jordan, the BBC editorial standards director.

The latest decision seems to have been a response to leaked internal correspondence that shows that members of the public made complaints about comments made by Munchetty and also her co-host Dan Walker – and the fact Walker did not receive the same public chastisement from the BBC.

Munchetty, a popular BBC presenter and a woman of colour, was reprimanded for calling a racist comment racist. This is because the racist comment was made by the president of the United States.

Hyperbolic

So the BBC was suddenly keen to follow guidelines and censor Naga, as well as their other employees of colour – who were not permitted to sign the petition supporting Naga. This is not a one-off incident: earlier this year, the Conservative politician Jeremy Hunt refused to use what he called ‘the R word’ when asked about Trump’s comments.

I find this extremely worrying. Fascism is on the rise in the UK and it needs to be called out whenever we see it, so that it doesn’t quietly become the norm. We all know what that can lead to. If our media can’t do it, what’s the point of journalism?

The BBC recently also broke its own editorial guidelines when it gave a platform to the people behind the Policy Exchange report, without looking into who was behind the think tank that funded the report, ‘Extremism Rebellion’.

The report contained the kind of poor argument that you might expect from such a hyperbolic title, attempting to brand peaceful rebels as extremists despite overwhelming evidence that XR is a non-violent movement. The report was also covered without question in The Telegraph newspaper.

Dr Rupert Read, an XR spokesperson, went on the Today programme on R4 and insisted to the presenter John Humphrys that he should have investigated who had funded the report before giving it so much coverage and taking it seriously. Soon after this, it was revealed that the Policy Exchange has been funded by big oil.

Alarm bell

Of course major oil companies want to brand peaceful rebels as extremists; they want us out of the picture so that they can continue to pollute our planet for profit. They have bunkers to retreat to when the proverbial hits the fan. We don’t. The Policy Exchange report was a targeted move against peaceful climate activists, and it will be the first of many.

Next, retired doctor Lyn Jenkins was reported to the counter-terrorism programme Prevent as at risk of ‘radicalisation’ by Extinction Rebellion. The Telegraph also wrote a damning account of non-violent climate activists, likening us to religious fundamentalists.

Meanwhile, there are actual extremist groups out there like Generation Identity, which has been targeting rural communities in the UK, preying on their vulnerability. This shows the worrying growing trend of eco-fascism in the UK: using anxiety about climate change to fuel intolerance and racism.

Every time these things happen and go unchallenged, my safety is being put at risk. I am a mother of two, an author and public speaker, and I am very visible as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion UK. We’ve all seen the hatred being thrown Greta’s way by some very angry individuals, many of them men in positions of power.

I have received hate mail from angry men after appearing on television. I am aware that as a woman of colour, I’m an easy target. But I will continue to do this work, because scientists are ringing the alarm bell on the health of our planet; they have been doing so for decades, and world leaders are still not paying attention to them.

Better world

We are facing a climate and ecological crisis, but we have yet to see an appropriate response to this emergency from those with power. Meanwhile, discontent and anger grow and very easily, very suddenly they can become violent fascism.

I’m not asking you to take a stand for me personally, but I look at my children, one with white skin and one with brown and wonder how a small quirk of genetics – they are both from the same father – can possibly determine their fate. That’s what will happen if we let this slide: that is the path that unchecked fascism will lead down. Racism is such an arbitrary sickness.

When we allow racist comments to go unchecked, when we allow the BBC to censor journalists who call it out for what it is, when we permit anonymous groups to brand Extinction Rebellion as extremists without evidence, lives like mine are being put at risk.

Fear will not deter me from continuing with this work to protect the planet from continued harm: I am not motivated by hate or extreme views, but by love for my children and for all the beautiful species on this pale blue dot, our only home.

Remember Jo Cox, murdered by a fascist for trying to create a better world. Question whether you want to live in a world – and want your children to live in a world, that is ruled by fascism and hatred – or whether you will consider trying to stop things from going that way.

This Author

Zion Lights is author of The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting and is a TEDx speaker. She is also a spokesperson with Extinction Rebellion UK and editor of The Hourglass newspaper. She tweets at @ziontree

Boris Johnson’s government has refused to apologise to Maori tribal leaders today for the massacre that took place in New Zealand in 1769.

