'What we’re seeing is a two-tier system of responsibility for the environment.' Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty
I spent the week before last on a hillside with some young people planting 12,000 saplings — oaks, and other native broadleaf species. We were helping to recreate a vital lost habitat, wood pasture, that will someday be home to a host of wild things, including my cows. Occasionally, I’d check the news on my phone. It just so happened this was one of the most insane weeks in living memory for anyone who cares about the British countryside.
First up, Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, announced that his new “Nature Restoration Fund” would “speed up the building of new infrastructure and homes across the country” and support a third runway at Heathrow — the fund is part of a crazed plan to make 150 infrastructure decisions by the end of this Parliament, “while supporting nature recovery at scale”!
Environmentalists everywhere gasped at his audacity. This was Orwellian doublespeak of the most shameless kind. Building roads, houses and runways is literally the opposite of nature restoration. The point isn’t that we don’t need more infrastructure projects — we often do, but until now no one has claimed they are “green”, or that environmental funding should be used to speed them up.
This is the same Steve Reed who has failed to deliver thousands of farmers the “green transition” that they were promised, and allowed the Treasury to torpedo, or pause, several strands of environmental funding for farms. It seems that in our age of Austerity 2.0, the Government can’t foot the bill for any environmental programmes it promised to pay for five years ago.
Oh, and that same week, Rachel Reeves claimed that “bats and newts” were holding up economic growth, and we really ought to be less sensitive. And that aviation is now cleaner and greener, so we don’t need to worry about that anymore — seriously, Rachel? The Chancellor likes to say that she’s making necessary “ruthless decisions”. The question is whether she makes good ones. Her number one mission for this Government is “growth” — and clearly, this even applies to environmental policy. What could possibly go wrong?
Then Steve Reed popped back up, and told us we needed to have a “national conversation about land use”. Really, Steve? How do you think a national conversation is going to go when the giant polluters are rich and powerful with direct access to No. 10? How do you think Welsh or Cumbrian hill farmers are going to fare in that conversation? What we need instead is a conversation about how corrupted, confused and contradictory environmental policy has become, and how little trust any of us have in government now.
Up until now, we were assured we were “all in it together” when it came to fighting climate change and biodiversity loss in the UK. I might have to change my diet or type of car, my household heating system or how I manage my fields, but that was kind of OK, because everyone else was doing their bit too.
But recently, this solidarity has begun to fracture. The idea of reducing consumption isn’t going down very well with voters, to put it mildly. Donald Trump was barely in the White House for five minutes when he told Americans to ignore all the climate doom and gloom and embrace cheap energy. “Drill, Baby, Drill!” he bellowed.
A similar rebellion is taking place in the UK. Not long ago, almost everyone in British politics paid lip service to the idea that we really ought to address climate and biodiversity crises. Delivery was often slow, with ridiculously small budgets, but it at least looked like we were trying. But in their desperation for economic growth, the Left, as well the Right, is now ripping up previously sacrosanct environmental and political norms.
Yet should “growth” really be our only priority? The Chancellor needs to be careful because the grown-up green consensus is a fragile one. Solving big environmental problems is hard, and most of us don’t want to do it. So if we get the hint that we’re off the hook, then the project could fall apart pretty quickly.
As a farmer, I know how frustrating environmental policy can be. Ideally, farmers would like to dredge rivers, rip out hedges and trees in our fields, and use synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides. All this would maximise productivity — and if “growth” was the sole purpose of our farms, we’d do all this and more. We would clear the last remaining forests and drain the last wetlands, and even reclaim the estuaries and marshes as we once did to feed Britain. But we know that doing this made our farmed landscapes into some of the most nature-depleted regions in the world. The awkward and frustrating truth is that growth isn’t the only metric that counts.
Yet the alternative — sustainable economic growth — is hard work and complicated. Not only do we have to think about boosting productivity, but we also need to consider the environmental costs. Only idiots get to “Drill, Baby, Drill!” or “Plough, Baby, Plough!” like we live in a world without consequences.
