@SamaHoole@Arnbeg A third of the deals for plantable land are now done off-market, in secret, precisely so the local community never gets the chance to bid.
A tenant farmer in the Cairngorms says land that sold for Β£500 an acre a few years ago now goes for Β£5,000. He is being moved off ground his family has worked for generations, because he cannot outbid the people buying it. The buyers are corporations, and they have no intention of farming a single acre of it.
Here is how the trick works. A company keeps emitting carbon exactly as before. Same factories, same flights, same supply chain, same product. Then it buys a Scottish hillside, plants some trees, and announces to the world that it is now carbon neutral, or, if it is feeling brave, carbon negative. The emissions never fell. It simply bought a landscape to point at.
Take BrewDog. In 2020 it bought a 9,300-acre Highland estate, propped up with public grant money, and promised a million trees and the crown of the world's first carbon negative beer business, removing twice the carbon it emitted, forever. By 2023 roughly half of the 500,000 trees it had managed to plant were dead, killed by drought, with critics noting the planting was drying out the peat and releasing carbon of its own. The advertising regulator ruled its carbon-negative claims misleading. In 2024 it quietly dropped the badge and dismissed the entire carbon credit market as a flood of cheap schemes whose benefit was "questionable, maybe even non-existent." Then it sold the estate to a firm whose actual business is selling carbon offsets.
That is the whole model in one story. Public money in. Dead trees out. A green halo worn for four years and then dropped. The farmer who used to be on that land, gone. The hillside passed to a company that exists purely to sell other people the right to keep polluting.
This is no fringe case. In one recent year, half of every estate sold in Scotland went to investment funds, corporations and charitable trusts rather than anyone who would farm it. A third of the deals for plantable land are now done off-market, in secret, precisely so the local community never gets the chance to bid.
So this is what net zero looks like on the ground. A man who produced food is priced out of his own glen. A corporation that produced emissions buys the glen, calls itself a force for good, and sells the carbon. The land stops feeding anyone. Nobody's emissions actually went down by a gram.
The food was real. The farmer was real. The carbon saving is a line in a slide deck.
And we have somehow decided the villain in all this is the man with the sheep.
@domdyer70@friendofthefox This film of these people is heartbreaking. Such disregard is disturbing. No thought at all. When did we stop caring or are we so stupid now we have no clue about wildlife & nature.
Nature groups have pleaded with swimmers to give wildlife a wide berth after dozens of people swam in a nature pond on Hampstead Heath among nests of baby birds.
Swans and their 12-day-old cygnets were disturbed by hordes of splashing revellers in the north London park on Monday as London reached record 35C temperatures. In one video, a swan was seen poking an unhatched egg with its beak after it fell into the water during the chaos.
Conservationists responded with dismay after a video was shared on social media of the scenes, which the City of London called βutterly appallingβ.
Coots, moorhens and swans were seen guarding their eggs and young as people obliviously splashed around them. There are large signs around the pond urging people not to swim as it is a wildlife conservation area.
The unseasonably hot weather has meant that people have been going into water sources en masse to cool off. This has coincided with the nesting season for water birds. Londonβs outdoor swimming ponds and lidos were busy and booked up during the heatwave, meaning some people went to swim in unauthorised areas.
The RSPB said it was βa crucial time of year for breeding birds which just want to nest and care for their young in peaceβ.
The bird charity urged people to swim in authorised, lifeguarded spaces rather than nature reserves. βAlong with the dangers of swimming in unauthorised places, there is a significant risk of disturbing wildlife.
Many species are already under huge pressure and disturbance can make a parent abandon their nest, putting eggs and chicks at risk. Everyone has a part to play in protecting nature so weβd urge people to be responsible and give birds and other wildlife plenty of space when outdoors this summer,β it said.
SOCIOPATH OF THE DAY! π‘ π‘
Trophy hunter Philip Glass ~ βGod says we have dominion over the animals. That means we can do what we choose with them. It is my divine right to shoot this #Elephant!"
RT if you want a GLOBAL ban on trophy hunting NOW!!
#BanTrophyHunting
If you were on Hampstead Heath ignoring the ' NO SWIMMING ' sign, splashing in the pond, then YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for the loss of the lives of the swans.
This part from later in the video broke my heart... a floating Swan egg that the Swan tries to pull under itself as if incubating it on a nest... ππ
How did it get in the water?
This is what entitlement looks like! π€¬
There are nesting waterbirds on this pond on Hampstead Heath... there are also big 'No Swimming' signs, all being totally ignored! π€¬
Pure selfishness... ππ€¬π€¬
(Shared from Instagr*m with permission from 'swansofhampsteadheath')
@OtisRedn@jomickane Then walk early in the morning & late at night when the temp drops. Your dog canβt cool down like a human. Itβs not rocket science.
@pottsy0337@jomickane Omg can people be this stupid. Put on a fur suit, take off your shoes & socks & take a walk in the heat. Donβt take coat off when you get back home & only little drops of water. Now are you ok!? Just be kind, walk late at night or early morning or just let them stay in the garden