Peter Smith

My talk to the Coalition for Economic Justice last Saturday. http://www.c4ej.com/ In this talk I explore what is nature, the history of its destruction and how economic justice will lead to its restoration, sucking carbon back into the ground, reducing carbon output and rewilding our world. All this with a vibrant environmentally friendly economy. Just by some simple changes to our tax system... But with profound effects that will change all our lives for the better. But make no illusions our economic system is designed to prevent such simple solutions to our problems for the greed of the few. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU_DPdyvJG4 In many ways’ nature needs no wildlife charities, natural resource economists or government laws to thrive. It just takes people to stop abusing it and to have space to thrive on. The rewilding movement has shown Government policy and establish environmental NGO’s are achieving little in tackling nature’s destruction or combating climate a...

Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot are absolutely correct with one small amendment... Protect, Restore and TAX – Tax land, natural resource use and pollution. Shift taxes from incomes and trade to Land Value Taxes and Green Taxes. Nature needs no funds, no $trillions of pointless projects that are economically inefficient, just make nature’s use (and abuse) expensive. Tax carbon and we will have amazing efficient homes and transport. Tax land and we will have 40% rewilded as its economically pointless for agriculture our human use.  Just as a plastic bag tax resulted in nearly 90% reduction in plastic bag use, or sugar tax cut sugar in drinks by 50% virtually overnight so a tax on land and natural resources will have an immediate and systemic shift to achieve a planet that can survive and still provide prosperity for all. Every economic transaction will contain the abuse of nature and Land used so every transaction will force down the use of land and nature as companies an...

Two recent reports, George Monbiot’s #LandForTheMany  and Chris Packham’s #peoplesmanifestoforwildlife sub report "Where there’s muck there’s brass: revealing the billions hidden in farmland tax shelters” , published today, have started highlighting the economics of land and wildlife destruction. Miles King - has investigated some of the more obvious tax breaks that  farmers get that are incentivising natures destruction in the People Need Nature Report - See here:  https://anewnatureblog.com/2019/06/28/farmland-tax-breaks-revealed/ But the journey these leading figures in wildlife protection have gone down, and the many authors they have drawn together, is still not fully complete.  Both reports have highlighted how we are destroying our planet because our current tax and subsidy systems gives incentives to people to kill our wildlife, pollute and use land and natural resources inefficiently. My personal campaign for the last 20 years has been to highlight ...

“MPs are voting today to commit to reducing Britain's CO2 emissions to 'net zero'. The cost is likely to be more than £1 trillion. Ministers say an impact assessment is not required.” So, says spam Facebook posts from dodgy think tanks spamming my social media feeds today. Their slickly produced videos have pictures of nurses and doctors with an ominous title spelling out how many doctors and nurse £1 Trillion would pay for. View more of the 'Global Warming Policy Forum's' drivel here:  https://www.facebook.com/pg/theGWPF/videos/ They are trying to scare people into being frightened of tackling a global climate catastrophe and it works judging by the comments.   But such futile trade-offs and false dichotomies are at the heart of tackling all societies problems, whether it is saving wildlife, helping people with physical and mental health problems or educating our children. Its all fundamentally a load of old bollocks! But unfortunately, mo...