Author: Alistair Munro, Press and Journal

A Highland community is seeking to provide an escape route for rare red squirrels after a spate of deaths.

Strathnairn Community Council is working with Scottish and Southern Electricity Network (SSEN) after the discovery of the remains of three red squirrels on the road near the Balnafoich crossroads at Inverarnie.

Residents have even put up their own “slow squirrels” sign to warn drivers of the presence of the charismatic mammal in the area.

And now, they want to give the squirrels a route through the trees high above the road in the formof a rope bridge.

Community Council chairman James Murray said: “We have had a report of three squirrels being killed on the road.

“As a result, we are looking at getting a rope bridge in place to prevent any more deaths.”

SSEN is currently working on replacing an overhead line between Knocknagal and Tomatin, and the subject of the squirrels was raised at a recent community liaison group.

Red squirrels are regularly seen in the woodland surrounding the construction work, but there has been no evidence of displacement of squirrels in the area.

SSEN was approached by the community council and said they would be happy to assist in purchasing and installing a crossing.

They are currently investigating the suitability of the various available models of crossing.

A spokesman said: “As a responsible developer we want to be a good neighbour to all our local communities, and this commitment extends to the nearby flora and fauna.

“When we were approached by Strathnairn Community Council for assistance with the installation of a squirrel crossing, we knew straightaway that it was the right thing to do, and we are currently looking at the various types of crossings on the market to ensure we get the best possible outcome for the squirrels.”

A spokesman for Scottish Natural Heritage said: “Where management involves the loss of continuous tree cover, rope bridges are a simple but effective way of helping our red squirrels to stay safe when crossing roads.”

Red squirrels were once widespread throughout Britain, but fewer than 120,000 remain in Scotland – 75% of the total UK population.

The decline in the numbers of the well-loved mammal is primarily due to competition for food and living space by the invasive non-native, American grey squirrel.

Grey squirrels also carry Squirrelpox – a virus lethal to reds but not to greys.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust joined forces with Scottish Natural Heritage, Forestry Commission Scotland, RSPB Scotland, Scottish Land & Estates and the Red Squirrel Survival Trust in a co-ordinated attempt to stop the decline and create the conditions for them to thrive in the future.

Since 2009, the initiative has enabled reds to re-establish in many areas.

Author: SRA

Book your place and see the programme highlights – HERE

The three-day Scottish Rural Parliament will take place in Stranraer in Dumfries and Galloway on 14-16 November 2018.  The biennial event hopes to brings together 400 rural community participants to discuss their priorities and this year will focus on two key issues – rural policy post-Brexit and taking action.

Announcing the event, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said “It is important people have a say in decisions affecting them, and the Rural Parliament is an important part of that process, allowing rural communities from across Scotland to discuss and agree priority areas for development and local democracy.”

“The Rural Parliament coming to Stranraer is a fantastic opportunity for the area to showcase its strengths and share ideas and good practice across Scotland’s communities.”

Welcoming the announcement, Amanda Burgauer, Chair of Scottish Rural Action said “We are delighted to be taking the Scottish Rural Parliament to Dumfries and Galloway this year and particularly to Stranraer, where an active community has already achieved much and has exciting plans for the future. The Rural Parliament will help bring attention to this effort and will leave a strong legacy in the area.”

“The dual themes of action and influencing around Brexit will foster a dynamic event that will help define the future of rural Scotland as the UK approaches Brexit and in the years that follow.  The event will offer an opportunity for 400 people from across rural Scotland to influence high level decision makers and ensure their community’s voice is heard. “

“At previous Scottish Rural Parliaments, we have shaped much of our work on areas such as connectivity, transport and banking. Being the voice for rural communities is a role that Scottish Rural Action takes seriously, and I am very pleased to have seen significant progress driven by our work in these areas over the years.”

Peter Ross, Chair of  the Stranraer Liaison Group said “We are delighted to be welcoming the Scottish Rural Parliament to Stranraer.  The event has great cultural and political significance, and allows us to showcase our dynamic and thriving rural communities.  We look forward to learning from other communities and working together in the future to share experiences and shape rural policy at both local and national level.  We have seen the impact on previous hosts local economy and expertise, and we look forward to bringing the spotlight to Stranraer, which has lots to offer.”

