She came along to Gunnersbury Triangle, together with two of her supporters to take some pictures and video clips of the occasion. I did my best to fit what I wanted to say into short bursts – I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to do soundbites before, but perhaps it will come in handy when anyone asks what I think about nature and politics, or for that matter to put into a few words what my book is about. (It’s about how crazy the English are about nature, and why.)
We talked about why nature matters and the benefits it brings (votes, of course; human wellbeing in an age of e-gadgets; education; mental health; knowledge of climate change; the value of the wild gene pool… ), and I suggested some topics that it would be nice to have as party policy.
Tiny Frogs (and a slug) hiding under a mat
We walked around the reserve, saying a little about its history, its current uses (school visits, corporate bonding days, volunteering, talks, picnics, family visits, bug-hunting and pond-dipping, days out for the mentally handicapped). We saw the variety of habitats, enjoyed hearing the Robins singing even on a chilly day in January, and looked under a mat at the tiny frogs sheltering there. Rupa certainly left with a deeper understanding of what nature can do for people and why it matters; and of the possibilities that the Gunnersbury Triangle reserve, at least, has to offer for her constituents.
On the PM programme on Radio 4, the presenter Eddie Mair regretted the long, long wait until polling day, given the inevitable length of the campaign with a fixed-term parliament. He sympathized with listeners at having to endure the same old party political ding-dong as the rivals seek to batter each other into submission. He suggested that we listeners tell him what we would like to know about the next general election.
What politicians want to talk about
The parties seem to want to tell us about the NHS (Labour) and the Economy (Conservative) and Immigration (all of them), so I’d like to hear about, well, anything else: especially nature.
Politicians don’t even call nature by its name any more.
They burble about “Sustainability“, but making our cities larger every year is not sustainable: that would mean a steady state. Think about it. Sustainable living is imaginable, but it would be nothing like how we live now. Everything – I mean everything – would be recycled. We’d use glass not china, so it could be melted down and reused when it broke. We’d burn no coal, oil, or gas. We’d design every product to be broken down into its components for recycling, as they’ve started to do in Germany. In short, current politico-talk about sustainability is just waffle, greenwash. You may have a ruder word for it.
They mumble about the “Environment“, as if nature impinged on our lives solely through dirt or noise in the places where we live. But our impact on the natural world is far, far greater than that. We have ravaged every habitat, every ecosystem on the planet. The African bush, home to elephants, rhinos, gazelles? It’s in free fall. Grasslands and meadows? We’ve lost 98% of ours. Wetlands, marshes, reedbeds? Disappearing everywhere. Mangroves and coral reefs? In crisis wherever they (used to) occur. Rainforest? You know the answer.
They waffle about “Biodiversity“, as if the word were a charm or mantra, calling for impact assessments for each major building project, which the planners then immediately ignore. But the diversity of life in England, like that of the whole world, is in crisis. Many people alive today will witness the mass extinction of perhaps a third of all the species now alive; man-made global warming and the resulting changes to the climate; the catastrophe being visited on all the oceans through overfishing; pollution, overpopulation, deforestation: the worldwide destruction of nature.
They ramble on about “Conservation“, as if nature would be fine if limited to a few nature reserves here and there, and try to change the conversation to the economy/the NHS/immigration (delete according to taste) as soon as possible. But nature is the whole of our planet (including us, if you prefer, but that’s another story). We depend on plants and algae for the oxygen we breathe. We depend on plants and animals for the food we eat. We depend on bees and other insects to pollinate many of our crops. We depend on bacteria to detoxify our sewage and rubbish. We depend on plant genomes for our medicines and our crops’ resistance to disease. We depend completely on nature.
What I’d like the politicians to tell me
I’d like to know what they will actually do for Nature, for everyone’s benefit:
what each party’s policy on nature really is
how they will prioritize nature
how children, NHS patients, and old people will be given access to nature for education, rehabilitation, wellbeing
how fisheries will be protected
how the decline of wildlife on farms will be reversed
Direct answers, please.
Well, I’d like to know a whole lot more, given the global disaster I’ve outlined, but that should be enough to start with. What would you ask?
On Tuesday (9 December 2014) I joined the RSPB and The Wildlife Trusts on their joint ‘Rally for Nature’, in other words a briefing in Church House, a short march to the Houses of Parliament, and a meeting with my MP, Angie Bray (Conservative) in the Central Lobby.
