Since the Environment & Ethics Committee acquired its ethical remit, we've been a bit short of ethical campaigns. Our environmental campaigning at a college, university and national level is going really well, but it's had a monopoly on our time, and there are plenty of ethical campaigns being run in the University that could really benefit from our resources. Before we start thinking about spending more time on ethical campaigns, however, we really need to get two questions sorted: 1) What is an 'ethical' campaign, and 2) What kinds of ethical campaigns are suitable for us to run?
Strictly speaking, an ethical campaign is any campaign that sets out to change things in line with a specific view of what is right and what is wrong, often within the context of a specific issue. There are very few universally held ethical principles, but there are lots that have widespread agreement, such as that human rights should be respected, and that future generations deserve to inhabit a planet with the suitable climate and rich biodiversity that we have enjoyed, within the boundaries of natural change. The reason ethical campaigns can be controversial is that they take a single stance on issues that are often populated by a wide variety of beliefs. If everyone who is part of the campaign agrees with the line that has been taken on the relevant underlying ethical principles, things are ok. Anyone who disagrees can form an opposing group, and the process is open and democratic.
The reason a group like OUSU Environment & Ethics Committee needs to be so careful in choosing its campaigns is that we are more than just the people who come to our meetings. We officially represent several thousands of students, and our fundamental role is to represent the views of those students and to act in their interest. This makes consensus crucial, but sometimes difficult, when we're choosing our campaigns.
We've run a number of environmental campaigns over the last year, many of which have used JCR and MCR motions to acquire a valid mandate because they have controversial elements. There are plenty of environmental campaigns that are just as controversial as 'ethical' campaigns. In fact, to distinguish between the two in this way is pretty arbitrary, as the first falls within the set of the second, and so assumes the same general properties. Much of the science of climate change remains vague, and the action that needs to be taken, in terms of its effect on economic development and lifestyles, is hugely controversial. Nonetheless, we have reached the decision, as a committee and in line with the view of increasing numbers of governments, that action on climate change is necessary despite these controversial side effects. This is an ethical decision, placing one thing at the expense of another in line with an underlying view of what is right.
We need to choose a campaign to work on that is not specifically to do with the effects of our behaviour on the natural environment. In making this choice, we need to bear in mind that an OUSU campaign is meant to represent the views of the students, and is also meant to be relevant to addressing their needs. This doesn't mean we can't pick a traditionally 'controversial' campaign; if we go to our JCRs and find that people are in agreement, we have a mandate to run the campaign. However, it is also important that any campaigns we do run can be directly targetted at the actions of the University, its staff and its students. Our campaigns on climate change address an international issue, but by changing the way the University operates. Likewise, the SRI campaign took the global issue of the arms trade, but dealt with it within the confines of the University's investments and the students' attitudes.
So, to pick a new campaign to work on, I reckon it should 1) have the support of the students, 2) have a strong moral case for action and 3) be relevant to the actions of the University. This would at least be a start, and these are just my views. It'd be really great to have discussion on this, so we can refine our definition of what it is that we do, and then maybe summarise this in a mission statement. Really looking forward to hearing people's views.
Sam
Saturday, 27 January 2007
Monday, 22 January 2007
Recycling
That anyone should question the revered act of eco-penance that is recycling may almost seem absurd, but in the spirit of this blog, here goes....
The logic behind recycling is impeccable - it simply must be better for the environment to reuse a can than bury it and make a new one. The facts from the 'International Aluminium Institute' (now that is a club I want to join) are quite clear - recycling a kilo of aluminium saves 8 kilograms of bauxite, four kilograms of chemical products and 14 kilowatt hours of electricity. For glass, there are similar savings in raw materials, carbon emissions and energy use.
These figures sound amazing, but there is one fact that still troubles me - if recycling saves so much energy and resources, why are we not paid to do it? Why is it left to the conscience rather than self interest of the people?
The answer to this is unclear, but i think it lies with the difference between the cost of labour and the cost of materials in the UK. It is so much more expensive to employ people than it is to buy stuff in Britain, that it is cheaper for councils to mix up all waste and bury it, rather than organise sorting and selling. This means that it really is up to the conscientious consumer to take the tiny effort of dividing up their waste so that it is easy and cheap for the councils to deal with it separately.
However, the more important problem that people often have is a (well placed) worry after the effort of sorting out the rubbish, it will only be mixed together again later on. This could be at the bins, in front of your very eyes by scouts or cleaners. This has been reported in a number of colleges, but i want to investigate how widespread it is, and try to work out a way to make it stop. So if you have ever seen a scout mixing up your recycling, then write below, and we can try to stop it.
