Owen Paterson has carried the latest #Badger Cull debate in the House of Commons and will proceed to instruct the #NFU licensed marksmen to undertake a controversial slaughter of significant numbers of badgers in two trial areas.
The campaign and debate have been rigorous an applied scientifically in the main by the opponents of the #cull setting themselves against an entrenched and dogmatic Minister.
Researching behind the scenes has repeatedly exposed the matrix of links and associations between government,agriculture,hunting and the predictable vested traditional interest groups all reinforcing each others perspective to the exclusion of any scientific or inconvenient truth.
Despite the vigorous public opposition of a passionate and well organised anti cull lobby Government , as embodied by Owen Paterson , never altered its position even in the face of concerted political pressure and scientific reason.
That inflexibility and general indifference to anyone other than vested interest groups that support the government almost as a reflex and badge of identity , may yet come to haunt this Government in the long-term.
It is important that I accept I might be proved wrong by events but if that is the case I based all my argument on the best scientific opinion available to the general public and never once avoided facts or information that emerged in several months of campaigning to stop the cull.
I can find no coherent scientific support for the Paterson/Defra postion that sustains careful examination.
If argument supported by best evidence and reason cannot prevail what hope is there for the democratic process.
British parliamentary history is riddled with inflexible political strategies that came off the rails , sadly on this occasion it will be at the expense of a summarily executed badger population unless someone intervenes.
I have other issues that must take priority in terms of my own immediate activity but I fear that others deeply upset by Owen Patterson and the NFU may find themselves now utterly frustrated by the democratic process and recourse to direct action .
The course of this activity will be determined by how rigid the #Cull is applied but expect to see television images parallel to those of the last miners strike if sides become entrenched.
How can we as a society either afford the cost of maintaining a police presence or the consequences of the social and political division that will result?
Why did David Cameron allow this situation to develop and Owen Paterson to lead policy taking control of the Conservative party ?
All these matters will unwind in the coming months and there may yet be a few unexpected twists and turns but science and common-sense are damaged ….we shall have to wait to see to what extent and if matters can be repaired.
For Badgers: hopefully they can be protected by those dedicated campaigners who will maintain a vigil.
SteveTomlinSustainability.
Asthall Leigh.
June 5th 2013
Theoretically today marks the beginning of the bTB Badger #cull “trials” despite months of fierce and passionate campaigning by those of us opposed to such an ill conceived policy.
I have always taken the position that The Government have ignored the best independent scientific opinion and pursued an approach that will in time prove costly and flawed.
I am aware there are many opponents marching against the cull today in London that farmers would describe dismissively as taking a soft position that fails to understand the commercially devastating consequences of bovine TB but that view fails to acknowledge the hard nosed science and best research opinion arraigned against the NFU and it’s supporters.
The science says the cull will be ineffective and that is a considered and substantiated opinion of those who have conducted two decades of thorough and rigorous study.
Farmers and Defra mutter to themselves in superior tones that the opposition is “woolly” and has failed to understand the problem; comforting themselves by repeating the received wisdom that has done the rounds for years and believing that makes them beyond reproach.
Sadly their, view which may prevail in the short run, has no foundation in science unless our scholarly scientists have misrepresented the facts.
If bigotry prevails over science, Owen Paterson and the government he represents will have perpetrated a grave misrepresentation and breeched irrevocably public trust in the farming sector.
Suffice to say the following weeks may see conflict and confrontation and one can only hope the worst excesses of entrenched positions do not materialise . If regrettably division and frustration are the winners, we are all losers .
As a constituent of the Prime Minister I would not be able to vote for an administration that ignores logic and is hell-bent on the unnecessary destruction of wildlife.
Defra, NFU and Owen Paterson ……you may have gained a pyrrhic victory but history will find you out.
Steve Tomlin
Asthall Leigh June 1st 2013
Why so long since the last blog ?
I have been thinking ………and can see no pathway through the current malaise on climate change or any sign of conviction to pay more than lip service to addressing the problem by political leaders.
Today R4’s #Today Programme announced that “officially” we have arrived at the much predicted 400 parts per million threshold of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
If not sanguine there is a resignation about this event that reminds this sixties child of Gil Scot-Heron’s#The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
Not it’s literal detail but the sentiment that our politicians are sitting on their hands praying the inevitable consequence of their own inaction will not rebound or ever happen if they continue to look away.