Laura Clarke, the British High Commissioner to New Zealand, is meeting tribal leaders in the town of Gisborne in the country’s North Island, as they mark the anniversary of Captain James Cook and the crew of his ship Endeavour arriving 250 years ago.

She will express “regret” that British explorers killed many of the first indigenous Maori they came across in New Zealand in 1769 – but, according to the Press Association, she will not be issuing a full apology.

A High Commission spokesman said: “The expression of regret responds to a request from the local iwi (tribe) for this history to be heard and acknowledged.

“The British High Commissioner will acknowledge the pain of those first encounters, acknowledge that the pain does not diminish over time, and extend her sympathy to the descendants of those killed,” he said.

“It is not how any of us would have wanted those first encounters to have transpired.”

Soon after arriving, fearing they were under attack, sailors shot and killed a leader, Te Maro, and later killed eight more Maori.

The High Commission’s statement said both Captain Cook and botanist Joseph Banks had written in their diaries that they regretted the deaths.

It added that the exact wording of Ms Clarke’s speech to Maori leaders would remain private.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. Padraig Collins is a reporter with PA.

Image: A Royal Mail stamp issued to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook setting sail aboard the Endeavour. 

A veritable A to Z of world finance institutions are enabling the destruction of three of the world’s biggest rainforests, research carried out by environmental and anti-corruption NGO Global Witness has revealed. 

Among those identified are some of the largest names in global finance—Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Santander and Standard Chartered among them—providing tens of billions of dollars in financing between 2013-2019 to companies either directly or indirectly deforesting the largest rainforest regions of the world.

Five of the world’s leading investment banks, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Barclays and Morgan Stanley are also implicated.

Money to Burn

Global Witness wrote to each bank and received responses, which are referenced in the full report, Money to Burn.

Six major agribusinesses causing this damage – which these well-known global financial players invest in – produce agricultural commodities like palm oil, beef, and rubber.

Global Witness investigated these giant companies over six years (2013-2019), operating across the three largest single rainforests on earth – Amazon, Congo Basin and New Guinea – and found that they were backed to the tune of $44 billion by over 300 investment firms, banks and pension funds headquartered across the globe.

The revelations in the report Money to Burn come after a summer of international outcry over the burning of the Brazilian Amazon, and fresh from a week of strikes and climate action across the globe. 

Studies have shown that forests and other ecosystems could make up more than a third of the total carbon mitigation by 2030 needed to limit global heating to a 2-degree Celsius rise.

Rapid breakdown

In 2018 alone an area of primary tropical rainforest the size of Belgium was destroyed. About a quarter of forest loss, or as high as 78 percent in South East Asia and 56 percent in Latin America, was to make way for agricultural commodities, including beef and palm oil.

Ed Davey, head of forest investigations at Global Witness said: “The rapid breakdown of our climate is a concern to many – including bank customers – so it’s unsurprising that banks and investors proudly trumpet policies on ethical investment and lending, giving the impression they are not pumping money into companies that would fell and burn precious rainforests.

“But their hypocrisy is clear: the same financial institutions are breaking their own policies at will and in search of profit, make many of their promises barely worth the paper they are printed on.

Responsibility

“Members of the public will be shocked to know that the bank they have a current account with,that manages their pension fund or invests their retirement nest egg are enabling the destruction ofthe world’s most previous ecosystems.”

“$44 billion is a terrifying sum of money to be ploughing into companies that destroy forests – at a time when we need trees more than ever. These household name banks and iconic investment funds our exposé highlights will be familiar to anyone who has looked at the skyline of Wall Street or Canary Wharf, read a newspaper or opened a current account. But the activity in this report is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Global Witness is calling on the financial sector to take responsibility for the impact of their financing and investments on forests and the climate.

They are also urging policy makers to address the systemic failure of the financial system, and the companies it finances or invests in, to tackle deforestation by introducing regulatory measures, strengthening their existing commitments, and take meaningful measures to ensure they are implemented effectively.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from Global Witness. 

Image: Represenatational/Pixabay. 

More songbirds could be living in captivity than in the wild on the Indonesian island of Java, according to new research led by Manchester Metropolitan University and Chester Zoo.

Around 75 million birds are kept as pets in Java, threatening to wipe out some wild bird populations.

Across South-east Asia thousands of songbird species are extracted from the wild for a variety of reasons, but many are sought after to enter into singing competitions or to be kept as ornamental pets.

