New forms of climate optimism

I started this blog as a contribution to a new form of environmental media. I believed that many of us are turned off by the negativity surrounding reporting on the climate and ecological emergency. I wanted to channel engagement by promoting actions each of us can take to confront this issue. I have become frustrated, however, with writing about ways of reducing our personal carbon footprints. Increasingly, I have come to see this as a distraction. It is not that I do not think individual action has a role to play; it does. Where it prevents us from acting collectively, however – because we spend all of our free time tracking down alternatives for everyday plastics, for example – I believe it can be dangerous. We are taught to perfect ourselves as individuals, but what we need is systemic change at every level of society in order to adapt to our changing environment.

I say adapt, because I also think we need a fundamental rethink in our approach to environmental issues. Too often, we talk about ‘solving climate change’ and ‘saving the planet’. These phrases are misleading. The planet will be fine without us. The reverse is what is not true. The images we saw from California correspond to 1 °C of warming. Currently, our most ambitious (and increasingly unachievable) target is to cap warming at an increase of 1.5 °C. The action plans of governments that, unlike the US, claim to be taking the crisis seriously are to continue adding warming potential to the atmosphere until 2050. At the very least, such plans imply accepting these wildfires – along with those in the Amazon, Arctic and Australia – not as other freak 2020 events, but as normal, annual occurrences. Regardless of what we do now in terms of climate mitigation – cutting greenhouse gas emissions – there is no going back from the current carbon concentration of the atmosphere. This reality is why climate adaptation is crucial: we need strategies for coping in a destabilised environment. We should not rebuild in ravaged Sonoma county, CA, for example, as it is all be guaranteed to burn again. But we will.

This kind of decision-making speaks to the dual climate science denial we see across society, and currently playing out in the US election. On one side, there is the fringe position of the Republican Party, amplified around the world by corporate press, that claims that human behaviour is not the cause of global heating. The far more prevalent variety of climate denial, embraced by the Democratic Party, consists of accepting climate science, but pretending that our futures are not transformed as a result. We see this form of climate denial in Biden’s nationalistic climate plans – sorry Joe, the atmosphere does not care if carbon is coming out of the US or China – and the videos of AOC in which she talks of Miami ‘going under water for the last time’ – how does that one work Alex? Water levels will not go down when we hit net zero.

The truth is that the Green New Deal championed by the American left is not a climate panacea that can be whittled down to appease the deficit hawks. The Green New Deal makes good economic sense, especially now as a means of creating good jobs, but in environmental terms it is a bare minimum: a stepping-stone to a broader recalibration of how we can learn to flourish without seeing out the sixth mass extinction. We also appear to be a long way from implementing this first step. We are not on track to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. On the contrary, roughly half of all human emissions have been released since the Rio summit in 1992, when we agreed that maybe someone should do something about this stuff.

The Green New Deal is not a climate panacea: it is a stepping-stone to a broader recalibration of how we can learn to flourish without seeing out the sixth mass extinction.

The current pandemic has given us a clear example of how our governments respond to crises: ignore the warning signs and scientific consensus on everything from deforestation to the mental health impacts of lockdown, put the advice of lobbyists above that of experts and, at best, act too late, leading to countless avoidable deaths. Those of us lucky enough not to have our lives or livelihoods destroyed by the disease have had to take a cut to our quality of life: masks, job insecurity, stress, less time with the people we love. World leaders are applying the same approach to the climate and ecological emergency: instead of investing reasonable amounts now that would preserve and stabilise the biogeochemical cycles on which we depend, we let them degrade, insuring that we will waste trillions on avoidable natural disasters, pandemics, and famines, while we are all forced to accept increasingly inhospitable conditions on planet Earth.

So should we just give up? Some theorists, such as Dr Mayer Hillman, believe we should stop pretending we can control climate breakdown. He compares the situation to that of a terminally ill individual who embraces their own mortality. People who do this do not tend to go on destructive binges, but instead take stock of what is important in their lives, and make the best use of the precious time left to them. Wouldn’t we all benefit from this exercise?

If I have a new aim for my blog, it is to encourage you not to be a bystander in these unprecedented times. Whether we shift out of our current inertia and transform our society depends on us.

One of my uncles once told me that he was annoyed that no government was asking him to do anything about the climate crisis. I thought about that idea for a long time and realised the principle problem with it is that it assumes that someone has a handle on what is going on and a blueprint for leading us through it. No one does. If Greta Thunberg can embrace that reality, than all of us can. It is high time that we freed ourselves of the illusion that smart people are in control.

The truth is that no one knows whether we can stabilise our changing climate and no one has a proven strategy for doing so. Nobody knows for sure that we cannot either. Is that not enough of a reason to try? We know that every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid makes a world of difference in our attempt to build a society in which we can all flourish. Just step out into the world and you’ll see how much we still have: the staggering abundance of wildlife and culture left to preserve. We also have a wealth of exciting ideas for doing so, from regenerating coral to democratising the economy. If I have a new aim for my blog, it is to encourage you not to be a bystander in these unprecedented times. Whether we shift out of our current inertia and transform our society depends on us. No one has a detailed map for steering us through the coming storm, but incredible things happen when we act collectively. There is so much wonder for which we need to fight.

PS: If you’ve found this hard to read, you’re not alone; reach out! Eco-anxiety is the rational response to engaging with these topics. I am more hopeful than I ever have been about the potential for societal change and I am doubling down on my promise to present you with new forms of climate optimism. Stay tuned.

