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Collectors’ trade threatens ‘Holy Grail’ of the reptile world Updated for 2026

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An unusual and little-known monitor lizard from Borneo that has captured the interest of reptile collectors is emerging as the latest victim of the global illicit wildlife trade, an investigative report by TRAFFIC warns.

Lanthanotus borneensis or the Earless Monitor Lizard had long remained virtually unknown to the outside world due to its subterranean habits and limited distribution in north-western Borneo.

Unknown, that is, until recently gaining attention from unscrupulous reptile collectors.

Until now, it was only the subject of scientific interest

Earless Monitor Lizards have no external ear opening, a cylindrical lengthened body covered in scaly tubercles, small limbs, a prehensile tail, a forked tongue, and small eyes with the lower eyelid covered by translucent ‘windows’. As such it is placed in its own monospecific family Lanthanotidae.

The small, orange-brown lizard with beaded skin was once primarily of interest to scientists because of its unique adaptations for living below ground, and there were few instances of private ownership reported during the last 30 years.

However, there has been a sudden emergence in the trade of this species over the past two years.

Through its research, TRAFFIC detected international trade in Earless Monitor Lizards that has largely been carried out online from 2013 onwards. Specific instances mentioning the species were documented on forums and social networking sites in Japan, the Ukraine, France, Germany and the Czech Republic.

‘A significant offtake of the animals from the wild’

The study found specimens being offered for sale online across Europe and received intelligence about a significant offtake of the animals from the wild.

This was corroborated by discussions in online forums on the availability of the animals for sale, where there were frequent references to the lizard as being the “Holy Grail” of the reptile collecting world.

“Our research highlights the importance of the Internet and social media in the trafficking of species in high demand by specialist collectors: the reach online traders have is both instant and global”, said Sarah Stoner, Senior Wildlife Crime Analyst at TRAFFIC and co-author of the report.

Keeping an ear to the ground: Monitoring the trade in earless monitor lizards, illustrates the international scope of the trade and the need for international enforcement efforts.

Legally protected – but no restrictions on international trade

The Earless Monitor Lizard is legally protected in its native range countries of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia. The sudden, growing international interest in the species, however, raises concern given the absence of international trade regulations that would criminalize any such activity.

Currently, this is the only species of monitor lizard not protected from over exploitation under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

“For zoologists and conservationists working in Asia, the Earless Monitor Lizard is truly a mythical creature and something we have read about in the classical scientific literature”, said Dr. Vincent Nijman, Professor of Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University and author of the report.

“The last detailed observations were made on individuals caught in Malaysian Borneo and date from the 1960s. It is very sad indeed that the next time the Earless Monitor Lizard resurfaces after an absence of almost 50 years it is individuals being illegally traded internationally.”

CITES listing desperately needed

TRAFFIC recommends that the Governments of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia list Earless Monitor Lizards in Appendix III of CITES as an immediate interim action to allow proper monitoring and regulation of trade in this species.

Appendix III of the Convention requires that trade must be conducted only with the appropriate paperwork, which allows countries to track and assess levels of international trade.

The campaign group also recommends the species be eventually listed in Appendix I of CITES, and that enforcement agencies in end-use countries increase their vigilance and efforts to crack down on the availability of these stolen reptiles.

An Appendix I of the Convention listing would mean all commercial international trade in this species would become illegal.

 

 

The report: Keeping an ear to the ground: Monitoring the trade in earless monitor lizards

TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature. TRAFFIC is a strategic alliance of IUCN and WWF.

 

 




383962

Collectors’ trade threatens ‘Holy Grail’ of the reptile world Updated for 2026

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An unusual and little-known monitor lizard from Borneo that has captured the interest of reptile collectors is emerging as the latest victim of the global illicit wildlife trade, an investigative report by TRAFFIC warns.

Lanthanotus borneensis or the Earless Monitor Lizard had long remained virtually unknown to the outside world due to its subterranean habits and limited distribution in north-western Borneo.

Unknown, that is, until recently gaining attention from unscrupulous reptile collectors.

Until now, it was only the subject of scientific interest

Earless Monitor Lizards have no external ear opening, a cylindrical lengthened body covered in scaly tubercles, small limbs, a prehensile tail, a forked tongue, and small eyes with the lower eyelid covered by translucent ‘windows’. As such it is placed in its own monospecific family Lanthanotidae.

The small, orange-brown lizard with beaded skin was once primarily of interest to scientists because of its unique adaptations for living below ground, and there were few instances of private ownership reported during the last 30 years.

However, there has been a sudden emergence in the trade of this species over the past two years.

Through its research, TRAFFIC detected international trade in Earless Monitor Lizards that has largely been carried out online from 2013 onwards. Specific instances mentioning the species were documented on forums and social networking sites in Japan, the Ukraine, France, Germany and the Czech Republic.

‘A significant offtake of the animals from the wild’

The study found specimens being offered for sale online across Europe and received intelligence about a significant offtake of the animals from the wild.

This was corroborated by discussions in online forums on the availability of the animals for sale, where there were frequent references to the lizard as being the “Holy Grail” of the reptile collecting world.

“Our research highlights the importance of the Internet and social media in the trafficking of species in high demand by specialist collectors: the reach online traders have is both instant and global”, said Sarah Stoner, Senior Wildlife Crime Analyst at TRAFFIC and co-author of the report.

Keeping an ear to the ground: Monitoring the trade in earless monitor lizards, illustrates the international scope of the trade and the need for international enforcement efforts.

Legally protected – but no restrictions on international trade

The Earless Monitor Lizard is legally protected in its native range countries of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia. The sudden, growing international interest in the species, however, raises concern given the absence of international trade regulations that would criminalize any such activity.

Currently, this is the only species of monitor lizard not protected from over exploitation under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

“For zoologists and conservationists working in Asia, the Earless Monitor Lizard is truly a mythical creature and something we have read about in the classical scientific literature”, said Dr. Vincent Nijman, Professor of Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University and author of the report.

