Monthly Archives: January 2014

The Davos Summit – How have we done since 2011?

Posted on by
Reply

Speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2011, Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon did not mince his words when he addressed the assembled world leaders, central bankers and CEOs on the challenges in front of them:

“For most of the last century, economic growth was fuelled by what seemed to be a certain truth: the abundance of natural resources.  We mined our way to growth.  We burned our way to prosperity.  We believed in consumption without consequences.

Those days are gone.  In the twenty-first century, supplies are running short and the global thermostat is running high.  Climate change is also showing us that the old model is more than obsolete.  It has rendered it extremely dangerous.  Over time, that model is a recipe for national disaster.  It is a global suicide pact. So what do we do in this current challenging situation?  How do we create growth in a resource-constrained environment?  How do we lift people out of poverty while protecting the planet and ecosystems that support economic growth?  How do we regain the balance?  All of this requires rethinking.” 

Dutchman Ralph Thurm’s is one of many voices calling for a renunciation of this “global suicide pact” and a shift in the mindset of business leaders from thinking of sustainability as just another set of boxes to be ticked and KPIs to report against to shareholders. Thurm calls for governments and corporate managers to lift their eyes from the obsession with measurement and micromanagement of initiatives designed to make their operations marginally less bad and embrace the definition of sustainable development that came out of the Rio Earth Summit over 20 years ago in 1992. This definition, which is often parroted without much understanding by the ‘sustainability industry’ is:

“The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations.” Rio Declaration on Environment and Development: Principle 3 

In an article published at the end of 2013, Thurm observes:

“What we can conclude more than 20 years after the first conference and more than 25 years after the Brundtland report is simply unsatisfactory, even more it has cemented our path to a slow death of humans on this planet.”

Thurm advocates replacing the concept of sustainability with ThriveAbility and urges business leaders, economists, accountants and statisticians to play their part in the move to a new paradigm that addresses the big picture problems of how we can collectively find a way of structuring global economic activity that is in accord with the Rio Declaration and is compatible with the long-term survival of human civilisation.

In stark contrast to this talk of an urgent need to find an alternative future for humanity, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s address to this year’s Davos gathering was an object lesson of short-sighted, business-as-usual empty rhetoric dressed up as some kind of grand vision. The PM appeared to be pinning his hopes for the UK’s recovery on ‘re-shoring’ jobs that have in recent years been ‘offshored’ by companies seeking cheaper locations for their call centres and his new-found enthusiasm for shale gas:

“There is no doubt that when it comes to re-shoring in the US, one of the most important factors has been the development of shale gas, which is flooring US energy prices with billions of dollars of energy cost savings predicted over the next decade.

Taken together, I believe these trends have the ability to be a fresh driver of growth in Europe too.

I want Britain to seize these opportunities.”

He was clear that the only way to achieve prosperity is to liberate the wealth creators from the shackles of regulation when he added:

“And above all, we need an unashamedly pro-business regulatory environment – with labour market flexibility, low jobs taxes and a willingness to pave the way for new business and new business models.”

All of which sounds worryingly like a prescription for business as usual, or certainly a return to business as it was before the 2008 crash.

Shale gas exploitation is associated with well-documented local environmental issues around land and groundwater pollution, together with risks of earth tremors and a range of other issues. It is also a fossil fuel so is represents a continuation of the problem rather than being a genuine solution. Furthermore, the US experience as documented in Richard Heinberg’s 2013 book ‘Snake Oil: How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future’ suggests that the volume of shale gas that is economically recoverable is significantly less than the vast amounts promised by the fracking industry’s hype. What shale gas does, however, along with nuclear power, is provide a bridge between our oil-fuelled present and a renewable future. It gives a narrow window of opportunity in which the world leaders who gather at Davos each year can decide to abandon the global suicide pact and make the shift to a future built on genuine sustainability (or ThriveAbility).

The danger is that they will instead continue to choose business as usual and it is becoming increasingly clear where that is leading.

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

Posted on by
Reply

Just for a brief moment we thought “maybe, just maybe, he does get it after all”. At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday 8th January, David Cameron, talking about the flooding that has affected large parts of the country, said he did believe that Britain was experiencing more abnormal weather events that could be linked to climate change.

He was hardly effusive on the subject but, all of a sudden, with the words: “Colleagues across the house can argue about whether that is linked to climate change or not. I very much suspect that it is” we were back to Hug-a-Husky-Greenest-Government-Ever Dave rather than the “Get rid of the green crap” PM playing to his climate change denying gallery of backbenchers. Oh, and the climate change denying Secretary of the State for the Environment of course.

However ,it turned out to be but a monentary blip and by yesterday the green crap had been well and truly jettisoned once again as the Prime Minister vowed to “go all out for shale” as he announced increased bribes, sorry incentives, for local councils to accept shale gas exploration in their areas.

Much has been said and written about the local environmental impacts of fracking – the possible earth tremors, pollution of groundwater and the effects of the industrialisation of rural areas. Ministers preach the economic benefits of newly created jobs, cheaper heating bills and energy security. Both sides of the arguments seem to overlook the elephant in the room; shale gas is a fossil fuel. It may be less carbon intensive than coal as a fuel for power stations but it still emits half a tonne of CO2 for every Mega Watt-hour of electricity generation. With the Climate Change Act 2008 introducing a commitment to reduce the UK’s CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050, this is not the time to be opting for the ‘slightly less bad’ option.

