I hold these truths to be self-evident:
To destroy the extraordinary beauty of the natural world is to destroy the source of human creativity.
Biodiversity and ecological health are prerequisites for human happiness.
A world stripped of birds, flowers, insects, woodlands and clean water is a world stripped of art and meaning.
We are destroying the very conditions that make life worth living and the very characteristics that make humans worth saving.
Only by saving the natural world can we save the human race. To do so requires a revolution in how we live, interact and work and a transformation in what we value, shifting from the accumulation of things to the cultivation of knowledge, skills and well-being.

■NATURE
A series of distressing recent reports have revealed the shocking and accelerating decline of wildlife in Wales. Wildlife Trusts Wales catalogued a 20% fall in species numbers on land and sea over the last 30 years in what was already one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries. This was followed by a report from the Senedd’s cross-party Climate Change & Environment Committee which concluded that Labour ministers in Cardiff Bay are completely failing to tackle the issue and instead resort to delaying tactics, undelivered commitments, missed deadlines, broken promises and general inertia: for instance, a pledge in 2021 to set legally-binding biodiversity targets was kicked down the road to 2029 at the earliest, while England and Scotland have both set such targets already, and important authoritative documents that guide the Welsh government’s biodiversity policies have been allowed to gather dust and become years out of date.

Then Natural Resources Wales (NRW), the environmental regulator, responded to widespread public alarm with a long-awaited definitive analysis of what has been happening. Here are some of the more prominent findings:
●2,955 species of animals and plants are just hanging on in a handful of locations (1,262 are restricted to a single location) with populations so small they are at imminent risk of total extinction.
●In the last 25 years 11 species have already become extinct and now 18% of the remainder face extinction too.
●Of the unique species found only in Wales, there are many which are very vulnerable:
FUNGI – Globeflower Smut, Tulostoma Stalkball
INVERTEBRATES – Agroeca Dentigera (spider), Allantus Laticinctus (sawfly), Aloconota Subgrandis (beetle), Beddau Beast Millipede, Black Night-runner (beetle), Delia Tarsifimbria (fly), Edwardsiana Rosaesugans (leafhopper), Epistrophe Ochrostoma (hoverfly), Exechia Spinigera (gnat), Exechia Styriaca (gnat), Glutinous Snail, Grayling Hipparchia Semele Thyone (butterfly), Gypsywort Weevil, Helianthemapion Aciculare (weevil), Large Mason Bee, Minutest Diving Beetle, Neurigona Biflexa (fly), Porrhomma Rosenhaeuri (spider), Rainbow Leaf Beetle, Rhagidia Odontochela (cave mite), Rosebud Sawfly, Scarce Awl Robberfly, Scarce Yellow Sally (stonefly), Short-legged Splay Cranefly, Simulium Morsitans (blackfly), Sinechostichus Inustus (beetle), Strandline Beetle, Theridion Hannoniae (spider), Trachyphloeus Heymesi (weevil), Trogloneta Granulum (spider)
LICHENS – Porpidia Ochrolemma
MAMMALS – Skomer Vole
MOSSES & LIVERWORTS – Cadair Idris Grimmia, Irish Rock-bristle, Upright Apple-moss, Welsh Bristle-moss
PLANTS – Anglesey Fleawort, Attenborough’s Hawkweed, Beacons Hawkweed, Brecon Hawkweed, Cille Hawkweed, Craig Gleisiad Hawkweed, Crass-leaved Hawkweed, Disc-leaved Hawkweed, Giltar Sea-lavender, Hepste Hawkweed, Least Whitebeam, Ley’s Whitebeam, Llanthony Whitebeam, Llanwrtyd Hawkweed, Menai Strait Whitebeam, Neath Hawkweed, Perennial Knawel, Purple-flushed Hawkweed, Rabigus Pullus (beetle), Radnor Lily, Radyr Hawkweed, Riddlelsdell’s Hawkweed, St David’s Sea-lavender; Slender-toothed Hawkweed, Small-leaved Hawkweed, Small Sea-lavender, Snowdon Hawkweed, Snowdon Lily, Sorbus Aria, Star-haired Hawkweed, Stirton’s Whitebeam, Summit Hawkweed, Tawe Hawkweed, Thin-leaved Whitebeam, Tongue-leaved Hawkweed, Welsh Eyebright, Welsh Hawkweed, Welsh Whitebeam, Wild Cotoneaster, Yellow Whitlowgrass
●The remaining severely threatened species are not unique to Wales. Here are some of the better-known just among birds and plants:
BIRDS – auk, bittern, bustard, cuckoo, curlew, dunlin, fieldfare, goldcrest, grebe, grouse, guillemot, house martin, kittiwake, lapwing, manx shearwater, merlin, nightingale, northern gannet, nuthatch, peregrine falcon, plover, redpoll, sandpiper, skylark, swift, tern, song thrush, treecreeper, twite, wagtail, waxwing, wren
PLANTS – avens, bilberry, bistort, bugloss, burnt-tip orchid, corn chamomile, cowslip, crowfoot, cudweed, dropwort, fen orchid, fritillary, goosefoot, loosestrife, marsh orchid, mousetail, pennyroyal, poppy, rattle, saxifrage, scabious, speedwell, squill, sundew, wintergreen

Why this is happening is no mystery. The destruction of the natural world is caused by habitat loss, intensive agriculture, pollution, pesticides, and the demented pursuit of infinite ‘growth’ at all costs – a mantra carved in tablets of stone for decades by the rightwing politicians, capitalists and mass media in control of the UK. NRW does its best, but is far too feeble and deferential to counteract these forces. The deliberate UK policy of under-funding Wales means it must operate on a shoestring and the resulting understaffing cripples its ability to do its basic job let alone lead the recovery of biodiversity – for instance, most of the protected sites NRW is responsible for monitoring have not even been visited for over 10 years!

