Environment Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

I will not detain the Committee further, except to say that this is a key area which will be increasingly important because of our renewable energy programme, much of which is based offshore. We are going to be moving ever more from ground-based or sea-based turbines to floating wind turbines; I am sure there will be differences there in ecological impact, so how will that be taken into consideration, in terms not just of research but of planning and, particularly, keeping our marine plans up to date and helping us make the right decisions in this area?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am here to speak against Amendment 285. It seems to me that making fracking effectively illegal is an extreme reaction. That seems short-sighted. It closes down any possibility of looking at the issue again or objectively, and potentially feeds into an atmosphere in which we cannot have a sensible debate on energy policy because we start criminalising innovations every time they come along. We have heard that the Government have a moratorium on fracking. I feel that is overcautious and potentially unhelpful but, regardless of that, to make it illegal feels completely over the top.

I understand that fracking is controversial as a method of drawing shale gas from the ground. Certainly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, explained, environmental activists have been hyperactive in ensuring that there is a popular image of fracking as dangerous and dirty, but I do not know that that should pass for science or evidence. I am not for or against fracking, but I am against moralising on the issue and, right from the start, I have been shocked by the venomous demonisation of what, after all, is just an energy source. There has been a lot of misinformation and scare stories around the issue.

I call, rather, for a calm discussion about the kind of tremors caused—they would be caused by any mineral extraction, whether quarry blasting or any major civil engineering project. I worry about a tendency to portray the worst-case scenario, with scary stories of earthquakes, water contamination and poisoned water tables. I feel that is a distinctly evidence-free approach and I do not feel the Bill should be associated with something quite so ideological in that way. I am calling for a more neutral and nuanced cost-benefit analysis approach.

I remember when the former Labour MP and fracking tsar, Natascha Engel, said that government policy was being driven by environmental lobbying rather than science, evidence and a desire to see the UK industry flourish. Indeed, I was shocked by how many rejoiced at what Ms Engel described as a “perfectly viable” industry being wasted, regardless of that industry’s massive potential for jobs and local prosperity in places such as the north-west, North Yorkshire and north Derbyshire. It promised to bring energy prices down. If it did not work out, fine, but to celebrate that as a big gain seemed to me inappropriate.

I also worry about the billions being spent on importing gas, which could be better spent. I have plenty of ideas, particularly in health and social care and in rebuilding post-Covid society. I am not keen on dependence on Russian gas, but even beyond the question of energy security, it seems to me that, even within the terms set by net zero—even though that is not a target I am particularly obsessive about, as others are—shale gas production could have had few carbon emissions, far fewer than hydrocarbons. It always surprises me, when we talk about reaching carbon emission targets, that we would rule out getting gas out of the ground in the UK, rather than importing it. It feels, with nuclear power as well, that every time a new energy solution is proposed that is not wind or solar, we get a kind of moral panic led by activism.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about the problem of finding any energy source that will not disrupt the environment and nature. I was involved in an argument some years ago after Lancashire County Council rejected an application for exploratory drilling—not in relation to the safety of fracking per se, but based on the negative visual impact, increased traffic on rural roads and that kind of environmental disruption. Would not such concerns condemn industrialisation in general? How can there be economic development without traffic, or some changes to the skyline or, indeed, to the environment? I think we need that.

My priorities are to generate wealth—not personally; I have never been able to do that—to see that society is able to generate wealth and, in the process, make people’s lives more comfortable and open opportunities for humanity. We need industrialisation in general, and more energy production in particular, and that will involve infrastructural environmental disruption. Shale gas might not be the energy we need, but we should note that the wider ideological rejection of economic growth and progress sometimes afflicts this discussion and we should avoid it. We definitely do not need an amendment to the Bill that would make fracking, or any energy source, illegal. I would even urge the Government to look again at the moratorium.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 280 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. This is a very interesting area and it is important that we continue to carefully research the impact of individual wind farms, as well as—perhaps more importantly, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned—their cumulative effect on many species, from benthic invertebrates through sand eels and fish to birds and the larger sea mammals. I shall start by highlighting the approach taken on this subject by the National Audubon Society, the equivalent of the RSPB in the USA. It says, and I gather that many scientists here agree, that climate change is the biggest enemy of our avian population. As wind farms are one of the best weapons in our arsenal to fight climate change, we must be careful about putting too many barriers in the way of their development, albeit with a clear understanding of their effects and what mitigation could be put in place.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is right that research on the effect of offshore wind farms on marine mammals and cetaceans is still, shall we say, in its infancy. However, the research on wind farms and their effects on birds is reasonably well advanced, so I shall focus on that. The Scottish Government, through their all-encompassing research programme on marine energy, ScotMER, have taken a very good strategic approach to this issue, working with research institutions, notably the UK’s CEH, which I happen to chair, alongside some important private-sector players; the Swedish company Vattenfall and the Danish company Ørsted being two good examples.

