Climate denial is waning on the right. What’s replacing it might be just as scary

Oliver Milman

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, November 21, 2021

Photograph: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

Standing in front of the partial ruins of Rome’s Colosseum, Boris Johnson explained that a motive to tackle the climate crisis could be found in the fall of the Roman empire. Then, as now, he argued, the collapse of civilization hinged on the weakness of its borders.

“When the Roman empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration – the empire could no longer control its borders, people came in from the east and all over the place,” the British prime minister said in an interview on the eve of crucial UN climate talks in Scotland. Civilization can go into reverse as well as forwards, as Johnson told it, with Rome’s fate offering grave warning as to what could happen if global heating is not restrained.

This wrapping of ecological disaster with fears of rampant immigration is a narrative that has flourished in far-right fringe movements in Europe and the US and is now spilling into the discourse of mainstream politics. Whatever his intent, Johnson was following a current of rightwing thought that has shifted from outright dismissal of climate change to using its impacts to fortify ideological, and often racist, battle lines. Representatives of this line of thought around the world are, in many cases, echoing eco-fascist ideas that themselves are rooted in an earlier age of blood-and-soil nationalism.

In the US, a lawsuit by the Republican attorney general of Arizona has demanded the building of a border wall to prevent migrants coming from Mexico as these people “directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”. In Spain, Santiago Abascal, leader of the populist Vox party, has called for a “patriotic” restoration of a “green Spain, clean and prosperous”.

In the UK, the far-right British National party has claimed to be the “only true green party” in the country due to its focus on migration. And in Germany, the rightwing populist party Alternative for Germany has tweaked some of its earlier mockery of climate science with a platform that warns “harsh climatic conditions” in Africa and the Middle East will see a “gigantic mass migration towards European countries”, requiring toughened borders.

Meanwhile, France’s National Front, once a bastion of derisive climate denial, has founded a green wing called New Ecology, with Marine Le Pen, president of the party, vowing to create the “world’s leading ecological civilization” with a focus on locally grown foods.

We are seeing very, very little climate denialism in conversations on the right now

Catherine Fieschi

“Environmentalism [is] the natural child of patriotism, because it’s the natural child of rootedness,” Le Pen said in 2019, adding that “if you’re a nomad, you’re not an environmentalist. Those who are nomadic … do not care about the environment; they have no homeland.” Le Pen’s ally Hervé Juvin, a National Rally MEP, is seen as an influential figure on the European right in promoting what he calls “nationalistic green localism”.

Simply ignoring or disparaging the science isn’t the effective political weapon it once was. “We are seeing very, very little climate denialism in conversations on the right now,” said Catherine Fieschi, a political analyst and founder of Counterpoint, who tracks trends in populist discourse. But in place of denial is a growing strain of environmental populism that has attempted to dovetail public alarm over the climate crisis with disdain for ruling elites, longing for a more traditional embrace of nature and kin and calls to banish immigrants behind strong borders.

Millions of people are already being displaced from their homes, predominately in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, due to disasters worsened by climate change such as flooding, storms and wildfires. In August, the United Nations said Madagascar was on the brink of the world’s first “climate change famine”.

People living in and around Tsihombe, Madagascar, gather at holes dug to access water. Photograph: Alice Rahmoun/AP

The number of people uprooted around the world will balloon further, to as many as 1.2 billion by 2050 by some estimates, and while most will move within their own countries, many millions are expected to seek refuge across borders. This mass upending of lives is set to cause internal and external conflicts that the Pentagon, among others, has warned will escalate into violence.

The response to this trend on the right has led to what academics Joe Turner and Dan Bailey call “ecobordering”, where restrictions on immigration are seen as vital to protect the nativist stewardship of nature and where the ills of environmental destruction are laid upon those from developing countries, ignoring the far larger consumptive habits of wealthy nations. In an analysis of 22 far-right parties in Europe, the academics found this thinking is rife among rightwing parties and “portrays effects as causes and further normalizes racist border practices and colonial amnesia within Europe”.

Turner, an expert in politics and migration at the University of York, said the link between climate and migration is “an easy logic” for politicians such as Johnson as it plays into longstanding tropes on the right that overpopulation in poorer countries is a leading cause of environmental harm. More broadly, it is an attempt by the right to seize the initiative on environmental issues that have for so long been the preserve of center-left parties and conservationists.

“The far right in Europe has an anti-immigration platform, that’s their bread and butter, so you can see it as an electoral tactic to start talking about green politics,” Turner said, adding that migrants are being blamed in two ways – first, for moving to countries with higher emissions and then adding to those emissions, as rightwing figures in Arizona have claimed; and secondly for supposedly bringing destructive, polluting habits with them from their countries of origin.

A mixture of this Malthusian and ethno-nationalist thinking is being distilled into political campaigning, as in a political pamphlet described in Turner and Bailey’s research paper from SVP, the largest party in Switzerland’s federal assembly, which shows a city crowded by people and cars belching out pollution, with a tagline that translates to “stop massive immigration”. A separate campaign ad by SVP claims that 1 million migrants will result in thousands of miles of new roads and that “anyone who wants to protect the environment in Switzerland must fight against mass immigration”.

The far right depict migrants as being “essentially poor custodians of their own lands and then treating European nature badly as well”, Turner said. “So you get these headlines around asylum seekers eating swans, all these ridiculous scaremongering tactics. But they play into this idea that by stopping immigrants coming here, you are actually supporting a green project.”

Experts are clear that the main instigators of the climate crisis are wealthy people in wealthy countries. The richest 1% of the world’s population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, research has found, with people in the US causing the highest level of per capita emissions in the world. Adding new arrivals to high-emitting countries doesn’t radically ramp up these emissions at the same rate: a study by Utah State University found that immigrants are typically “using less energy, driving less, and generating less waste” than native-born Americans.

‘Protect our people’

Still, the idea of personal sacrifice is hard for many to swallow. While there is strengthening acceptance of climate science among the public, and a restlessness that governments have done so little to constrain global heating, support for climate polices plummets when it comes to measures that involve the taxing of gasoline or other impositions. According to a research paper co-authored by Fieschi, this has led to a situation where “detractors are taking up the language of freedom fighters”.

“We are seeing the growth of accusations of climate hysteria as a way for elites to exploit ordinary people,” Fieschi said. “The solutions that are talked about involve spending more money on deserving Americans and deserving Germans and so on, and less on refugees. It’s ‘yes, we will need to protect people, but let’s protect our people.’”