“The last detailed observations were made on individuals caught in Malaysian Borneo and date from the 1960s. It is very sad indeed that the next time the Earless Monitor Lizard resurfaces after an absence of almost 50 years it is individuals being illegally traded internationally.”

CITES listing desperately needed

TRAFFIC recommends that the Governments of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia list Earless Monitor Lizards in Appendix III of CITES as an immediate interim action to allow proper monitoring and regulation of trade in this species.

Appendix III of the Convention requires that trade must be conducted only with the appropriate paperwork, which allows countries to track and assess levels of international trade.

The campaign group also recommends the species be eventually listed in Appendix I of CITES, and that enforcement agencies in end-use countries increase their vigilance and efforts to crack down on the availability of these stolen reptiles.

An Appendix I of the Convention listing would mean all commercial international trade in this species would become illegal.

 

 

The report: Keeping an ear to the ground: Monitoring the trade in earless monitor lizards

TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature. TRAFFIC is a strategic alliance of IUCN and WWF.

 

 




383962

Collectors’ trade threatens ‘Holy Grail’ of the reptile world Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




An unusual and little-known monitor lizard from Borneo that has captured the interest of reptile collectors is emerging as the latest victim of the global illicit wildlife trade, an investigative report by TRAFFIC warns.

Lanthanotus borneensis or the Earless Monitor Lizard had long remained virtually unknown to the outside world due to its subterranean habits and limited distribution in north-western Borneo.

Unknown, that is, until recently gaining attention from unscrupulous reptile collectors.

Until now, it was only the subject of scientific interest

Earless Monitor Lizards have no external ear opening, a cylindrical lengthened body covered in scaly tubercles, small limbs, a prehensile tail, a forked tongue, and small eyes with the lower eyelid covered by translucent ‘windows’. As such it is placed in its own monospecific family Lanthanotidae.

The small, orange-brown lizard with beaded skin was once primarily of interest to scientists because of its unique adaptations for living below ground, and there were few instances of private ownership reported during the last 30 years.

However, there has been a sudden emergence in the trade of this species over the past two years.

Through its research, TRAFFIC detected international trade in Earless Monitor Lizards that has largely been carried out online from 2013 onwards. Specific instances mentioning the species were documented on forums and social networking sites in Japan, the Ukraine, France, Germany and the Czech Republic.

‘A significant offtake of the animals from the wild’

The study found specimens being offered for sale online across Europe and received intelligence about a significant offtake of the animals from the wild.

This was corroborated by discussions in online forums on the availability of the animals for sale, where there were frequent references to the lizard as being the “Holy Grail” of the reptile collecting world.

“Our research highlights the importance of the Internet and social media in the trafficking of species in high demand by specialist collectors: the reach online traders have is both instant and global”, said Sarah Stoner, Senior Wildlife Crime Analyst at TRAFFIC and co-author of the report.

Keeping an ear to the ground: Monitoring the trade in earless monitor lizards, illustrates the international scope of the trade and the need for international enforcement efforts.

Legally protected – but no restrictions on international trade

The Earless Monitor Lizard is legally protected in its native range countries of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia. The sudden, growing international interest in the species, however, raises concern given the absence of international trade regulations that would criminalize any such activity.

Currently, this is the only species of monitor lizard not protected from over exploitation under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

“For zoologists and conservationists working in Asia, the Earless Monitor Lizard is truly a mythical creature and something we have read about in the classical scientific literature”, said Dr. Vincent Nijman, Professor of Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University and author of the report.

“The last detailed observations were made on individuals caught in Malaysian Borneo and date from the 1960s. It is very sad indeed that the next time the Earless Monitor Lizard resurfaces after an absence of almost 50 years it is individuals being illegally traded internationally.”

CITES listing desperately needed

TRAFFIC recommends that the Governments of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia list Earless Monitor Lizards in Appendix III of CITES as an immediate interim action to allow proper monitoring and regulation of trade in this species.

Appendix III of the Convention requires that trade must be conducted only with the appropriate paperwork, which allows countries to track and assess levels of international trade.

The campaign group also recommends the species be eventually listed in Appendix I of CITES, and that enforcement agencies in end-use countries increase their vigilance and efforts to crack down on the availability of these stolen reptiles.

An Appendix I of the Convention listing would mean all commercial international trade in this species would become illegal.

 

 

The report: Keeping an ear to the ground: Monitoring the trade in earless monitor lizards

TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature. TRAFFIC is a strategic alliance of IUCN and WWF.

 

 




383962

Europe’s vultures face extinction from toxic vet drug Updated for 2026

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Following recent catastrophic declines of vultures in Asia that left landscapes littered with carcasses, vultures in Europe and Africa may be set to follow, according to BirdLife International.

The warning comes following the discovery that a veterinary drug that’s lethal to vultures even at low doses is commercially available in Europe.

“Vultures play a fundamental role that no other birds do: they clean our landscapes”, said Iván Ramírez, Head of Conservation for BirdLife International in Europe and Central Asia.

And that means they are for human and animal health as they clean up the rotting remains of dead animals.

Diclofenac has already wiped out vultures in South Asia

Used to treat inflammation in livestock, diclofenac has already wiped out 99% of vultures in India, Pakistan and Nepal.

A non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) present in many commonly used drugs that are used for treating moderate pain, diclofenac is extremely toxic to vultures in small doses. Vultures eating cattle treated with a veterinary dose of diclofenac will die in less than 2 days.

The decline of vultures in Asia was shockingly fast – quicker than any other wild bird, including the Dodo. Within a decade species such as the White-rumped Vulture fell by 99.9% as a result of diclofenac in India alone – leaving only one bird in a thousand alive.

A safe alternative drug, meloxicam, has been identified and tested on vultures and a range of other bird species. The meloxicam patent is more than 10-years old, meaning any pharmaceutical company can produce it with no royalties or licence fees to pay.