Yet instead of fighting for and demanding Wales’ rightful allocation from the British State (the 4th wealthiest country in the world in terms of total assets) and thereby begin to tackle the tragic devastation of the natural world that is just one of the many terrible consequences of our oppression and impoverishment, the Labour-controlled Senedd barely raises a squeak of resistance. Regarding the nature crisis, all it ever does is churn out more puffed-up strategies, policy screeds and greenwash gobbledygook that never lead to action. This is criminal negligence on a massive scale and although responsibility lies squarely with the diabolical UK political parties that seem to derive sadistic delight from persecuting their oldest colony, the Labour Party’s ‘Welsh’ sub-branch is an especially guilty collaborator. For years London’s hand-picked lackeys in Cardiff have refused to stand up for and defend Wales or to develop Wales-specific policies that address real Welsh needs and instead just meekly obeyed orders and accepted the imposition of turbo-capitalist, far-right dogma and endless cruel austerity. This is what happens when the enemies of Wales are allowed to have power over us – and unless we unite to end our subservience they will kill our besieged little country.

■MINING & QUARRYING
For centuries, mineral-rich Wales has been treated as a lucrative source of free assets to be plundered at will by England/Britain. The systemic extraction of antimony, arsenic, barium, clay, coal, cobalt, copper, dolerite, galena, gold, granite, gravel, iron, lead, limestone, manganese, quartz, sandstone, shale, silica, silver, slate, sulphur and zinc (not to mention numerous secondary minerals and aggregates, the dredging of sand and the extraction of soil and peat), was conducted on a massive scale with the arrival of the industrial revolution in the 18th century and amounted to the removal of the very foundations of Wales beneath our feet, to be taken away and monetised by robber barons. The legacy of this ruthless ransacking is everywhere apparent to this day: over 10,000 barren mine and quarry sites abandoned after they were bled dry; vast voids where mountains once stood, often flooded by dead, dangerous, deep water; countless heaps of contemptuously dumped detritus and rubble; toxins and poisons leaching into water courses and aquifers; subsidence, avalanches and landslips; and a multitude of deep, unhealed scars marking the violent savagery that has been inflicted on our once beautiful land.

Don’t for one moment think that this brutal raping is a thing of the past: it continues to this day, updated and evolving but as voracious as ever. Wales is just 4% of the UK yet provides 30% of the UK’s mineral supply and sedimentary and igneous rocks – and, with all UK mines and quarries privately owned by multinational corporations and greedy developers, none of the enormous profits generated go to Wales. Here are just a few current examples, all based in the south since the northern quarries have long ago been stripped of their treasures and turned into trashed, littered, vandalised, desecrated tourist slums where hordes of talentless ‘content creators’ and whoring ‘influencers’ illegally park, make a piss-poor video for YouTube or Tik Tok, dump their rubbish, deposit their shit on the mountains and then fuck off back to England:

●The outrageous scandal of the Ffos-y-Fran opencast coalmine site, the largest and last in the UK, is scarcely believable. The first outrage was the permission given in 1988 by the UK Tory government to create a mine on grassy uplands adjacent to Merthyr Tydfil despite the total opposition of the people of Merthyr. Economic issues caused the plan to be mothballed for a couple of decades but, post devolution, it was revived by the private company involved, Miller Argent – later rebranded as Merthyr South Wales (MSW). Incredibly, with zero regard for Merthyr, for Wales, for the environment, for the climate crisis and for the urgent need to decarbonise generally, the then Labour environment minister Carwyn Jones (soon to become a dreadful First Minister) gave his approval and from 2007 to 2023 MSW extracted 11 million tonnes of coal, selling it to power stations and steel works and making a fortune while creating a gigantic, sprawling abyss surrounded by tips in the hills. Throughout the years the noise, dust, proximity to homes and sheer ugliness provoked continual protests and campaigns, to no avail. The only consolation was that the licence awarded by Merthyr Tydfil Council stipulated that MSW must restore the landscape when it expired. But, after the mining eventually ceased (a year after the licence had expired), the company immediately started to renege on those supposedly binding terms, giving lame excuses and pleading they couldn’t afford to restore the land they had mutilated. And, astonishingly, Merthyr’s atrocious Labour/Independent-controlled council, rather than take MSW to court for breach of contract, meekly accepted that argument and allowed MSW to downgrade any restoration work to a bare minimum – even though all public records indicate that MSW could comfortably afford to pay for full restoration and the company’s bosses had paid out £50 million in dividends and royalties to themselves. So the three giant spoil tips, originally intended to be temporary earthworks, but now teetering alarmingly over a frightening 175m (574ft) deep void that has filled with water, will not be removed as promised, and the green agricultural common land and their ancient rights of way will not be restored as promised, and meanwhile all the pitiful Welsh government can do is say that “the case remains under active consideration by ministers” even after a Senedd Committee condemned the whole fiasco as “epic mismanagement”. And this is being tolerated just a few miles away from, of all places, Aberfan! What is needed is a Welsh government with the principles, the concern for Wales, the backbone and the vigour to requisition MSW’s assets, prosecute its three directors, and also take legal action against the Labour ministers in the Senedd and councillors in Merthyr that allowed this travesty to happen through cowardice, indifference, outright negligence and shameless breaches of Wales’ Well-being of Future Generations laws.