This backlash is visible in protest movements such as the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) in France, which became the longest-running protest movement in the country since the second world war by railing against, among other things, a carbon tax placed on fuel. Online, favored targets such as Greta Thunberg or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been shown in memes as Nazis or devils intent on impoverishing western civilization through their supposedly radical ideas to combat climate change. Fieschi said the right’s interaction with climate is far more than just about borders – it is animating fears that personal freedoms are under attack from a cosseted, liberal elite.

“You see these quite obviously populist arguments in the US and Europe that a corrupt elite, the media and government have no idea what ordinary people’s lives are like as they impose these stringent climate policies,” said Fieschi, whose research has analyzed the climate conversation on the right taking place on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms.

This sort of online chatter has escalated since the Covid-19 pandemic started, Fieschi said, and is being fed along a line of influence that begins with small, conspiratorial rightwing groups spreading messages that are then picked up by what she calls “middle of the tail” figures with thousands of followers, and then in turn disseminated by large influencers and into mainstream center-right politics.

“There are these conspiratorial accusations that Covid is a dry run for restrictions that governments want to impose with the climate emergency, that we need to fight for our freedoms on wearing masks and on all these climate rules,” Fieschi said. “There is a yearning for a pre-Covid life and a feeling climate policies will just cause more suffering.

“What’s worrying,” Fieschi continued, “is that more reasonable parts of the right, mainstream conservatives and Republicans, are being drawn to this. They will say they don’t deny climate change but then tap into these ideas.” She said center-right French politicians have started disparaging climate activists as “miserabilists”, while Armin Laschet, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union who sought to succeed Angela Merkel, has said Germany should focus on its own industry and people in the face of cascading global crises.

Green-cloaked nativism

The interplay between environmentalism and racism has some of its deepest roots in the US, where some of the conservation movement’s totemic figures of the past embraced views widely regarded as abhorrent today. Wilderness was something viewed in the 19th century as bound in rugged, and exclusively white, masculinity, and manifest destiny demanded the expansion of a secure frontier.

John Muir, known as the father of national parks in the US, described native Americans as “dirty” and said they “seemed to have no right place in the landscape”. Madison Grant, a leading figure in the protection of the American bison and the establishment of Glacier national park, was an avowed eugenicist who argued for “inferior” races to be placed into ghettoes and successfully lobbied for Ota Benga, a Congolese man, to be put on display alongside apes at the Bronx Zoo. This focus on racial hierarchies would come to be adopted into the ideology of the Nazis – themselves avowed conservationists.

There has been something of a reckoning of this troubling past in recent years – a bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt on horseback flanked by a native American man and an African man is to be removed from the front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and at least one conservation group named after the slaveholder and anti-abolitionist John James Audubon is changing its name. But elsewhere, themes of harmful overpopulation have been picked up by a resurgent right from a liberal environmental movement that now largely demurs from the topic.

Law enforcement and fire personnel wait to enter an area encroached by flames during the Bear fire, in Oroville, California, in September 2020. 

Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

Republicans, aware that many of their own younger voters are turned off by the relentless climate denial as they see their futures wreathed in wildfire smoke and flood water, have sensed an opportunity. “The right is reclaiming that older Malthusian population rhetoric and is using that as a cudgel in green terms rather than unpopular racist terms,” said Blair Taylor, program director at the Institute for Social Ecology, an educational and research body.

“It’s weird that this has become a popular theme in the US west because the west is sparsely populated and that hasn’t slowed environmental destruction,” he added. “But this is about speaking to nativist fears, it isn’t about doing anything to solve the problem.”

The spearhead for modern nativism in the US is, of course, Donald Trump who has, along with an often dismissive stance towards climate science itself, sought to portray migrants from Mexico and Central America as criminals and “animals” while vowing to restore clean air and water to deserving American citizens. If there is to be another iteration of a Trump presidency, or a successful campaign by one of his acolytes, the scientific denial may be dialed down somewhat while retaining the reflex nativism.

We will see weird theories that will spread blame in all the wrong directions

Blair Taylor

The Republican lawsuit in Arizona may be a prelude to an ecological reframing of Trump’s fetish for border walls should the former president run again for office in 2024, with migrants again the target. “We will see weird theories that will spread blame in all the wrong directions,” Taylor said. “More walls, more borders, more exclusion – that’s most likely the way we are heading.”

A recasting of environmentalism in this way has already branched out in different forms throughout the US right, spanning gun-toting preppers who view nature as a bastion to be defended from interlopers – “a ‘back to the land’ ideology where you are an earner and provider, not a not soft-handed soy boy,” as Taylor describes it – to the vaguely mystic “wellness” practitioners who have risen to prominence by spreading false claims over the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines.

The latter group, Taylor said, includes those who have a fascination with organic farming, Viking culture, extreme conspiracy theories such as the QAnon fantasy and a rejection of science and reason in favour of discovering an “authentic self”. These disparate facets are all embodied, he said, in Jake Angeli, the so-called QAnon shaman who was among the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January. Angeli, who became famous for wearing horns and a bearskin headdress during the violent insurrection, was sentenced to 41 months in prison over his role in the riot. He gained media attention for refusing to eat the food served in jail because it was not organic.

Angeli, who previously attended a climate march to promote his conspiracy-laden YouTube channel and said he is in favor of “cleansed ecosystems”, has been described as an eco-fascist, a term that has also been applied to Patrick Crusius, the Dallas man accused of killing 23 people in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.

In a document published online shortly before the shooting, Crusius wrote: “The environment is getting worse by the year … So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.” The shooting came just a few months after the terrorist massacre of 49 people in two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand, with the perpetrator describing himself as an eco-fascist unhappy about the birthrate of immigrants.

Such extreme, violent acts erupting from rightwing eco-populist beliefs are still rare but the “‘alt-right’ has been adept at taking concerns and making them mainstream”, said Taylor. “It has fostered the idea that nature is a place of savage survival that brings us back to original society, that nature itself is fascist because there is no equality in nature.

 That’s what they believe.”

Advocates for those fleeing climate-induced disasters hope there will be a shift in the other direction, with some advocating for a new international refugee framework. The UN convention on refugees does not recognize climate change, and its effects, as a reason for countries to provide shelter to refugees. An escalation in forced displacement from drought, floods and other calamities will put further onus on the need for reform. But opening up the convention for a revamp could see it wound back as much as it could be expanded, given the growing ascendancy of populism and authoritarianism in many countries.