One way that economists have tried to square this circle is “carbon offsetting”. This is when individuals and companies invest in environmental projects elsewhere — often in developing countries — in order to balance out their own carbon footprint. They can then boast about being “carbon neutral”. In theory this system allows growth to happen, while also paying for the damage we do to nature. But it is a terribly flawed idea.
When we agree to the principle of offsetting, we accept that the cost of helping nature in one place is its destruction in another. In this way, we are all made complicit in the systemic destruction of the natural world.
Offsetting creates vast flows of capital (as “carbon credits” can be traded), but it is inherently dishonest. It is a gold rush fuelled by bullshit — it’s all about creating some numbers to put in a spreadsheet back at HQ so you can claim your airline, powerplant or supermarket is “carbon neutral”. Naturally, some good will be done with some of this offsetting money, and many environmentalists are doing their best. But in the end, it’s a smoke-and-mirrors game, which turns bad guys into heroes, and assuages the guilt and responsibility of the wealthy.
It’s above all a game that plays to the strengths of the rich and powerful. A new kind of feudalism is now emerging in the British countryside. Large landowners, who have always held their tenants and workers in contempt, can now get rid of them, let the land go, and claim vast sums of money for preserving nature and offsetting carbon emissions. You don’t need to be a qualified environmentalist to get your hands on this offset cash, just a plenty of acres, the gift-of-the-gab, some claims about “carbon sequestration” or “biodiversity gain” and a swanky website. These landowners have the scale required to play the game — and they’d far rather have a safari experience outside the back door than some grumpy tenant farmers.
What we’re seeing is a two-tier system of responsibility for the environment, with the powerful and wealthy given a free pass to pollute because they are the miraculous deliverers of “growth”. It has become a giant power play (which is about to get worse because of the vast energy needs of AI), in which the wealthy assuage their guilt by buying out everyone else — including farmers, who can’t possibly compete. Indeed, Britain’s landscapes are being rapidly bought up by wealthy landowners and giant corporations: more than 40% of land purchased last year was by non-farmers. And they seem to have our government in their pockets. They whisper about “growth” and needing deregulation and suddenly Labour becomes their pet. Meanwhile, the rest of us are bribed and cajoled into “offsetting” their mess.
Another problem is that offsetting is rarely a straight swap. A developer might bulldoze an ancient woodland, and pay for a new one to be planted elsewhere. But even if it’s twice the size, this low-quality replica won’t truly offset their damages. The ancient oak tree they felled to clear space for a new road would have taken centuries to grow, and it would have been part of an ancient ecosystem supporting hundreds of species of wild things. The new woodland they plant with plastic tree guards is an entirely false creation that will take decades, if not centuries to remotely resemble what they have destroyed. And given the logic of offsetting, someone else will in time destroy this new wood too. This cycle will repeat itself until nature is pushed to the lowest quality land and everywhere else is tarmac, housing and shopping centres.
The worst thing about offsetting, though, is that it stops us talking honestly about industries that do real damage — burning fossil fuels or using finite natural resources. It allows us to keep polluting under the illusion it’s all OK, and that the debt has been paid. Yet shifting emissions from one place to another, from a factory to a forest, won’t reduce the emissions. It just allows big business to keep on polluting.
The solution, of course, is for the state to pay for nature restoration, or mandate it through regulation, so we all pay the real price of pollution and nature destruction. But being broke is making our government desperate and weak. Rachel Reeves’s proposed Heathrow runway threatens to create so many emissions that all the offsetting we’ve done for years will be pointless.
I’ll go back to our hillside later today, to plant some more trees, out of sheer bloody stubbornness if nothing else. In a year or two this place will be different, an emerging wood pasture with lots of wildflowers. Productive, bio-diverse and beautiful, a once broken place helped to heal. From the crest I can see for miles out across Northern England — a bleak half-broken landscape that could be an inspired mix of nature restoration and thriving family farms. Such a landscape would be full of jobs and produce vital and valuable food.
