Author Archives: Peter Tyldesley

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About Peter Tyldesley

Charity Chief Executive havig a sabbatical, charity trustee, non-executive director, sporadic blogger, grower. This site contains my personal musings and ramblings and the views expressed are my own and do not represent those of any organisation with which I am connected.

Lib Dems Take the Nuclear Option

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Of the many ways in which the Green credentials of Liberal Democrat voters have been caricatured in the past, one of the most enduring must be the image of the rainbow- emblazoned sticker in the rear windscreen (of a Citroen 2CV, naturally) proclaiming: “Nuclear Power – No Thanks”. Opposition to nuclear power has been such a touchstone of the Green movement for so long that any questioning of this stance is treated as nothing short of heretical by many Greens. Yet, at their annual conference in Glasgow, the Lib Dems have not merely questioned the policy of opposition to new nuclear power generation, they have ditched it altogether.

Although the debate over the details of the Party’s acceptance of new nuclear and the precise definition of terms such as ‘no public subsidy’ will rumble on, there is no doubt that a Rubicon has been crossed.
There have been howls of outrage from environmentalists, with Craig Bennett, policy director at Friends of the Earth, saying: “The change punches a huge hole in the Liberal Democrats’ fast-sinking green credibility.” Greenpeace have been equally savage: Dr Doug Parr their chief scientist added: “The vote shows how far the Liberal Democrats have slid from their previously principled position on energy and climate.”

There are, however, some very respected Green thinkers who have come around to the pro-nuclear way of thinking and have also been pilloried by their fellow travellers for daring to question the orthodoxy of the anti-nuclear stance.

As far back as 2004, James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory and elder statesman of the environmental movement, took his fellow environmentalists to task for their continued opposition to nuclear energy even in the face of the far more immediate and potentially deadly threat posed by climate change. Writing in The Independent, he said: “I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.” This view was reflected in his 2006 Book The Revenge of Gaia in which he expanded on the view that the threats posed by nuclear power and the disposal of nuclear waste are as nothing compared to the global threat posed by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In March 2012, in an open letter to the Prime Minister that publicly disagreed with an earlier letter signed by four former Directors of Friends of the Earth urging him to abandon plans to increase nuclear power generating capacity, George Monbiot, Stephen Tindale, Fred Pearce, Michael Hanlon and Mark Lynas asserted: “Nuclear remains the only viable large-scale source of low-carbon baseload power available to energy consumers in the UK today. Whilst we enthusiastically support research into new technologies, the deployment of renewables, demand-management and efficiency, these combined cannot, without the help of atomic energy, power a modern energy-hungry economy at the same time as reducing carbon emissions.”

What both these views have in common is an acceptance that we have waited too long to tackle climate change through renewable technologies alone and, due to a failure to invest in research and development in both renewables and methods of mitigating the impact of burning fossil fuels such as Carbon Capture and Storage, we have run out of alternatives to the nuclear option.

So, instead of criticising the Liberal Democrats for abandoning their Green principles, we should be applauding their willingness to take a realistic approach to meeting the energy needs of the 21st century whilst taking seriously the need to drastically reduce the carbon footprint of energy generation. Taking the nuclear path is an admission of failure but, having failed to address the issue of climate change by other means, it does at least buy us the time to seriously invest in the development of alternative technologies. If the Government will commit to the next generation of nuclear power stations being the last and that, by the time they reach the end of their productive lives, they will have been made redundant by the great strides that have been made in improving the efficiency of renewable energy technologies, then this change of heart will have paid off. If, on the other hand, the commissioning of new nuclear is used as an excuse to stop thinking about the problem then the Lib Dems will deserve all the opprobrium, and more, being heaped upon them by the likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

Fracking Threatens to Fracture the Coalition

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Following increasing public disquiet about fracking, including the recent protests and direct action around the Sussex village of Balcombe, which saw the arrest of Green Party MP and former leader Caroline Lucas, cracks have started to appear in the coalition Government over energy policy.

