Environmentalists trashing the environment (again)

The greatest threat to endangered whooping cranes? Environmentalists.

(H/T ASI) 

Le plonker le plus grand

This is wonderful - funniest green since Swampy.

Planet Relief redux

Remember the BBC's Planet Relief? 24 hours of being lectured by holier-than-thou greens? It was pulled from the schedules a year into the project, when BBC planners got cold feet. They reckoned their viewers might not be too pleased at having naked propaganda shoved down their throats.

I came across some interesting developments related to this project the other day. It's a bit involved, but stick with me.

Planet Relief was the brainchild of an environmentalist called Matt Prescott. Now it's interesting in itself that an environmental campaigner appears to have been appointed to head a very large BBC project. Still more surprising is the fact that he was barely out of University when appointed to head it up.

The justification for the licence fee has always been that the BBC is objective and impartial, and yet here we have Mr Prescott brought in from outside, apparently to use public resources to promote his own (and presumably the BBC's) political views.

Now perhaps I'm leaping to conclusions. Perhaps Mr Prescott has TV experience, as well as being an environmental campaigner. Perhaps his objectivity and is unimpeachable. Let's see.

So what do we know about Matt Prescott?

His Blogger profile can be seen here. He is nothing if not prolific, with fully eleven blogs associated with him. He has a PhD in zoology from Oxford, and organised the Oxford Earth Summit. In 2005 he launched a campaign to ban incandescent bulbs and since graduating has worked for:

• Prof. Norman Myers (a British environmentalist),
• Sir Crispin Tickell,(a British diplomat, environmentalist and academic)
• Roger Harrabin,(BBC environment)
  
• George Monbiot, (journalist and environmentalist)
  
• Jon Plowman (Head of BBC comedy)
  
• Glenwyn Benson (Controller BBC knowledge)

Now an environmentalist working for environmentalists isn't really news, but working for the head of BBC comedy? That's a bit odd isn't it?

According to this article by Prescott himself, he was introduced to Plowman by Roger Harrabin and the Open University's Joe Smith in Cambridge "a couple of years ago". This puts it in 2006.

Now Cambridge, Roger Harrabin, and Joe Smith rang a bell with me. Harrabin and Smith run something called the Cambridge Environment and Media Forum (CEMP) which I've blogged about previously. It's funded by the BBC and is alleged to look at ways of improving reporting of environmental stories. There are some details of some of the seminars they have organised online. By looking at the lists of attendees it appears that the meeting of Prescott and Plowman may have taken place at the seminar at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge on September 14th and 15th 2006, the purpose of which was apparently to look at how non-factual program makers might include environmental and development issues in their storylines. It's worth a look at the names of those involved which reads like a list of the movers and shakers in the upper echelons of the Beeb.

We should first stand back and wonder how a fresh-faced PhD, not long out of Oxford, manages to move so rapidly through the ranks at the BBC. No sooner is he in the door than he is hob-nobbing some of the most powerful people in the BBC. But not only that, but he has also landed himself a major project to co-ordinate. It's pretty impressive stuff.

We might also wonder how  Mr Prescott came to work at the BBC. Was he an employee or a consultant? If the former, was the position advertised openly, and if the latter, what particular expertise was Prescott supposed to bring in order to justify his retention.

Why, we wonder, did the allegedly objective BBC journalist Roger Harrabin invite this rather wet-behind-the-ears environmentalist to meet such important people?

Reasons for the invitation aside, the result seems to have been that Plowman, the head of BBC comedy, got right behind the Planet Relief idea. He was still supportive after it was cancelled. In Prescott's words:

Jon did his best for Planet Relief within the BBC and stuck by me after his baby was cancelled.

Prescott is also clear that Harrabin and his CEMP colleague Joe Smith (who, we note in passing, is also a non-political public servant and who also has a startling sparse publication record, according to his webpage) were also instrumental in getting the Planet Relief project off the ground:

Joe Smith (Open University) and Roger Harrabin (BBC News) [...] also played a crucial role in helping to get things off the ground a couple of years ago.

After Planet Relief was pulled, Prescott went back to campaigning - as noted above, he had launched a campaign to ban incandescent bulbs in 2005. The BBC obligingly gave him a slot on their website to promote his views, here and another one here.