Further down the line is the worry that the council is mixing the recycling. Economically, this would be a pretty stupid thing to do, as paper, glass and aluminium all have considerable market value, while waste sent to landfill is taxed (£24 per tonne from April). However, it would be easy to imagine the dustbin men making their lives easier by mixing them, especially if the recycling was all mixed together.
Toby Pitts-Tucker told me of a Panorama/Horizon on recycling which "focussed on a recycling unit in Northern Ireland, which as the hidden camera's showed, would sift out recyclable waste from household waste (at vast expense) only to then load it onto a truck with the rest of the junk and dump it in landfill sites. What's even worse, is that because getting rid of waste in recycling plants is subsidised by the government, companies in southern ireland (cork, limerick etc) were sending THEIR junk by lorry all the way up to northern ireland to dispose of it, using even more time, money and energy than if the whole recycling pretence was dropped and everything was put in landfill sites."
All this is very interesting, and such arguments are often used by people as reasons not to recycle, so we must tackle them. It seems that scouts and dustbinmen would be more likely to mix rubbish if they have to do more work to sort it, so if these problems are real and widespread, then we should be aiming to implement recycling schemes that lead to large amounts of well sorted waste in one place rather than a lot of bins full of mixed recycling.
The logic behind recycling is impeccable - it simply must be better for the environment to reuse a can than bury it and make a new one. The facts from the 'International Aluminium Institute' (now that is a club I want to join) are quite clear - recycling a kilo of aluminium saves 8 kilograms of bauxite, four kilograms of chemical products and 14 kilowatt hours of electricity. For glass, there are similar savings in raw materials, carbon emissions and energy use.
These figures sound amazing, but there is one fact that still troubles me - if recycling saves so much energy and resources, why are we not paid to do it? Why is it left to the conscience rather than self interest of the people?
The answer to this is unclear, but i think it lies with the difference between the cost of labour and the cost of materials in the UK. It is so much more expensive to employ people than it is to buy stuff in Britain, that it is cheaper for councils to mix up all waste and bury it, rather than organise sorting and selling. This means that it really is up to the conscientious consumer to take the tiny effort of dividing up their waste so that it is easy and cheap for the councils to deal with it separately.
However, the more important problem that people often have is a (well placed) worry after the effort of sorting out the rubbish, it will only be mixed together again later on. This could be at the bins, in front of your very eyes by scouts or cleaners. This has been reported in a number of colleges, but i want to investigate how widespread it is, and try to work out a way to make it stop. So if you have ever seen a scout mixing up your recycling, then write below, and we can try to stop it.
Further down the line is the worry that the council is mixing the recycling. Economically, this would be a pretty stupid thing to do, as paper, glass and aluminium all have considerable market value, while waste sent to landfill is taxed (£24 per tonne from April). However, it would be easy to imagine the dustbin men making their lives easier by mixing them, especially if the recycling was all mixed together.
Toby Pitts-Tucker told me of a Panorama/Horizon on recycling which "focussed on a recycling unit in Northern Ireland, which as the hidden camera's showed, would sift out recyclable waste from household waste (at vast expense) only to then load it onto a truck with the rest of the junk and dump it in landfill sites. What's even worse, is that because getting rid of waste in recycling plants is subsidised by the government, companies in southern ireland (cork, limerick etc) were sending THEIR junk by lorry all the way up to northern ireland to dispose of it, using even more time, money and energy than if the whole recycling pretence was dropped and everything was put in landfill sites."
All this is very interesting, and such arguments are often used by people as reasons not to recycle, so we must tackle them. It seems that scouts and dustbinmen would be more likely to mix rubbish if they have to do more work to sort it, so if these problems are real and widespread, then we should be aiming to implement recycling schemes that lead to large amounts of well sorted waste in one place rather than a lot of bins full of mixed recycling.
Saturday, 20 January 2007
Climate Change - Britain Under Threat
8pm Sunday 21st January - David Attenborough will be presenting the results of climateprediction.net, the online modelling program co-ordinated by the ECI in Oxford, but run on 250,000 idle computers in 171 countries. Each computer spent about 3 months of computing time running a very complex model, with slightly different parameters each time. The thousands of potential outcomes were then analysed, and the results will be shown on the program tomorrow, or can be found here http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/.