Chancellor George Osborne has stated that he wants to “put Britain at the forefront of exploiting shale gas” and Prime Minister David Cameron, in an article for Lord Lawson’s climate-sceptic think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, wrote: “we cannot afford to miss out on fracking”
But this enthusiasm for shale gas demonstrated by the holders of the two top jobs is not shared by all members of the government.

Mark Durkan, Environment Minister for Northern Ireland, criticised this headlong rush to exploit shale gas reserves and made his position more cautious position clear: “The scientific evidence is far from being established. No fracking for Fermanagh, no fracking for Northern Ireland, as things stand.”
Meanwhile, a policy paper produced by the Liberal Democrats in advance of their forthcoming conference puts clear daylight between the party and their coalition partners on a range of energy-related issues, including shale, where the paper’s authors flatly contradict the Chancellor’s views, stating: “There is no realistic prospect of a ‘shale gas revolution’ in the UK.”

In a more measured assessment of the potential role of shale gas in the energy mix that is in marked contrast to the wild enthusiasm shown by senior Conservatives, the paper goes on to conclude: “There is value in promoting domestic production rather than imports, so Liberal Democrats would permit measured shale gas extraction, ensuring that regulations protecting water and land pollution and local environmental quality are strictly enforced at a national level. Planning permission decisions should remain with local authorities however, and local communities should be fully consulted over local extraction, and fully compensated for all damage to the local landscape.”

The debate about fracking, as with that over wind farms, has tended to focus on the local environmental impacts, real or perceived, rather than the big picture issues such as climate change and the effect these technologies will have on efforts to mitigate future rises in global temperatures.

Given that wind energy generation causes no carbon emissions and shale gas is a fossil fuel that emits over 500 kgs of CO2 for each megawatt-hour of electricity generated, a rational approach to policy-making in the light of the Government’s own decarbonisation targets would seem to be that there should be a presumption in favour of the former and against the latter before the local factors are considered. However, in marked contrast to the rushing out of Planning Practice Guidance that stresses that Local Authorities have a duty to make an assessment of all oil and gas resources in their areas the planning regime for onshore wind energy has recently been tightened

Here again, the Liberal Democrats paper on energy policy shows a clear difference in approach to the Conservatives: “Onshore wind, currently the cheapest renewable technology, could provide up to a fifth of UK electricity consumption. In public opinion surveys wind farms consistently attract support from around two-thirds of the public, but the 10 per cent or so who are consistently opposed are usually more vocal. Liberal Democrats would require onshore wind farms to help fund local energy efficiency measures, thus reducing householders’ energy bills. Liberal Democrats would support developers who seek punitive damages against councils who do not follow National Policy Guidelines in determining consents, for example, many (particularly Conservative) councils have adopted criteria (such as minimum separation distances from dwellings), in contravention of government planning policy.”

This claim of two-thirds public support reflects the findings of a poll conducted for The Guardian in 2012, which found that 66% of Britons were in favour of wind power and only 8% against. Indeed, a similar poll found that 60% of people would support a wind farm development within 5 miles of their home compared to 20% support for a new coal-fired power station and 14% for a nuclear power station.

Conversely, only 40% of the public support fracking in their local area with 40% saying they would oppose it.

Given that the scientific evidence on the negative impact of shale gas exploitation on efforts to curb climate change is clear, the industry’s record on localised environmental damage is far from blameless and the lack of support from the public despite efforts by the tabloid press to cast the Balcombe anti-fracking protestors as benefit scroungers and extremists who do not represent the views of the local community, it is not difficult to see why elements of the coalition government are rushing to distance themselves from their leader’s wholehearted support for the technology as a potential answer to Britain’s energy worries. We wait to see whether this will lead to a permanent split or another policy U-turn.

Dear Humanity, your account appears to be overdrawn…

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Yesterday, 20th August 2013, was Earth Overshoot Day, also known as Ecological Debt Day, the approximate point in the year when humanity’s resource use for the year exceeded the Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources.

The date is an approximation but it has been moving steadily forward in the calendar since the phenomenon was first identified in the mid-1970s.