“The big players aren’t invested in changing any of the definitions around refugees – in fact the US and UK are making it even more difficult to claim asylum,” said Turner. “I think what you’re going to see is internally displaced people increasing and the burden, as it already is, falling on neighbors in the global south.”

Ultimately, the extent of the suffering caused by global heating, and the increasingly severe responses required to deal with that, will help determine the reactionary response. While greater numbers of people will call for climate action, any restrictions imposed by governments will provide a sense of vindication to rightwingers warning of overreaching elites.

“My sense is that we won’t do enough to avoid others bearing the brunt of this,” Fieschi said. “Solidarity has its limits, after all. Sure, you want good things for the children of the world. But ultimately you will put your children first.”


Research for this article was made possible with the support of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Washington DC’s Transatlantic Media Fellowship

Ecofascism

Ecofascism is a theoretical political model in which a totalitarian government would require individuals to sacrifice their own interests to the "organic whole of nature". Some writers have used it to refer to the hypothetical danger of future dystopian governments, which might resort to …

 

Wikipedia

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Author

Ecofascism _Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience_, published by the anarchist AK Press, is a book consisting of two essays by supposed ecological activists Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier.

Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience: Biehl, Janet, Staudenmaier, Peter: 9781873176733: Amazon.com: Books
https://www.amazon.com/Ecofascism-Lessons-Experience-Janet-Biehl/dp/1873176732

Ecofascism: An Enduring Temptation

https://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/Ecofascism.pdf · PDF file

True, ecofascism is unlikely to occur in the United States any time soon, but environmentalists need to be aware that ecofascism was a component of German National Socialism, and that even today neo-fascists and members of far right-wing groups in Europe and the United States put to dark uses concepts drawn from the environmental movement. Twenty years ago, far right-wing groups in Germany ...

What Is Eco-Fascism, the Ideology Behind Attacks in El ...

https://www.gq.com/story/what-is-eco-fascism

2019-08-08 · The shootings in both El Paso and Christchurch, New Zealand are the latest examples of a new kind of ecoterrorism. According to the FBI, ecoterrorism is "the use or threatened use of violence of a ...

• Estimated Reading Time: 7 mins

Eco-fascism: The ideology marrying environmentalism and ...

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2018/09/eco-fascism-ideology...

2018-09-21 · Eco-fascism: The ideology marrying environmentalism and white supremacy thriving online. The online movement has roots in neo-Nazism – and a violent edge worth taking seriously. “I believe that both the state and the state’s citizens have the right to use all means necessary to save the environment, including murder and sabotage,” one ...

• Author: Sarah Manavis

The Dark Side of Environmentalism: Ecofascism and COVID-19 ...

https://usfblogs.usfca.edu/sustainability/2020/04/15/the-dark-side-of...

2020-04-15 · Ecofascism has no place within the environmental movement. It is harmful and destructive to all human beings with an emphasis on those who identify as marginalized and non-white. Now, this isn’t to say that every person who tweets or minimizes the impact of COVID-19 has the intention of being an ecofascist and is aware of the history and serious flaws within this mindset. It’s just to say ...

• Estimated Reading Time: 8 mins

Eco-fascism, “Overpopulation,” and Total Transformation

https://itsgoingdown.org/ecofascism-overpopulation-and-total-transformation

2021-02-19 · Eco-fascism, “Overpopulation,” and Total Transformation. A critical look at how historically white nationalists and the State have weaponized discussions of “over-population” to intervene in the environmental movement. Proposes that anarchists and autonomous anti-capitalists need new ways of discussing the unsustainability of industrial ...

Humanity isn't a disease - but ecofascism is - Global ...

https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/.../04/humanity-isnt-disease-ecofascism

• The Overpopulation Lie
• The ‘Acceptable Losses’ of The Population Argument
• Ecofascism and The Co-Opting of The Climate Movement
• Humanity Is The Cure

• Ecofascism is a growing movement in the far-right as the climate crisis becomes harder to ignore. It’s the use of environmentalist language to bolster far-right talking points. And it often begins with the idea of overpopulation. The connections between the climate movement and ecofascism aren’t coincidental…

See more on globaljustice.org.uk

Voices: The climate crisis has put all of us on the Titanic – we are, quite literally, sinking


Donnachadh McCarthy
Sun, November 21, 2021,

‘Cop26 is dead. Long live (the reformed) Cop27– and mass global peaceful direct action’ (Crispin Hughes )

Cop26 is dead – long live (the reformed) Cop27.

Let us be clear – Cop26 utterly failed on the only issue that counts: cutting global carbon emissions. The latest IPCC report stated that we needed a 45 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2030. UN analysis of the latest Cop26 pledges suggests that they will lead to a 16 per cent increase.

The reason Cop26 – just like every previous Cop – failed to stop emissions rising is that its institutional structures are incapable of delivering the actions necessary to save civilisation. Take for example the stark fact that Saudi Arabia has been able to veto the adoption of agreed voting procedures at every Cop since 1995. Thus every oil-producing or high-fossil-fuel-consuming state has the power of veto over every single word “agreed” at these summits.

Watching these failures unfold is like watching the Titanic catastrophe in real time. Human civilisation is the Titanic. The climate crisis is the iceberg we have now hit, despite all previous Cop summits supposedly seeking to avoid such a crash. The ship is now holed, and the poorest countries in the global south are literally having their third-class berths flooded and possessions destroyed.

These countries pleaded for years with the global north to stop burning fossil fuels at such a rate that the climate crisis would flood and destroy them. They then pleaded for funding to help protect them from the coming floods, droughts and storms. The industrialised nations promised $100bn per year from 2015, but failed to deliver. Forty per cent of the funds provided were not grants but loans, which require interest repayments, further damaging the ability of poor countries to protect themselves. They are now in vain pleading with the global north to help pay for the damage being caused as a result of past emissions.

Then we have the industrialising nations, including China, India and Brazil, with large populations, in the Titanic’s second-class cabins. These countries are demanding the right to burn vast amounts of fossil fuels in order to gain first-class cabin riches and a comfortable standard of living, something the first world has enjoyed for the past century. They are so obsessed with seeking first-class cabin status on the ship that their soaring fossil-fuel consumption is ramming that same ship even faster into the iceberg, which is sinking all of humanity, including their own populations.