●There’s a similar story of a mining company not fully abiding by the terms of their licence at the Nant Helen opencast coalmine near Ystradgynlais in southern Powys. It was first granted permission by the UK Tory government in 1985, on condition that mining would cease in 2020, a restoration scheme would fill the vast void and then there would be five years of environmental aftercare. Readers will not be surprised to learn that the operator Celtic Energy Ltd attempted to wriggle out their obligations. Celtic Energy submitted an application in 2018, and was granted permission by Powys County Council, to delay the restoration and secure a time extension until 2021 in order to extract a further 800,000 tonnes. That decision was called in and overturned by Lesley Griffiths in 2020 (one of the very few good things she did in her time as Environment Minister), the first time that powers conferred to the Welsh government in the Wales Act 2017 had been used, and both the original licence from the UK Coal Authority and Powys Council’s permission were rendered invalid. Meanwhile the £30 million that was due to pay for the restoration had been reduced by £16 million and meekly agreed by the Powys planning officer as Celtic Energy claimed they couldn’t afford the commitment. Most of this saving came from moving around 10 million less cubic meters of soil than the amount required to completely fill the opencast void, and abandoning the planned gentle mounds to instead create a steep-sided ‘valley’ with reduced woodland planting – and so adding yet another coal tip to the 2,566 that litter Wales. Fresh calls for proper levelling of the tip have followed, amid fears of another Aberfan tragedy should the tip become unstable. As with other opencast coal mining sites owned by Celtic Energy, land ownership of Nant Helen was then transferred to a shell company in the British Virgin Isles, absolving Celtic Energy of the legal responsibility to restore the site. Powys County Council have taken enforcement action against Celtic Energy for not completing the restoration and breaching planning conditions but, as the legal dispute drags on, Nant Helen remains a horrendous and dangerous blot on the landscape – one of nine disgraceful unrestored and abandoned opencast mines in Wales.

●Premature deaths, long-term ill health, 2,566 disused coal tips that were never removed, 350 tips that are classified as unsafe and require regular checks…Wales is not allowed to move on from the immense extraction of coal that mainly took place for around 100 years from the mid 19th century to the late 20th century. When Tower Colliery, the last deep mine in Wales, closed in 2008 it seemed that perhaps the coal era was finally over, but UK governments seem incapable of seeing Wales as anything other than a handy source of mineral wealth to be extracted whenever circumstances suit the British State. The Aberpergwm Mine near Glynneath which closed in 1985, briefly reopened under private ownership in 1996, closed again, was passed around by a series of owners, closed yet again in 2012 and then re-opened in 2018 as a deep mine owned by a company called Energybuild. The company commenced the digging up of high grade anthracite before applying to the UK Coal Authority to expand the colliery to extract a further 42 million tonnes of coal (and therefore emit 100 million tonnes of CO2 and 1 million tonnes of methane until the year 2039). The Welsh government opposed the proposal but after two years of legal action in the high courts the UK government over-rode Welsh self-determination as usual and won the right to permit the expansion on tenuous grounds of nit-picking legalese. So the expansion of what is the last colliery as well as the largest source of the greenhouse gas methane in the UK is proceeding at full tilt and thus enacting UK Labour’s passionately-held values: fuck the environment, fuck climate change, fuck Wales, fuck the future.

●The standard of most local councillors in Wales is reliably awful. It seems that only reactionaries, ignoramuses, money-grubbing sleaze-bags, pompous egomaniacs, grovellers to wealth, apologists for unscrupulous capitalism and lazy freeloaders hold power throughout all 22 Councils, no matter what political colours they wear. This inadequacy is vividly illustrated by the laissez faire way Councils deal with quarrying applications. Examples come thick and fast:
~Blaenau Gwent Council have nodded through an extension of the timescale for the quarrying of limestone at Trefil Quarry in remote countryside at the head of Afon Sirhywi, meaning it will now go on and on through to the year 2052. Moreover permission has been given for Gryphonn Ltd to enlarge the stupendous cavity by 22 hectares, the better to get their diggers’ claws on 400,000 tonnes of saleable limestone. We are assured that when the extraction is completed the bottomless chasm will be filled with rubble and all will be fine and dandy (Does anyone buy that? I certainly don’t). As for the wildlife haven at Trefil, where endangered birds such as red grouse, ring ouzel, snipe, stonechat, wheatear, whinchat have found a home, they apparently don’t matter.
~Caerffili Council have approved an expansion of already huge Machen Quarry so that German giant Heidelberg Materials can use it to dump even more construction and demolition waste there and torment local people with increased noise, traffic, dust and pollution.
~Carmarthenshire Council have accepted an application to re-open disused Cilyrychen Quarry at Llandybie and re-purpose it as a tip for waste rubble and soil, despite the objections of over 2,000 local people, despite nature having reclaimed the old quarry as a vital habitat for rare wildlife including falcons, bats and dormice, despite its popularity as recreation amenity, despite the wanton destruction of tranquillity and beauty and despite the fact that the tip will not create a single new job.
~Vale of Glamorgan Council have given the go-ahead for Garwa Quarry (not worked for 20 years) and adjacent Ruthin Quarry (not worked for 40 years) near Pencoed to reopen. English-based Tarmac, part of the global conglomerate CRH, decided they wanted to remove every bit of limestone and aggregate from the sites, and the Vale Council wouldn’t dream of refusing them. There might even be a job or two in it. The considerable increase of traffic for six days a week will entail removing hedges and widening country lanes while the blasting operations will turn a green oasis of nature into a heavy-duty industrial eye-sore.
~Even when a Council does the right thing, as Rhondda Cynon Taf Council did when twice rejecting the plans of Hanson Quarries (now Heidelberg Materials) to expand Craig yr Hesg Quarry at Glyncoch near Pontypridd – the appalling Labour government in the Senedd will usually overrule it. This occurred in 2022 when despicable Julie James, then the Labour Minister for Climate Change, overturned RTC’s decision and thus permitted breaches of both planning regulations and the Well-being of Future Generations Act. The result is that Glyncoch residents now live in a hell of endless terrifying explosions that shake and crack their homes, exceed decibel levels set out in the planning conditions and, along with a crusher machine, generate mushroom clouds of choking dust containing fine particles of crystalline silica that cause serious respiratory diseases. In addition, the quarry operator’s lorries clog up the narrow roads and park on kerbs near schools and trees are being felled without restriction. It is expected that 10 million tonnes of very high quality blue pennant sandstone will be quarried at Craig yr Hesg (to make less slippery roads) over the next 20 years until it is all gone, contributing nothing to the Welsh economy, wrecking the environment and the lives and health of the people of Glyncoch, and leaving another monstrous hole where Wales once was. Swansea MS Julie James has just retired before next month’s election. I wonder if she will look back with pride at her legacy: inflicting suffering and misery on Welsh people so that the fat-cat executives of a faraway corporate colossus can be further enriched.