We should invest in the work of restoring the countryside, not because it greenwashes some other ugly industrial thing elsewhere, but because it is a good investment itself. It would create something for us all. But, then, it seems that we’re not all in this together: some of us are being used, and it’s starting to feel like it is for nothing.
James Rebanks is a fell farmer and the best-selling author of The Shepherd’s Life. His latest book is The Place of Tides.
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SubscribeThe solution, of course, is for the state to pay for nature restoration, or mandate it through regulation, so we all pay the real price of pollution and nature destruction.
Raising the privatizing of profits and the socializing of costs to official policy, I see. When the going gets tough, the tough get the state involved.
I think there’s value in promoting more land use zoning for family farming. The author is correct about “greenwashing” which is similar to “wokewashing” and every other type of sin cleansing that Corporations engage in when State policies try to coerce behavior. So why the policies in the first place?
Degrowth is not a realistic option because it defies human nature. But giving more people the ability to develop land so they can feed themselves and local community might bring down costs by reducing dependence on corporate agriculture. Increased market competition and self-reliance would “stick it to the man” and Make Family Farms Great Again!
I spent some time (in the States) at a campfire talking with two farmers last weekend. One guy was 55 but looked about 70 due to 40 years of 2 packs a day. The other fit the perfect stereotype of a hillbilly with his big belly, long beard and deep accent. What struck me was their common sense and tremendous subject matter knowledge of agriculture. They spoke in plain language and listened intently. In other words, these were serious people. Too serious to get preoccupied with theorizing about existential global problems or saving the world.
There’s really no need to put the same pesticide limitations and emission requirements on small farms because they’re not polluting or emitting at scale. Pollution not “carbon emissions” is the real issue anyways. Is there blatant, large scale dumping happening? If so, you need to stop or be fined. Clean water and air agendas are programs the overwhelming majority of people can get behind. Carbon emission limits are an unnecessary burden and subjective enough that they’re screaming to be broken or manipulated by corporations with large bands of savvy attorneys. By reducing pollution you’re almost certainly going to reduce total emissions, so why not just make it simple.
Lots of good points but we do need to start, gradually, increasing the costs of fertilisers and the various cides as they do cause considerable damage to water, soil and nature in general. How much the pollution/poisoning levy on them should be is a good question.
Similarly medicines, esp antibiotics, for farm livestock. I have livestock and try to minimise use and use good breeding to reduce sickness in the bloodlines but often it is too easy to just reach for the Pharma.
Does the damage spread beyond your plot of land though or it confined?
And that Pharma is in the meat we eat, with as yet unknown but possibly dire consequences for human health.
Pesticides are another problem, as they tend to be indiscriminate. At the insect level, they might combat plagues, but they’ll also wipe out pollinators. And a local I know who loved working in the countryside said his eyes filled with tears when he would arrive at the tomato plantation (he only tolerated for a few months) and see the ground strewn with dead birds. And those chemicals are on and possibly absorbed into the fruit and vegetables we consume.
I know we have to generate income and produce food on an industrial scale to sustain the (already far too excessive) population, but it requires a very delicate balancing act and we should be listening to the farmers. How politicians can ignore such experts and their accumulated wisdom when imposing regulations is completely beyond my comprehension..
I just learnt write baby write could be pretty ego centric.
“Up until now, we were assured we were “all in it together” when it came to fighting climate change and biodiversity loss in the UK. I might have to change my diet or type of car, my household heating system or how I manage my fields, but that was kind of OK, because everyone else was doing their bit too.”
No James, we were never all in it together, the NetZero intoduced by PM’s May & Boris were a nonsense and were a direct attack on the salaries of working people. Only for Labour & the Miliband joke to double down on it all.
