Can you hear the silence of the huskies? When he was rebranding the Tory party, David Cameron promised us he would lead "the greenest government ever", and flew to the Arctic to be photographed hugging the Arctic dogs.
Since he came to power, he has broken every environmental promise he made -- and then gone much further. He has opened up the coasts of Britain to the deep-sea drilling that worked so well in the Gulf of Mexico, and put a For Sale sign outside every single remaining forest in England. Yes, as his own environment minister puts it, Cameron is determined to achieve "disposal of public forest" -- and the timber companies and holiday-parks are preparing their opening bids.
In order to raise £2bn, the government is selling all 650,000 acres of our forests -- a privatization that even Margaret Thatcher blanched at. These are the most popular outdoor spaces in Britain, visited more than our beaches. They are the last place where millions of people can go to escape their anxieties and glimpse what Britain looked like to our ancestors for millions of years. They are the site of some of our most potent national myths: what would Robin Hood say if he knew Sherwood Forest itself was now on the market? Is Cameron really taking the Sheriff of Nottingham as his role model?
This is in direct contradiction to what Cameron told us he would do before the election. In 2007, talking about forests, he promised he would "take a more effective and strategic approach to safeguarding a priceless -- and irreplaceable -- natural asset.'' He said the countries that "are cutting forests down" are "barmy.''
The government says there is no danger to the forests in selling them to timber companies and the other highest bidders. They say they will still be standing, they will be cared for as well, and the public will have just as much access. Does this match the facts?
It's true that once a company has bought a forest, they will still need planning permission to cut the woods down. This is a crucial brake. But -- wait -- Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has just announced his is "remov[ing] the structures of control" and making it "much easier" to get planning permission across the country. Planning is being massively deregulated, just as the forests are sold. Not every buyer will cut them down. But some will. Why do the Tories think timber companies want to buy them -- to abandon the work they do in every other country on earth and become druids?
Confronted with this point, the government admits there is a "possibility of established forest being bought by energy companies who would proceed to chip it all for energy recovery" -- and then swiftly insists there is nothing to worry about.
The forests that remain will be less well-maintained, and harder for the public to access. The Forestry Commission looks after our woods today, and 100 percent of it is maintained to the international Forest Stewardship Standard that keeps it healthy and alive. By contrast, only 25 percent of private forests in England are looked after this way. After the sale, they will become more degraded, less biodiverse, and less likely to survive for the long term.
And you will find it harder to get to them. The government says that the legislation passed in 2000 granting us all the 'Right to Roam' will mean we can enjoy them just the same. But the public only has a right to access woodland classified as "freehold". You have no right to access the woodland held as "leasehold." According to the Ecologist, half of privately owned woodland is barred to the public.
It gets worse still. The Forestry Commission works very hard to make our woods accessible to everyone. They build car-parks, bike-tracks, visitor centers, picnic areas. When the land is privatized, most of that will go. They can put a massive fence around the forest, they just can't put up a sign that say 'Keep Out.' Look at what happened to the Riggs Woods in the Lake District, sold a few months ago. The car-park has been shut down, the picnic area has been dismantled, the visitors center closed, and all you see when you go there now is a large bolted gate that, legally, you are allowed to clamber over.
And for what? To preserve our forests costs just 30p per taxpayer per year. Selling them off forever will raise just half of the sum that one corporation -- Vodafone -- was let off after the Tories came to power from what Private Eye says was its total tax liability. (Vodafone denies this figure).
So if you go down to the woods today, you'll find the best metaphor for Cameronism. Change your party's logo to a lovely green tree -- then sell off all the real trees to corporations. Oh, and then say you are "empowering volunteers" by doing it. The Prime Minister has said the forest sell-off "empowers local communities" to take over the forests for themselves as part of a "Big Society." Yet sources within the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs say that -- unsurprisingly -- only about 1 percent of the sales are anticipated to go to local co-operatives or green groups. The "Big Society" is a fluffy fig-leaf for dismantling and demolition.
But -- amazingly -- this may not be the biggest environmental vandalism of the Cameron years. The Conservatives have just authorized the launching of deepwater drilling off the coast of Shetland. The White House investigations are only now uncovering quite how disastrous this tactic was in the Gulf of Mexico -- but it would be worse in the Shetlands, where the very harsh, cold and windy conditions would make a clean-up dramatically harder and more expensive. It would have to be bigger too: Chevron has admitted if things went wrong it would release 77,000 barrels a day, 25 percent more than went into the Gulf.
Britain's Health and Safety Executive warned that serious accidents on British oil rigs almost doubled last year. These are the very warning signs that preceded the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Even if the oil is excavated "safely", it will then release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and destabilze our climate even more -- which doesn't sound very safe to me.
As if that wasn't enough, Cameron has also authorized drilling for shale gas off the coast of Blackpool -- an extremely controversial practice that is suspected by many scientists of poisoning water supplies in several sites in the US.
Britain's forests and seas don't belong to David Cameron. They belong to us. As the former Forest of Dean district council chairman Bill Hobman says: "Mr Cameron should show us the deeds to the Forest. How can they sell something they don't own?... This is a wonderful part of the world and shouldn't be auctioned off to the highest bidder to have their own little bit of heaven. We will fight this all the way." The fight-back will be ferocious, and, like the inspiring fight against super-rich tax-dodgers, it unites people from the Tory shires with amazing left-wing activist groups like 38 Degrees that are organizing thousands of people to protest.
