tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65533597339426218302024-03-19T09:28:20.170+00:00Peter Smith"People think I'm just trying to look after nice fluffy animals, What I'm actually trying to do is stop the human race from committing suicide." Gerald DurrellPeter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.comBlogger104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-51073189749532632002020-02-14T16:43:00.002+00:002020-02-14T16:43:33.830+00:00How do we stop the Insect Apocalypse?There have been a number of articles this week on the insect apocalypse, with some studies showing an 80% drop in insect numbers since the late 90s. These come from the car windshield splatter effect. We now see so few bugs splattered across our windscreen when many of us over 40 in childhood saw our car windscreen splattered with insects, and every stop our parents had to wipe hundreds of squashed bugs from our windscreens during the summer.<br />
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-splatometer-tests-reveal-huge-decline-number-insects">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-splatometer-tests-reveal-huge-decline-number-insects</a><br />
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More detailed studies in Germany have identified a 75% decline in flying insect numbers over a 26 year period.<br />
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<a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809">https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809</a><br />
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As those who read this blog will know I am more interested in solutions to ecological issues and one of my pet hates is this futile dilemmas presented in mainstream media as fact. So listening to people once again wringing thier hands saying nothing can be done and if we do it will cost a fortune, poor people will suffer etc against those saying we must ban pesticides now, whatever the cost makes me quite agitated. Such futile dilemmas are indeed futile if we approach the problem without knowledge of the economics of land.<br />
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Reading the articles this week there have been impassioned calls to cause terror that our whole biosphere will collapse and we are sleepwalking into a ecological and human catastrophe. This could be true but so far humanity and policy makers have not made efforts to avoid such a unforeseen catastrophes.<br />
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The issue of is not just that insecticides are killing all our bugs, its issue like biomass in soils, food availability (weeds), seasonality of food availability, loss of complex boundary habitats, connective habitats, drainage etc, basically land in a wild condition is not available for insects to have homes and food.<br />
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What I find criminal is the lack of government research into such a vital topic, just some relatively low scale NGO research, surely this is something vital to the security of us all and thus something government bodies should have excellent research on. (for all the tin foil hat wearers perhaps they already do!!!)<br />
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The other issue forgotten by such media coverage is about how we actually stop this life threatening decline in the very fabric of our biosphere... As ever efficient use of land and pesticides is key. Legal instruments are useful but the best solution would be to increase the cost of using land and pesticides (and all harmful chemicals). A simple Land Value Tax and a simple Pesticide tax (externality taxes) would make all farmers and landowners think seriously about land and chemical use and therefore look to use less allowing more insects to thrive.<br />
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Such an economic solution would reward hard working farmers for thier ingenuity and skill and punish those push button agronomist advised agribusinesses pumping ever more chemicals into what little remains of our soils.<br />
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Such a system would improve economic activity and the health and welfare of people.<br />
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Having sustainable agriculture under a system of Land Value Taxation will take away the monopoly of land that allows people to profit from rents and capital value created by insecticide use, thus the new taxes will impose costs on land and chemical use would come out of rents received by landowners and capitalised into the ever increasing cost of land. Such costs would not come out of having to charge more for food, but the profits derived by those who have not earned it or deserve profits made from killing nature.<br />
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But if we increase taxes on Land and externalities we can relieve the poor of thier tax burdens of VAT and Income tax which will make poor people better off and improve the quality of their food, drinking water and environment. So no one has to suffer for improved environmental standards. The only losers will be monopolists, tax dodgers and bank shareholders (I for one will not lose any sleep at thier loss)<br />
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And maybe our children can suffer the mutterings of parents wiping the bugs off car windscreens on summer trips once again... and maybe our future generations will have a world that will both support them and delight them...Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-13336781058216209642019-10-25T19:44:00.001+01:002019-10-25T19:44:32.505+01:00Only economic Justice can save our future & restore nature...My talk to the Coalition for Economic Justice last Saturday. http://www.c4ej.com/<br />
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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.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU_DPdyvJG4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU_DPdyvJG4</a><br />
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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 and ecological breakdowns. This fundamental truth has rocked nature conservation who are struggling to cope with this social movement where established NGO’s and Government wish to be seen as having a monopoly on the protection of nature. Rewilding has enthused people that wildlife loss is not inevitable, and something can be done to bring wildlife and the natural systems all human life depends on back in profusion without spending a penny of taxpayer’s money.</div>
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We can eliminate poverty, reduce population and protect our planet from climate catastrophe with some simple changes to how we raise taxation. The shifting our taxes on incomes and trade and putting them on Land Values and environmental</div>
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externalities will make every person, business and government body value nature in every decision they make.</div>
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A change to our tax structure will allow a natural compensation system to happen automatically between the winners and losers when land is rewilded, based on understanding land values & taxation. Such solutions would protect nature and stimulate human progress, by getting to the very economic roots of the problem– we can see how simple economic steps, such as Land Value Tax & Green taxes, can efficiently and effectively internalise the costs and benefits of nature and create the Ecological Renaissance many people wish to see, allowing all to share the</div>
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Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-55795737965038402762019-09-20T13:50:00.001+01:002019-09-24T18:34:16.261+01:00Protect, Restore and TAX Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot are absolutely correct with one small amendment...<br />
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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.<br />
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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<br />
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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 and trade avoid the tax.<br />
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And land taxes and carbon taxes can not be avoided, dodged or offshored – there is no escape – environmental protection will be relentless and every bank, investment house, multinational corporation and government will turn their energies to using less land and natural resources in everything they do.<br />
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Funding is the wrong approach - its vastly inefficient if you buy land the price just goes up rewarding landowners. So we can achieve all that the army of activists inspired by Greta and George desire, and save our planet, for no cost to the taxpayer. </div>
Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-77393847267756466872019-06-28T12:06:00.000+01:002019-06-28T12:08:43.266+01:00George Monbiot & Chris Packham are getting close to the fundamental solution to saving our planet<br />
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Two recent reports, George Monbiot’s <a href="https://landforthemany.uk/" target="_blank">#LandForTheMany </a> and Chris Packham’s #peoplesmanifestoforwildlife sub report <a href="https://anewnatureblog.com/2019/06/28/farmland-tax-breaks-revealed/" target="_blank">"Where there’s muck there’s brass: revealing the billions hidden in farmland tax shelters”</a>, published today, have started highlighting the economics of land and wildlife destruction.<br />
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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: <a href="https://anewnatureblog.com/2019/06/28/farmland-tax-breaks-revealed/">https://anewnatureblog.com/2019/06/28/farmland-tax-breaks-revealed/</a><br />
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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.<br />
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My personal campaign for the last 20 years has been to highlight this and promote rewilding, understanding that if we cannot tackle these issues, we will continue to lose wildlife no matter what social movements happen, wildlife protection laws are enacted or how many landowners we can win over to rewild their land.<br />
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It’s really very simple, if we want to save our planet and rewild land we need to base our entire tax policy on taxing monopolies and externalities and have a tax policy that does not allow avoidance. Shifting taxation from incomes (earnings and trade) and put it on land values. Taxing pesticides, diesel etc (externalities) will all provide a positive incentive to use such resources less and much more efficiently. Taxing land values will reduce land use and allow rewilding. Our current corrupt system is based on inflating land values to benefit the tiny minority of landowners. This has been a political fight waged over hundreds of years, the basis of the Corn Laws and the Liberal movement of the late 19th century, it was behind the Parliament Act and the landowners and bankers win in the end because most people are unaware of the fundamental economic forces at play.<br />
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Such a tax shift will save our planet, rewild 40% to 50% of the world, abolish poverty, reduce crime and take away many of the incentives for war. It’s all about understanding the marginal economic choices of the people who control natural resources and land – be it a hill farmer or Donald Trump; people choose to destroy our planet and hurt others because they make money by doing so. Our current tax system pushes people to misuse land and natural resources in so many complex ways that no matter what laws we try to enact it cannot counteract that economic force of those trying to make money from nature’s destruction. If we have a tax system that forces people to use land and natural resources more efficiently then they will choose to damage the planet less, the free market will become our ally as people try to outcompete one another to provide goods and services that use less land, pollution and natural resources within them.<br />
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A land value tax collecting the full unimproved rental value of land will make landowners compete to provide food with less land, landowners will be begging to give poor quality land to rewilding charities, grouse moor owners will be falling over themselves to shoot on less land and give up the moors. But by reducing labour taxes we will have more farmers producing more food with less inputs, a true democracy in land is best achieved by fiscal measure and not laws.<br />
If we continue to have policies that give subsidies to landowners, let them off scot free when they pollute, have a system of money creation that is used to fund ever increasing land values then we enshrine natural destruction and poverty, a bleak future for humanity. This is a battle that must be won and for those campaigning to protect our planet the fundamental economic forces must be understood otherwise we will continue to fail in our efforts.<br />
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One of my lectures on the subject:<br />
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Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-74275483672453030242019-06-25T10:21:00.001+01:002019-06-25T10:38:50.446+01:00Be Terrified (tackling) Global Climate Disaster will Destroy the NHS<br />
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“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.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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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.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<span id="goog_512998714"></span>View more of the 'Global Warming Policy Forum's' drivel here: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/theGWPF/videos/">https://www.facebook.com/pg/theGWPF/videos/</a></div>
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They are trying to scare people into being frightened of tackling
a global climate catastrophe and it works judging by the comments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Its all fundamentally a load of old bollocks! But unfortunately,
most people are too dumb to recognise the false framing of both those actively manipulating
the dialogue to save us from a global catastrophe, or those determined to bury
their heads in the sand and deny we have a looming disaster on our hands. The only
winners are those that ensure such a false narrative perpetuates on both sides
of the augment and can use public outrage to frame Government policies for their
own self advantage.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Whether its companies or banks looking to own ‘carbon
credits’ to trade as the new land barons of the future with a tradeable
commodity to pollute or the landowners and natural resource owners looking to
abuse nature’s bounty for their personal wealth, they are both playing the
system for self-advantage and hoodwinking the general population to accept their
avarice and greed harnessing fear and outrage.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Such false dilemmas and futile trade-offs presented here are
highly disingenuous and let me explain.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It would cause no problems to truly tackle global warming,
in fact we could increase wealth and jobs for most people if we simply transferred
taxes from earned incomes to carbon taxes and land value taxes. But those who
own the rights of economic rents from land and natural resources try to hide
this economic solution. Such tax shifts would create efficiency in production
using the free market to create low carbon and low land use in our goods and
services. Lower land use would allow carbon to be reabsorbed back into organic matter
such as soils and land rewilded for wildlife. But such sense is hidden by
foolish and selfish policies of a corrupt system of Government and self-interest
of those wedded to our current monopoly capitalistic system instead of true
free market principles that correctly account for monopoly and externalities.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is compounded by most people not understanding the best
policies to use to tackle runaway climate catastrophe, such policies often
proposed by those politicians and groups wedded to preserving our monopolistic
economic system use the feelings of people terrified of global warming, saying;
‘if it costs a trillion so be it’, but without a knowledge of economics and
money supply such people are allowing a different portion of our corrupt elite
to steal their future incomes, this time with the promise of averting a global
disaster. Under our current system the costs of the taxpayer coving inefficient
efforts to reduce carbon use would fall on the poorest further dividing society
and creating poverty, while at the same time doing little to tackle carbon use.
