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Namibia sighting suggests much-hunted whales are regaining ancient migratory routes, or may be down to climate disruption

Astonishing news from Walvis Bay, Namibia, where scientists from the Namibian Dolphin project on Tuesday confirmed the sighting of a grey whale. Not only has this north Pacific species been extinct in the Atlantic since the 18th century, it has never been seen south of the equator.

The significance of this sighting is creating excitement among marine biologists. It may suggest good news – that the great whales are recovering from the disastrous hunts of the 20th century. Or it may indicate that the changing climate is disrupting their feeding habits – with unknown consequences.

A unique sighting of a grey whale in the Mediterranean in May 2010 – the animal got as far as Israel – has overturned many preconceptions, with some scientists speculating that this much-hunted great whale – reduced to near extinction in the 20th century – is regaining ancient migratory routes.

John Paterson, of the Walvis Bay Strandings Network, says the whale was first sighted by tour boats on dolphin watch on 4 May. The "strange whale" was confirmed as a grey, and photographed, by a member of his team on 12 May.

"The question is now, what is origin of this whale?" says Paterson. The photographs prove this is not the same individual that turned up in the Mediterranean, he says. "Is it another individual that has traverse the North-west Passage, or perhaps travelled around the southern tip of South America and across the Atlantic? Unfortunately, we'll never know the route it followed to get here."

Known as "devil fish" for the ferocity with which they fought the whalers (usually because the hunters targeted the calves, which the mothers fiercely defended), grey whales now permit themselves to be petted by tourists from whalewatch boats off Baja California. Their historic range included the Atlantic, with convincing historical evidence that Icelandic people hunted them. The whales may have migrated south to the Mediterranean to calve in the warmer waters of the Mediterranean, where they would also be relatively free from attack by orca, their only natural predators.

As shore-hugging, bottom-feeders, grey whales may have also been once common off British shores. A vertebra in the collection of the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, found in Cornwall, has been identified as belonging to a grey whale. The last records of grey whales in the Atlantic appear to coincide with the start of modern whaling off the coast of New England in the early 18th century, with the appearance of "scrag whales" off the island of Nantucket.

The southern African grey whale joins other whales where they should not be. In Cape Cod Bay off New England last year, an aerial reconnaissance team from the Provincetown Centre for Coastal Studies surveying the north Atlantic right whales feeding in the bay were amazed to find a bowhead whale – a strictly Arctic cetacean – among their number. Climate change and shifting ice have been attributed to its surprise appearance – with the same conditions possibly accounting for the Mediterranean grey whale, which may have crossed from the north Pacific to the Atlantic via the opened-up North-west Passage.

In his forthcoming book, Feral, George Monbiot cites a contemporary proposal to reintroduce grey whales to the Irish Sea by airlifting 50 animals there from California. Today's news from southern Africa (Walvis Bay translates as Whale Bay) indicates that the whales may be about to achieve their own reintroduction without the need of airpower.

• Whales
• Marine life
• Namibia
• Africa
• Animals

Philip Hoare
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New hydrocarbon sites will all be offshore, but campaigners fear contentious oil and gas development in Amazon will still go ahead

Peru has announced a bidding round for new oil and gas concessions but, contrary to what was initially expected, none of them are in the Amazon rainforest.

Nine concessions are to be auctioned, energy company Perupetro declared recently, but all of them are offshore along Peru's Pacific Ocean coast.

This constitutes a significant change of plan by Perupetro which last September issued a statement that before the end of 2012 36 new concessions would be established.

According to a presentation made to the World Heavy Oil Congress in Aberdeen in Scotland the same month, 27 of these concessions – totaling millions of hectares – would be in the Amazon.

In November Perupetro's then chairwoman, Rosa Maria Ortiz, said the establishment of the lots would be postponed until this year, but when the bidding round was declared on 25 March only nine of the 36, all of them offshore, were included.

Perupetro's new chairman, Luis Ortiga Cuneo, who took over from Ortiz in December, told Peruvian press the reason for the postponement was a 'prior consultation law' approved by Congress in 2011.

The law's stated aim is to give "indigenous or native peoples" the right to be previously consulted about development projects or "administrative or legislative" measures affecting their collective rights to their "quality of life, cultural identity or physical existence."

Ortigo Cuneo, sitting in his office in Lima's San Borja district, says now:

We went ahead with the offshore lots because we don't need to do prior consultation. It's a new thing so we don't know how long it will take. We're identifying the communities we need to talk to. We haven't talked to them yet, but we're going to begin next month. We could be ready by the end of the year, but that will be difficult.

The projected concessions include scores of indigenous communities and the buffer zone of one of Peru's largest 'protected natural areas', while four of them border reserves established for indigenous peoples in 'voluntary isolation.'

Amazon Watch's Andrew Miller, currently in Peru, says the "sustained campaigns of local indigenous communities, their federations and international allies appear to have changed the government's calculus. Whereas in the past they promoted the oil rounds to international companies without advising communities, now they have to comply with the consultation law."

But others remain extremely skeptical.

"The government has been granting concessions without doing consultations for 40 years and it'll be difficult to change now," says Jesus Castro Suarez, from Lima-based NGO Eco-Dess. "I suspect they'll find some legal device to avoid consulting people. This can't or shouldn't be described as a civil society victory."

Others express concern about the prior consultation law itself and what the consultation process will involve. Although the law states that the government must seek the consent of potentially affected indigenous peoples, it is not required to obtain it.

According to Juan Carlos Ruiz Molleda, a lawyer at Lima's Institute for Legal Defence, the law and the 'regulations' to implement it violate Peru's constitution and international jurisprudence in numerous ways.

"They are important achievements but contain dangerous provisions," he says. "I'm referring in particular to their omission of obtaining indigenous peoples' consent" – a right recognized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights whose rulings are legally binding on Peru.

Ortiga Cuneo, for one, is adamant that Perupetro will establish the concessions in the Amazon at some point – whether indigenous communities like it or not.