Shrinking habitat

The biggest source for this demand is Indonesia, where levels of ownership have put a huge drain on wild populations causing an ‘Asian songbird crisis’, which may now be approaching a tipping point, threatening wild bird populations with extinction.

Manchester Metropolitan PhD student and Chester Zoo Conservation Scholar Harry Marshall led a team that surveyed 3,000 households across the island of Java – Indonesia’s most densely populated island and home to more than half of its 260 million population. For many Indonesians, bird-keeping is a popular pastime.

His research, published in Biological Conservation, looked into the prevalence and patterns of bird keeping. He found that the proportion of bird-keeping households has increased over the past decade, and that a third of the island’s 36 million households now keep birds.

Harry said: “The removal of birds from the ever-shrinking forest habitat on such a large scale may be extremely damaging, not only causing bird extinctions but also threatening the important ecosystem services they provide such as pollination.

“The trade in songbirds is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars to the Indonesian economy, so it is no surprise that it is a key regional source of both supply and demand for songbirds, with hundreds of markets running across the archipelago, selling more than 200 different species – the majority of which are native to Indonesia.”

‘Kicau-mania’

The illegal trade in wildlife affects species in almost every country, with a growing number of species threatened with extinction because of demand for pets, medicine or ornaments.

Birds are one of the most traded groups with over 3,000 species, a third of all surviving species, reportedly affected by the trade.

Keeping songbirds has a long tradition in certain parts of Indonesia and is seen as an important part of a balanced life for Javanese men – the most populous ethnicity in Indonesia. The researchers found that bird-keeping is more common in the Eastern provinces of Java with the largest Javanese populations.

In recent years however, bird-keeping has evolved into a modern hobby, often referred to as ‘Kicau-mania’ – singing contests for the birds. The competition has become a ubiquitous part of urban life, where birds’ songs, or Kicau in Indonesian, are judged on melody, duration and volume.

These events happen all the time across the island with some people willing to pay thousands of dollars for prize-winning songsters that could win them as much as $50,000 in the top contests.

Notable members of Indonesia’s political elite are also keen songbird enthusiasts, supporting the creation of the high-end songbird contests exclusively for White-rumped Shamas, making it one of the most popular and expensive birds with over three million owned across households. Not surprisingly, the species – once widespread in Java – is now almost exclusively only found in captivity in Java, with evidence suggesting birds are being illegally imported from neighbouring countries.

Future prospects

Species not native to Indonesia, such as canaries and lovebirds, are also are amongst the most commonly kept across Java and bred in captivity, so the demand for these birds does not affect wild populations.

Lovebirds – small parrots of African origin – have seen a seven-fold increase in popularity over the last decade, suggesting that demand is adapting to the reduced availability of other species in the wild and could be a way to meet demand and maintain wild bird populations.

Stuart Marsden, Professor of Conservation Ecology at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “Overall bird ownership shows an increase in the last decade but the high prevalence of bird-keeping, the higher species diversity and the expanding variety of motivations for keeping birds in urban areas suggest that bird keeping is likely to increase in prevalence as the Indonesian population continues to become more urban.

“The songbird trade has become a major threat to the survival of South-east Asia songbirds. Millions of these beautiful birds are captured illegally every year and we need to act now before we reach the point of no return.”

Cautious optimism

Andrew Owen, Curator of Birds at Chester Zoo, added: “We’re well aware that songbirds are under enormous threat from illegal trapping in Indonesia. Yet to see the new figures in this study is really startling. Make no mistake, this is a crisis.

“Information like this really helps us to understand and tackle the problem. Through community awareness and education projects in South-east Asia and conservation breeding programmes for rare songbirds here in Chester, we have been striving to combat the songbird crisis for a number of years.

“There is room for cautious optimism though, as a number of influential and well-respected song competition groups hold events exclusively for captive-bred birds – thus reducing the pressure on wild bird populations. We hope that these events can become the norm as opposed to the exception before it’s too late.”

Global partnership

The findings will help conservationists to target the most important communities with campaigns to reduce bird ownership. The aim is to reduce the number of wild caught birds trapped to be kept in captivity, and with it, an increase in the number living in the wild, in their natural habitat. 

This research is in partnership with Birdlife International, Atma Jaya University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and the Oriental Bird Club.

This Article 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Manchester Metropolitan University. 

Image: Gabby Salazar.