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But if we adopt land value taxes and externality tax shifts
we could solve this futile dilemma and create a world fit for our children to inherit,
that truly values our natural world (by actually making people pay for its abuse) and makes perfect economic sense. But the
rich would get poorer and their political cronies would lose power – so it not
going to happen until we all educate ourselves on the basic economic principles
by which we choose to use and abuse natural resources and land. We all must understand that it is
monopoly, mostly in the ownership of land and natures gifts that drives poverty. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-58695859394649407982018-06-25T15:07:00.000+01:002018-06-25T15:07:50.081+01:00Garden Ponds & the Uncommon Frogs & Toads of Britain <br />
The uncommon Frogs & Toads of Britain in danger<br />
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Latest research show sightings of toads have fallen by over 30% in the last 5 years & frog numbers have plummeted 17% in that time. Toad numbers have dropped nearly 70% over the last 30 years, as reported in the Guardian today. But this sort of reporting drives me up the wall as it recommending we build ponds in our gardens to reverse the loss. While it will make a tiny difference, and everyone should have a pond in their garden, it again shows our powerlessness in the face of the real calamity that is befalling wildlife in the UK. And what is far worse shows the timidity of NGO’s and our media in reporting what is happening to wildlife in the UK, that they will not even highlight the real causes of wildlife loss let alone challenge landowner vested interests and say what must be done if we are to reverse that wildlife calamity..... and Garden ponds have virtually nothing to do with it!<br />
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Common Frog at Wildwood Trust</div>
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<span id="goog_82526443"></span><span id="goog_82526444"></span>Common Toad at Wildwood Trust</div>
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/21/uk-gardeners-urged-to-build-ponds-as-sightings-of-frogs-and-toads-dry-up?CMP=share_btn_fb">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/21/uk-gardeners-urged-to-build-ponds-as-sightings-of-frogs-and-toads-dry-up?CMP=share_btn_fb</a><br />
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Now is the time to make a pond in your garden to help our froggy friends so go and plan your garden pond today BUT! if we really want to help nature in the UK we must address the core problems of inefficient land use and the tax breaks and subsidies we give to landowners who are destroying Britain's wild habitats. Allowing our water ways to meander, land to remain undrained and stopping subsidies to very poor farmland, that only produces a tiny fraction of the food we eat, is key if we are to reverse the last 100 years of wildlife destruction and extinction.<br />
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These press reports have asked us to build more ponds in our gardens but really it's just marketing aimed at driving up membership of NGO’s as gardens in the UK make up just over 1% of our land surface so cannot be the solution to the wildlife catastrophe that is happening around us. The inefficient use of land in the countryside and modern factory farming methods continue to be the real cause as to why we are wiping out all the places where many of our most threatened creatures live.<br />
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Behind every wildlife disaster, including the one happening to our frogs and toads in the UK are Government rules set in place that rewards people with tax breaks and subsidies for killing our wildlife. Much of our wildlife is clinging on to small pockets of suitable habitat when contrary to many people's beliefs it is not housing or roads that is killing our wildlife but what is happening to land in the countryside.<br />
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With Brexit comes a once in a lifetime opportunity to save the taxpayer billions in wasteful subsidies and tax breaks to those who use their land inefficiently and rob our wildlife of a home. Rewilding the UK offers us a chance to benefit our economy, create more jobs, make our food production more secure for our children and protect nature but we have to address the core issue of inefficient land use and the rewards that can be made from destroying wildlife.<br />
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Central to this is stopping the rewards on offer for the mere ownership of land and alternatively rewarding real hard working farmers. Redress the balance of those that earn from their labour in our countryside while charging more to those that abuse land for little food and less employment. The only way we can do this is to stop subsidies land use, shift taxes from VAT and employment taxes and put those same taxes onto land values, effectively making the town subsidise our countryside. We should not tax the hard working farmers who can produce food sustainably with less inputs and put those taxes and remove the tax breaks that fund intensive farming, that perpetuates the harm we do to our soils and wildlife through inefficient use of farm chemicals. And remember we are not talking about romantic visions of farming past - but just shifting the margin at which land use decisions are made in how we treat the land.<br />
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We can rewild about 10% of our total land surface currently farmed with no appreciable difference in food production and a massive saving to the taxpayer, and ensure frogs and toads are around for our children to discover for many generations to come… if we tax land values!<br />
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Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-14380368239944686932018-05-17T09:57:00.001+01:002018-11-01T13:16:21.414+00:00A Price on Nature - can save us from environmental collapse & poverty, if done rightGeorge Monbiot wrote another piece on his fears and distaste for the economic process promoted by some economists to calculate the economic value of nature and ecosystem services. I have seen many criticisms of his approach from those that think he is an idealist and we must calculate a value of nature to help decision making so we can at least save some. I personally say a plague on both your houses as you are wrong and both right, but totally missing the point!<br />
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/15/price-natural-world-destruction-natural-capital" target="_blank">The UK government wants to put a price on nature – but that will destroy it</a></blockquote>
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To me the real crux of the issue is are we going to make people pay a price to when they destroying nature, thus when priced correctly pushes us to destroy less nature and turn us from abusers of nature to conserveres. Those who abuse nature less in their activities such as farming or manufacturing will then out compete the abusers. We internalise the destruction of nature into our economic choices (also keep the laws that protect nature as well)<br />
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Further to this is the idea of using nature as a means of rent seeking by those that ‘own’ it. Monbiot has not elaborated on this but is right that if we undervalue nature we will go on abusing it in the current framework and dominant economic illusions held by governments and corporations, and may use this as a justification of further destruction.<br />
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I have discussed this with some members of the Natural Capital Committee and they mostly are of a mind to funnel taxpayers cash to 'compensate' landowners and businesses for abusing nature less which is a travesty and only make us poorer and create a vastly unequal society of natural capital haves and have nots,. new landed barons to milk humanity's need for natural resources to live....<br />
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The simple solution is of course to transfer taxation off of incomes and trade and put it in the destruction of nature, best achieved by a Land Value Tax with surcharges for special natural value. So, destroying an ancient habitat become extremely expensive, prohibitively so. Land and natural resources become expensive to exploit and when not a 'true' economic benefit get left alone.<br />
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Taxation means we leave fossil fuels in the ground, we stop farming marginal habitat and it becomes wild again, we reduce the extraction of fresh water and it stops in rivers and wetland. Carbon will come out of the atmosphere and be sequestered back into the ground.<br />
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So get rid of subsidies for farmers and industry and tax the use of land & natural resources, proportionate to the damage their use causes. So special taxes and laws to prevent the destruction of high value habitats and dangerous pollution, and areas that provide specific ecosystem services such as flood prevention and carbon sequestration.<br />
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These taxes need to embody future destruction, and not at any ‘discount rate’, also land taxes should be yearly taxes so we properly value that destruction in the future and we do not undervalue the ecosystem we leave to future generations.<br />
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The idea of using nature as a means of rent seeking by those that ‘own’ it is an appalling idea and is the fundamental problem of ‘neo-classical’ economics and one we must fight with all our might!<br />
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Some of my thoughts on the value of nature<br />
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Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-73374827861466302402017-11-19T11:58:00.001+00:002017-11-19T11:58:12.275+00:00Beavers! a plan for Wales’s Ecological Renaissance, with the help of David Lloyd George - Video of Lecture:Beavers! a plan for Wales’s Ecological Renaissance, with the help of David Lloyd George…..?<br />
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It was my Honour to Give the Annual Lacey Lecture for the North Wales Wildlife Trust this year - You can watch it here:<br />
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In Honour of W.S. (Bill) Lacey, Lecturer in the Botany , University College of North Wales & Founder of the North Wales Wildlife Trust<br />
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A history of Beaver in Britain, a lecture by Peter Smith, Director of the Wildwood Trust. Peter will talk about the history of beaver extinction, the many efforts of people over the last 100 years who tried to reintroduce beavers and the problems they faced. The many benefits to our water quality, flood risks & and wildlife that beaver could bring. Dispelling some of the myths about the augments against beaver reintroduction.<br />
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The study of ecology has resulted in a growing interest in Rewilding some of our land and the role of animals such as beavers, wild herbivores and the huge ecological benefits of the population dynamics of plants, herbivores and predators, without the intervention of humans. The rewilding movement has spun off to take a proper look at land use economics, hydrology and the wider science of Ecological services. The economics of nature and the fundamental flaws in our current economic system are at the heart of all human wildlife conflict and Peter has spent his career learning about the ecological and economic tools that can mitigate such conflict and allow humanity and nature to flourish.<br />
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Beavers make a big difference to our rivers and this means there are winners and losers. There are many obvious and subtle benefits to beavers living in our water ways once again: wildlife, water quality, the buffering of floods & droughts and carbon sequestration are the most obvious. But how can we measure these benefits, what are the leading scientists and economists thinking when it comes to putting monetary value on these benefits and how we can all benefit and properly compensate or mitigate those that loose out.<br />