Participants can look forward to a warm welcome from friendly people in a town with excellent facilities, set in lovely countryside. Stranraer has, in common with the rest of Dumfries and Galloway, a large vibrant community who gladly undertake lots of volunteering roles. There are lots of clubs, organisations and caring people who look out for each other.”

Author: David McPhee Oban Times

Oban is well on its way to becoming Scotland’s first ‘health town’.

The journey officially started on Saturday at a health fair in Atlantis Leisure, where people were encouraged to try out a new activity or sport.

Dozens of organisations that help improve people’s health, turned out to offer advice.

Attendees were also given the opportunity to take part in taster sessions, such as walking football, CPR training, tennis coaching, Tai Chi, as well as other sports and fitness classes.

Roy Cloonie, a voluntary director at Healthy Options, said: ‘We are launching Oban becoming Scotland’s first healthy living town.

‘Forty per cent of the population is not active enough to stay in good health, but today is not about being scared. In Oban we have fantastic organisations.

‘What we are doing and what these organisations do is fantastic, but it’s still just reactive. We  want people to stay healthy – that’s what healthy Oban is all about.

‘There are 150 different organisations either directly, or indirectly improving our health.

‘Not just sports clubs and gyms, but walking and social groups.

‘They all improve our health, reduce isolation and loneliness, and get us active.

‘As a town we have our own sports centre, a cinema, and we are working towards having a community centre at Rockfield.

‘Today, we are saying to the Oban community, this is us making a commitment and the journey has started – and the journey will never end. This is a long-term project.

‘It’s a mindset thing. We never think, “I am going to brush my teeth today”, we just do it. We want the same for exercise – we just go for a walk.’

Discussing the next steps, Roy said: ‘We have a group of committed people from voluntary organisations who are all pulling together. We just want to support, encourage and provide opportunities for people. We need to support these organisaitons.’

Andy Spence, chief executive of BID4Oban, said: ‘We have a very keen interest in what’s happening with Oban as a healthy town. It’s essential to the residents and the businesses that we support this and make it a success.’

Councillor for Oban North and Lorn, Elaine Robertson said: ‘We are so fortunate to have a community that responds to a call such as this one.

‘This includes physical and mental health because unless you have both, your wellbeing and quality of life are diminished.

‘Unfortunately not everyone enjoys good health, but we can all do something to help ourselves.

‘Exercise does as much for us than anything prescribed. Just get out there and go into the community and you will feel better.

‘One of the great things about being the first is you can’t make a mistake as there are no rules.

‘Having fun and enjoying yourself is better than any medicine you can prescribe.

‘Look around and see if there’s any activity you might enjoy – such as walking football.’

Author: Dr Charlotte Heales, Dr Mary Hodgson, Hannah Rich

Humanity at Work – MONDRAGON, a social innovation ecosystem case study

Our new research report on the MONDRAGON Corporation, the largest industrial Co-operative in the world, explores it as a social innovation ecosystem, a highly successful and competitive way of transforming people’s lives for the better through shared ownership.

MONDRAGON is a large global business owned by its workers delivering economic and social equality by combining success in the marketplace with social benefit. We found that MONDRAGON, with annual revenues of over €12 billion (equivalent to those of Kellogg’s and Visa), doesn’t just have social values as a nice-to-have, like many corporate social responsibility or shared value models. Instead, social values are embedded in its core working practices and drive it forward. This is epitomised by salary ratios between the lowest and highest paid workers of 1:9 (compared to 1:129 for a FTSE 100 company), training and participation opportunities for workers, the redistribution of wealth and democratic processes which enable every worker to vote on key principles. Our research uncovered a thriving ecosystem which has highly important implications for the development of an inclusive UK economy, and demonstrates how businesses can be both competitive in the marketplace and generate social value at large scale.