But now diclofenac has reached Europe

But despite the dangers and the availablity of alternatives, BirdLife has found that the drug is commercially available in Spain and Italy – both stronghold countries for European vulture species.

Since 1996, the EU and national governments have invested significant resources on conserving vultures, and there have been at least 67 LIFE projects related to these species. Between 2008 and 2012, nine vulture conservation projects alone received €10.7 million.

“We know what we need to do in Europe – ban veterinary diclofenac”, said Jim Lawrence, BirdLife’s Preventing Extinctions Programme Manager. “All these European conservation efforts would be useless if the use of veterinary diclofenac becomes widespread.”

Four vulture species breed in Europe: the Endangered Egyptian Vulture, the Near Threatened Cinereous Vulture, and important populations of Griffon Vulture and Bearded Vulture.

Three of the four vulture populations have been increasing steadily (except the Egyptian Vulture), partly due to the intensive conservation efforts funded by European Union budget lines.

A host of other threats in Africa

As well as the impending threat of diclofenac, a multitude of other complex threats need to be unravelled further in Africa, and investment needed to tackle them.

African vultures are facing increasing threats from poisoning (deliberate and accidental), persecution for body parts to be used in traditional medicine, habitat loss, collision with power-lines, and more.

The birds have declined in West Africa on average by 95% in three decades. Across Africa, seven of the eleven vulture species are now listed as globally threatened, with species such as Hooded Vulture recently being up-listed to Endangered in 2011.

“Three of every four old-world vulture species are already globally threatened with extinction or Near Threatened according the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species”, said Kariuki Ndanganga, BirdLife Africa’s Species Programme Manager.

“Unless threats are identified and tackled quickly and effectively, vultures in Africa and Europe could face extinction within our lifetime.”

He is now leading an effort to raise £20,000 to identify, review, prioritize and tackle the threats to vultures across the continent.

The decline is global

Of 11 vulture species found in Africa, seven (including five of the six species endemic to Africa) are globally threatened. Five of these species joined the Red List of threatened species only in the last seven years. The Hooded Vulture – a historically widespread species – was listed as Endangered in 2011.

There are 21 species of vultures in the world, five of which can be found in the American continent. The other 16 are distributed across Africa, Europe and Asia.

Of these so-called Old World vultures, 75% are globally threatened or near-threatened, with the number of threatened species expected to rise in the next conservation status assessment.

 

 

Donate to Birdlife’s ‘Stop Vulture Poisoning Now’ campaign (Just Giving).

 

 




383841

Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians Updated for 2026

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Over the last few weeks, as the situation in Syria and Iraq has deteriorated, we’ve seen politicians in the West become more bellicose about the “threat” of terrorism to our way of life.

What few in this debate seem to address is whether there is any objective data, compared to other non-terrorist ‘threats’, to support that assertion.

Rather like the ‘reds under the bed’ scares of the Cold War, the threat of ‘Islamism’ is held up as an existential threat to the British public innocently going about their daily lives. However, if we look at the statistics we can’t demonstrate that claim.

How many people in Britain get killed by terrorism in Britain in an average year? Given recent media coverage, how many do you think?

Bees and hornets pose the same risk as ‘terrorism’

Until the murder of Private Lee Rigby in May 2013, no members of the public had been killed by terrorist acts in Britain since 2005. Even with Britain’s history of terrorism, due to the conflict in Ireland, in global terms the risk from terrorism here is low.

The relative scale of the public’s risk of fatality from terrorism was outlined in the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s report published in 2012:

“During the 21st century, terrorism has been an insignificant cause of mortality in the United Kingdom. The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

That said, must we declare bees and hornets to be as dangerous as al-Qaida? Perhaps that’s why the Government doesn’t want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in Britain.

Is the loss of civil liberties proportionate to the threat?

The Government, incited by sections of the media, has made a great play of their tough stance on counter-terrorism – and the powers which we grant our security services. Again, are these proportionate to the objective threat?

In July, Britain’s oldest ethical Internet service provider, GreenNet, sued the Government and GCHQ for their arguably unlawful breach of British citizens right to privacy as part of their mass collection of on-line data.

The response of the Government was to regularise that breach of privacy laws by rushing through emergency legislation. David Cameron’s justification for this was that

“Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone’s phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot.”

Is the threat to our civil rights and privacy really worth that intrusion? And, compared to the threat to democratic values posed by the Government’s spy systems, does that power significantly reduce the risks to the public from terrorism?

To answer that point let’s put that 5 per year terrorism fatality figure into a wider statistical context:

I think that makes the relative hazard of terrorism to other ‘threats’ quite clear. Is this reflected in the current media debate? Clearly not!

Now this really is scary – ditching the ‘green crap’

As I outlined in a recent article for The Ecologist, last year David Cameron instructed his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from Government policy.

And yet some of the greatest threats to the public are a result of that so called “green crap”. You don’t have to take my word for that – let’s look at what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to say.

The MoD publishes its Global Strategic Trends report for those within the MoD and wider Government who are involved in developing long term planning. They recently published the fifth edition, which identifies long term threats and opportunities to 2045 (it even has a scary cartoon which summarises it).

If you read that report, you could almost think you were reading something penned by WWF or Greenpeace. For example:

“As we increase the stress we place on the natural environment, our need to understand, protect and preserve it will almost certainly grow. Climate change, a rise in sea levels, desertification and reducing biodiversity are all issues that could affect us even more over the next 30 years. They are likely to impact on agricultural production and fishing, and could exacerbate humanitarian crises.”

In stating that, the MoD are not being alarmist. You can find similar reports being produced today by other ‘establishment’ organisations – such as the World Economic Forum.

US military researchers produced a broadly similar document in March 2014, which considered climate change to be a particular threat. In response, in May 2014, the US Congress passed a bill which banned the US military from considering the security implications of climate change.