Asked what would happen if communities said they were against oil or gas concessions, Ortiga Cuneo says:

That's not possible. It's not for them to decide the destiny of Peru. What we have to do is tell them what's going to happen, how it's going to happen, and reach an agreement. This is not a question asking them 'yes' or 'no.' Prior consultation is not consultation because, imagine it, it'd be like having one country inside another. It's so they're well-informed and know what's planned.

Carmen Rosa Sandoval Muñoz, a Lima-based human rights lawyer, calls Ortiga Cuneo's position "extremely concerning."

"There's a growing public discourse that maintains that prior consultation isn't really about consultation at all, but just bringing indigenous peoples closer to the centres of decision-making or keeping them informed," she says. "But that's what's called participation, which is just one part of consultation."

AIDESEP, an indigenous organization representing 1,500 communities in the Amazon, recently expressed its 'suspicion' about the consultation process. In February the government created a special commission to oversee it, but failed to appoint any indigenous representatives.

"And indigenous peoples? None," AIDESEP responded. "Their absence is cause for a great deal of suspicion."

Perupetro's announcement in late March is just the latest of several postponements of new Amazon concessions. In February 2012 it stated that a Bidding Round 2012 "will be launched in the coming months", and companies like ExxonMobil, BP, Total and Chevron were interested in investing.

But two months later Perupetro announced that 22 new concessions would be "launched in the last quarter of 2012" – 18 in the Marañon, Ucayali and Madre de Dios basins in the rainforest, according to the then chairman Aurelio Ochoa – yet none were put to tender.

"In the case of the off-shore concessions Perupetro doesn't have the prior consultation law problems, so they can go ahead," says Ochoa now. "For the 27 other concessions, they need to do the consultation. This will take time. It could take a year, a year and a half."

According to Perupetro, there are already 40 oil or gas concessions in the Peruvian Amazon in the exploration or production phase, covering approximately 20m hectares.

Social conflicts or environmental problems are endemic. In March the Environment Minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, declared a 'state of emergency' in the Pastaza region in the north following "40 years of oil exploitation and contamination", as indigenous federation PUINAMUDT describes it.

The contract for one of the concessions in this region, called 'Lot 1-AB' and operated by Pluspetrol, will expire in August 2015. Perupetro has announced it will re-offer the concession as 'Lot 192' and do prior consultation with affected communities, but leaders are insisting on various conditions, including environmental clean-up and land-titling, to be met first.

"If there's no clean up, there won´t be any consultation," leaders from indigenous organization FECONACO told Pulgar-Vidal during a visit to the region in late April.

In recent months the prior consultation law has generated intense controversy and fierce debate, particularly over who it applies to. Publication of a database listing those supposedly protected by it has been long delayed, and two weeks ago the government official in charge, Ivan Lanegra Quispe, resigned.

A few days before that president Ollanta Humala Tasso gave a TV interview implying that the majority of communities in the Peruvian sierra – inhabited by approximately 3.8 million Quechua and 100,000s of Aymara, according to the indigenous Andean federation CAOI – wouldn't be covered by the law.

"The problem is defining who are indigenous communities and who aren't," the president said.

• Amazon rainforest
• Trees and forests
• Peru
• Oil
• Gas

David Hill
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More than 83,000 hunting birds are killed by windfarms each year but no wind energy company has been fined

The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted a windfarm for killing eagles and other protected bird species, shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret, an Associated Press investigation has found.

More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country's windfarms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.

Each death is federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines. No wind energy company has been prosecuted, even those that repeatedly flout the law.

Wind power, a pollution-free energy intended to ease global warming, is a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's energy plan. His administration has championed a $1bn-a-year tax break to the industry that has nearly doubled the amount of wind power in his first term.

"It is the rationale that we have to get off of carbon, we have to get off of fossil fuels, that allows them to justify this," said Tom Dougherty, a long-time environmentalist who worked for nearly 20 years for the National Wildlife Federation in the West, until his retirement in 2008. "But at what cost? In this case, the cost is too high."

Documents and emails obtained by The Associated Press offer glimpses of the problem: 14 deaths at seven facilities in California, five each in New Mexico and Oregon, one in Washington state and another in Nevada, where an eagle was found with a hole in its neck, exposing the bone.

One of the deadliest places in the country for golden eagles is Wyoming, where federal officials said windfarms had killed more than four dozen golden eagles since 2009, predominantly in the southeastern part of the state. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to disclose the figures. Getting precise figures is impossible because many companies aren't required to disclose how many birds they kill. And when they do, experts say, the data can be unreliable.

When companies voluntarily report deaths, the Obama administration in many cases refuses to make the information public, saying it belongs to the energy companies or that revealing it would expose trade secrets or implicate ongoing enforcement investigations.

Nearly all the birds being killed are protected under federal environmental laws, which prosecutors have used to generate tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements from businesses, including oil and gas companies, over the past five years.

"What it boils down to is this: If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK," said Tim Eicher, a former US Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent.

The Fish and Wildlife Service says it is investigating 18 bird-death cases involving wind-power facilities and seven have been referred to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to discuss the status of those cases.

In its defence, the wind-energy industry points out that more eagles are killed each year by cars, electrocutions and poisoning than by turbines. Dan Ashe, the Fish and Wildlife Service's director, said that his agency always has made clear to wind companies that if they kill birds they would still be liable.

"We are not allowing them to do it. They do it," he said of the bird deaths. "And we will successfully prosecute wind companies if they are in significant noncompliance."

Windfarms are clusters of turbines as tall as 30-story buildings, with spinning rotors the size of jetliners.

Flying eagles behave like drivers texting on their cell phones – they don't look up. As they scan for food, they don't notice the industrial turbine blades until it's too late.

Former interior secretary Ken Salazar, in an interview with the AP before his departure, denied any preferential treatment for wind. Interior Department officials said that criminal prosecution, regardless of the industry, is always a "last resort".

"There's still additional work to be done with eagles and other avian species, but we are working on it very hard," Salazar said. "We will get to the right balance."

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has proposed a rule that would give wind-energy companies potentially decades of shelter from prosecution for killing eagles. The regulation is currently under review at the White House.