The risks of #Resistance for the global climate response

Joe Biden’s campaign recently put forward a $2 trillion climate and jobs plan, thereby embracing a Green New Deal in all but name. The policy represents a major break with Biden’s previous position and is welcome news for anyone interested in avoiding environmental breakdown and alleviating the pain of the recession. Whether the plan should be qualified as “aggressive”, as the Guardian chose to describe it, is another question, given that the same newspaper reported that we may overshoot the first Paris Agreement target in the next five years.

As Trump’s popularity drops in key electoral college states, the policy proposal offers a glimmer of hope that the next four years could see the US finally begin to confront the climate and ecological emergency. This possibility is all the more important because the climate-science denial emanating from the leader of the world’s largest economy has contributed to widespread complacency regarding Paris Agreement pledges. Of the 197 signatories, only Morocco is on track to meet its goals.

Biden’s proposal has substantial flaws, however, notably its nationalistic bent, which may stymie international cooperation. Even more worrying is Biden’s continued refusal to take on the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry. Contrary to the declarations of Vice President Mike Pence, the idea that “Biden would destroy our fossil fuel industry” seems optimistic to the point of foolishness. The latter was all too comfortable organising a fundraiser hosted by the founder of a natural gas company and famously told a potential supporter asking if he would ban fracking to vote for somebody else.

The electoral strategy embraced by the Biden campaign risks preventing any meaningful action on the climate crisis, even if he does get elected. As #Resistance – implying that anyone who opposes Trump is an ally – has spread online, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has been busy rehabilitating the neoconservative politicians it has been running against for the past three decades. George W. Bush – the one who oversaw the murder of half a million Iraqis in order to open up the country to US oil companies – has been turned into a cuddly grandfather at a speed that would make Ronald Reagan blush. Warmongers such as James Mattis are welcomed into the Resistance with open arms the moment they stop enabling Trump’s lunatic impulses in the service of their own self-interest. The overtures to fabled Never-Trump Republicans reached new heights when the DNC invited John Kasich, a member of the opposite party, to speak at their national convention.

Presenting Trump as an aberration in American history – rather than the natural successor to Reagan, Bush and Sarah Palin – risks giving power back to the people who first made climate-science denial mainstream. Biden’s Green New Deal is a victory for the climate movement, but turning the US into a global leader on climate action will require standing up to the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.

The environmental movement’s only hope is to become anti-racist

Anti-environmental racism protesters in Afton, North Carolina, September 1982 (Jerome Friar/UNC Libraries).

Over the past month, as Black Lives Matter protests have spread around the world, activists have extended the collective conversation from extrajudicial killings and police brutality to institutional racism in areas as wide-ranging as criminal justice, housing, employment, education, healthcare and the environment. In this context, it is worth remembering that the broader fight for environmental justice evolved from the struggle against environmental racism.

The environmental justice movement first emerged in 1982 in Warren County, North Carolina. Truckers had dumped oil containing carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) along state roads and the US Environmental Protection Agency chose Afton, a predominantly African-American town in Warren County, as the site for a landfill to hold this toxic waste. Local activists rose up against the decision, aided by groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the United Church of Christ, which produced the evidence they needed to argue their case. The landmark report “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” demonstrated that race was the best single predictor for the placement of dangerous byproducts in the US. The fight against environmental racism had begun.

To this day in the US, air and water pollution disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic communities in areas ranging from Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” to Detroit and Flint, Michigan, and Richmond, California. Until now, no one has performed a large-scale study of environmental discrimination against Native Americans. African-Americans, however, are three times more likely die as a result of exposure to air pollution. As researchers are still trying to understand the link between this risk and respiratory diseases like Covid-19, the virus is hitting highly polluted areas hardest . Particulate matter could be part of the explanation for why Black Americans are dying at three times the rate of their white fellow citizens.

In the UK, living near a busy road has been shown to correlate with stunted lung growth in children. In 2013, nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, who lived just off the South Circular, died following an acute asthma attack. She had previously been admitted to hospital for breathing problems 27 times.

When confronting these figures, I cannot help but think of a quote by Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Given what we know about the myriad forms of discrimination people of colour must overcome, it is hard not to wonder how many Vanessa Nakates and Greta Thunbergs have died of asthma attacks or been shot by the police.

It is hard not to wonder how many Vanessa Nakates and Greta Thunbergs have died of asthma attacks or been shot by the police.

The effects of environmental breakdown are also pummelling communities of colour: just ask the inhabitants of predominantly Black neighbourhoods of New Orleans. When we tell people we need to think about the world we are leaving for our children, we ignore the indigenous communities dying under Jair Bolsonaro’s attack on the Amazon or the citizens of Beira, Mozambique, the first city to have been rendered close to uninhabitable by a cyclone.

Despite China’s position as the world’s current highest greenhouse-gas emitter, the climate and ecological crisis is disproportionately the responsibly of European and North American imperial powers. By contrast, most of those suffering from the emergency so far live in the Global South and bear almost no responsibility for it. The conversation on environmental reparations in the form of an international climate stabilisation fund is long overdue.

Confronting the climate and ecological emergency means recognising that it was brought about by profit-driven colonial practices that endure to this day. Our extractivist economy relies on always having another frontier, far from the glittering centre, to conquer, plunder and abandon. We are finally being forced to reckon with these practices, by the maddening tendency of global heating and pandemics like Covid-19 to disregard national borders.

