I’m currently wrestling with one of those awkward policy dilemmas that seem to abound in the ethical business sphere – and to which there’s no clear answer. What if you want to develop and implement a climate-friendly technology, but an unavoidable side effect is that animals suffer? How do you trade off climate change against animal welfare?

I have a client that needs to find a reasoned position; frankly there are some tough choices and none of them are straightforward. Climate change is clearly the greatest existential threat to humanity (although nuclear weapons haven’t gone away) and should be a corporate priority for any company that has any thought for the future. On the other hand, the humane treatment of animals is a fairly deep ethical issue for many people (especially the English) and we generally want to avoid strategies that cause suffering.

Presented in its starkest terms it’s relatively easy to make judgements – very few of us would empty a barrow load of cute kittens into a furnace in order to heat the water for a shower, even though this is probably climate-friendly behaviour. Likewise, not many people would consider the deaths of a few pigeons to be a conclusive argument against a wind farm.

But many of the choices are not so easy. Farming is a classic example of where the difficult decisions lie. There is a strong argument that locking up pigs and chickens in windowless crates within a fully controlled artificial environment is a climate- friendly option. Animal wastes can be collected to generate renewable energy, gases like methane can be captured and the feed regime tightly controlled. But this technology comes at great cost to animal welfare, with literally millions of animals suffering in perpetuity. So the question becomes a straight trade-off between climate change and welfare – and there are no mathematically precise answers.

It’s tempting at moments like this to try and change the terms of the debate, and start arguing that consumers should eat less meat as their personal contribution to saving the planet. But this isn’t likely to happen any time soon, and the world is hardly going to become one hundred per cent vegetarian. Consequently you end up trying to improve welfare “a bit” while trying to hang onto most of the climate benefits – but without any real way of knowing how big that “bit” should be.

I haven’t found an answer yet, and there probably isn’t one – there’ll be an ugly compromise, and we will all have to live with it. But if I’m facing these kinds of problems trying to resolve a very English problem around animals, imagine how hard it will be to resolve issues of social justice and equity. Lots of proposals for keeping tropical forests intact have the potential for shocking injustice in terms of ejecting indigenous forest dwellers or constraining their activities. Is this a price that we’re prepared to pay?

Ultimately we want to save the planet, but there are other issues as well. Are we really prepared to pay any price to save the planet? In some ways the answer must be ‘yes’, because stopping climate change is hardly an optional extra. But there are ethical trade-offs to be made, even if they are ugly. And we need to be as up front as possible about how difficult it is to make these choices.

I spent last week in an exhausting round of meetings at the Brussels Seafood Expo, the world’s largest trade fair for fish. It’s quite a sobering experience wandering the aisles of this enormous show and seeing just how many creatures we gather up from the deep. The show sprawls over several aircraft-hanger-sized halls and features just about every creature that can be plucked from the ocean and scoffed.

I know it’s no use being sentimental about salmon and squid. But I did feel a twinge when I turned the corner of the Canada stand and found a group of people taking photos of something on the floor. I peered over the shoulders of the crowd to find the cause of the commotion, and there in the middle stood the monstrous bulk of George – probably the largest lobster you will ever see.

George, it seems, was sixty years old (although I don’t know how you can tell such a thing). And he’d been brought all the way from Canada to provide a celebrity moment at the fair. But was he going back to Canada, I asked? Perhaps in business class? Unfortunately not. Poor George was due to be auctioned to the highest bidding Belgian restaurant after the show ended, and would be tossed in a pot and boiled alive.

This seemed like a grim end for a superstar like George. He was starring in his very own ‘I’m a Celebrity Crustacean – Get me out of Here’ and the penalty was death. I felt genuinely sad. Surely after sixty years he deserved better than the ignominy of Belgian gastronomy? Can’t we say there’s a cut-off point for creatures that get so old – so we stop killing them and just let them retire gracefully? I looked at the pitiful handful of euros in my pocket and realised I could never outbid the local eateries. And even if I found the money, how could I get George home? On Eurostar in a bath tub?