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A proper compensation strategy, based on understanding land values & taxation, could be the Solution to the whole problem of protecting nature and stimulating human progress, by getting to the very economic roots of the problem– we can see how simple economic steps, such as Land Value Tax & Green taxes, can efficiently and effectively internalise the costs and benefits of Wales’s Ecological Renaissance, allowing all to benefit by following the forgotten advice of Wales’s greatest minds including, Robert Owen, Aneurin Bevan, Bertrand Russell & even David Lloyd George!Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-16189161728012833412017-11-08T09:25:00.000+00:002017-11-08T09:25:12.929+00:00Beavers! a plan for Wales’s Ecological Renaissance, with the help of David Lloyd George…..?My next Public Talk will be the on the Return of the Beaver to Wales, for the North Wales Wildlife Trust's Annual Lacy Lecture:<br />
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TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW!<br />
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To show your support for beaver reintroduction, why not come along to ‘Return of the Beaver’ on Friday 17 November, 7pm at Venue Cymru, Llandudno. (This is NWWT’s annual Lacey Lecture.) Early bird tickets are £10 from your local branch or the NWWT Bangor office or direct from Venue <a href="https://venuecymru.co.uk/return-beaver" target="_blank">Cymru booking office</a> (01492 872000) at £12. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiORi6ZUdrtvnpMARkD-BaMJtZHyrrvFJ2B9Ofq7CKNmzPSeZy4FQV9XQ1em1zL6NNn8VCRLwbQ0Y_RagpPm85ukR_V9oPlKNXgz3E14ees1UvAEylvFF7PNTWhdGRYILitHdffhmMltv4/s1600/22687962_10155852804427238_1303691878473884946_n.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiORi6ZUdrtvnpMARkD-BaMJtZHyrrvFJ2B9Ofq7CKNmzPSeZy4FQV9XQ1em1zL6NNn8VCRLwbQ0Y_RagpPm85ukR_V9oPlKNXgz3E14ees1UvAEylvFF7PNTWhdGRYILitHdffhmMltv4/s640/22687962_10155852804427238_1303691878473884946_n.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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Talk Synopsis:<br />
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Beavers! a plan for Wales’s Ecological Renaissance, with the help of David Lloyd George…..?<br />
A history of Beaver in Britain, a lecture by Peter Smith, Director of the Wildwood Trust. Peter will talk about the history of beaver extinction, the many efforts of people over the last 100 years who tried to reintroduce beavers and the problems they faced. The many benefits to our water quality, flood risks & and wildlife that beaver could bring. Dispelling some of the myths about the augments against beaver reintroduction.<br />
<br />
The study of ecology has resulted in a growing interest in Rewilding some of our land and the role of animals such as beavers, wild herbivores and the huge ecological benefits of the population dynamics of plants, herbivores and predators, without the intervention of humans. The rewilding movement has spun off to take a proper look at land use economics, hydrology and the wider science of Ecological services. The economics of nature and the fundamental flaws in our current economic system are at the heart of all human wildlife conflict and Peter has spent his career learning about the ecological and economic tools that can mitigate such conflict and allow humanity and nature to flourish.<br />
<br />
Beavers make a big difference to our rivers and this means there are winners and losers. There are many obvious and subtle benefits to beavers living in our water ways once again: wildlife, water quality, the buffering of floods & droughts and carbon sequestration are the most obvious. But how can we measure these benefits, what are the leading scientists and economists thinking when it comes to putting monetary value on these benefits and how we can all benefit and properly compensate or mitigate those that loose out.<br />
<br />
A proper compensation strategy, based on understanding land values & taxation, could be the Solution to the whole problem of protecting nature and stimulating human progress, by getting to the very economic roots of the problem– we can see how simple economic steps, such as Land Value Tax & Green taxes, can efficiently and effectively internalise the costs and benefits of Wales’s Ecological Renaissance, allowing all to benefit by following the forgotten advice of Wales’s greatest minds including, Robert Owen, Aneurin Bevan, Bertrand Russell & even David Lloyd George!<br />
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<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-75486013188863376642017-07-16T21:54:00.002+01:002017-07-16T23:28:19.292+01:00To Rewild or Starve - More Futile Trade-offs masking Perverse Incentives Or why the 'Food Security Lobby' are a bunch of self <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">serving</span> benefit scrounging scaremongers!<br />
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Two good articles in the press this week have got me to discuss concept of the 'Futile Trade-offs' as in food or wildlife. But we must look deeper into the 'perverse incentives' inherent in our economy that make us destroy wildlife to put wasted food down the waste disposal unit or to feed intensively farmed pigs and cattle soya from destroyed rainforest! As ever the real sin is the perverse incentive to waste land we need for wildlife and keeping our environment healthy, the very life-support system all humanity relies on.<br />
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An article in 'The Conversation' posed the question:<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-would-happen-if-we-abandoned-britains-farms-and-left-them-to-nature-63951?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=facebookbutton" target="_blank"> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">What would happen if we abandoned Britain’s farms and left them to nature? </span></a><br />
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And the BBC came out with this:<br />
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<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40596729" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;">World's large carnivores being pushed off the map</span></a></h3>
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Both articles produced a lot of flak from the 'Food Security Lobby': My answer is this:<br />
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Calories produced by farming on marginal land are tiny. One allotment can produces over 100 times the food of the same area of upland or sub marginal farmland if not a lot more. Food security is about distribution and never amount. Farming produces 10 to 20 times, at least, the food we need, the problem is distribution and poverty.<br />
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I have always considered the food security augment fallacious and one designed to ‘keep the free cash from subsidies rolling in’. The reality is we have lots of land to rewild. We could rewild 40% of the UK and it would save the taxpayer about £1 Billion in wasted subsidies and have virtually no impact on food production or prices as the land is so unproductive. less than one half of 1% of our food is produced on such land. The benefits would be huge. From flood prevention, massive increase in water quality, reduced water bills, gigantic carbon capture as soils replenish and woodlands grow.<br />
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We could increase economic activity as Jobs shift to recreation and other land uses in harmony with rewilding. Rewilded land can be land full of people doing things, just not making a big impact…. We could achieve this with greater economic output and prosperity if we learned to tax Land and Natural resources instead of ordinary people’s incomes as well, to dispel the myth of these 'Futile trade-offs' as food or wildlife; or the perverse incentives to destroy wildlife for so very little gain....Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-84394813335742326582017-07-03T23:17:00.002+01:002021-11-28T16:04:24.280+00:00Rewilding with Wolves – How Far Should We Go…?Or how rewilding with wolves could save the Scottish Taxpayer Millions and prevent many avoidable fatalities?<br />
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<a href="http://www.wildwoodtrust.org/" target="_blank">Wildwood Trust’s</a> recent press activity including a piece on Radio 4’s Today Programme and articles in the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/30/wolves-brown-bears-could-return-british-countryside-naturally/" target="_blank">Telegraph</a> and <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/823618/wolves-cut-deer-population-britain-lynx-wildlife-countryside" target="_blank">Express</a> on our Devon Wolf project have causes a stir on social media. I have been lambasted in comments as a fool etc. But what kind of fool am I for wanting to see the return of wolves and bears to the UK.<br />
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My critics have said wolves would be dangerous and costly if returned to Scotland. But would they? Many conservationists favouring classical conservation have said we should have rewilding ‘lite’ such as letting roadside verges go wild but not the wolves.<br />
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As a small thought experiment (trust me I have not been drinking!): let’s compare the negative externalities of two forms of rewilding:<br />
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<ol>
<li>Leaving roadside verges uncut (rewilding 'Lite') </li>
<li>Reintroducing 5 packs of wolves to Scotland </li>
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Rewild the Verge</h2>
Grass verges (I did a contract on this in 1994 for Scottish Wildlife Trust putting a tender in for managing major road verges for wildlife for the then Scottish Office) calculating the negative impacts this could cause about 1 to 5 deaths a year due to more dangerous conditions for visibility when driving. Tree growth could cause about 200k of damage to roads a year. Net gain in biodiversity about 20,000 hectares + appreciable benefit in wildlife corridors.<br />
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Rewild the Wolf</h2><div>Wolf reintroduction, say 1 death every 50 to 150 years. This could potentially cut by over half the 180 deaths or serious injuries by deer collision every year in Scotland. So we could probably save over 500 lives for every life taken.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wolf reintroduction would cause land abandonment and a net loss of income by some £200 Million to sheep farms and hunting estates as their businesses become uneconomic. But tourist income would probably be equal or more and would save the taxpayer about £200 Million in agricultural subsidies and another £200 million in tax dodging land scams. The net gain in wildlife habitat, let us be conservative and say 250,000 hectares.</div><div><br /></div><div>So rewilding with road verges would be an orders of magnitude more dangerous to people and be far less cost-effective costing the taxpayer more!</div><div><br /></div><div>Interesting most of the benefits of wolves go to the average Scot in more jobs and economic activity and Government revenue for public services and the benefits of not having wolves go to landowners and tax dodgers... </div>
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I would be interested in any informed criticism of my guesswork!<br />
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Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-47162728547373727362017-01-04T11:59:00.000+00:002017-01-04T11:59:01.811+00:00Brexit Tea, injustice and the Georgist JournalMy blog post about BREXIT was picked up and rewritten for a global audience in the Georgist Journal - a great honour for my good self.<br />
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<a href="http://www.georgistjournal.org/2016/12/12/brexit-why-land-value-tax-can-stop-fascists-save-the-planet/">http://www.georgistjournal.org/2016/12/12/brexit-why-land-value-tax-can-stop-fascists-save-the-planet/</a><br />
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The Georgist Journal has a wealth of articles which I recommend anyone to read it<br />
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If you are after a much deeper investigation into the issues surrounding Brexit and an explanation of how Land Rent Capture is the solution then read the excellent book by Fred Harrison: Beyond Brexit: The Blueprint:<br />
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You can get it on amazon here: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Brexit-Blueprint-Fred-Harrison/dp/0995635102">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Brexit-Blueprint-Fred-Harrison/dp/0995635102</a><br />
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and do visit Fred's excellent website <a href="http://www.sharetherents.org/">www.sharetherents.org</a> where he published an excellent article '<br />
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<a href="http://www.sharetherents.org/articles/brexit-last-great-injustice/" target="_blank">Brexit and the Last Great Injustice</a></h1>
'Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-31678426217430859922016-10-16T09:35:00.001+01:002016-10-16T23:42:13.822+01:00St Ambrose of Milan & the Causes of Poverty & Environmental Damage TodayA friend sent me some choice quotes from St. Ambrose of Milan (AD 339-397), who could have wrote these yesterday and not in the 4th century. A man who understood the natural world and that the fundamental causes of poverty and evil all stem from the private ownership and exploitation of the gifts of nature.<br />
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This got me thinking, while I was just reviewing my pension today, the main reason I will live in penury in my old age is rent, not just rent of a house or the high cost of a mortgage but all the rents on all the things we have in life in a million complex ways that pervade our society. To get around this many old people cling on to property they do not need, and vehemently oppose the one fundamental solution to poverty and environment damage..... taxes on land. Thus we make the situation worse for all and the future, from our greed and fear today.<br />
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Poverty and environmental destruction today both stem from the private wealth to be generated from forcing rent onto to the poor and the money to be made from exploiting nature for private gain. A tax on land and environmental destruction, offsetting other taxes, is the fundamental solution to all the worlds problems, recognised by the leading thinkers throughout history including St Ambrose..... From Aristotle to Einstein, from Henry Ford to Benjamin Franklin. from Winston Churchill to Confucius history's greatest thinkers have all saw the wisdom of using economic rent as public revenue and its vital place in lifting humanity to greater heights. Yet still our political systems serves the rich, lazy and powerful who milk the rest of humanity through such a monopoly, a monopoly that devastated economies, creates poverty, drives us to war and to destroy our beautiful planet and its wildlife....<br />
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The Quotes of St Ambrose:<br />
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"In the beginning people practiced the natural policy, after the example of the birds, so that both work and honors were common, and people knew how to divide among themselves the obligations as well as the rewards and power, so that no one was left without reward, not free from labor. This was a most beautiful state of things. . .Then the lust after power came in, and people began claiming undue powers, and not relinquishing those they had."</blockquote>
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"Why do you {the rich} drive out of their inheritance people whose nature is the same as yours, claiming for yourselves alone the possession of all the land? The land was made to be common to all, the poor and the rich. Why do you, oh rich, claim for yourselves alone the right to the land?"</blockquote>
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"The world has been made for all, and a few of you rich try to keep it for yourselves. For not only the ownership of the land, but even the sky, the air, and the sea, a few rich people claim for themselves. . .Do the angels divide the space in heaven, as you do when you set up property marks on earth?"</blockquote>
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"When you give to the poor, you give not of your own, but simply return what is his, for you have usurped that which is common and has been given for the common use of all. The land belongs to all, not to the rich; and yet those who are deprived of its use are many more than those who enjoy it."</blockquote>
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"God our Lord willed that this land be the common possession of all and give its fruit to all. But greed distributed the right of possessions. Therefore, if you claim as your private property part of what was granted in common to all human beings and to all animals, it is only fair that you share some of this wealth with the poor, so that you will not deny nourishment to those who are also partakers of your right {by which you hold this land}."</blockquote>
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"Greed is the cause of our want. The birds have abundant natural food because they have received in common that which is necessary for their nourishment, and they do not know how to claim private ownership. By claiming the private, we lose the common."<br />
"Why do you consider things in the world as possessions {proprium}, when the world is common? Why do you consider the fruits of the land private when the land is common? Birds, who own nothing, lack nothing."</blockquote>
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"Nothing graces the Christian soul so much as mercy: mercy as shown chiefly towards the poor, that you may treat them as sharers in common with you in the produce of nature, which brings forth the fruit of the earth for use to all."</blockquote>
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"But this is not even in accord with nature, for nature has poured forth all things for all men for common use. God has ordered all things to be produced, so that there should be food in common to all, and that the earth should be the common possession of all. Nature, therefore, has produced a common right for all, but greed has made it a right for a few."</blockquote>
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Another great quote shared bu my friend is this one, penned by the great 6th-century Greek hymnographer St. Romanos the Melodist, also resonated with me:<br />
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"The rich man is exalted above the poor, he devours all his substance:<br />
The peasant toils, the landlord harvests; the one labours, the other is at ease."</blockquote>
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Thanks to Jared Baker from Summerville, South Carolina for his research that unearthed this work</div>
Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-41816729920363738472016-09-29T19:11:00.000+01:002016-09-29T19:11:50.126+01:00The Sheehy Effect - Why Pine Marten 'Rewilding' will allow Red Squirrels to Return to EnglandIt is one of my big ambitions to return red squirrels to all of the UK; non-native North American grey squirrels, introduced at the whim of some aristocratic thinking they look cute to his grounds, have edged out our native red squirrels to near extinction in England. But it has been noted by many naturalists that red squirrels are present in the same place pine martens exist. Pine martens were wiped out in England by gamekeepers to keep them from their shooting estates, allowing our landowning elite to shoot that other alien invader, the pheasant, bred in their millions still today.<br />
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It is rare for reds, pine martens and grey squirrels to co-exist, in fact the return of Pine Martens to central Ireland has spelt doom for the invasive greys and a leap in red squirrel numbers this has been coined the 'Sheehy Effect' after Wildwood's good friend Dr Emma Sheehy who has done so much of the Pine Marten Surveys that have confirmed this hypothesis. In fact Dr Emma Sheehy is working with Wildwood on more projects to assist her research into this effect.<br />
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This example highlights the need to get our ecology back in balance to stop invasive species, but also stop killing off our own species in the wonderfully termed ‘trophic cascade’ as is used by rewinders such as myself or George Monbiot. The scientific research and the conservation community have now been amassing evidence and the Vincent Wildlife Trust have already released pine martens to Wales.<br />
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I have been working up plans to restore pine martens and Red Squirrels throughout Southern England at appropriate sites and our plans were documented by the BBC on thier Inside Out programme this week.<br />
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<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-73975686799982949502016-08-17T13:28:00.000+01:002016-09-11T11:24:28.509+01:00What’s killing our wildlife?<div class="MsoNormal">
What’s killing our wildlife, is a question that occupies my mind a lot & getting to the bottom of the issue and addressing it is my lifes work. So it is my mission to understand why many people do not critically assess this and put the policies in place that address wildlife loss as efficiently as possible. In my career I have two issues with fellow conservationists and ‘greens’who have been getting it wrong for so long:</div>
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<li>Following the herd and not addressing the real needs, chiefly not addressing the issues of inefficient land use as the primary driver of biodiversity loss</li>
<li>Focusing on ineffective solutions that are counterproductive to biodiversity conservation, chief of which is subsides to landowners and not on fundamental solutions such as a Land Value Tax and taxes on environmental degradation.</li>
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One approach, to put some real numbers on the relative importance on the things that are killing our wildlife, is to look at all the threatened (and near threatened) wildlife and look at the most prevalent threats to their survival. A new study reported in Nature has just done that by Sean Maxwell & collaborators at the University of Queensland.<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/biodiversity-the-ravages-of-guns-nets-and-bulldozers-1.20381" target="_blank"> http://www.nature.com/news/biodiversity-the-ravages-of-guns-nets-and-bulldozers-1.20381</a></div>
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Obviously such research has many limitations and is just one way of looking at biodiversity loss. Firstly, biodiversity is not just some species numbers, it is a complex mix of biological life. Issues such as abundance, interdependence, complexity, endemism, ecological processes and inorganic biodiversity all have to be taken into account when assessing 'biodiversity'. The second is that we have little knowledge of many species and the data collected by the IUCN is far from comprehensive. The list of such limitations is long but we can use this as a rough guide to threats to wildlife across the globe.</div>
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If we look at the UK, the list here will change significantly as extractive industries are much smaller and most of the biodiversity being destroyed by the UK through such extractive industries is perpetrated abroad by the things we import.</div>
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In the UK agriculture especially livestock farming will be the greatest threat to UK biodiversity which is why the conservation movement is waking up to this and starting to challenge cultural norms, powerful vested interests and reassessing the impact of sheep farming against its economic value as the biggest win for wildlife at the least cost to the country. </div>
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Housing is another area where the UK will differ significantly from global trends as we have some of the smallest, densest, houses in the developed world. What we have is grossly inefficiently allocated making the Uk have probably the worst housing in developed world. I have blogged before about why the economic rules the Uk is using both harms wildlife and harms peoples chances of having a decent home: <a href="http://renegadeecologist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/where-is-brexit-nhs-money-is-going-to.html">http://renegadeecologist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/where-is-brexit-nhs-money-is-going-to.html</a><br />
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This is a legacy of our almost unique history of enclosure acts, stealing common land and forcing people off the land and into industrial working. Since the 'thatcher revolution' we have increase lending to land values while at the same time reducing house building further exacerbating the land monopoly. Land Value Tax would solve this issue very quickly and efficiently making us develop what land is already developed far more efficiently, increasing the living quality of all, and even return some land to agriculture and nature. Good quality planning can create housing that allows us to reduce environmental input and create spaces for nature and wildlife corridors getting a win-win for people and wildlife & LVT will help this process. <a href="http://renegadeecologist.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/will-land-value-tax-destroy-that-birdy.html" target="_blank">http://renegadeecologist.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/will-land-value-tax-destroy-that-birdy.html </a></div>