Our energy system also depends on oppression and environmental racism in places like Basra, Iraq (BP) and and the Niger delta (Shell). We could imagine a capitalist, carbon neutral world that cements these systems of exploitation. We could ship the waste from our nuclear reactors off to the people dying while mining the metals we need for our electric cars. But as Bill McKidden highlights in an interview with the New Yorker, why on earth would anyone fight for that?

In a critique of white feminism, Audre Lorde declared that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” If the environmental movement hopes to preserve the ecosystems on which we depend, swapping coal-fired power stations for solar pannels won’t cut it. We needs to confront the fact that what is putting all our lives in danger is our capitalist and colonialist relationship to nature and our fellow human beings.

Transforming the global economy seem like a tall order, but this month of protests has given me a lesson in cynicism. I could not believe that the Minneapolis City Council would vote to disband their police department while admitting they do not know exactly how they are going to achieve it. This approach is exactly what is needed for confronting environmental breakdown: accepting that we might not have all the answers yet, but that the current system is killing us and needs to be rethought.

The environmental organisations I have been part of have, for the most part, been disproportionately white. Historically, this lack of diversity has been the result of mainstream environmentalists failing to campaign on the issues presented above or to build bridges with communities of colour. The failure to embrace intersectional environmentalism has led to some spectacularly tone-deaf messaging by well-intentioned people who have never experienced the effects of structural racism. The last march I attended before lockdown featured a banner reading: “Metropolitan Police, Extinction Rebellion: both working for a safer London.” At best, those who printed it must not have realised that rather than making many Londoners feel safer, the Met jeopardises their lives and wellbeing. Similarly, last October, I heard of many Rebels chanting “We love you” at the police and even sending flowers to a police station. In addition, one of the group’s white founders has repeatedly trivialised arrest and jail time, thus alienating those who had very different experiences of the British criminal justice system. Given all this, is it a surprise that XR is struggling to look like the communities it seeks to champion?

In a recent blog post, the environmental activist Leah Thomas drove home Toni Morrison’s argument that racism constitutes an endless distraction. Thomas explains how the constant necessity to justify her existence through conversations about race derails her desire to focus on climate. Writing in the Washington Post, the marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson makes a similar point ending: “So, to white people who care about maintaining a habitable planet, I need you to become actively anti-racist. I need you to understand that our racial inequality crisis is intertwined with our climate crisis. If we don’t work on both, we will succeed at neither. I need you to step up. Please. Because I am exhausted.” The environmental movement needs to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters and do the work required for the former to become a place where the latter feel welcomed and heard. We have a world to fight for together.

I will not vote for Joe Biden

Last Wednesday, Bernie Sanders suspended his presidential campaign, leaving Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. As things stand, I plan to cast a blank ballot in this November’s election. My decision stems not from bitterness that my favoured candidate lost. As Bernie repeated from the start, his campaign was about the ideas on which he ran, not any given individual. Rather my choice is the result of anxiety about the future of the United States, and the impact that the US will have on the world’s ability to prosper in the coming decades. I have already written about why I believe Sanders is far more electable than Biden – as backed up by the latest polling. Here, I will discuss the risks I see in a potential Biden presidency.

I am aware of what a Trump second term would mean. His rhetoric alone costs lives every day. COVID-19 has thrown this reality into sharp relief, but it was already true when we consider the current epidemic of transgender killings or Trump’s support for white nationalism. In addition, his rollback of environmental regulations, the pace of his appointment of federal judges, and the ever-present chance that he might lose his temper and start a nuclear war make the prospect of another four years of Trump a horrifying prospect. Nonetheless, I believe the long-term consequences of a Biden presidency could be even more damaging. Indeed, Trump is not the cause of America’s current crises. He is the latest symptom of them. If we elect another president who serves the interests of corporations over those of people, we are setting ourselves up to lose to another demagogue in 2024.

I have always been a strong believer in pragmatic politics. In 2016, for my first ever vote in a presidential election, I voted for Hillary Clinton, because I recognised the importance of fighting the rise of fascism in America. In 2017, I pushed French friends to vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the French presidential election rather than let Marine LePen get elected. I will not dutifully vote the party line this time around, however, as the Democratic Party has shown that it is more concerned with maintaining current power structures than with the welfare of the American people. It instigated what amounted to a masterful political coup in order to ensure the nomination of a man unequipped to tackle the challenges facing American society.

As we enter the decade that will determine whether we succeed in limiting global heating to 1.5C, I cannot countenance voting for Joe Biden, whose entire platform is based on taking us backwards. Indeed, the Obama administration, so fetishised by Joe Biden, was in power at an equally crucial juncture for the climate and ecological emergency. Its failure to address this crisis was not only due to congressional stonewalling, but also to Obama’s decision to bankroll the shale oil-and-gas boom.

If America plans to survive into the next century, it needs to rethink its political, economic, health, education, energy, food and criminal justice systems, to name only a few. With 78% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, Joe Biden promises that under his administration, “nothing would fundamentally change“. He not only lacks the vision for what is necessary; he bears as much responsibility for some of the biggest structural problems afflicting American society as any other current politician. Biden’s signature achievement from his time in the Senate was the war on drugs, and the mass incarceration of African-Americans he now claims to be best positioned to fix.

The best indicator of what an elected official will do while in office is not their election pledges, but their record. Joe Biden did more than vote for the war in Iraq; he championed it. He supported the USA Patriot Act. He introduced a bankruptcy bill making it harder for Americans to reduce their debts, which has stoked the current student debt crisis. He voted to allow states to overturn Roe v. Wade stating he “didn’t think a woman had the sole right to say what happened to her body“.