The financial analogy employed by many commentators is an apt one, particularly given the state of the gobal economy, even though world leaders are directing infinitely more time and resources at that than they are at the more pressing environmental credit crunch. Just as individuals and families were able to happily carry on increasing their consumption during the boom years, fuelled by a plentiful supply of readily available credit, so the economies of the developed world have continued to grow at an ever-inceasing rate, thanks to the ready availability of resources whose full cost we never stopped to calculate, let alone consider paying.

Eventually, however, the debt must be repaid and with interest.. The choice that we face is whether we will tighten our belts and find ways to live within our means or carry on regardless until the day that the bank, or the planet, calls in the loan.

Unfortunately, the UK’s government’s enthusiasm for technologies such as fracking to unlock the supposed shale gas boom, suggests that the lure of a short-term fix of shiny new stuff may onceagain triumph over sober restraint and delayed gratification.

Shale Gas Tax Breaks – Another Victory for Short-Term Thinking

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This article was first published on the Sustainable Business Toolkit website in July 2013

Last month Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has announced plans to give generous tax breaks to companies involved in exploiting the UK’s shale gas reserves .

The proposals, which the Government are now consulting on until 13th September 2013 include a reduction in the tax paid on shale gas revenues from 62% to 30%. These reductions are planned as part of “This new tax regime, which I want to make the most generous for shale in the world” said the Chancellor.

Osborne revealed his priorities and the thinking that lay behind the announcement when he added “I want Britain to be a leader of the shale gas revolution – because it has the potential to create thousands of jobs and keep energy bills low for millions of people.”

Now for a Government facing the task of getting itself re-elected following years of ‘austerity’ budgets and cuts to public services, you can see why a technology that offers the prospect of both higher employment and lower energy bills is appealing, which only serves to underline the difficulty that politicians face in dealing with issues such as climate change and resource depletion: to tackle these problems requires a dramatic shift in the ‘business as usual’ model that will undoubtedly cause short-term pain and only deliver benefits in the longer term. This is a proposition that is of no use at all if you operate on a 4-5 year electoral cycle, which means that the short-term pain will see you ejected from office long before the long-term gains are realised, even if these gains include avoiding catastrophic climate change that threatens the very continuation of civilisation as we know it.

It is interesting that most of the media coverage and the debate around shale gas exploitation has centred on the localised environmental concerns surrounding the ‘fracking’ process such as groundwater contamination and the potential of these operations to cause earth tremors. Matthew Roberts’ SBT article of 28th June 2013 addresses the US experience of these issues.

In the UK, the British Geological Survey has a programme of research into the possible groundwater and seismic implications of hydraulic fracturing, as ‘fracking’ is properly known. Of far more widespread, indeed global, concern are the effects of the shale gas boom on efforts to reduce CO2 emissions in order to tackle climate change.

Much has been made of the US experience that this new ‘dash for gas’ has led to a reduction in carbon emissions. A recent report by the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research says that this may be an over-simplistic interpretation of what has happened. According to the report, US CO2 emissions from domestic energy have declined by 8.6% since their peak in 2005 – equivalent to an annual reduction of 1.4% per year, which still falls far short of the rate of decarbonisation required to keep global temperature increase below the generally accepted ‘safe-ish’ limit of 2 Degrees. Not all of this reduction can be attributed to shale gas but the part that any switch plays in reducing CO2 emissions is due to the fact that burning natural gas in a power stations emits around 44% less Co2 per Megawatt-hour of electricity generation than using coal, which is the main fuel displaced. What tends to be overlooked in celebrating this reduction is the fact that using gas to generate electricity still emits around 300kg of CO2 per Megawatt-hour as opposed to 500kg for coal or less than 10kg for wind and nuclear.

The bottom line after cutting through all the hype is that shale gas may be ‘less bad’ than the coal that it displaces but it is not ‘good’. Furthermore, it is still a finite resource so its exploitation is only putting back the day when the lights go out, not offering a long-term sustainable way to keep them on.