You’ve probably heard of Extinction Rebellion (XR) by now. The environmental campaign has caused waves with its focused, colourful and in many ways controversial direct actions.

The weeks of disruption caused to central London in April 2019 marked a turning point, mobilising large numbers who had not previously engaged in direct action, and finally pushing well overdue conversations into the public discourse. 

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine

XR has also been criticised by parts of the organised left, who accused it of irresponsible tactics, of backgrounding capitalism as the core enemy, and of understating the existing struggles of people in the global south.

Climate activism

Out of this comes An Extinction Rebellion Handbook, recently released by Penguin, with the aim of pushing the message – and the confidence to take action – even further.

The book is a collection of 32 short essays by diverse authors, split into two halves, illustrated throughout with XR’s signature impactful artwork.

The first half, Tell the Truth, relates to the situation at hand: rising temperatures, catastrophic events, and the failure of governments to act.

The second half, Act Now, provides practical advice on climate activism, including how to organise and carry out a direct action, building campaign support, and the nitty-gritty of making art, providing food and keeping spirits up on the day.

This two-part structure mirrors the successful presentations that XR has been taking around the country to begin forming groups, helping to make that experience available to a wider audience.

Whilst there is no single voice, there does appear to have been an effort to respond to the criticisms, with chapters on Indigenous struggle and the ecological situation in the global south featuring prominently, and capitalism and colonialism frequently named as the core problem.

Movement DNA

A further criticism I have personally had of XR has been its apparent lack of a concrete future vision in terms of transformed social structures (as opposed to merely demanding reduction in emissions).

I was pleasantly surprised, then, to see that in the final few essays the book moves on to lay out ideas for alternative societies such as Rojava, democratic confederalism in Northern Syria; participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil; and Cooperation Jackson’s radical cooperative network in the US, as well as discussing post-growth economics, redesigning cities, and building common ownership.

The potential for these ideas to be opened up to a wider readership is, for me, enough to warrant recommending this book, as it remains a missing piece in the climate movement puzzle.

Those who were critical may remain dissatisfied. Many of the essays continue to feature an unquestioned liberal state analysis: for example, the term ‘social contract’ is thrown around without any analysis or acknowledgement that this concept emerged from the same Enlightenment philosophy that has formed the backbone of capitalism and colonialism.

Further, the friendly approach to the police is unchanged and is so deeply embedded in the organisation’s DNA that it is extremely likely to remain so. But the book does give a much clearer explanation than I’ve seen elsewhere for why this approach has been taken.

Mobilising people 

Anyone embarking on any extended critique of these or other aspects of XR would be advised to read it for insight into the underlying strategy. 

But whatever problems the book might have, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at it in terms of its intended purpose: that of mobilising the large number of people who are currently outside the left-wing bubble.

This is an accessible text appropriate for introducing the average reader to both the scale of the building crisis and what they can do to fight back. It does that while seeding in ideas that haven’t been heard in the popular conversation, such as around the role of colonialism, and viable utopian visions.

It won’t please everyone, but it’s aware it won’t. It’s a messy book for messy times. Buy it for that person in your life who just needs one more nudge to take action.

This Author 

Graham Jones is the author of The Shock Doctrine of the Left. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine

Image: Francesca E Harris.

Coffee could become a luxury in the UK if businesses do not invest more to help farmers who are abandoning their crops because of climate change and historically low prices.

Temperature extremes, increased humidity and crippling market prices are forcing coffee producers in Peru to turn to other sources of income as they struggle to harvest healthy crops.

Farmers of the Arabica bean, used in thousands of Britons’ daily flat whites and cappuccinos, are deserting their farms or turning to other crops, as pests and disease trigger smaller harvests of lower-quality beans.

Fair

Farmers are also being forced to grow the delicate plant on ever-higher, cooler land, as rising annual average temperatures render large swathes of ground unsuitable.

By 2050, up to half the land currently used globally to grow coffee could have become unusable for this purpose, experts predict.

The environmental cost of this could be dire, with increased deforestation likely in order to clear new areas for coffee farms.

Experts fear the quality of coffee could be diminished as farmers turn to new varieties, and that lower production volumes could cause prices to increase.

Catherine David, head of commercial partnerships at Fairtrade, said the UK public “really expect businesses to be paying a fair price for their coffee – this isn’t a nice-to-have for them”.