Wednesday, 10 January 2007
The Organic Debate
This week David Milliband spoke out at the Oxford Farming Conference saying that there was no real evidence that Organic food is better for your health. Though there are a few examples where the health benefits have been shown (higher Omega-3 in organic milk, lower fat content of organic farmed salmon), it is true that the evidence for health benefits is generally non-existent. These comments come in the month after the Economist wrote an article questioning the Environmental benefits of organic food, and though the article itself was quite shallow on detail, it raised important questions. A study by Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) found that a Organic Farms do support more biodiversity (85% more plant species, 17% more spiders, 5% more birds and 33% more bat species), the yield is much lower (c20%), and the energy inputs are higher (more ploughing etc needed), so more land and energy is needed, leaving less for rainforests or nature reserves. In addition, many of the benefits of organic agriculture come from the traditional wildlife friendly way that the land has been managed, but as the Organic label has grown ( doubled in the last 6 yrs to £1.6bn this year), some of the organic agriculture has become increasingly commercial and businesslike, which means the wildlife suffers.
I'm sure I'm really stirring up some trouble here by speaking out against the Ecologist, but I think we need to seriously consider why we do things like buy organic - is it a lifestyle choice, do we like the packaging, or are we really convinced by the environmental benefits? If anyone has any thing to add or say on this, then email me, and we can get a debate going on the website.
Here is the bit from the Economist article i referred to..
How green is your organic lettuce?
Yet even an apparently obvious claim—that organic food is better for the environment than the conventionally farmed kind—turns out to be controversial. There are many different definitions of the term "organic", but it generally involves severe restrictions on the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers and a ban on genetically modified organisms. Peter Melchett of the Soil Association, Britain's leading organic lobby group, says that environmental concerns, rather than health benefits, are now cited by British consumers as their main justification for buying organic food. (There is no clear evidence that conventional food is harmful or that organic food is nutritionally superior.)
But not everyone agrees that organic farming is better for the environment. Perhaps the most eminent critic of organic farming is Norman Borlaug, the father of the "green revolution", winner of the Nobel peace prize and an outspoken advocate of the use of synthetic fertilisers to increase crop yields. He claims the idea that organic farming is better for the environment is "ridiculous" because organic farming produces lower yields and therefore requires more land under cultivation to produce the same amount of food. Thanks to synthetic fertilisers, Mr Borlaug points out, global cereal production tripled between 1950 and 2000, but the amount of land used increased by only 10%. Using traditional techniques such as crop rotation, compost and manure to supply the soil with nitrogen and other minerals would have required a tripling of the area under cultivation. The more intensively you farm, Mr Borlaug contends, the more room you have left for rainforest.
What of the claim that organic farming is more energy-efficient? Lord Melchett points out for example that the artificial fertiliser used in conventional farming is made using natural gas, which is "completely unsustainable". But Anthony Trewavas, a biochemist at the University of Edinburgh, counters that organic farming actually requires more energy per tonne of food produced, because yields are lower and weeds are kept at bay by ploughing. And Mr Pollan notes that only one-fifth of the energy associated with food production across the whole food chain is consumed on the farm: the rest goes on transport and processing.
The most environmentally benign form of agriculture appears to be "no till" farming, which involves little or no ploughing and relies on cover crops and carefully applied herbicides to control weeds. This makes it hard to combine with organic methods (though some researchers are trying). Too rigid an insistence on organic farming's somewhat arbitrary rules, then—copper, a heavy metal, can be used as an organic fungicide because it is traditional—can actually hinder the adoption of greener agricultural techniques. Alas, shoppers look in vain for "no till" labels on their food—at least so far.
And here are some of the responses...
Rebecca White wrote
I agree with many of the questions you raise about organic agriculture, but I did want to highlight that organic agriculture actually uses less energy than conventional (off the top of my head this is between 30-60% less for dairy/arable). Even when yeild reductions of 20% are taken into consideration the balance of energy use is still in organic's favour. For livestock energy use is about 50% less. And as animal rearing is so energy intensive in the first place, this really makes a big difference.
Although there may be more ploughing/tilling on organic farms, it is fertiliser and pesticide/herbicide use and animal feed (a specified proportion of which needs to come from the farm itself in organic systems) that is the big energy use input to farming - this is why conventional farming is more energy intensive.
A big question that hangs over all this though, and about which we know little, is the balance of other greenhouse gases in conventional/organic farms - methane and nitrous oxides. Also - and as you probably know - so much organic food is currently imported into this country, so the gains on the farm are offset in the transport stage (although for meat this is not always the case - organic from abroad might outweigh conventional from the UK depending on transport mode etc). From a carbon point of view, if you are umming and aahing over organic or not I'd suggest seriously cutting meat consumption and when you do eat it, make it organic (dairy too). This will make a much bigger difference than buying organic veg/fruit.