Where shale gas could fit into a future energy mix, as with nuclear power, is as a short- to medium-term stop-gap until zero-emissions technologies such as renewables or nuclear fusion, are developed to a point where they are both technically feasible and economically viable sources of power. A clear long-term road map to a sustainable energy model could credibly include shale gas as an interim technology on the path to a low carbon future. In this context, offering tax incentives to companies to develop this embryonic industry would be justified and a perfectly proper thing to do as part of a taxation and regulatory framework that also incentivised work on developing the long-term solution and penalised the old, highly polluting technologies to increase the speed of the switch of investment away from them. Such a move would also address issues of energy security and the risk of relying on imports of vital energy sources from politically volatile parts of the world.

The problem appears to be that, almost inevitably, we are seeing a government pursue short-term advantage without appearing to consider the future. The problem is that the future, like the gas, is in danger of running out.

Climate Change – Who Do You Believe?

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This article was originally published on the Sustainable Business Toolkit website in January 2013

It’s a tough call. On the one hand, there was an editorial in the Observer last Sunday that proclaimed “Now No One Can Deny that the World is Getting Warmer”

On the other hand, the Mail on Sunday, admittedly not a publication that has ever been accused of harbouring tree hugging tendencies in its newsroom, declared on the same day: “Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago, Met Office Report Reveals: Mail on Sunday Got it Right About Warming… So Who Are the ‘Deniers’ Now?”

That two UK newspapers published on the same day can carry such contradictory stories on the same subject of such global importance illustrates the problems faced by those who seek to communicate the facts about climate change to both political leaders and the general public and expect them to take rational decisions based on those facts.

The Observer editorial concerns the publication, in draft form at present, of the US Government’s National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee’s Climate Assessment Report.
The introduction to the report is presented in the form of a ‘Letter to the American People’ and the first sentences leave the reader in no doubt about what is to come:

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present. This report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee concludes that the evidence for a changing climate has strengthened considerably since the last National Climate Assessment report, written in 2009. Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed.”

The report extends to 1,146 pages of assessment compiled by a team of 240 scientists and will be subject to a review by the US National Academy of Sciences alongside the public consultation process before the final version is published later this year. There is no doubt that the content of the report is deeply disturbing but one thing that is really striking is the uncompromising, unequivocal way in which the report’s authors – representing some of the leading thinking in the field with access to the widest and deepest sets of data in existence – spell out their message: man-made climate change is real and it is affecting real people in the real world now. It is hard to believe that this report has originated in the same country that recently held a Presidential election in which the issues that 240 leading scientists describe as presenting “a major challenge for society” barely received a mention from either of the candidates, including the one who is now responsible for leading the world’s largest economy’s response.

On the other hand, the Mail on Sunday appears to have reverted to the belief that climate change is a leftwing conspiracy designed to undermine Western capitalist society, or at least house prices in the Home Counties. More particularly, the paper has seized on the fact that a report by the UK Met Office appears to suggest that there has been a slowdown in the rate of increase in global average temperatures. The facts, inevitably, are not so clear cut: the Met Office’s new projections, generated by a new computer model that the agency itself heavily caveats, are that temperatures over the period 2012-16 will be 0.43 degrees C above the average for the period 1971-2000 as opposed to the previous prediction of 0.54 degrees. Hardly dramatic or conclusive, especially when one considers that the confidence ranges for the new and old predictions are 0.28-0.59 and 0.36-0.72 degrees respectively. In addition to the fact that an increase in temperatures above the previously forecast level is well within these parameters, the model compares future temperatures to a 30-year average that itself shows a significant warming trend compared to previous decades.
An overwhelming majority of respected scientific thinking agrees that anthropogenic (man-made) climate change is a reality and has done for quite some time but, to read the popular press, one could be forgiven for thinking that the issue is still in doubt and that there is no need for politicians to take difficult decisions or for people to make changes to their lifestyles.
One of the coalition government’s new, and much applauded, initiatives on taking office was to establish an independent Office for Budget Responsibility to ensure that economic forecasting and the collation and publishing of data regarding key economic indicators are kept separate from policy-making. Perhaps it is time for an independent Office for Climate Responsibility.

2012: Weird Weather or Changing Climate?