Our research report looks at different elements of the way MONDRAGON works to understand what keeps driving it forward and what could be learnt from its model. What keeps it consistent in the face of changing contexts and challenges? Why do people commit to its practices and what drives it forward and sustains it?

Full report

Author: Third Force News, by Gareth Jones

A project that could help change the face of medical care has been given a funding boost.

The Social Prescribing Project will bring together partners from across Scotland and Northern Ireland, having received £3 million in funding from the Big Lottery Fund.

Scottish Communities for Health and Wellbeing (SCHW) and the Northern Ireland Healthy Living Centre Alliance (HLCA) will deliver the partnership in project, with support from a range of other groups.

Social prescribing links primary medical care to community based resources and local support services and is backed by a social model for health. This recognises that good health and wellbeing are influenced by a wide range of individual, interpersonal, organisational, social, environmental, political and economic factors.

Local medical and social work professionals, including GPs and practice nurses, will be able to use social prescribing to refer patients who are isolated or experiencing loneliness or presenting with social psychological and anxiety symptoms to a link person – the social prescriber.

This person will work with an individual to develop a health pathway, which includes access to a range of local resources, activities and services, including stress management, volunteering opportunities, formal and informal learning, parent support activities and healthy lifestyle/active travel activities such as walking, football and cycling. Most importantly each participant receives one to one support at all stages from the social prescriber, including introductions to formal and informal community groups and community assets to assist in reconnecting and reducing loneliness and isolation.

Ten organisations across Scotland will each receive £40,000 per year for at least three years to develop and deliver the project. They will be responsible for the delivery of the social prescribing for each patient. Each social prescribers will be based in the local community led health organisations, which allows them to draw on their knowledge and understanding of their communities.

The Social Prescribing Project in Scotland’s John Cassidy said: “Social prescribing could change the way primary care is developed for current and future generations. It is a holistic approach that can help reduce medication and improve health and wellbeing. It empowers patients and communities, supports greater independence and reduces reliance on primary healthcare, ultimately delivering better outcomes for people and society.

“Individuals will be supported to increase their skills and to learn new skills to help them achieve their goals and aspirations. They will increase their confidence and self-esteem and develop their social networks, enabling them to become reconnected to their communities, friends and families.”

Author: Sandra Dick, The Herald

REMOTE communities across Scotland are sharing a multi-million-pound cash bonanza generated by the wind and rain that batters them. Over the past decade, nearly £50 million has been paid to communities from the proceeds of wind farms that have been built nearby.

The money has been spent on a diverse range of schemes, from the renovation of village halls and bowling clubs, to taking school pupils on day trips, providing musical tuition and giving everyone in the community new Christmas lights.

In other cases, canny investors who have pumped savings into buying shares in community energy schemes are reaping up to eight per cent return on their investment – far more than they might hope for in any high street savings account.

Such is the clamour to invest in renewable schemes, the latest share offer that calls for community investors to purchase the first of £1.89m worth of shares in six hydroelectric projects across the Highlands raised one-third of the money required within days. Indeed, demand for a share of the windfall means the offer is likely to be over-subscribed.

But the real money-spinners are the lucrative community agreements made in the early stages of wind-farm planning, which has led to millions being distributed for the good of the surrounding area.

Last year alone an estimated £15.7m was distributed to community wind-farm trusts despite rising household energy bills and the £105 on average that every UK household pays to subsidise wind farms.

Funds from energy giant SSE alone – which aims to have a renewables network valued at £10 billion within five years – delivered almost £5.2m in support for community projects across the UK last year.

Almost all was distributed in Scotland, in many cases landing with tiny communities that are now finding themselves with so much spare cash it’s increasingly difficult to know how to spend it.

Meanwhile, Scottish Power Renewables, which currently has 40 wind farms across the UK, gave over £3.5m to more than 30 community benefit funds.

In total, the two firms have handed out £48m to communities over the past decade.

This has allowed the northerly communities of Bettyhill, Armadale, Strathnavar, Melvich and Altnahara, which sit close to the 33-turbine Strathy North Wind Farm in Sutherland, to be handed £230,000 in the past year alone, which is about £225 for each of the 904 locals.