Animal welfare depends hugely on the individual farm, but under organic a 'no grazing system' for dairy is prohibited. Therefore, if you buy conventional, there is the risk that the cow from which the milk came has never been outside to graze. Which sounds like a pretty dire life to me.
Some fodder for the debate!
Becky.
ps. On the point of rainforests and land etc. I'd again say why not less
meat rearing (cattle ranches in Brazil/Argentina etc) and more organic veg
production in its place. Perhaps offsetting the need to cut down rainforest.
Many ifs and buts here, but worth investigating.
Kate Aydin, the University's Sustainable Development Officer, wrote
For argument's sake: the reason I buy it is because it doesn't have pesticides in it.
My concern with pesticides is that they're bad for ground water contamination.
Did you know that 50% of all UK ground water is contaminated and can never be remediated? This is due to surface run off - which includes pesticide residue from agriculture.
But on the other hand....
Karen Mecz wrote
In terms of pesticides, organic farming uses 'traditional' methods, which often rely on heavy metals. for example, in apple orchards you'd have to spray all the branches and effectively cover the fruit bearing boughs with copper-solution. is that really better for the environment or for consumer health than adding a tiny, specifically measured dose of a modern chemical pesticide. in terms of quantity, the reduced amount of chemical pesticide compared to the 'organic' is much better for the environment.
Julian Cottee added these comments
I think it's essential that all of the issues within the 'green movement' are properly debated. Many of the things we campaign for - organic, fair-trade, localisation, micro-generation etc - are taken as articles of faith, whereas in reality the solutions to our problems may be less obvious. The green movement needs to have considerably more clarity in its aims and the ways in which they are achieved, especially when they are increasingly subject to the analysis of specialists, the press and public.
Spiked Online (www.spiked-online.com) is regularly sceptical about the justifications and methodologies of environmentalism. While I don't necessarily agree with their editorials, they are provokative enough to make me need to defend my own thinking, which is what everyone interested in this kind of stuff should be doing. There is a recent article on the David Miliband / Economist / Ecologist organic debate at http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2691/. I think the first part of this on the health benefits or otherwise of organic is reasonably irrelevant to the environmental debate. While I don't like the idea of pesticide residues very much, I'm not worried enough about it to only buy organic food. As long as scientific research is still inconclusive on this (and the potential long-term effects of the build-up of residues in the body), it should be left to one side as an issue for personal consideration.
The more important debate is to be had on the effects of agriculture on local issues:
a) local ecosystems
b) local communities
c) land-use and deforestation
and at the level of the global ecosphere:
d) climate change
e) international trade / social equality
There are probably a few things I missed of that last, but that's all that I can think of now. These are all deeply interrelated in many many ways, but it helps to differentiate between them rather than lumping them together as 'environment', which in itself is a meaningless term used with the best of intentions but with so little focus as to be of little practical use. The
question of what is best has no simple answer, and will take a lot of thinking out from a viewpoint which is not occluded by the environmentalist blinkers described in the latter part of the Spiked article. What is of foremost importance is to set clear aims. Clear policy will never come from 'environmentalism'. I suggest that sustainability is the concept from which
we should start - sustainability looks at ways of creating a socially and physically healthy human society that has long-term stability. Any approach that does not place human well-being first is bound to failure. Even sustainability as a concept has inherent problems. Its over-use risks stripping it of meaning; we must define exactly what social sustainability
is; we must make convincing arguments as to why indeed we should be sustainable (economists argue that we have a moral responsibility to act for the current generation, with each subsequent generation of lesser importance)... and so forth.
And in all this, facts are thin on the ground - we are awash with speculation and generalisation. A few specific examples the came to mind from the current debate:
- Localisation and food transport:
The economist: '[A] shift towards a local food system, and away from a
supermarket-based food system with its central distribution depots, lean
supply chains and big, full trucks, might actually increase the number of
food-vehicle miles being travelled locally, because things would move around
in a larger number of smaller, less efficiently packed vehicles.' This I
think was the main focus of the Economist's attack on localisation in their
extremely short and partisan editorial (which, although poorly researched
and depressingly simplistic, has had the excellent result of sparking
debate). Upon careful reading, what it actually says is that localisation
of the food system might increase the number of food-vehicle miles travelled
*locally*. This could potentially be true, although the difference is
unlikely to be great. It is just as much in the interests of local
producers to pack their distribution vehicles as efficiently as possible.