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This article was originally published on the Sustainable Business Toolkit website in March 2013

There have been a number of sets of weather and climate-related data published in the last couple of weeks that illustrate just how extreme the weather was in the UK in 2012 and how this fits into a picture of a global climate that appears to be warming at a faster rate than was previously thought.
A report on the drought and flooding experience in the UK in 2012 by the Environment Agency and reported in The Observer on 2nd March shows that flooding was recorded on 20% of days last year and drought on 25%, often in the same parts of the country with some rivers experiencing both their lowest and highest recorded levels within the space of a few months.

Following hot on the heels of this report comes the news that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii have showed the second largest annual increase on record. Data just released show that the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere rose 2.67 parts per million to 395ppm.

News that global efforts to reduce emissions have not only so far failed to lower the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere but that these levels are actually increasing at a record rate will, or certainly should, make sobering reading for governments and policy makers around the world.
The 2007 Bali Climate Change Declaration formally set out the consensus view of the world’s leading climate scientists that, in order to avert potentially disastrous consequences, the increase in global temperatures should be limited to no more than 2 Degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In order to limit the rise in temperatures to 2 Degrees, the scientists’ view was that atmospheric CO2 levels should be “stabilised at a level well below 450ppm” and that, in order to achieve this, emissions would need to peak and then decline in the 10-15 years following 2007. The fact that, 6 years into this timeframe, CO2 levels are continuing to rise at an increasing rate, casts doubt on the ability of the global community to achieve the 2 Degrees cap on warming. This limit of 2 Degrees has been adopted by many of the world’s developed economies, including the European Union, and the fact that its achievement is now in doubt will come as a major blow to governments and campaigners alike.

The fact is that even a 2 Degrees rise in global temperatures is predicted by many to have dramatic consequences so the prospect of an even greater increase is a grim one indeed.

You would think that an impending global calamity of this nature would be front page news and would galvanise governments into action, spurred on by the demands of their electorates and constant media scrutiny of the progress they were making towards averting disaster. In fact, research published earlier this year by Media Matters in the United States shows that, while 2012 was the warmest year on record, this was not reflected in the coverage the issue received in the mainstream media.

With very little effective pressure from the popular press, politicians are able to continue to dismiss climate change, and environmental concerns in general, as being fringe issues that must not be allowed to thwart efforts to get the economy back on track. In the UK, the widely-reported remarks in a speech by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne that “We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business, so let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe” seems to encapsulate the Government’s approach: do what we absolutely have to but be in no rush to adopt a leadership position on the issue.

Also in the papers is the news that the country’s two largest heritage organisations, English Heritage and The National Trust, have won a high court battle to stop a windfarm being built in Northamptonshire in a location that would adversely impact views of and from the Trust’s property at Lyveden New Bield, which is an Elizabethan ruin. Now I used to live very close to Lyveden and it is indeed a remarkable monument and there are many very good arguments for not building a windfarm in its vicinity, not least the fact that Northamptonshire is one of the least windy counties in England. However, I do wonder what could be achieved if the country’s largest heritage charity and a government quango could join forces to demand positive action to respond to the challenge of climate change as well as going to court to challenge misguided efforts to tackle the issues. It is right that these bodies should be vigilant in guarding our national heritage from despoliation but who is taking the same care over our national, and indeed global, future?

Are Your Staff Suffering from Nature Deficit Disorder?

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This article was originally published on the Sustainable Business Toolkit website in December 2012

It’s a phrase coined by US author Richard Louv in his groundbreaking 2005 book ‘Last Child in the Woods’ and refers to the collection of physical, mental, emotional and behavioural disorders that can occur, in adults as well as children, as a consequence of a lifestyle that keeps people away from contact with the natural world.

The consequences of a childhood spent indoors, in front of computer screens and away from nature are now being recognised on this side of the Atlantic as well. The National Trust commissioned naturalist, author and TV producer Stephen Moss to gather together all the evidence surrounding the issue of the disconnection of children from nature and the result is the Natural Childhood report, published in March 2012.