Coca

She told the PA news agency: “While now coffee sales have grown and it’s a very popular product and we can pick up coffee from all different price ranges, I think if we don’t invest now then coffee could become a luxury, longer term.

“Because if 50 percent of land currently used for coffee isn’t going to be suitable for it by 2050, and coffee farmers are abandoning their farms, there simply won’t be enough coffee, and so we could, conceivably, get to a point where coffee is no longer available for, say, £1.50 at Greggs, but becomes a premium product for only those who can afford to enjoy it.

“It really is a crisis we are facing and I think it’s one that, if the UK public were more aware of, they’d be pretty scandalised that brands, retailers and coffee shops that they are buying their coffee from aren’t doing more.”

The poorest farmers are being hit the hardest, because they cannot invest profits in tools to improve the soil or buy new plants.

In places such as Tarapoto, farmers have even returned to growing the coca plant, the raw material for cocaine, despite a Government initiative to reduce production.

Exacerbated

Norandino, a Fairtrade co-operative representing the largest number of farmers in Peru, about 7,000, said extreme rainfall two years ago destroyed crops and caused buildings to crumple in the north west region Piura.

Its headquarters were flooded with water, and members fear the region may become uninhabitable in the future.

It buys coffee from its producers at a minimum price higher than the current market rate, but many not in co-operatives are without this vital safety net.

In Montero, a valley district in Piura, leaf rust disease has continued to diminish yields after a devastating outbreak five years ago.

The disease, which has been exacerbated by climate change, covers the leaves with orange dust and causes them to fall off, stopping the plant photosynthesising.

Thrive

Farmers replaced many of their crops with the catimor variety, which is resistant to the rust but vulnerable to the brown eye fungus, which has also become more common due to rising temperatures.

Over the last five years, coffee production in the area shrank from 80% to 20%, with many now turning to the more-resilient sugar cane.

The family of Segundo Alejandro Guerrero Mondragon, part of the Norandino co-operative, has been experimenting with new coffee varieties.

This summer has been unusually cold, meaning the coffee has not been drying properly, while an outbreak of coffee rust last year has led to lower yields this harvest.

The family has started planting higher up the steep valley, as plants are no longer able to thrive at the altitudes once perfect for their growth, replacing the lower coffee plants with sugar cane. But there is only so much hillside before the land runs out.

Lucky

The 72-year-old was one of the founders of the organisation that became Norandino. His family has been farming coffee for more than 100 years.

He told PA: “Our area used to be free of all types of disease. There was no rust, there was no brown eye, there was no borer (a beetle that is an aggressive coffee pest).

“Lately we were managing to partly control brown eye, but when we got rust it was a largely unknown disease and really concerned us, it hit us really hard and there was a huge drop in production.

“For me it was very disappointing, we had coffee plantations with a really good crop and we were left with next to nothing, it was almost completely destroyed.

“I was a little bit lucky because of my children (three are agronomists) who helped to manage the crop and for the greater part managed to control the fungus. Others were left with nothing.”

Disease

His sons Hugo, 33, and Omar, 35, are helping him experiment with new varieties of coffee in a protected nursery, to produce a more resilient bean without compromising on quality.

Organic fertilisers and irrigation have meant the plants are healthier than their poorer neighbours’, but with little to no boundaries between plantations, disease is just a boot print away from being spread.

The family has been able to invest in production facilities to speed up their coffee farming due to being members of the co-operative.

Poorer farmers who are not members can use their machinery, while the family is providing seasonal employment for students and women, and sharing their technical knowledge.

One of those they have been helping is Sefelmira Alberca Pangalima, a single mother who cannot support her two daughters with her dwindling, disease-ridden coffee crop.

Struggles

The 50-year-old inherited a quarter of a hectare of land after her father’s recent death, but has found it difficult to become a member of a co-operative as she does not hold the legal rights to her share of the farm.

She is hoping to obtain the correct documents and join Norandino. In the meantime, she has been securing extra income by helping the family harvest, cooking meals, and sewing.

She told PA: “Sometimes we plant coffee but a disease that comes in on the wind or something, I don’t know, they dry out. We plant them, and they start well and then they wither.

“But in the future, I hope to produce enough coffee and then perhaps join an organisation and sell at a better price.”

Those worst hit are adamant they want their children to be spared their struggles, with an increasing challenge being how to encourage the younger generation to stick with the industry.

