John Sauven | ukwatch.net

Bluefin thinking

Ellie Keen — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Tuna, particularly the canned variety, has long been one of the UK’s staple foods and most of us probably have a couple of tin or two somewhere in our cupboards. More recently, we’ve been developing a taste for raw tuna, as sushi bars continue to spread throughout the country.

So, what’s the problem? Tuna is a wild source of protein. We don’t farm tuna; we catch it from the great oceans of the world. And that is where the predicament starts, because global tuna stocks, like those of other species, have been grossly overexploited and are now in big trouble. The iconic bluefin tuna, widely used in sushi, is critically endangered. Bigeye and albacore tuna are also under threat, while yellowfin tuna is in decline globally. Worldwide, up to 90% of stocks of large predatory fish, including tuna, have already been fished out.

The organisations responsible for managing the international tuna fisheries have failed dismally. But where governments have failed, retailers, restaurants and consumers can help turn the tide.

Greenpeace is campaigning to stop the collapse of the world’s remaining tuna fisheries, pushing for the creation of large scale marine reserves and changes in fishing practices to allow tuna and other fish stocks to recover.

This month, the Greenpeace ship Esperenza is confronting tuna boats that are fishing unsustainably in the Pacific. Meanwhile, today, more than 80 Greenpeace activists used nets and chains to close down the stands of five of the biggest and most unscrupulous tuna suppliers at the European Seafood Expo, the world’s largest seafood fair.

The UK is a huge consumer of canned tuna on a global scale. We import well over 100,000 tonnes each year. Sushi sales are also increasing. So, what can we do as consumers?

First of all, look out for restaurants and retailers that show commitment to sustainable seafood when you eat out or shop. For example, it was hearing about the plight of tuna that leading UK sushi chain Moshi Moshi to the decision to stop serving bluefin in their restaurants and to adopt strict sourcing policies. Among retailers, Marks and Spencer has consistently topped Greenpeace’s seafood sustainability surveys. Second, avoid red-listed species like bluefin tuna. (You can find a guide to these species here.)

Third, wherever possible, choose pole- and line-caught tuna, the most environmentally friendly way of catching the fish. Other methods of catching tuna, even when the cans are labelled “dolphin friendly”, can be very destructive – killing rare giant turtles, sharks, juvenile tuna and many other fish species.

Sustainable seafood is part of the answer, but the science is clear that we also need a global network of no-take marine reserves, like national parks at sea, covering large parts of the oceans. Following the science, Greenpeace is calling for 40% of the world’s oceans to be marine reserves, where no fishing is allowed.

By only choosing sustainable seafood in shops and restaurants, we can all make a difference. Alternatively, as professor of marine biology Daniel Pauly, of the University of British Columbia, has said, you don’t need to worry about these problems – as long as your children like plankton stew.

We've Never Been So Consulted

Tim Holmes — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 14:48:45 +0000

Gordon Brown’s public consultation on nuclear power is being fixed by the market research company carrying out the polling.

Dr Paul Dorfman, a senior research fellow at the National Centre for Involvement at the University of Warwick, told the Guardian that the questions being asked in the consultation were deliberately skewed to get a thumbs up for nuclear power by massively overplaying its role in tackling climate change – because the government knew this was the only way they could ever get people to accept new nuclear power.

According to Dr Dorfman, “partial information was rammed down the public’s throat. It was totally impractical for people to make a rational decision based on the information they were fed. The way it was put together was designed so that a particular view would emerge.”

The fact that a new fleet of reactors in the UK could only cut our carbon emissions by a measly 4% was buried at the back of a huge pile of information that consultation attendees had to plough through in one day. Positive messages about nuclear were made as statements of fact – “Nuclear power stations could make an important contribution to reducing the UK’s CO2 emissions” – while negative issues for nuclear power required answers by degree, with the loaded term “satisfied” included in the question: “How satisfied are you with the government’s proposal to manage new nuclear waste in the same way as existing waste?”

Of course, you have to ignore the small issue of the government not yet knowing what they are going to do with any of the nuclear waste.

Despite entering into this consultation (which, don’t forget, a high court judge ordered the government to do after their first attempt was exposed as a total sham) with the intention of engaging as fully as possible, it soon became clear that the whole thing was little more than a pro-nuclear rubber-stamping exercise. And the longer it goes on, the more we discover just what a grubby and seedy little process it really is.

That’s why Greenpeace issued a formal complaint to the Market Research Standards Board about the role of Opinion Leader Research (OLR), the pollsters employed by the government to run the show. We think OLR has broken its industry’s own code of conduct by designing questions and materials for the public that are misleading and factually inaccurate. Designed, you might say, to get the answer on nuclear power that the government wants rather than allowing people to make up their own minds. Opinion Leader Research told Channel 4 News: “We refute the points made in the complaint. We believe our work is carried out to the highest professional standards. Opinion Leader Research will cooperate fully with the MRS investigation.” We await the verdict.

Some participants apparently saw through the spin. One contacted Greenpeace to say that she “left the event in Edinburgh feeling furious with the government’s blatant marketing of nuclear power”, adding that the “participants of Talking Energy were pushed up against a wall, so they had no choice but to support a new generation of nuclear power plants.”

