Voices from the Hive 5

 

 

 

This week it was also revealed by the Financial Times that the Fossil Fuel giant Shell has admitted to paying absolutely no UK Corporate Income Tax for the 2018 financial year. This should come as no surprise to followers of the Desmog Blog, who will have been aware that back in November its website published a major expose on the vast sums of money the Conservative Party has been getting from what it described as ‘an elite club of super wealthy donors that have made their money from polluting industries or are involved in backing climate science denial in the UK’. This followed close on the heels of a Guardian report into the ‘salaries, shareholdings and donations from fossil fuel companies’ that have benefited some of the most high profile Tory MPs in the upper echelons of the present administration; including Nadhim Zahawi and Alan Duncan. No surprises then that just two days before the election result was to reveal that the Tories had won another five years in Government, the Independent had likewise pointed to the fact that the Conservatives had just taken £1m in election ‘dirty money’ ‘from fossil fuel investors responsible for climate emergency’. These facts in themselves would suggest a rerun of the 2017 General Election when the Conservatives had received ‘almost £400,000 from oil bosses’ who allegedly included Ayman Asfari, head of the Jersey-based oil firm, Petrofac; who had himself been the focus of an alleged bribery and corruption investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

 

Meanwhile, up in Alaska, the scientific focus is now on the environmental effects of Global Heating, which has caused roads to sink, bridges to tilt and a huge release of greenhouse gases, particularly methane, as the Alaska permafrost continues to melt.  The dangers to Humanity of this phenomenon were summarised by Dr Peter Carter of the Climate Emergency Institute in his interview with Nick Breeze at last week’s COP25 in Madrid. This would appear to confirm some of the hypotheses advanced in the wake of the latest data release by the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in the US. Elsewhere, additional research published in the ‘Journal of Geophysical Research’ Biogeosciences section suggests that Methane-releasing Tundra Soils have been freezing later each year as Scientists discover links between ‘delayed freezing of Alaskan soils and higher atmospheric methane concentrations during the cold season.’ For readers unaware of the overall effect that this is likely to have, watch or listen to the full Youtube upload of the Dr Peter Carter COP25 interview via the link here.  

 

Friday’s revelation that Canadian Police are now prepared to shoot indigenous Land Defenders attempting to blockade the construction of a natural gas pipeline in British Columbia emphasises the extent to which governments and their respective agencies are prepared to go in order to defend the extraction rights of fossil fuel multinationals; whilst simultaneously riding roughshod over the rights of those whose lands they seek to exploit. Far to the south, along the much disputed US Border with Mexico, the issue of indigenous land rights has now become enmeshed with what may amount to possible Ecocide in relation to the Tohono O‘Odham Nation’s fight for their sacred lands. The US Border Agency’s construction of a section of President Trump’s highly controversial Border Wall is now alleged to involve the extraction of precious groundwater for the mixing of concrete needed in the construction process; thus further compounding issues around further desertification brought on as a result of man made Climate Change. The fact that the Wall itself is as much a problem for migrating wildlife as it is for would be economic migrants, who also have the ability to tunnel under it anyway, is among the major issues that have been raised in this on going dispute between local indigenous Native Americans and the Trump administration. Once again, as in Australasia and South America, indigenous peoples are in the front line when it comes to dealing with the ravages of Climate Change and the impact of related damage to the Biosphere.

 

But, there has been good news in the run up to Christmas too! Also on Friday a landmark ruling from the Dutch Supreme Court now means that the Dutch government has a legal obligation to protect its citizens’ rights in the face of climate change. Although this ruling is perhaps in stark contrast to the judgement delivered against Extinction Rebellion’s ‘DLR 3’ earlier in the week. Although the DLR3’s albeit minimum sentence is a definite setback for those who wish to engage in peaceful protest, it may nevertheless set a precedent for some sort of subsequent appeal against the latter ruling. The fact that these legal developments come hot on the heels of a highly critical report from Netpol, the Network of Police Monitoring, which documented no fewer than 521 abuses of power during the Extinction Rebellion protests in London in October 2019, does not bode well for Boris Johnson’s government! The additional fact that fossil fuels appear to have fallen to a record low in terms of their proportional use in the UK energy mix, with Scottish wind farms producing sufficient electricity to power just short of 4.5m homes, also means that, in spite of the fact the fossil fuel giants appear to have bought and paid for the present Tory administration, the message is getting across to just about everyone but the Cabinet! 

 

     

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