Professional

Omar added: “If Fairtrade did not exist… we would not now be growing coffee.

“Or perhaps only about one third of what we grow now, just enough to meet the demand of the small plant we have. It would not be profitable.

“Or maybe everything that is now coffee would instead be cane, because it is an easier crop to tend, and is more profitable than coffee.

“Without the coffee, professional people like me would not be here, we would be working in the city or elsewhere.”

This Author

Jemma Crew is the PA health and science correspondent and is currently in Peru.

Come all ye heart-weary activists longing to heal the planet, and bring your environmentalist friends with you, for I have the perfect podcast for your ears. 

Outrage and Optimism describes itself as “a podcast about solving the climate crisis and reshaping the world”.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine

In other words, it’s a podcast for people who already understand that we face a climate and extinction crisis, and who want to take radical action to “create a kinder, healthier and more beautiful world for everyone”.

Easy humour

The weekly podcast is presented by Christiana Figueres, who as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change brought together the countries for the Paris Agreement, Paul Dickinson, who co-founded CDP, an NGO showing what business is doing to reduce CO2 emissions, and Tom Rivett-Carnac, who has previously worked with both Figueres and Dickinson.

The three are already very good friends, so there is an easy humour and unforced rapport between them from the first episode, though each brings a different perspective to keep the discussions interesting.

But why call it ‘Outrage and Optimism’? This is explained beautifully in the first episode, where Figueres asserts that we need both in order to move beyond the climate crisis.

She describes her despair following the Copenhagen climate negotiations, and her realisation that her belief that agreement was impossible would ensure the failure of all future talks. She intentionally changed her attitude, and slowly the mood began to change.

“We finally understood”, she said, “that optimism is not the result of an achievement, but rather the input with which we have to approach any challenging task.”

Climate justice

And the outrage? We’re possibly all more familiar with this one. It’s seeing the extinction of species, and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, and the rising death toll. It’s the anger we feel when, even though we have the policies, the technologies and the finance to make a difference, we are still not moving fast enough.

Outrage gives us the energy to come together and act, or as Figueres puts it: “Optimism is the direction, and outrage is the fuel.”

Crucially, the podcast includes the outrage felt by those left behind by rising global inequality – the need for climate justice – so that our actions need to be about creating a better world for everyone, not just saving the world as it is now.

For a relatively new podcast, the team has already interviewed some huge names, including David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, Bill McKibben, Jane Goodall, Ellie Goulding and – perhaps not such a big name in the environmental movement – William Hague.

Well, yes. Although activists tend to be left-leaning, Hague makes the point that the political right also needs to be engaged and to come on board. The discussion is polite but lively. Well worth a listen.

Striking a balance

There are episodes about pollution in our cities, about the role of the EU, the mechanics of the Paris Agreement, and how the climate crisis is magnifying the numbers of refugees. There are moments of hope – Democrat presidential hopeful Jay Inslee claims that strong action on the climate can win votes; there are tears – including an absolute mic drop moment at the end of the Attenborough interview; and there are moments of despair – Figueres is deeply moved by her interview with Thunberg, and all three are profoundly concerned by Thunberg’s sadness.

This is a podcast that assumes its listeners are intelligent. It manages to strike the right balance between providing information, global context and news.

But it’s the emotional frankness that makes it so transformative. I’ve felt it changing my brain wiring as I’ve listened.

I’ll leave the final word to Figueres: “Remember, impossible is not a fact: it is an attitude… and we are running out of time.”

This Author

Rachel Marsh is a podcast addict and designs Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. 

Image: David Morrison. 

Raging forest fires in Brazil are a direct result of Brazilian government policies that have dismantled environmental protection and Indigenous rights. The fires have led to a huge spike in deforestation. 

Indigenous communities on the frontline of this fight are speaking out, condemning the government and calling for solidarity action.

On Thursday 3 October the Brazilian environment minister, Ricardo Salles, will be visiting the UK on a public relations trip. He’s been hit by protests at every step of the tour, and London will be no different.

Solidarity and unity

Protestors will gather at 8.30am on Thursday morning to send a clear message to Salles that until their destructive agenda is reversed and the amazon and its people are protected, he is not welcome here. More information can be found here. 

Campaigners from the UK Student Climate Network said: “As young people worried about climate change and its impacts across the globe, we stand in solidarity with the Indigenous and local communities defending their land, the forest and the lungs of the earth. We see you.

