This blog may help people explore some of the 'hidden' issues involved in certain media treatments of environmental and scientific issues. Using personal digital images, it's also intended to emphasise seasonal (and other) changes in natural history of the Swansea (South Wales) area. The material should help participants in field-based modules and people generally interested in the natural world. The views are wholly those of the author.
Tuesday, 27 September 2022
Should Nature be a Negotiable Luxury?
UK 'Green' charities, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust, are urging their millions of members to write to their MPs. They want them to express concerns about, on what the charities see, as a government 'attack on nature' (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/27/green-charities-urge-millions-of-members-to-oppose-tories-attack-on-nature). Worries of these 'Green' charities include the fact that, 570 laws derived from EU directives, are likely to be axed. These laws cover issues like sewage pollution; water quality; clean air and wildlife habitat protections. Replacement UK laws are likely to offer lesser protections. Removing the moratorium on 'fracking', to extract methane from shale rocks, also concerns the Environmental charities (as well as folk, unfortunate enough to live above these strata). In addition, the charities note that, the setting up of low tax investment zones across England, involves a 'relaxation' of local environmental protections. There is also a strong likelihood that the proposed Environmental Land Management Scheme (Elms) will be axed. Elms was intended to replace EU farming subsidies with a scheme rewarding farmers for enhancing nature. Even the Institute for Economic Affairs, a favoured government, rightwing thinktank argues that the current subsidy scheme "is a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to landowners" (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/27/truss-favoured-thinktank-attacks-massive-transfer-of-wealth-to-landowners). Elms was supposed to solve that problem. Essentially, the 'Green' charities believe that, the government's current obsessive push for economic growth, 'takes a wrecking ball' to nature. Resistence, they feel, must not be futile!
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