And then, finally, we have the hypocritical arrogance of the industrialised north: the first-class occupants. They are insisting on the second world phasing out the coal-fired power stations that are fuelling its rapid increase in living standards, while the west continues to pour huge investment into new oil and gas fields around the world. They refuse to pay for the destruction and death their first-class luxury is imposing on the third-class occupants, though its effects will increasingly devastate their own populations.

Cop26 decisions, yet again, were littered with loopholes, postponing the rapid cuts required. Mark Carney’s GFANZ finance “agreement” allows the banks to invest in fossil fuels for another three decades.

The deforestation “agreement” allows deforestation to continue for another decade, even if signatories deliver on their pledges. Already Indonesia, which is a signatory, has declared that it will continue to prioritise “development” over protecting its forests.

When Cop26 defenders have to point out that the final “agreement” for the first time actually mentions fossil fuels, and that they have agreed to discuss “cuts” again next year, and that these are the “big wins” of the conference, you realise how flawed the whole process is.

So, what do we do now?

First, we need to reform the Cop process. Governments by themselves cannot create a zero-carbon economy without the agreement of the other three pillars of the fossil-fuel economy: banks, fossil-fuel corporations and media. The UK, as the current Cop president, needs to work with the incoming presidency, Egypt, and convene simultaneous Cop27 summits of the other three pillars to agree binding proposals to achieve net zero by 2030.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter by clicking here

Second, the climate movement needs to prioritise two targets. It must press the global corporate media leadership to use their immense political power to advocate for the urgent fair transition to a zero-carbon economy by 2030. And it must put pressure on the world’s banking system to implement the IEA ban on all new fossil-fuel investments. If Cop27 agreed that the $5 trillion investments planned for fossil-fuel expansion should be redirected instead into the energy transition, it would be a game-changer.

Finally, and tragically, we need a massive expansion in disruptive direct action. The global visceral anger from young people in response to Cop26’s betrayal needs to be channelled into waves of peaceful disruptive actions to force the pillars of power to take the necessary action.

With the Titanic ploughing at full speed into the iceberg, this is no time for hand-wringing. Action is what is needed, or the entire ship sinks, affecting all of us indiscriminately, whether our children are from the first, second or third-class cabins. The Canadian fires, the devastating floods in China and Germany and the droughts in Africa have shown that we are all now united in mortal danger.

Cop26 is dead. Long live (the reformed) Cop27– and mass global peaceful direct action.

Texas may be in danger of another major energy crisis and widespread power outages this winter, new report warns


Bethany Biron
Sat, November 20, 2021


Pike Electric service trucks line up after a snow storm on February 16, 2021 in Fort Worth, Texas.Ron Jenkins/Getty Images


A new report found that Texas could be in danger of widespread power outages again in the case of extreme winter weather.


The state is still grappling with the fallout of deadly February storms that left millions without electricity and water.


If a storm hits, the Texas power grid is projected to be 37% short of providing the total energy needed for the state.

Residents of the Lone Star State may have another long, difficult winter ahead.

Texas is once again in danger of widespread power outages if extreme weather strikes this season, according to a new report from the non-profit North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a harrowing warning after the state was devastated by severe storms earlier this year.

While NERC also indicated risk for additional regions in the South and the Midwest, the greatest risk remains with Texas, which is projected to fall 37% short of providing the total energy needed in the case of a storm.


The evaluation comes as the state continues to grapple with the fallout of historic February storms that brought freezing temperatures, snow, and ice and left millions of Texans without electricity and clean water for days on end. The unprecedented weather left 210 people dead and led to more than $50 billion in damages, prompting the Biden Administration to declare a national disaster in the state.

In the aftermath, many residents also faced a slew of billing and insurance issues, causing some to be saddled with astronomical electric bills of upwards of $1,000 a day because their plans were tied to wholesale rates.

"Winter Storm Uri highlighted the vulnerabilities of our electricity and natural gas systems during long duration, widespread cold-weather conditions," Mark Olson, NERC's manager of reliability assessments, said in a press statement. "The industry has taken major steps to prepare for extreme weather conditions this winter, but our existing generation fleet and fuel infrastructure remain exposed in many areas."

To further mitigate outages, NERC said power companies should take proactive measures to prepare for extreme winter weather, including implementing emergency operating plans, conducting drills, and polling generators for fuel and availability status.

"To be resilient in extreme weather, we are counting on our grid operators to proactively monitor the generation fleet, adjust operating plans and keep the lines of communication open," Olson said in the press statement.

According to News 4 San Antonio, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas — the company that operates the Texas power grid — plans to inspect 300 power plants during the course of 21 days in December in an effort to prevent power outages.

"To see what could happen under extreme cases in ERCOT, I think is very disappointing and something that we need to see how we can rectify," John Moura, NERC's director of reliability assessment, told News 4.

DINKS

Poll: More Americans losing interest in having kids



Ivana Saric
Sun, November 21, 2021, 3:47 PM·1 min read

The proportion of U.S. adults who don't have children and say they're unlikely to want them in the future is growing, according to a new Pew Research Center survey published Friday.

Why it matters: The declining U.S. birth rate, which has dropped for the last six years, raises questions about whether the U.S. will have enough workers in years to come to sustain the economy and fund social programs, according to the Washington Post.

The big picture: The survey found that about 44% of non-parents aged 18-49 said it was "not too or not at all likely" that they will have children.

This represents a 7 point increase from 2018, when 37% of respondents said the same, per Pew Research Center.

Adults below 50 with children who say they're unlikely to have any more — about 74% — remain consistent with 2018 levels.

Between the lines: About 56% of non-parents who say they're unlikely to have kids say it's because they "just don't want" them.

Among other reasons, 19% cited medical issues, 17% cited finances and 15% said because they don't have a partner.

9% based their decision on the "state of the world" and 5% of these respondents attributed their reluctance to climate change.

Democracy slipping away at record rate, intergovernmental body warns

Sun, November 21, 2021

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A greater number of countries are sliding towards authoritarianism, while the number of established democracies under threat has never been so high, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said on Monday.

Populist politics, the use of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions to silence critics, a tendency of countries to mimic the anti-democratic behaviour of others, and disinformation used to divide societies are mainly to blame, the Stockholm-based intergovernmental organisation said in a report.