During a 12-month spending spree, £75,000 went on a new bowling green, £25,000 for new clay pigeon traps for Armadale Gun Club, and a hefty £7,500 to bathe the handful of houses and businesses in the hamlet of Melvich – population 300 – in Christmas lights.

Throughout the course of its lifespan, the local wind farm will plough £4.5m into an area known mostly for its wild and unspoiled scenery.

In Fort Augustus, the 32-turbine Bhlaraidh wind farm will deliver a £7m windfall to the community of just 3,288 people. Cash last year went on social housing and an apprentice programme, with enough left over to spend £7,500 for new windows, doors and carpets for Fort Augustus Golf Club and £6,384 for Glen Urquhart Shinty Club for a vehicle to help keep the pitch in trim.

It is a picture that is replicated wherever a wind farm or hydro development has sprung up.

In the east Sutherland communities of Golspie, Brora, Helmsdale and Rogart, the Gordonbush turbines are generating a £5.2m pot of cash for a 4,680-strong community.

Recent spending included £12,600 to send Golspie High School pupils on a trip to Manchester City FC, and £4,300 for a senior pupils’ common room.

In Huntly, the local fire station received £5,000 from Vattenfall Clashindarroch Community Fund to buy a bouncy castle, while Huntly and District Pipe Band scooped £9,500 to pay for a mentor to work with the pipe major and leading drummer.

The windfall is being shared right across the country where cash is flowing to communities.

Achany in Sutherland, with a population of just 2,500, is set to receive £2.5m over 25 years, of which £6,500 has recently gone towards marketing the area to tourists.

Elsewhere, offshore wind farms are helping to fund a £3,000 Viking farmstead at Largs Station in Ayrshire.

In the far north of Orkney, 500 residents of Sanday will benefit to the tune of £600,000, with £5,000 already paying for music lessons for the local high school’s 51 pupils.

In one case, a Western Isle community has scooped a £3m payment for a wind farm that was never even been built.

French company Engie abandoned its £200m plans for a 39-turbine wind farm on the Eishken estate on Lewis in 2015 amid uncertainty over the laying of a subsea cable to the mainland.

A legal contract meant it was still required to make payments to the Muaitheabhal Community Wind Farm Trust, resulting in a deal to pay £2.92m to grateful islanders.

Since then, Muaitheabhal Community Wind Farm Trust has helped a local group become community landowners, by providing funding to help them take over the 1,200 acres of Keose Glebe estate.

But while canny investors and big spending communities are enjoying the financial benefits, critics question the long-term benefits.

Graham Lang, of campaign group Scotland Against Spin, said: “It’s pretty short-sighted. There is a carrot dangled in front of communities. The first thing that a wind-farm developer does is say ‘Look guys, we will get this wind farm that we need and you will get something out of it too’.

“It’s thousands of pounds and people prick up their ears and think it’s fine. But the people that are benefiting are very seldom – or never – the people that are worst affected.

“If you have a house on the edge of the area where a wind farm is, you will have 25 years of looking at this thing. Your house will be devalued, your health might be affected, you can’t sleep at night for the noise and you don’t receive any compensation for that.

“It’s an uneven playing field. We realise that good things are done with the funds – there’s no doubt about that – but there’s a large section of the population who are the worst affected who don’t benefit at all.”

The windfalls also come at a price through higher customer bills.

Earlier this week, Ofgem warned that vulnerable customers are still getting a bad deal from energy providers, with more than half of households on a poor value deal leaving them “most likely paying over the odds for their energy”.

This year alone UK energy providers have made a combined total of 41 price increases for gas and electricity.

At the same time, the £105 per year paid by each UK household to subsidise wind and solar farms and energy-efficiency measures could be set to soar.

The UK Government’s Committee on Climate Change is to examine Britain’s response to dire global warming warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which could result in additional investment for wind, solar, hydro and other renewable projects.

Rachel McEwen, SSE’s director of sustainability, said: “Community benefit is a central feature of SSE’s renewable energy portfolio, with £23m provided in Community Funding since 2008.

