© Alison Walters

Really - Left Behind On GM?

This week's comments on GM crops by Environment Secretary Owen Patterson at the National Farmers Union Conference were astonishing, if not predictable. It's depressing to hear yet again how deeply our Government has bought into the rhetoric that UK farmers are somehow missing out by not being able to adopt GM crops.

In an attempt to cheer ourselves up, we can only conclude that Mr Patterson has been receiving some rather one-sided briefings. If he had been advised on the extent of the problems GM crops are causing farmers worldwide he wouldn't be seriously suggesting the UK heads down that rocky road.

There may be trouble ahead

Those GM crops that the US, Brazil and others are "ploughing ahead" with are not the miracle crops we've been promised for decades; crops that will tolerate drought, salty soils and fix their own nitrogen. No, those crops are still in the research pipeline, a pipedream draining vast amounts of funding in the hope that they will one day deliver for food security. more ...

© NASA

Ecocide: crime-fighting for the planet

** this blog is by our lawyer Gita Parihar **

It seems as if every day that passes brings news of large-scale future or current harm to the environment. Greenpeace recently produced a "Point of No Return" report highlighting 14 "carbon bomb" projects which, if they were all to go ahead, would raise global CO2 emissions by 20%, pushing us into runaway climate change.  The destruction caused by activities such as mining tin for smartphones, highlighted in Friends of the Earth's Make It Better campaign, also harms people and nature.

It is difficult to bring legal challenges in this area. In the past few weeks, a Dutch court rejected four out of five claims in a case brought against Shell for oil pollution in Nigeria. It upheld the principle that parent companies can be responsible for what their subsidiaries do in other parts of the world, but did not find the parent company liable in that particular case. more ...

© Friends of the Earth International

We need to stop burning fossil fuels. Because we just do

Not that I was much of a fan of it in the first place, but can we now scratch the 'peak oil' idea? Fossil fuels aren't about to run out, not in any kind of useful timescale anyway. Instead, buckle up for what looks like a 20 per cent increase in global oil production by 2020. 

This is what you get when you mesh together growing demand, sharply improved extractive technology and techniques, and all the wrong price signals being sent by Governments, including perverse subsidies. As energy pundit Dieter Helm has said, the real problem is not that there aren't enough fossil fuels, but that we have more than sufficient to "fry the planet several times over".    more ...

© Amelia Collins

What do they want? An action replay?

The next few weeks could be historic for our bees.

European governments are due to decide whether to act on the latest scientific evidence and restrict use of some pesticides because of 'high acute risk' to bees.

Who knows if the British Government will support the plan and start protecting bees?

Some media reports say the UK Environment and Agriculture Secretary, Owen Paterson MP, will oppose any restriction on neonicotinoids used by farmers and growers.

But during the whole 'neonics' saga he's said his Government will not hesitate to act if there is evidence of harm to bees and beneficial pollinating insects from the use of neonicotinoids.

How much more evidence is needed?

On Tuesday the Government's advisers on pesticides said there is a 'growing weight of evidence' about the risk to bees.

They had examined the latest review of risks to bees by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and scientists from EU Member States including Britain. more ...

© farmer giles

This is not a horsemeat blog - lets transform our food system

I confess I've been here before. Back in 2000 I wrote a book called Perfectly Safe to Eat? which looked at topical food scares like salmonella and mad cow disease, and additional problems associated with the UK food system. The book's publication coincided with the creation of the shiny new Food Standards Agency (FSA).

Being a hardened doom-monger, I suggested the FSA may not be fit for purpose if it wasn't tough enough on bad practice or able to address the drivers causing our increasingly broken food system. These included the over-dominant food retail sector, poor deals for farmers and a lack of control over junk food marketing.

Clearly, and depressingly, it's done neither - despite oh so many meetings, roundtables and expert reports on what needs to change.

But maybe we are now on the cusp of a real transformation, given how much the horsemeat saga is revealing about our complex and uncontrollable food chains. Across the board - from political leaders to ordinary consumers - we've had enough. We're asking why this keeps happening. And the wider, deeper problems in the food system are getting a valuable airing. more ...

© jurvetson

Review of news, views and action - January 2013

Fear not, President Obama will save the day. After defeating Mitt Romney in the US Presidential election, Obama used his inauguration speech to tell us that he gets climate change and he's going to do something about it.  Whilst it would be easy to be cynical and dismiss the speech - or to be analytical and say that the maths in Congress makes his aims difficult - it is a very welcome start to the year.