This is a fight about what the British people value as a country. Do we want to preserve Britain's most beautiful places -- forests and seas that were alive for our distant ancestors, and should be alive for our distant descendants -- or do we want a few rich corporations to make a little bit more money from destroying them? David Cameron has made his choice. Now the British people need to make theirs.
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or here. You can email him at j.hari [at] independent.co.uk
To join the fight to save Britain's forests, click here.
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England is in a union with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This Union was set up from the start, to erase the English and England. Those other countries have their own devolved political chambers, Scotland has a parliament, Wales and N. Ireland with assemblies soon to be upgraded to full parliaments. Each of these chambers look after its own nation's affairs.
England is left with the United Kingdom Parliament that has Scottish, Welsh and N. Irish members voting on English matters. Members of the British Parliament with constituencies in England have no say over the affairs of the other countries. Nor do those MPs of the British Parliament with constituencies in one of the three other nations.
England is the own country in the democratic world that does not have its own elected chamber, even though the original English Parliament is the mother of modern parliaments.
Only in England is the British Government selling assets. Parts of the moneys raised from such sales go to the other three countries. If Scotland were to sell its forests, then no money would come to England.
The list of benefits that the rest of the UK enjoy at English taxpayers' expense is too long to fit here, but includes at least twelve cancer drugs available to Scots, that are denied to English patients.
British MPs have betrayed the English.
Don't let the facts get in the way of a good bit of British nationalism. It's only England's forests that Cameron is selling off to service British debts.
Can I recommend you look into who destroyed the UK economy, sold its citizens in debt slavery whilst presiding over a record reduction in manufacturing industry.
Why can't Cameron look across the ocean and see what America is becoming? Coal companies blow the tops off mountains, and not only poison the water, but are changing the whole topography of the Appalachians -- who would have thought that would be allowed. Glory be, I guess, like so many other of the very rich, they only care about the short run to make money, not the long view of history.
Since Cameron out and out lied, doesn't Britain have a procedure like impeachment?
In Europe, private forests are managed on a long-term commerial basis. This is not always negative: for example a management technique known in France as "irregular forestry" is leading to beautiful woods that look just like old-growth ones. It turns out that having trees of all ages and sizes side by side leads to higher production and especially higher quality (and price) than traditional tree plantations. The public sector took longer to catch on.
However, for liability reasons (a dead tree falling on a hiker's head) private owners tend to sanitize their forests (cutting out dead trees) or restrict access more than public ownership would.
The biggest difference (aside from public access) may be that public ownership will be more likely to promote biodiversity, which from a private owner's perspective has little value.
(1) I don't think timber companies will be lining up to buy these lands. They'll prefer the lower price and lack of long-term responsibility for the land that comes with logging concessions. Buyers will be institutional investors - pension funds and the like - who are already snapping up forests around the world, knowing that future wood shortages and increasing pressure on the land will drive up their value in the long term. In France it's become very difficult to buy a private forest, since the big players have notified all real estate agencies that they'll buy any forest that's for sale before it reaches the market.
(2) Cameron is sending a terrible message to all national leaders we from the West habitually lecture about the need to preserve their forests. I can already see how Indonesia, Brasil or Congo will react to the next preaching about how important it is to safeguard forests: "If the British can sell them without you guys uttering any protest, then why can't we?" Indeed: why couldn't they.
The best solution for Britain may be to generate support for a National Park system modeled after the contemporary U.S. system. Though the parks have been around since 1916, they fall under the purview (read: funding arrangements) of the Dept. of the Interior and are constantly buffeted by the winds of change in Washington. So it's just recently that the parks have come to look at monetizing certain aspects and becoming more self-sustaining.
Many now have modest entry or parking fees, concession lease income, income charged for commercial photography or videography (for advertisements, film locations, etc.).
Unfortunately, we have to think like those land grab corporatists, and then shame the government into doing it our way.
I think we're pretty much doomed.
I'm glad for Theodore Roosevelt, or I'm sure that the same thing would have long-since happened here.
Britain, stop the madness before you turn into a mini-America. I love my country, but I hate what's happening to it.
This has become the axiomatic narrative of the 21st century, and that's a very scary thing. It is being used to justify the new paradigm of economic Darwinism which governments all over the world are beginning to construct. More and more, the things which people care about in their countries are being sacrificed in the name of developing resources, and creating jobs--it's all about remaining competitive, it's all about survival. States are adopting the operating strategies of businesses, and transforming their societies into voracious cancers which swallow up everything in order to keep contriving growth in production. In Britain's case, they will begin exploiting the oil in their seas, and their forests. What happens when these avenues of growth have been exhausted? The line has to be drawn somewhere.
This is about privatizing nature. A walk in the woods will be the exclusive right of the rich. Things which used to belong to everybody will now belong to the few. Things which were normal will become a privilege.
If someone can't pay, maybe he/she shouldn't be allowed to breathe, either. If there is no such thing as public land or public water, why should there be public air?