Anyone who is serious about transforming the global energy system must recognise that the vested interests maintaining it will oppose such changes every step of the way .

Were we to assume that the 2020 Joe edition is a new politician, however, his current platform dispels any such belief. He has promised to veto a bill making healthcare a right for every citizen. In this most crucial of decades for the climate crisis, he has been adamant in his opposition even to minimal measures such as a ban on fracking. His position is unsurprising, given his advisory staff includes fossil fuel executives. Anyone who is serious about transforming the global energy system must recognise that the vested interests maintaining it will oppose such changes every step of the way. While he continues to accept funding from the fossil fuel industry, Biden will be both disinclined and unable to push for change.

Biden has made restoring decency and civility to the White House a central pledge of his campaign. During that time, he has insulted a student, a factory worker and a presumptive supporter. He has also lied about his propagation of the myth surrounding Iraq’s so-called weapons of mass destruction, lied about his support for Social Security, and distorted the Obama administration’s record on immigration. Not satisfied with misleading the public on his record, Biden has repeatedly invented episodes from his past. He pretended to have been arrested while visiting Nelson Mandela in South Africa and fabricates stories about his involvement in the civil rights movement.

Finally, at the time of the confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas, Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee which silenced Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment. More recently, Senate staffer Tara Reade accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993. I read the allegations and found them worthy of investigation. I believe her. I will not get in arguments about which party’s sexual predator is the better candidate. I will not vote for a man who takes no responsibility for assaulting women.

I believe in making amends for past harms. I will remain open to changing my mind if Biden owns up to the mistakes he has made. This would involve apologising to Anita Hill, Tara Reade and the other women he has touched inappropriately. It would mean committing to a cabinet that reflects the policy views of a majority of Democratic voters, refusing funding from the fossil fuel industry and committing to a platform based on the science on restricting global heating to 1.5C.

I will not get in arguments about which sexual predator is the better candidate.

With our backs against the wall of climate breakdown, we may be able to weather the storm of four more years of Trump. We will not survive four more years of inaction under Biden, leading to a loss to a fascist who actually knows what they are doing.

What COVID-19 can teach us about tackling the climate and ecological crisis

With cases set to pass the million mark, the Coronavirus pandemic has taken centre stage in lives around the world. Lockdown measures offer many of us the opportunity to reflect on what matters to us and what we would like our post-COVID-19 society to resemble. Governments’ response to what Angela Merkel described as our greatest challenge since World War II shows that they are in fact capable of offering more than words in reaction to an unprecedented global emergency. For those of us intent on preventing empty supermarket shelves from becoming a regular feature of our futures, this crisis has a lot to teach us.

First, it is essential to recognise the connections between COVID-19 and the climate and ecological emergency. Humanity’s latest pandemic highlights its dysfunctional relationship with the ecosystems on which it depends. As with Ebola, the last health emergency declared by the WHO, COVID-19 first arose in another species and was transmitted to humans through a bushmeat market. In the same way that our consumption of animals that are routinely fed antibiotics is contributing to the rise of superbugs, it is worth realising that if none of us ate meat, we would not be under lockdown right now. At the very least, COVID-19 presents a good reminder of the impact our diets have on our environment.

Humanity’s latest pandemic highlights its dysfunctional relationship with the ecosystems on which it depends. 

This pandemic may not seem so unusual in a few years’ time. Indeed, global heating makes others far more likely, among other reasons due to an expansion in the ranges of many mosquito species. This pandemic is also the product of our wanton destruction of natural habitats. While this blog has too often focussed on climate, COVID-19 offers a prime example of the direct societal effects of the ecological crisis. Kate Jones, one of my professors at UCL, researches how species in degraded habitats are likely to carry more viruses that infect humans: ‘Simpler systems get an amplification effect. Destroy landscapes, and the species you are left with are the ones humans get the diseases from.’ Deforestation in particular is leading to more interactions than ever between these species and humans.

Politicians appear to be struggling to grasp these connections, however. The first noteworthy distinction between our concurrent health, climate and ecological crises concerns our national leaders’ contrasting responses to them. While the UK, for example, declared a climate and environment emergency last May, we have yet to see somber televised addresses by the Prime Minister, flanked by experts, in order to invoke community spirit. The chancellor of the exchequer has promised to spend ‘whatever it takes’ to get us through COVID-19. Where is this attitude when the prospect of societal collapse is on the line?

Additionally, the trillions – that’s with a T – currently being thrown around by the United States government, among others, tend to undermine the perennial argument ‘how are we going to pay for it?’ It seems that when the lives and livelihoods of the rich as well as the poor are on the line, we can find the money.

Our collective response to COVID-19 has demonstrated how much of an impact societal narratives have on our behaviours and how quickly we can adapt to new circumstances. A month ago, none of us had heard the phrase social distancing, yet we are now constantly aware of our proximity to others. Our routines have been upended from one day to the next, but we are finding more creative ways than ever to connect with one another. Companies are realising just how many meetings can be performed remotely. Will they continue to fly their employees around the world as much when this is over? How quickly would other environmentally destructive behaviours shift if our governments treated the environmental emergency with the gravity it requires?

Reduced human activity around the globe has also shown how fast nature can recover if given a chance. Animals are venturing back into our cities. China’s industry grinding to a halt has made air pollution levels plummet. Oil prices have followed, hitting 18-year lows.

The slump is aggravated further by Russia and Saudi Arabia increasing their production in an attempt to wipe out competition. Historically, low oil prices have slowed the progression of renewable energy, but there are reasons to believe this instance may be different. The price of low-carbon technologies, notably that of battery storage, has fallen so much that they remain competitive even with crude trading under $30 a barrel. Spurred by incentives in China, Europe and California, the replacement of conventional cars by electric is therefore unlikely to be reversed.