Gil Scot-Heron song exemplifies the condition that completely fails to understand reality.
More frighteningly he identifies the paralysed inaction of confused , deluded and unimaginative individuals who have come to expect the political reality to exist in a stable state without taking any responsibility for it’s process or soul.
We are in fact as a society #watching and waiting in terms of the climate debate and not demanding action to alter the consequences of our behaviour. This fatalism , and it must be stressed it is our own inaction, cannot be a transferred responsibility to others .
The “revolution” is not to be televised….there will be no re-runs ….the revolution will be Live” to remember Heron’s words.
Months ago I reported the 400 parts per million threshold breached and have spoken of “passing the fulcrum of no return“, but nothing changes dramatically enough to be significant to alter the course of our own destruction.
I have struggled to write in recent weeks for fear of simply providing more verbiage that alters nothing and out of an academic egotism that I will marginalise my own work by being too extreme and over-stated.
I know that beating people over the head with information often alienates more than it improves but at what point do we recognise the fate of the planet and the threat to our very daily existence before we change our lifestyles.
It is no longer theoretical we are now in a terminal behaviour pattern and must act.
Television will not mitigate the problem …you cannot “stay home turn on and cop out“… “it will put you in the drivers seat” ……
to quote 1970’s Small Talk … The revolution effects you !!
Steve tomlin Sustainability
Asthall Leigh
May 11th 2013
Day#1282
Recently I expressed concern the proposed #Badgercull and bTB debate was in danger of becoming viciously acrimonious and suggested that Owen Patterson was a protagonist of unfettered free-market policies which might herald a transformation of the fundamental nature of the rural landscape. With the prescience of fortune I reflected how Harold Macmillan was drawn to challenge #Margaret Thatchers government of the day to withdraw the emotive slur that the miners were the “Enemy Within” in the interest of avoiding further division at a time of heightened social and political confrontation.
Whilst holding no brief for the late Mrs Thatcher , I recoil at some of the anger fuelled and venomous comments that are flying about in the immediate aftermath of her death.
I opposed her in office unequivocally and can never forgive her for the manner in which she altered much that I held to be important in the established fabric of Britain.
I carefully say “altered” when many would say destroyed and vilified because I sincerely believe much of the power politicians like Margaret Thatcher wield is derived from the re-action they provoke and they are best diminished by understatement.
Geoffrey Howe dismantled Thatcher in the House of Commons with a resignation speech that was “quietly lethal” and “calmly delivered spite” as revenge for the bullying his leader administered to the moderate long suffering Howe.
Thatcher celebrated confrontation and given all the power of the British Prime Minister she was more than equal to her equals.(1) Out of confrontation she fashioned a celebrity by justifying all situations referenced to her own will and strength to resist regardless of subject or substance.
As we inevitably undergo saturation coverage of her political legacy it offers an important lesson for those campaigning against governments of the day .
Arthur Scargill tried to take Thatcher and McGregor her champion head on with virulent and uncompromising rhetoric that merely gave the queen of confrontation the easy option to play the need for law and order card , marginalising Scargill as extremist and unreasonable.
Kim Howells (South Wales, NUM) and Mick McGaghey (Scottish Mineworkers Union) both privately counselled a more flexible approach and I recall a late night meeting in Blackpool during the 1980’s strike ,with the Scot heavily imbibed, excoriating Scargill in private for only knowing confrontation whilst miners starved.
This was never reported.
The relevance, turning back to the impending badger cull, is the anger for those of us opposing this unscientific policy, should be carefully directed and not through frustration be permitted to degenerate away from our considered and science based position.
In recent weeks there is evidence of increasingly angry exchanges between elements on both sides of the debate. I believe some of this confrontation is deflecting from the need to carry the farming community with us and to make the case we all need to contribute to a soundly scientific approach, that will develop best practice for removing this dreadful disease from the national herd.
There are no winners if the outcome is a slaughter that leaves the problem unresolved and a resentment and bitterness that will not be easily healed in the aftermath.
Macmillan pleaded for patience and the fortitude to work together at all costs to avoid social and political division that would wreak havoc.
Thatcher would have called for her opponents to “bring it on” which the wisdom of the elder statesman understood achieved only contempt and a memory harbouring bitterness.