I slowly wandered away feeling troubled and unsure where the moral line really lay. I thought about the orange roughy, a spectacularly ugly deep water fish that lives to 150 years old, and how we had trawled them up with gay abandon only to realise that they could barely reproduce, and that we had taken 90% of the stock in just a few seasons.

Surely it’s ok to scoop up the surly teenagers of the seas – anchovies, sardines and the like – but leave the oldies alone?

And then of course I realized where my empathy with George had spring from. It had been my birthday only the day before. I was on the threshold of fifty and suddenly I was feeling rather protective about the middle-aged. If they can boil George without even a moment’s pause to consider his years, what does that mean for me? I’ll be elbowed aside by adolescents at a bus stop as surely as George will get chucked in a saucepan. I don’t often feel solidarity with creatures that have enormous claws and the potential to snap off a finger – but for George, I’ll make an exception.

Taking pictures of a farm isn’t considered a particularly sinister activity around my home in rural Suffolk, but over the Atlantic it’s a very different matter. Legislators in both Iowa and Florida are currently trying to pass laws which would make taking pictures of farms a ‘felony’ (which potentially means jail time if convicted). They’re claiming that these laws are vital to safeguard biosecurity.

In truth, these laws are not being designed to keep germs away from farm animals, but rather to stop the prying cameras of pesky animal welfare campaigners taking photos that might embarrass the livestock industry. The hog, chicken and beef farmers of the US are tired of being roasted in the media because of shocking video evidence of cruelty, so they’ve decided to adopt the same tactics as despots around the world: shut down the debate and stop the public finding out what really happens in factory farms. Of course they could have adopted the alternative route – make conditions for animals sufficiently humane that the public are not rendered speechless with horror when they see it with their own eyes. But heck, that would cost money. Far simpler and cheaper to use a tame legislator to pass a law that blindfolds the public.

Thankfully, no British farmers are currently demanding such legislation. But doubtless there are a few that wouldn’t object too strongly if it came about. I’ve always been struck by the strange contradiction of the National Farmers Union moaning about how kids in towns don’t know where food comes from, while at the same time refusing public access to intensive livestock units. If I write to the NFU and say: “I’m really appalled at how little modern children know about agriculture and would like to take a class load to see an intensive chicken facility,” you can be absolutely sure what the answer will be. They’re very happy for the public to think that farm animals live Disney-style lives in spotless fields, rather than the ugly reality of confinement, mutilation and antibiotics.

But despite the reticence of the livestock industry to come clean about what happens behind the razor-wire fence, there is nonetheless a rising trend of transparency. Public interest in the food supply is at an all-time high, with huge amounts of media time dedicated to food and its provenance. The rising macro trend of consumer interest in ‘fresh and local’ food is clearly a major driver in all this, and there’s no sign of it abating. Retailers maintain almost total visibility of their supply chains and like telling their customers at least part of the story, but inevitably the narrative is a little selective. Conditions for animals on farms is one example of supermarket memory loss, but there are plenty more. Fisheries are a classic case: how many consumers know that their frozen fish dinner has travelled from the Atlantic to China and back before they pulled it from the shelf?

Perhaps it’s time for the food industry to come clean about all aspects of production, and make the public take responsibility for their buying decisions. Although the livestock sector tries to bamboozle us with cartoon drawings of cheerful pigs on packs of sausages, we also collude in the deception by failing to ask questions. Maybe it would be helpful if occasionally supermarkets had to display pictures of the farm conditions right next to the relevant product. Then customers could see for themselves the difference between intensive and free range systems, and decide whether they want to save 50p a kilo or pay a little extra for the higher welfare option. And maybe kids in towns might actually find out where food comes from – whether farmers like it or not.

Long ago, at a time when my career fortunes perhaps ran higher than they do today, I edited a magazine for a very green readership and invited a young journalist to write a cover piece about the environmental impacts of pet ownership. The story he wrote was both funny and acerbic but essentially speculative. Little did I predict the astonishing post bag that I would receive the following month from enraged readers threatening to cancel their subscriptions and unleash savage hounds in my office. My time at the helm of this noble publication was terminated shortly afterwards.

