Campaigners fear 'backward' step in pesticide regulation in UK after testing body scrapped as Government also confirms major budget cuts to Natural England and the Environment Agency
Forget impersonal internet interactions, Project Dirt is connecting green initiatives in real life to make environmental change at a local level a reality
Individuals and local campaign groups are being prevented from challenging environmental damage because of the potentially crippling cost of legal action
It probably isn’t too much of an exaggeration to suggest that most people are hard pushed to name a politician they really admire. In Britain, however, one name will come up time and again.
This budget season, and so a short perambulation around the vexed question of the national debt seems in order. As a nation we've been living with debt for more the 300 years now, since 1694 to be precise, when Scottish privateer William Paterson persuaded the government of the time that creating £1.2 million of IOUs would get them out of their spending difficulties.
Uncontrolled growth of financial debt is currently laying waste to large parts of the global economy. An explosion of ecological debt looks set to do the same, but worse, to a biosphere friendly to human civilisation.
Experts have identified something called ‘shifting baseline syndrome’. No, not a symptom of excessive alcohol intake, but rather the theory that people’s perception of the environment is based on what they can see with their own eyes today, not what things were like in the past.
Pirates ruled Somalia’s waves last year, but a greater crime is still being perpetrated by the multinational companies using the mainland as a toxic dumping ground. Chris Milton reports
The recent U-turn by of some of the UK's leading environmentalists - and one-time nuclear energy opponents - on the issue of nuclear energy, has caused vigourous debate in the media. Their reasoning is that we simply don't have the capacity to produce enough renewable energy to meet our needs. But as this comprehensive Ecologist report from 2007 shows the UK is really a renewable energy powerhouse.
A new Ecology Party would work for a change in values, a paradigm shift in which human beings learn to work with the grain of the natural world, instead of against it.
Environmental groups were pleased at the end of 2007 when the UN announced that its under-resourced adaptation funds - established to help less-industrialised nations adapt to the effects of climate change - were to receive a cash injection.
‘Britain’s astounding retreat from reason is now legitimising anarchy.’ That was the conclusion of the hotblooded screaming radical Melanie Phillips, writing for The Spectator.
During the past weeks, the world’s media have been transfixed by the convulsions of the US and global fi nancial system. At stake are billions in bail-outs and trillions in derivatives. The viability of banks and currencies is threatened, and ultimately the savings and investments of hundreds of millions of ordinary people.
The Government has backtracked on radical plans for personal carbon trading schemes, reports Jamie Andrews – taking accountability for what we emit is the only way to go.
It’s fair to say that we have our share of robust discussions in this office. Opinions get aired, fingers get pointed, occasionally voices get raised. It’s all in a good cause. Setting the world to rights isn’t always a civilised tea party.