Stevetomlinsustainability.
Asthall Leigh .April 09 2013
(1) adapted from the Greek: Primus inter pares First amongst equals or peers.
Anthony Sampson :Anatomy of Britain described the Prime minster as “First Amongst Equals …with the power of a dictator ” as I recall
Michael Heseltine’s intervention(1) in the financial crisis to-day expressing concern the UK lacks the will and resolution to achieve economic change because Britain suffers from affluence complacency, reminded me of the late Harold MacMillan’s (2)intervention at the height of Thatcherism .
Macmillan expressing shock that miners should be regarded as the Enemy Within, which might be even more relevant on the eve of what I believe will be a catastrophically divisive policy decision by #Owen Paterson to go ahead with the #badger cull.
Hesseltine’s reknown quality has always been to grab headlines and be glamorously correct after the event.
MacMillian’s comments came as a reflection of deep concern by a former Prime Minister(1957-1963) and a very senior statesman who saw Britain being driven apart in the Miners strike (1984-85) by a government he perceived to have abandoned traditional core values of One Nation Conservatism .
He was concerned that Margaret Thatcher and the leadership of the Conservative party had divorced itself from orthodox consensus to the detriment of the broader nation in the eyes of the Etonian patrician, who once extolled “Britain had never had it so good” whilst Heseltine seems to imply “we have it too good for our own good!” .
I am drawn to make the association between MacMillan’s concern for the nation being torn apart those years ago and the present conflict between the two sides of the #Bovine Tuberculosis debate because matters have reached a critical and deeply impassioned moment and before events become too heated to retrieve what will be a tragic situation potentially leaving our nation divided and unable to turn back.
The #cull is scheduled for July 2013 despite the scientific weight of opinion indicating that it will be ineffective or only marginal in its attempt to reduce infection within the national dairy herd.
Rather than address the detailed scientific issues again, despite previously vigorously campaigning against the cull, I am concerned now to address the social consequences if the government and specifically Owen Paterson persist with their expressed intentions .
The consequence of headlines and news broadcasts describing the destruction of up-to 10,000 badgers will unleash a resentment and anger that will leave the already estranged farming community even further isolated and their opponents furious and in a hostile frame of mind that will not recover or go away quickly..
All farmers will inevitably suffer from this anger and will be characterised collectively as indifferent and self-interested regardless of their individual dispositions.
If as is suspected the Badger cull is a distraction from deficiencies of forthcoming government policy proposals the farmers may find themselves without public support when they most need it in the not too distant future.
The public ,whilst still purchasing from the big supermarket chains, have in recent years understood the pressure adversely exerted upon farmers in their efforts to supply quality home-grown goods for a commercially viable return.
That sympathy may well evaporate.
Paterson is a free-marketeer and will eventually remove subsidies that protect small farms.
Who then will farmers have to stand up for them ? …certainly not the ground of Middle England they are choosing to alienate by killing Badgers..
I draw the association with Macmillan’s concern for a divided nation from my own memories of the 1984-85 Miners Strike that decimated the traditional mining communities and left them utterly bereft of hope for many years.
During the strike living in an affluent , albeit radical Cotswold community, in the Stroud Valleys we provided support and sustenance to the Cwm , Ebbw Vale, Marine Colliery miners and families in South Wales for almost 2 years and came to know their stories and lives as friends.
Coming and going with community arts entertainment and welfare support programmes I witnessed how embedded a hatred of an insensitive London based government could get when matters became so polarised.
People almost starved and were desperately proud to support their own families and communities whilst the NUM national leadership and government fought from rigid positions on both sides.
Following the eventual return to work behind their banners and colliery bands they enjoyed a brief respite before they discovered too late the industry was in terminal decline velocity and the “valleys” were spent and destroyed……. if never defeated.
The residual anger was tangible and still haunts many communities to this day.
You cannot repair such anger in a single generation.
Given our nations current economic and environmental difficulties our society can barely afford further, let alone deep divisions, if a common objectives and united political will are fragmented by bitter rows over bTB.
Heseltine is right to point out the need to be unified and purposeful but there is a further historic connection of fate that befalls the farmers and former miners …..
The miners were led by a powerful and rigid leadership that enjoyed class confrontation before a negotiated arrangement.