Roll forward to today, and Matt's latest wheeze is E-day. This time, we are all going to switch off lights for a day and the planet will be saved. All the usual suspects are involved: Jon Plowman is on the steering committee, and among the list of people thanked for help and support are Roger Harrabin and the following BBC staff:

• Andrew Lane (BBC Weather)
• Andrew Zincke (BBC Worldwide)
• David Shukman (BBC)
• Jonathan Harvey (BBC)
• Kate Forbes (BBC)
• Mark Damazer (BBC Radio 4)
• Mark Kinver (BBC)
• Peter Barron (BBC)
• Richard Black (BBC)
• Sarah Mukherjee (BBC)
• Sophie Stafford (BBC Wildlife Magazine)
• Will Watt (BBC Worldwide)
  

In addition, occasional BBC correspondent Alex Kirby seems to be heavily involved. 

Now, were we especially naive, we might think that all these BBC staff were giving their spare time to support Mr Prescott's campaign. But thirteen people, representing all the major arms of the BBC, is strongly suggestive that the  Corporation is giving unofficial support to this campaign which is nothing if not political. Essentially, they've tried to resurrect Planet Relief on the quiet. They've done their bit puffing up E-day, with an online article from Richard Black at the start of the month and another today. They seem to be almost the only MSM outlet which seems to think E-day is news.

So where is all this heading? I don't really know, but it just doesn't look right to me. It kind of looks as if the BBC is allowing itself to be used once again as a vehicle for environmentalist propaganda.

Just another reason to privatise it. 

 Update:

Matt Sinclair is following E-day's progress. So far energy consumption is above normal. Even the kindest heart would find it hard not to snigger. 

Fools of the Earth

Friends of the Earth 2004 

The Government should introduce a Biofuels Obligation, to stimulate a UK biofuels industry - as a lower carbon alternative to conventional transport fuels. The obligation would require that a proportion of all road transport fuels in the UK should be sourced from accredited renewable sources.

 Friends of the Earth 2008

Friends of the Earth hopes that the Government will now put the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation on hold and demand a moratorium on EU biofuel targets. The real solution to Europe's rising transport emissions is better public transport, more provision for cyclists and higher standards for fuel efficiency in new cars

 Chaps, has it occurred to you that you might do less harm if you just, you know, shut up?

More on the Green Alliance

Friends of the Earth have issued a press release today, welcoming the appointment of the Climate Change Committee by the government.

We welcome these appointments. It is clear this is going to be a serious and heavyweight committee, which is much needed if we are to keep future Governments under pressure to bring down emissions from the UK. �What is now needed is for the Climate Change Bill to be amended to ensure that this Committee can advise on a target that takes all emissions into account, including those from aviation and shipping.

Oh dear, thinks I. If FoE are in favour it's unlikely to be a good thing.

So who are these captains of science that have been drafted in to save us from the horrors of global warming? (As I write, it's bitterly cold and pouring with rain, so I could do with a little AGW right now.) The details come from 24Dash.

First up is Adair Turner, who is obviously a NuLab placeman.

Then there's Sir Brian Hoskins, a meteorologist and climatologist from the University of Reading. Among his many acheivements were a contribution to the risible Stern Report.

Lord May is the first interesting one. He's a physicist by training but carved out a career in mathematical ecology. This was followed by a second career as a professional green scaremonger, promoting major green issues from "limits to growth" right through to climate change. He's been described as a "serial alarmist", so I imagine we know what to expect from him.

Then we have Professor Jim Skea who had his first career as a director of a left-wing think tank, and is now head of the UK Energy Research Centre. He turns out to be a member of the Green Alliance, the campaigning group I mentioned in the previous post. No doubt his independence is unimpeachable.

Dr Samuel Fankhauser is an economist who contributed to the IPCC reports.

And lastly is Professor Michael Grubb, another economist, this time from the Carbon Trust. And rather interestingly, another member of the Green Alliance. I feel quite certain that, like Prof Skea, he is a man of independent thought who comes to this job with no preconceptions about conclusions he's going to reach.

The committee is described by Hilary Benn as "independent". The question is: independent of what? Most of them work in the public sector and owe their positions to government advancement. Overwhelmingly "green" in outlook, they've clearly been appointed because the government can be sure of the conclusions they're going to reach.

Deborah Mattinson and the Green Alliance

Last year, the esteemed Guido Fawkes published a piece about Deborah Mattinson, the dodgy pollster used by Gordon Brown to tell him he's the greatest. It went like this:

According to the front page of the Guardian Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and the Green Alliance are claiming that the government is using Deborah Mattinson's Opinion Leader Research to distort the evidence and get the required result on nuclear power from bogus public consultations.

 Which is strange, because Deborah Mattinson turns out to be a trustee of the Green Alliance. Isn't that odd?

