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The Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Woman who withheld council tax in climate protest faces losing home
A woman who withheld council tax payments for three years in protest at her local authority's continued investment in fossil fuels fears losing her home. Jane McCarthy, 74, said she made the decision after becoming increasingly fearful about the impact of climate breakdown on future generations, particularly when she learned about climate tipping points at a local meeting. 'I think that was the point at which I realised, oh my goodness, this is really urgent, really serious.' McCarthy, who has terminal cancer, said she did not take the decision to withhold the money from Buckinghamshire council lightly but said it was a matter of principle as the council continued to invest in fossil fuels through its pension fund and by using Barclays Bank. 'I really object having to hand money over knowing that it's going to be used in ways that are reckless, that are damaging my children's chances of a livable future, let alone my grandchildren,' she said McCarthy appeared at Reading county court earlier this month, resulting in a final charge order on her home, leading to fears the council could force her to sell up to repay the debt. 'It has been very stressful but for me it was a matter of conscience and also as a matter of conscientious objection, because fossil fuels are the cause of so much war as well as driving the climate crisis.' UK pensions invest about £88bn in fossil fuels, which campaigners warn is helping drive the climate breakdown. Experts also warn such investments put pension savings at risk because those investments will either become stranded if countries meet their emissions targets, or runaway climate breakdown will wreak havoc with the global economy and wipe out any potential returns. Campaigners are hoping that the pension schemes bill currently going through parliament will change the way pension funds are managed, ensuring pension trustees take relevant system level risks, including climate change into account, when deciding where to invest. Claire Brinn, senior UK policy manager at the ShareAction campaign, said there was a 'lack of clarity' over trustees' legal and moral obligations when investing funds at the moment. 'This creates uncertainty for trustees over the legal scope for taking into account systemic considerations, whether macroeconomic or environmental, or even their members' living standards and views.' She said clarifying this 'fiduciary duty' would be a 'a simple legislative change that will empower pension funds to consider people and planet and secure our future prosperity and security.' McCarthy says her debt to the council now stands at about £5,000 including costs. She said she would be more than happy to pay the withheld tax to local charities or good causes. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion 'I do want to pay it … I would love to just talk to the council about what charities I could support in Buckinghamshire but I am sure that is very unlikely, a fantasy.' She added: 'For them to apply for the sale when it's only a debt of about £5,000 feels so disproportionate but that is what could happen.' Robert Carington, Buckinghamshire council's cabinet member for resources, said it was 'duty bound' to collect tax to pay for essential public services. 'While the council acknowledges the personal views held in this case, they do not constitute a valid reason for not paying council tax. Payment of council tax, like any other tax, is not a personal choice. People are legally bound to pay it and the council has a legal duty to recover council tax. We are therefore pleased that the court has found in the council's favour and that this matter has been brought to a conclusion.' He added that the council was committed to a 'greener future' and its pension fund investments were only in projects or corporations that had set a target 'to be net zero by 2050 at the latest'. The council declined to say what it planned to do next in its efforts to recover the withheld tax.
The Guardian
15-06-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Why nuclear war, not the climate crisis, is humanity's biggest threat, according to one author
Climate breakdown is usually held up as the biggest, most urgent threat humans pose to the future of the planet today. But what if there was another, greater, human-made threat that could snuff out not only human civilisation, but practically the entire biosphere, in the blink of an eye? As you read this, about 4,000 nuclear weapons are poised for a first strike across the northern hemisphere, enough atomic firepower to kill as many as 700 million people from blasts and burning alone. And that is just the start. The explosions and fires – like nothing seen on Earth since the comet strike that led to the Cretaceous mass extinction – would loft enough soot into the stratosphere to cast an impenetrable shadow over the globe. No light means no photosynthesis, the basis of planetary foodwebs. No heat means that the surface of the Earth would plunge into an icy, years-long winter. That is the message of Mark Lynas, a British writer who for two decades has worked to help people understand the science of climate breakdown while pushing for action on carbon emissions. But after three years of research for a new book, published last month, he now sees nuclear war as an even greater threat. 'There's no adaptation options for nuclear war,' Lynas said. 'Nuclear winter will kill virtually the entire human population. And there's nothing you can do to prepare, and there's nothing you can do to adapt when it happens, because it happens over the space of hours. 'It is a vastly more catastrophic, existential risk than climate change.' Lynas got started on his work on nuclear war in 2022, soon after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Like many born into the era of the cold war, he was aware of the concept of nuclear winter – the likely environmental impact of a global thermonuclear exchange. But what emerged from his research was far more horrifying. As the rest of the world gradually forgot about the nuclear threat, researchers began applying the new models of climate science – the same ones used to predict the developing threat of climate breakdown – to understand its dramatic implications. 'The burning of the cities is the mechanism that causes nuclear winter,' Lynas said. 'You get soot that's lofted through pyrocumulonimbus clouds – big, fire-generated thunder clouds – which pump [it], like a chimney, into the stratosphere. 'Once it gets above the tropopause, into the stratosphere, it can't be rained out. And because it's dark coloured, it catches the sun, heats up and gets higher and higher. It gets probably totally dark at the surface for weeks, if not months.' The temperature rapidly drops below freezing. And it stays there, for years. 