As that US example shows, where the real statistical threats to public life are concerned, we might judge the inaction of our politicians to be a greater ‘threat’ than the risks from terrorism.

In my view our politicians concentrate on terrorism because it’s the perfect ‘paper tiger’. It’s scary, and unpredictable, but by its very nature the success or failure of their policies are not subject to external assessment. The secretive nature of the agencies involved allow politicians to say what wish, and justify their actions to some abstract threat, without any great risk of being proven wrong.

In contrast, if the Government started to address some of those really serious, ecologically-based issues, then that would require fighting some very difficult political battles – abandoning historic commitments to certain economic and ideological principles to achieve those ecological goals.

Tackling the ecological roots of the world’s conflicts

Terrorism, globally, is a serious issue – one which we should all be concerned about. What we’re talking about here is the relative weight of that issue compared to other issues which the UK Government, arguably, has a far greater power to address.

When it comes to the problems of the Middle East, the historic issue of the control of oil supplies is a key factor in the West’s foreign policy strategy. Arguably Britain and France created these problems when they enforced the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region in 1916 – creating the boundaries within the region we see today.

However, adapting to ecological limits requires that the world wean itself off oil-burning within a decade or two at most. That would allow us to try and find a new, less exploitative way to co-operatively engage with the peoples of that region.

The UN’s decade-old study of “future threats and challenges” highlighted the range of problems which will confront in years to come. And, despite David Cameron’s desire to “get rid of the green crap”, most of these serious, long-term issues are driven by a common ecological root.

Instead of the current Western policy of control and exploitation, we need a new strategy. As outlined in that report, we

“face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together. The purpose of this report is to suggest how nations can work together to meet this formidable challenge.”

What has come from the mouths of politicians and pundits over the last few weeks does nothing to address the root of the greater human ecological crisis – manifesting itself in the many regional problems we see in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Until we have that discussion about global equity and justice, and we end the ‘exceptionalism’ in Western foreign policy, the issue of terrorism will not go away.

Instead, as we escalate measures to control dissent at home and abroad, knee-jerk security and surveillance measures will arguably degrade the democratic principles which our government’s claim to protect.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer. He runs the Free Range Activism website.

 




383600

Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Over the last few weeks, as the situation in Syria and Iraq has deteriorated, we’ve seen politicians in the West become more bellicose about the “threat” of terrorism to our way of life.

What few in this debate seem to address is whether there is any objective data, compared to other non-terrorist ‘threats’, to support that assertion.

Rather like the ‘reds under the bed’ scares of the Cold War, the threat of ‘Islamism’ is held up as an existential threat to the British public innocently going about their daily lives. However, if we look at the statistics we can’t demonstrate that claim.

How many people in Britain get killed by terrorism in Britain in an average year? Given recent media coverage, how many do you think?

Bees and hornets pose the same risk as ‘terrorism’

Until the murder of Private Lee Rigby in May 2013, no members of the public had been killed by terrorist acts in Britain since 2005. Even with Britain’s history of terrorism, due to the conflict in Ireland, in global terms the risk from terrorism here is low.

The relative scale of the public’s risk of fatality from terrorism was outlined in the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s report published in 2012:

“During the 21st century, terrorism has been an insignificant cause of mortality in the United Kingdom. The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

That said, must we declare bees and hornets to be as dangerous as al-Qaida? Perhaps that’s why the Government doesn’t want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in Britain.

Is the loss of civil liberties proportionate to the threat?

The Government, incited by sections of the media, has made a great play of their tough stance on counter-terrorism – and the powers which we grant our security services. Again, are these proportionate to the objective threat?

In July, Britain’s oldest ethical Internet service provider, GreenNet, sued the Government and GCHQ for their arguably unlawful breach of British citizens right to privacy as part of their mass collection of on-line data.

The response of the Government was to regularise that breach of privacy laws by rushing through emergency legislation. David Cameron’s justification for this was that

“Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone’s phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot.”

Is the threat to our civil rights and privacy really worth that intrusion? And, compared to the threat to democratic values posed by the Government’s spy systems, does that power significantly reduce the risks to the public from terrorism?

To answer that point let’s put that 5 per year terrorism fatality figure into a wider statistical context:

I think that makes the relative hazard of terrorism to other ‘threats’ quite clear. Is this reflected in the current media debate? Clearly not!

Now this really is scary – ditching the ‘green crap’

As I outlined in a recent article for The Ecologist, last year David Cameron instructed his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from Government policy.

And yet some of the greatest threats to the public are a result of that so called “green crap”. You don’t have to take my word for that – let’s look at what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to say.

The MoD publishes its Global Strategic Trends report for those within the MoD and wider Government who are involved in developing long term planning. They recently published the fifth edition, which identifies long term threats and opportunities to 2045 (it even has a scary cartoon which summarises it).

If you read that report, you could almost think you were reading something penned by WWF or Greenpeace. For example:

“As we increase the stress we place on the natural environment, our need to understand, protect and preserve it will almost certainly grow. Climate change, a rise in sea levels, desertification and reducing biodiversity are all issues that could affect us even more over the next 30 years. They are likely to impact on agricultural production and fishing, and could exacerbate humanitarian crises.”

In stating that, the MoD are not being alarmist. You can find similar reports being produced today by other ‘establishment’ organisations – such as the World Economic Forum.

US military researchers produced a broadly similar document in March 2014, which considered climate change to be a particular threat. In response, in May 2014, the US Congress passed a bill which banned the US military from considering the security implications of climate change.

As that US example shows, where the real statistical threats to public life are concerned, we might judge the inaction of our politicians to be a greater ‘threat’ than the risks from terrorism.

In my view our politicians concentrate on terrorism because it’s the perfect ‘paper tiger’. It’s scary, and unpredictable, but by its very nature the success or failure of their policies are not subject to external assessment. The secretive nature of the agencies involved allow politicians to say what wish, and justify their actions to some abstract threat, without any great risk of being proven wrong.