We should be fracking oil & gas, opening up the North Sea again for oil and gas and growing our economy so providing a decent standard of living for all working people.
p.s. Check out how they ‘farm’ in New Zealand, no subsidies or grants since 1984 from the taxpayer and it is now a major exporting industry.
Farmers are having a terrible time in New Zealand! and the polluted rivers etc there a real problem. i think you should find out about farming in New Zealand before you write about it. And nowhere do I see any mention of good food let alone food security. this is a shocking reply, ill thought out and ignorant of the facts
New Zealand’s LAWA* National River Water Quality series shows river agricultural pollution reducing in the last decade. There has been a major reduction in ammonia levels, a reduction in reactive phosphorus, and no change in nitrate pollution. Overall, NZ’s river health is, by international comparison, very good. The data simply doesn’t support the alarmism being spread by environmental activists, who are the ones making life very hard for farmers.
*Land, Air, Water Aotearoa.
You may now also swim in Lake Geneva/Lac Léman which was decidedly unadvisable fifty years ago.
Yes, some Kiwi farmers are having a terrible time and NZ must be one of the most toxic countries around. e.g. $100M/yr spent on 1080 to kill possums and everything else that it touches, Glysophate sprayed all over the place and now seen in fish in the sea and totally corrupt councils and government from top to bottom lining their own pockets .
Some farmers are cashing in on the ridiculous green bottom line of large European (e.g. IKEA,) companies that do not change their practices and “offset” their poor practices by buying farmland and covering it with pine trees. Often over paying by 6 times for some really good quality farm land so that these companies can prove to their shareholders they are heading towards net zero. What a load of bs.
We have 5.5+ million acres of pine trees, a dying timber industry due to the appalling policies of the Ardern era which created ever rising electricity prices. We no longer refine oil and we buy in dirty coal from Indonesia, even though much of what is left in the ground here is very high quality.
Our timber is shipped to Australia and back and it is still cheaper than buying local timber. The pines are now wilding at an alarming rate and the latest govt. policy is to spend $100million on removing wilding pines to protect our own natural bush.
The whole climate thing is a scam, and if you go back a few years… 50-60?? it was noted by that whomever controls the weather controls the food and population. Even that bastion of wokeism The Guardian has been talking about geo-engineering in the last week.
Yes, there is nothing wrong with looking after our planet and I applaud all those plantings of natural and native forests etc, bird restoration bush etc. and farmers in NZ have been made to pay twice for fencing off waterways etc after successive governments literally moved the boundaries of fencing.
No subsidies works very well up to a point as the farmers can change output quickly if they want to, this was seen around my area by the vast number of new hop plantations that went in over the last 5 years. Last year there was a glut and much less is planted for this season. However the banks no longer give out loans to farmers if they are not heading down the net zero pathway, they still go on about methane, carbon dioxide levels which should be a lot higher than they are. Banks hold Kiwi farmers to ransom.
It is up to all of us to hold our local and national governments to account and be the squeaky wheel for change.
There are always problems my friend! Read David Deutsch, a brilliant scientific philosopher. Human being solve these problems, then of course create other ones.
Sustainability is pretty much an absurd concept. Human beings don’t live in some harmonious balance with nature and in fact haven’t done for thousands of years. If we did there probably would be only a few million of us across the planet. The idea that we want to turn the clock back to some kind of subsistence agriculture is the hobby horse of a tiny minority of people, who are completely unrepresentative of the population.
And then we have the irony that the very farms that James Rebanks champions, including sheep farms are hardly biodiverse themselves, as environmental writers that such as George Monbiot point out. But it is “traditional” – and traditional is good right?
Net Zero was something May signed up to as part of the EU. For some bizarre reason, despite Brexit, Johnson kept us signed up to the madness.
Net Zero is rooted in UN agendas 2030 and 2050. The UN, always a vociferous advocate for mass immigration into the west, is no friend to Western nation states.
