Peter Smith

  The Beaver's Call: How Grey Owl Ignited the Attenboroughs' Lifelong Mission In the annals of conservation, certain moments of inspiration shine like beacons. One such moment occurred in the 1930s, when two young boys from Leicester, David and Richard Attenborough, were taken by their father to a public lecture. The speaker, a tall, striking figure in full buckskins, was the conservationist known as Grey Owl. This single evening would weave a thread that connects a Canadian wilderness, the birth of British broadcasting, and the modern rewilding movement in the UK. The Enchantment in Leicester Grey Owl, born Archibald Belaney in England, had reinvented himself as a First Nations advocate and had become a global sensation. His message was urgent and new: that the beaver, then trapped to the brink of extinction for its fur, was not merely an animal but the very "engineer of the wilderness." He didn't just describe beavers; he described their function. He spoke of ho...

Scotland ’s recent announcement to raise over £100 million through private investment while abandoning grants for nature restoration projects , as reported by The Guardian , may at first glance seem a bold and progressive step towards environmental conservation. In reality, it risks becoming yet another mechanism to enrich the affluent while burdening future generations with insurmountable costs. Many conservationists rightly point to the destruction wrought by commercial forestry—stripping valuable habitats such as peat bogs , releasing vast amounts of CO₂ from our soils into the atmosphere, and accelerating climate change—as the main culprit. These are indeed symptoms of the perverse incentives embedded within our current economy and regulatory landscape. But the issue runs far deeper than mismanaged forestry or carbon leakage. At its core, this policy is a textbook case of rent-seeking . It invites speculative finance—much of it from American institutions —to carve up our natural ...

Land Campiagner Andy Whiteman has unveiled the true extent of the land market madness in Scotland in his latest blog - essential reading here: https://andywightman.scot/2025/09/the-12-million-farm-sale-and-the-14-million-lease I responded to Andy thus: Andy, hope you're well. Another incisive piece that perfectly captures the surreal financialisation of Scotland's land. Your analysis of the £12m sale and £14m leaseback is the clearest case study yet of a phenomenon I've witnessed firsthand while trying to acquire land for genuine conservation: the creation of a natural capital speculative bubble. My experience with the Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) and Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) markets confirms that this isn't just land trading; it's a fundamental re-engineering of land as a financial instrument. Upland estates are no longer valued for their agricultural, tax dodging or 'sporting' potential, but as factories for producing environmental commodities. The Financ...

The accelerating loss of wildlife is not being halted by market–oriented conservation schemes such as Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) and carbon offset markets. Though these policy tools are promoted as innovative means to finance restoration and conservation, emerging evidence suggests they are deeply inefficient, misaligned, and susceptible to capture by powerful actors. But as we explore the solutions to all these failures, there is a much simpler way: transfer taxes to land. This would concentrate development, reward high-quality housing, make wildlife conservation far cheaper, and finally put a true cost on the destruction of habitats and species. What the Evidence Shows 1. Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) in England: Gaps, Shortfalls, and Loopholes BNG was introduced in England in 2024 to require developers to deliver at least a 10% net gain in biodiversity when harming habitats via building or infrastructure projects. But several analyses show serious under-delivery. Shortfall of hab...

The desire to reap unearned gains from the uplift in the value of monopoly assets — whether Bitcoin, intellectual property, gold, or most profoundly, land — lies at the heart of economic dysfunction. This pursuit of rent, not productive wealth, fuels cycles of greed that generate poverty, inequality, and instability. As Mason Gaffney argued in The Corruption of Economics (1994), speculative rent-seeking systematically diverts capital away from productive enterprise. Fred Harrison, in works such as Boom Bust (2005) and Ricardo’s Law (2006), has shown how this process drives property booms and busts with mechanical regularity, each cycle leaving widespread economic wreckage in its wake. We are told a reassuring story: that investment in assets — stocks, pensions, or property — underpins prosperity and security. Yet this narrative conceals the truth. Much of what passes as “investment” is in fact malinvestment: wealth funnelled into speculative bets on monopoly rents rather than innova...