The proposal, made at the urging of the wind-energy industry, would allow companies to apply for 30-year permits to kill a set number of bald or golden eagles. Previously, companies were only eligible for five-year permits.

"It's basically guaranteeing a black box for 30 years, and they're saying 'trust us for oversight'. This is not the path forward," said Katie Umekubo, a renewable energy attorney with the Natural Resources Defence Council, who argued in private meetings with the industry and government leaders that the 30-year permit needed an in-depth environmental review.

But the eagle rule is not the first time the administration has made concessions for the wind-energy industry.

Last year, over objections from some of its own wildlife investigators and biologists, the Interior Department updated its guidelines and provided more cover for wind companies that violate the law.

Under both the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the death of a single bird without a permit is illegal.

But under the Obama administration's new guidelines, wind-energy companies don't face additional scrutiny until they have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife or habitat.

That rare exception for one industry substantially weakened the government's ability to enforce the law and ignited controversy inside the Interior Department.

"US Fish and Wildlife Service does not do this for the electric utility industry or other industries," Kevin Kritz, a government wildlife biologist in the Rocky Mountain region wrote in internal agency comments in September 2011. "Other industries will want to be judged on a similar standard."

The Obama administration, however, repeatedly overruled its own experts. In the end, the wind energy industry, which was part of the committee that drafted and edited the guidelines, got almost everything it wanted.

"Clearly, there was a bias to wind energy in their favor because they are a renewable source of energy, and justifiably so," said Rob Manes, who runs the Kansas office for The Nature Conservancy and who served on the committee. "We need renewable energy in this country."

• Birds
• Energy
• Wind power
• Renewable energy
• Wildlife
• Animals
• Obama administration
• United States
• US politics

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Marine Conservation Society's annual count of rubbish also records a 90% increase in cigarette lighters and packets

The number of cigarette butts littering UK beaches doubled last year, while other rubbish from smoking including lighters and packets increased by 90%, according to a survey that raises that concerns anti-littering campaigns are failing to make an impact.

Plastic rubbish including sweet and lolly wrappers also rose by 3% in 2012 compared with 2011, the annual count of litter on UK beaches in the Marine Conservation Society's (MCS) beachwatch big weekend showed.

Almost two-thirds (65%) of the total litter recorded was made of plastic, with unidentified scraps of plastic topping the table for the most commonly found litter. On average, 75 drink bottles were found for every thousand yards of beaches surveyed.

The MCS said it was concerned that so much rubbish was plastic and would be unlikely to break down.

The conservation charity also warned the findings showed decades of anti-litter campaigning needed to be reinvigorated for a new generation.

The rise in smoking-related litter could be the result of more people smoking outside as a result of the smoking ban and dropping their butts rather than putting them in ashtrays, the MCS added.

Overall, litter levels were at their highest level since 2008, the figures reveal.

Lauren Eyles, MCS Beachwatch officer, said: "Despite last summer being seen as a washout by many with heavy rain in many places, it appears those people that did visit our beaches left behind a lot of personal litter – sweet wrappers, ice cream wrappers and plastic drinks bottles failed to find their way into rubbish bins and ended up being dropped and left behind.

"This year's figures point to people becoming less bothered about littering."

She said: "We must hammer home the message that litter is completely unacceptable in the 21st century."

The number of items of rubbish found per kilometre (0.6 miles) increased from 1,741 pieces of litter in 2011 to just over 2,000 pieces in 2012, the annual report shows.

Volunteers surveyed 90km (56 miles) on 240 beaches and collected almost 1,800 bags of rubbish during the September 2012 weekend.

With four-fifths of the rubbish coming from land-based sources, the MCS said that is where the focus needed to be to reduce marine and beach litter.

After pieces of plastic, the most commonly found items were crisp, lolly and sweet wrappers, little bits of string and cord, caps and lids, polystyrene pieces and drinks bottles.

The other items making up the top 10 litter list were fishing netting, cigarette stubs, glass pieces and fishing line from anglers.

The part of the UK with the most litter per kilometre was Northern Ireland. In England, the most littered beaches were found in the south west. The north west was the only area where litter decreased, falling by 60% per kilometre.

• Pollution
• Coastlines
• Smoking

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UK fisheries minister says he will refuse any deal that goes against three key principles at key meeting in Brussels

Richard Benyon, the UK's fisheries minister, has vowed to drive "ambitious and radical reform" of the EU's common fisheries policy at a key meeting in Brussels this week.

In an interview with the Guardian, he listed three main goals for the UK – to ensure that a new proposal for fishing to be carried on strictly within a "maximum sustainable yield" that would be legally binding; a ban on the discarding of edible fish at sea, and a devolution of key aspects of managing fishing quota to member states, instead of being controlled entirely from Brussels.

This week's tense meeting, which follows more than two years of negotiations over the management of the EU's dwindling fish stocks, will not reach a conclusion until late on Tuesday night or some time on Wednesday morning, the European commission warned. Once a common position has been agreed, more talks will follow next week to finalise further details.

Benyon acknowledged that there were "forces [that want] to scupper this deal", but said the UK would refuse to do a deal "that goes against our principles".

While a discards ban is likely to come into force in some form, some member states want fishermen to have much more leeway in how much of their catch they are allowed to throw away as being unavoidable. The UK wants no more than 5% of any catch to be allowed to be discarded under any circumstances, but other countries have suggested as much as doubling this.

But Benyon warned that governments must work closely with fishermen in order to make the reforms work. "We are working closely with the fishing industry to do [the reforms] in a practical way," he said. "I do not want to transfer a problem that happens at sea to landfill."

He said that co-operation with fishing fleets was already bearing fruit. "Great work has been done on a dramatic reduction in discards of white fish," he said. "Much has come from incentivising, working with fishermen."

Although some large fishing interests, particularly in Spain and France, have been starkly opposed to any deal on discards and a legally binding maximum sustainable yield, Benyon emphasised that many fishermen had been supportive. "It would be entirely wrong if people thought the ban was in the teeth of opposition of the industry – though some are very concerned about the practicalities [such as] having to bring back fish having maybe been gone for days."