The report found that the main barriers to children having access to nature included the culture of health and safety and risk aversion, including the reluctance of parents to let their children play outside. The dramatic growth in alternative, sedentary, pastimes and forms of entertainment and the lack of opportunities a crowded curriculum for schools to provide appropriate education and experiences for children were also to blame.

The consequences of this decline in outdoor activity predictably include physical health problems such as obesity and also mental and emotional health issues such as depression. There is a lot of compelling evidence around the positive impact of access to nature and green spaces on health and the ability to recover from illness – hospital patients who can see trees from their beds have been shown to get better quicker than those with only a blank wall to look at.

Of perhaps greater concern from a business perspective are the consequences of Nature Deficit Disorder for the development of important life skills such as creative visualisation and the ability to assess risks and select appropriate courses of action in complex situations. We read a lot in the media about business leaders complaining that school leavers and graduates cannot do mental arithmetic or write grammatically. Should they instead by concerned about the effect that a lack of exposure to the natural environment in childhood has had on these employees’ planning, problem solving and leadership abilities?

Could it be that the proponents of those much-derided, mud-spattered corporate “team building” activity days were right all along? Possibly not: the report suggests that unstructured experiences that require children to plan ahead and devise their own approaches to different situations are of the greatest value and that organised activities such as outdoor sports do not provide as many benefits, over and above the physical ones, as apparently aimless and unstructured play. Indeed, the author warns of the dangers of over-organising and over-packaging the countryside experience:

‘We should also be wary of the tendency to turn every encounter with nature into some kind of ‘interactive experience’. Nature reserves were once indistinguishable from the wider countryside; today they have so many signs, exhibits and organised activities that many visitors may never actually get to look at the wildlife they have come to see.’

So, whilst regular outdoor activity is certainly good for improving the physical health of your people and increases their ability to handles stress and avoid depression, if you want to ensure that your business contains innovators and problem-solvers, you should be questioning potential new recruits at interview less about their GCSE, A-level and Higher Education achievements and more about how much time they have spent bird-watching, pond-dipping and just messing about outdoors.

Climate Milestone Passes Un-noticed

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This article was originally published on the Sustainable Business Toolkit website in May 2013

To be fair to the Prime Minister, he did have a lot on his mind on 10th May 2013. The Conservative party was embarking on one of its periodic spasms of self-destruction, this time following the strong showing by UKIP at the Tories’ expense in the local elections the previous week. With a Euro-Sceptic backbench rebellion to add to the ongoing unrest about “Gay Marriage” among his MPs, David Cameron could perhaps be excused for allowing the latest news from Hawaii to sink below the surface of the Downing Street In-Tray.

Except this was no ordinary run-of-the-mill bulletin from the Pacific Island paradise; not a weather report of another gloriously sunny day and not the latest breaking news of spectacular surfing exploits. This time the news from Hawaii, and in particular from the Mauna Loa Observatory, was that the levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere had risen to levels not seen since the Pliocene period over 3 million years ago.

Four hundred parts per million does not seem any more momentous than when it is written in its usual, abbreviated form of 400ppm but it is an important landmark , remarkable both for its absolute magnitude and the speed at which it has come about. At the dawn of the industrial age, less than three centuries ago, the level was around 280ppm. When the Mauna Loa observatory was established in 1958, the level had climbed slowly to 315ppm. The Keeling curve that plots the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, named after scientist Dr Charles Keeling who started the Hawaiian observations, has climbed steadily upwards at an increasing rate ever since.

Analysis of bubbles of ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice sheets suggests that, for the 800,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, global atmospheric CO2 levels had remained between 200 and 300ppm. To jump from this long term stable average to the present 400ppm level in a mere 250 years represents a rate of increase – some 75 times faster than the pre-industrial average – that has no precedent in the geological record. What the evidence does suggest is that, the last time that the 400ppm threshold was crossed, global average temperatures were 3 or 4 degrees Centigrade warmer than today and around 8 degrees warmer at the poles. Reef corals suffered major extinction and areas around the Arctic Circle that are today a frozen wilderness were covered in lush forest growth. There is always a lag between the level of CO2 in the atmosphere increasing and the manifestation of its warming effects on the climate so, even if levels were to miraculously stabilise at their current magnitude tomorrow, there would still be a certain amount of warming to come. And CO2 levels show no signs of stabilising; in fact, anything but.