However, what is of interest to us with respect to greenhouse gas emissions
is the *total* number of food miles, not the local number. If we are 10%
more efficient locally by using supermarket distribution systems, but have
flown the produce from Thailand in the first place, the local option is
still giving out far less emissions. . Unfortunately, a surface reading of
the economist's article will cause many to doubt that localisation has any
advantage here. Also of note is that supermarkets require food to be
transported to centralised depots (sometimes abroad) for packing, from where
it is taken to individual retail units all over the country, which
themselves are energy inefficient. Supermarket buildings are vast heated
warehouses with glass frontages and rows of open refrigerators, to where
thousands of people must drive every day. I suspect that the car use
involved in customers getting to supermarkets would outweigh any advantage
to large-scale distribution networks, though that is pure speculation.
There is also no mention of the potential advantages of localisation for
building stable and meaningful local communities, promoting entrepreneurship
and creativity.
...
Maybe I have gone off-topic here - but that's partly my point. This stuff
on localisation appeared in an article on organic food. That is, the
possibility that food may more efficiently transported by supermarkets than
by local distributors is used as an argument against organic food, when it
is clearly an unrelated discussion (though equally important, perhaps). A
clear case of muddying the waters, something that we should try avoid (hard
though it is). One more point:
- Organic and land-use:
"...producing the world's current agricultural output organically would
require several times as much land as is currently cultivated. There
wouldn't be much room left for the rainforest." Again from the economist of
Dec. 7th. The point made is I believe true, and one well worth considering.
But this is no argument against organic farming in the UK, for example,
where a great number of fields lie fallow every year. There is an debate to
be had over whether it is better to farm a few fields intensively and leave
a few fallow in rotation; or whether it is better to farm more fields
organically and less intensively. I don't know the answer to that one.
Neither, really, does the economist's point remain true with regard to
nations that are currently over-producing (there are quite a few of these).
India for example in 2001 had 42 million tonnes of foodgrain stored in
warehouses because there was no suitable export market, and the domestic
market was flooded with produce from abroad as a result of lifting import
restrictions as instructed by the WTO. If we are forced to create a free
market on unequal terms, then surely it would be better here for some
farmers to switch to producing higher-profit organic produce for export? Of
course, finally, as has been mentioned a couple of times in various
articles, central to the issue is the problem of the huge and expanding
world population. However, to invoke this with a shrug of the shoulders is
no solution. Whilst we try to ease the population pressure it is essential
that in the interim we conserve a biosphere suitable for future human
habitation. This requires not environmentalism but well-thought out human
ecology.
http://ousuenvironmentcommittee.googlepages.com
The debate goes on... please add your comments below.
I'm sure I'm really stirring up some trouble here by speaking out against the Ecologist, but I think we need to seriously consider why we do things like buy organic - is it a lifestyle choice, do we like the packaging, or are we really convinced by the environmental benefits? If anyone has any thing to add or say on this, then email me, and we can get a debate going on the website.
Here is the bit from the Economist article i referred to..
How green is your organic lettuce?
Yet even an apparently obvious claim—that organic food is better for the environment than the conventionally farmed kind—turns out to be controversial. There are many different definitions of the term "organic", but it generally involves severe restrictions on the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers and a ban on genetically modified organisms. Peter Melchett of the Soil Association, Britain's leading organic lobby group, says that environmental concerns, rather than health benefits, are now cited by British consumers as their main justification for buying organic food. (There is no clear evidence that conventional food is harmful or that organic food is nutritionally superior.)
But not everyone agrees that organic farming is better for the environment. Perhaps the most eminent critic of organic farming is Norman Borlaug, the father of the "green revolution", winner of the Nobel peace prize and an outspoken advocate of the use of synthetic fertilisers to increase crop yields. He claims the idea that organic farming is better for the environment is "ridiculous" because organic farming produces lower yields and therefore requires more land under cultivation to produce the same amount of food. Thanks to synthetic fertilisers, Mr Borlaug points out, global cereal production tripled between 1950 and 2000, but the amount of land used increased by only 10%. Using traditional techniques such as crop rotation, compost and manure to supply the soil with nitrogen and other minerals would have required a tripling of the area under cultivation. The more intensively you farm, Mr Borlaug contends, the more room you have left for rainforest.
What of the claim that organic farming is more energy-efficient? Lord Melchett points out for example that the artificial fertiliser used in conventional farming is made using natural gas, which is "completely unsustainable". But Anthony Trewavas, a biochemist at the University of Edinburgh, counters that organic farming actually requires more energy per tonne of food produced, because yields are lower and weeds are kept at bay by ploughing. And Mr Pollan notes that only one-fifth of the energy associated with food production across the whole food chain is consumed on the farm: the rest goes on transport and processing.