In contrast, if the Government started to address some of those really serious, ecologically-based issues, then that would require fighting some very difficult political battles – abandoning historic commitments to certain economic and ideological principles to achieve those ecological goals.

Tackling the ecological roots of the world’s conflicts

Terrorism, globally, is a serious issue – one which we should all be concerned about. What we’re talking about here is the relative weight of that issue compared to other issues which the UK Government, arguably, has a far greater power to address.

When it comes to the problems of the Middle East, the historic issue of the control of oil supplies is a key factor in the West’s foreign policy strategy. Arguably Britain and France created these problems when they enforced the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region in 1916 – creating the boundaries within the region we see today.

However, adapting to ecological limits requires that the world wean itself off oil-burning within a decade or two at most. That would allow us to try and find a new, less exploitative way to co-operatively engage with the peoples of that region.

The UN’s decade-old study of “future threats and challenges” highlighted the range of problems which will confront in years to come. And, despite David Cameron’s desire to “get rid of the green crap”, most of these serious, long-term issues are driven by a common ecological root.

Instead of the current Western policy of control and exploitation, we need a new strategy. As outlined in that report, we

“face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together. The purpose of this report is to suggest how nations can work together to meet this formidable challenge.”

What has come from the mouths of politicians and pundits over the last few weeks does nothing to address the root of the greater human ecological crisis – manifesting itself in the many regional problems we see in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Until we have that discussion about global equity and justice, and we end the ‘exceptionalism’ in Western foreign policy, the issue of terrorism will not go away.

Instead, as we escalate measures to control dissent at home and abroad, knee-jerk security and surveillance measures will arguably degrade the democratic principles which our government’s claim to protect.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer. He runs the Free Range Activism website.

 




383600

Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Over the last few weeks, as the situation in Syria and Iraq has deteriorated, we’ve seen politicians in the West become more bellicose about the “threat” of terrorism to our way of life.

What few in this debate seem to address is whether there is any objective data, compared to other non-terrorist ‘threats’, to support that assertion.

Rather like the ‘reds under the bed’ scares of the Cold War, the threat of ‘Islamism’ is held up as an existential threat to the British public innocently going about their daily lives. However, if we look at the statistics we can’t demonstrate that claim.

How many people in Britain get killed by terrorism in Britain in an average year? Given recent media coverage, how many do you think?

Bees and hornets pose the same risk as ‘terrorism’

Until the murder of Private Lee Rigby in May 2013, no members of the public had been killed by terrorist acts in Britain since 2005. Even with Britain’s history of terrorism, due to the conflict in Ireland, in global terms the risk from terrorism here is low.

The relative scale of the public’s risk of fatality from terrorism was outlined in the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s report published in 2012:

“During the 21st century, terrorism has been an insignificant cause of mortality in the United Kingdom. The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

That said, must we declare bees and hornets to be as dangerous as al-Qaida? Perhaps that’s why the Government doesn’t want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in Britain.

Is the loss of civil liberties proportionate to the threat?

The Government, incited by sections of the media, has made a great play of their tough stance on counter-terrorism – and the powers which we grant our security services. Again, are these proportionate to the objective threat?

In July, Britain’s oldest ethical Internet service provider, GreenNet, sued the Government and GCHQ for their arguably unlawful breach of British citizens right to privacy as part of their mass collection of on-line data.

The response of the Government was to regularise that breach of privacy laws by rushing through emergency legislation. David Cameron’s justification for this was that

“Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone’s phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot.”

Is the threat to our civil rights and privacy really worth that intrusion? And, compared to the threat to democratic values posed by the Government’s spy systems, does that power significantly reduce the risks to the public from terrorism?

To answer that point let’s put that 5 per year terrorism fatality figure into a wider statistical context:

I think that makes the relative hazard of terrorism to other ‘threats’ quite clear. Is this reflected in the current media debate? Clearly not!

Now this really is scary – ditching the ‘green crap’

As I outlined in a recent article for The Ecologist, last year David Cameron instructed his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from Government policy.

And yet some of the greatest threats to the public are a result of that so called “green crap”. You don’t have to take my word for that – let’s look at what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to say.

The MoD publishes its Global Strategic Trends report for those within the MoD and wider Government who are involved in developing long term planning. They recently published the fifth edition, which identifies long term threats and opportunities to 2045 (it even has a scary cartoon which summarises it).

If you read that report, you could almost think you were reading something penned by WWF or Greenpeace. For example:

“As we increase the stress we place on the natural environment, our need to understand, protect and preserve it will almost certainly grow. Climate change, a rise in sea levels, desertification and reducing biodiversity are all issues that could affect us even more over the next 30 years. They are likely to impact on agricultural production and fishing, and could exacerbate humanitarian crises.”

In stating that, the MoD are not being alarmist. You can find similar reports being produced today by other ‘establishment’ organisations – such as the World Economic Forum.

US military researchers produced a broadly similar document in March 2014, which considered climate change to be a particular threat. In response, in May 2014, the US Congress passed a bill which banned the US military from considering the security implications of climate change.

As that US example shows, where the real statistical threats to public life are concerned, we might judge the inaction of our politicians to be a greater ‘threat’ than the risks from terrorism.

In my view our politicians concentrate on terrorism because it’s the perfect ‘paper tiger’. It’s scary, and unpredictable, but by its very nature the success or failure of their policies are not subject to external assessment. The secretive nature of the agencies involved allow politicians to say what wish, and justify their actions to some abstract threat, without any great risk of being proven wrong.

In contrast, if the Government started to address some of those really serious, ecologically-based issues, then that would require fighting some very difficult political battles – abandoning historic commitments to certain economic and ideological principles to achieve those ecological goals.

Tackling the ecological roots of the world’s conflicts

Terrorism, globally, is a serious issue – one which we should all be concerned about. What we’re talking about here is the relative weight of that issue compared to other issues which the UK Government, arguably, has a far greater power to address.