■WATER
Of all the many thieving privatisations of public utilities implemented by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government, the 1989 privatisation of water companies has easily proved to be the most damaging, ridiculous and corrupt. The facts beggar belief. Since privatisation water bills have increased by 360%, the companies have built up debts of £65 billion, and 95% of their profits, £80 billion and counting, has been paid out in dividends to their shareholders. Meanwhile rivers, lakes and seashores have become open sewers as the water companies exploit their monopoly position and the systemic failure of toothless regulator Ofwat (largely funded by and thus answerable to the companies themselves) to abandon investment, cease routine maintenance and savagely cut costs in order to concentrate on their one and only objective: raking in bonuses and dividends. Raw sewage is pumped into waterways 825 times a day on average and every single river in England, and 60% of rivers in Wales, are now in an appalling condition with catastrophic consequences for people’s health and and utter devastation for countless fish and other animals.

The chief executives and shareholders of the water companies don’t give a damn. Contrary to Thatcherite bullshit about “a shareholding democracy”, each company was soon snapped up by foreign investment funds, private equity firms, hedge funds and institutional investors, lured by the lack of regulation and the guaranteed big profits. Nowhere else in the world other than in England and Wales, England’s powerless possession and punch-bag (a strong Scottish National Party meant Thatcher didn’t dare privatising water in Scotland), is the provision of water in private hands – for the very good reason that clean water isn’t a commodity or a consumer choice, it’s the most fundamental of all human rights. Here we have one of clearest examples possible of capitalism’s innate wickedness, perversion and malignancy. In the end, the sole capitalist motivation is always profit and, when ruthless tycoons, and secretive investment vehicles are allowed to do as they please with a utility nobody can live without, then the rivers of shit that have resulted is no surprise.

Anyone with functioning brain cells and a shard of decency cannot possibly defend the water companies’ diabolical tactic of polluting for profit, and even the Tory press has become strangely silent on the issue. Determined campaigners like Feargal Sharkey, a host of local community protests and organisations such as Surfers against Sewage, River Action, Waterwatch and The Rivers Trust are fighting for change, a Channel 4 documentary Dirty Business exposed the full horror of what is happening, 90% of the electorate now support the re-nationalisation of water, and widespread intense anger about filthy rivers was one of the main reasons the Tory Party that enabled it and then defended it for decades was wiped out in the 2024 General Election. The Labour Party won a landslide victory largely because it vowed to bring the water companies to heel and end the outrage. Yet within a few weeks of coming to power Labour made it clear that there would be no meaningful change, setting up a token review that was barred from even considering water nationalisation. A year later it duly came to the pathetically inadequate conclusion that tinkering with regulation rules would suffice. So two and a half years after coming to power, Labour has done absolutely nothing. Yes, those promises were just another instance of that now familiar Kier Starmer trademark: a pack of lies. The ‘Blue Labour’ rightwingers who have taken over the Party, particularly the then Environment Secretary odious gay zionist Steve Reed, kept repeating the scaremongering lie that it would be impossible to re-nationalise water because it would cost £100 billion. But that figure came straight from a self-serving report commissioned by who else but the water companies and was plucked out of nowhere by using the assumed value of the companies at the time of privatisation which is three times higher than their actual value today. In fact, by law, the government could nationalise water at a cost well below those current valuations by factoring in the huge amounts paid to shareholders and the stratospheric costs of all the environmental damage. But that would require a government that hasn’t sold its soul to to the billionaires, big businesses, financiers, merchant bankers, bond markets and money launderers that now dictate Labour policy. In one of the greatest betrayals in political history, a Party founded in 1900 to protect downtrodden workers from ruthless capitalists is now dedicated to doing the precise opposite. The time has surely come for Welsh voters to bring their unreciprocated loyalty to Labour to an unceremonious and permanent end.

There are lessons here for Wales. Firstly, it is revealing that water was privatised just in England and Wales and not in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where Scottish Water and Northern Ireland Water remained publicly-owned and run for public benefit not shareholder profit. To this day Wales has never voted Tory, yet that counted for nothing back in 1989 (and counts for very little even now) when there was no democracy at all for Wales, viewed by the Conservatives as merely an English possession with no priorities, interests, purposes and trajectories of its own. Here is a glaring example of how Wales is grievously damaged by our lack of autonomy and our humiliating, debasing status as England’s abused and misused chattel with no say in what is done to us.