The NFU like the NUM of the day is leading its membership with a closed mind, preferring to posture rather than understanding the longer game or the virtues of flexibility and gentle persuasion .
The NFU leadership is intransigent and committed to oppose scientific opinion and public concern.
Ten thousand carcasses are not going to change the fate of the farming community positively and someone has to intervene to call for a better approach that will carry the general public and protect the long-term fortunes of agriculture or Macmillan’s ghost may reappear and farmers like miners may become an insignificant sector spoken of in the past tense.
Stevetomlinsustainability .
WordPress.com
Asthall Leigh
(1)March 25th 2013http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-michael-heseltine-fears-british-people-are-too-rich-to-push-for-economic-recovery-8547641.html
Macmillian (2) Viscount Ovenden, Earl Stockton 1894-1986 IN November 1984 He criticised Margaret Thatcher for treating the “brave men who helped defeat the Kaiser and Hitler…..as the Enemy Within”
(2a) ” We used to have battles and rows but they were quarrels and we got over them”
Rather than gloat about campaigners in Gloucestershire having succeeded in stopping the construction of a proposed #incineration plant(1) and setting aside the technology issues which should have aborted the project from the outset, I am concerned that significant lessons are understood from this protracted and at times bitter environmental planning exercise.
The refusal by the Gloucestershire County Council Planning Authority to allow permission to proceed with an incinerator plant to dispose of refuse and waste should not be seen as a Luddite act or nimbyism, but rather the defeat of a technological approach to material handling that should be removed from the recovery hierarchy for all time and probably the seminal point at which materials described as “Waste ” should be conveyed to the historical record for future generations to marvel at our total failure to understand the value of “resources”.
Stepping aside for one moment from the main issues,had incineration technology gained approval, the people of Gloucestershire would have been locked into an inflexible contractual commitment that might not have been reversible for several decades and not enabled the adoption of other rapidly advancing more enlightened approaches .
Not to mention the profligate waste of resources incineration reinforces and the convenience factor that it encourages over the need to address consumption and higher carbon recovery methodologies.
I have written for more than a decade that we may yet mine existing landfill sites to recover precious buried resources at some point in the future and nearly 25 years ago, when I was MD at Reclamation Services Ltd (2) I took a front page advertisement in the #Stroud News& Journal asking …When you throw away materials …WHERE IS AWAY ?.… in an attempt to challenge members of the public to consider disposal pathways, long before it was fashionable let alone the greatest imperative and arguably the most critical consideration in this age of climate and carbon crisis.
Our planet is finite and resources are more fiercely competed for by our international competitors than ever before at considerable and ever increasing cost not to mention the scarcity and strategic problems of the global economy. Even if we could afford previously to be wasteful we certainly do not have that privilege as we confront the need to reduce our #carbon footprint and the cost of energy which needs to be sustainable.
Returning to the main issue.
Why is it that we have so much technology, knowledge and experience yet fail to implement policies and apply the best thinking at a planning level that could resolve our difficulties.
Its too easy to blame capitalism ,corporate might and political masters although they are part of the equation and need to be understood.
On this occasion Javelin Park provides a perfect example of the mechanics of decision making and the way issues unfold.
The proposers of any incineration recovery scheme are looking to capitalise on an opportunity that blatantly exists and needs resolving nominally municipal waste.
Incineration is plausible and seemingly convenient. Plainly the operators can see the profitability in the provision of a service that most local authorities would identify as politically and socially important. It may not be very glamorous but un-emptied refuse is the very blight of any local authority Environmental Services Department and ratepayers do not intellectualise the merits of inefficient disposal pathways. They blame, and when they call the local authority reception desk to complain to their respective ward representative, their Councillor who in turn complains through the appropriate channels to the “officers of the council”.
Anyone in local government knows what happens next if officers haven’t addressed the problem *yesterday*: the officers are arraigned at the next full council meeting with outraged indignation particularly by members who know that *grandstanding* grabs headlines in local newspapers in a way that quite correspondence exchanges go unnoticed ,even if just as effective.
The point I am labouring, is in a chain of blame the easy option “to do *Something* and Quickly” is often to adopt the line of least resistance and find *a solution* which may not be the better long term resolution but gets council officers and executives off the hook.