Airbrushing and biofuels

In an a wonderfully brass-necked piece on the always lamentable Comment is Free, an enviro-loon called Mark Lynas claims, astoundingly, that environmentalists were right all along. Biofuels are a disaster!

Yes, you read that correctly. The environmentalists are going to start claiming that they've always been against biofuels.

When you've stopped killing yourselves laughing here's the "proof". Lynas says:

When the prospect of large-scale use of biofuels as a response to climate change was first mooted, many green campaigners and writers - including Greenpeace and the Guardian's George Monbiot - raised concerns about the impacts on land-use, food supply and biodiversity.

To his credit, Moonbat has written against biofuels in the past. But as one commenter on the CiF thread points out, Friends of the Earth have been welcoming pretty much every move towards biofuel for years: 

Here's what Friends of the Earth had to say in 2004:

Climate Change and the Budget, Nov 2004, page 19
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/pre_budget_nov_2004.pdf

"The Government should introduce a Biofuels Obligation, to stimulate a UK biofuels industry - as a lower carbon alternative to conventional transport fuels. The obligation would require that a proportion of all road transport fuels in the UK should be sourced from accredited renewable sources."

and here's what Friends of the Earth had to say in 2005:

Cautious welcome for biofuels obligation, Nov 10, 2005
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/cautious_welcome_for_biofu_10112005.html

"Friends of the Earth welcomed the Government's promise today (Thursday 10th November) that biofuels will form five per cent of transport fuel sales by 2010, helping to tackle transport's contribution to climate change."

Friends of the Earth eventually reversed their position in 2007:

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/oecd_warning_over_biofuels_11092007.html

"Friends of the Earth called on the EU to scrap its ten per cent target for using plant-based bio-fuels for transport, after a leaked paper revealed that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD's has grave concerns about their social and environmental effects."

Friends of the Earth spent several years campaigning in support of biofuels with total vigour and certainty. They're now campaigning against them with equal vigour and certainty.

And what about Greenpeace, who Lynas claims have been in the forefront of the green perspicacity on biofuels. In fact they've been screaming in favour of them for simply years - this from 1993. They were still welcoming biofuels targets in 2005.

Airbrushing history is just so much more difficult when your opponents have got Google.

The Royal Society - cloth-eared numpties

Nature Climate Feedback reports on the Royal Society's pronouncements on the looming biofuels disaster.

When it comes to lowering greenhouse gas emissions, the report points out, there are biofuels and biofuels. That is, while some plant fuel sources promise as much as 80% greenhouse gas savings over fossil fuels, it's also possible to keep trashing the planet by using unsustainable methods to produce and supply renewable fuels. Unless the UK sets emissions targets per se in its fuel policy, warns the report, the new UK rules and the EU Biofuels Directive that they reflect "will do more for economic development and energy security than combating climate change".

Splendid. So what are the eminences grises at Britain's premier scientific society proposing we do about it?

[T]o ensure that biofuels are sustainable, says the report, you have to monitor carbon absorption and emission - along with other environmental and socioeconomic impacts - along the entire supply chain, starting in the crop field and ending at the tailpipe.

Now the total of the "environmental and socioeconomic impacts" is big-important-scientist-speak for a concept which you and I know as the PRICE. Regular readers here will have picked up on this remarkable tool before, but for the uninitiated-but-still-jolly-clever denizens of the RS, I'll give you a clue. You can find out the PRICE by telephoning someone called a SALESMAN. He will give you the number you are after. (But remember to ask for the PRICE rather than the "total of the environmental and socioeconomic impacts along the whole supply chain". Firstly it's quicker, and secondly he's less likely to call you a "cloth-eared numpty". Or worse.)

So, having put the cloth-eared numpties right, it's worth pointing out that, no matter how daft a bureaucratic scheme our scientists can come up with...the EU can get there first:

In the runup to the Royal Society report, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told the BBC that the EU recognized the problem and intended to introduce just such a monitoring scheme.

The whole world's gone mad. 

Greens massacring the environment (Part 253)

A small update to what is becoming a regular feature on these pages - still more trashing of the environment by environmentalists.

This time it's the RSPB who have been doing their darndest to make this green and pleasant land just a little bit greyer and duller.

The populations of falcons, kites and eagles have increased sharply in the wake of reintroduction programmes and improvements in their environments. But now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has discovered that their success is leading to a decline in ground nesting birds such as the grey partridge, one of the most endangered birds in the UK, the capercaillie, the black grouse and its red cousin.

Will they apologise to all the gamekeepers they've been prosecuting?