Thing is, NZ agriculture paid a huge price for decades. I remember 20 years ago reading about big farms in NZ that had to stop rearing sheep because they’d made the land so sick with over production (in the harsh world of market only conditions) A lot of those farms switched to milk production- the next holy grail. All was grand until the commodity traders decided that dairy products were a good thing to bet on. Along comes the giant Frontera who drove milk prices through the floor & the cycle started all over again.
Now the challenge in NZ is to comply with the new green requirements.
The added thing for British agriculture is this.
We left the EU (under false pretences) But the EU with its subusudy system is still on Our doorstep, therefore it’s nonsense to try any comparison with NZ.
Uk agriculture simply can’t operate without subsidy- it’s a fallacy to pretend otherwise
Yes – why doesn’t the government pay for everything? Then no-one would have to work.
Patience, we’re almost there.
“I might have to change my diet or type of car, my household heating system or how I manage my fields, but that was kind of OK”
No it wasn’t. Controlling what the masses get to eat and drive, and whether they get to heat their houses is full on Soviet Union communism.
I hate to break it to you James, but the majority of people don’t agree with you, and you’re picking a lonely hill to die on.
You claim “ Only idiots get to “Drill, Baby, Drill!” but in fact the idiots are the ones who write Net Zero into law with no idea of the costs involved or whether the whole thing is scientifically feasible or beneficial.
The NET Zero policies are a non-solution to a non-problem. And they will devastate the country’s wealth creating ability.
And that’s bad news for the Welfare State, as that costs lots of money.
Re the header :- a la Zimbabwe, look how that’s prospered?
There is a major problem in that the UK, England in particular, is massively overpopulated and is governed by an urban educated mentality who only undertand flawed statistics. Community democracy, people making decisions locally, is the only way out of this mess.
Totally agree about local decisions – just as Labour is about to introduce a new level of local government, well insulated from the views of the voters.
Eh?. This is completely incoherent!. We want more local decisions but apparently no more elected politicians? How does this work? A self-appointed group of people in a village, the great majority of course who do not work on the land but either work from home or commute!
One of the worst aspects of human agglomerations in urban centres is the lack of contact with and understanding of nature. I was privileged to grow up in the countryside and am forever grateful for that life enhancing experience. I feel especial compassion for urban children, who grow up in a concrete and asphalt jungle and would benefit greatly from the occasional rural holiday under expert guidance. Perhaps well wishers could sponsor such endeavours.
“What we need is a conversation about how corrupted, confused and contradictory environmental policy has become.”
The above is the summary in the article. It is 100% correct but….
1) Where would this conversation take place? On UnHerd – no, too ‘far-right’, on GBNews (aka ReformTV), on the BBC – too ‘far-left’ with the conversation being chaired by Gary Lineker and Fiona Bruce.
2) Who would be involved? MPs who can’t speak without advisors and briefs and also have to think about their careers? ‘Experts’ as with the COVID debate? Representatives of Just Stop Oil? Representatives of Big Oil?
3) Suppose, say, the answer is to ban all electric cars because they destroy the environment – the minerals for the batteries, that is. Would this be acceptable as a conclusion?
Perhaps the author needs to supply the answer to these questions.
One thing should be absolutely clear. Are we discussing ‘global warming’ to ask if is real and what we should do? Or are we discussing NetZero2050, which we signed up to in 1996? Or are we discussing NetZero2030, the modification supplied by our government? Or are we discussing NetZero2028, which is being pursued by my local county council?
Cardog has highlighted the madness behind the climate obsession rather well.
Even if UK achieved Net Zero at whatever date, the effect on global warming would be negligible, because UK´s contribution is so tiny. The NetZero aim is virtue signalling of the most mindless variety. We should do far better to exercise control over those matters where we have influence: like clean water in our rivers; like better air quality; like not overfishing our waters; like planting new woodlands; like controlling- or better stopping – immigration. James Rebanks has a reason to sound grumpy, and he is right to be angry at our current government.
There’s not much global warmth bathing us in the UK!