I do not mean to diminish the integrity of all council officers but I have seen time again officers lambasted and blamed who are then reduced to popular pragmatism to avoid sometimes vicious verbal assaults to satisfy political motives.
All this in the context of ever changing criteria and financial austerity being leveraged by Central Government pressure to “do more with less”.
Hardly an atmosphere that encourages long term planning or enlightened thinking. More members of the public should try sitting through a full council agenda which is often mind numbingly complex and very hostile even in the age of cabinet councils.
This brings me onto the actual councillors who are in the main decent law abiding people often pitched into power by the internal vagaries of their constituency parties without training or support services. Whilst diligent and overtly conscientious councillors come briefed and researched to Full Council Meetings many are straight from work or simply overwhelmed by the detail which they trust to “the officers” integrity to provide.
Whilst I have sat through some of the best discussions and briefings at council meetings , generally they are not good forums for complex issues where the best outcome might be counter intuitive or need advanced technical expertise which exhausted officers are not going to volunteer to provision .
I am avoiding all issues of vested interests corrupting decisions because it deflects from the real human structural problem of our system of local government and is often more imagined than real.
Returning again to my theme. Given the context described above when an issue of civic waste disposal arises and a plausible scheme which appears to all intents and purposes to provide a practicable solution, it is not so extraordinary that a lay council seizes upon the option before them.
Mention “recycling and its merits“, which can be easily understood when included in an election manifesto and the association with “greenness” and “energy recovery from waste” as a bonus and the average layperson is satisfied they are being constructively positive.
This I contend is central to the problem .The main cause of so much misinformation is the use and abuse of the semantics and language we use.
Aided and abetted by decades of public relations the expression “recycling” has come to be associated with “Green”, environmental friendly and positive action. This misnomer has become entrenched and its only in the last 10 years, with our concern and understanding of embedded carbon values, that we have come to understand how we delude ourselves with recycling as a “comfort blanket” to offset our sense of knowing outright consumerism is no longer tenable.
If we reuse materials we recover the maximum embedded carbon value. Ideally we would reduce our consumption and items such as packaging would be minimised and re-useable.
We need to understand that when we dispose of an item we lose the cost/value of the carbon utilised in the manufacture of the product.
When we demolish a building wholesale we can claim to “recycle” upward of 90% of materials but probably only recover 5-10% of the embedded carbon value. We need to up-cycle and drive the recovery process higher up the identified EU waste hierarchy .
We need to invert the hierarchy pyramid. Placing reduced consumption, reclamation and reuse above recycling and using landfill as an option of last resort storage for future extraction .
We need to up-cycle and minimise recycling.
To bring this back to why politicians and the public are generally confused and thereby enable the belief that ” recycling” is a panacea I would like to illustrate the problem by reference to my experience at the time of the Stratford Olympic Games 2012
Charged, as part of the core team (3), with the task of creating a basis for a sustainable games by the World Wildlife Organisation and working for both Bio-Regional Ltd and The Hyder Corporation Sustainability Division under James Hurley, we produced a component response to the brief which enabled the Olympic Delivery Committee to speak of a Sustainable Olympic Games in absolute terms.
Much loud exclaiming of the virtues of our sustainable protocol followed and I enjoyed boasting of my involvement naively believing we had achieved a considerable breakthrough in national public civil engineering par excellence .
It was to maximise reuse and environmentally sustainable materials throughout.
Post games I received the reports of the audited outcome and with banner headlines that heralded the success of the project as 97% sustainable .
Remarkable . But How was this achieved ?
Sadly it soon became clear that by recycling materials via the conventional demolition process i.e crushing to aggregates, recycling metals and incineration for energy recovery we had achieved 94% sustainable activity.
Closer examination revealed that only 2-3 % had been reclaimed recovered ,de-constructed or reused.
Disguised as ” recycling” with the general public uncertain of the difference, when spoken quickly by politicians wishing to bathe in the implied reflected glory of the Games general success ;all was deemed to be well in Denmark.
No headlines for carbon recovery failure . But the public were persuaded they had witnessed a sustainable games and the warm glow of the recycling comfort blanket had yet again disguised the truth.
I apologise for the length of this exposition but it is complex and I have great sympathy for local authority members who strive to understand the green deception that allows negative processes to masquerade as honourable in the name of re-cycling.