The big question is how will governments use the opportunity presented by the oil slump and a recession that could prove worse than 2009. They can choose to bailout the carbon-intensive industries already clamouring for relief packages and fall back on the same austerity measures which slowed recovery and caused untold suffering. Alternatively, they could impose strict carbon-reduction conditions on airlines, or even nationalise them along with failing oil companies in the goal of sustaining the latter just long-enough to insure a fair transition to renewables, thus putting them out of business.

Now is the moment for an International Green New Deal. For the first time in a generation, governments have the upper hand over corporations. The fall in oil prices means they can use this opportunity to cut subsidies for fossil fuels and enact a progressive carbon tax without punishing consumers. Our economies can be relaunched through massive investments in green technology, retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, and free electric public transport systems, not to mention creating thousands of jobs through natural climate solutions. The world that entered this pandemic will not be the same one that overcomes it. It is up to us to fight the battle of ideas that will make the latter more sustainable, fairer and humane.

The biggest way of reducing your environmental footprint? Eat more plants

The food we eat produces one quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. While we all know that not all foods have the same carbon footprint, there are a lot of misconceptions regarding the environmental impact of our dietary choices. Eating more local food can help, but its effect is dwarfed in comparison to reducing our consumption of meat and dairy. In fact, except for extreme frequent flyers, adopting a more plant-based diet is the single biggest action each of us can take to prevent climate breakdown, deforestation and topsoil erosion.

The reason for this is that the greenhouse gas produced through food transport is often negligible in comparison to that caused by farming. In the largest meta-analysis of global food systems to date, Poore and Nemecek (2018) found that, on average, the emissions from plant-based foods are 10.5 times lower than those of animal-based products. How can this be?

The explanation lies in farm animals’ enormous environmental footprint, as shown below in the kind of graph I get very excited about. First, they require vast tracks on land, both to live on, and to grow the food they themselves need to eat. As the global meat industry expands, this land encroaches more and more on previously diverse ecosystems. One of the primary reasons the Amazon fires last autumn were visible from space was beef farming. Second, like the other mammals we eat, cows are an extremely inefficient way of growing food in that they only deploy a fraction of the energy they consume towards growth, using the rest of their food to power their brain and many stomachs. Finally, as ruminators, cows fart out methane, a greenhouse gas around 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. An alternative is to eat the grains we feed them ourselves, reducing land use and liberating generations of animals from lives of misery.

As you can see in greater definition here, land use change and farming account for more than 80% of most foods’ emissions. Those attributable to processing, transport, retail and packaging are negligible in comparison. Locally grown beef therefore has a carbon footprint many times higher than plant-based protein sources, even if these are shipped from the other side of the world. Back in 2008, Weber and Matthews showed that substituting beef and dairy for another source of protein just one day a week reduces emissions more than buying all your food locally.

So what are the implications for our diets? Going fully plant-based has by far the lowest carbon footprint, even if you are eating some avocado and quinoa. In most of the world, that is still quite challenging, however. The great news is, as highlighted above, any reductions in animal products have a substantial impact.

As a indulgent Swiss sweet-tooth, I eat a lot of chocolate, dairy and coffee, all high-carbon offenders. In an attempt to reduce the emissions linked to my food, I do not eat meat, however. I never thought I would be a vegetarian, so I first started by telling myself I could eat meat once a week. That meant I was allowed to stumble and devour a burger every once in awhile. I progressively found I just did not need to. My mouth stills waters when I smell barbecue, but, contrary to what I thought before the switch, I still eat diverse and exciting meals and get a lot of my daily joy from food.

Reducing the environmental footprint of our food should not be seen as an all or nothing choice.

To me, the answer is not absolutism; rather it is being aware of the problems facing our food system and making informed choices. You might not be able to face the idea of Christmas without turkey, and that is OK. I do not believe that any lasting behavioural change comes from deprivation. Life without eggs makes me sad, so I eat eggs. That does not mean there are not excellent ethical reasons for going vegan. I simply believe it is important to remember that we can never completely avoid the systems of exploitation in which we are living – there is evidence that a large proportion of Europe’s tinned tomatoes are picked by slave labour – and that, as I have argued in this space before, individual action often is not the most effective means of enacting change. Reducing the environmental footprint of our food should not be seen as an all or nothing choice.

As with everything, I found that the key is finding enjoyable ways of forming a habit, even if that is just one delicious plant-based dinner per week – like this recipe to my favourite chili sin carne. It comes from Scott Jurek, an ultra-runner who was one of the first to contend that he did not need animal protein to power his astonishing feats of endurance. On the contrary, as he and other plant-based athletes argue in the recent Netflix documentary, The Game Changers: veganism makes them stronger. At the very least, it is clear that plants provide all the nutrients we needs – the only exception, vitamin B12, is an easy-to-find supplement – and there is ample research showing that the amount of meat in a traditional western diet is unhealthy. One of the most common concerns regarding plant-based diets, the fear of protein deficiency, is in fact one of the most enduring myths of our time. No one in the Global North is lacking protein. While it is true that veganism is not suitable to everyone, the vast majority of us do not need animal products to fulfil our dietary needs. The oat-milk icing on the carrot cake? Last year, the Lancet concluded that, as the global population increases, a healthy diet lines up perfectly with the one our environment can sustain.

