Protect wild species, the climate and agricultural soils: Sign to e-mail your UK parliamentary (MP) candidates

The environmental threats we face will change life on Earth for millennia, and may leave our children struggling to survive as many already are elsewhere. These issues make others seem almost minor yet our MPs have not prioritised them as is urgently needed. Remember the disgraceful display when just 12 MPs attended the debate on climate change in the Commons?

  You may recall a similar campaign two years ago, and I like to feel that your e-mails then helped lead to the new environment minister paying attention to the science, and talking about protecting soils, etc. in contrast to his predecessors. Of course climate change has recently been forced up the agenda. Let's remind candidates that we really care about these issues at this critical moment.

Email your candidates now by signing this petition to remind them about:

Loss of species and the habitats they depend upon

Climate change, energy and fracking

Agricultural soil degradation


Please join me in e-mailing your local candidates to ask them what they intend to do about these issues.

I appreciate the positive response from non-UK residents, but only UK signatures will be sent to candidates.

E-mail text:

Dear Candidate,

The environmental threats we face will change life on Earth for millennia, and may leave our children and even ourselves struggling to survive as many already are elsewhere. These issues make others seem almost minor yet our MPs rarely refer to them let alone prioritise them as is urgently needed:

• Loss of species and the habitats they depend upon: Our fellow species have an intrinsic right not to be carelessly made extinct. Even from a selfishly anthropocentric perspective, a strong biodiverse natural world is vital to support the environmental services that we depend upon.  It has become clear that the loss of even some obscure species can cause a domino effect resulting in dramatic environmental losses.  Consider corals that shelter the young fish that many fish stocks depend upon.

• Climate Change: This issue is well covered by the media, and no-one serving the public has any excuse not to be familiar with it and determined to reassess all other policy in relation to it. It makes clear the harm caused by the GDP growth basis of policy and shows that we need to re-focus on less environmentally destructive values.  We also need government to put policy and funding on a 'war footing' to de-carbonise our economy. This means abandoning the misplaced and backward-looking support for fracking.

• Agricultural soils: Tilling the soil, leaving it bare, and extracting organic materials in ever larger amounts ('higher efficiency') has dramatically degraded many farm soils. Mineral content has dropped by up to 50% (for iron) over 60 years, which is reflected in the food produced and the fact that these soils only have 60 years of cropping left in them. Lower mineral content in food has health and health cost implications.  
  
  In the UK, that means losing the ability to feed ourselves - a dire security risk, in a world where international supplies will likely become severely restricted over the coming decades for the reasons given along with population increases.    
  
  Where wilderness still exists, it will likely be destroyed in desperation as farm soils fail, exacerbating the other issues mentioned.  Solutions to this are harder with large and expanding world human population, but include switching to perennial crops, intercropping, no-till, the returning of nutrients to close the cycle (and change sewage from a problem into a solution), enabling global birth control access, and a determined research push.

(Your comments here) 

I would like to hear what you intend to do to urgently address these issues, and can promise that many will be watching as these disasters unfold (if not addressed), reflecting back on who did and didn't do what. If you're on the side of a genuinely safe, healthy and equable future where these matters have been addressed seriously with the full force of the British state, then I wish you good luck on November the 12th.

Sincerely,

(your name and address)