And secondly, after the Blair government permitted a miniscule morsel of devolution in 1999 with the setting up of the Welsh Assembly, the tiny room for manoeuvre encouraged Welsh Water to undergo a much-needed change after 10 years of chaotic mismanagement in which millions had been lost doing things that had nothing to do with providing a water supply, like buying hotels and country clubs and electricity suppliers. With Rhodri Morgan, easily the best First Minister Wales have had so far, showing leadership and socialist principles, Welsh Water was taken over by Glas Cymru and became a ‘not for profit’ company without shareholders called Dŵr Cymru. This was a lot better than all the other privatised water companies but considering nothing could be worse, that’s hardly a complement. What is does illustrate, though, is the innate Welsh desire for fairness, equity and the collective good, and the stark difference, embedded in a thousand years of history, between those prevailing values and the inbred Toryism and Imperialism of England. The English control of Wales is not just a travesty and a deep injustice, it is a twisted remnant of violent appropriation that should have no place in the 21st century.

Dŵr Cymru may be nominally ‘not for profit’ and bears little resemblance to the English water companies that have the UK government over a barrel, threatening ‘too big to fail’ bankruptcy should their grand larceny be halted. Moreover, regulator NRW is a lot more diligent than its rotten English equivalent (the Environment Agency), but nevertheless privatised status means their performance is also woeful. Only last year Dŵr Cymru was fined £1.35 million and ordered to pay £70,000 in costs after pleading guilty to over 800 breaches of its permits to discharge sewage, the latest in a long line of permit breaches by the company that have made Welsh rivers and coasts almost as polluted as England’s. Meanwhile Dŵr Cymru’s performance rating by NRW has been repeatedly downgraded in the last six years from an industry-leading 4-star to a shameful 2-star rating.

In Wales it isn’t shareholders that bleed us dry: it’s the salaries and bonuses decided by and paid to the cosy cabal of hand-picked, unaccountable ‘members’. The Chief Executive, for instance, is the highest paid person in Wales with a salary + inbuilt bonuses amounting to an obscene £894,000 a year. The current lucky incumbent is newly appointed Roch Cheroux, an Australian who somehow got the job last year having been sacked as head of Sydney Water and accused by the ASU trade union of creating a toxic workplace culture, squandering spending on private consultants, backdoor privatisation, and slashing workers’ pay and conditions. And this man is deemed a suitable appointment by Dŵr Cymru! He obviously fits the company’s plans: before he arrived, prices were increased by a massive 29% and a ‘restructuring’ involving the loss of 500 jobs was announced, sending out the loud messages that ending the illegal pumping of sewage into Welsh rivers is not a priority, and when fines ensue they will be paid by customers. Dŵr Cymru is obviously totally unfit to be in charge of Wales’ water. If/when we get a Senedd with the necessary courage, ethics and righteous anger, it must be dissolved and taken into true public ownership by the people of Wales.

And Severn Trent, a company based in England that supplies customers in both Wales and England due to the Severn catchment straddling both, must be broken into its two components so that the people of Powys are no longer required to help fund the disgraceful racket that pays out approaching £300 million in dividends to shareholders annually and £4 million to its chief executive – all for filling the Severn and its tributaries with sewage and presiding over reservoirs that appropriated and drowned Welsh territory but have never contributed a penny to the Welsh economy. I hear predictable voices whining “it’s not possible”. Answer: well, they manage it everywhere else on the planet where a river runs through more than one country (eg: the Amazon, the Danube, the Nile, the Rhine, etc, etc). The real objection is, of course, to fairly sharing any income at all with Wales.

So many Welsh rivers, lakes and beaches have been allowed to deteriorate into a heart-breaking state, I am spoiled for examples. On a personal note, I will just look at what has been done to the River Wye (Afon Gwy), the fourth longest river in the UK, steeped in Welsh history and folklore. It rises on Pen Pumlumon in the Cambrian Mountains and flows 155 miles southwards to meet the Severn at Chepstow. 40 miles of it wanders into Herefordshire in England and the last 15 miles between Monmouth and Chepstow forms the border between Wales and England. Throughout my teens, every summer my Scout group would spend a fortnight camping by the banks of the Wye near Tintern in Gwent. Every day was spent swimming, canoeing, paddling and messing about in the pristine, crystal-clear river as trout, chub, sticklebacks and grayling meandered around us. It had been like this since the beginning of time. And now, just half a century later, at an astonishing speed, the Wye is dying. Over 200 chicken factories on both sides of the river in Powys and Herefordshire have been granted planning permission for giant steel barns containing an estimated 20 million tortured, imprisoned birds. The manure from this vast flock is spread by the farmers on their fields and thence runs off into the river. 6,000 tonnes of phosphate is thus dumped into the Wye every year, more than can be possibly absorbed by river plants like water crowfoot which anchor the entire ecosystem. 95% of the Wye’s water crowfoot has been killed, just one of many aquatic plants that naturally cleanse the waters, to be replaced by toxic algae blooms feeding on the extreme surplus of nutrients.

Chicken factories are extremely lucrative, each generating profits of up to £1 million a year. As all life in the river has been killed off in no time and it becomes a stinking, slimy, open air sewage pipe, pastimes like swimming and fishing have ceased and local people who have objected have suffered intimidation and vandalism. The two atrocious Councils involved, Tory-run Herefordshire County Council in England and ‘Independent’-run (translation: closet Tory) Powys County Council in Wales, trot out the old chestnut that the factories “bring jobs” – even though the sheds need hardly any staff, the pay is sub-minimum wage, and those employed are transients who soon move on to something else. What the Councils don’t mention is that the factories have annihilated the thriving local economy of pubs, restaurants, shops and so on that were supported by the angling, canoeing, swimming and camping that focused around the river. Why is this insanity allowed to happen? Because the economic power of the water companies and the cultural power of the farmers trumps everybody else (irresponsible dairy farming is an equally serious problem in other parts of Wales); because the rightwingers who run Powys and Herefordshire on 20% voter turnouts are in the pockets of the farming lobby; because NRW is grossly underfunded and helpless; because England’s Environment Agency is just a totally compliant arm of the Tory/Labour ‘free market’ ideology that seeks to ditch any regulation in the name of pointless, self-defeating ‘growth’; and because, nearly 40 years later, Thatcher’s failed privatisation model is still being propped up by the terrible bastards in charge of the evil, beyond redemption British State.