It’s not Global Warming anymore. It’s Climate Change. Didn’t you get Greta’s memo?
Global warming is a meaningless term anyway, as it’s based on average figures, whereas local variations differ considerably (with record local highs and lows being set). It doesn’t help that thermometers are often deliberately placed in hotspots like airports to deliberately inflate the figures. They don’t even know the ‘in the shade’ temperatures because they don’t put thermometers in the shade anymore.
If the climate is really changing this deserves attention, because the agriculture that feeds us depends on traditional weather patterns.
Agree! ‘Climate change’ can mean anything you want it to mean. Vapid weasel words.
What happened to your attempt to castigate me about my continued criticism of the Senned?
Did YOU ask UH to expunge it perhaps? All very weird!
Despicable tyrants always go after the farmers.
Starting with Sir Robert Peel perhaps?
While I don’t agree with all of the arguments in this article, James is correct to say that the Government has got it in for (small) farmers. IHT will cause land to be sold. The buyers will be people like Dale Vince, who will then pick up a Government subsidy – paid for by you and me through our energy bills – to construct giant solar farms.
It wouldn’t be so bad to have our food security diminished if the energy security we’re allegedly getting in return wasn’t completely illusory.
Yes and so we must support farmers all we can in their fight against the government.
The mind poison of climate change hype causes a civilization destroying cancer that spreads everywhere. The utter lack of evidence behind policies designed to “fight climate change” have never made and never will make one bit of difference to the climate.
“Solving big environmental problems is hard, and most of us don’t want to do it.” The sheer hubris lurking behind that statement (that mankind has the ability to “solve big environmental problems”) is of the same type that drives the whole climate alarmist scam. The human species is not nearly as all- powerful as you and most alarmists believe James. Remove us completely from the planet and it will take just a few centuries (mere seconds in Earth time) for Earth to return to a pre-human status (as may be amended by natural climate shifts of course). We are but ants crawling around in a Petri dish. Lets stop pretending we are otherwise.
I think I understand what you’re trying to say here, and I agree to some extent, but the fact is, we have, as a species, caused some major environmental problems, and we have also, as a species, fixed some of them. Whether global warming would be amenable to our attempts to “fix” it, is an open question, but the tone of your response seems to imply that it’s pointless for us humans to even attempt such a thing.
The issue is not whether the planet would recover just fine without us. Of course it would. The issue is whether our actions are destroying the ecological basis for our continued thriving WHILE WE’RE STILL HERE.
Perfectly put Sir, although I would substitute ANTS for MAGGOTS.
You lost me at “burning fossil fuels”. Firstly, they are not “fossils”. Secondly, hydrocarbon fuels are the most valuable bounty this planet has bestowed on mankind, and long may they last. The demonisation of this plentiful and cheap source of energy (and numerous other materials and products) is getting really irksome.
The fight for Britain’s future will not be won with a few hedges and some flowers planted for the pollinators
And certainly not by the reintroduction of dangerous creatures that were eliminated for a reason. It’s that sort of environmental extremism that alienates a population that would be supportive of sensible attempts to improve the quality of life through nature and the environment.
Well said James, I’m totally with you. I too am a farmer and am down here in Cornwall planting trees.
Lets just think about ‘growth’ for a minute. A third runway at Heathrow, so more traffic, more roads. Then to keep ‘growing’ what’s next? Well obviously a fourth runway, more roads, more traffic etc. Ad infinitum until everything is concrete.Is that living? If it is it’s a living Hell. Eternal growth is a ludicrous delusion , a wilful act of self destruction.
There’s a comedy series on tv – called Figlio del Secolo, where mussolini wants to control everything starmer wants to: property ownership, diet, excercise, music et al. But it goes wrong. Everyone has their own version of the “one truth” and in the end, the boss’s boss (Hitler) steps in and takes over his errant lackey. Well, starmer ain’t fluent in Russian or Mandarin so i gues his boss is still Trump. Meet the new boss, same as the last elected boss.