When it comes to the problems of the Middle East, the historic issue of the control of oil supplies is a key factor in the West’s foreign policy strategy. Arguably Britain and France created these problems when they enforced the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region in 1916 – creating the boundaries within the region we see today.

However, adapting to ecological limits requires that the world wean itself off oil-burning within a decade or two at most. That would allow us to try and find a new, less exploitative way to co-operatively engage with the peoples of that region.

The UN’s decade-old study of “future threats and challenges” highlighted the range of problems which will confront in years to come. And, despite David Cameron’s desire to “get rid of the green crap”, most of these serious, long-term issues are driven by a common ecological root.

Instead of the current Western policy of control and exploitation, we need a new strategy. As outlined in that report, we

“face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together. The purpose of this report is to suggest how nations can work together to meet this formidable challenge.”

What has come from the mouths of politicians and pundits over the last few weeks does nothing to address the root of the greater human ecological crisis – manifesting itself in the many regional problems we see in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Until we have that discussion about global equity and justice, and we end the ‘exceptionalism’ in Western foreign policy, the issue of terrorism will not go away.

Instead, as we escalate measures to control dissent at home and abroad, knee-jerk security and surveillance measures will arguably degrade the democratic principles which our government’s claim to protect.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer. He runs the Free Range Activism website.

 




383600

Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Over the last few weeks, as the situation in Syria and Iraq has deteriorated, we’ve seen politicians in the West become more bellicose about the “threat” of terrorism to our way of life.

What few in this debate seem to address is whether there is any objective data, compared to other non-terrorist ‘threats’, to support that assertion.

Rather like the ‘reds under the bed’ scares of the Cold War, the threat of ‘Islamism’ is held up as an existential threat to the British public innocently going about their daily lives. However, if we look at the statistics we can’t demonstrate that claim.

How many people in Britain get killed by terrorism in Britain in an average year? Given recent media coverage, how many do you think?

Bees and hornets pose the same risk as ‘terrorism’

Until the murder of Private Lee Rigby in May 2013, no members of the public had been killed by terrorist acts in Britain since 2005. Even with Britain’s history of terrorism, due to the conflict in Ireland, in global terms the risk from terrorism here is low.

The relative scale of the public’s risk of fatality from terrorism was outlined in the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s report published in 2012:

“During the 21st century, terrorism has been an insignificant cause of mortality in the United Kingdom. The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

That said, must we declare bees and hornets to be as dangerous as al-Qaida? Perhaps that’s why the Government doesn’t want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in Britain.

Is the loss of civil liberties proportionate to the threat?

The Government, incited by sections of the media, has made a great play of their tough stance on counter-terrorism – and the powers which we grant our security services. Again, are these proportionate to the objective threat?

In July, Britain’s oldest ethical Internet service provider, GreenNet, sued the Government and GCHQ for their arguably unlawful breach of British citizens right to privacy as part of their mass collection of on-line data.

The response of the Government was to regularise that breach of privacy laws by rushing through emergency legislation. David Cameron’s justification for this was that

“Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone’s phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot.”

Is the threat to our civil rights and privacy really worth that intrusion? And, compared to the threat to democratic values posed by the Government’s spy systems, does that power significantly reduce the risks to the public from terrorism?

To answer that point let’s put that 5 per year terrorism fatality figure into a wider statistical context:

I think that makes the relative hazard of terrorism to other ‘threats’ quite clear. Is this reflected in the current media debate? Clearly not!

Now this really is scary – ditching the ‘green crap’

As I outlined in a recent article for The Ecologist, last year David Cameron instructed his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from Government policy.

And yet some of the greatest threats to the public are a result of that so called “green crap”. You don’t have to take my word for that – let’s look at what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to say.

The MoD publishes its Global Strategic Trends report for those within the MoD and wider Government who are involved in developing long term planning. They recently published the fifth edition, which identifies long term threats and opportunities to 2045 (it even has a scary cartoon which summarises it).

If you read that report, you could almost think you were reading something penned by WWF or Greenpeace. For example:

“As we increase the stress we place on the natural environment, our need to understand, protect and preserve it will almost certainly grow. Climate change, a rise in sea levels, desertification and reducing biodiversity are all issues that could affect us even more over the next 30 years. They are likely to impact on agricultural production and fishing, and could exacerbate humanitarian crises.”

In stating that, the MoD are not being alarmist. You can find similar reports being produced today by other ‘establishment’ organisations – such as the World Economic Forum.

US military researchers produced a broadly similar document in March 2014, which considered climate change to be a particular threat. In response, in May 2014, the US Congress passed a bill which banned the US military from considering the security implications of climate change.

As that US example shows, where the real statistical threats to public life are concerned, we might judge the inaction of our politicians to be a greater ‘threat’ than the risks from terrorism.

In my view our politicians concentrate on terrorism because it’s the perfect ‘paper tiger’. It’s scary, and unpredictable, but by its very nature the success or failure of their policies are not subject to external assessment. The secretive nature of the agencies involved allow politicians to say what wish, and justify their actions to some abstract threat, without any great risk of being proven wrong.

In contrast, if the Government started to address some of those really serious, ecologically-based issues, then that would require fighting some very difficult political battles – abandoning historic commitments to certain economic and ideological principles to achieve those ecological goals.

Tackling the ecological roots of the world’s conflicts

Terrorism, globally, is a serious issue – one which we should all be concerned about. What we’re talking about here is the relative weight of that issue compared to other issues which the UK Government, arguably, has a far greater power to address.

When it comes to the problems of the Middle East, the historic issue of the control of oil supplies is a key factor in the West’s foreign policy strategy. Arguably Britain and France created these problems when they enforced the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region in 1916 – creating the boundaries within the region we see today.

However, adapting to ecological limits requires that the world wean itself off oil-burning within a decade or two at most. That would allow us to try and find a new, less exploitative way to co-operatively engage with the peoples of that region.