ENERGY
Wales is already completely self-sufficient in energy, producing 23 Terrawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per annum while consuming just 14 TWh, meaning Wales generates a massive electricity surplus and has no need at all to generate any more into the far foreseeable future. We do not require one more hydroelectric dam, solar panel or wind turbine. In fact, we could comfortably dismantle many of these hideous disfigurements of the landscape. But to a UK government that jealously guards its self-appointed right to do what it likes to Wales, without consultation, debate or even notification, the Welsh point of view does not and must not exist. After all, who else can they bully and pick on if not Wales?

Firstly I will briefly mention the UK government’s obnoxious plans to turn Wales into a nuclear hell-hole, starting on Ynys Môn with eight “small modular reactors” (SMR) at Wylfa. It’s like this: whenever Wales asks the UK government for anything the answer is invariably “NO!” but when Wales makes clear that something is not wanted, as the Senedd, local authorities and the vast majority of people have done for decades regarding nuclear power, that is precisely what the UK government decides to impose. I will not repeat here what I have already written about Starmer’s vision for Ynys Môn: see this article. There are also proposals from Last Energy, an American venture capital firm, to build four SMRs in the Lynfi valley near Maesteg on the site of the old Lynfi power station (operational from 1943 to 1977) which has been re-greened and returned to nature and is an important local amenity. As on Ynys Môn, there is no desire or need to take the drastic, unsafe, wastefully expensive and frightening move into nuclear energy – and the handful of jobs that might be created can be no compensation for the guaranteed presence of radioactive waste that lasts thousands of years. It seems that exploiters and colonialists just can’t rid themselves of the idea that Wales must always be the home of the dirtiest and most damaging industries.

Moving on to my main theme, the UK Labour government’s Energy Minister Ed Miliband has decreed that Wales’ spectacularly beautiful, wild and wonderful, remote Cambrian Mountains are going to be handed over to various private companies in order to erect more than 100 giant wind turbines across the majestic, unspoiled landscape. Many of the proposed turbines will be 230 metres (750 feet) high, 50% taller than any turbine in the UK, double the height of the tallest building in Wales and as high as the 5th-highest tower in London’s financial district. Such monstrous edifices may be suitable in the urban heart of a swaggering capital city (although that is debatable), but they certainly have no place at all in an entirely undeveloped rural paradise.

Each turbine will require at least 100 tonnes of steel, the excavation of an enormous pit that will be filled with a 2,000-tonne concrete foundation, and an infrastructure of roads, repair facilities and storage warehouses. In addition, to connect the turbines to the National Grid and thereby supply England with electricity, more than 120 miles (200km) of less prominent but equally intrusive pylons will criss-cross the Cambrians. Wind turbines have an estimated life-span of just 20 to 25 years before they must be replaced. This abominable project will, as the Wild Wales Trust warns, “industrialise and degrade huge areas of the uplands” while also infringing the supposedly sacrosanct only Unesco biosphere sites in Wales and wrecking many designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

There has been no shortage of local protests and environmental organisations like the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales and the Cambrian Mountains Society are strongly opposing the project. Only the ‘Welsh’ Greens (the very name is a deception – they are actually the ‘Green Party of England and Wales’) seem flummoxed by the issue, constrained by their antiquated and stupid stance that wind power is always unimpeachable.

Because the Cambrian Mountains are so sparsely populated (another marvellous attribute that makes them so special), there are few residents to defend them. Therefore its is incumbent on the people of Wales to organise resistance to Miliband’s heinous plan. One only has to have passing acquaintance with the Cambrians, as I have from my hiking years, to know that this obnoxious vandalism must be stopped. For instance, the blissful Glaslyn Nature Reserve where I once camped is being lined up for a hilltop industrial estate of 26 turbines, each 220 metres (720 feet) high, that will be visible from across Wales, and the nearby gorgeous Afon Twymyn valley where I once wandered is to be mutilated by a giant rank of 37 similar turbines. This must not happen.

And, as if Wales didn’t have quite enough turbines already, there are other massive wind farms planned for our besieged countryside that must also be resisted: the 27-turbine wind farm that the ‘net zero’ fixated Welsh Labour government intends to impose, via its own Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru offshoot, on the enchanting Brechfa Forest area in Carmarthenshire, already scarred by a large privately-owned wind farm; the 30 200m-high turbines that savage Scottish developer Bute Energy want to put on top of the tallest hills in Radnorshire at the wildlife haven of Radnor Forest; the 27 200m-high turbines that loathsome developer Wind2 has planned for Aberedw Hill above the Wye valley at Builth; and the scandal of the shocking Hendy Wind Farm in Radnorshire, permitted by the Welsh Labour government despite multiple local objections and professional advice to refuse the application. Proper planning permission had yet to be granted when the Birmingham-based developers erected a single second-hand turbine on the glorious common lands, and then the other six turbines planned were not built as grant deadlines had expired, leaving a pointless shard of rusting metal that has produced zero electricity and breached the condition that it must be removed after five years if no electricity is generated. Will Powys Council and the Welsh government at long last intervene, pull the atrocity down and restore the land to local people and wildlife? We would need a Senedd that truly cares about Wales and the natural world first.