On the question of where offshore windfarms should be situated, we are pretty well aware of their effects during the seabird breeding season. By putting GPS tags on birds during the breeding season, we now know precisely where wind farms should not go, which is a very good start. The winter season is more difficult, however. GPS tags are not yet light enough or durable enough to provide reliable long-term information during this highly sensitive period. I call it a sensitive period because most seabird mortality happens during winter, and winter deaths are the critical factor in the survival of their colonies—more so, it seems, than their breeding success.

The main problem encountered during winter by our seabirds is the lack of food. The main food they eat are sand eels, which, as their name indicates, live in the underwater sands of the North Sea, let us say, where most wind farms are. Maybe the abundance of sand eels is affected by the sands themselves being disturbed by the building of wind farms and, more importantly perhaps, by the submersion of miles and miles of cable. But we do not yet have the data on that.

However, I should point out at this stage that, where you have wind farms, you will probably not get fishing boats, because of the likelihood of drift and getting the nets entangled in turbine towers. In the long term—we do not yet know—by building wind farms, we might well be creating the equivalent of what should be happening in our marine protected areas in terms of no-go fishing areas, where many species, including sand eels, could be given a real chance to flourish. Wind farms could be the best thing for both our abundance of fish and our birds. Who knows?

Coming back to the existence of offshore wind farms and their effect on birds, it is notable that the worst effects are on high-flying birds such as gannets and kittiwakes, whereas low-flying birds such as razorbills, guillemots and shearwaters tend not to be too troubled by them. Kittiwakes seem to be the worst affected species, and it is good that Ørsted, for instance, is building artificial kittiwake nesting sites at the Hornsea Three development off the Yorkshire coast by way of mitigation.

Returning to the amendment, I am not sure that its emphasis is right. Private companies already have to carry out basic environmental monitoring exercises both before and after their developments. As I have said, some of them go very much further, with Vattenfall actually paying for a PhD student to assist in the ScotMER research project I mentioned just now.

In many ways, having private companies judge the environmental viability of their own project is not as good as getting them to contribute to more strategic research into the overall cumulative effects of offshore wind farms and the best ways of mitigating their effects. The current view is that having lots of small turbines placed close to each other is more damaging than having modern large turbines placed a kilometre or so apart, but we do not yet really know. Is it best to leave 2-kilometre-wide corridors through wind farms or does this only confuse the situation? Further research has found that if you paint one blade of each turbine all black, the birds seem to keep away—but again, more data is needed on this.

Coming back to the kittiwake issue, and on the subject of strategic planning, there is a big question as to whether we should be thinking of the kittiwake population as a local problem or, as they do in the United States, thinking of the kittiwake population as a whole. In other words, if a colony on the Yorkshire coast is threatened, maybe it would be better to encourage more kittiwake growth in Wales or Cornwall, and not in Yorkshire. We might have more overall success that way. Again, more research is going on in those fields. If overwintering is the main problem, as I said, we should definitely combine our research strategies, not only with all the UK nations involved but also, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, with other countries such as Iceland, Norway, Denmark, et cetera.

In conclusion, the problem is a very good one to raise in the context of this Bill. It is an important issue and I thank the noble Baroness for raising it, but I am not sure that the amendment as it stands quite puts its finger on the right solution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was actually disappointed—but perhaps not surprised—to see this amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. For some time, I have been following the way in which “ecocide” has become a fashionable term to hype up human engagement with nature in a wholly negative way. I am not as familiar as the noble Baroness is with the legal definitions that she explained, but I feel that “ecocide” is an especially emotive word cynically designed to invoke thoughts of evil genocide. It implies that our relationship with nature and the different ways in which we interact with the environment are as heinous, deliberate and destructive as the Holocaust—which, to be frank, I find distasteful.