RSPB-TWT Rally for Nature panel in Church House. From left: Mark Avery (RSPB), Joe Dudworth (LACS), Stephen Trotter (TWT), Mike Clarke (RSPB), Kerry McCarthy MP (Lab), Caroline Lucas MP (Green)
The briefings gave those hoping to see their MP something to say and a bit of guidance about how to say it. Joe Duckworth of LACS hosted the morning panel in a very jolly way.
A cheerful Caroline Lucas, MP
Caroline Lucas spoke clearly and passionately on key campaign causes, fitting a great deal into her 5 minutes: the goals of a Nature and Wellbeing bill, especially to reconnect children with nature; a long-term government commitment to nature; a mechanism for national and local action, including mandatory plans at these levels; and proper coverage in school curricula. She then spoke on the need to control Wildlife Crime, with consistent application of existing laws; need to act on illegal carbofurans used to poison birds of prey; sentencing guidelines; training of prosecutors; and action on trafficking of endangered species. She emphasized the role of the European Union Birds and Habitats Directives, the backbone of our wildlife laws (she noted that the UK did support these, once), and that they are now in danger, even though they are not in any way a block to development. She told us gently that Natural England now has to “consider economic growth” in every decision: an outrageous imposition on an important conservation body, itself in peril of being merged into nothingness. She spoke of the value of nature in people’s mental wellbeing, and that we needed to challenge the idea of growth as the be-all and end-all of government policy. She decried vague talk of “the environment” and told us to focus on the local and real, such as allotments.
Rally assembled at Church House
Kerry McCarthy told us she was one of 3 vegan MPs; said people thought it “a bit mad” talking about “bees, bats, badgers”; but that when the public in marginal seats send in over a thousand emails about such a topic, it makes a difference. She reminded us that deprived people were much (10x) less likely to live in green areas, and instead suffered from smoking, drinking, fat, diabetes, unemployment, loneliness and depression. These can all be ameliorated by contact with nature. She said that bees and other pollinators were declining, and that in Bristol the urban pollinators project showed children what bees did, and provided free vegetables to all and sundry. She mentioned Fracking in Chew Valley, and opposed the wasteful practice of subsidising grouse shooting. I asked her what Labour’s biodiversity policy was; she said there wasn’t one yet as the Manifesto wasn’t ready, that it wasn’t a “doorstep issue” (one that voters asked her about), and that a long-term view was needed. I think I heard a polite intake of breath from the audience as they realized Labour really hadn’t got its act together on nature at all.
Badger on the March
Julian Huppert MP (Lib. Dem.) said airily “We can destroy our viability on this planet.” but said little, to my mind, on what Parliament might do to prevent this. He did say that MPs were impressed by anyone who bothered to come to parliament as it showed commitment. He advised us to make our case, given that “people” (I think he meant MPs) fell into one of 3 categories: those who care about the world (I assume he meant nature); those who care for the local environment (their constituency); and those who just care for how they are perceived, i.e. could be embarrassed into some kind of action if it were seen to be popular. He claimed that the coalition government had doubled renewables and increased green energy. It didn’t seem to be much to do with nature or biodiversity really.
Joe Duckworth, Bill Oddie at Houses of Parliament
Sir John Randall MP (Con.) told us to be nice to our MP as they assume people will be confrontational, and are far more receptive when we’re not! He had seen peregrines over Parliament and grey wagtails and kingfishers in St James’s Park: wildlife was here, with us, even if there were fewer birds in the countryside, and despite “the scandal that’s going on in Malta” (illegal mass shooting of migrating birds). He came across a lot better than Huppert did.
I was astonished to find no queue at Security, so I had to wait in the Central Lobby for the time I had allowed for queuing! It gave me a chance to go over my carefully-prepared notes, not a bad thing.
A beautiful handmade placard
Angie Bray MP told me she was an RSPB member, and that she had written an article for the Ealing Gazette on bees, but (she volunteered) wasn’t convinced by the dire claims on neonicotinoids; it wasn’t something on my list, as it happens. We agreed totally on the need for children to get outside to play, to be in nature, and that parents were needlessly fearful of paedophiles in the park (most child molesters are, unhappily, within the extended family or otherwise known to the children concerned). She mentioned in passing that LACS were basically too wild to be taken seriously. She agreed that poisoning and the use of illegal lead shot were not good, and we parted all smiles.
In 1942 the scholar of Middle English, christian apologist and author of the Narnia books, C.S. Lewis, published The Screwtape Letters. The explanatory subtitle was Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil, indicating the purpose of the book, to educate the young devil in the most effective means of corrupting humans from the paths of goodness and righteousness. Of course, we believe (or are free to imagine) the book to have a different purpose altogether for its human readers. In that spirit, here is some Advice to a Young Property Developer.