Food prints

Following on from the previous post, Greenie Watch points us to an article at ICWales which wants us to think about something called food prints.

While buying food produced locally can cut down on carbon emissions used to transport the goods from their country of origin, the benefits may be counteracted by the “food print” of plants grown in greenhouse conditions.

The term is the latest buzzword used to describe the environmental impact of certain types of food production.

But while a carbon footprint refers to the emissions used to transport food across the world, a “food print” describes the amount of land needed to supply a person’s nutritional needs for a year.

So, there is something called the carbon footprint which kind of encapsulates the energy cost and maybe something of the global warming externality. Now there is the food print which sort of encapsulates the land cost. You might say it's all a bit confusing.

But talking about all these different footprints has given me an idea. Let's have a measure which actually encapsulates all the costs associated with production of something. You know - the energy cost, the labour cost, the transport, the raw materials, the taxes, the overheads. Everything. We could even add in the financing cost! That way we've missed nothing and we know that when we assess what the best way of of producing something, we really are working out the most efficient way of making it.

We'll call it "THE PRICE". And hey - if we charge consumers THE PRICE, they'll be incentivised to go for the most efficient, and therefore the most environmentally friendly option! Wow!! I really think I'm on to something here!

Do you think it'll catch on?   

It wasn't me guv!

Greenpeace biodiversity campaigns manager Andy Tait has a piece up at Comment is Free in which he tells us that the government has got it wrong on biofuels.

We are being sold a pup by governments and by the biofuels industry: a solution to climate change that actually risks making the problem worse.

Bravo Andy. You might also have pointed out to your readers that this is the problem with measuring carbon footprints rather than the full economic cost of something. The carbon footprint is just one cost among many, many different costs (and a small one at that). Unless you take them all into account you end up taking very silly decisions. This is why biofuels are not only associated with destruction of biodiversity but also with causing riots in Mexico and starvation in the third world. It's also why the track record of environmentalists has been to damage the environment rather than to enhance it. But hey-ho it keeps the activists off the streets.

It's also instructive to look at some of Greenpeace's earlier pronouncements on biofuels.

• Greenpeace today welcomed the Government’s announcement on a mandatory sales target for biofuels as a small step in the right direction. (link)
• When biomass is used to generate energy in an efficient and sustainable way, it has a role to play in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and we strongly supports this. (link)
  

To be clear, they have caveated some of their support with requirements that the production should be environmentally sustainable, but one has to wonder whether they were really so daft as to think that there was a great deal of spare land around that could be converted to biofuels production.

Actually scrub that, of course they were that daft.

It will be interesting to see if Greenpeace will now adopt a position of outright opposition to biofuels. I rather think a veil will quietly be drawn over the whole embarrassing affair. 

Another underqualified environmental correspondent

Timmy notes another piece of half-witted environmental journalism, this time from Fiona Harvey of the FT. Ms Harvey notes that the Thames Barrier is being raised more often than in the past (climate change is the culprit of course), while apparently being ignorant of the fact that the south-east of England is sinking at 2.3mm per year.

Fiona Harvey has a degree in English Literature from Cambridge University.

It figures. One can't help but notice that there is something of a theme developing here?

Never mind the science, feel the empathy. 

Huhne and the environment

Interesting point picked up while researching the last post.

Chris Huhne, who wants to put the environment at the centre of government policy, has five children and seven houses (five of which he lets out).

What is it about greens and procreation?  And is the greenery a guilty reaction to the overindulgence? Or is there something in the nut cutlets?

Biofuels are "crime against humanity"

The UN has announced that biofuels are a crime against humanity. I might also add that they're a crime against rational economic thought too.

Meanwhile, the European Union has issued a directive that biofuels should occupy more than 5% of the market in member countries. And our lords and masters in the Labour party are developing a strategy to increase their use in the UK.

Business as usual then. 

Environmentalists still trashing the environment

Here's a delightful story (via Rob Fisher, a blog I haven't visited for ages for reasons which entirely escape me).

German greens have persuaded the government there to institute a state-funded deposit scheme for plastic bottles. Trade in your plastic bottle and you get 25 eurocents from the state. Because the bureaucrats have ignored the economics the consequences have been, frankly, completely predictable.

Three hardworking thieves [...] bought 150,000 ersatz grape soda bottles, made for a few cents each in Lithuania, to the eastern German state of Schleswig-Holstein and started trying to cash in.

So here we have, ladies and gentlemen, greenery in action. Bottles are made to order in Lithuania, shipped across the border to Germany and are then melted down to make new bottles. 

Lunatics, I tell you, lunatics.