Even if the latest news on the global CO2 front passed the Prime Minister by, he cannot have failed to notice the report by the Government’s own Committee on Climate Change that highlighted the fact that, although domestic production of CO2 is down by 20% over the past two decades, the UK’s carbon footprint has actually increased by 10% as “embodied emissions” in imported goods have increased at a faster rate than UK-based production emissions.

This trend is cause for concern from both environmental and economic policy standpoints. If the UK is effectively “offshoring” its CO2 emissions by replacing domestic manufacturing production with imports, this is bad news for the British manufacturing sector and bad news for UK workers as jobs go to companies based overseas. It also suggests a weak base for any Green Recovery from the ongoing economic downturn. Gaining market share and decarbonising production would be significant challenges individually for the manufacturing sector to face. To ask firms to adopt low carbon technologies whilst at the same time competing to regain market share previously lost to imports is a big ask indeed.

Chancellor George Osborne has attracted a lot of criticism (not least from me) for his assertion that: “We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business”. The latest evidence suggests that we are currently failing to save the economy and, if governments do not start according the reduction of CO2 levels the priority it desperately requires, we are in very real danger of putting the planet out of business.

Margaret Thatcher – Unsung Environmentalist?

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This article was originally published on the Sustainable Business Toolkit website in April 2013

Since the announcement of the death on Monday 8th April of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (latterly Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven), the British media has been awash with tributes to, and retrospective critiques of, her record as the longest serving United Kingdom Prime Minister of the 20th Century

Whilst most of the coverage has focussed on the legacy of her economic and industrial policies including such milestones as the privatisation of many State-owned companies such as British Telecom and the long-running and bitterly divisive strikes in the mining and printing industries, little consideration has been given to Thatcher the Environmentalist.

As a trained scientist – she studied Chemistry at Oxford University and worked as an industrial chemist before entering politics – Mrs Thatcher was probably better equipped intellectually than any subsequent Prime Minister to fully grasp the fundamental science behind climate change and other contemporary environmental issues.

Although such issues did not start to be widely discussed and debated outside academic circles until the 1990s, Margaret Thatcher delivered a speech to the Royal Society in 1988 that touched on the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, the hole in the ozone layer that had recently been discovered over the Antarctic and acid deposition from power stations and industry.

This address to a British learned society, which could possibly have been dismissed as the Prime Minister, as a Fellow of the Royal Society, seeking to demonstrate her scientific credentials to her peers, was followed in 1989 by a speech to the United Nations General Assembly that contained the lines:
“The result [of human impacts on the environment] is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. Change to the sea around us, change to the atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world’s climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all.”

The fact that we may be surprised to hear such sentiments being articulated by a politician who is viewed as a champion of the Right demonstrates the extent to which the issue of climate change has become dominated by political, as opposed to scientific, considerations. Ultimately, it would seem that Thatcher could not bring herself to embrace the type of trans-national policies that are required to tackle global environmental challenges, especially when these involved challenging the hegemony of free market economics.

In her 2003 book Statecraft, Thatcher criticised the “alarmist” pronouncements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and warned that “the new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes.”

A further statement appears to foreshadow the approach of the current UK Government that action on the environment must not be allowed to derail economic growth. “Whatever international action we agree upon to deal with environmental problems, we must enable our economies to grow and develop, because without growth you cannot generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment.” One can almost imagine current Chancellor George Osborne uttering these words in support of his assertion that “We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business”.

At the end of the day it seems that the concerns of Margaret Thatcher the scientist were over-ruled by Prime Minister Thatcher the free market ideologue. With all the current debate surrounding her legacy, it is salutary to speculate what it might have been had those late 1980s speeches been translated into concrete policy prescriptions. Mrs Thatcher Saves the Planet?