The UN’s decade-old study of “future threats and challenges” highlighted the range of problems which will confront in years to come. And, despite David Cameron’s desire to “get rid of the green crap”, most of these serious, long-term issues are driven by a common ecological root.

Instead of the current Western policy of control and exploitation, we need a new strategy. As outlined in that report, we

“face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together. The purpose of this report is to suggest how nations can work together to meet this formidable challenge.”

What has come from the mouths of politicians and pundits over the last few weeks does nothing to address the root of the greater human ecological crisis – manifesting itself in the many regional problems we see in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Until we have that discussion about global equity and justice, and we end the ‘exceptionalism’ in Western foreign policy, the issue of terrorism will not go away.

Instead, as we escalate measures to control dissent at home and abroad, knee-jerk security and surveillance measures will arguably degrade the democratic principles which our government’s claim to protect.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer. He runs the Free Range Activism website.

 




383600

Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Over the last few weeks, as the situation in Syria and Iraq has deteriorated, we’ve seen politicians in the West become more bellicose about the “threat” of terrorism to our way of life.

What few in this debate seem to address is whether there is any objective data, compared to other non-terrorist ‘threats’, to support that assertion.

Rather like the ‘reds under the bed’ scares of the Cold War, the threat of ‘Islamism’ is held up as an existential threat to the British public innocently going about their daily lives. However, if we look at the statistics we can’t demonstrate that claim.

How many people in Britain get killed by terrorism in Britain in an average year? Given recent media coverage, how many do you think?

Bees and hornets pose the same risk as ‘terrorism’

Until the murder of Private Lee Rigby in May 2013, no members of the public had been killed by terrorist acts in Britain since 2005. Even with Britain’s history of terrorism, due to the conflict in Ireland, in global terms the risk from terrorism here is low.

The relative scale of the public’s risk of fatality from terrorism was outlined in the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s report published in 2012:

“During the 21st century, terrorism has been an insignificant cause of mortality in the United Kingdom. The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

That said, must we declare bees and hornets to be as dangerous as al-Qaida? Perhaps that’s why the Government doesn’t want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in Britain.

Is the loss of civil liberties proportionate to the threat?

The Government, incited by sections of the media, has made a great play of their tough stance on counter-terrorism – and the powers which we grant our security services. Again, are these proportionate to the objective threat?

In July, Britain’s oldest ethical Internet service provider, GreenNet, sued the Government and GCHQ for their arguably unlawful breach of British citizens right to privacy as part of their mass collection of on-line data.

The response of the Government was to regularise that breach of privacy laws by rushing through emergency legislation. David Cameron’s justification for this was that

“Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone’s phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot.”

Is the threat to our civil rights and privacy really worth that intrusion? And, compared to the threat to democratic values posed by the Government’s spy systems, does that power significantly reduce the risks to the public from terrorism?

To answer that point let’s put that 5 per year terrorism fatality figure into a wider statistical context:

I think that makes the relative hazard of terrorism to other ‘threats’ quite clear. Is this reflected in the current media debate? Clearly not!

Now this really is scary – ditching the ‘green crap’

As I outlined in a recent article for The Ecologist, last year David Cameron instructed his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from Government policy.

And yet some of the greatest threats to the public are a result of that so called “green crap”. You don’t have to take my word for that – let’s look at what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to say.

The MoD publishes its Global Strategic Trends report for those within the MoD and wider Government who are involved in developing long term planning. They recently published the fifth edition, which identifies long term threats and opportunities to 2045 (it even has a scary cartoon which summarises it).

If you read that report, you could almost think you were reading something penned by WWF or Greenpeace. For example:

“As we increase the stress we place on the natural environment, our need to understand, protect and preserve it will almost certainly grow. Climate change, a rise in sea levels, desertification and reducing biodiversity are all issues that could affect us even more over the next 30 years. They are likely to impact on agricultural production and fishing, and could exacerbate humanitarian crises.”

In stating that, the MoD are not being alarmist. You can find similar reports being produced today by other ‘establishment’ organisations – such as the World Economic Forum.

US military researchers produced a broadly similar document in March 2014, which considered climate change to be a particular threat. In response, in May 2014, the US Congress passed a bill which banned the US military from considering the security implications of climate change.

As that US example shows, where the real statistical threats to public life are concerned, we might judge the inaction of our politicians to be a greater ‘threat’ than the risks from terrorism.

In my view our politicians concentrate on terrorism because it’s the perfect ‘paper tiger’. It’s scary, and unpredictable, but by its very nature the success or failure of their policies are not subject to external assessment. The secretive nature of the agencies involved allow politicians to say what wish, and justify their actions to some abstract threat, without any great risk of being proven wrong.

In contrast, if the Government started to address some of those really serious, ecologically-based issues, then that would require fighting some very difficult political battles – abandoning historic commitments to certain economic and ideological principles to achieve those ecological goals.

Tackling the ecological roots of the world’s conflicts

Terrorism, globally, is a serious issue – one which we should all be concerned about. What we’re talking about here is the relative weight of that issue compared to other issues which the UK Government, arguably, has a far greater power to address.

When it comes to the problems of the Middle East, the historic issue of the control of oil supplies is a key factor in the West’s foreign policy strategy. Arguably Britain and France created these problems when they enforced the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region in 1916 – creating the boundaries within the region we see today.

However, adapting to ecological limits requires that the world wean itself off oil-burning within a decade or two at most. That would allow us to try and find a new, less exploitative way to co-operatively engage with the peoples of that region.

The UN’s decade-old study of “future threats and challenges” highlighted the range of problems which will confront in years to come. And, despite David Cameron’s desire to “get rid of the green crap”, most of these serious, long-term issues are driven by a common ecological root.

Instead of the current Western policy of control and exploitation, we need a new strategy. As outlined in that report, we

“face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together. The purpose of this report is to suggest how nations can work together to meet this formidable challenge.”