PS: You can head over to Greens & Beans for more inspiration for easy and delicious plant-based meals!

If you consider yourself a climate voter, your choice in 2020 is clear

This November, I hope to cast a ballot for Bernard Sanders for president of the United States of America. With the US Democratic primary contest underway, I wanted to write a piece explaining the basis for my support from an environmental perspective.

Anyone who recognises the existential threat to society posed by the climate and ecological emergency can agree on the importance of kicking Donald Trump out of the White House. With that in mind, I believe Senator Sanders represents the best chance not only of making the world’s leading economy finally confront the gravity of our current situation, but also of winning the upcoming election.

Sanders first won my support during a 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton. When asked what he considered the greatest threat to US national security, he did not hesitate: climate change. Since then, he has adopted the most ambitious environmental platform of any candidate – I particularly appreciate the emphasis on international development as an essential component of it. Moreover, the Green New Deal constitutes the founding plank of his economic proposals. This approach is fundamental to countering the entrenched narrative that portrays climate action as detrimental to the economy, rather than a unique opportunity to make it work for everyone. Tying climate action to combating inequality makes it more likely attract mass support, one reason why Sanders has been endorsed by major environmental groups such as the Sunrise Movement.

In order to break America’s dependence on fossil fuels, the country needs a president who is ready to tackle Big Oil’s vested interests head on.

The Green New Deal highlights the unequal distribution of the impacts of global heating across society. For this reason, social justice is inextricable from mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis. Deploying a just transition away from fossil fuels must offer alternatives to those whose jobs disappear as a result of it, while protecting vulnerable communities in degraded environments. Additionally, even Michael Bloomberg, who has the most experience as an executive pushing environmental legislation, fails to grasp that the fossil fuel industry will fight decarbonisation every step of the way. In order to break America’s dependence of its products, the country needs a president who is ready to tackle Big Oil’s vested interests head on.

In 2009, President Obama’s failure to recognise the scale of this challenge led to a catastrophic cap-and-trade bill, which, if passed, would have favoured polluters even more than the status quo. Nominating a candidate who promises to return Washington to its pre-Trump state constitutes criminal negligence in the face of climate breakdown. The stakes are two high for business-as-usual. It is time to put our faith in someone who will not shy away from the coming fight.

While one could argue that a President Elizabeth Warren, for example, might aim to enact a very similar environmental agenda, I believe Sanders also has the best chance of beating Trump in November. With the Republican Party at Trump’s feet and Democrats united in their desire to defeat him, 2020 will be decided by independents. In the past, this has pushed the Democratic Party to run on a slightly more palatable version of the small-state neoliberalism touted by conservatives, in the hope of swaying moderates hovering between the positions of both major parties. The fact that the number of independents continues to rise suggests an increasing number are not undecided, but rather disenfranchised with the American political system as a whole.

In this context, Sanders’ status as a party outsider is a major asset. While Warren represents the Democratic progressive wing, Sanders has never even been a member. His ability to focus on bread-and-butter issues that resonate across the political spectrum is what generates standing ovations from Fox-News town halls. Many people view Trump voters as inherently racist and misogynistic. This view underestimates how many working-class voters – particular crucial Midwesterners who switched from Obama to Trump – did so out of desperation, believing that voting for the status quo would not alleviate their compounding economic struggles. I continue to be astounded by the argument that a country that elected a sexual predator with no political experience would find voting for a democratic socialist too radical an act. In Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, 214,000 voters swung from Sanders in the primary to Trump in the general. He won the three states by a combined total of 77,000 votes.

Finally, Sanders’ is running a campaign different to any that the country has ever seen before, one rooted in grassroots mobilisation aimed at engaging the most chronically disaffected portions of the electorate. By organising within communities and showing them how politics could work for them, Sanders’ “revolution” creates the greatest chance of getting minority and first-time voters to turn out in numbers similar to 2008 and 2012.

I continue to be astounded by the argument that a country that elected a sexual predator with no political experience would find voting for a democratic socialist too radical an act.

The last presidential election showed us just how dangerous it is to nominate an uninspiring establishment centrist. Voting for a candidate who may appear as the safest bet against Trump could well insure his re-election. For the sake of those already being pummelled by hurricanes and bushfires, as well as every future generation, now is the time for bold choices. Now is the time to vote for someone who has what it takes to win in November and fight the climate and ecological emergency with the urgency it requires.

The World Economic Forum presents a good reminder of what meaningful environmental action requires

On Monday, I joined five hundred environmental and social activists in a three-day march on Davos, where the World Economic Forum is currently in full swing. We set off from Schiers, in the Swiss Alpine canton of Graubünden, on the most picturesque protest of which I have ever been part. At every stop, we were served hot plant-based meals by the impeccable organising team, who had also booked out a gymnasium for us to sleep in en route. By far the largest group to rise up in opposition to the conference in its fifty-year existence, we comprised an interesting intergenerational mix of people, from eco-anxious students to anarchists, all singing in Swiss German, German, English, French and Italian.

In many ways, the climate crisis constitutes an ideal lens for understanding our exploitative capitalist system.

I was struck that many of our chants centred on climate justice, rather than economic inequality, of which Davos is such obvious symbol. In many ways, however, the climate crisis constitutes an ideal lens for understanding our exploitative capitalist system. Quantifying carbon emissions offers a concrete insight into just how unevenly responsibility for the current emergency is shared. Britons produce the average annual carbon footprint of someone living in Africa in just two weeks. As I discussed in my last entry, the difference in emissions between the richest in society and the rest of us is even starker.