"More countries than ever are suffering from 'democratic erosion'," IDEA said in its 2021 study on the state of democracy, relying on data compiled since 1975.

"The number of countries undergoing 'democratic backsliding' has never been as high," it said, referring to the regressive turn in areas including checks on government and judicial independence, as well as media freedom and human rights.

Afghanistan, which was taken over by Taliban militants in August after international troops withdrew, is the most dramatic case this year, while Myanmar's Feb. 1 coup marked the collapse of a fragile democracy. Other examples include Mali, which has suffered two coups since 2020, and Tunisia, where the president has dissolved parliament and assumed emergency powers.

Large democracies such as Brazil and the United States have seen presidents question the validity of election results, while India has witnessed the prosecution of groups of people critical of government policies.

Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Serbia are the European countries with the greatest declines in democracy. Turkey has seen one of the largest declines between 2010 and 2020.

"In fact, 70 per cent of the global population now live either in non-democratic regimes or in democratically backsliding countries," the report said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge in authoritarian behaviour by governments. The study said that there was no evidence that authoritarian regimes were better at fighting the pandemic, despite Chinese state media reports to the contrary.

"The pandemic provides additional tools and justification for repressive tactics and silencing of dissent in countries as diverse as Belarus, Cuba, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Venezuela," the report said.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Belarus opposition leader urges Austria to do more to counter Lukashenko


FILE PHOTO: Belarusian opposition leader Tsikhanouskaya visits Warsaw, where she meets with the Belarusian diaspora in Warsaw

VIENNA (Reuters) - Belarusian opposition leader in exile Svetlana Tikhanouskaya urged Austria's government and Austrian companies present in Belarus to do more to help her allies against President Alexander Lukashenko in remarks published on Sunday.

Her comments in a joint interview with Austrian newspapers Kleine Zeitung and Die Presse come on the eve of a video conference hosted by Austria in support of Belarusian civil society in the face of a crackdown on opposition by Lukashenko's government. Tikhanouskaya helped organise the conference.

Austrian companies are among the most important European Union firms in Belarus. Raiffeisen Bank International's Priorbank is the fourth-biggest bank in the country in terms of loans, and phone operator A1 Telekom Austria has a share of roughly 42% of its mobile market.

"We understand that large companies like A1 do not want to give up their business activities in our country," Tikhanouskaya said.

"However, they could make their presence subject to certain conditions and make clear that their employees cannot be thrown in prison simply because they have a different opinion to Lukashenko."

Austria could take in students expelled from university in Belarus, she added.

Lukashenko claimed a resounding victory in last year's presidential election despite the widely held view that the vote was fraudulent. Various opposition groups say Tikhanouskaya won.

The resulting crackdown has involved hundreds thrown in prison, allegations that opposition activists were tortured, and spurred a lively opposition movement in countries like Latvia, Lithuania and Germany where many Belarusians live.

In the latest confrontation between the EU and Minsk since the election, Europe accuses Belarus of flying in thousands of people from the Middle East and pushing them to cross the Polish border into the EU.

Monday's conference, which was switched to a virtual format because Austria is going into a COVID-19 lockdown that day, is due to feature the foreign ministers of Germany, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia and Slovakia. The Belarusian government declined to take part.

The aim is to seek "constructive approaches for a peaceful, dialogue-based solution" in Belarus, Austria says.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Congress to airlines: Where did all that Covid money go?



Oriana Pawlyk
Sat, November 20, 2021

The wave of airline cancellations that snarled thousands of flights over the past three months did more than strand passengers at airports from Florida to Indiana and points in between.

It also angered lawmakers who had given the airline industry more than $50 billion in pandemic relief money over the last year and a half — based on the carriers’ promise that the cash would help them be ready for travelers' return to the skies. Now Congress is demanding answers about why airlines have been so unprepared for the inevitable upswing in passenger demand, a question with big implications for the holiday travel season that kicks off this weekend.

“There should have been every reason, particularly given the bailout money for the airlines, to prepare for the surge we're seeing now,” Democratic Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s representative in Congress, told POLITICO. “This money was for a very specific purpose.”

Norton, who said she has some “buyer’s remorse” for supporting the bailout, is calling for hearings on the topic before the House Transportation Committee — and she’s not the only one. The Senate’s transportation panel is already preparing to grill airlines on the matter in early December.

“The airlines owe Americans better service,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the panel. “In my view, they're failing to keep their side of the bargain.”

Airlines for America, the trade group for major U.S. airlines, said the hiccups carriers have experienced recently "are wholly unrelated" to federal support payments, which was "used exclusively" to keep workers on the job.

"Travelers have been returning to the skies at a rapid pace, and U.S. airlines are working to hire and train new employees and return to service aircraft that had been put in storage in order to meet the growing demand," the group said. It did not respond to a further question about why airlines didn't use the federal money to stay more adequately staffed for the return of demand.

So far, the start of the pre-Thanksgiving weekend has not seen a new surge in mass cancellations — though that could change with the next wave of stormy weather.
Weathering the weather

Southwest last month canceled more than 2,000 flights after what it called an “unexpected air traffic control issue” compounded by weather in Florida that disturbed flight operations. American Airlines had a similar meltdown with thousands of flights canceled over Halloween weekend, also citing bad weather. Spirit canceled more than 60 percent of its flights for roughly three days in August, attributing its snafu to system outages, staffing and the weather.

The airlines involved in this recent turmoil have typically blamed a set of cascading problems that begins with bad weather, which for example has hampered crews trying to fly to the airports where their next assignment begins. Those crews are still on the work clock even during those delays, which means that by the time they're in position, they're sometimes forced to stop for the night because of rules intended to ensure they don't fly tired. And because the airlines lack adequate reserve crews to fill in those gaps, problems snowball from there.

Aviation industry experts are skeptical that weather is always the root cause, though, instead blaming tight crew scheduling and lack of personnel slack in general. For instance, Southwest said its October flight meltdown was over air traffic control delays and weather in Florida. But no other airline that operates out of Florida had such severe problems in the same span.

In an Oct. 21 earnings report, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly acknowledged a personnel crunch at the airline, saying its "available staffing fell below plan and, along with other factors, caused us to miss our operational ontime performance targets."

'What did you do with all the money?'