He said: "In fairness to them, they are raising concerns in a way that accepts this is going to happen and to make it work."

The minister has seen for himself what discarding means in practice – he went to sea with a trawler, and saw whiting being discarded in the North Sea.

He credits campaigners with helping to ensure there was support for a discards ban. "I would never have been able to get agreement on radical reform agenda without all the NGOs on this. [This is] a revolution on how to manage our seas."

Some countries are also reluctant to allow the "maximum sustainable yield" – a scientific measure that would ensure that quotas were set at a level where the stocks could restore themselves naturally – to be made legally binding, as the UK and most northern European countries want.

Scientific research will need to be brought to bear as fisheries management develops. Benyon noted the effects of climate change: "The seas are changing – cod are moving further north, other fish are in greater abundance, mackerel are moving."

On "regionalisation", which would allow some aspects of fisheries management – such as net size and the level of quota given to smaller and larger boats – to be decided by member states, there is broader agreement. Benyon described the current situation in which fishermen in Ullapool were having their net size decided in Brussels. "How bonkers is that?" he asked.

A key aspect would be ensuring that the regulations are applied fairly across the whole of the EU's fisheries. "[Previous] proposals would have had some trawlers fishing some waters but not having to abide by some of the rules. The ridiculous concept of the common fisheries policy is that [it] tries to manage waters from the Arctic to the southern Mediterranean. You can't have a system that applies to all ecosystems but you can have common principles you can make in law."

This week's meeting is the culmination of more than two years of wrangling. The decisive starting point came early in 2011 when the European fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, publicly disclosed her key aim of ending the wasteful practice of discards. This proposal had itself followed years of work behind the scenes by the commission, but when the proposals began to be publicly debated there were strong voices of opposition from some quarters.

The commission's proposals were narrowly passed by member state fisheries ministers, though they were nearly scuppered at several points. Then they received strong support in a vote in the European parliament. Now, the final stages of the process will provide the last chance for opponents of the reforms to derail the proposals. It will then take further work to put the finishing touches on the reforms, before they can come into force.

Commissioner Damanaki said: "Substantial progress has been made in the negotiations between the European parliament and the council [of ministers] on the commission's proposal for a reformed common fisheries policy. The EU is on the doorstep of a historical deal that would put fish stocks on the road to recovery, eliminate the wasteful practice of discarding and ensure that decisions are taken as close as possible to fishermen.

"It is the responsibility of all institutions not to jeopardise a final deal because of disagreements over a few percentage points [in terms of amount of inadvertent catch that can be discarded]; one or two years [between the proposed introduction of a ban]; detailed technical rules or institutional power struggle. It is now time for both the European parliament and the council to make that extra final step towards each other that is necessary to come to a final agreement that will launch a new era of healthy fish stocks, viable fishing industries and more and better paid jobs for fishermen."

While green campaigners have warned that the battle is far from over, and that the opponents of the reforms could yet gain the upper hand in the final hours, Benyon said he was optimistic that the reforms would be successful. "I do not see this is some great giant gulf [among member states over the issues]," he said. "There could be blocking minority against reform … but I do not think they will find the opportunity to scupper the deal."

But he admitted compromises might be needed: "I might have to make a decision that will not particularly please me or many people who write to me or campaign to me … [but] I am determined that any agreement will not go against our principles."

• Fishing
• Food
• Wildlife
• Conservation
• Animals
• Marine life
• Fish
• Food & drink
• Seafood
• European commission
• European Union
• Europe

Fiona Harvey
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The apple trees are heading for full blossom in Michigan after a disastrous 2012 crop, when only 15 percent of the apples survived. But this year's harvest is expected to rebound.

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If scholars don't take an ethical stance against corporate money, where's the moral check on power?

In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published a piercing attack on the intellectuals of his day. They should, he argued in La Trahison des Clercs (the treason of the scholars), act as a check on popular passions. Civilisation, he claimed, is possible only if intellectuals stand in opposition to the demands of political "realism" by upholding universal principles. "Thanks to the scholars," he said, "humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honoured good." Europe might have been lying in the gutter, but it was looking at the stars.

But those ideals, Benda argued, had been lost. Europe was now lying in the gutter, looking into the gutter. The "immense majority" of intellectuals, artists and clergy had joined "the chorus of hatreds": nationalism, racism, the worship of power and war. In doing so, they justified and magnified political passions. Across Europe, scholars on both the left and the right had become "ready to support in their own countries the most flagrant injustices", to abandon universal principles in favour of national exceptionalism and to proclaim "the supreme morality of violence". He quoted the French anarcho-syndicalist Georges Sorel, who eulogised "the superb blond beast wandering in search of prey and carnage".

The result of this intellectual support for domination, Benda argued, was that there was now no moral check on the pursuit of self-interest. Rather than forming a bulwark against popular delusions, Europe's thinkers turned them into doctrines. With remarkable foresight, Benda predicted that this would lead inexorably to "the greatest and most perfect war ever seen in the world". This war would be genocidal in intent, and would not be stopped by any treaties or institutions. In 1927, these were bold claims.

I'm not suggesting an equivalence between those times and these. I'm summarising Benda to highlight a general principle: the need for a disinterested class of intellectuals which acts as a counterweight to prevailing mores. Racism, nationalism and war are only three of the many hazards to which society is exposed if that challenge should fail: if, that is, most scholars side with the soldiers or the sellers.

Today the dominant forces have changed. Now the weak state, not the strong state, is fetishised by those in power, who insist that its functions be devolved to "the market", meaning corporations and the very rich. Economic growth and the forces that drive it, whether they enhance or harm people's lives, are venerated. And too many scholars seem prepared to support the new dispensation.

Two weeks ago I castigated the new chief scientist, Sir Mark Walport, for misinforming the public about risk, making unscientific and emotionally manipulative claims and indulging in scaremongering and wild exaggeration in defence of the government's position. Since then I have seen his first speech in his new role and realised that the problem runs deeper than I thought.