“The funding stream from SSE’s wind farms – and others – provides an important boost to communities. Because it is private money, the funds can be more flexible than the funding streams communities often rely on through the public sector. The other key feature is that the decisions to allocate funds are made by the local communities themselves.

“However, we are very conscious that communities need support in this role and SSE employs a specialist team of grant managers for evaluate funding bids, administer the funds and, often, to undertake social value assessments too.”

A ScottishPower Renewables spokesman said: “Our onshore wind farms provide employment opportunities and a wide range of benefits for local communities and the wider economy in Scotland.

“For example, of eight onshore wind farms we recently built, more than £1.6bn of investment will directly benefit the economy, providing £59m of community benefit funding over their lifetime. We have good relationships with the community groups we work with, and will continue to seek to enhance local economic opportunities.”

But MSP Maurice Golden, the shadow cabinet secretary for the environment, climate change and land reform, said there is a need for the money flowing into communities from renewable energy developments to be spent wisely.

He said: “Community benefit was devised as a means of helping small, rural communities mitigate the after- effects of large-scale renewable energy developments. After all, it is only right that communities affected by wind farms receive due compensation.

“For the most part, community benefit has been positive for rural areas, but funding must be spent wisely and with a long-term strategic vision.

“Poverty and inequality is a serious issue for rural Scotland and many small towns and villages suffer from digital and infrastructure shortfalls and it is here where community benefit can have the most impact.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The Scottish Government’s work in this area supports our wider ambition to grow communities and tackle inequality in often rural and isolated communities. Our Good Practice Principles are voluntary guidelines that we encourage communities and developers to use.”

Author: Lesley Riddoch, The Scotsman

Last week, the Duke of Buccleuch put a portfolio of land on the market called Evertown, which includes farms, productive farmland, commercial forestry and planting opportunities near Canonbie in Dumfries and Galloway. The 9000 acres is composed of 18 lots on sale for £19.5 million – most hill ground is priced at three times its agricultural value and advertised as “suitable for forestry planting” and includes land with sitting tenants whose leases have not been renewed.

That includes folk like Alison and David Telfer who’ve farmed Cleuchfoot, near Canonbie for almost 20 years, first as managers and then on short-term leases, but must leave by this time next year, despite what they claim were verbal promises by the Duke’s father that they could stay till retirement and by the current Duke that he would reflect on local anger about removing tenants to secure lucrative forestry planting grants.

It seems hideously unfair. It is.

Local MSP Joan McAlpine has been working behind the scenes on the case and said this weekend: “The Duke and his factors are unflinchingly cruel in the case of the Telfers.

“He could easily allow them to see out their working lives at the farm – instead he has split their farm into two lots for sale, removing part of it imminently.

“The Telfers believe they are being victimised by a powerful and vindictive organisation, and I am inclined to agree.”

Of course the Buccleuch Estate disputes this. They say the Telfers always knew their latest five-year lease would expire and the couple have been given several extensions to their removal date plus a chance to buy their farm.

It would be surprising if two people on a meagre income, approaching retirement with no assets could find an asking price of £600,000. But then that isn’t the Duke’s problem.

Now all of this may seem like one more shameful aftermath of a tenancy fix created by the Scottish Government in the 1990s, (limited partnerships) which left a small group of tenant farmers without any security at all. Recent reforms have mercifully put most tenants on a more secure footing.

But this is far more than a local dilemma for one unfortunate couple.

This could be the case that prompts Scotland’s new Land Commissioner to intervene and place constraints on the Buccleuch’s land sale process.

Andrew Thin has welcomed the decision by Buccleuch Estates to sell land and diversify ownership hoping it would encourage other large landowners to do the same and “reflect on emerging land reform priorities.” But he added; “We expect Buccleuch and other landowners to conduct land disposals in a responsible manner, taking full account of the views of the local community including tenants who are involved.

“We will review the actions that Buccleuch now takes with care, and stand ready to offer advice where required.”

Some folk may snort at the idea the multi-millionaire landowner will need or heed advice from anyone.