Can this really be the sort of consultation Gordon Brown had in mind when he talked of having “a very different form of conversation” with the public, with “politicians learning from everyday experience, people engaging in genuine discussion”? It’s clear to us this self-styled conversation consists of a bullying monologue based on shockingly skewed information designed to scare people into accepting new nuclear power – a climate red herring if ever there was one.

A Cool Reception

eddie — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:38:00 +0000

George Bush’s climate change plan merely creates the impression of action. The G8 must not allow this procedural torpedo to hit its target.

So this is it. After years of denial, evasion and hostility George Bush has finally been forced to play defence on climate change. It’s good news, right? Tony Blair called the president’s speech yesterday “a big step forward”. Well I call it a disaster. Last week George Bush committed a squalid street mugging on the G8 process and the Kyoto protocol, and Tony Blair just stood behind him grinning.

Bush’s proposal – to develop a non-binding set of global emissions reduction targets by the end of 2008 – is a classic spoiler, intended to show his domestic audience and the wider world that the US is taking the issue seriously. The administration knows it has no place to hide and so, like so many times before, it has announced a plan to create the impression of action, a pathetic attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the world and an increasingly concerned US electorate.

The Bush administration’s “new climate initiative” ignores both the scientific facts and the hard-earned experience of the last 15 years: voluntary measures do not work. The physics of the task we face is clear: global emissions must peak in the next 10 to 15 years and be drastically cut after that. In terms of the politics, the G8 are responsible historically for over 80% of the climate change we witness today and still emit over 40% of all global emissions now. They are therefore morally and legally bound to act first and act firmly. In order to achieve a global emission cut of 50%, the G8 must cut their own emissions by at least 80-90% by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels). Anything less will be neither adequate nor fair and certainly not safe.

This makes the US response all the more inadequate. Setting up yet another talking shop at a time when the world has a real chance of making progress at the G8 in Germany this month is an irresponsible move. For Blair to welcome the initiative is a similarly devastating indictment of the level of success he believes is achievable while Bush is still in office.

So where does the world go from here? The G8 must not allow this attempt at a procedural torpedo to hit its target. It still remains the only existing forum in which to mobilise action on a global scale, and the urgency of the problem demands that the leaders of the industrialised countries do not wait for the US to wake from its torpor. If all seven G8 countries that have ratified the Kyoto protocol declared their determination to cut their emissions by 30% by 2020 and 80-90% by 2050, this would be a major success. Kyoto-member countries can and must state clearly at the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm, that they will agree to these binding cuts under the protocol by 2009 at the latest. Bush, not having signed Kyoto and leaving office next year anyway, should be ignored.

It is amazing that the US administration is still claiming that technology and research can deliver the cuts necessary to stop the planet from suffering the worst effects of climate change. We already have the technology we need to make these cuts – renewable energy, decentralised power like combined heat and power, and massive energy efficiency programmes that could dramatically reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we pump into the atmosphere. What is required is a transformation in the way we think about energy usage, a massive overhaul of the ways in which we power the world’s economies. The urgency of this problem is hard to overstate, and by delaying global action Bush is leaving the darkest of all presidential legacies.

The Best Policy

Tim Holmes — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:12:49 +0000

The 1950s technology of nuclear power won’t stop climate change, it will actually leave us more dependent on foreign fuel imports than the decentralised energy alternatives and is a scandalous waste of hot air – quite literally in fact. Like all old-fashioned centralised power stations, two-thirds of the energy these nuclear reactors could be using is thrown away in the form of heat into the cooling water; doing nothing but heating up the oceans. With coal and gas power stations most of the energy is wasted up the cooling towers. This wasted heat is equivalent to all the heating and hot water needs of every single building in Britain.

Less than one-third of the gas we consume in this country is used for electricity generation, so if we are really concerned about importing our gas from Russia, nuclear power, which is only used to produce electricity, can’t help much. The best way to reduce fuel dependence is to make the most efficient use possible of the gas we have left, or import. That means decentralising our energy system -generating heat and electricity next to where it is needed in combined heat and power stations that can be up to 95% efficient – more than doubling the energy we currently get from these fuels.

Ten new nuclear power stations will only reduce UK CO2 emissions by 4%, and not until after 2020. To play our part in stopping climate change we in the UK need to cut emissions by at least 80% by 2050. The best way to achieve this is to capture all that wasted energy we currently throw away by decentralising our energy system, saving energy and in the home and harnessing clean, renewable energy as fast as possible.

Or of course we could rely on nuclear, which even if we replace our existing fleet will only produce 3.5% of the UK’s total energy, and it still leaves us dependent on gas for all our heating and most of our electricity. That’s only if you can ignore the other threats of nuclear – waste, accident risk, terrorism etc.

Perhaps if the government had been honest about all these facts in the first place they wouldn’t have had to force through their sham energy review quite so bullishly. Perhaps we wouldn’t have had to take them to court, and maybe the public wouldn’t have lost total trust in yet another government stitch up unravelling before their eyes.

We sincerely hope Gordon Brown will do a better job than his predecessor. Right now, the government’s spin doctors might be wise to take note of that old saying – “when in a hole stop digging” ...