—o0o—
Dear Frango, you are trying to get planning permission for a huge, ugly glass and concrete stump in a beautiful area that is already fully built-up with attractive rows of houses and their little gardens, small friendly shops and peaceful parks. I understand you like strolling around the area at lunchtimes. Enjoy it by all means, but do not allow your feelings for the area to intrude on your work. Professionalism must come first. Your company’s existence, your job and those of your colleagues depend absolutely on your being able to work unsentimentally and methodically towards the goal of making money through development. You must use all means at hand, within the law or where necessary without it, taking all due precautions of course, to achieve the desired ends in good time. Time is money, as you will become aware. Each month’s delay costs the company a month’s salary for all the employees involved, as well as a month’s interest on the money it has borrowed from the City. It also delays by a month the necessary returns to the company’s owners and shareholders, and your jobs depend ultimately on their confidence in your professionalism and reliability. Therefore, do everything you can not just to get the job done, but to overcome opposition quickly. Leave your feelings for lunchtimes and evenings. All the best, Nick.
Dear Nick, thank you for your letter. I’ll do my best, but we are heavily tied down by planning law, especially the need to consult widely and to provide 40% social housing. What a nuisance! It takes ages and the social housing will cut our profits down terribly. Any ideas? With many thanks again for your help, Frango.
Dear Frango, you are quite right to ask. The good thing about the rules on consulting is that you only have to do it within a fixed distance – I think it’ll be 500 metres in your case. This may sound a lot, but if you choose a site at the boundary of a park or commercial estate, or beside a river for instance, you’ll immediately halve the area involved as you’ll only have to consult in half a circle. Even better, if you can find a place near a borough council boundary, you can forget about the people in the other council! What an excellent rule! Of course, if you’re near an administrative boundary and also beside an industrial estate, then hardly any local residents will ever get to hear about your project, until it’s too late. Things are pretty well stacked in our favour!
As for the 40% social housing, I wouldn’t get too hung up on the percentages. We can easily offer the council some cash “in lieu” of the social housing: they can announce they will be using it somewhere else, some time in the future, to build some social housing, somehow or other (certainly not with us, there’s no money in it, but I’m sure if they offer a building contract, there’ll be some builder willing to take their money off them to throw up some matchwood stuck together with spit for the deserving poor. As soon as your council smell the money – we can call it Section 106 you know, even if it isn’t exactly compensation – they’ll be eating right out of your hand. Your affectionate uncle (may I call myself that?), Nick.
Dear Nick, of course you can be my uncle if you like! Thank you so much for your helpful suggestions. They are just what I needed. My team leader was really impressed in our weekly meeting this morning. We’ve got a suitable site lined up and think we may be able to get away with a 42-storey tower! I couldn’t have imagined we’d be able to risk anything so profitable around here. All the best, Frango.
Dear Frango, delighted to hear it’s all going so well. Do be careful not to get your hopes up too early: remember there are many steps to the process, and “obstacles” to be overcome. Take things one at a time, though, and you’ll soon be in management. Your affectionate uncle, Nick.
Dear Nick, you were right. We’d hardly got started when an incredible busybody of a local nuisance – I think she’s got a lawyer for a husband – has started complaining to all and sundry, and we haven’t even put in a planning application yet. She’s pointed out that we’re in breach of the Local Plan, and that we can’t use Section 106 money to compensate for lack of social housing. If only we could shut her up… Your stressed-out “nephew”, Frango.
Dear Frango, something like this always happens. The good news is, we’re still here, and we have deep pockets. Of course we don’t want the delay and expense, but the fact is, we can cope with it, as we have done on every previous project. You’ll find a way around it. Remember that the busybody and her husband have no funds to fight us with, and plenty of other things to worry about – they have to earn their living, and fight off all our “friends” who are planning developments in the same area. Did you hear about the combined housing/office/retail development just off the high street, and the swimming pool/cinema/housing complex where the old tennis courts were? They’ll be run off their feet, you’ll see, and we can reapply with a marginally different proposal if your 42-storey tower actually gets rejected. So I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. Your affectionate uncle, Nick.
Ah, the environment. I remember a time when I was driven by a landowner through the English countryside. He was disgusted at the litter of discarded plastic bags that had stuck in the hedges. His rural landscape was visually contaminated with the worthless outpourings of careless city-dwellers. He was furious at this despoliation of the environment.
What is the environment? It’s a vague enough thing to some people, everything around us from the end of our nose to the end of the universe. Defined like that, it’s (almost) the whole of Nature, the world, the universe. Defined by my landowner, it was probably more narrowly understood: the visible landscape, or perhaps the immediately visible world, landscape, skyscape and maybe waterscape in his neck of the woods.