Speaking at the Centre for Science and Policy at Cambridge University, Walport maintained that scientific advisers had five main functions, and the first of these was "ensuring that scientific knowledge translates to economic growth". No statement could more clearly reveal what Benda called the "assimilation" of the intellectual. As if to drive the point home, the press release summarising his speech revealed that the centre is sponsored, among others, by BAE Systems, BP and Lloyd's.

Last week, two days before CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, Oxford University opened a new geoscience laboratory named after its sponsor, Shell. Among its roles is helping to find and develop new sources of fossil fuel.

This is one of many such collaborations. Last year, for instance, BP announced that it will spend £60m on research at Manchester University partly to help it drill deeper for oil. In the United States and Canada, universities go further: David Lynch, dean of engineering at the University of Alberta, appears in advertisements by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, whose purpose is to justify and normalise tar sands extraction.

As the campaign group People and Planet points out, universities help provide fossil fuel corporations not only with expertise but also with a "social licence to operate". Climate change is one of the great moral issues of our age, but the scholars in the strongest position to challenge the industry responsible are, instead, lending it what Benda calls their "moral prestige". Neoliberal economists, imperialist historians, war-mongering philosophers, pliable chief scientists, compromised energy researchers: all are propelling us into the arms of power.

In 1998, the vice-chancellors of the UK's universities decided that they would no longer take money for cancer research from tobacco firms. Over the past few days I have asked the Shell professor of earth sciences at Oxford, the university itself and the umbrella body Universities UK to explain the ethical difference between taking tobacco money for cancer research and taking fossil fuel money for energy research. None of these great heads, despite my repeated attempts to engage them, were prepared even to attempt an answer.

So perhaps this is where hope lies: unlike Benda's scholars, these people have not yet developed a justifying ideology which permits them to excuse or glorify the compromises they have made with power. Perhaps we have not yet abandoned the redeeming hypocrisy of what Benda called "honouring good".

Twitter: @georgemonbiot A fully referenced version of this article can be found at monbiot.com

• University funding
• Climate change
• Oil
• Oil
• Oil sands
• Royal Dutch Shell
• BP

George Monbiot
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In this spoof documentary the naturalist protests against HSBC's illegal logging by entering the den of the banker

Hunted for an hour to find a chunk of copper tubing in my stuff.  Finally found one and made some copper tongs.  Mixed up a batch of pickle acid ( sodium hydrogen sulfate - "to effectively remove surface oxidation and flux from silver, gold, copper and most other nonferrous metals after soldering or casting" ) for my nuggets in a mason jar and set it in my old solar oven without the glass cover and it still got up to 150°.  Cleaned all the scale and flux off the pieces (including ingot #1) so they are ready for the final melt into ingots.  Reserved numbers are as follows: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,23,26,27,28,30,31,32,33,34,35,38,42,44,46,50,51,54,56,62,67,72,77,98,99,100
Number 5 is reserved for Pablo Jaramillo who came out just over a year ago with his daughter.
http://thefieldlab.blogspot.com/2012/03/blt.html  He contacted me a year before that and it seems to me I remember him telling me about coming to the area to spread his wife's ashes in Big Bend.  That ingot is my memorial to her and free to Pablo's daughter but I will need to get her address from him. 

If you would like to reserve a number, don't send it as a comment on the blog - send me an email so I can keep track of them easier.76,94,45,0,B,.28

Carbon dioxide at its highest level for 3m years and Damian Carrington's story merits only page five in the Guardian (Report, 11 May); it doesn't even get a mention on the front cover. As a 15-year-old I am confused as to why this is considered less important than the horse meat scandal or the Co-op bank's difficulties or, on the second page, talk of another coalition. I realise that these things are important, but I think that the survival of the human race is just a little more important than parliament, which, with the current rates of CO2 emissions, will most likely be flooded by about 2200.
Geoffrey Liddell
Clatford, Hampshire

• Damian Carrington tells us: "The world's governments have agreed to keep the rise in global average temperature ... to 2C". This is precisely what has not happened. More than 20 years of climate change negotiations have failed to yield any agreement whatsoever to limit global emissions to any specific target.
David Campbell
Professor of international business law, University of Leeds

• It is not only environmental campaigners who oppose European investments in coal power (Report, 13 May). It is also mainstream scientists, concerned citizens and the people that Christian Aid works with across the developing world, who are already feeling the impacts of a changing climate on their lives.

Investing now in unabated coal technologies in EU and EU accession countries will make it impossible for Europe to achieve the ambitious carbon cuts needed to lead global action against climate change.
Dr Alison Doig
Senior adviser on climate change, Christian Aid

• The letter writers against Oxford's partnership with Shell (Letters, 9 May) forget that our understanding of climate change is underpinned by geological knowledge obtained in a relatively underfunded academic field, coupled with a neglected British Geological Survey.

As James Lovelock has demonstrated, once triggered, global heating will be irreversible on a human time scale, and so aiming to keep global temperatures within 2C is a meaningless target. It would be madness to turn our backs on investing in carbon capture and storage on a massive scale, even if this is a spinoff of the wicked hydrocarbon industry. This could eventually reduce atmospheric levels if it were treated with the same urgency as the second world war Manhattan project by governments who appear interested only in keeping enough of the people happy at any one time. Companies like Shell can only be expected to clear up our waste gases if they are given clear political leadership, not warm words.
David Nowell
New Barnet, Hertfordshire

• Roger Scruton (Comment, 11 May) criticises the government for not agreeing with conservative voters who believe the "climate change" agenda has been foisted on us by an unaccountable lobby of politicised intellectuals. Does he think manmade emissions of greenhouse gases should be reduced by other means, or does he consider the IPCC's assessment of the science and its consequences is completely wrong?
Stewart Reddaway
Baldock, Hertfordshire 

• Climate change
• Climate change
• Climate change scepticism

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Taunton Vale, Somerset: The plan had been to link the Bristol and English channels, to avoid the voyage round Land's End

Years ago, at Wrantage, south-east of Taunton, we found the masonry that was once part of an aqueduct spanning the road, and, across the fields, the blocked entrance to a tunnel that went through Crimson Hill, both relics of a long-defunct canal. Now we had directions to surviving traces of the same canal on the other side of the hill.

