Peter Smith

I recently contributed to a Government Consultation on Biodiversity Offsetting. This scheme aims to replace complex wildlife protection legislation with a scheme to allow developers to destroy wildlife on their development and paying for that 'biodiversity' to be created elseware. On the surface this is actually a good idea and could enhance the overall biodiversity of the UK. BUT! This is not what will happen, it is in fact just a massive scam (just like the Carbon Offsetting Scheme) to funnel ever more profits into the pockets of landowners and bankers. As you un-peel the onion of the economics of wildlife destruction we can get to the root problem. That destroying wildlife is very profitable as the profits go mostly untaxed into the hands of the lucky few who get permission to destroy Biodiversity & own the land. If we just taxed wildlife/land destruction (shifting the taxes off  income tax and VAT so it would have no negative impact on the economy) we could square t...

The green agenda has been hijacked, reveals Fred Harrison. To inflate corporate profits, the last of the commons (oceans and heaven) are being privatised in a financial scam that will create the Land Barons of the 21st century. Planet Earth is being converted into a Temple of Doom. It will take a new social contract with nature to prevent the looming ecological disaster.  

The High Court in the UK  has ruled in favour of redistributing some fishing rights from big producers to small-scale fishermen, a small victory for the 'little Guy' but this poses the Question:  Who owns the fish in the sea? There is a more fundamental issue at stake in the legal battles surrounding fishing subsidies & quota allocation and that is in the legal question: Who owns Nature? Do we all own nature? Does the state own nature? Has the state the right to sell nature? Should we all share in the fruits of nature? Is there a difference between owning the fruits of our labour as to opposed to the gifts of nature? How can we make a economic system that can simply reflect the difference between the free gifts of nature and that which we make ourselves? What is nature Many of the large fishing companies have been auguring a legal case that state given fishing quotas they have acquired are ‘their property’ and not the governments, so they must b...

  Or why the green movement has trouble accepting the one policy that will guarantee their objectives.   Land Value Tax (LVT) in its full theory is very complicated and to understand it properly requires a lot of thought and to mechanistically work out how it is fundamental to the protection of nature & natural assets. I myself have been attacked at conferences by well-meaning greens who’s hostility and almost zeal at condemning LVT leaves me depressed and confused as to their thinking. Why such people should have such anger, denial and almost  willful  need not to educate themselves of the economics of environmental destruction needs further investigation.  My best answer for this came from the similarities to the title theme of Robert M. Pirsig's bestselling book ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ exploring the ‘Metaphysics of Quality’. Even though LVT is official Green Party Policy, explaining LVT to the leaders of the gree...

This week there has been many reports on second homes. Our recent Budget speech was basically a charter to give public money to underwrite loans to buy homes. Most of these will be sold to speculaters,  landlords and people wanting a second home and not fo r the  purpose  the  deceitful  chancellor George Osborne stated; in helping people buy a house for  their  own oc cupation. Leading on from this press activity former poet laureate, Sir Andrew Motion, now head of the campaign to Protect Rural England, has made the headlines in all the UK media, calling for tax increases on second homes in the countryside to preserve communities. He is of course correct but if we dig deeper into what do we as a society want to see in the countryside we must look at the issues and values that will save rural communities. A number of papers have posed the question of how do we value rural Britain and protect its socia...

I listened to our Government's Chief Scientist,  John Bebbington, on Radio 4 this morning, he is retiring and has made a statement on three ‘underlying problem’ facing Humanity: Climate Change, population Growth, and Sustainable cities. What annoys me about such media debate is they seem to avoid all discussion on actual remedies to the three ‘underlying problems’ he raised. Instead of examining the solutions, the debate concentrated on anguish, wringing their hands with worry; saying it is really difficult and if only we tried a little harder, and it’s going to cost a fortune to protect the planet, and nobody wants to bear the cost of doing so etc... The real ‘underlying problem’ is our legal, political and economic system that enshrines the right of Government bodies & private individuals to own the ability to destroy and monopolise natural assets without compensation to the rest of society & ‘the planet’; yet it is the one issue that never seems to be chal...