So, if I understand this correctly, Labour’s plan is for Britain to have no energy production, therefore that will be imported. No manufacturing, as costs have shuttered that, therefore that will be offshored and imported. And now, no farming, so no food production, therefore that will be imported.
Brilliant.
I’ve read Mr Rebank’s books and very good they are. But in them, and in this, alas, badly thought-through article, is the message that the government must pay and direct and provide and ordain. But in a free society, the government must do the absolute minimum of any of this; it must allow the citizenry to make its own mistakes and learn, and benefit from learning.
We don’t really know if the climate changes are man made; they are not terribly dramatic and we have seen much more dramatic changes over the last 2000 years. But we can be sure we will run out of many essential materials fairly soon, especially with a world population that has quadrupled in the last 75 years, and continues to grow. So we must prepare for new forms of power generation, we must get much better at recycling, and we must be economical with material use. The market will do this most efficiently, government will mostly mess up – like wind turbines, the most inefficient power generators there are.
And one more thing. The national economy is bust. We can’t spend (our money remember, not the government’s) on anything except real essentials. And that, sorry James, does not include farmers.
If our nation’s core food supply as produced by farmers isn’t a core essential what on earth is?
Food is good, like technology and transport and books, but none of it needs subsidies to be produced!
‘We can’t spend our money on anything except real essentials’. This includes ‘foreign aid’!
Or rather, that doesn’t include ‘foreign aid’.
“We don’t really know if the climate changes are man made …”
If you don’t look for other causes, you will never know. It looks like the variations in Space Weather, especially the recent changes in the Sun, offer a better explanation, with plenty of data being collected by satellites. It includes collecting particular frequencies in the Electromagnetic spectrum, not just visible light, and the strength and direction of magnetic fields; and there’s the high velocity particles that hit the Earth, or rather the Ionosphere, from time to time. Thunderstorms and Earthquakes can be triggered, and it has been found that, just before an Earthquake, the Electric field in the vicinity changes significantly. But Meteorologists, and the MET Office in particular, appear oblivious.
Unless you have a good understanding of Physics, Chemistry, some knowledge of Geology and Biology, you won’t know. You won’t know the difference between something based on the well known laws in these subjects, that have stood the test of time, and propaganda. Most of the required information used to be taught at A’ level, in schools.
And when the BBC, created to inform, educate, and entertain, has morphed into a producer of entertaining propaganda, there’s little chance of Informed Discussion. It matters little that you might think Windmills are virtuous, it’s whether they can keep the lights on, the heat pumps running, and the EVs, including refrigerated lorries, tractors, bin-lorries, and ambulances, ready for use, whenever needed.
And they can’t.
And Newton’s Laws of Motion would provide the clues.
Well said. The dumbing down of education to make it easier to pass (while simultaneously spreading far left political ideology) is having dire consequences for consecutive generations. The one bright spot is that the internet has made information readily available. So of course the totalitarian powers want to censor it.
Good leaders help the citizenry to avoid mistakes and to find the best solutions by bringing the appropriate experience, knowledge, skills and wisdom to bear to address each challenge. The UK has lacked proper leadership for decades, which is why people feel nostalgia for Churchill and Thatcher.
Neither did much of what you suggest in peacetime; they, especially Churchill did in war time of course, fighting such born leaders as Herr AH and J Stalin, who were very hot on helping the citizenry avoid mistakes.
That is so crass, are you trying to be witty, because you sound a born Starmerite!
Is the destruction of the UK’s coal-fired powers stations ‘carbon offsetting’ the building of coal-fired powerplants in China? One blown up in the UK in exchange for one built in the people’s republic? Net Zero in one country, much like Stalin’s socialism in one country.
If farming in the UK can be dismissed as one per cent of GDP, just as Edward Heath dismissed the UK’s 22,000 fishermen and their families as ‘politically insignificant’ in the 1970s, there needs to be a new way of measuring the economic state of the UK before farmland is sold off in its entirety.