We went on a day when, at last, the hedges lining the winding country lanes through Hatch Beauchamp, Beer Crowcombe and Curry Mallet were sunlit green instead of wintry brown. Beside Beer Crowcombe church, which stands in farmland apart from the village, we took a footpath along the edge of a freshly ploughed field, then down a few steps to what remains of this section of the canal, just pools of stagnant black water crossed by a rudimentary bridge made of two planks.

You can make out the line of the canal through the fields, where trees lean out or have fallen across it from the collapsed banks of what was once a viable waterway, a bold commercial venture and a notable feat of engineering, with three tunnels and four inclined planes, carrying freight down to Chard. The original plan in 1810 had been one of the most visionary of canal schemes, linking the Bristol and English channels, so that vessels might avoid the long and dangerous voyage round Land's End. But the stretch from Taunton to Chard was all that materialised and, before long, that had been made redundant by new rail routes, now themselves long-defunct.

Not far from Beer Crowcombe we paused at the arresting view of Hatch Court, a grand Palladian mansion standing in its deer park, with an ornamental octagonal pavilion where you might expect a mere lodge or gatehouse. We took the grassy footpath to Hatch Beauchamp church, which stands behind the mansion's walled garden. And in this quiet place apart, found a window dedicated to the memory of JRM Chard VC, hero of Rorke's Drift.

• Transport
• Rural affairs

John Vallins
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Demand for rhino horn, used in traditional Chinese medicine, is fueling a slaughter of the animals in Africa. In Vietnam, the sought-after commodity is fetching prices as high as $1,400 an ounce, or about the price of gold. There, some believe ground horn can cure everything from hangovers to cancer.

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Demand for rhino horn, used in traditional Chinese medicine, is fueling a slaughter of the animals in Africa. In Vietnam, the sought-after commodity is fetching prices as high as $1,400 an ounce, or about the price of gold. There, some believe ground horn can cure everything from hangovers to cancer.

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Justice Elena Kagan says Vernon Bowman's late-season soybean crop infringed on patent for GM soybeans

The US supreme court came down solidly on the side of the agricultural giant Monsanto on Monday, ruling unanimously that an Indiana farmer could not use patented genetically modified soybeans to create new seeds without paying the company.

The case – which was cast by the farmer's supporters as a classic tale of David vs Goliath – could well dictate the future of modern farming.

In an unanimous ruling written by Justice Elena Kagan, the court ruled that the farmer, Vernon Bowman, had infringed on Monsanto's patent for its GM soybeans when he bought some of those seeds from a local grain elevator and planted them for a second, late-season crop. Monsanto sued, arguing that Bowman had signed a contract when he initially bought the Roundup Ready soybeans in the spring, agreeing not to save any of the harvest for replanting. The seeds are genetically modified to be resistant to Roundup Ready weedkiller.

On Monday, the nine justices agreed. Kagan rejected the farmer's main argument, that Monsanto's patent was exhausted, because he had bought the seeds from a grain elevator. "Patent exhaustion does not permit a farmer to reproduce patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent holder's permission," she wrote.

Bowman, who is in his 70s, grew up in south-western Indiana and has farmed the same stretch of land for most of the past four decades. He had for years been faithfully signing contracts with Monsanto for his main soybean crop. More than 90% of the soybean grown in the mid-west is believed to be GM strains, like Round-Up Ready. But Bowman got into trouble when he decided to buy up junk seed from a local grain elevator and use it for a second, late-season planting. The advantage to the farmer was that such seeds were cheaper than the price demanded by Monsanto, and the late-season plantings were a riskier crop.

Monsanto sued, arguing that it maintained patent rights on the GM seeds even after sold on by a third party, and won a settlement of $84,456 (£53,500) which was upheld on Monday.

Kagan, above, agreed with the company's argument that if it allowed farmers like Bowman to replant his seeds after just one season's use, it would have no business model:

"In the case at hand, Bowman planted Monsanto's patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article. Patent exhaustion provides no haven for that conduct. We accordingly affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit."

Monsanto said the ruling would help shore up the US patent system, and encourage greater innovation.

"The Court's ruling today ensures that longstanding principles of patent law apply to breakthrough 21st century technologies that are central to meeting the growing demands of our planet and its people," David Snively, the company's general counsel, said in a statement on the company's website. "The ruling also provides assurance to all inventors throughout the public and private sectors that they can and should continue to invest in innovation that feeds people, improves lives, creates jobs, and allows America to keep its competitive edge."

Kagan said it was a narrow ruling. But some commentators said the decision could offer greater protection to those with patents on products that can be self-replicated, like cell lines and software.

The decision will be seen as a big defeat for those who had looked to Bowman's case to challenge the growing power over modern farming that is wielded by giant agricultural and biotech firms. By the start of this year, Monsanto had filed 144 lawsuits against 466 farmers and small farm businesses alleging patent infringement, according to a report from the Centre for Food Safety which has championed Bowman's case.

The report noted that three big companies now control more than half of the global seed market – a position that has sent prices soaring. The report said the average cost of planting an acre of soybeans had risen 325% between 1995 and 2011.

• GM
• US supreme court
• United States
• Indiana
• Farming
• Agriculture

Suzanne Goldenberg
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Farms processing insects for animal feed might soon become global reality as demand grows for sustainable feed sources

The best way to feed the 9 billion people expected to be alive by 2050 could be to rear billions of common houseflies on a diet of human faeces and abattoir blood and grind them up to use as animal feed, a UN report published on Monday suggests. Doing so would reduce the pressure on the Earth's forests and seas as food sources.

The case for houseflies - or other insects like crickets, beetles, bees, wasps, caterpillars, grasshoppers, termites and ants - becoming a major industrial food source is being taken seriously by governments, says the report, because they grow exceptionally fast and thrive on the waste of many industrial processes. The authors envisage fully automated insect works being set up close to breweries or food factories that produce high volumes of farm waste. Each could breed hundreds of tonnes of insects a year that would be fed to other animals.

