SprintBio George Monbiot - Distibutors of environmentally friendly boilers, burners and heat pumps

It is time to distinguish fact from fiction once and for all over the climate change issue. A recent Observer poll has shown that many Britons still doubt the causes of climate change, and question the extent of the problem. Roughly 60% of those surveyed believe that there is still disagreement among scientists over whether climate change is happening, while 40% think the extent of the climate change problem has been exaggerated. Despite this nearly two-thirds want the government to do more to tackle the issue.

How has such a degree of doubt arisen? Where is the confusion coming from?

It is certainly not due to legitimate scientific studies or reports. In the last 10 years there has not been a single scientific paper published that denies climate change is happening, man-made, and massively dangerous - excluding of course the ‘work’ of the numerous psuedo-scientists and documentary makers, and other seemingly independent media voices which have all received payments from oil companies or lobby groups.

So if science is so totally and truly clear in its findings (that climate change is an impending man-made disaster in development); how come so much doubt still pervades among the general public?

Well, in the UK there are some 14,000 people working in the PR industry. In essence people harnessing the power of the media to make private companies look better. The influence of big business in politics has never been greater, and the EU for example is recognising that certain lobby group activities need to be scrutinised. To this end the EU Commission has this week announced a forthcoming new register to monitor the activities of various lobby groups, and the involvement of big business in politics.

Such an effort is vital if we are ever to expel the doubt that still exists relating to climate change and its causes. George Monbiot has recently compared the current situation to that of the efforts of Big Tobacco in decades gone by to create doubt and confusion in the public consciousness over what is, scientifically speaking, a relatively black-and-white issue (http://tinyurl.com/42j9es). The profits that can be made from a misinformed public are colossal, and oil lobbyists (as well as motor industry lobbyists, non-renewable energy lobbysists etc etc) exist for this reason alone.

This week James Hanson, one of the world’s leading climate change scientists will call for executives of oil companies to be placed on trial for crimes against humanity and the planet, on account of the misinformation (and its serious consequences) that they have been responsible for deliberately spreading (http://tinyurl.com/4juqq3). He too has highlighted the similarities with Big Tobacco campaigns, emphasising before congress that ‘democracy is not working in the way it should’ as a result of the fact that ‘money talks in Washington’.

The thousands of PR workers, and billions of dollars that comprise their budgets represent a mighty Goliath indeed. Luckily certain mainstream media channels also wield considerable influence, and it is in this time that they have a crucial role to play in providing accurate and trustworthy information to the general public.

Here’s a little indicator of what is going on; the CEO of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, (annual salary: £8.54bn) has publicly said: ‘a lot of climate change policy is still up for debate’. However, his company has recently cut funds to groups which ‘divert attention’ from the need to develop renewable energies due to the negative press (and subsequent financial implications) that these activities have been causing. This very action represents an open admission that such groups are used, and the cynical nature of the whole operation is plainly evident in the doublespeak of its wording.

What is needed now more than ever is a commitment from trusted media sources, and across all relevant information outlets as a whole, to a stalwart defence of facts and clarity. The doubt-casters must be thwarted and only black-and white, precise, and clear reporting can achieve this. It is not easy to remove the obstructions of the deluge of PR material that floods the internet and many public information outlets. However only a thorough and accurate practice can redress the imbalance between scientifically established fact and public misconception that currently is a testament to the success of lobby groups and big businesses campaigning on this issue.

Dejan Levi

The Biofuel vs. food debate is a relatively new issue. After all, we have become used to thinking of environmentally friendly policies as an inherently desirable and beneficial thing for both people and planet.

However, recent months have seen a controversial debate raging over the ethics of using Biofuel (which requires land otherwise used for food production to grow fuel crops) as an alternative to standard petrol. The simplistic Green=Good thinking of years gone by is truly over…

As the western world seeks to address climate change and reduce the environmental impact of its dependence on cars, many of the world’s poorer countries are facing a much more immediate problem: how to feed their starving populations.

This week Josette Sheeran, of the UN World Food Programme, warned that, as a result of rising food prices, there are now 100m extra people across the world who cannot afford to buy the food they need to survive - who did not need help six months ago.

Her speech at a London conference on Biofuels was followed by a pledge from Gordon Brown to assess the viability of pursuing Biofuel policies, in the wake of rising food prices and increasing third-world hunger.

The problem is that modern Biofuel solutions to climate change often involve the use of food crops, such as wheat or corn, to produce a petrol alternative. Even if produced from non-food crops, Biofuel production inevitably reduces the quantity of land employed in food production. At a time of rising food prices and rapidly increasing global population, many see this as a reckless avenue to explore.

However, there is another issue at the heart of this problem which perhaps does not always receive the attention it deserves. The best way to introduce it is with a few figures:

Last year’s global grain harvest totalled 2.1bn tonnes (beating all previous records by just over 5%, despite poorer harvests in many countries such as Australia).

Current rate of year-on-year global population growth: 1.3%.

Something is clearly not right when the global grain harvest is up 5%, and yet the world gets hungrier, despite a population increase of only 1.3%. Let’s look more closely at that 2.1bn tonnes of grain…

Of the 2.1bn tonne harvest, roughly 60% was used to feed the world’s population (while only 3% went into Biofuel use). Now, though the current food crisis is currently impacting millions of people, as little as 2.5% additional grain would be enough to alleviate the problem (according to UN FAO figures). So where is the rest of the harvest going?

The problem is this; approximately 760 million tonnes (equivalent to 36% total production) was used last year to feed our ever-increasing appetite for meat – by feeding livestock reared for the meat industry.

This represents a huge inefficiency in our global food resource allocation, and makes the aforementioned Biofuel debate seem rather less significant. Even if all Biofuel policies were scrapped tomorrow, this problem will surely only be offset for the few years it takes for our increasing meat demand to apply sufficient pressure to grain prices again.

George Monbiot, in his Guardian column this week, did a great job of highlighting the sheer scale of the issue with an excellent article. Unfortunately, the UK is a relatively small player in the global meat market, and with China’s average consumption increasing by a factor of 2.5 over the past 27 years it seems that we are only moving in the wrong direction on this front.

A few months ago global grain stockpiles hit a 36 year low, falling to just 57 days worth of consumption. Farming methods are improving all the time, and total global harvests have rarely been better. Despite this, our harvests simply cannot satisfy both the richer world’s appetite for meat and the poorer world’s need for the little food they rely on to survive.

In the UK at least, we have been made well aware of the environmental implications of many aspects of our day-to-day lives, including everything from buying imported fruit to using energy-saving light-bulbs. Surely it’s time public attention was turned onto this pressing issue.

It is ridiculous to expect that we stand any chance of turning everybody into a vegetarian any time soon. However the message is nonetheless pretty simple: eating less meat is probably the most ethical environmental consumer decision one can make today. If there is any chance of us moving away from our over-reliance on meat (which is actually unhealthy in the quantities consumed by the average Western adult - but that is another story) we could not only improve our own personal health, but also alleviate the starvation and suffering of millions.

Eating less meat is actually easier than many people think, plus it saves money, and, perhaps most importantly, it represents a direct contribution to improving the lives of some of the world’s poorest people.

Dejan Levi