That young journalist was Matthew Gwyther – now editor of Management Today – and it’s with a strange sense of déjà vu (and of roles cruelly reversed) that I find myself penning a piece on the planetary consequences of pets. Whether I can provoke the same tide of wrath is highly debateable. Read More »

It’s difficult for any organisation to claim that they’re truly sustainable. But they need to keep trying.

I’ve been in northern Europe this week talking to a client about sustainable supply chains. Everyone working with natural materials – whether foodstuffs, wood, cotton or whatever – is currently interested in defining sustainability. And they’re busily organising ‘multi-stakeholder’ groups to figure out an answer. But are we ever going to reach a conclusion that pleases everyone?

My client discussions went round the houses a bit, but there was profound concern about whether they could publicly say they were ‘sustainable’ – and what kind of an evidence set you would need to make that assertion bomb-proof.

My recent experiences in the fisheries sector have made me extremely phobic about the s-word – as soon as you use it, someone tries to pull it down. The Marine Stewardship Council has endured an almost constant hail of (metaphorical) rocks from campaign groups because of their insistence on calling the fisheries they certify sustainable. And in truth, there are certified fisheries that don’t seem all that great to the casual observer. But the real point is that even if the MSC fisheries aren’t strictly sustainable by some deep green criteria, they are nonetheless a hell of a lot better than most uncertified ones and deserve support.

Which all goes to show that defining ‘sustainability’ as an end point is a huge mistake. Definitions change, science makes new discoveries, and people disagree on what should or should not be included. Read More »

I wouldn’t describe myself as a deep green, but I can’t resist a good rummage at a charity shop to see if someone else’s rubbish can’t be usefully re-employed. And so it was last week that I found myself at the local office of the Suffolk League for Distressed Cats (or maybe it was hedgehogs) picking through a strange collection of cheap glassware, fake horse brasses and discarded soda siphons. Nothing really caught my eye until I started searching among the board games and discovered, at the bottom of a dusty pile of jigsaws, a classic piece of entertainment from 1987: “David Bellamy’s Save the World!” game.

The game looks suspiciously under-used, so perhaps this wasn’t the rival to Monopoly that the manufacturers intended. But as a social document, it’s priceless. I’m not sure how many readers recall the late eighties boom in environmental awareness, but for those of us who were there it was a seminal moment – climate change was first talked about (although scarcely believed), the ozone layer was an imminent crisis, Margaret Thatcher gave her first green speech and there were even some ungainly (and hilarious) attempts at corporate green-washing.

This game was clearly an attempt to cash in (in the nicest possible way) on a wave of green concern and “Preserve the world’s precious resources from destruction – for two to six players”. The question cards mostly focus on wildlife, but a few look at more global phenomena. And the ‘answers’ make scary reading: according to the game, the world will have run out of oil by 2020 and the world temperature will have risen by 3 degrees by 2025. Well ok, there’s a debate about peak oil but it’s not THAT bad! And thankfully temperatures haven’t risen at quite such a cataclysmic rate. But I guess it seemed plausible at the time, based on known science etc. And their heart was in the right place.

Perhaps the cruellest irony is that David Bellamy – who will be recalled by older readers as a ‘celebrity botanist’ much imitated by Lenny Henry – actually became Britain’s highest-profile climate sceptic for a while, and spent a good deal of time in the media saying that global warming was nonsense. Whether Doctor Dave had forgotten the fat commission he received for the game, or whether he had played it so often that he’d lost his reason, I don’t know. But clearly something went awry somewhere.

Although the game is a charming artefact of an eco-conscious period, it’s worth remembering that by 1992 everyone had forgotten about the environment and was hunkering down under a recession. Hopefully the recent surge in interest in sustainability isn’t going to suffer the same fate – and there’s lots of evidence that this time the issue is here to stay. Climate change is now a permanent feature of the global political map (despite Dr Bellamy’s best efforts); water scarcity is a major concern; and huge efforts are going into protecting forests. Supermarkets in northern Europe are wedded to sustainable supply chains and vie with each other to create eco-stores. Even The Economist thinks that the environment is important. Clearly environmental sustainability is embedded within the mainstream debate – and it will take some dislodging, even if many of the indicators are still trending negative.