The most environmentally benign form of agriculture appears to be "no till" farming, which involves little or no ploughing and relies on cover crops and carefully applied herbicides to control weeds. This makes it hard to combine with organic methods (though some researchers are trying). Too rigid an insistence on organic farming's somewhat arbitrary rules, then—copper, a heavy metal, can be used as an organic fungicide because it is traditional—can actually hinder the adoption of greener agricultural techniques. Alas, shoppers look in vain for "no till" labels on their food—at least so far.
And here are some of the responses...
Rebecca White wrote
I agree with many of the questions you raise about organic agriculture, but I did want to highlight that organic agriculture actually uses less energy than conventional (off the top of my head this is between 30-60% less for dairy/arable). Even when yeild reductions of 20% are taken into consideration the balance of energy use is still in organic's favour. For livestock energy use is about 50% less. And as animal rearing is so energy intensive in the first place, this really makes a big difference.
Although there may be more ploughing/tilling on organic farms, it is fertiliser and pesticide/herbicide use and animal feed (a specified proportion of which needs to come from the farm itself in organic systems) that is the big energy use input to farming - this is why conventional farming is more energy intensive.
A big question that hangs over all this though, and about which we know little, is the balance of other greenhouse gases in conventional/organic farms - methane and nitrous oxides. Also - and as you probably know - so much organic food is currently imported into this country, so the gains on the farm are offset in the transport stage (although for meat this is not always the case - organic from abroad might outweigh conventional from the UK depending on transport mode etc). From a carbon point of view, if you are umming and aahing over organic or not I'd suggest seriously cutting meat consumption and when you do eat it, make it organic (dairy too). This will make a much bigger difference than buying organic veg/fruit.
Animal welfare depends hugely on the individual farm, but under organic a 'no grazing system' for dairy is prohibited. Therefore, if you buy conventional, there is the risk that the cow from which the milk came has never been outside to graze. Which sounds like a pretty dire life to me.
Some fodder for the debate!
Becky.
ps. On the point of rainforests and land etc. I'd again say why not less
meat rearing (cattle ranches in Brazil/Argentina etc) and more organic veg
production in its place. Perhaps offsetting the need to cut down rainforest.
Many ifs and buts here, but worth investigating.
Kate Aydin, the University's Sustainable Development Officer, wrote
For argument's sake: the reason I buy it is because it doesn't have pesticides in it.
My concern with pesticides is that they're bad for ground water contamination.
Did you know that 50% of all UK ground water is contaminated and can never be remediated? This is due to surface run off - which includes pesticide residue from agriculture.
But on the other hand....
Karen Mecz wrote
In terms of pesticides, organic farming uses 'traditional' methods, which often rely on heavy metals. for example, in apple orchards you'd have to spray all the branches and effectively cover the fruit bearing boughs with copper-solution. is that really better for the environment or for consumer health than adding a tiny, specifically measured dose of a modern chemical pesticide. in terms of quantity, the reduced amount of chemical pesticide compared to the 'organic' is much better for the environment.
Julian Cottee added these comments
I think it's essential that all of the issues within the 'green movement' are properly debated. Many of the things we campaign for - organic, fair-trade, localisation, micro-generation etc - are taken as articles of faith, whereas in reality the solutions to our problems may be less obvious. The green movement needs to have considerably more clarity in its aims and the ways in which they are achieved, especially when they are increasingly subject to the analysis of specialists, the press and public.
Spiked Online (www.spiked-online.com) is regularly sceptical about the justifications and methodologies of environmentalism. While I don't necessarily agree with their editorials, they are provokative enough to make me need to defend my own thinking, which is what everyone interested in this kind of stuff should be doing. There is a recent article on the David Miliband / Economist / Ecologist organic debate at http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2691/. I think the first part of this on the health benefits or otherwise of organic is reasonably irrelevant to the environmental debate. While I don't like the idea of pesticide residues very much, I'm not worried enough about it to only buy organic food. As long as scientific research is still inconclusive on this (and the potential long-term effects of the build-up of residues in the body), it should be left to one side as an issue for personal consideration.