"The prospect of farms processing insects for feed might soon become a global reality due to a growing demand for sustainable feed sources," say the authors who have been working with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on the potential for insects improving human food security.

"The bioconversion process takes low-cost waste materials and generates a valuable commodity. Depending on the species, a single female fly can lay up to 1,000 eggs over a seven-day period, which then hatch into larvae. Potential big users would need vast quantities of the product – some pet food businesses alone could use over 1,000 tonnes per month," the report adds.

Insect eating may be frowned upon in the west but termites, mealybugs, dung beetles, stink bugs, leaf cutter ants, paper wasps, even some species of mosquitoes are all relished by someone, somewhere, suggests the study. Eighty grasshopper species are regularly eaten; in Ghana during the spring rains, winged termites are collected and fried or made into bread. In South Africa they are eaten with a maize porridge. Chocolate-coated bees are popular in Nigeria, certain caterpillars are favoured in Zimbabwe, and rice cooked with crunchy wasps was a favourite meal of the late Emperor Hirohito in Japan.

"In the past there has been a tendency to say insects are for primitive, stupid people. This is nonsense, a misconception that must be corrected," says lead author Arnold van Huis, who has helped write a Dutch insect recipe book that includes mealyworm pizza and locust ravioli.

Westerners barely know what they are missing, he suggests. Dragonflies boiled in coconut milk with ginger are an Indonesian delicacy; beekeepers in parts of China are considered virile because they eat larvae from their hives, and tarantulas are popular in Cambodia. Europe gave up eating them centuries ago, but Pliny the elder, the Roman scholar, wrote that aristocrats "loved to eat beetle larvae reared on flour and wine" while Aristotle described the best time to harvest cicadas: "The larva on attaining full size becomes a nymph; then it tastes best, before the husk is broken. At first the males are better to eat, but after copulation the females, which are then full of white eggs," he wrote.

So far, says the UN, more than 1,900 species of insects have been identified as human food, with insects forming part of the traditional diets of possibly 2 billion people. The most consumed insects are the beetles (468 species), followed by ants, bees and wasps (351), crickets, locusts and cockroaches (267), and butterflies, moths and silkworms (253).

The crunch factor for governments and food producers may be the lower costs. Cattle and poultry are poor at converting food to body weight, but crickets, says the report, need just two kilograms of feed for every one kilogram of weight gained. "In addition, insects can be reared on organic side-streams including human and animal waste, and can help reduce contamination. Insects are reported to emit fewer greenhouse gases and less ammonia than cattle or pigs, and they require significantly less land and water than cattle rearing," says the report.

It is because insects are metabolically more efficient that it is potentially far cheaper to raise them om a large scale than any other animal, says Van Huis. But because of the psychological factors [of many people not liking the idea of eating insects directly] the greatest potential in the short term at least, could be to rear insects to provide animal feed, he said.

Eva Muller, director of the FAO's forest economic policy and products division, which co-authored the report, said: "We are not saying that people should be eating bugs. We are saying that insects are just one resource provided by forests, and insects are pretty much untapped for their potential for food, and especially for feed."

Insects, say the authors, are widely misunderstood. "[They] deliver a host of ecological services that are fundamental to the survival of humankind. They play an important role as pollinators in plant reproduction, in improving soil fertility through waste bioconversion, and in natural biocontrol for harmful pest species, and they provide a variety of valuable products for humans such as honey and silk and medical applications such as maggot therapy."

The Netherlands is now the centre for research into industrial-scale insect rearing with several companies and universities working on ways to scale up production. "The larvae of mealworm species and the superworm are [now] reared as feed for reptile, fish and avian pets [in the Netherlands]. They are also considered particularly fit for human consumption and are offered as human food in specialised shops," says the report.

Insect recipes

Grasshopper tortillas

Collect 1,000 young grasshoppers. Soak for 24 hours. Boil and let dry. Fry in a pan with garlic, onion, salt and lemon. Roll up in tortillas with chilli sauce and guacamole.

Witchetty grub barbecue

Sear grubs with butter and garlic in a hot pan until brown. Grab the head and bite off the rest. The taste is of fried egg with a hint of nuts.

• Food
• Food & drink
• Food security
• Insects
• Wildlife
• Animals
• United Nations

John Vidal
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A UN report recommends insects as a nutritious and eco-friendly food, and suggests 'raising the status of insects' in restaurants and recipes to lessen 'consumer disgust'. Would you eat insects?

City councils and local activists have stymied shale gas mining in New York, and could prove an example for others to follow

Readers of the New York Daily News were treated to a little unsolicited advice from Ed Rendell recently. The former Pennsylvania governor, a Democrat, who presided over much of the fracking boom in his state from 2003 to 2011, invited his neighboring governor – who's been sitting on the fence over shale gas mining – to join the party.

In Pennsylvania, Rendell effused, "thousands of solid jobs with good salaries were created, communities came back to life and investment in the state soared".

What the Daily News failed to mention is that Rendell has lobbied the Environmental Protection Agency in favor of a driller company, Range Resources, and is currently a paid consultant of Elements Partners, a private equity firm with big stakes in several energy companies that are engaged in fracking. 

And what Rendell failed to mention is that the drilling of over 150,000 wells for natural gas has transformed large swaths of rural Pennsylvania into what basically are industrial zones, bristling with monster trucks, wastewater ponds, and traffic jams. Air pollution is higher in counties with drilling than those without and residents complain about round-the-clock noise. 

Ed Rendell also didn't mention the McIntyre family, who live in Butler County – western Pennsylvania's frack zone – and whose members suffer from projectile vomiting, headaches, breathing problems, mysterious skin rashes … the list goes on. The family dog died suddenly, after lapping up some water the family believes was problematic. The McIntyres no longer drink, brush their teeth, or do their laundry with the water piped into their home.