'There's never another harvest for humanity. The food will never grow again. Because by the time the sun comes back out and temperatures rise again, within a decade or so, everyone's dead.' How likely is this scenario? Surely no one could be so reckless as to start a nuclear war? Actually, says Lynas, they could. After all, the US did use nuclear weapons against civilians in Japan in 1945, and since then there have been numerous moments when the world stood minutes from nuclear war, whether by accident or brinkmanship. Today, both the US and Russia have espoused first-strike doctrines that threaten the use of nuclear weapons even against conventional attacks (China, notably, has a policy of 'no first use'). Meanwhile, nuclear weapons continue to proliferate. The US and Russia hold the biggest arsenals, with about 12,000 between them. China is racing to catch up, with an estimated 500 as of 2024. Also armed are Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, with Iran apparently on the cusp developing its own weapon – a step that onlookers fear it may be more likely to take after last week's attacks by Israel. And the potential for error is also high. If US early warning systems went off, its nuclear doctrine would give Donald Trump six minutes to decide whether it was a glitch (which has happened) or to respond in kind. Russia is said to have a 'dead hand' system that would launch ballistic missiles automatically in the event its own command and control structures were disabled. So what can be done? We could stop ignoring it, for a start. Lynas calls for the revival of an anti-nuclear weapons movement on a scale to match that of the present-day climate movement, although he has criticisms of past such movements. 'On the success side, it had some very dedicated people who devoted their whole lives to this issue, in quite large numbers,' he said. 'But it was also politically very, very left of centre, very kind of hippy, peace movement type thing – women-only spaces. And that kind of stuff, of course, then means that anyone who's politically centrist or right centre isn't involved. 'And if you have a very narrow political base in your movement, you're going to have a very narrow success rate.' Lynas disavows unilateral nuclear disarmament as naive, and maintains – unlike previous anti-nuclear campaigners – that nuclear power is not only not a threat, but possibly a massive benefit to human civilisation, not least because of its potential for producing low-carbon energy. Nevertheless, some of his suggestions are quite radical, including treating everyone in the chain of command in the 'nuclear nine' states, from leaders down, as a potential war criminal, subject to legal restrictions and sanctions in states that choose not to hold nuclear weapons. In spite of all the grim possibilities, Lynas sees hope – and in unusual places. 'Trump gets credit for basically shaking things up in a way which could lead to a more positive outcome,' he said. Much as it took another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, to kickstart the US and Soviet disarmament of the 1980s, so Trump could do what Democrats, eager to prove their strength, could – or would – not. 'And you know, maybe his bromance with [Vladimir] Putin and Kim Jong-un or whatever will bring them to the table.' Six Minutes to Winter was published in May by Bloomsbury.
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
EU's ‘chocolate crisis' worsened by climate breakdown, researchers warn
Climate breakdown and wildlife loss are deepening the EU's 'chocolate crisis', a report has argued, with cocoa one of six key commodities to come mostly from countries vulnerable to environmental threats. More than two-thirds of the cocoa, coffee, soy, rice, wheat and maize brought into the EU in 2023 came from countries that are not well-prepared for climate change, according to the UK consultants Foresight Transitions. For three of the commodities – cocoa, wheat and maize – two-thirds of imports came from countries whose biodiversity was deemed not to be intact, the analysis found. The researchers said the damage to food production by climate breakdown was made worse by a decline in biodiversity that has left farms less resilient. 'These aren't just abstract threats,' said the lead author of the report, Camilla Hyslop. 'They are already playing out in ways that negatively affect businesses and jobs, as well as the availability and price of food for consumers, and they are only getting worse.' The researchers mapped trade data from Eurostat on to two rankings of environmental security to assess the level of exposure for three staple foods and three critical inputs into the EU's food system. They used a ranking of climate readiness from the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, which combines a country's vulnerability to climate damages with its access to financial and institutional support, and a ranking of biodiversity intactness from the UK Natural History Museum, which compares the current abundance of wild species to pre-modern levels. They found the majority of imports came from countries they ranked 'low-medium' on the climate scale and 'low-medium' or 'medium' on the biodiversity scale. Some food products were particularly exposed. The EU imported 90% of its maize from countries with low-medium climate readiness and 67% from countries with medium or lower biodiversity intactness, the report found. For cocoa, a key ingredient in the chocolate industry that Europe does not grow itself, the import exposure was 96.5% for climate preparedness and 77% on the biodiversity scale, the report found. The industry is already struggling with rises in the price of sugar, driven in part by extreme weather events, and supply shortages of cocoa. Most of its cocoa comes from west African countries facing overlapping climate and biodiversity risks. The report, which was commissioned by the European Climate Foundation, argued that large chocolate manufacturers should invest in climate adaptation and biodiversity protection in cocoa-growing countries. 'This is not an act of altruism or ESG [sustainable finance], but rather a vital derisking exercise for supply chains,' the authors wrote. 'Ensuring farmers are in their supply chains paid a fair price for their produce would allow them to invest in the resilience of their own farms.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Paul Behrens, an environmental researcher at the University of Oxford and author of a textbook on food and sustainability, who was not involved in the research, said the findings painted an 'extremely worrying picture' for food resilience. 'Policymakers like to think of the EU as food-secure because it produces quite a lot of its own food,' he said. 'But what this report shows is that the EU is vulnerable to climate and biodiversity risks in some vital food supply chains.' The report found coffee, rice and soy had fewer risks overall but noted hotspots of concern. Uganda, which provided 10% of the EU's coffee in 2023, had low climate preparedness and low-medium biodiversity intactness, the report found. Joseph Nkandu, founder of the National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises in Uganda, called for more access to international climate finance to help farmers become more resilient in the face of worsening weather. 'The weather in Uganda is no longer predictable,' he said. 'Heatwaves, prolonged dry spells and erratic rains are withering our coffee bushes and damaging production.' Marco Springmann, a food researcher at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the research, said a shift to healthier and more sustainable diets would be needed for food systems to withstand climate shocks. 'About a third of grains and basically all imported soy is used to feed animals,' he said. 'Aiming to make those supply chains more resilient therefore misses the point that this supports the very products that are to a large degree responsible for what is being tried to protect from.'