The more important debate is to be had on the effects of agriculture on local issues:
a) local ecosystems
b) local communities
c) land-use and deforestation
and at the level of the global ecosphere:
d) climate change
e) international trade / social equality
There are probably a few things I missed of that last, but that's all that I can think of now. These are all deeply interrelated in many many ways, but it helps to differentiate between them rather than lumping them together as 'environment', which in itself is a meaningless term used with the best of intentions but with so little focus as to be of little practical use. The
question of what is best has no simple answer, and will take a lot of thinking out from a viewpoint which is not occluded by the environmentalist blinkers described in the latter part of the Spiked article. What is of foremost importance is to set clear aims. Clear policy will never come from 'environmentalism'. I suggest that sustainability is the concept from which
we should start - sustainability looks at ways of creating a socially and physically healthy human society that has long-term stability. Any approach that does not place human well-being first is bound to failure. Even sustainability as a concept has inherent problems. Its over-use risks stripping it of meaning; we must define exactly what social sustainability
is; we must make convincing arguments as to why indeed we should be sustainable (economists argue that we have a moral responsibility to act for the current generation, with each subsequent generation of lesser importance)... and so forth.
And in all this, facts are thin on the ground - we are awash with speculation and generalisation. A few specific examples the came to mind from the current debate:
- Localisation and food transport:
The economist: '[A] shift towards a local food system, and away from a
supermarket-based food system with its central distribution depots, lean
supply chains and big, full trucks, might actually increase the number of
food-vehicle miles being travelled locally, because things would move around
in a larger number of smaller, less efficiently packed vehicles.' This I
think was the main focus of the Economist's attack on localisation in their
extremely short and partisan editorial (which, although poorly researched
and depressingly simplistic, has had the excellent result of sparking
debate). Upon careful reading, what it actually says is that localisation
of the food system might increase the number of food-vehicle miles travelled
*locally*. This could potentially be true, although the difference is
unlikely to be great. It is just as much in the interests of local
producers to pack their distribution vehicles as efficiently as possible.
However, what is of interest to us with respect to greenhouse gas emissions
is the *total* number of food miles, not the local number. If we are 10%
more efficient locally by using supermarket distribution systems, but have
flown the produce from Thailand in the first place, the local option is
still giving out far less emissions. . Unfortunately, a surface reading of
the economist's article will cause many to doubt that localisation has any
advantage here. Also of note is that supermarkets require food to be
transported to centralised depots (sometimes abroad) for packing, from where
it is taken to individual retail units all over the country, which
themselves are energy inefficient. Supermarket buildings are vast heated
warehouses with glass frontages and rows of open refrigerators, to where
thousands of people must drive every day. I suspect that the car use
involved in customers getting to supermarkets would outweigh any advantage
to large-scale distribution networks, though that is pure speculation.
There is also no mention of the potential advantages of localisation for
building stable and meaningful local communities, promoting entrepreneurship
and creativity.
...
Maybe I have gone off-topic here - but that's partly my point. This stuff
on localisation appeared in an article on organic food. That is, the
possibility that food may more efficiently transported by supermarkets than
by local distributors is used as an argument against organic food, when it
is clearly an unrelated discussion (though equally important, perhaps). A
clear case of muddying the waters, something that we should try avoid (hard
though it is). One more point:
- Organic and land-use:
"...producing the world's current agricultural output organically would
require several times as much land as is currently cultivated. There
wouldn't be much room left for the rainforest." Again from the economist of
Dec. 7th. The point made is I believe true, and one well worth considering.
But this is no argument against organic farming in the UK, for example,
where a great number of fields lie fallow every year. There is an debate to
be had over whether it is better to farm a few fields intensively and leave
a few fallow in rotation; or whether it is better to farm more fields
organically and less intensively. I don't know the answer to that one.
Neither, really, does the economist's point remain true with regard to
nations that are currently over-producing (there are quite a few of these).
India for example in 2001 had 42 million tonnes of foodgrain stored in
warehouses because there was no suitable export market, and the domestic
market was flooded with produce from abroad as a result of lifting import
restrictions as instructed by the WTO. If we are forced to create a free
market on unequal terms, then surely it would be better here for some
farmers to switch to producing higher-profit organic produce for export? Of
course, finally, as has been mentioned a couple of times in various
articles, central to the issue is the problem of the huge and expanding
world population. However, to invoke this with a shrug of the shoulders is
no solution. Whilst we try to ease the population pressure it is essential
that in the interim we conserve a biosphere suitable for future human
habitation. This requires not environmentalism but well-thought out human
ecology.
http://ousuenvironmentcommittee.googlepages.com
The debate goes on... please add your comments below.