If the general public can be persuaded of the important difference between Reuse and Down-cycling (recycling) and the importance of embedded carbon recovery become as familiar as “recycling” (down-cycling) in the popular vocabulary then we can change the playing field in favour of true environmental sustainability.
Stevetomlinsustainability.
Dedicated to @Glosvain and their campaign team and published in haste !
Prepared as I visited the dentist in response to a Twitter conversation with @Brianat Rodboro @Katiejarvis @Stellaparkes following Gloucestershire local Authority Refusal of Planning permission for an Incinerator at Javelin Park.
InTransit from Astall Leigh to Witney March 22nd 2013
(1) Javelin Park Gloster . Unanimous refusal
(2) MD of Reclamation Services Ltd ,which was the holding company of Masco Ltd t/as Minchinhampton Architectural Salvage Co. Astondown . During which time I was a consultant stakeholder with Bio Regional , Croydon;The Building Research Establishment, Watford; and a consultant advisor to Hyder Corps, Bristol working for Atkins T1 for The Olympic Delivery Authority. (ODA).
(3) Bio-Regional were the appointed Agent of WWO and I was a stakeholder consultant working with Jonathan Essex providing demolition recovery and reclamation advice.
Recently challenged to justify my involvement in the #Badger Cull debate I found myself causing more confusion than illumination to those who know my work as an environmentalist campaigning for carbon reduction and material resource efficiency. Why was I concerned about #Badgers and farming policy and surely it was a distraction?
If only life was that easy.
Some months ago I was minding my own business quietly waiting for a Parliamentary Select Committee to commence and overheard Owen Patterson make a statement on #Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) that I knew to be in conflict with the best received scientific opinion.
The basis for my re-action was a coincidence of circumstances going back many years.
I had worked for the owners of Easter Park Farm and become friends with several of the occupants of the site in Gloucestershire adjacent to Woodchester Park where a group of scientists (1) had conducted badger research since the 1970’s.
Coming and going from the site periodically I encountered the research group and came to know their work.
Subsequently they transferred to Aston Down where DEFRA established a research centre continuing the work carried out in the Woodchester Park area. This facility was immediately next to my architectural salvage yard (2)
Sharing frequent informal encounters as neighbours I came to have a reasonable grasp of their work protocols and on occasions when I challenged individual scientists they rolled their eyes in an attempt to be discrete but when confronted with questions “why had the research gone on for so long ?”… and “why after such lengthy research were there no conclusions to settle matters ?”…. their response can be summarised by polite expressions of frustration and statements that they had not produced the results that government were satisfied with.
The issue might have rested there but for two recent parliamentary statements involving #Owen Paterson, the first a about the link between Badgers and bTB that contradicted what I knew to be the scientific truth and the second about Ash Tree Dieback , (Chalara Fraxinea), which a great friend ,who is a leading arboriculturist, had many months previously told me about as a growing widespread threat.
Owen Paterson told the House of Commons that it was identified “recently and isolated in East Anglia” with a bland indifference that I knew not to be the truth.
The combination of the two events angered my sense of justice and I found myself increasingly engaged in the discussion of these issues by default.
Why? well not everything in life is planned, but I find Ministers who distort or who are “economic with the truth“, trying to slip under the radar before they are discovered, highly duplicitous.
I followed up the bTB issue by obtaining copies of the latest House of Commons Select Committee transcripts on their investigations into Defra and bTB.
I was shocked to discover The Independent Scientific Group (ISG), carrying out the research, had been dismissed by Prof Sir David King , who in turn had been requested to reinstate or at least resume discussions with the ISG ( Lord Krebs) by the Select Committee ; guidance which it appears he ignored.
Looking through the ISG Report, which King was indifferent too, it became clear that the scientific evidence was being diminished for the convenience of The Government and the farming community,who being utterly despondent where in no mood to be reasoned with.
…..and so it was that I got involved, and as a countryman I remain deeply concerned that this appalling disease is being mishandled by a #Culling policy that is not supported by the scientific evidence.
It remains outside the scope of this blog to analyse the depth of the problem, sufficient only to say that logically better bio-security and an accelerated comprehensive vaccine programme would mitigate the situation before this divisive and brutal cull proceeds .
