Category: Politics

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Tanzania reimposes a rule banning export of animals, one day after they rescinded the ban put in place 2016

The ban was to be lifted for traders to clear their stocks, and would have been lifted from the start of June to the start of December.

Outrage forced the minister in charge to reverse the change within 24 hours.

WWF the worldwide famous conservation organisation warned on Saturday that relaxing this ban would undermine progress made in wildlife protection, particularly by encouraging poaching which has been on the decline in recent years.

Hosting 50% of Africa’s lions, Tanzania is essential for the thriving of many species and so this is a good thing.

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Apparently fossil fuel cars make ‘hundreds of times’ more waste than electric cars

It seems obvious. Into one car you simply put electrons, into the other car you pump as much as 50kg of fuel, which uses more resources?

How anyone can compare the 30kg or so lost at the end of an electric cars life, to the 50kg or so that the average combustion car burns each week, is baffling

Over the lifetime of an electric car, roughly 30kg of raw material will be used. A combustion engine car will use 17,000 litres of oil.

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Several years ago, I wrote about the Prime minister of the UK fighting against this ‘green C**P’ now they want us to look at them as the saviours of the energy crisis?

Back in 2013 David Cameron did a u-turn on government support for Wind and Solar power generation. This has greatly impacted the uptake of both – and the savings are small and will be dwarfed by the likely financial cost of the delay that they forced on us.

Gas prices have already risen by 50% and are likely to spike further later this year. The chancellor has made small moves to try to stop this (and has recently given up by promising us all money off our bill).

What is scary, is that had the Conservative government of 2013 not done what they did, we would already be generating more clean energy than that which gets imported from Russia.

Labour has pledged a 28 billion fund to lead a green recovery, his homes grant scheme has insulated just 10% of the pathetically small number of homes it had promised to insulate.

The Renewable Energy Association believe that it could build enough energy generation within 18 months to offset the loss of the terrawatt-hour imported from Russia – if obstacles were removed. Renewables are faster to come on line and cheaper than either Shale or north sea drilling.

Bizarrely, the Mail suggests that those fighting fracking are funded by Putin – a clearly stupid idea, as Putin wants fracking stopped so that he can supply the UK instead. Of course these extreme views have never felt the need to conform to something as unimportant as the truth. I would hope, however, that the absurdity of these positions would be so obvious as to make a mockery of them, and give the far right of the conservative party the backbone to do what is needed and ignore the contradictory voices coming from even further right.

We need to move away from gas. For goodness sakes, it is not a renewable resource, so one day the planet will have to survive without it. Lets make that day now, and not require our descendants to learn to survive in a world decidedly less pleasant to those wanting to live here.

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Tory MPs are arguing that the green transition is too expensive, an argument that has proved false many times over – currently being shown to be rubbish by the EU

It is a progressions that is very old

  1. Deny that there is a problem – in this case deny the increasingly clear evidence of climate change
  2. Claim that mitigation of the problem (which until recently they denied existed) is way to expensive – why would a sane person listen to some one who has been denying the problem for years
  3. Once the damage is done, say that it is too late anyway

Temperatures at some Arctic weather stations hit 30 degrees earlier this year. At the same time, down in Antarctica temperatures hit 40 degrees above normal. These readings are not anomolies. We have also seen mass coral bleachings on the great barrier reef (during a La Nina year, which is supposed to be cooler)

Scientists have predicted for decades, that climate breakdown will be incredibly fast when its starts in earnest, and at this point there will be little or nothing that we can do about it.

Have we crossed this terrifying point? We don’t know, but what we do know is that far from giving up saying it is too late and we just need to accept it, we need to accelerate our efforts to green our economy.

It is important to remember that the climate mitigation that was claimed to be too expensive, will be a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of living in a world that is subject to runaway climate change.

Despite what many right wing conservatives currently claim, if oil prices remain high we could be looking at a significant saving not a cost from these decarbonisation projects.

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The absurd case of a local mayor being imprisoned for trying to stop illegal deforestation, and how this happens all over the world

Often concessions that are granted to groups overlap with protected reserves. Obviously this should not be allowed, yet it continues. Often the company can then do great environmental damage before the error is rectified.

Ipilan Nickel Corporation began felling trees in its concession area in Brookes point Palawan, Mary Jean Feliciano moved to stop them. After sending cease and desist orders that were ignored (during which time 7000 trees were cut down) she used her authority to shut down the companies operations and demolish their onsite facilities. The company fought back, and the Philippine Ombudsman sided with the company and Feliciano was suspended for a year without pay.