Were these proposals for England’s beauty spots they would be unthinkable. The turbines are not needed to supply Welsh energy needs but to supply energy for England. As such, this is an attempt to revive the old colonial approach which saw the flooding of Welsh valleys and annihilation of Welsh communities to provide cities like Birmingham and Liverpool with free water. Given that wind turbines can go anywhere the wind blows, this is a totally unnecessary, violent, malicious attack on Wales. It is an exercise in tone-deaf, provocative thuggery from Miliband, Starmer’s ‘left of centre’ stooge, a tokenistic nod in the direction of ‘sustainability’ to meet arbitrary and spurious targets, claim ‘green’ credentials and boost his flagging political career, a monumental environmental crime destroying the glorious heart of rural Wales for no better reason than Labour’s subservient sub-branch in Cardiff dare not resist it and anyway there isn’t much political damage in shitting all over unprotected, powerless little Wales.

I’ve got news for the ghastly Miliband and all the other English imperialists who think that Wales only exists to be exploited by England: WALES EXISTS FOR WALES; PUT YOUR USELESS TURBINES IN YOUR OWN FUCKING COUNTRY.

Here are more revelations that someone as thick as MIliband would not have grasped. Man-made Climate Change is very real indeed and very serious, but it is only one symptom of humans’ impact on the planet. Overconsumption of Earth’s finite resources, destruction of eco-systems, loss of biodiversity and pollution are equally important. To claim that the solution is another technological fix called ‘renewables’, or reaching ‘net zero’ by some deadline or other, or by simply wishing for it is either a delusion or a calculated lie that avoids the urgent need to work towards a real solution. The chance of reaching net zero by 2050 is absolutely not feasible and is not going to happen, no matter what the spreadsheets, computer models or AI engines say. Likewise, the oft-repeated notion that fossil fuels can be replaced with shiny new technology, whether called a Green New Deal, Green Energy or a Green Transition, is complete bullshit.

This is not siding with fossil fuel corporations, their propaganda arms and their think tanks. This is exposing the advocates and manufacturers of ‘renewables’ for the scammers and fraudsters they are. They are inextricably entwined, neck and crop, with the fossil fuel apologists. The wind turbines are made from polymers and steel made from oil and utilising energy from oil and gas. The turbine bases are huge concrete structures made using the same processes. A 2 MW wind turbine is made of 260 tons of steel requiring 300 tons of iron ore, 170 tons of coking coal, rare earths including Praseodymium (Pr), Neodymium (Nd), Terbium (Tb) and Dysprosium (Dy), fibre glass, resin, plastic and aluminium….all mined & produced using hydrocarbons, and all leaving a trail of destruction as they are mined, extracted and manufactured. Solar panels are mined using the same energy sources and manufactured in the same manner. Huge dams for hydroelectricity destroy rivers and their ecosystems. Felling forests with energy-gobbling machines to grow more food or bio-crops just uses more fossil fuel. And the resulting energy derived from these methods simply adds to the ever-accelerating increase in CO2. In short, no matter how many fancy ‘new’ energy sources that are created, or how much ‘efficiency’ is squeezed from whichever gimmick, it is always used to increase consumption, destroying the ecology and remaining life of the planet in the process.

This repeatedly happens no matter what the energy source is. Coal was used to make more stuff and increase consumption and, note well, it prompted the use of more wood – the supposedly obsolete fuel that it had replaced. Since then, oil and gas took over from coal but coal and wood use still went up. Then came nuclear and Hydro – but again the usage of all the previous fuels went up. Now wind and solar have arrived and yes, once more usage of all the previous fuels continues to rise remorselessly, as shown in this graph:

Whatever new energy source comes along is just added to the mix. This is why climate change hasn’t even begun to be tackled and never will unless humans change. We have foolishly allowed our entire social structures, cultures and behaviours to be be reliant on energy and dependent on rampant capitalist consumerism. Add this to the ignorance of those drawn to enter politics and the wilful lies from fossil fuel industries and corporations, and you have the reasons why the planet is in such critical jeopardy and the reasons why the proposed destruction of the Cambrian Mountains would be not just criminal, not just brutal and not just nasty – but also completely futile.

The key issue is capitalism, a system driven by the relentless pursuit of surplus value, i.e. profit. This forces capitalists into perpetual accumulation and expansion of production. The system’s internal logic – competition, the need to keep enlarging profits, and the drive to dominate markets – makes infinite growth on a finite planet a necessity, not a choice. The naïve idea, clutched at by smug ‘soft left’ twerps like Miliband and blinkered pie-in-the-sky simpletons like the Greens, that technological progress will solve the systemic social and ecological problems capitalism causes is dangerously wrong. Technological fixes always fail to curb consumption because technology itself is not neutral: it is developed and deployed by and within capitalism not to save resources or to improve conditions for the working-class or for the benefit of society, but to increase profit and control. Therefore, expecting the same system that has inflicted endless ecological and social crises on the world to technically innovate its way out of them is a profound contradiction and sheer nonsense that is never going to happen.

Capitalism is ecologically unsustainable by its very nature. It cannot separate incessant growth from environmental impact because its internal logic requires never-ending expansion, constantly seeks to overcome limits and always turns any efficiency gains into just more new avenues for accumulation. And now the Tech bro billionaires of the USA have, without debate or consideration of the consequences, foisted AI on the world in order to accumulate yet more billions. This new technology uses such vast amounts of energy to power its data centres (as well as huge quantities of water for cooling data stacks that will quickly limit water for drinking and crops) that defunct nuclear reactors are reopening just to power AI. This AI growth, hyped as inevitable, desirable and exciting by predictable desperate morons like Starmer and his government, couldn’t be more dangerous for all of us: as it becomes compulsory, widespread and hungry for more growth to keep profits rising it will be impossible to scale-up electricity demand fast enough and the fashion for ‘sustainable energy’ will be ditched in favour of more fossil-fuel dependence that will unleash out-of-control climate change and eco-catastrophe even sooner than is currently predicted.