The Guardian
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Ahead of his time': Guyanese artist gets London show amid reappraisal
An artist whose work was part of the first wave of abstract art to hit the UK and presaged the climate breakdown protests as well as debates over the legacies of British colonialism is undergoing an 'overdue' reappraisal, according to experts and critics. Aubrey Williams, the Guyanese artist who moved to Britain in the 1950s, was a respected figure in his lifetime and the subject of several exhibitions in the UK. But after his death from cancer in 1990, the artist's influence and the legacy of his abstract painting has slowly faded from view in Britain. 'His work was very dramatic with the huge canvases, and the colour was intense always,' says Chili Hawes of October Gallery, the institution that represented Williams during his lifetime. 'There was nothing pale about his work. He loved the drama; he loved the colour.' Williams spent most of his time in the UK after arriving in 1952 and also had studios in Miami and Jamaica. He mingled with art's great and good, once meeting Picasso in Paris after being introduced by Albert Camus. 'He said that I had a very fine African head and he would like me to pose for him … he did not think of me as another artist,' was how Williams recalled the meeting. Despite Picasso's dismissal, Williams was a key player in the Caribbean Artists Movement (Cam), which emerged in the mid-1960s in Britain and was founded by West Indian artists, authors and playwrights. Cam had two main aims: forcing their work into the mainstream and debating what black art should be in the post-colonial 20th century. Alongside the likes of John La Rose, Althea McNish and Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Williams took part in small meetings, dubbed 'warshis' by Williams, an Amerindian word he encountered in Guyana, which meant meetings where people 'unburdened' themselves. 'He was one of the ideas men in Cam,' says the academic Malachi McIntosh, who is currently writing A Revolutionary Consciousness: Black Britain, Black Power, and the Caribbean Artists Movement, a new history of Cam, for Faber. 'The big schism that broke Cam apart was between people who were saying art needs to be engaged in the community. Others, including Williams, said artists need to have complete freedom,' McIntosh added. As with his fellow Guyanese artist Frank Bowling who had his first major retrospective at Tate Modern in 2019, and McNish, who had her own major touring exhibition in 2022, Williams has undergone a resurgence in interest. In 2010, his work was included in a landmark Afro Modern show at Tate Liverpool; and between 2022 and 2024 there was a room dedicated to his work. At last year's Frieze Masters, Williams was given a coveted place in the 'Spotlight' section, with curators billing him as someone who had 'taken painting into new territories'. Earlier this year Yale University Press released a book that was co-edited by his daughter Maridowa Williams and included critical responses to his work, diary entries and poetry. 'There has been such a shift in the reception of those artists,' says Hawes. 'But Aubrey needs to be paid particular attention to, because he was ahead of his time. He talked about ecological matters … I think now is his time, in a sense.' October Gallery's artistic director, Elisabeth Lalouschek, points out that Williams's work would also take all sorts of turns, such as his interest in the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. 'When you look at the symphonies of Shostakovich he was trying to paint music in colour and in form, which is, of course, a very difficult task,' she says. A new exhibition of Williams's work is opening this week at October Gallery, which takes in several decades of his work and explains how he was hugely influenced by his time working as an agronomist in Guyana. He initially came to Britain to study agricultural engineering at Leicester University, and his interests in ecological matters and the ancient cultures of the Mayan, Aztec and Olmec cultures was a regular feature in his art. The author Anne Walmsley, wrote in her Guardian obituary of Williams, that his 'enquiring mind is continually focused on the relationship between man and nature, and the mythological mysteries echoed in artefacts of past civilisations'. Aubrey Williams: Elemental Force is on at October Gallery, 22 May to 26 July
