The True Cost of Oil

The world is watching with collective dismay the environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20.

Eleven workers were killed outright in the disaster which led to the rig sinking. In the longer term, the lasting consequences are sure to reach far and wide. The immediate concern is how to stop oil spewing out from the burst pipeline at an estimated 24,000 barrels every single day. BP has managed to capture some of the oil with a containment cap but thousands of litres are escaping in any 24 hour period. This has been going on, unabated until recently, for the best part of two months.

The oil spill is already the USA’s biggest ever environmental disaster with the slick having spread towards the Louisiana, Alabama and Florida coastlines. This will have ramifications for the ecology, wildlife, the fishing industry and tourism of such a large strip of America. Some beaches in Florida are already beginning to display warning signs to would-be bathers. It is extremely worrying that the oil may reach Cuba where the economy is so reliant on foreign visitors. If the oil reaches the Cuban shoreline, it could be the tipping point for a country struggling to survive as a result of the damaging trade embargoes America has placed upon it.

This is not the first time BP has suffered an explosion in the United States. The company was fined $87 million last October for failing to correct safety problems at one of their refineries in Texas in 2005 following a blast which killed 15 workers. This hugely wealthy company continues to prioritise their profits above the safety of their employees and the environment.

Now BP is facing a huge clean-up operation which they must surely foot the bill for. The cost of the clean-up has been estimated to date as £1 billion – less than one month’s profit for the company. However, much more damaging has been the £55 billion that has been wiped off BP’s value since the spill began. This will have huge consequences for the pension market in the UK since so many portfolios are invested in the company. Is it not time for the UK Government to start regulating pension funds so that they are invested in ethical companies? The Fair Pensions campaign, supported by trade unions and charities, has long called for the government to regulate pension funds so that people’s future livelihoods are protected from market failure and irresponsible corporate behaviour. The raising of the state pension, which Plaid Cymru has repeatedly called for, could compensate for any losses following on from the collapse in BP's market value.

In an illuminating article, Guardian columnist George Monbiot has argued whether BP actually delivers a profit. Despite pumping billions of pounds every year into the pockets of its shareholders, Monbiot argues this is money which should be set aside for future liabilities, much in the same way that Norway has treated its oil money. Is it ethical for BP to be making a net profit of £17 billion in 2009 without reinvesting those profits in the planet it is benefiting from, yet ulimately wrecking? Its not. Unless oil companies, and BP are by no means the only offender, begin to invest serious money in the environment and prepare for a future where our need for oil does not outstrip supply, then we are in serious trouble.

Despite the projections that the disaster will spell the end for BP, Monbiot also predicts that the company will ride out the storm and still be in business ten years from now. If that is the case, I hope they will have been forced to learn lessons from the Gulf of Mexico.


UPDATE, FRIDAY JUNE 11 - The US Geological Survey has this morning estimated that up to 40,000 barrels of oil could have been escaping from the ruptured pipeline every day before a cap was fitted at the beginning of the month. This is double the amount of oil previously thought to have been escaping.

A Welsh Food Revolution?

There are many good reasons to change the way we source our food. The price of food is on the increase, we don't fully understand the effects of additives in processed food, climate change is turning parts of the world into desert and biofuels have replaced food crops resulting in food shortages. It is estimated that world food supplies would have to double in the next 40 years to feed a population of nine billion, while at the same time, farmers must cope with climate change, oil price rises and new plant and animal diseases.

A report from MPs out last week said "Only 10% of the fruit consumed in the UK by value is grown here. Apple orchards have reduced by nearly 33% in just 10 years and less than a third of the apples eaten here are grown here", while in 2005 Britain imported 1,500 tonnes of potatoes and exported exactly the same amount.

According to Sustain

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has calculated that, globally, agriculture generates 30% of total man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, including half of methane emissions and more than half of the emissions of nitrous oxide.
In the EU, over 30% of the greenhouse gases from consumer purchases come from the food and drink sector.
Latest conservative estimates from the Food Climate Research Network in the UK suggest that almost one-fifth of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions are associated with our food and drink.

We have to change the way we source our food and the single greatest contribution we can all make in reducing our individual carbon emissions is to eat as much of our own-grown food as possible.