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"Land Value Tax is a rocket to put up the backsides of landowners & developers to make the most of what we have, in doing so we put all our human effort into building better housing on the land already developed, we will make farming and recreation ‘land efficient’ and thus create the space to rewild Britain and at the same have great housing & jobs aplenty." Peter Smith</blockquote>
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When formulating conservation policy, we must look at the activities we carry out against their economic and cultural benefit. In doing so we would find the big anomalies that are destroying British biodiversity are sheep farming, grouse shooting and golf courses.</div>
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The Woolly Maggots</h3>
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Sheep farming in the UK, my personal <i>bête noire</i>, an activity
that strips our land bare causing global warming, floods to towns and
catastrophic loss of wildlife. Yet in total the area of land affected is greater than
all our arable land put together, yet sheep farming only makes up one half of one percent, 0.5%, of all farming revenue. A colossal waste of land and one that is only possible by taxpayers giving huge subsidies to this otherwise uneconomic activity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>"Agricultural subsidies</b>: the mad idea that we have to pay taxes to give to landowners and then legally enforce those subsidies are used to destroy wildlife." Peter Smith</blockquote>
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George Monbiot talks about our sheepwrecked uplands:<br />
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Inglorious Basterds </h3>
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In the UK well over 1.3 million Hectares of land is devoted to grouse shooting (source British Association of Shooting and <i>'Conservation'</i>) a essentially worthless activity that burns and over grazes land, destroying biodiversity, causes flooding and a colossal release of carbon from its soils equivalent to 140,000 cars a year; Source: <a href="https://www.johnmuirtrust.org/assets/000/000/401/jmt_journal_aut_14-burning_issue_original.pdf?1434636101" target="_blank">John Muir Trust 'A Burning Issue</a>' </div>
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Not only is this activity very bad for wildlife to ensure enough grouse are living at high densities the 'managers' of these places have to kill all the predators and competing wildlife on these moors leading to the catastrophic loss of birds of prey, especially the recently reported Hen Harrier debacle or the death of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/eight-tagged-golden-eagles-disappear-scottish-highlands" target="_blank">8 golden eagles reported in Scotland</a>. Again this land use recieves huge subsidies and tax breaks a terrible waste of public effort. <a href="http://www.raptorsalive.co.uk/">http://www.raptorsalive.co.uk/</a><br />
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A Good Walk Spoilt</h3>
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Mark Twain put it best with his quote: "Golf is a good walk spoiled." But in England Golf Courses take up more than twice the area of land than all our houses put together (Source: <a href="http://www.golfclubmanagement.net/2014/01/two-percent-of-england-is-golf-courses/" target="_blank">Golf Cub Management</a>) yet thier carefully manicured greens are often very poor for wildlife. It is a testament to our times that some golf courses, especially 'links' courses do harbour rare wildlife but that is just relative because there's so little land for wildlife left in this country and only for a few grassland plants.</div>
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So to save wildlife we must start charging a Land Value Tax on all land to suppress such wasteful activities as Sheep farming, grouse shooting and playing golf. We do not need to ban them(apart from prosecuting those killing Hen Harriers and Golden Eagles and the like), but a land value tax, removal of subsidies and tax breaks will make those wishing to use land have to do so efficiently when compared to other activities that Britain needs, especially rewilding. Additionally taxes should be levied to cover damage to ecosystem services such as carbon release, drainage causing flooding and we should of course remove all subsidies and tax breaks associated with these activities. </div>
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Excuse the extreme profanity but I think George Carlin summed it up best for me:</div>
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Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-42699895771226688662016-08-16T23:17:00.003+01:002016-08-17T09:03:48.440+01:00Why Conservation NGOs Must Target the Financial Drivers of Ecological Destruction"Something vital was missing from the campaigns to alert the world to the way our natural habitats were being wrecked." Conservationists must relaunch their vision to target the financial drivers of ecological destruction:<br />
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So says Fred Harrison, the economist who predicted the financial collapse of 2008 in his blog commenting on the chapter I wrote in the new book 'Rent Unmasked'<br />
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Read his blog about it here:<br />
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<a href="http://www.sharetherents.org/saving-nature-missing-link/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter" target="_blank">Saving Nature: the Missing Link</a></h1>
<a href="http://www.sharetherents.org/saving-nature-missing-link/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter">http://www.sharetherents.org/saving-nature-missing-link/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter</a>Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-84166045746281624422016-08-13T17:02:00.003+01:002016-08-14T12:26:00.346+01:00Where is the BREXIT NHS money going? To landowners of course!The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, yesterday committed the UK government to providing subsidies for farmers worth £2.3 billion a year until 2020 and most of the press has hailed it as vital to the UK economy but is it?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Phillip Hammond, the enemy of real British farmers - the friend of landowners </b></span></div>
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The first thing to understand is where does all these subsidies go, whether its direct payments to farmers or in manipulating global food prices. The net effect of these subsidies is that they are capitalised into higher agricultural land prices and higher rents. <br />
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<b>"In many ways, nature conservation has become just another method of rent extraction by landowners who are trying to hide the fact that modern farmers’ fields are essentially deserts, devoid of wildlife, and the taxpayer must pay ‘rent’ if we want wild animals to occupy ‘their land’." Peter Smith</b></blockquote>
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Rent & high land values are unique in that it stifles our farming efficiency and robs the productive capacity of our farming industry, so for every pound in subsidy nearly all of it does not produce efficient farmers but gets siphoned of in higher rents for tenants and higher land values, virtually non of that helps farming.<br />
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Furthermore the high land values and high rents not only sap our ability to compete in the world marketplace but also represent the theft from the poor to the
rich, from the young to the old. It distorts farming, robbing those that wish to
make a living from the land and leaves land in the hands of a growing landlord
class. This mirrors what has happened in our housing market creating an army of
private renters destined to be poor the rest of their lives no matter how
successful they are in their careers, just as it creates an army of tenant farmers destined to be poor no matter how much subsidy we throw at farmers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is easily demonstrated when looking to rent land. Agricultural land is offered for rent at two prices. One price where the subsidy is claimed by the landowner and another collected by the tenant. The difference is exactly what that subsidy is minus a tiny amount to cover the hassle of doing the paperwork etc. and some smoothing issues.<br />
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“Agricultural subsidies tend to be capitalised into the purchase and the rental price of agricultural land. Because of higher incomes farmers are prepared to bid more to rent in or purchase extra land. But given that the overall supply of land is fixed, farmers will bid against each other up to the point where the entire increase in profitability is dissipated by the higher cost of land. Thus, it is landowners who are the main beneficiaries of farm support policies."<br />
Alan Matthews, CapReform.EU, More on who benefits from farm subsidies, October 14 2007: <a href="http://capreform.eu/more-on-who-benefits-from-farm-subsidies/">http://capreform.eu/more-on-who-benefits-from-farm-subsidies/</a></blockquote>
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So overall subsidies does not help real farming - just landowning and those involved in lending money to purchase land (banking).<br />
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<br />
So what does subsidy do to our land? Subsidies lower the margin at which it is profitable to farm land, therefore more poor quality land is now in agriculture, that means a lot less wildlife, and economically the land now farmed does not produce that much food. An example of this is our <i>bête noire</i> the humble sheep, these woolly maggots that strip our land bare causing global warming, floods to towns and catastrophic loss of wildlife are actually destroying more land than all our arable land put together, yet they only make up one half of one percent of all farming revenue.<br />
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Subsidies also have the effect of pushing up the value of
land in marginal cases which means it is much more expensive to buy. This is
a big problem for nature conservation charities like Wildwood Trust because it makes it more expensive to acquire land for nature and to promote the rewilding of land across
Britain. In fact any subsidy, not just farming subsidies, such as tax breaks to
landowners of which there are many kinds, acts as a barrier, preventing the establishment
of nature reserves or the rewilding of natural area. In my 20 years as a conservationists the cost of land for nature reserves has risen about 23 times or an inflation rate of 2300% over that time.<br />
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<b>"Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title."</b></div>
<b></b><br />
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<b><b>John Stuart Mill </b></b></div>
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</b></blockquote>
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<b>"The widow is gathering nettles for her children's dinner;'a perfumed Seigneur, delicately lounging in the Oeil de Boeuf hath an alchemy whereby he will extract from her every third nettle—and call it rent. "</b></blockquote>
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<b style="text-align: center;">Carlyle.</b></div>
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"<b>Now what had the landowner done for the community; what enterprise had he shown; what service had he rendered; what capital had he risked in order that he should gain this enormous multiplication of the value of his property! I will tell you in one word what he had done. Can you guess it! Nothing."</b></blockquote>
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<b style="text-align: center;">Winston Churchill</b></div>
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This inflation rate would shame any banana republic, but it is a direct result of the hard work of charities, generosity of donors and government grants yet it is utterly wasted by rewarding landowners for doing nothing but own land.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>"A Rewilded Britain is a </b><span style="text-align: start;"><b>lost </b></span><b>dream, just as an affordable home is a lost dream for so many young couples today." Peter Smith</b></blockquote>