The World Economic Forum was set up to promote better cooperation between the private sector and national governments. As one of the activists on the march put it: “I can scarcely think of an organisation that has achieved greater results.” Given that the financial instituions participating this year have pumped $1.4tn into fossil fuel investments since the Paris climate agreement was signed, I fail to understand why their CEOs are granted more access to world leaders than any other citizen.

The idea that these interactions will help “address the greatest ecological crisis of our time” as advertised on the WEF website is not just optimistic, it is impossible given the incentive to drive down prices under our current economic model. A company that seeks truly to offset its environmental footprint is rendered completely unprofitable by its competitors being free to pollute without repercussion. A good demonstration of this is Paul Polman, who has a good understanding of the environmental challenges facing us, despite spending more than a decade as the head of Unilever, one of the most environmentally destuctive companies in the world.

Gus Speth, professor of environmental law at Yale, puts it as follows: “A reliably green company is one that is required to be green by law.” The Dutch historian Rutger Bergman caused quite a stir at the 2019 WEF with his more candid framing: “Taxes, taxes, taxes and the rest is bullshit.” It is past time that we put a real price on carbon. The research is clear: at least in the short term, carbon taxes are a more effective means of cutting emissions than the cap-and-trade schemes created by the 1997 the Kyoto protocol. These could be implemented with a progressive credit system to prevent lower- and middle-income individuals being disproportionately affected by them. In this way, rather than contributing to the economic injustice which sparked the gillets jaunes movement in France, they could help reduce it.

The WEF’s commitment to market deregulation – in the energy sector, the myth of free markets translates into governments putting their thumbs on the scales in favour of fossil fuels – has stifled meaningful action on global heating. It is time we abandoned the illusion that billionaires, be they Michael Bloomberg or Donald Trump, are going to save us from the crises for which they bear so much responsibility.

Davos is another sanction of what Anand Giridharadas calls the ‘phony religion of plutocrats’: philanthropy. If the 0.1% were truly disinterested parties, instead of presuming to know how to solve the worlds problems, they would use their time in the Alps to pressure governments into making their class pay its fair share.

It is time we abandoned the illusion that billionaires are going to save us from the crises for which they bear so much responsibility.

In reaction to Greta Thunberg’s call for full divestment from fossil fuels, the US Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin – net worth: $300 million – responded: “After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us.” As Greta pointed out, despite his degree in economics, Mnuchin is no closer to grasping the the consequences of the yawning gap between global emissions and our remaining 1.5C carbon budget.

PS: If there are environment-related topics you would like me to write about, please send me your suggestions!

Going beyond individual action

One of the first entries in this blog highlighted the importance of individual action for coming to terms with our environmental crises. I remain convinced of this, but I also believe that all too often, corporations and governments push us to consider solutions at the level of the individual to what are systemic problems.

In the 1980s, Ronald Raegan and Margaret Thatcher pioneered the idea that there was no such thing as society. This message, coinciding with the evisceration of worker collective bargaining power, made us forget that our influence increases exponentially when we act as a group. The effects of no-society neoliberalism are particularly poignant in the way we think about the environmental challenges facing us today.

Pick your issue, and you will find a dominant narrative about it going away if everyone did their bit. The oceans are filling up with plastic? We need to reduce our plastic consumption and recycle more. Except there are many areas in which we have no subsitute for plastic, most of which cannot be recycled, and that, rather than recycling what they can, most governments dump their plastic waste on the Global south.

Another example of our exaggerated focus on individual choices concerns air travel. Greta Thunberg has brought new interest to the concept of flygskam or flight shaming. The images of her arriving at the UN climate summit in New York on the hull of a carbon-fibre catamaran remain some of coolest of 2019. She is absolutely right to denounce the rising amount of carbon produced by the aviation sector. Air miles often account for a huge proportion of an individuals’ carbon footprint.

For this reason, I decided not to fly in 2019. As a result, I had to factor extra time into my trips for overland travel. I found this made me appreciate the places I was going to even more, having developed a real sense of how far I had travelled to reach them. It also made the journey part of the experience, and pushed me to visit six European countries I had never been to before.

Nonetheless, at the latest climate strike in Bern, I was struck by how many of the placards denounced flying. Although flying can have a large carbon footprint for us individually, air travel only accounts for about 2.4% of global emissions. In the short term, reducing this to zero presents a real challenge. Electric commercial airliners appear far off, and it is hard to imagine a world in which people simply stop flying. Air travel, unlike sectors such as electricity and heating, is typically an industry for which we are going to need measures like afforestation to soak up the carbon we are unable to cut.

The idea that the climate crisis can be tackled through individual choices is a myth propagated by those who are currently profiting from the status quo and the destruction of our environment.

I happen to think that the falling price of air fares is a great thing, because it makes travel more accessible than it ever has been. The problem is not the working-class families taking their first overseas vacations, but those flying constantly for business meetings that could be conducted remotely. In the UK, 70% of flights are taken by just 15% of the population. We should absolutely be taxing air travel, but that tax should target frequent flyers instead of rewarding them through air-mile schemes.

These figures demonstrate the gross hypocrisy that underlies the premise that we should all do a little better, when we know that the the richest 1% have carbon footprints more than 800 times higher than the poorest 10%. The idea that the climate crisis can be tackled through individual choices is a myth propagated by those who are currently profiting from the status quo and the destruction of our environment.

Last autumn, the Guardian revealed that 35% of emissions are atributable to just 20 companies. I hope that I will see a few more placards with that on them at the next climate strikes. Given that our governments have so far shown complete disinterest in making these polluters pay for the damage they are causing, only by acting collectively can we hope to hold them to account.