Last year, as lawmakers began to grasp the nature of the pandemic challenge at the country’s doorstep, Congress enacted the CARES Act, H.R. 748 (116), with a tranche of money for airlines to use to protect their workers — from crews to baggage handlers — from mass furloughs. The idea was to keep employees, many of whom require training and certifications to perform their jobs, in place so that operations could resume seamlessly as travel ramped back up.

“The support our government has entrusted to us carries immense responsibility and an obligation that American Airlines is privileged to undertake,” CEO Doug Parker said in April 2020 following the news that grants were on the way. “It is our privilege to continue flying through the downturn and to be in a ready position as our country and the world return to the skies.”

Ultimately, federal money saved hundreds of thousands of flight attendant, pilot and support jobs. Yet the disruptions experienced over recent weeks are expected to continue as travel climbs. Southwest has already decided to cut flights from its schedule for December and through early next year to try to get ahead of its staffing concerns and avoid last-minute cancellations of the sort that strand passengers.

Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines pilot and a spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, the union for pilots at American, said it's not just lawmakers who are frustrated with the way airlines are behaving. He said crews aren't always being managed well, with pilots and flight attendants waiting around after a canceled flight for airline planners to attempt to reschedule them as the clock ticks down on their shift.

He said pilots also want to be able to have a better-planned routine that doesn't devolve into chaos at the first hint of trouble. He noted that the relief funding — $25 billion in grants, and $25 billion more in financial assistance — was supposed to provide a cushion to give airlines the ability to execute flights in a post-pandemic world.

"So we're asking our management team, even before these [travel] events, 'What did you do with all the money?'" Tajer said.

Tajer didn't have an answer, but Norton did. She speculated that it appears that "who really benefited are the shareholders of the airlines — that's one of the reasons that I'm requesting a hearing."

Like Norton, Tajer said he remains dumbfounded as to how these problems could happen knowing the money was there as a protective measure.

"I did interviews everywhere, along with other union groups and the airlines saying, 'We've got to be ready for the recovery, that's why this is important; this is an investment in that recovery,'" Tajer said. "And now here I sit talking about, 'How in the world could you not be ready for this?'"
Congress weighs in

Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) has already been probing the issue. Over the summer, she asked airlines for information on the staffing shortages that some experts contend have led to flight cancellations and disarray.

Specifically she has asked for current staffing figures, information about layoffs, buyouts and furloughs, and other statistics that will form the basis of what could be an uncomfortable hearing on the matter when her committee convenes in December.

Congress put strings on its bailout money — chief among them that airlines agreed to stop furloughing or laying off their employees during the pandemic. But John Breyault of the National Consumers League said he suspects that even with that directive, airlines got creative in how they balanced their capacity, avoiding furloughs and layoffs in part by offering incentives for employees to take voluntary leave or retire early. Though allowed under the terms of the legislation, that's contributed to the current staffing crunch, he suggested.

Now, "consumers are really reaping the whirlwind when it comes to delays and cancellations because the airlines don't have the staff to fly those planes," added Breyault, the league's vice president of public policy, telecommunications and fraud. The nonprofit organization advocates for citizens on marketplace and workplace issues.

In a memo to flight attendants, American Airlines acknowledged that disruptions were caused by past staffing decisions, including buyouts and early retirements that the airline encouraged. The company said another factor was the need to juggle new hurdles, such as peaks in travel demand as more Americans sought out leisure travel for the first time in more than a year.

"As the demand for air travel was slow to return, we offered early outs and extended voluntary leaves," Brady Byrnes, American's vice president of flight service, said in a Nov. 5 internal memo to flight attendants. "Fast forward a few months, and the landscape has changed dramatically. … That's why we're taking steps to minimize disruptions to your work schedule and our customers' travel plans as we gear up for the busy holiday season."

With holiday travel coming up, airlines say they're accelerating efforts to get schedule and staffing right to avoid gaps in the system, including making sure they have enough staff to crew the scheduled flights they have already planned, and creating bonus and pay incentives for overtime work. Byrnes, for example, said American will offer its flight attendants 300 percent pay premium increases for working during holiday peak periods if they don't skip a shift between Nov. 15 and Jan. 2.

A contributing factor is the continuing tight labor market, which has left many industries with a dearth of personnel slack that the pandemic is only worsening, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president and analyst at the Teal Group.

Aboulafia said airlines couldn’t predict when exactly travel would climb out of its pandemic slump back to pre-Covid levels. “Who could have predicted that?”

If airlines had brought on more employees, jet fuel and planes ahead of market demand, it would have plunged them into a financial hole deeper than deficits wrought by the pandemic, Aboulafia said. “By having too little capacity, you're embarrassed, [but] if you get it wrong by having too much capacity, you run the risk of bankruptcy,” he said.

But Norton said this was entirely predictable.

“Any fool could tell that as Covid declined, airline traffic would go up,” she said.
Travel roars back

The trends have been clear, particularly recently. Airline bookings have been on the upswing over the last few weeks, especially with the Thanksgiving holiday coming up. An airline consumer index released last week by Adobe Digital Economy shows bookings from six U.S.-based carriers are 78 percent higher than 2020 levels, and are up 3 percent over pre-pandemic levels.

Airport businesses are also predicting an uptick in need for services such as parking spots and other items, all of which suggest consumer demand is soaring. Another data point is a reported rise in wait times at airlines' call centers.

Airlines’ zeal to return to profitability as soon as possible is skewing how they accommodate consumers, argued Breyault of the National Consumers League.

He said that in a meeting with Department of Transportation officials Nov. 10, his organization called for an investigation into whether airlines are deceptively advertising flights and selling tickets that they can't possibly meet because of limited crews.

Asked about the meeting, DOT responded that it meets regularly with representatives of consumer advocacy organizations, who "often highlight aviation consumer protection priorities for their organizations."

"The Department welcomes this input and considers the perspective of these organizations and other stakeholders in determining what action is in the public interest," a spokesperson said Tuesday.

Between January 2020 and the end of June 2021, DOT received 124,918 complaints concerning refunds, with 84 percent pertaining to mishandling of a canceled flight, according to the agency. “There certainly seems to me to be some shenanigans here that the DOT should be investigating,” Breyault said.