But it’s likely the Duke is already consulting his land lawyers to make sure his actions conform with part 4 section 44 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016, which says landowners must engage with local communities before taking any decision that may affect them. It’s new ground as the Scottish Government only published its guidance earlier this year, but there’s no doubt the proposed sale of 9000 acres has big implications for local people.

The Buccleuch Estate insists it has already conducted a lot of consultation over the last 10 months “to understand the aspirations of community bodies”.  It says one or two groups have expressed interest in acquiring land and one sale is apparently at an advanced stage. Buccleuch says; “Other groups expressed satisfaction with their current agreements [and] a preference for their relationship with Buccleuch as a landlord to continue.”

The assumption that Buccleuch has consulted sufficiently will raise eyebrows locally after an angry public meeting in Langholm this spring in response to community anger at planting and criticism from local politicians.

Local MSP Joan McAlpine points out: “The Scottish Government Guidance on Engaging Communities in decisions relating to land states quite clearly that significant decisions on land use and ownership require formal engagement with the community and lists ways to do that.”

Indeed, the Land Commissioner has arranged for a letter to go to Buccleuch reminding them of their obligations under the new community engagement guidelines.

But the Duke doesn’t just need to begin a pioneering formal process of talking to local farmers and existing tenants, he may also have to involve a much wider community of interest. Land isn’t just a resource for folk currently working on it, but for the whole local population who might want to build houses or a new village, get individual plots of land for new farming tenancies, set up community woodlands, or get land for light industrial use like a sawmill, or – with enough time and encouragement – want to own land and follow the example of community-owned Eigg, offering free plots of land so youngsters can build truly affordable homes.

No-one will ever know if the whole community wants a vastly different future like this if folk are not brought together to focus on the incredible opportunity afforded by change.

According to veteran land reform campaigner and Green MSP Andy Wightman: “Historically, land market interventions have focused on acquisition of land through compulsory purchase by public bodies and on community buyouts at the point of sale.

“The sale of Evertown raises further questions about the usefulness of existing mechanisms and the free market in land.

Author: LGiU

Published by Local Government Think Tank – LgiU.

Local Government Finance – The Essential Guide

All You Want To Know But Were Afraid To Ask…….. Pages 3 -12

Author: George Monbiot, The Guardian

We’re getting there, aren’t we? We’re making the transition towards an all-electric future. We can now leave fossil fuels in the ground and thwart climate breakdown. Or so you might imagine if you follow the technology news.

So how come oil production, for the first time in history, is about to hit 100 million barrels per day? How come the oil industry expects demand to climb until the 2030s? How is it that in Germany, whose energy transition (Energiewende) was supposed to be a model for the world, protesters are being beaten up by police as they try to defend the 12,000-year-old Hambacher Forest from an opencast mine extracting lignite: the dirtiest form of coal? Why have investments in Canadian tar sands – the dirtiest source of oil – doubled in the past year?

The answer is growth. There might be more electric vehicles on the world’s roads, but there are also more internal combustion engines. There might be more bicycles, but there are also more planes. It doesn’t matter how many good things we do; preventing climate breakdown means ceasing to do bad things. Given that economic growth, in nations that are already rich enough to meet the needs of all, requires the growth of pointless consumption, it is hard to see how it can ever be decoupled from the assault on the living planet.

When a low carbon industry expands within a growing economy, the money it generates stimulates high carbon industry. Anyone who works in this field knows environmental entrepreneurs, eco-consultants and green business managers who use their earnings to pay for holidays in distant parts of the world, and the flights required to get there. Electric vehicles have driven a new resource rush, particularly for lithium, that is already polluting rivers and trashing precious wild places. Clean growth is as much of an oxymoron as clean coal. But making this obvious statement in public life is treated as political suicide.

The Labour Party’s new environment policy, published this week, rightly argues that “our current economic model is threatening the foundations on which human wellbeing depends”. It recognises that ecological collapse cannot be prevented through consumer choice or corporate social responsibility. The response to our greatest predicament must be determined by scientific research, and planned, coordinated and led by government. It pledges “to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rises to no more than 1.5 °C.”