So that is why ...science should not be inconvenient to government and decent people care about a wide range of issues regardless of their specialities.
Living in the Cotswolds badgers are part of our heritage and bio-system and should not be arbitrarily destroyed for want of a more scientific approach.
In response to @zimmer_donna and others
Stevetomlinsustainability.
Asthall Leigh March 20th 2013
(1 )Easter Park Farm, Nympsfield was the original research station which I believe was linked to Bristol University and became Defra’s defacto principal research vehicle for Badger Research under various titles until it was fully subsumed by DEFRA at Aston Down.
(2)MASCo Ltd Minchinhampton Architectural Salvage Co was my business for Twenty Five Years.
(3) http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=lord%20king%20defra%20badger%20research&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.defra.gov.uk%2Ffoodfarm%2Ffarmanimal%2Fdiseases%2Fatoz%2Ftb%2Fisg%2Fdocuments%2Fisg-responsetosirdking.pdf&ei=oRhKUfiaC6q50QX9lIDYCQ&usg=AFQjCNHgg4VINvQxPaJFPjHH3Qj5vz_NqQ
#Climate deniers often recourse to objecting that others should change their behaviour first.
Their defence contests that altering one’s own actions unilaterally will have a prejudicial effect, rendering oneself at a commercial disadvantage whilst competitors remain unrestrained.
The other rather pathetic excuse for not initiating action is our own implied relatively small contribution to the totality of environmental problems compared to the demonstrably enormous scale of the global situation.
So why indeed should we act and what should our motives be?
Firstly the judgement of our own contribution is often both seriously misrepresented and minimised whilst, and secondly, the positive actions of others are ignored or obscured by the means of comparison. We use our relative smallness say compared to China to obscure the truth of the facts.
Whilst we may protest our contribution is a small percentage of total # global pollution, we conveniently ignore the fact we generate a disproportionately large amount comparative to our land mass and population, and we consume a seriously greater amount of materials and goods compared to our relative size. Estimates vary between one and a half to three times(1) greater the amount of energy and consumables we use compared to that which our land mass could sustain and generate of its own accord.
Rather than argue negatively the comparative merits of the commercial and industrial giants ,such as China and India’s contribution, I believe we should re-examine our own input and understand that we have a particular if not unique historic and economic obligation which transcends the self- righteous posturing we regularly indulge in to avoid addressing the reality of global environmental issues.
What we conveniently overlook in this age of global economics is that the manufacturing that takes place in China and the Far East is funded and corporately administered predominantly from Wall Street , The City of London and other European financial centres.
Whilst the smoke and anvils of production are no longer the everyday backdrop to our western cities the consumption and investment that drives these distant industrialised nations originates in “our clean capitals “.
It therefore becomes incumbent upon us to recognise that we own the duty to address the consequences of our international investment and not pretend that its someone else’s problem.
More importantly we should own the moral responsibility, if not for our consumption and economic policies ,but as the “right thing to do” and to recognise that if we fail to act in a sustainably correct manner now while the West still has residual economic superiority and control ,we may find ourselves in the not too distant future pleading for understanding to the younger arriviste economies who may,at some future point, remind us of our past arrogance when things were in our favour and we chose to ignore their needs.
The main motivation for our actions must remain doing what is right over narrow short term commercial objectives; although much opinion increasingly says that which is sustainable is also commercially the most viable in the long term and consequently most beneficial for the planet that supports us.
The understanding that we are an integral component of a natural biological system and that our purpose of survival and perpetuation of the species is dependent on sustainable interaction.
Our actions are for the greater whole and we gain advantage by defending the host that supports us.
Our motive for doing what is right can and should be self-serving without being narrowly interpreted as selfish pursuit of profit without regard to consequence.
Doing what is right and sustainable in the interest of the environment is a moral imperative that should not be obscured by nationalistic and anti-nature opinion deriving its inspiration from fundamental misunderstandings and the ruthless pursuit of corporate profits.
Stevetomlinsustainability
Astlehall Leigh. March 12 2013
(1) Bio-Regional estimate we require a planet three times greater than Earth to sustain our current level of consumption.
(2) http://t.co/8CWniiUhX9 The nature of the Carbon Problem some data
Twenty five years ago or more I left the National Meningitis Trust which I founded with Jane Wells to return to political activism within the environmental movement, activity I had marginalised during my time at the Trust.
