Unearthed today: Pesticides residues, plastic exports and carbon taxes
Morning! Bumper edition for you today, but it’s all killer….
We’re writing about… lobbying to spray pesticides
Europe’s farming and chemical lobbies are working to weaken new EU targets to halve pesticide use by 2030 and weaken rules on the imports of products coated in hazardous chemicals, according to documents obtained by Emma Howard and Zach Boren.
The EU wants to reduce the amount of pesticide use by half in ten years. But the chemical pesticide giants say that’s not happening; regardless of the risk regulators believe their products may pose.
“The crop protection industry considers that [the planned] reduction of 25% of the use of chemical pesticides, whatever the risk of their use, is achievable by 2030,” read the notes of a March meeting between industry and the EU. The rules are non-binding so are unlikely to be achieved without industry’s support.
The industry is also lobbying to overturn limits on residues of hazardous pesticides found in products imported to the EU – citing the need to feed animals bred for the meat industry.
According to notes from a 30 March meeting, the European Crop Protection Association (ECPA) told Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle, then deputy to the EU’s Agriculture Commissioner that the pesticides target was not “realistic”.
The notes continued: “On the basis of projections concerning the products which will hit the market and those for which the authorisation will not be renewed between today and 2030, the crop protection industry considers that a reduction of 25% of the use of chemical pesticides, whatever the risk of their use, is achievable by 2030.”
And the ongoing shipment of plastic waste to poorer countries
The UK has continued to send plastic waste to developing countries, despite widespread concerns about increased plastic pollution and a Conservative party manifesto pledge to stop the practice, reports Joe Sandler Clarke.
The environment bill would have given ministers powers to ban waste exports to low and middle-income countries, but the legislation was withdrawn during the pandemic. There is now confusion over whether it will be put to parliament at all.
Exports to Malaysia, now the UK’s the second biggest market for waste, have increased significantly in the first seven months of this year, with 33,098 tonnes of scrap sent to the country, a rise of 81% on the same period last year.
The rise comes despite reports that Malaysia’s recycling infrastructure has been overwhelmed by an influx of overseas waste, leading to an increase in plastic pollution in parts of the country. In January, it was reported that Malaysia planned to return 42 shipping containers of illegal plastic waste back to the UK.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) responded to this story by stating that the government plans to move ahead with its pledge to ban waste exports to non-OECD countries and to “introduce tougher controls on waste exports”, but did not give a timeframe for this.
I’m reading about… where next
By some metrics, the UK is a world leader in tackling climate change. Emissions have fallen more so far than in most developed economies and the government has just pledged a massive investment in offshore wind – though details are as hazy as the North Sea in winter.
And yet building wind turbines and even banning the sale of new fossil fuel cars doesn’t really cut it anymore, it’s not going to get emissions to “net-zero”. It is mostly rolling out technology and ideas we’ve been developing for about two decades. To go further, we probably need changes which cut across the economy or – at least – impact on parts of it so far left basically unchanged.
Faced with the unimaginable cost imposed by the pandemic the Treasury is reportedly considering exactly one such measure; a new carbon tax. Writing in the FT energy economist Dieter Helm, who has advised the government from time to time, argues strongly for exactly this.
“Now is the time to introduce a carbon tax, common across energy, transport and agriculture, and applied at the border,” he claims. A new tax on food, transport and on imported goods from high-carbon industries and regions would certainly be a pretty radical step for a post-Brexit Britain grappling with the social and economic impact of the pandemic. It’s probably, on balance, a bad idea. It’s also not all that likely.
More likely is a limited, revenue-raising tax of the type discussed by The Guardian here. Even that could prove problematic. After all, what is it trying to achieve? A key goal beyond cars and turbines is to get gas boilers out of homes. Would we do that by taxing them?
“Raising taxes on voters until they squeal and switch to lower carbon-intensive heating systems would not be popular or necessarily progressive,” the paper notes dryly.
Instead, The Guardian emphasises the importance of planetary boundaries in economic planning – how GDP growth should not be the be-all and end-all of decision making. It’s a crucial debate but it sheds little light on which policies are now needed beyond a nod towards state subsidies for alternatives to gas boilers – funded through regulation and taxation of the energy companies.
Perhaps principles are what we need, because the full range of changes are so complex and inter-connected they are hard to express, and harder still to engage with. Perhaps that’s also why The Sun dodges the policy issue entirely recruiting readers instead to join it’s “green team” and make small changes to their lifestyle – including political activity – which could help cut emissions.
It’s a potentially powerful initiative, backed by Sir David no less, so long as it doesn’t give the impression that these changes alone will compensate for lack of state and corporate action – beyond wind turbines and electric cars.