New Yorkers worried about fracking have been looking at the impact it's had on their neighbors in Pennsylvania. Increasingly, they don't like what they see there. After a fact-finding tour to the town of Troy, in northern Pennsylvania, Terry Gipson, a New York state senator, reported that, despite signs of renewed economic activity in the region, he couldn't help wonder what will happen when the gas boom goes bust, as all booms inevitably do. Gipson asks:

"Envision a time when the trucks are gone, the lease money is spent, the trailers and the diners are empty, and all that is left is unusable farm land with a contaminated water supply. What will these people do then?"

Many New Yorkers have been asking similar questions. Surveys show that support for hydraulic fracturing in the state is at an all-time low. In a poll released by Siena College in April, 45% of voters opposed fracking and 40% supported it (15% said they didn't yet know enough to decide). New Yorkers used to be evenly split on the issue. Interestingly, upstate New York, which tends to be conservative, politically, and which would presumably have the most to gain from allowing gas drilling, reported the highest levels of opposition to fracking: 50% want to see it stay out of the state. 

These sentiments have led to a groundswell of local rebellions against the gas companies. The Albany Times Union reports that there are already 55 separate municipal bans against fracking, and 105 moratoriums in the state. These local bans were challenged in court by the energy companies, who argued that the state alone has the regulatory authority to prohibit drilling. But earlier this month the state supreme court disagreed, ruling that the town of Dryden has the right to prohibit fracking within its borders.

This decision may turn out to be the nail in the coffin for fracking in New York state. If their investment can be rendered worthless by a local town council's vote, gas companies may now be reluctant to spend millions of dollars leasing drill sites.

But anti-fracking activists are not resting on their laurels quite yet, because Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has yet to decide whether to permit gas drilling. Cuomo has promised to announce his decision on a number of deadlines, but they've all come and gone without a definitive word. Touted as a potential presidential contender in 2016, the governor is understandably reluctant to step into this political minefield.  

Earlier reports indicated that the governor make a decision after New York's health commissioner gives his assessment on drilling, which is expected to be released in a matter of weeks. But the latest word from Cuomo's aides is that "there is no timetable for a decision". 

The state put in place a provisional moratorium on drilling in 2008. John Armstrong, of the coalition New Yorkers Against Fracking (NYAF), told me that ever since then, there has been a spontaneous groundswell of "hundreds of kitchen table organizations petitioning and holding public meetings to educate the public on the dangers of fracking".

One such group formed in Vestal, New York, a town just across the state line from Dimock, Pennsylvania, whose flaming taps in the movie Gasland made it a poster child for fracking gone bad. Sue Rapp, the co-founder of Vestal Residents for Safe Energy (VeRSE) has been tramping from door to door with a petition that calls for the town council to ban drilling. She said that many residents need little convincing, since they have seen homes in Pennsylvania with 500-gallon "water buffaloes" – plastic tankards full of drinking water sitting on their front lawns. She says that they've seen how property values plummet, banks revoke mortgages and natural landscapes are altered. Already, endless caravans of trucks barrel through their own town, kicking up dust as they head to Pennsylvania to service the gas industry.

Rapp told me that the recent court ruling has encouraged her, and she says it will free town boards from the fear that the gas companies will sue against any fracking bans. Now that this legal hurdle has been overcome, she expects that a lot more towns will soon vote to keep drillers at bay. Her organization is one of over 200 groups that make up NYAF, an eclectic alliance that includes health professionals, unions, faith institutions, farmers and even breweries.

Rapp is proud, she says, that the movement against drilling in New York grew from the bottom up rather than the top down. Mainline environmental groups were initially ambivalent, believing that natural gas is cleaner than coal, and that its use in America's power plants would lead to significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. Those reductions have occurred, but evidence has mounted that mining shale gas carries risks.

But Sue Rapp doesn't see this as an environmental movement so much as an existential quest to preserve a peaceful way of life in the rolling hills of New York's bucolic Southern Tier. Maybe that is why their grassroots campaign appears – for the moment at least – to be succeeding where so many other environmental crusades have failed to ignite the public's imagination.

• Shale gas and fracking
• United States
• New York
• Pennsylvania
• Energy
• Energy industry
• Andrew Cuomo

Richard Schiffman
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Newtok is losing ground to the sea at a dangerous rate. Unless its population can be relocated in time, an entire community will cease to exist and the villagers will become America's first climate refugees

Guardian US interactive teamGabriel DanceFeilding CageSuzanne GoldenbergRichard Sprenger

Have your say on the fate of native Alaskan communities under threat from climate change

The people of Newtok, on the west coast of Alaska and about 400 miles south of the Bering Strait that separates the state from Russia, are living a slow-motion disaster that will end, very possibly within the next five years, with the entire village being washed away.

The Ninglick River coils around Newtok on three sides before emptying into the Bering Sea. It has steadily been eating away at the land, carrying off 100ft or more some years, in a process moving at unusual speed because of climate change. Eventually all of the villagers will have to leave, becoming America's first climate change refugees.

It is not a label or a future embraced by people living in Newtok. Yup'ik Eskimo have been fishing and hunting by the shores of the Bering Sea for centuries and the villagers reject the notion they will now be forced to run in chaos from ancestral lands.

But exile is undeniable. A report by the US Army Corps of Engineers predicted that the highest point in the village – the school of Warner's nightmare – could be underwater by 2017. There was no possible way to protect the village in place, the report concluded.

If Newtok can not move its people to the new site in time, the village will disappear. A community of 350 people, nearly all related to some degree and all intimately connected to the land, will cease to exist, its inhabitants scattered to the villages and towns of western Alaska, Anchorage and beyond.

It's a choice confronting more than 180 native communities in Alaska, which are flooding and losing land because of the ice melt that is part of the changing climate.

In a special three part series on the imminent crisis, the Guardian has visited Newtok and spoken to the villagers, politicians and climate scientists about their plight. You can read about it here and have your say below.

• Alaska
• Polar regions
• Climate change
• United States
• Sea level
• Sea ice

Environment editor
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Jeff and Lisa Charles, who have six children, were allotted one of the first houses in Mertarvik as the sea advances on Newtok

Guardian US interactive teamSuzanne GoldenbergRichard SprengerGabriel DanceFeilding Cage