What has come from the mouths of politicians and pundits over the last few weeks does nothing to address the root of the greater human ecological crisis – manifesting itself in the many regional problems we see in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Until we have that discussion about global equity and justice, and we end the ‘exceptionalism’ in Western foreign policy, the issue of terrorism will not go away.

Instead, as we escalate measures to control dissent at home and abroad, knee-jerk security and surveillance measures will arguably degrade the democratic principles which our government’s claim to protect.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer. He runs the Free Range Activism website.

 




383600

Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Over the last few weeks, as the situation in Syria and Iraq has deteriorated, we’ve seen politicians in the West become more bellicose about the “threat” of terrorism to our way of life.

What few in this debate seem to address is whether there is any objective data, compared to other non-terrorist ‘threats’, to support that assertion.

Rather like the ‘reds under the bed’ scares of the Cold War, the threat of ‘Islamism’ is held up as an existential threat to the British public innocently going about their daily lives. However, if we look at the statistics we can’t demonstrate that claim.

How many people in Britain get killed by terrorism in Britain in an average year? Given recent media coverage, how many do you think?

Bees and hornets pose the same risk as ‘terrorism’

Until the murder of Private Lee Rigby in May 2013, no members of the public had been killed by terrorist acts in Britain since 2005. Even with Britain’s history of terrorism, due to the conflict in Ireland, in global terms the risk from terrorism here is low.

The relative scale of the public’s risk of fatality from terrorism was outlined in the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s report published in 2012:

“During the 21st century, terrorism has been an insignificant cause of mortality in the United Kingdom. The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

That said, must we declare bees and hornets to be as dangerous as al-Qaida? Perhaps that’s why the Government doesn’t want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in Britain.

Is the loss of civil liberties proportionate to the threat?

The Government, incited by sections of the media, has made a great play of their tough stance on counter-terrorism – and the powers which we grant our security services. Again, are these proportionate to the objective threat?

In July, Britain’s oldest ethical Internet service provider, GreenNet, sued the Government and GCHQ for their arguably unlawful breach of British citizens right to privacy as part of their mass collection of on-line data.

The response of the Government was to regularise that breach of privacy laws by rushing through emergency legislation. David Cameron’s justification for this was that

“Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone’s phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot.”

Is the threat to our civil rights and privacy really worth that intrusion? And, compared to the threat to democratic values posed by the Government’s spy systems, does that power significantly reduce the risks to the public from terrorism?

To answer that point let’s put that 5 per year terrorism fatality figure into a wider statistical context:

I think that makes the relative hazard of terrorism to other ‘threats’ quite clear. Is this reflected in the current media debate? Clearly not!

Now this really is scary – ditching the ‘green crap’

As I outlined in a recent article for The Ecologist, last year David Cameron instructed his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from Government policy.

And yet some of the greatest threats to the public are a result of that so called “green crap”. You don’t have to take my word for that – let’s look at what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to say.

The MoD publishes its Global Strategic Trends report for those within the MoD and wider Government who are involved in developing long term planning. They recently published the fifth edition, which identifies long term threats and opportunities to 2045 (it even has a scary cartoon which summarises it).

If you read that report, you could almost think you were reading something penned by WWF or Greenpeace. For example:

“As we increase the stress we place on the natural environment, our need to understand, protect and preserve it will almost certainly grow. Climate change, a rise in sea levels, desertification and reducing biodiversity are all issues that could affect us even more over the next 30 years. They are likely to impact on agricultural production and fishing, and could exacerbate humanitarian crises.”

In stating that, the MoD are not being alarmist. You can find similar reports being produced today by other ‘establishment’ organisations – such as the World Economic Forum.

US military researchers produced a broadly similar document in March 2014, which considered climate change to be a particular threat. In response, in May 2014, the US Congress passed a bill which banned the US military from considering the security implications of climate change.

As that US example shows, where the real statistical threats to public life are concerned, we might judge the inaction of our politicians to be a greater ‘threat’ than the risks from terrorism.

In my view our politicians concentrate on terrorism because it’s the perfect ‘paper tiger’. It’s scary, and unpredictable, but by its very nature the success or failure of their policies are not subject to external assessment. The secretive nature of the agencies involved allow politicians to say what wish, and justify their actions to some abstract threat, without any great risk of being proven wrong.

In contrast, if the Government started to address some of those really serious, ecologically-based issues, then that would require fighting some very difficult political battles – abandoning historic commitments to certain economic and ideological principles to achieve those ecological goals.

Tackling the ecological roots of the world’s conflicts

Terrorism, globally, is a serious issue – one which we should all be concerned about. What we’re talking about here is the relative weight of that issue compared to other issues which the UK Government, arguably, has a far greater power to address.

When it comes to the problems of the Middle East, the historic issue of the control of oil supplies is a key factor in the West’s foreign policy strategy. Arguably Britain and France created these problems when they enforced the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region in 1916 – creating the boundaries within the region we see today.

However, adapting to ecological limits requires that the world wean itself off oil-burning within a decade or two at most. That would allow us to try and find a new, less exploitative way to co-operatively engage with the peoples of that region.

The UN’s decade-old study of “future threats and challenges” highlighted the range of problems which will confront in years to come. And, despite David Cameron’s desire to “get rid of the green crap”, most of these serious, long-term issues are driven by a common ecological root.

Instead of the current Western policy of control and exploitation, we need a new strategy. As outlined in that report, we

“face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together. The purpose of this report is to suggest how nations can work together to meet this formidable challenge.”

What has come from the mouths of politicians and pundits over the last few weeks does nothing to address the root of the greater human ecological crisis – manifesting itself in the many regional problems we see in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Until we have that discussion about global equity and justice, and we end the ‘exceptionalism’ in Western foreign policy, the issue of terrorism will not go away.

Instead, as we escalate measures to control dissent at home and abroad, knee-jerk security and surveillance measures will arguably degrade the democratic principles which our government’s claim to protect.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer. He runs the Free Range Activism website.

 




383600