PS: I have been increasingly concerned when hearing people discussing the climate emergency in isolation from other environmental crises. I have also been guilty of that, as demonstrated by the name of this blog, so in an effort to combat the trend, I have decided to rename it. Please send me all your ideas!

An update from the frontline of the fight for divestment

Upon starting my degree, I joined Fossil Free UCL, which has been pushing the university to divest its endowment for the past six years. The Investment Committee has already reduced its investment in the fossil fuel industry from £12 million to just over £1 million (exclusively in Royal Dutch Shell) and appears to be on the brink of complete divestment.

Divestment simply refers to the sale of all stock in a given company or sector and the reinvestment of the money elsewhere. Unless a huge number of shares are put up for sale, it should not affect their price, and, on its own, will not lead to a company going bankrupt. Instead, it constitutes a political statement, reducing the company’s social license to operate. It can also make it hard for a company to raise capital. Goldman Sachs have described the divestment movement as “a key driver of the coal sector’s 60% de-rating over the past five years”. 

The Fossil Free movement emerged on US campuses in 2010, notably at Harvard and Stanford. It quickly spread to Europe, culminating most recently in the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund divesting £1 trillion. Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate group 350.org, estimates that the divested funds to date amount to over £8 trillion. These portfolios include the endowments of 76 universities in the UK. UCL, which describes itself as “London’s Global University”, is lagging behind.

For the past year, I have been attending meetings with the UCL’s investment teams to discuss the merits of divestment. The reason the university has divested most of its fossil fuel holdings but retains stock in Shell resides in its belief in shareholder activism. They feel that they can achieve more by retaining a seat at the table from which to engage with Shell over its climate targets. 

There are several arguments for complete divestment. The first is purely economic: if the energy transition necessary to prevent runaway climate change occurs, big oil companies will find themselves swamped in stranded assets and tank – pun very much intended. The second is that as an institution actively involved in producing climate research, UCL should not be placing a bet on the future of the industry most responsible for the current crisis. More than anything, however, given these companies history of human rights violations and clear contempt for the preservation of our environment, we should reduce their standing in society to that of the tobacco industry.

The idea that we are currently leaving the solutions to the climate crisis up to the businesses that profited most from its creation beggars belief.

Shell, for its part, has successfully convinced many of its investors that it is serious about following the Paris Climate Agreement to maintain global heating well below 2°C. Visit its greenwashed website, and the first thing you will see are headlines about the company’s investment in renewables. Less visible will be the fact that these investments only account for 5% of its capital expenditure, with the rest going into new oil exploration. Indeed, Shell has published a series of climate projections suggesting that instead of transitioning away from fossil fuels, we offset excess emissions through carbon capture and storage (CCS) and, if necessary, geoengineer our atmosphere to block the suns rays. One problem: the technology needed for CCS on the scale demanded by Shell’s latest Sky Scenario does not exist. The dangers and caveats of geoengineering would take up their own blog post; suffice to say that this strategy involves turning our entire atmosphere into a laboratory experiment with winners (the Global north) and irreparable losers (read: Africa).

It is no surprise that Shell is not very interested in enacting the energy transition given that the survival of its current business model depends on it not happening. In order to remain profitable in the oil industry, companies must maintain a reserve replacement ratio of at least 100%. This means that the company has sufficient oil reserves to replace those currently being exploited. As soon as a company’s reserve replacement ratio dips below that threshold, it cannot continue to produce at the same rate. Such news generally causes shareholder alarm and share prices to plummet. To avoid hothouse Earth becoming a reality, however, we need to start keeping oil in the ground. Research by UCL’s own Dr Christophe McGlade has showed we have already tapped into far greater oil reserves than can be burned under a 2°C scenario.

The only way for Shell’s share price to no longer depend on its reserve replacement ratio (and this goes for all fossil fuel extractors) is to commit to becoming a renewable energy company. This change would amount to an extremely costly transformation in the short term. Luckily, Shell, which featured in fifth position on Forbes’ latest Global 500 ranking, has the capital to enact just such a transition. Instead, it poured its money into lobbying against stronger climate regulations and, over the last calendar year, paid £20 million to its CEO Ben Van Beurden for him to make speeches calling for people to tackle climate change by eating more seasonal food.

Given this reality, I fail to comprehend how I was having debates with earnest investors about whether Shell was serious about respecting the Paris Agreement. The idea that we are currently leaving the solutions to the climate crisis up to the businesses that profited most from its creation beggars belief. I am not claiming that shareholder activism cannot work. I simply believe that we cannot rely on big oil to transition away from fossil fuels at the speed required to avoid climate breakdown. As Gus Speth, the former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies puts it: “a reliably green company is one that is required to be green by law.” It is well past time for governments to put a price on carbon and make fossil fuel providers pay for the devastation they are causing, rather than subsidising them to the tune of £10.5 billion annually in the UK.

Fossil Free is meeting with UCL’s Investment Committee again on July 5th. We hope to convince them to use the endowment not merely to limit harm, but to maximise its potential positive impact by investing it in companies working on solutions to our current crises. Reinvesting fossil fuel stocks constitutes the true genius of divestment in that, if deployed at scale, it could spur the market towards a green global golden age. Stay tuned for more developments soon!

PS: If you want to join the fight for divestment, you can find the closest group to you on 350.org or get in touch with your local representatives to discuss reinvesting state pension funds, a major source of fossil fuel investment!