To politicians, in this final party conference season before the British general election next May, the environment is something rather unimportant. The odd landowner and the occasional grumpy ex-soldier, “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”, may complain about litter; Prince Charles may sound off about modern architecture and hideous glass stumps invading the landscape; but for the rest of us practical folk, the environment frankly doesn’t matter, compared to urgent questions like the economy, health, education, pensions, war and winning the next election.
But “environmentalists” aren’t worrying about the odd plastic bag, or the visual impact of an occasional skyscraper, however horrid those things are.
As the zoologist Gerald Durrell said, people think I’m trying to save fluffy animals. But I’m trying to save life on Earth.
There’s nothing fluffy about it. Habitats everywhere are being destroyed. Global warming is moving vegetation zones towards the poles and up mountains. Anything that is trapped at a north coast or on an isolated mountain top is doomed if it can’t move further. Species everywhere are heading towards extinction. Things that are beautiful, useful for the genetic diversity of our crops, valuable for medicines; things we haven’t even named yet; things that perform vital services, giving us oxygen, forming the web of life of which we are part: all these things are being recklessly eliminated. We’re axing our own life-support system in this little ball-of-rock spaceship, with nowhere else to go to for untold billions of miles in every direction. The human race, under the direction of our political leaders, is racing to spend what’s left of our inherited family silver, happy that there’s a little bit left for the next few years. After that? We have no idea.
Why should politicians put “the environment” at the top of their agendas for the next election? Because it’s an emergency, for all of us.
Green Politics: A cheerful Caroline Lucas, MP, briefing members of the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts on how to lobby their MPs
It has been said that nature-lovers are left-wing on all political questions except immigration, where they are distinctly right-wing.
This can readily be explained by guessing that nature-lovers essentially choose to prioritize in the following order:
Themselves (well, everybody does)
Wildlife and the Environment
Other people
Big business
Immigration is unpopular both because it conflicts with #1: it puts pressure on resources near the home, and because it conflicts with #2: it puts pressure on land.
I’ll return to the question of putting nature above people later, but first I want to note that this set of priorities is radically different from those of the right (say, the Republican party in the USA, or the Conservative party in Britain), who we may guess have these priorities:
1. Themselves
2. Big business
3. Other people
4. Wildlife and the Environment (if they rate this at all)
On this rather simple view of politics, left-wing people (say, the Democrat party in the USA, or the Labour party in Britain) are imagined to have these priorities:
1. Themselves
2. Other people
3. Big business
4. Wildlife and the Environment
The reason left-wingers may put business above wildlife is that, despite all the left-wing rhetoric, they do recognize that business generates the money needed to pay for welfare and shared services such as health care and education. So, although there has been a historic rich vs poor, Upstairs vs Downstairs polarity between left and right, they do actually agree on most of their priorities.
If you’ve followed the argument this far, you’ll see that at least in countries like Britain and the USA, this places anyone who has ‘green’ political views, favouring wildlife and the environment, in a tricky position. There is nobody with any reasonable likelihood of getting into power that they can vote for with any confidence.
In countries like Germany with a proportional representation system for voting, smaller parties are able to flourish, and Green parties can become significant in regional and national parliaments. In countries like Britain and the USA, which have “first past the post” (winner takes all) voting systems, smaller parties usually get trodden underfoot, along with any more subtle points of view than left vs right.
I would love to be able to tell you (I assume you are a nature-lover) that I have a brilliant solution for you, but I doubt there is one. Instead, you have a few possible choices.
You could carefully study, and ideally question, your candidates from left and right about their views on nature conservation in the hope of finding or provoking a spark in some of them. (I’m trying this myself.)
You might consider joining their party so you can lobby them more effectively; you might attend policy forums and try to push the environment up the agenda (I don’t hold up much hope on that one, though I know energetic people who are trying it).
If you have money, you might give donations to either side, accompanied by whatever pressure you can apply.
If you are persuasive, you might speak or write to the candidates, arguing that saving the environment is good for people (their health, exercise, mental state, and so on) or for jobs (tourism, conservation work, pollination of crops, that sort of thing).
Or you could move to Germany, work hard, and apply for citizenship. You could give up on politics altogether, and immerse yourself in practical conservation, campaigning and suchlike.