Monday, 1 January 2007
Biodiversity
Here are some facts about biodiversity that might startle you:
Total number native woody plant species in the UK - 30
Number of woody plant species in a 52 hectare sample plot in the Rainforest in Borneo - 1175
Number of species in the world - we don't know somewhere between 5 and 100million. 30 million is often cited.
Number of species we have identified and described - 1.8million.
Number of species of Vertebrates - 50 000.
Therefore, most of life is small, is in the Tropics, and has never been identified by humans.
The trajedy of this is that the reason it is cheaper to produce food outside of the UK is mainly because it is cheaper to employ people elsewhere. Frustratingly many of these people live in countries that also happen to contain enormous boiological diversity, and employing them to create food for an export market (oil palm etc) is driving the great loss of biodiversisty that we are living through.
Our demand for food (and biofuels) is creating the market forces that directly lead to the destruction of the rainforests.
If we value biodiversity then we must ensure that countries with vast biological wealth but ecomnomic poverty can generate some economic value through maintaining biodiversity, or at least generate none through detroying it. The promise of future drugs derived from undescribed plants is not enough for this, nor are aesthetic or moral imperatives to act as Stewards, though of course these are important.
One option that arises from my very limited knowledge of economics seems to be a much more global labour market, so that we can make the food we need in the areas that can produce maximum food with minimum environmental damage (the UK, for example), and not where it is cheapest to employ people.
The other more readily available option that i know of is sustainable forestry certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (http://www.fsc.org/en/) . They have stringent guidelines for sustainable forest management, and track the wood through the supply chain so that the consumer can "vote with their wallet" to maintain biodiverisity.
These ideas about biodiversity also affect how we should view local food - promoting local food in the UK means that we are encouraging the production of food on land whose value to biodiversity is relatively small, and thereby slightly decreasing the economic incentive for producing food on land whose value to biodiversity is greater. This is all very indirect, but it seems that allowing Britain to be fallow because British labour is too expensive, in times when land shortages are leading to enormous loss of habitat and biodiversity in other countries would be foolish.
If we put a value on biodiversity then we need to see that it's current destruction - the Sixth Great Extinction - is a truly global problem, and act accordingly.
The complexity of the modern world means that every 'solution' will cause more problems, but the global inbalance in biological resources means that our environmental concerns must not only consider, but focus on the damage we are causing far away by global market forces.
Total number native woody plant species in the UK - 30
Number of woody plant species in a 52 hectare sample plot in the Rainforest in Borneo - 1175
Number of species in the world - we don't know somewhere between 5 and 100million. 30 million is often cited.
Number of species we have identified and described - 1.8million.
Number of species of Vertebrates - 50 000.
Therefore, most of life is small, is in the Tropics, and has never been identified by humans.
The trajedy of this is that the reason it is cheaper to produce food outside of the UK is mainly because it is cheaper to employ people elsewhere. Frustratingly many of these people live in countries that also happen to contain enormous boiological diversity, and employing them to create food for an export market (oil palm etc) is driving the great loss of biodiversisty that we are living through.
Our demand for food (and biofuels) is creating the market forces that directly lead to the destruction of the rainforests.
If we value biodiversity then we must ensure that countries with vast biological wealth but ecomnomic poverty can generate some economic value through maintaining biodiversity, or at least generate none through detroying it. The promise of future drugs derived from undescribed plants is not enough for this, nor are aesthetic or moral imperatives to act as Stewards, though of course these are important.
One option that arises from my very limited knowledge of economics seems to be a much more global labour market, so that we can make the food we need in the areas that can produce maximum food with minimum environmental damage (the UK, for example), and not where it is cheapest to employ people.
The other more readily available option that i know of is sustainable forestry certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (http://www.fsc.org/en/) . They have stringent guidelines for sustainable forest management, and track the wood through the supply chain so that the consumer can "vote with their wallet" to maintain biodiverisity.
These ideas about biodiversity also affect how we should view local food - promoting local food in the UK means that we are encouraging the production of food on land whose value to biodiversity is relatively small, and thereby slightly decreasing the economic incentive for producing food on land whose value to biodiversity is greater. This is all very indirect, but it seems that allowing Britain to be fallow because British labour is too expensive, in times when land shortages are leading to enormous loss of habitat and biodiversity in other countries would be foolish.
If we put a value on biodiversity then we need to see that it's current destruction - the Sixth Great Extinction - is a truly global problem, and act accordingly.
The complexity of the modern world means that every 'solution' will cause more problems, but the global inbalance in biological resources means that our environmental concerns must not only consider, but focus on the damage we are causing far away by global market forces.
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