Not the same can be said about David Cameron's speech on the European Union, which as our blog shows, makes no sense from a environmental perspective because, as we all know, global and regional pollution requires global and regional solutions. Even now, the EU looks set to take action on pesticides that endanger our bees whilst the UK Government dithers - although thankfully some retailers are responding to our pressure and scores of MPs are supporting us.   more ...

© think4photop

Yee-haw! Osborne's oil bonanza

Fossil fuel subsidies are a really bad idea: they increase the risks of climate change, keep economies hooked on oil and gas, give unneeded strength to the arm of some of the world's biggest, dirtiest corporations, and make it harder for clean energy to break through.

But our new research shows that the Chancellor, George Osborne, appears not to think so. He has provided the best part of £1 billion worth of tax breaks to oil and gas producers in the last ten months alone, as Larry Elliott covered in the Guardian earlier this week.

Friends of the Earth's research quantifies by how much the Chancellor's tax breaks for oil and gas production, called "field allowances", have been massively ramped up since Budget 2012.

Field allowances work by reducing the amount of tax that that certain types of field have to pay on their profits. They are deliberately designed to encourage oil and gas extraction from smaller, declining or tricky fields, where it would otherwise not make economic sense to do so. That is: the Chancellor is fiddling with the marginal economics of oil and gas investment decisions, to make sure the pumps continue to, er, pump. more ...

© Marten van Dijl/Milieudefensie

Breakthrough ruling in the Hague on Shell's Nigerian subsidiary

Yesterday in the Hague a judge ruled on claims against Shell's Nigerian subsidiary and its Dutch parent company, the multinational Royal Dutch Shell, calling on Shell to address four cases of oil pollution in Nigeria.

Four Nigerian farmers and Friends of the Earth Netherlands brought the case. (Pictured right - one of the plaintiffs, Eric Dooh, near his village in Ogoniland.)

It is unique - as it's the first time the Dutch multinational has been brought before the court in its own country for environmental damage caused abroad. It's also the first time Shell has been ordered to pay compensation for damage caused in Nigeria.

The court ruled that Shell's Nigerian subsidiary was liable for failing to prevent the pollution of farmlands at Ikot Ada Udo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. The level of compensation payable will be determined at a subsequent court hearing.

The court did not return a similar verdict in the cases brought by the plaintiffs from Goi and Oruma communities, dismissing the claims relating to wells in these communities. The plaintiffs and Friends of the Earth Netherlands plan to appeal this ruling, and in particular the point of principle about the liability of the Royal Dutch Shell (RDS) parent company. more ...

© Thinkstock

Why Friends of the Earth supports the call for a sugary drinks tax

Friends of the Earth has joined more than 60 other organisations to support Sustain's new report calling for a sugary drinks tax. The report, covered in the Guardian and Telegraph, argues that a 20p per litre sugary drinks duty could be used to create a Children's Future Fund that would invest in programmes to promote children's health and the health of the environments they grow up in.

Obesity is a sign of a broken food system, and sugary drinks are one part of the problem. More fast foods, snacks and soft drinks are consumed in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, and fruit and vegetable consumption is well below daily recommended levels. Meanwhile, the production of sugary drinks is extremely energy and water intensive, huge sugar plantations, for example in Brazil and India, are damaging to ecosystems and a drain on increasingly scarce resources like water, and plastic bottles and cans contribute to unnecessary levels of refuse. more ...

What has the European Union ever done for us?

** This blog first appeared on politics.co.uk **

Do you remember the tabloid headlines about the UK being the dirty man of Europe? The olden days when Britain was awash with sewage on our beaches, acid rain gasses belching from our power stations and drinking water contaminated with a cocktail of chemicals. I wonder whether David Cameron thought about this as he complained about EU rules on the environment going too far when he promised a referendum on membership of the EU this week.

The blunt fact of the matter is that EU rules have done a much to help improve environment standards in the UK, and continue to do so.

Previous Conservative Governments have actively championed the development of EU environmental rules. Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control - to tackle pollution from factories - was pushed through in 1996 with Conservative support to ensure a level playing field for industry across Europe, after they'd previously introduced rules to tackle the problem in Britain. more ...