I responded to an advertised vacancy to join a national environmental campaigning group which even in those days had an international reputation for leading the opposition to #nuclear waste being transferred from the UK to be “dumped at sea” via Sharpness Docks,(1)
Meanwhile, then living in Gloucestershire ,the local Severnside Campaign opposing nuclear power generation was broadly based but narrowly focused on the perceived health issues.
Several friends worked at Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories and I got to know Ross Hesketh, who’s “arranged dismissal” for exposing the American “ Plutonium syphoning” of weapons grade material gave me a solid grounding of knowledge about the nuclear industry and it’s inner workings .(2)
I had assisted Ken and Liz Brown’s (3) direct action which had included blocking the Bristol mainline rail access into Sharpness Docks which carried the bulk radioactive “waste”, and supported the direct action team that chained the sea-lock-gates to stop The Gem (3) getting into Sharpness harbour to collect the radio-active material from Berkeley nuclear power station …actions which today would have us all locked up as terrorists.
Again I had always believed the real issues were economic and technological and I increasingly researched and monitored the decommissioning programme with ever greater interest and a growing concern for the deficiencies that emerged.
At the first job interview in Islington I was short-listed and required to write a synopsis of my own thinking about the direction the Nuclear Industry was heading and the key issues that might emerge . This document was to be delivered prior to a second interview a week later.
Returning to the West country I attended a serious of meetings with insiders in the nuclear industry who were unhappy with some elements of the reprocessing and future decommissioning programme. From those discussions it emerged that consideration was being given to the possibility of disposal of spent fuels offshore beneath the sea bed , with linked underground direct access tunnels that would give maximum security and limit public scrutiny .
I accordingly included this scenario in my synopsis to the incredulity of my potential employers who required corroboration and specific names .
It was not tenable or morally right to betray the names of individuals whose livelihoods would have been compromised and there the matter rested.
Subsequent letters to newspapers at a later date postulating the idea of seabed disposal were met by frank denials from industry spokespersons.
I can only say that I believe to this day the sincerity of my informants, despite no known use of a seabed depository being identified twenty years later on .
I revive this story in the light of recent refusals to allow deep inland storage in the Lake District.
Setting aside issues of NIMBYism , deep seated mistrust of the Nuclear Industry has frustrated all planning applications to find fresh decommissioning and storage facilities on the mainland.
The existing arrangements at Sellafield/Seascale are terminally inadequate and desperately in need of replacement.
It may be that the “fanciful” sea bed disposal route will now become the only option that can avoid public hostility.
Whatever the final resolution of the radioactive spent fuel planning issues the industry needs to learn from the past and alter it’s thinking perspective.
The spent-fuel should be regarded as a potential future resource to be recovered at some point and not treated as “waste”.
More importantly the main lesson from early attempts at storage must be to create flexible storage that can be accessed and improved over time.
Most decommissioned high level spent-fuel has for some time been sealed in lead and ceramic containment encased in stainless steel before transfer to “ponds” which are accessible; unlike first generation ponds which are deteriorating rapidly and their contents difficult to transfer.
The history of the industry being secretive , uneconomic and requiring blank cheques to keep the ageing facilities operative needs to find a fresh approach to decommissioning and spent fuel recovery.
If the industry understood the need to be more open and accountable it is still possible that a different and improved generation of reactors might yet contribute positively to carbon reduction and it’s past “waste” become an inheritance of worth.
Stevetomlinsustain.
Asthall Leigh February 28th . 2013
(1) Sharpness in Gloucestershire is adjacent to Berkeley and Oldbury Nuclear Power stations and was until 1980 used for transferring spent-fuel by sea to Japan.
(2) Berekely Nuclear Laboratories are on the same site as Berkeley Power Station but operate independently. Many of the original scientists were sincere believers in Atoms for Peace . I have referred in previous blogs to scientists Martin Quick and Ross Hesketh
(3) Ken and Liz Brown , based in Stroud,were two of the most dedicated and committed environmentalists of the 1970’s and 80’s. Both were regularly arrested and kept in custody . They were as I recall Quakers and pacifists who opposed the use of Plutonium from Berekely power station being transferred to US military facilities.
SteveTomlinSustainability 