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Because land is so expensive we cannot buy it, just as young people cannot afford to buy a home today. This means nature conservation has had to become renters just like most of the country's would be home buyers. In many ways nature conservation has become just another method of rent extraction by landowners who are trying to hide the fact that modern farmers’ fields are essentially deserts, devoid of wildlife, and the taxpayer must pay ‘rent’ if we want wild animals to occupy ‘their land’. So just as we have silly schemes like funding for lending to banks and 'help to buy' or a outrageous housing benefit system, so taxpayers and charities are now paying off landowners to protect the bit of nature on thier land. That is a yearly payment that is cruelly counterproductive, making the vision of a Rewilded Britain an unobtainable dream, just as an affordable home is a lost dream for so many young couples today.</div>
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Subsidies and associated tax breaks are the biggest obstacle
to recreating wild habitats in Britain and it is very sad that the government
has promised the lion’s share of yesterday's post BREXIT cash to ensure landowners don’t lose
out in the future and that nature will suffer and remember that every subsidy,
every hand-out, every tax break received by land represents not just a nail in
the coffin of British wildlife, but also theft from those that have paid the
money through taxation and also what that money could have been spent on such as the
promise to fund the NHS. Many credit the NHS promise by the leave campaign as the key issue that swayed voters
into pulling us out of the European Union.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Subsidies are just one part of the equation and if we are to
create an agricultural system that rewards the hard work of 'real' farmers, uses the land efficiently and leaves a space for nature for future generations then the
only policy we can follow is to institute a land value tax for all land in the
UK. On top of this we need a taxation system based on the environmental damage
that fertilisers pesticides and other land uses create. <o:p></o:p></div>
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</div>
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If we are to have a subsidy system then that subsidy system must
be based on rewarding those that truly work the land, those with the knowledge and
skill that can direct what we do and to create an economic topology which
favours the most efficient of land management practices. Only then can Britain farm to a world-class standard, create the jobs our countryside so desperately needs and leave a living wildlife legacy to future generations.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If we do not ween ourselves off subsidies then our landowners and bankers can only get ever richer, while real jobs are lost, wages are driven down and our environment is destroyed.</div>
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Much of the economic concepts above where first described by the great economist David Ricardo - in his Ricardo's law of rent. This basic and irrefutable law must be at the heart of all government policy making and later this month I will be submitting my suggestions based on this to the Governments consultation on Future Environmental Policy after BREXIT.</div>
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To Understand Ricardo's Law then I suggest you read Ricardo's Law: House Prices and the Great Tax Clawback Scam by Fred Harrison: Available on Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ricardos-Law-House-Prices-Clawback/dp/0856832413">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ricardos-Law-House-Prices-Clawback/dp/0856832413</a></div>
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And watch this video: </div>
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<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-22280526706668814682016-08-04T21:51:00.000+01:002016-08-10T18:55:36.413+01:00Rent - Umansked: A new book that could save the planet....I have had my first contribution to a book published, co-authored with 12 leading Professors from around the world, the book focuses on economic solutions to social and environmental problems.<br />
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<br />
<br />
The book comprises of essays in honour of Professor Mason Gaffney, who has for years researched and published the most insightful work in to the economic concepts that can solve our social and environmental problems. Professor Gaffney is a personal hero of mine I am am deeply honored to be chosen by the Schalkenbach Foundation to honor Mason in this way.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“An inveterate optimist [who] makes an excellent case that, by applying the Henry George principle, we can reduce inequality, and raise ample public revenues to be directed at any one of a multitude of society’s ills”.
Joseph Stiglitz (University Professor at Columbia University, recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics) </blockquote>
<br />
Mason Gaffney Describing how to solve the water crisis in California:
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<br />
Rent Unmasked explores the new economic paradigm that policy-makers need to solve global problems in the post-2008 era. With conventional economic theories discredited, the new model must equip governments with tools to re-stabilise societies in a dangerous world. Rent Unmasked explains why one paradigm only qualifies to serve this purpose: the dynamic model that reinstates time and space in economic theorising.<br />
<br />
<br />
The Flat Earth economics of the neo-classical school is analysed by the 13 contributors to this volume, which honours the seminal role played by Mason Gaffney, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of California (Riverside), in exposing the way in which classical economics was debased to serve rent-seeking interests.<br />
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<br />
The authors are drawn from the legal and property professions and from universities around the world. They evaluate the key contributions from Mason Gaffney, the Ultimate Heterodox economist, and they apply the new insights to current challenges. The issues confronted in Rent Unmasked range from corporate tax evasion to the rise of irrational forces within democratic societies; the housing crisis to the fractured politics of the Eurozone; the misdemeanours in the banking sector to the way in which financial policies must be framed if economics is to be harmonised with ethics. The social science branded as “dismal” because of the ideological prejudices of past exponents is shown to be empowering for problem-solvers in the 21st century.<br />
<br />
Buy your copy Here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.shepheard-walwyn.co.uk/product/rent-unmasked/">http://www.shepheard-walwyn.co.uk/product/rent-unmasked/</a><br />
<br />
Or on Amazon:<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rent-Unmasked-Global-Economy-Sustainable/dp/0856835110">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rent-Unmasked-Global-Economy-Sustainable/dp/0856835110</a><br />
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<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-17242930315263856632016-07-30T11:21:00.005+01:002016-07-30T11:21:51.196+01:00Why are Hedgehogs disappearing from the British Countryside A short radio interview where I talk about the plight of the hedgehog and why they are disappearing from the British countryside, broadcast on BBC radio.<br />
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The real issue why our hedgehog population is crashing is a simple food pyramid whereby intensive agriculture and pesticide use has killed of the slugs, worms and snails hedgehogs eat.<br />
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The efficient solution as ever is to levy a land value tax and tax pesticide use relative to its effects(externalities). This will steer farming to producing food in a way that will allow wildlife to thrive.<br />
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Why are Hedgehogs disappearing from the British Countryside:<br />
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<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-38071250084968386352016-07-30T11:09:00.000+01:002016-07-30T11:09:46.804+01:00The Wild Horses that are Rewilding Britain This short BBC documentary follow the Wild Konik Ponies that are spreading across the UK helping to Rewild Britain.<br />
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It has been great fun learning the art of the cowboy and having our work documented for all to see.<br />
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This is small but vital programme cutting costs of nature reserve management. But it also highlights a fundamental problem in nature conservation. Because so little land is left to wildlife we have to intensively manage small nature reserves for specific species. The wild horses would do a much better job if the nature reserves where bigger and where connected.<br />
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Once again we see that the real solution to rewilding is land availability and to make land available we must stop subsidising land use and remove associated tax breaks. But the best solution is to Levy a Land Value Tax on land.<br />
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<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-29583489479476792682016-07-07T13:57:00.001+01:002016-07-07T13:57:11.476+01:00Tony Blair – His two great crimes against HumanityWatching the sickening well-manicured war criminal & sociopath Tony Blair defend his terrible crime of waging aggressive war has made me both sick and full of hate for him today.<br />
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Looking into his eyes you saw the terror that his careful ego construct was cracking while he defended the indefensible. But the story missed by most commentators is what are the underlining forces that pushes groups of politicians, who profess they are doing good, to want to perpetrate such terrible crimes. It is my belief that politicians are not policy makers but policy takers, they are people who instinctively know how to adopt the positions that will satisfy their most powerful supporters to ensure their careers progress and they can retire to wealth and comfort.<br />
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This is the main reasons why elites will do anything to unseat moderate conviction politicians whether that is Jeremy Corbyn, Mohammad Mosaddegh or Salvador Allende.<br />
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Find out more about <b>Mohammad Mosaddegh</b> who threatened the UK and USA’s control of Iran’s oil by nationalising it: <a href="https://youtu.be/Os9ggGN-R-E">https://youtu.be/Os9ggGN-R-E</a><br />
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<b>Salvador Allende</b> threatening the USA’s control of its strategically important copper mines <a href="https://youtu.be/X6kkaIfy9wU">https://youtu.be/X6kkaIfy9wU</a><br />
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Tony Blair is guilty of two big ‘crimes’; one great crime against the people of this world & one great economic crime against the people of Britain…<br />
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<h2>
The Great War Crime: </h2>
Firstly, the war crime of aggressive war making, which he still is in utter denial. The Chilcot report has documented how he lied to us all along, we knew this but had no proof. We had to suffer watching the disaster unfold, with bush and Blair making it worse and worse by incompetence and cover-up as the real objective on capturing the oil wealth of Iraq enforced the terrible decisions that saw Iraq descend into anarchy and conflict.<br />
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But most commentators have ignored how a natural resource at the root of this disaster. The profits to be made by the elites of Europe and America from mostly oil but many other natural resources mean that there is always a ‘war party’ ready to give their support to politicians looking to invade. Cold heartless minds of diplomats look to solve economic problems and establish power by stealing the wealth of others.<br />
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The many businesses who donate and fund (even just provide friendship) to politicians can benefit hugely by the calamity of war and getting their hands on oil. We have seen this recently in Iraq and in Libya but this has gone on for centuries. The more chaos and human misery created, the more internal factions fight and terrorise each other means there is no coherent internal state to defend their resources from our rapacious oil companies and dominion of powerful nations.<br />