The term I am more familiar with is on the level of cultural discussion and the way in which the term “ecocide” has been used to criminalise, even if metaphorically, a whole range of human activities that have an impact on the environment. There is an unpleasant misanthropic aspect, as well, in associating human impact with wanton ecological destruction—something that I raised in my remarks at Second Reading.

Reading the literature on ecocide over the years, I have seen humans described as “a cancer on the environment”, “a parasite species on the planet” and “a virus infecting the earth’s body”. This emphasises the negative aspects of human culpability and destruction, rather than seeing humanity and civilisation as a source of creative solutions, which is more helpful. Civilisation and development have allowed our species to use knowledge, reason, ingenuity and innovation to aspire to improve the conditions of life. I would rather we celebrated the huge gains of the progress, political change and technological innovation that have driven humanity from the Stone Age through to the 21st century, yet “ecocide” and the discussion around it focuses wholly on humanity as an agent of destruction.

I worry that the whole discourse on “ecocide” expresses a disillusion with those gains—the fruits of modernity and the economic growth that we have benefited from and witnessed, particularly in the West. It views the rapid development of the rest of the world in a wholly negative way, as though somehow the use of fossil fuels in order to grow is potentially akin to mass murder, as the comparison with genocide suggests. It flirts dangerously closely with romanticising Stone Age lack of development elsewhere. In debates on earlier groups of amendments, I heard a number of noble Lords criticise GDP and say that it does not represent very much. Well, in my view, we do not have enough GDP. I want more of it for the masses of the world. Certainly, without it, well-being is nigh on impossible, and I have worried throughout this discussion on the environment that a clash is being set up between GDP—that is, economic development and growth—and matters around the environment.

It certainly seems to me that charges of activities typically dubbed ecocide are too easily levelled at countries and people trying to develop to escape immiseration, poverty and hunger. China, India and Brazil are often discussed in these terms, and I wonder who will be charged with ecocide. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, listed a number of big bad companies—in her view. That anti-corporate “They should be held responsible and blamed for the people killed” is something we are familiar with.

But I worry that ordinary people in Brazil and other parts of the developing world are implicated and criminalised for felling forests and clearing land for agriculture, as we in the West have done before and benefited from, in industrial revolutions and modernisation. I get nervous, in this discussion of ecocide, of a rather arrogant neocolonial instinct about who will be accused of ecocide, who will police those accused of it and even whether it will become a justification for western intervention, with all these green-helmet lawyers going around the world saving nature from the destructive activity of ordinary people. I totally reject this amendment.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is interesting to hear the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, but I take a different line. As a member of Peers for the Planet, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on introducing the concept behind these amendments to your Lordships’ House and I am pleased to add my name to them.

I confess I was disappointed when my questions to the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, about adding the crime of ecocide to the Rome statute received, first, the answer that there were no such plans. His next answer, which I have just received in time—for which I am grateful—adduced various traditional diplomatic reasons, but I still hope we can make a start. I think we should.

Of course, ecocide is an innovatory idea, and innovations are disturbing and disruptive. This one requires different thinking about human rights. The Rome statute and, for that matter, the United Nations human rights instruments have a specific human focus on what is needed to establish and maintain well-being. We in the UK have taken an even narrower view, in that we have not implemented the economic and social rights set out in the convention, only the civil and political ones. But the concept of ecocide is hardly dangerously revolutionary; it was mooted by Olof Palme in 1972 and, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Boycott, say, France and others are in the process of incorporating it into their laws.

Our environment is so critical to our well-being that we need to think in new ways about how to protect it from the damage being done to it. I think all your Lordships value our natural environment. That clearly emerges from the debates on this Bill and the answers of the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith. We should put that into practice by cherishing its biological and botanical elements and, therefore, ought to support efforts to get this into international law.

Already one of our most distinguished human rights lawyers, Philippe Sands QC, is working on how this value can be made justiciable at the International Criminal Court. The definition has now been agreed by all 12 of the eminent international lawyers in the group he chairs. For once, I hope our Government can be a bit ahead of the curve and support these amendments.