Lawmakers have long been concerned by airline behavior on refunds, especially during the pandemic. On Wednesday, Blumenthal and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) reintroduced a bill, S. 3222 (117), to expand protections for air travelers. The legislation, similar to one introduced in 2019, would provide passengers with fair compensation in the event of airline-driven cancellations or delays and other items.
'Doing the best they can'

Some lawmakers weren't as eager to upbraid airlines for canceled flights, saying they’ve managed as best they can with this unpredictable pandemic and the government’s sometimes patchwork requirements for travel.

“They're dealing with Covid and just like the rest of this country and the rest of the world, it's made life very difficult and much more complicated,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo). Pilots and flight attendants also have additional stressors to deal with, including spiking incidents with unruly passengers.

“It’s not the airlines failing to act. … They are doing the best they can,” he said.

That reasoning won’t satisfy other lawmakers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said the airlines received funding solely because they are a key part of the nation’s transportation infrastructure.

But “if they can’t keep their promises to taxpayers and travelers, Congress should find out why,” she said.

CIA continues to conceal JFK assassination files. But here’s what we do know | Opinion


Jefferson Morley
Sun, November 21, 2021

As a professional journalist who has been reporting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy for almost 30 years, I have long been skeptical about the pursuit of a proverbial “smoking gun” that supposedly will blow open the case of the murdered president. hen When the congressional deadline for the release of the last of the JFK files approached last month, I instinctively advised friends that there would no smoking gun in the released material.

After all, no serious investigative reporter seeks a single piece of evidence to decisively prove some kind of wrongdoing. To the contrary, good investigative journalism assembles myriad pieces of evidence into a mosaic that depicts a granular story of wrongdoing not previously visible to the public and law enforcement. Most prize-winning journalistic investigations do not depend on, or even feature, a “smoking gun” piece of evidence. So why should the JFK assassination story?

As the editor of the JFK Facts blog, I report on new pieces of evidence that filled in blank spaces in the historical record of JFK’s assassination. Think mosaic, not smoking gun.


But when the Biden White House announced late in the evening of Oct. 22 that the last of the JFK documents would not be released until December 2022 at the earliest, I began to rethink my caution. Friday nights are traditionally when the White House press office takes out the president’s smelliest garbage in hopes that the stench will pass by Monday morning. The announcement that the CIA and other federal agencies had delayed compliance with the 1992 JFK Records Act for the second time in four years was a story the White House understandably wanted to go away.
Smoking gun?

The delay struck me — and University of Texas Professor James Galbraith, among others — as a smoking gun in itself. The CIA’s slow-walking tactics are not quite definitive proof of a JFK conspiracy. They do, however, demonstrate that the CIA does not intend to obey a law concerning the assassination of a sitting American president.

The most plausible explanation of the CIA’s six-decade long history of deception, deceit and delay about assassination-related records is the desire to hide embarrassment or malfeasance. If nothing else, Biden’s order on the JFK files indicates that the CIA has a JFK problem: the clandestine service today cannot afford full disclosure about what happened in Dallas a long time ago.

To be sure, there are other possible explanations. Mark Zaid, a leading national security attorney in Washington, suggests that the CIA is hiding legitimate non-JFK secrets. This is possible, if not probable. But the CIA, facing a deadline set by President Trump in October 2017, released no JFK documents of any kind, basically saying, “the COVID dog at my homework.” You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if non-JFK secrets is all they are withholding.

In fact, JFK researchers know something about what the CIA is hiding. Most of the still-secret JFK files have been partially declassified. In some documents only a paragraph, sentence or single word remains secret. From context we can deduce much about what is still hidden.

A redacted 123-page CIA file on Watergate burglar Howard Hunt, released in April 2018, for example, may shed light on what President Richard Nixon called “the whole Bay of Pigs thing.” Nixon used this phrase as a coded reference to JFK’s assassination, according to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. The Hunt file lends credence to Haldeman’s claim.
Cuba policy

In 1970, Hunt, a leading figure in the failed invasion of Cuba, circulated the manuscript of his memoir, “Give Us This Day,” which denounced JFK’s Cuba policy as weak, if not traitorous. Hunt did not go through the agency’s pre-publication clearance process, a serious breach of protocol. Five documents, comprising eight pages of material, have been removed from the Hunt file with the notation that they can be found in CIA’s JFK files. I doubt these documents include a smoking gun, but they are certainly relevant to the assassination story.

The CIA file of Hunt’s fellow burglar Frank Sturgis has more smoking-gun potential. Sturgis, a long-time resident of Miami, was a soldier of fortune involved in anti-Cuba operations in the 1960s. Accused of involvement in Kennedy’s assassination, Sturgis denied he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. But behind closed doors, Sturgis boasted to investigators that the FBI considered him a plausible suspect in JFK’s murder. The redacted material in the Sturgis file may shed light on questions about Mafia involvement in JFK’s murder.

These passages concern the agency’s long-running interest in a man named Robert Maheu. He was a corrupt former FBI agent who facilitated the first CIA conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1960. In 1971, Maheu shared what he knew of the Castro plots with syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. Maheu’s source, Mafia hitman Johnny Rosselli had hinted that the CIA’s efforts to kill Castro had led to the assassination of JFK. Rosselli, under federal investigation, with the possibility of deportation to Italy, threatened to tell the whole story to a Las Vegas grand jury. The blackmail ploy worked. The agency protected Rosselli from deportation, and Maheu never told the story to prosecutors. Years later, Rosselli, facing a congressional subpoena seeking his JFK testimony, was found stuffed in an oil drum floating in Biscayne Bay before his appearance on Capitol Hill.

Another still-secret file concerns a Miami man named Eladio del Valle. Some of his associates — not conspiracy theorists and not enemies— believed was involved in Kennedy’s assassination. Del Valle was murdered in 1966, a crime that never was solved. David Kaiser, a diplomatic historian and author of “The Road to Dallas,” a scholarly book about Kennedy’s assassination, sought to get access to Del Valle’s CIA records. He learned the Del Valle file was — and is — classified in its entirety.
Aware of Oswald

Then there’s a 338-page file that traces the very interesting career of James Walton Moore, the chief of the Dallas office of the agency’s Domestic Contacts Division in 1963. Moore knew all about Lee Harvey Oswald a year before he supposedly killed Kennedy. In the summer of 1962, Moore learned that Oswald, a former Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union out of sympathy for communism, had returned to Texas with a Russian wife. If the official JFK story is true — if Oswald alone killed the president — Moore was one of a half dozen senior CIA officials who failed to discern the threat he posed.