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Many people in those countries see the duplicity of the installed puppet politicians and fight either for national sovereignty or get their own hands on the huge wealth of the natural resources being fought over.<br />
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But what is the solution to natural resource disasters and war? How can we keep the greedy hands of interfering states, bankers, corporations and politicians from accessing the riches of our natural world & sowing the seeds of unimaginable barbarity and anarchy?<br />
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This web of murderous self-interest is at the root of many such conflicts and it is easy to get side tracked by the dishonesty and duplicity of all the states and groups indulging in this.<br />
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My heart is broken by what has befallen the Iraqi people and I have wept for the victims. But my anger must really be reserved for the stupidity of all of us at preventing war. The anti-war movement needs a concrete objective, a remedy, that will remove the causes of warfare such as environmental destruction, loss of lively hood and remove the incentive of those that seek to profit from war. Only a Land Value Tax as a policy objective can fulfil these objectives so why do anti-war, anti-poverty & environmental campaigners not band together to promote this as a policy?<br />
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Land Value Tax is the solution to both the macro and micro issues in preventing war. This goes for land (a land Value tax), water use (abstraction tax), carbon tax etc and other natural resources & 'green' taxes. This solves scarcity but also suppresses the use of the fossil fuels removing the incentive for war and controlling our insatiable thirst to exploit those natural resources.<br />
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This solution will suppress those seeking to push our foreign policy to war by removing the perverse incentive to fight over natural resources rents as they will be impossible to monopolise by one group, country or corporation under such as system.<br />
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So what the Iraqi people really need is a Land Value Tax & Nationalisation of oil to stop people internally or externally killing each other to acquire the riches that ownership brings.<br />
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My thoughts on war:<br />
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Fred Harrison's thoughts on war:<br />
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<h2>
<span style="font-size: large;">The great economic crime against the people of Britain…</span></h2>
The other great Crime Tony Blair was architect to was the impoverishment of the people of Britain. This destroyed our productive industries, brought huge social divides and even created the climate of fear of immigration that saw us vote for BREXIT.<br />
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What was this crime, it was to continue the policies that saw the house price bubble grow ever bigger. Taxing wages and trade can never provide the income of government to tackle poverty. As rents and mortgages capture the income of the poor and funnel it up to landowners and banks, destroying jobs, reducing wages and robbing our country of the ability to trade economically with the rest of the world. Only our financial sector prospered because we financed other rent seekers around the world to rape our planet and exploit the labour of other countries.<br />
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This crime is best expressed by my friend, the author and investigative reporter, Fred Harrison.<br />
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<h2>
Tony Blair’s Dereliction of Duty to the People of Britain </h2>
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1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In 1997, Tony Blair was elected Britain’s Prime Minister. He claimed to be heading a government that would define a Third Way in politics, after abandoning the socialist economic agenda of nationalising the means of production. This meant his government needed new tools to control the boom/bust business cycle that periodically ruptures the capitalist economy.<br /><br />2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When they moved into Downing Street and HM Treasury, I wrote to Mr Blair and his four key colleagues to explain that a house price bubble, driven by speculation in the land market, would peak in 2007. They had 10 years in which to adopt the policies that could prevent the housing market from getting out of control. I provided the detailed analysis in The Chaos Makers (1997), explaining how to realign tax policy to secure and sustain full employment. At the time, 20% of UK households had nobody in employment. I submitted further alerts to the British government, and reaffirmed the risks to the UK and the global economy in Boom Bust: house prices, banking and the depression of 2010 (2005). <br /><br />3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>No preventative action was taken. Blair resigned in June 2007. UK house prices peaked five months later, precipitating the worst depression since the 1930s. <br /><br />4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Following his departure from Downing Street, Blair amassed a portfolio of London residential properties worth many millions of pounds. Many other families had their homes repossessed. Many others could not afford to buy homes for their families.<br /><br />5.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Tony Blair, in his memoir A Journey (2010), insists that he was responsible for his government's economic policies. Therefore, he must accept personal responsibility for the land speculation that triggered the financial crisis of 2008 (when banks lost faith in the value of the sub-prime mortgages which they had created). The documentation on Blair’s failure is provided in my book 2010: The Inquest (2010).<br /><br />6.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Britain is now being steered towards the next land-led property boom/bust. <br /><br />7.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On stepping down as Prime Minister, Blair was appointed by the United Nations as its envoy to help secure peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This role required insight into the significance of land in the life of a population. Blair had demonstrated a wilful disregard of this aspect of British life. He is not qualified to resolve the land question that divides Israeli from the people of Palestine.<br /><br />8.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I herewith pronounce that Tony Blair, in view of his dereliction of duty towards the people of Britain, does not deserve the respect of a statesman, and that he is not qualified to act on behalf of the UN and the community of nations. <br /> </blockquote>
Fred Harrison<br />
September 1, 2013<br />
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Learn more about Fred’s work at <a href="http://www.sharetherents.org/">www.sharetherents.org</a> or his you tube channel Geophilos <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/geophilos">https://www.youtube.com/user/geophilos</a><br />
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Treason Part 1:<br />
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<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-16020198784382974702016-06-25T16:20:00.003+01:002017-01-05T09:04:26.939+00:00BREXIT: Why Land Value Tax can kill Fascists & Save the Planet….<div class="MsoNormal">
Or….. J'accuse....! Why the Guardian columnists have created BREXIT and the rise of the new fascists of the west & the
calamity of environmental destruction…..<o:p></o:p></div>
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Brexit has caused outrage among the established commentators
of the Gruaniad today and they are all missing the point and only have
themselves to blame. A bold and unfair accusation, but hear me out & I shall explain why I accuse some of the best educated and most thoughtful social commentators on politics and the environment. I voted Remain but I also have serious reservations about Europe
and now want the Left, Liberal and caring Conservatives to own up to their mistakes
and fix them fast. If we do not the ugly rise of fascism and environmental
collapse is a real possibility.<br />
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In this blog I liken my message to the Guardian columnists
like the pleas of Tolstoy to Tsarist Russia, Michael Flürscheim to the German
Imperium or Churchill and Lloyd-George to the British Empire. Only a Land Value Tax can save us from the populous turning to extremism or the elites turning to
conflict and war.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After reading the Guardian Columns by Damian Carrington
& Poly Toynbee today I am writing this blog to say I accuse! I accuse you
both of being at the centre of why this country voted for Brexit and that your ill-informed
opinions are creating the very thing you campaign against, the rise of the far
right, growing social inequality, environmental destruction & the
propensity to wage war on the world for resources and power.<o:p></o:p></div>
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UK's out vote is a 'red alert' for the environment, Damian
Carrington:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2016/jun/24/uks-out-vote-is-a-red-alert-for-the-environment?CMP=share_btn_tw">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2016/jun/24/uks-out-vote-is-a-red-alert-for-the-environment?CMP=share_btn_tw</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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Dismal, lifeless, spineless – Jeremy Corbyn let us down
again, Polly Toynbee:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/25/jeremy-corbyn-referedum-campaign">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/25/jeremy-corbyn-referedum-campaign</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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The problem with leaders, whether it is a politician our guardian
columnist is they want be seen to be a ‘leader’ and be responsible for solutions,
enacted by rule & law, when what we really need to do is implant policies
that create the incentives, the very legal and economic topology, for everyone
to be rewarded for being a caring neighbour, hardworking risk taker and steward
of our natural heritage. Actions that destroy the environment, rob people of
jobs and stop us looking after others should be not rewarded economically but
penalised.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But our legal system and culture cannot change the fact that
we, under our current economic rules, are disadvantaged when we do charitable work,
our wages are cut when we welcome asylum seekers and immigrants, and can become
instant millionaire if we get a right to exploit natural resources or planning permission
to build a house on land we own. The
incentives are all wrong and none of the political establishment are ready to tackle
the vested interests that are benefiting from this system or acknowledge the
poor who are suffering because of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If I discuss this with my working class family members they
are outraged because they too see me as a Guardian reading middle class lefty.
To them the Guardian readers are the very manifestation of hypocrisy and privilege,
wanting lower wages for their plumbers and nannies, while at the same time
wanting their houses to rise in value or the speculative gains from in Buy to
let property?<o:p></o:p></div>
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There silly solutions of taxing workers to provide social
services to counteract the effects of immigration are treated with scepticism by the working classes and rightly so. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As best explained by Leo Tolstoy, perhaps even a more fervent
exponent of Land Value Tax than myself:<o:p></o:p></div>
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“I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry
me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to
ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.”<br />
Writings on Civil Disobedience
and Nonviolence (1886)</blockquote>
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Tolstoy understood that land value tax had the solution to
the rising tensions in pre-revolutionary Russian and pleaded with the nobility
and the Tsar’s chief advisors to implement this policy in a letter to Prince L.