“Come on Thursday morning – bring your friends – for music, speakers and solidarity for the ‘NOT WELCOME’ that Salles won’t forget. Opposition is global. There is no climate justice without indigenous justice, without solidarity and, without unity.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor.

Image: Palácio do Planalto, Wikimedia. 

There are over 3.5 billion hectares of farmland and grassland on Earth and each hectare can remove tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

We can draw down carbon with beneficial soil biology, Like planting trees to store carbon in their trunks. In my home state of California, rangeland ecologists and bio-geochemists have been testing the soil carbon from improved grazing and compost application, practices known as carbon farming.

The reduction in carbon emissions has been astounding—in ranch in my supply chain, the equivalent to not burning 6500 liters of petrol per hectare, each year, for 6 years and counting.

Perverse incentives 

There’s really no downside to investing in better farming and healthy soil, which also creates more delicious and nutritious food while conserving water and making farms more climate resilient.

Each dollar invested in climate solutions related to food and land use would generate over $13 in public benefit; overall, 1 percent of GDP annually would be enough funding to lower global temperatures by 2050.

However, at present, in the US and other countries, agricultural incentives are so perverse that they often punish farmers and ranchers for investing in healthy soil: as a result, very little of the world’s agricultural land is healthy. 

According to the United Nations, if current trends continue, the world’s topsoil has only about 60 harvests left in it.  Capitalism prioritizes short-term yield and profit instead of long-term agro-ecology and human health, so we’ve adopted a production mode reliant on monoculture and chemical inputs and extracting as much as we can, as quickly as possible. 

If we can focus on returning carbon (i.e. organic matter) to the soil, we can solve global warming and create better food. Applying compost to farmland is probably the best example of how society can shift to a renewable food system. 

Cultural shift

Making these changes would require widespread cultural shift – but recycling has become the norm in a few short decades and renewable energy is scaling rapidly. However, we must view the transformation of the food system along the same lines as the transition to renewable energy—we must fund the transition to renewable farming. 

Since the goal is to truly change many acres of farmland, then we must not only try to source well, but specifically ask our existing supply chains to change. In fact, we should help pay for the transition. 

Like many chefs – and home cooks – I aspire to work with the best ingredients I can afford, or the best that my business model allows.  But as demand for sustainably produced ingredients starts to outpace the 2 percent or 3 percent of the farmland, or when we can’t afford the most sustainably farmed choice, we must also focus on actually creating the change. 

Imagine for a moment if such an option presented itself in another industry—if, say, there was a fuel additive that could eliminate the emissions from burning petrol, or in fact if the additive went as far as to pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

Now imagine if it cost just 1 percent more at the pump. We would expect corporations and governments and citizens to be scaling up as quickly as possible. 

Funding transition

The same model could be applied to farming. Bio-geochemists have determined that carbon farming actually begins to create long-term, durable soil carbon immediately.  If we paid farmers to reconfigure the food system by applying climate beneficial soil additives such as compost and cover crops, then we can transition millions of hectares each year and solve global warming.

Restaurants are a tough business and barely making ends meet, but we can serve as a pathway for customers to invest in better farming.

I have been piloting this in my restaurant, Mission Chinese Food, in San Francisco.  And many of the restaurants at Zero Foodprint.org have as well by adding a surcharge of 1 percent to support environmentally-friendly farming practices.

The funds from the surcharge will help farmers transition from non-renewable production in a scalable way – sequestering CO2 in plants and soils, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and producing co-benefits that build ecological and economic resilience in local landscapes.  

So far, it’s a success – At MCF we’ve probably served about 30,000 people and only two diners have opted out. (And unlike most of the other participating restaurants, we have applied 3 percent charge).

Optional surcharge

In January, we’re working with the State of California to ask all restaurants to add an optional surcharge to create a renewable food system.  If just 1 percent of California’s restaurants participate, the program will generate $10 million a year to fund carbon farming across the state.

The solution to reducing carbon emissions is not using chard stems or perfecting the stem cell burger.

It’s using trillions of dollars to return billions of pounds of nutrients to millions of hectares—shifting to a renewable food system. Re-storing carbon one hectare at a time can help us to fight climate breakdown. 

This Author 

Anthony Myint is the winner of the Basque Culinary World Prize 2019, an award for chefs around the world whose work has transformed society through gastronomy.