If you don’t find any of those suitable, you do have another option, but it’s very long-term. You campaign for a fair, democratic, voting system that will actually represent your views, along with those of other minorities: you fight for proportional representation. If you thought that was a dull, dry piece of constitutional reform, think again. It’s the only way things that matter to you and to me will ever be taken seriously. We greens need seats in our legislatures, in direct proportion to our numbers. That might be 30 or 40 green MPs in Westminster, for example. Now that would be talking. Until then, frankly, we’re disenfranchised. And that’s wrong.
It’s time to come back to the awkward matter, for green politics, of at least seeming to put nature above people. To put it at its mildest, it can look somewhat self-indulgent in the well-off with money and leisure enough to enjoy looking at wildlife in beautiful places to argue that conserving nature is more important than dealing with the pressing social issues of the day: hunger, homelessness, unemployment, poverty, disease, and all the side- and after-effects of war: trauma, grief, coping as refugees, orphaned or widowed. And that is to hint at the hidden, unspoken issue for green politics, migration, which numbers among its many causes inequality, war, and climate change.
The cause of green politics is not simply an open-and-shut case of selfishness, however. There are arguments that can be used in its favour.
A key one, perhaps, is the moral argument for care for other living things, and for the environment as a whole: we are just one species among millions, and we have just one world to look after, not just for ourselves (the poor, homeless, unemployed and so on) but for all Earth’s species, and for all future generations, our children and our children’s children. If all species were valued equally, and why should they not be, then wildlife should score a millionfold more than any purely human priority. It seems, of course, that nobody can quite bring themselves to value other species anywhere near as highly as Homo sapiens: indeed, even the assertion that a million other species might be worth nearly as much put together as humankind would raise eyebrows – who cares about a rainforest or two when business or livelihood is at stake?
The somewhat more selfish argument that we need nature for a large number of ‘ecosystem services’ such as pollination of crops, a ready supply of timber or fish, genetic variety in the shape of ancestral species related to valuable crops (wild potatoes, wild maize, wild apples) or a list of candidate pharmaceutical drugs from as-yet-undiscovered species of plant, fungus or micro-organism, may have a little more traction. Here, nature is worth conserving for its enormous utility, of which we currently have only a hazy notion, but which we already perceive to be much larger than we ever imagined. Most clearly, the cost to farmers of hand-pollinating every fruit tree is becoming frighteningly obvious as bees of many species vanish from the ploughed and pesticide-sprayed countryside.
A slightly less utilitarian argument concerns the value of nature for human well-being, both now and for future generations. We wouldn’t want to live in a world with no ‘charismatic species’ such as elephants, giraffes, lions, gorillas and tigers. Yet, we could easily find ourselves there, with perhaps a few miserable beasts desperately keeping their species alive in zoos and safari parks. More mundanely, we know that city-dwellers are happier and more relaxed, better able to focus clearly at work, if they have a little time in a park or garden with trees and flowers, and perhaps with bees and butterflies too (if that isn’t too much of a luxury).
If we accept any or all of these quite good reasons for saving life on Earth, then we must make nature conservation a high priority: which means making it a higher priority than at least some human political priorities. And that is a ‘green’ agenda. If anything, it is alarming to anyone who reflects on the question just how little effort is in fact being spent by governments on keeping the world’s ecosystems in existence: we are all so busy fighting wars and economic collapse that such larger matters spend their whole time on the back burner, if not (to mix metaphors disgracefully) on the ‘too difficult’ pile.
Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that all the non-human species in existence add up in moral terms to our single species (leaving aside any idea that this grossly undervalues them). Let us suppose, too, that all future generations add up in moral terms to the generation which is alive today (and yes, we’ll ignore any idea that this undervalues them, too). Then all our conventional political goals should be given 1/3 or thereabouts of the total weight: the other 2/3 belong to nature, and to future humanity (who of course may care about nature also). And Nature should then easily top the political agenda.
Or we can look at green politics in space rather than in time. The politics of big business, and of the social systems of rich nations, ignore the rest of the world, where injustice, drought, poverty, dictatorship, war, tropical disease and famine are major factors. Worse, our greed and selfishness has inflicted post-colonial disaster (think of the Anglo-French agreement to draw borders for the new kingdom of Iraq after the First World War) and exploitation of minerals on many parts of the world. We owe it to everyone to put these matters straight, which means protecting the environment: their environment, in the places where we are stripping them of their resources, or already did so, or where we are dumping the wastes that we don’t want to deal with ourselves. This way too, justice means green politics, but more clearly Nature and suffering humanity need to be safeguarded together.
Green politics is not a luxury for the idle rich. Making wildlife and the environment, biodiversity and conservation a top priority is vital for everyone, rich or poor, on the entire planet.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