But, as almost everyone does, it ignores the fundamental problem. Beyond a certain point, economic growth, the force that lifted people out of poverty, cured deprivation, squalor and disease, tips us back into those conditions. To judge by the devastation climate breakdown is wreaking, we appear already to have reached this point.

The contradiction is most obvious when the policy document discusses airports (an issue on which the party is divided). Labour guarantees that any airport expansion “adheres to our tests” on climate change. But airport expansion is incompatible with its climate commitments. Even if aircraft emissions are capped at 2005 levels, by 2050 they will account for half the nation’s carbon budget, if the UK is not to contribute to more than 1.5°C of global warming. If airports grow, they will swallow even more of the budget.

Airport expansion is highly regressive, offending the principles of justice and equity that Labour exists to uphold. Regardless of the availability and cost of flights, they are used disproportionately by the rich, as these are the people with the business meetings in New York, the second homes in Tuscany and the money to pay for winter holidays in the sun. Yet the impacts – noise, pollution and climate breakdown – are visited disproportionately on the poor.

I recognise that challenging our least contested ideologies – growth and consumerism – is a tough call. But in New Zealand, it is beginning to happen. Jacinda Ardern, the Labour Prime Minister, says “it will no longer be good enough to say a policy is successful because it increases GDP if … it also degrades the physical environment.” How this translates into policy, and whether her party will resolve its own contradictions, remains to be determined.

No politician can act without support. If we want political parties to address these issues, we too must start addressing them. We cannot rely on the media to do it for us. A report by the research group Media Matters found that total coverage of climate change across five US news networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and PBS) amounted to 260 minutes in 2017 – a little over four hours. Almost all of it was a facet of the Trump psychodrama – will he pull out of the Paris Accord?, what’s he gone and done this time? – rather than the treatment of climate chaos in its own right. There was scarcely a mention of the link between climate breakdown and the multiple unnatural disasters the US suffered that year, of new findings in climate science or the impacts of new pipelines or coal mines. I cannot find a comparable recent study in the UK. I suspect it is a little better, but not a lot.

The worst denial is not the claim that this existential crisis isn’t happening. It is the failure to talk about it at all. Not talking about our greatest predicament, even as it starts to bite, requires a constant and determined effort. Taken as a whole (of course there are exceptions), the media is a threat to humanity. It claims to speak on our behalf. But it either speaks against us or does not speak at all.

So what do we do? We talk. As the climate writer Joe Romm argued on ThinkProgress earlier this year, a crucial factor in the remarkable shift in attitudes towards LGBT people was the determination of activists to break the silence. They overcame social embarrassment to broach issues that other people found uncomfortable. We need, Romm argues, to do the same for climate breakdown. A recent survey suggests that 65% of Americans rarely or never discuss it with friends or family, while only one in five hear people they know mention the subject at least once a month. Like the media, we subconsciously invest great psychological effort into not discussing an issue that threatens almost every aspect of our lives.

Let’s be embarrassing. Let’s break the silence, however uncomfortable it makes us and others feel. Let’s talk about the great unmentionables: not just climate breakdown, but also growth and consumerism. Let’s create the political space in which well-intentioned parties can act. Let us talk a better world into being.

www.monbiot.com

Author: SCDC

Have your say about the future of human rights in Scotland.

Share your views in this online survey now >>

Last year, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon set up an independent Advisory Group to develop a series of recommendations and actions around human rights in Scotland – and you can have your say with this online survey.

Human rights are a vital part of a just and equal society. They give you a set of rights and freedoms regardless of where you are from, how old you are, what you believe, or how you choose to live your life.

How your human rights are affected by governments and other bodies is becoming increasingly important, with the Advisory Group making recommendations on how we can protect our existing rights and examine how Scotland can go further in demonstrating human rights leadership.

The Advisory Group want to hear your views and feedback on their developing recommendations and how they can be made as effective as possible in improving the lives of people and communities.  

Share your views >>

The survey will be open until 11th October.