When the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report says that we can be 95% confident that human actvity is affecting the world’s climate, it is a disgrace that even the very guarded acknowledgement by the PM that climate change may be affecting our weather was met with groans from the Government benches in the House of Commons.

It is also disgraceful that the man in charge of the Department for Environment is a climate sceptic, that the Minister for Energy appeared on the Today Programme on Radio 4 on 13th January referring to shale gas as a renewable source of energy and that the Conservative politician who aspires to be the next Chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Committee is a Director of a petrochemical company who was one of only 3 MPs to vote against the Climate Change Bill. I refer of course, in that order, to Owen Paterson, Michael Fallon and Peter Lilley.

The wilful ignorance of the science behind climate change by Government Ministers and their decitful and irresponsible enthusiasm for fracking whilst painting all those who oppose it as scaremongering Luddites who want to deny the country the chance of prosperity would be comical if it were not so insidious. The next thing you know, the Education Secretary will say that World War One was a just war competently fought and that anyone who says otherwise is an unpatriotic leftie. Oh wait…

From Badgers to Biodiversity Offsetting – the Trials of Owen Paterson

Posted on by
Reply

Fresh from the badger culling debacle, Secretary of State for the Environment Owen Paterson has once again provoked the anger of environmentalists, this time with his support for the controversial policy of ‘biodiversity offsetting’ where development is granted planning permission even if it leads to the loss of important wildlife sites so long as new habitats are created elsewhere. In a move that has provoked outrage among campaigners and even less-than-wholehearted support in The Daily Telegraph, Paterson has said that proposals that involve the destruction of ancient woodland could be allowed with appropriate offsetting, although he sought to downplay the likelihood of this happening.

The Secretary of State suggested that up to 100 new trees could be planted for each existing tree that is destroyed

Whilst this may sound on the face of it like a good deal for the environment and for the communities in whose neighbourhoods these proposals take effect, it demonstrates appalling ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of the importance of ancient trees and the web of life that they support. Conservationist and author, Oliver Rackham wrote in his The History of the British Countryside: “10,000 oaks of 100 years old are not a substitute for one 500 year old oak”. Due to the history of exploitation of their timber resource and the ravages of two world wars, our continental neighbours do not have the same opportunity that we do in Britain to appreciate these historic specimens. “In much of mainland Europe, you would be hard pushed to find a tree much more than 200 years old” according to the North York Moors National Park Authority. The Ancient Tree Forum exists to protect and raise awareness of our oldest trees and their Founder President Ted Green MBE has told me in conversation that he believes that the 900 acres of Leicestershire covered by Bradgate Park  contains more ancient trees than the whole of Germany. Environmentalists often bemoan the fact that we live on a crowded and over-developed island so an ecological resource such as this that many neighbouring countries simply do not possess is surely something to be treasured not trashed.

During his 15-month tenure at DEFRA, Paterson has probably done more than any other politician to unite the disparate strands of the environmental movement. Sadly, they have been united in horrified opposition to the policy pronouncements emanating from the Department. This support for biodiversity offsetting follows in the footsteps of the Secretary of State’s climate change scepticism and his assertion that the badgers ‘moved the goalposts’ when asked to explain the failure of the badger cull to reach its targets.

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett  said of the offsetting policy: “The concept of biodiversity offsetting betrays a failure to understand the complexity of nature and the inter-related nature of different ecological elements. It suggests that animals, plants and microbes are simply like Lego blocks, to be moved around at will, when in fact they exist in complex inter-relationships of which we frequently have only the dimmest understanding, or none at all.”

The National Trust, viewed as being one of the more conservative voices in the countryside, is not impressed either. Its spokesman told The Daily Mail: “Offsetting the losses of wildlife that usually accompany development by creating replacement habitats could be a useful addition to the planning system but it mustn’t mean mature irreplaceable habitats being replaced by low-quality habitats that will take decades to develop the character and complexity of those that have been lost. There will be some habitats that are effectively irreplaceable and should not be part of any offsetting scheme.”

Environmental campaigner Arthur Pendragon, veteran of the Newbury and Twyford Down protests against the driving of infrastructure projects through important wildlife sites added:  It’s all about money. The government is relaxing the laws so developers can make a killing.”

Owen Paterson has conceded that the present generation will lose out as they will suffer the loss of wildlife sites but the benefits of the new sites established as a result of offsetting will take longer to be felt. He also conceded that replacement sites will not necessarily be in the same locality as those lost but could be up to an hour’s car journey away. He did however insist that the fact that more trees would be planted was good news as he told The Times: “The point about offsetting is it will deliver a better environment over the long term”.

His opponents, on the other hand would argue that the Environment Secretary is seeking to espouse the virtues of quantity over quality or, in the words of Oscar Wilde “is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. Interestingly, this was Wilde’s definition of a cynic. Is the current DEFRA figurehead guilty of cynicism as well as scepticism?