Anybody who wants to avoid this most extreme of all calamities, an ecocide at the behest of a few billionaires that will kill our children, grandchildren and ultimately the future itself, should join the struggle to topple capitalism and replace it with de-growth, de-industrialisation, de-population and a fundamental restructuring of society that will heal our broken planet and our broken selves.

MISCELLANEOUS
●The assault on the Welsh language takes many forms. One of the oldest strategies, dating back to the first Anglo-Norman incursions of the 12th century, is the corruption, mangling, bastardisation and, ultimately, the replacement of place-names – a method of undermining and superseding languages that has been wielded around the world whenever land-grabbers and conquerors want to eradicate a culture and expedite a complete takeover. Examples today include illegal Israeli settlers in Palestine introducing Hebrew names and Russian invaders of Ukraine imposing Russian names in areas they have violently annexed. In Wales the names of farms, houses, fields and geographical features as well as places are routinely changed, usually to English, as second homes, tourism businesses and incomers with the money to outbid Welsh people take over whole areas that had been deeply Welsh. It doesn’t help that so many of them feel entitled to stamp out Welshness, are completely oblivious to and ignorant of Welsh history, care nothing for Wales and can’t even be bothered to embrace bilingualism by just adding an English translation side-by-side with the Welsh original but instead prefer to erase the Welsh and introduce an entirely unrelated word. The new names frequently replace old and historic names woven into the fabric of communities and actually rewrite Welsh history, but despite a petition to the Senedd signed by 18,000 people, many campaigns and the efforts of some local councils, the useless Labour Welsh government (hopefully for not much longer) continually refuses to introduce legislation to protect the language, relying instead on a vapid ‘guidance’ leaflet that is never going to persuade an arrogant, white-settler Cymruphobe to respect Wales.
●The Starmer government is proving to be the most anti-Wales UK government since the introduction of universal suffrage. There is no end to the virulent hostility and outright antagonism of the British Nationalist bigots as they launch attack after attack on everything Wales holds dear, gleefully causing immense distress, anguish and misery. Now they have unilaterally announced that they intend to destroy the St David’s peninsula, one of Wales’ most evocative and beloved environments, steeped in the very essence of Welsh identity. In collaboration with the fascist plutocrats who have taken over the USA, the UK’s Ministry of Defence intend to install 27 enormous radar antennae at Brawdy, the fulcrum of the peninsula. 21 metres (70 feet) high and 15 metres (50 feet) wide, they will loom over the entire landscape of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, while a plethora of associated works like new roads and maintenance sheds will industrialise the gorgeous maritime environment. It will be one of three sensor arrays, along with similar in the USA and Australia, called the Deep Space Advanced Radar Concept (DARC) and will enable 360° coverage of the sky. Campaign group PARC (Pembrokeshire Against Radar Campaign) describe the proposals as “a monument to the needless, sabre-rattling, expansionist vanity project that is an attempt by the US to dominate all of space against the stated wishes of almost every nation in the UN”. The grovelling UK government of course meekly follows whatever the US dictates, no matter how unethical, confrontational and militaristic. Welcome resistance has come from the Welsh government in the form of First Minister Eluned Morgan, who is from the area and knows well what DARC will destroy. At last she has stopped fawning to Starmer and stood up for Wales, calling for the plans to be halted and drawing attention to Trump’s war crimes, targeting of civilians and contempt for the UK and other former allies. Admittedly, with only a couple of weeks left as First Minister she has nothing to lose, and of course Starmer will ignore her pleas, but the end of her years of compliant silence in the face of assaults on Wales is better late than never. Of course, those in favour of wrecking the most sacred landscape in Wales can only come up with the knackered old lie about all the wonderful jobs that will ensue, when the highly specialised technology will only employ a handful of experts from outside Wales and, in any case, it’s a bit rich for the same fanatical advocates of AI that has already put thousands out of work to posture as concerned about job creation.
●Yet another violation of Wales that is increasing exponentially is the spread of ugly pylons across the country, unregulated and never prevented. It is happening more and more in order to send the ever-escalating quantity of electricity generated by turbines in Wales to where it is required: England. In civilised countries across the world electricity is transmitted by underground cables, rather than by pylons that despoil the environment. Hidden cables cost more than overhead lines, but the protection of the landscape is regarded as making it well worth it in the long run. But not in the UK, where cheapskate short-termism and cavalier barbarism rule the roost. The ‘National Grid’ which runs power transmission throughout the UK makes all the decisions, and never questions the construction of towering steel frameworks marching in straight lines over whatever stands it their way. Wales, entirely without influence or a voice in the issue, can only weep as our cherished land is turned into one giant extension lead to England, with bullying pylon firms like Green GEN Cymru (GGC) and its parent company Bute Energy intimidating anybody who tries to stop them. 500 Welsh farmers are currently bringing a legal case against GGC which wants to build 250 miles of pylons in three routes connecting windfarms in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Powys with the wider grid. The case, being heard in the High Court in Cardiff, alleges unlawful conduct, abuse of power, disregard of biosecurity, access to land ahead of compulsory purchase orders, trespassing without consent, collection of personal data, and environmental damage. It’s vital the Welsh farmers win this case, to begin to put spanners in the works of the venal ‘renewables’ industry. But, as a realist with eye-opening experience of taking on the British State and its agents, I’m not holding out much hope…

Graph: Our World in Data