Climate Change and The Wheel of the Year

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This article was originally published in The Magical Times magazine in March 2013

As I sit here writing, snow is falling outside my window. It is late January and the world outside is blanketed with a covering of white that is getting thicker all the time. The newspaper headlines are filled with the usual references to ‘The Big Freeze’ and ‘Arctic Blasts’ and their inside pages are devoted to calculating how many millions of pounds the Winter weather is costing the economy. Most workplaces will experience at least one outbreak of recrimination and backbiting about the person who missed work because of the snow while someone else, who lives further away, battled in heroically.

By the time you read this, hopefully Spring will have well and truly arrived. The Snowdrops that pushed their way through the frozen ground at the beginning of February to bring their message of hope and promise of new life will have been followed in their turn by Crocuses and Daffodils. In April the hedgerows here in the Midlands will turn white once again, not with snow this time, but with the Blackthorn blossom, the effect even more striking as the flowers appear before the leaves on bare dark twigs, unlike the Hawthorn blossom in early May which puts the finishing touch to hedges and bushes already clothed in fresh vibrant green.

The period between early February and the beginning of May, between the festivals of Imbolc and Beltane, brings the most intense and dramatic transformation of any three-month period of the year. Within the space of thirteen short weeks, the countryside will change from a bleak, possibly still snow-covered, apparent wasteland of Winter to a verdant landscape that is pulsing with energy and positively bursting with life.

But is this seemingly ageless rhythm being disrupted by changes in the Earth’s climate caused by human activity?

Although not yet accepted by one hundred percent of media commentators or at the top of many people’s lists of worries, where some of us feel it should be, the vast majority of scientists now accept that the natural fluctuations of our climate between warmer and cooler periods have been significantly altered since the Industrial Revolution by the emission of large quantities of carbon dioxide as a result of burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas to power our modern economies and lifestyles. What has been more difficult to agree upon has been the rate at which this global warming is occurring and, when we experience extreme weather events such as 2012 being the wettest year on record in England despite the fact that the early Summer saw warnings of a drought and the imposition of hosepipe bans in many areas, to what extent is this a product of a shift in the climate as opposed to the famously unpredictable British weather.

Research published in the 2011 Journal of Climate suggests that Spring in western North America has been arriving around 1½ days earlier each decade since the 1950s, based on observations of the appearance of plants’ first leaves and blossom. Of these 1½ days, the authors calculate that half a day can be attributed to natural variations in weather patterns and a whole day per decade to the effects of climate change.

Assuming that something similar is happening in Britain and Europe as well, this slow but steady shift will eventually mean that the days habitually allocated in the calendar to the seasonal festivals (Major Sabbats or Cross Quarter Days) of Imbolc (2nd February), Beltane (1st May, Lugnassadh/Lammas (1st August) and Samhain (31st October) become out of sync with the seasonal changes that they traditionally mark.

I think this is a good example of the rhythms of the Earth refusing to conform to our modern human desire to regularise, categorise and allocate them to fixed dates in our diaries. The fact that modern humans are responsible for the changes in the climate that have caused this dislocation just adds a touch of irony to the situation.

The Eightfold Wheel of the Year that is used by many Pagans of today (or “Neo-pagans” if you prefer) for ritual purposes is a modern device that was devised in the 20th Century to divide the year into neat, regular portions and to provide more festivals than history shows were celebrated in any one tradition. There is evidence that all eight festivals were celebrated in one ancient culture or another but the idea of combining them all into a single, regular cycle is undoubtedly modern. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the Eightfold Wheel – modern Paganism is a young tradition and is as entitled to devise its own ritual system as any other religion. Indeed, “walking the Wheel of the Year” gives a structure and method of connection to the cycle of the seasons to many people’s spiritual practice.

We just need to remember that the Wheel is a device that originated in a time and place where such a regular division of the year happened to fit quite well with the changing seasons so, if the seasons continue to shift, we will need to bear in mind why the Wheel came about in the first place and re-design it accordingly, even if the result is not quite as neat and regular as the original. But, then again, Nature does not seem to be as neat and regular as she used to be and whose fault is that?