The CIA has largely managed to keep Moore out of the JFK investigations. He was never questioned about his pre-assassination knowledge of the accused assassin. His personnel file was partially released in 2018. A dozen pages remain redacted in their entirety.

Even more sensitive are the files of George Joannides, chief of CIA covert action operations in Miami. In 1963, Joannides ran a network of Cuban agents, recruited under a program code-named AMSPELL, who generated propaganda about the pro-Castro Oswald before and after JFK was killed. A dozen documents from Joannides’ personnel file in 1963 are still kept secret on the grounds that their release would harm the national security of the United States in 2021.

This claim sounds extreme but I’m inclined to believe it. The release of these records could do real damage to the reputation of the CIA. One heavily redacted memo that I obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit concerns a security clearance Joannides received to participate in a still-undisclosed top-secret operation in the summer of 1963. If that operation involved AMSPELL agents and Oswald’s Cuba activities, the memo will be strong evidence, that certain CIA officers were complicit in Kennedy’s murder.

The CIA partially declassified an 87-page AMSPELL file in 2018. A dozen pages are still hidden from public view. If, and when, they are declassified, these pages may shed light on the CIA cover-up that followed JFK’s murder.

Of course, my educated guesses could be wrong. After all, I cannot see the redacted material. Only top CIA officials know what the agency will — and will not — release in compliance with Biden’s order. The sheer variety of the still-secret JFK files, however, indicates the scope of the agency’s JFK problem today. Six decades after the Dallas ambush, there is a lot of potentially embarrassing JFK material — hundreds of pages worth-- that the CIA is loath to share with the Congress and the American people.

Do one or more of these pieces of the JFK mosaic add up to a veritable smoking gun?

In my opinion, yes, which is why I doubt any significant JFK files will be released in the coming weeks or in December 2022. The CIA, of course, could prove me wrong and dispel all doubts by releasing these files in their entirety at any time. That is not going to happen for one increasingly obvious reason. When it comes to the JFK assassination story, the CIA’s files are smoking suspiciously.

Jefferson Morley, editor of the JFK Facts blog, is the author of the forthcoming “Scorpions Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate,” to be published in June 2022.

UK

New Forest rangers bridle at ‘abusive’ cyclists scaring off ponies during annual count

Telegraph reporters
Sat, November 20, 2021

Cyclists are putting themselves and others in danger by ignoring signs warning them off and getting in the way of the round-up, say agisters - Stuart Martin/Alamy Stock Photo

It is an ancient tradition dating back to the time of William the Conqueror.

For almost 1,000 years, the wild ponies of the New Forest have been rounded up for annual health checks in a countryside custom known as “the drift”.

However, this year’s drift has been disturbed by “abusive” cyclists who have been accused of treating the historic woodland as a “playground”, putting themselves and others in danger by ignoring signs warning them off and getting in the way of the round-up.

Some have even sworn at park rangers telling them to stay away as the round-up is carried out by agisters, the group responsible for caring for the 6,000 ponies that roam the national park.

The beauty of the New Forest is at risk of being destroyed by visitors who do not respect it, the group said.

It has warned that visitors who disobey signs asking them not to use certain areas and paths in the park are startling the ponies and frightening them off.

About 6,000 ponies roam the national park in Hampshire - RichardALock/E+

The group has said taking care of the ponies is important as the grazing animals are what makes the park’s landscape so unique which is the very reason visitors flock to the area in the first place.

Jonathan Gerrelli, the head agister, explained the importance of the round-ups: “The drift is very much an ancient tradition. The act of the animals going out grazing is what has made the New Forest what it is today. They have very much shaped the forest.

“You would not have the lovely grassy lawns or the open heathland without the grazing animals. You would just have woodland and scrubland.

“There is hardly anywhere else in the country where you have large numbers of grazing animals turned out all year round onto thousands of acres of open land, so it is a unique area.”

Mr Gerrelli explained that as the forest attracts increased visitors, it is having a big impact on his team’s ability to properly look after the horses.

He said: “During the round-up, we are getting more issues with people getting in the way and putting themselves in danger and us in danger. By ignoring signs telling them the cycle route is close, some cyclists are getting in the way as you are gathering up herds of galloping ponies.

“It is dangerous and spooks the horses away from the designated route, so we cannot catch them. The forest is a working forest. People look at it as a bit of playground and it is certainly not that.”

Mountain bikers were the biggest problem as they do not stick to cycle routes, according to Jonathan Gerrelli, the head agister - Jordan Pettitt/Solent News & Photo Agency

Mountain bikers were the biggest problem, according to Mr Gerrelli, as they do not even stick to cycle routes and they cannot put signs warning people of the horse round-up all over the forest.

“Although it is great for visitors to come down and enjoy it, they have got to respect it, so we would ask people to take great care and obey instructions. The signs aren’t put up for nothing. They are there for a reason,” he said.

“They don’t mean to do it. It is just ignorance of country ways and the countryside. People need to be more respectful and think a bit more of their actions.

“Everybody thinks ‘it is only just me’, but you have got to think there is 1,000 more only ‘just yous’ coming behind you and doing the same thing.

“It is a constant pressure with the volume of people coming into the forest, which is threatening the very thing they are coming to see.”

The issue first emerged in a report to the Verderers’ Court, an elected group responsible for the protection and conservation of the national park, which noted problems with cyclists and walkers.

In a meeting in September, the court was told: “Unfortunately, a small number of cyclists have caused problems at some drifts by refusing to follow advice. On occasion they have been abusive.

“On the Hilltop drift, some members of the public out walking had seen the notices warning of the drift, but still thought it was OK for them to proceed.”

Throughout the autumn, there are about 40 round-ups in which often more than 200 horses are gathered up for health checks - Solent News & Photo Agency

Damage to fencing in the forest was also raised as a problem, with agisters complaining they had lost half the ponies they had intended to catch on a recent drift due to a lack of fencing.

The court was told: “On the recent Fawley drift, only about 50 per cent of the ponies the agisters aspired to catch were driven in. The remainder got away due to a lack of fencing that has been removed.”

The people of the New Forest have been rounding up their horses since before it was officially created in 1079 by King William I. The drift is seen as an essential part of managing the herd of ponies in the forest.

Throughout the autumn, there are about 40 round-ups in which often more than 200 horses are gathered up for health checks.

They are also fitted with reflective collars in order to decrease the amount of road accidents.