But where is the “Save the World!” game for 2011? I tried the 1980s original out on my kids and they barely lasted two minutes before slinking off to the Playstation. How can we interest the restless youth of today in an ecological board game? Why has nobody invented an eco-version of monopoly where the players build wind farms, and going to jail (without passing Go) is actually ok because you shut down a coal-fired power station? Where is the Cluedo for the 21st century, with Miss Scarlet revealed as the Metropolitan police spy in the Climate Camp? Surely it’s not beyond our creativity to crack this conundrum.

And so, as an act of astonishing selflessness, I’d like to offer my 1987 edition of ‘Save the World’ (VGC, hardly used, only a few cards missing) as a grand competition prize for the best suggestion for the next green board game. I’ll give you until April 1st to send me suggestions.

I’m currently in Vancouver at the annual gathering of folk interested in sustainable fish and consumers. It’s a fairly small band that gathers regularly to talk about fishing methods, supermarket policies and eco-labels. But the debates are passionate, and what gets discussed here ends up reaching the public domain sooner or later. The whole ‘pole and line’ discussion around tuna was raging around this group long before celebrity chefs found out about it.

By a curious coincidence, on the very same day the conference started, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation published their latest data on fish consumption. And the results were all too predictable. The global per capita consumption of fish has reached an all time high, with annual global per capita seafood consumption now at 17 kilograms per head – and still rising.

With such pressure on the oceans, it’s inevitable that some have tried to develop consumer-focused tools to try and make fishing more sustainable. Read More »

Are oil spills good for wildlife? Amazing new research from the Gulf of Mexico is showing a huge increase in the number of marine species AFTER the catastrophic BP oil spill had allegedly destroyed the ecosystem. It turns out that BP may have done more to protect marine wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico than Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth put together.

Researchers at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in the United States – who have been regularly monitoring sea life in the Gulf of Mexico for years – are reporting huge increases in all kinds of marine creatures, ranging from tiny shrimps up to massive sharks. Tiger sharks, the largest shark in the Gulf, have increased by 300%!

These findings seem totally at odds with common sense. But an explanation is readily available. One of the early responses to the disaster was the closure of fishing grounds by the US authorities – which meant that for the first time in centuries, nobody was trying to catch anything in the Gulf. This removal of fishing pressure resulted in a sudden eruption of marine life – far greater than could be suppressed by the toxic effects of the oil spill.

So what lessons does this hold for the rest of us? Read More »

So here we go with the first Green Machine blog of the year. And with a stunning lack of originality, let’s think about some New Year eco-predictions:

1. A significant rise in pundits telling you that ‘sustainability in business is now completely mainstream’. This is either not true, or it may even be an excuse for sacking the CSR team as a cost-cutting measure. One day, environmental sustainability may be core to the majority of British business. But that day ain’t going to happen in 2011. For every visionary Unilever or GE, there are a hundred other companies who don’t give a toss.

2. Ocean acidification will become a proper issue. It’s not very high profile at present, but the issue of acidifying seas is going up the agenda faster than an eel up a drainpipe. Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere mean the seas are changing – and the news is not good for fish. Maybe the seafood industry will start chaining themselves to coal-fired power stations.

3. Cameron will have stopped talking about being ‘the greenest government in history’ by the end of 2011. OK, hardly an original prediction but they haven’t had a brilliant start, Lib Dem influence on the green agenda seems to be waning and there’s a deep vein of climate scepticism in the Tories that has yet to express itself.

Read More »

Most people are familiar with the term ‘carbon neutral’ – the idea that companies might produce no net increase in carbon dioxide. And have even heard about the idea of ‘water neutral’, which means not just returning as much water back to the environment as you use but even accounting for ‘embedded water’, which is the stuff you use in growing crops, making packaging etc.

But if you think the neutral concept had reached a natural boundary, you can think again. This year the corporate green community is talking about ‘biodiversity neutral’. Yes, that’s right, every plant and critter that you chopped down or stamped on in the course of making an honest buck has to be replaced by an equivalent somewhere else.

Now I’m all in favour of treading lightly on the earth, passing the planet to the next generation in the same condition that we found it, etc – but is the whole neutrality concept really going to help us? Read More »