D. Urusov he pleaded:<o:p></o:p></div>
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“If the new Tsar [Nicholas II] would ask me what I would
advise him to do, I would say to him: use your autocratic power to abolish the
land property in Russia and to introduce the Land Value Tax system; and then
give up your power and [grant] the people a liberal constitution.”</blockquote>
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Tolstoy said in another letter which foretold the calamity of
revolution and the rise of extremists:<o:p></o:p></div>
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“People do not argue with the teachings of Henry George,
they simply do not know it. ... He who becomes acquainted with it cannot but
agree.”</blockquote>
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“Of all indispensable alterations of the forms of social
life there is in the life of the world one which is most ripe. ... The method
of solving the land problem has been elaborated by Henry George to a degree of
perfection that under the existing state organisation and compulsory taxation,
it is impossible to invent any better, more just, practical and peaceful
solution.”</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Quite difficult matters can be explained even to a
slow-witted man, if only he has not already adopted a wrong opinion about them;
but the simplest things cannot be made clear even to a very intelligent man if
he is firmly persuaded that he already knows, and knows indubitably, the truth
of the matter under consideration.”</blockquote>
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“The only thing now that would pacify the people now is the
introduction of the Land Value Taxation system of Henry George. The land is
common to all; all have the same right to it. Solving the land question means
the solving of all social questions.... Possession of land by people who do not
use it is immoral — just like the possession of slaves.”</blockquote>
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Yes the working classes do not want handouts, they do not
want welfare, what they want is that their labour is valued and the cost of
living is affordable. This is the fundamental message we are getting from Brexit
campaigners across Europe and the rise of Donald Trump in the states. But because our political & social leadership has
failed us so badly, the frightened working classes are running into the arms of
demagogues like Trump, Farage, Le Pen and Geert Wilders, just as they ran into
the clutches of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini when social tensions rose
to fever pitch when wages stagnated and a financial system based on banking/high land
prices collapsed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So to, our environment and wildlife do not want endless
government grants funding cushy jobs or grants to pay for ‘signs or wildlife
art installations. What our wildlife and environment need more than any European
Habitats Directive, Water Frameworks Directive, Carbon Trading scheme or a host
of other bureaucratic nonsense is to be not abused. What our wildlife and environment needs is to
have their habitats left alone, to stop polluting the land and air? What our
environment needs is a way for us to all stop benefiting from its abuse. </div>
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The
only logical way to do this is to make charges and put taxes on the use and
abuse of land and the natural environment, this will do more than any
complicated directive or law as we will not incentivise people to circumvent these
policies and laws, it will push everyone into finding new ways to increase the efficiency
of land use, leave land for nature, it will incentivise business and people to
pollute less and find new ways to protect the environment as they will financially
benefit from doing so.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our political establishment – both left and right tell us of
the benefits of immigration, rejoice in economic growth and welcome the ever
increasing costs of housing. Yet they all rob the poor and funnel money into
the pockets of the wealthy and privileged irrespective of their political affiliations.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thankfully the solution to what caused people to vote for
leaving Europe and rejecting immigration is the same solution to the problems
of social inclusion, jobs, economic success & environmental protection is
all the same: LAND VALUE TAX!<o:p></o:p></div>
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The tax shift to reclaim economic rents as our tax base,
taking taxes off of those who work and aspire to work will fulfil both the
stated objectives of all our main political parties, but they are too afraid of
the vested interests who are farming our economy of the economic rent of
monopoly and the killings to be made destroying our environment and misusing
land.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To enhance social inclusion Land Value Taxes will
drastically reduce housing and welfare costs. This will allow us to take taxes off productive
businesses and jobs causing an explosion in the value of labour, increasing
both jobs & wages. This positive cycle will decrease the costs of housing,
welfare, crime and the distress shown when we welcome asylum seekers and immigrants
to our island home.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The swivel eyed loons lead by George Galloway, Nigel Farage
and Boris Johnson have captured the fundamental truth that no one wishes to
mention, immigration really does push down wages for the poorest, but what is
more it forces up living costs mostly through housing. Letting these demagogues
capture public support is an extreme betrayal of our established politics. The
stupidity and lazy intellectual opinions of our elites could lead us to the calamity of a rise of fascism and an acceleration of environmental collapse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The centre ground are quick to tell us immigration does improve
our economy & I agree it does, but who receives the benefits of that
economic growth. The recipients of this free handout are landowners, landlords
and those that employ people for less wages.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So if you are a progressive socially minded person who
welcomes helping others and protecting our environment you better start
advocating Land Value Taxes & the elites need to own up to their selfish motivation
protecting their privilege….<o:p></o:p></div>
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Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-59648323825131561272016-06-04T17:41:00.000+01:002016-06-05T10:09:26.368+01:00#voterbeaver – a plague on both Britain & Europe#voterbeaver – a plague on both Britain & Europe<br />
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An amusing internet meme is trending on Twitter after a vandalised sign was rewritten to spell ‘Vote Beaver’ instead of ‘Vote Leave’. This caused those of us in the rewilding movement a great deal of fun and I myself have been guilty of spreading this meme.<br />
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But the European argument is much more serious and the vote later this month could spell doom for the humble British beaver. The powers that be across the land in nature conservation are readying documents to give the free beavers of Britain full legal protection, this is vital if their number is to multiply and spread, breathing life back into our rivers, protecting us from flooding and delivering us from the blight of poisoned rivers, poisoned by agricultural pollution. Legally protected beavers will restore desiccated and destroyed wetlands, drained and scalped into a wildlife deserts by our stupid laws, taxation systems and subsidies to landowners.<br />
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Europe has given us some very good legislation, especially the habitats directive which has done more to protect wildlife in Britain than any legislation devised by our timid Houses of Parliament. The benefits of Europe to people can be easily seen in legislation to protect workers’ rights and our environment.<br />
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But at the heart of Europe lies the deep evil and that evil is based around five issues:<br />
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<li>A <b>taxation system</b> based on taxing the productive economy through higher taxes on incomes and high taxes on trade through a value-added tax. This tax system, with its complications, is how the poor are made poorer. This tax system allows those with land and ownership of natural resources to exploit them inefficiently. Landowners and rentiers of all kinds can sit and milk the productive hard-working people of Europe and the profits to be gained from destroying our natural environment.</li>
<li>A <b>monetary system</b> that allows private banks to create money as debt which in turn leads to the creation of money to fund property speculation and inefficient use of natural resources</li>
<li><b>Land subsidies</b>, mostly in the form of agricultural subsidies which are directly responsible for the destruction of vast swathes of our wild land. Making landowners push into production the most marginal of land. This policy has seen the destruction of wildlife across Europe as we have driven our wild areas to extinction. Britain has been uniquely bad in this respect compared to our continental cousins and Brexit does not promise a reprieve.</li>
<li><b>Stupid laws</b>, these are often not the laws that are ridiculed in our tabloid press, not the bendy bananas! but the laws that really do subvert society and make all of our lives worse. Examples of these silly laws that introduce things like palm oil as a biofuel where we destroy the last equatorial forests and the homes of orang-utans in a perverted environmental law aimed at reducing fossil fuel use, when it does nothing of the sort. Legislation on carbon trading is again a grotesque perversion in using a so-called environmental law to create a system that will allow the European corporate elites to suck the wealth out of the poor when achieving nothing to combat global warming and reducing harmful polluting emissions.</li>
<li><b>Immigration:</b> immigration and the free movement of people is a noble gesture but in the UK without adequate housing the perversity of immigration forces the wages of the poorest people down and their living costs up through high rents and house prices. The rich benefit and the poor suffer but none in our timid labour party will admit that and put in place the changes needed that will allow us to receive the benefits of immigration. I believe it is a noble goal to integrate the people of this world, but if we are to achieve it we need an economic system that allows the increased economic activity of our multicultural world not to rob the poorest and the hardest working and that can only be achieved by taking away the benefits to the elites through higher rents for land and other forms of monopoly and having a taxation system that does not penalised workers but gives them back the benefits of sharing our land with people from the rest of Europe and the world. This can only be achieved through a tax shift to land value taxes, providing council housing to all in need and taxing away other monopolies and redistribute such taxes equally to all, so everyone can share and enjoy the benefits of welcoming new people to our country.</li>
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So my real problem is I feel like Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, I am forced to say a “plague on both your houses”. Our choice in the forthcoming referendum on the membership of the European Union is a Hobson’s choice.<br />
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What do we have to vote for, a Europe whose rules and regulations enforce an economic system that will systematically rob the poor and our environment? But has thrown us some scraps of legislation that protect the poorest and environment better than what our so-called parliament has ever been able to give us.<br />
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Independence could give us the chance to reclaim our government and deliver economic and environmental justice to bring in land value taxes and pollution taxes and to get rid of the harmful taxes that are levied upon us and thus stimulate a revolution for the poor and our environment. Such a change would see Britain wild again, the increased wealth of our poor letting them enjoy the growing natural resources that will reclaim our land and banish the dead hand of the rent seekers and landowners whose heinous grip blights our lives.<br />
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But independence will be unlikely to give us that and a dangerous group of brexit campaigners are more likely to enact legislation that will damage our economy and our ecology and lead us on a path to poverty and environmental destruction.<br />
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When we look at the benefits of European membership in legislation and political system, it has attempted to give us laws that have protected the poor and have kept us on the road to peace and prosperity, but ultimately it has been subverted so that it has given the benefits to a corporate, banking and landowning European elite.<br />
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I want to have a referendum that lets me vote to protect the weakest, to give assistance to the most vulnerable, to educate, to protect people in need and to create a vibrant economy that will provide the resources to achieve this. I want to vote to rewild Europe and to rewild Britain with 40% of our land surface given to wildlife and not to be destroyed by inefficient farming or landowners shaving the land bare so they can shoot game birds or indulge other passions of dominion. But those in both the Leave and Remain camps will not give me that opportunity.<br />
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So I am torn on which way to vote this month, to risk the possible loss of legal protection for the wonderful beavers of Britain, and enable a mad bunch of misguided racists, proto-fascists and right-wingers to gain control of our Government. Or to continue to tie our hands to an economic system that enshrines poverty and environmental loss whatever laws are passed to protect it.<br />
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So what advice do I have to give to the voters of the UK? To spoil my ballot by having VOTE BEAVER scrawled across it or to choose between the lesser of the two evils?<br />
<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-89230689937482561492016-05-20T11:46:00.002+01:002016-05-20T11:46:13.491+01:00Ghosts of the Forest... Rewilding BritianWildwood's animals take centre stage in this amazing film about the rewilding of Britain, featuring TV's Ben Fogle, Simon King and yours truly...
A beautifully filmed short Documentary film shot at Wildwood Trust among other places Enjoy.<br />
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Producer: Luke Sutton, D.O.P Vatalii Ciobanu, Camera Op. Jack Cuckson, Edited by Jessica Harms. Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6553359733942621830.post-36995630893687698922016-05-01T22:54:00.000+01:002019-10-25T21:12:17.462+01:00What is the Vision that inspires Ellie Harrison? Rewilding!Well I was truly humbled by the great endorsement I got from BBC Countryfile's presenter Ellie Harrison.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">"I have got to travel all over the country to see close up many conservation projects…. One that stands out for me was spending time with Peter Smith who runs Wildwood in Kent, a man of extraordinary knowledge and passion and someone who has a vision and a dream of how wildlife can be in this country….." Ellie Harrison BBC Countryfile 2016</span></blockquote>
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But what is the vision that inspired Ellie - it's a Vision of rewilding, the ecological processes and the economic processes of how it can be achieved. In a world that can enjoy prosperity and jobs with wealth for all and the protection of wildlife and natural resources through rent sharing and earth sharing - shifting our taxes from wages and onto natural resources and land misuse.<br />
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Watch a recent lecture on the subject here:<br />
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and here:<br />
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<br />Peter Smith - Rewilding http://www.blogger.com/profile/14052159513271602918noreply@blogger.com0