Growing-your-own provides good exercise and has obvious other health and financial benefits. It can also help to bring people together. On my allotment, young and older people work together sharing plants and tips in a spirit of communalism. We all rely on each other - a plant disease on one plot can affect us all.

Demand for allotments is growing. At the beginning of the year I did some research which showed that there are 2,500 people on waiting lists for an allotment in Wales and that some people will have to wait up to nine years! The 1908 Small Holdings and Allotment Act says the council has a duty to provide land if they are satisfied there is demand and if six electors petition that council, their representations have to be taken into consideration. Since then I have found plenty of examples of groups of people who have petitioned their council only to be told that the council has considered their request, but there is no land available.

I've visited community owned urban food production gardens in Cuba and I'm keen to see if we can do something similar here in Wales. Tomorrow, I am hosting a "summit" of all the contacts I have made while working on allotments and I am hoping that the meeting will generate ideas for making more land available for those who want to grow their own.

Solidarity with Latin America

I have invited Assembly Members and staff to a meeting tonight to discuss the setting up an All-Party Group on Latin America with a launch reception to mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, and the 10th anniversary of the election of Hugo Chavez as President of Venezuela.

Peter Black has criticised the event on his blog. His post 'Supporting the Dictators' can be read here. Hugo Chavez is not a dictator and there is more to Cuba than just Fidel or Raul Castro. The event and group are about building solidarity with two socialist administrations that would collapse if they did not have massive popular support.

Hugo Chavez has been repeatedly elected in Venezuela through internationally monitored free and fair elections, with huge majorities. When he did lose a referendum he accepted the result. The assertion that Chavez has sought election as 'President for life' is also untrue. He supported a referendum on removing term limits, which has given Venezuelan officials (including anti-Chavez politicians) the same right to run for office that politicians in the UK have.

Cuba of course is not a liberal democracy like the UK, United States or other Western countries are. If Peter had been to Cuba he would see that there is a different kind of participatory democracy evident at all levels of society. Of course progress can be made with regards to personal freedoms, but its unclear how such progrss can take place under the current economic blockade and consistent interference by the USA, a country that still wishes Cuba was under its sphere of control.

The context that the socialist administrations in Venezuela and Cuba are developing in is entirely different from here in Wales. Programmes which have taught all people to read and write and measures to ensure all have access to good quality healthcare and education that is worth supporting and that is why I am backing a group at the Assembly to build links and solidarity with these struggles.

The Cuban Food Revolution Comes to Wales

It's not often that I can say I am truly inspired in our National Assembly, but I was yesterday. Roberto Perez called in to Cardiff (at very short notice) for a meeting with myself and Nerys Evans AM. He was on his way through to Bristol from Machynlleth - he's in the middle of a speaking tour advancing the permaculture revolution which could soon spread to Wales.

I went to see this community-owned allotment project (organiponico)in Alamar in May, when Nerys and I were part of a Plaid Cymru study trip to Cuba. I met a representative from the Cuban Agriculture Ministry with Elin Jones AM, Plaid's Rural Affairs Minister and we were given a tour around Organiponico de Alamar, which is on the outskirts of Havana.

Cuba lost two thirds of its oil when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. The whole food system had to be reorganised. People no longer had access to fertilisers, machinery or the means to distribute food. The organiponico movement started with people squatting pieces of waste land in urban areas. The government allowed them to use the land as long as they continued to produce food. Collective co-ops were developed and markets for selling the food were established.

Roberto Perez is one of the founders of the urban permaculture movement in Cuba and he is in Bristol tonight. He agrees that we have a lot of potential in Wales to localise our food systems and develop ways of producing food that work with, rather than against, nature.

We don't have to start from scratch. Last week I visited a number of projects in Pembrokeshire and met with some representatives of the transition towns movement. People there - and in plenty of other places throughout the country - are getting together to produce their own food and energy. As Roberto said, wherever you go in the world there are plenty of people who want to get involved in permaculture and small scale renewable energy production. It's up to governments at all levels, especially councils, to make it easy. According to Roberto, access to land is key. In Cuba there are gardens on former car parks and polluted industrial sites. They are very cheap to set up, and have the potential to employ and educate people and contribute to healthier lifestyles. With the price of food rocketing, they would be a great way of ensuring access to cheap, good food. What are we waiting for?