By the time that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources issued a stoppage order 7000 trees in the village protected area, which operates as their water catchment area, had been cut down. This aea fell within the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscapes which is a recognized protected area.

The cutting started on May 2017. The village knew what was going on, but the mining company security guards would not let the village authorities in to stop the illegal deforestation.

What is more ridiculous is that the Companies environmental compliance cirtificate was rescinded on december 14th 2016, and on may 17, 2017 it was confirmed that the firm no longer had the permit to cut down any trees.

In July of 2017 hte Palawan Council for Sustainable Development reviewed a petition by Feliciano, recalled the clearance it had issued, and bowing to public pressure the council recongized that 80% of the mining companies claims fell within “core zones” of the protected forest – clearly illegal to cut down.

Civil rights groups praised Feliciano, but the Philippine Ombudsman found her “guilty of oppression or grave abuse of authority” and served her a year long suspension without pay. They claimed that while the EEC of the company had been revoked, they still had an appeal which needed to run its course before she undertook any action.

This suit brought by the company is a clear form of SLAPP litigation – the aim is to make everyone too fearful to try to get in their way.

Around the world companies are using legal actions to delay orders to stop damaging the environment. In many cases including deforestation, by the time an order comes through to stop cutting down forests, all the damage is done. There are places where companies will have to pay large reparations, as well as reforesting more land than they illegally deforested – this process must be rolled out worldwide.

It must become too expensive to risk damaging the environment. Another requirement is for these countries to put a system in place which stops companies delaying the answer why they carry out the work that environmental action is trying to halt.

How can we help? it is hard, but we must make our voices heard over the noise that comes from all around us.

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200 “Carbon bombs” are in the planning. What are they and can we survive them?

A carbon bomb is defined as a project (mine, oil well or similar) which if allowed to go ahead will emit 1 billion tonnes of carbon over its lifetime. A guardian analysis suggests that there are around 200 of these so called carbon bomb mega projects around the world. This is the equivalent of 18 years of total global emissions.

Despite what we know about the effects, there are still 200 “carbon bomb” plans in the pipeline
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Bwindi impenetrable forest threatened by road plans

Ugandan authorities are considering two roads that will pass through Bwindi. These roads are likely to have two devastating impacts.

Currently this forest consists of unbroken forest – but will it?

Firstly, these roads are likely to splinter the park from the connected park across the border in the DCR. As with the proposed Serengeti road, neither side of the road is big enough for large ecosystems to survive long term, therefore you are threatening one of the biggest draws of tourists to the country – these tourists if well managed bring the means to pull millions out of poverty.

If these roads go ahead, then much damage will be done. Of greatest concern is a road that would run north to south in the far west of park, cutting the park off from its sister reserves across the border in the DRC. This could well lead the the rapid loss of the mountain gorilla population

The other problem is that roads ease the progress of poachers deep into the park. It has regularly been shown that a road is often the easiest way to remove the wildlife that lives in an area.

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When was human caused climate change first noticed?

There are still a large number of people with vested interests, who are arguing that climate change science is not settled and we need to wait a bit more.

How long should we wait?

Guy Callendar released a paper in 1938 – considered revolutionary at the time, which linked fossil fuel burning to the warming of the earths atmosphere. Indeed in 1896 Svante Arrhenius a Swedish scientist first predicted that increasing carbon emissions could significantly increase surface temperatures.

In other words it is now 126 years since a scientist predicted that global warming would be likely if we continued to release carbon emissions, and a paper was released 84 years ago confirming that Scvante Arrhenius prediction was correct.

So why are we still arguing about it? Does the free market truly allow profit to be prioritised over a scientific fact that was proposed more than a century ago, and confirmed nearly a century ago? Had the world dealt with carbon emissions back then we would be looking at a very different situation.

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I am disgusted to be British after the latest move in parliament – hunting trophy import ban to be axed, but if we are ending the ban the British government must take responsibility

The British government promised to ban the imports of trophies in to the UK, yet they have given up after “wealthy peers” lobbied against the move and so it was dropped.

I have written on this issue many times over the last few years, as it was raised as an issue over and over again.

Should wealthy individuals be allowed to go and shoot members of an endangered species? I would argue no, never. However, we do not live in a perfect world. There are places where few tourists will go. If these incredible places can be protected by sustainably harvesting a small number of endangered animals I would argue that this is the lesser of two evils.

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