More like one was blown up in the UK (there are actually none left now) for a hundred built in China.
Labour is waging war against those groups it feels it can dispense with because they are unlikely to support the party: farmers, elderly pensioners, private school parents and children, landowners, and now environmentalists. One can only hope they do not wreak too much vengeance by 2029 when hopefully they will receive their just desserts.
Far left governments never intend to voluntarily surrender power!
All this pressure on land comes from our ludicrous pursuit of population growth
I agree, It’s the root cause of the problem.
It’s the root cause of all the problems. Perhaps that’s why some sinister people in back rooms keep inventing things to kill us off, like pandemics and wars. I’m even wondering whether some ‘natural disasters’ aren’t deliberately triggered. The UAE admitted its disastrous flooding last year was provoked by cloud seeding. They can cause precipitation but cannot control the consequences. How many more ‘consequences’ do our egocentric scientists provoke?
You know what would go down good right now? A really lovely war. The last big one killed off around 80 million, Not nearly enough, but it’s a good start.
I agree with some of what the writer says but the belief that we can stymie climate change in any way whatsoever is for the birds. If it is true that carbon emissions have caused climate change then how can reducing our out output from 0.8% to 0 have any blooming effect whatsoever when China alone is pumping out 33% of global carbon emissions? The whole thing is nuts. A scam. “The science” supporting all of this is as dodgy as “the science” that supported lockdowns. I am passionate about farming and protecting and regenerating the country side. That means I have been dead set against mass immigration for years because growing our population by ten million plus in such a short space of time means the opposite of all I care about and makes a complete mockery of “environmentalism”. The numpties that run the Green Party are all for mass immigration, as were the Tories and as are Labour: they are all either hypocritical or dangerously stupid. Perhaps both.
It’s not carbon emissions – that’s a scam. It’s urban sprawl, replacing vegetation (which cools naturally, filters and absorbs precipitation) with concrete and asphalt (which causes hotspots and provokes run-off). Look at the way urban expansion (including all the supporting infrastructure) has gobbled up the land, as the human population has quadrupled in just a century!
I agree with you. It was the cleverest scam to deflect those who cared about the environment and those who were a threat to global corporate interests. As I said the “science” it is based on is as dodgy as the lockdown “science”.
I suggest we return to the time approximately 52 years ago when Cambridge, Wye, Rothamstead , Silsoe, Reading and Oxford had world class departments of agriculture and people understood soils. We no longer have an Agriculture Research Council.
In 1970 more people knew more about soils than today. However, one study gender and media at university.
The massive bias towards humanites and against applied science and engineering, just look at numbers of A levels and degrees, demonstrates the problem.
A combination of subsidies for fertilisers and ignorance how they move the soil into groundwater and surface water are the main problems.
Why did Rebanks read History and not Agriculture ?
Excellent post
Thnak you.
Seconded!
Thirded!
Writer reads as conflicted.
Carbon trading – essentially selling parcels of atmosphere – must rank alongside the most egregious scams of the Victorian era.
Making us buy the very air that we breath.
Whenever you say that our progressive governments are enacting a WEF / Davos globalist agenda you get called a conspiracy theorist. And to be fair – you feel a bit like a conspiracy theorist – because it seems implausible. However the war on farmers is what really made me put my tin foil hat on. The Netherland’s bizarre attempt to destroy its farming industry. The UK’s current attempt to dislodge farmers. What did it for me in Canada was Trudeau several years ago suddenly declaring out of the blue that soil nitrogen levels were had to be addressed – which would have – you guessed it – shut down many farms. Thankfully the Western premiers forced him to back down by, among other things, threatening to arrest federal employees for trespass if they stepped on private land to test for nitrogen. How we keep electing these anti-human ghouls is beyond me – but many in our societies appear to have some kind of national death wish. I pity the UK as you have four more years of this insanity.