The Thin End

According to recent market reports, demand for palm oil is 'skyrocketing worldwide,' with global demand estimated at 74.6 million tons in 2019 and expected to grow.  It is used in packaging and in so much of our snack foods, cookies, crackers, chocolate products, instant noodles, cereals, and doughnuts, and the list goes on. Palm oil is used in a staggering 50% of consumer products.  Yet, unethical exploitation is destroying rainforests and harming the planet.  Asia Pacific countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia are the top producers contributing 80% to the global market.  WWF’s 2021 Palm Oil Buyers Scorecard published last month found that some of the world’s most influential brands are still failing to tackle the deforestation and damage to critical natural habitats caused by unsustainable palm oil production.  The sixth edition of the scorecard, the most far-reaching to date, examined 227 major retailers, consumer goods manufacturers and hospitality compani...

We need to see the bigger picture. While populist politicians turn inward and argue about migration, the world burns literally.  Instead of erecting barriers, they need to address the causes of migration.  We need international action on climate change.  Climate change is the biggest challenge we face. It is the bigger picture.  When I started The Thin End blog, it was heavily focused on the political aftermath of the financial crash.  In the UK, and elsewhere, politicians made the poorest, and least able bear the brunt of the banking scandal.  The capitalist system could 'no longer afford' to help the poor, to house the homeless and heal the sick!  The stark naked truth of its objective - growth for profit - was revealed. Any growth would do, even if it killed the planet.  A self-destructive growth on which a few grow very, very rich.  Of course, we all benefitted, didn't we?  Growth creates jobs and income we are told.  S...

Dame Emma Thompson, backed by a host of other famous names, has taken aim at big brands including Unilever, Nestle and Mondelez today, as Greenpeace releases a powerful new 90-second animation that highlights how orangutans are being pushed to the brink of extinction because of deforestation for palm oil. Rang-tan Launched globally today, just ahead of International Orangutan Day (on August 19), the film, voiced by Emma Thompson, will also be shown across UK cinemas with thousands of screenings throughout August and September. It has been made by creative agency Mother (directed by award-winning Salon Alpin) and produced by Oscar-winning Passion Animation Studios. Celebrities taking to social media to share it include Stephen Fry, Bryan Adams, Jodie Kidd, Alesha Dixon, Andy Serkis, Geri Horner (née Halliwell), Gregg Wallace and Sharon Osbourne. The film tells the story of baby Rang-tan as she causes mischief in a little girl’s bedroom. Just as the girl is about to banis...

The G7 met last month in Canada.  Did you notice the big distraction? Or, perhaps I should say distractions.  The world leaders met, and yet failed to consider the most pressing problem of our time - climate change and habitat loss.  Yet,  these are the man-made causes of their problems. Instead,  they were concerned largely with trying to stabilise the status quo on global trade.  To keep things as they are.  The meeting ended in chaos.  The system is broken, but goes on clunking away destroying the planet at each turn of the wheel.  Political wood mouse We thought of writing about the wood mouse again.  The wood mouse was deemed too 'political'  for us to promote in the USA, or at least one major social outlet deemed that this was so for our podcast  Learning from the Wood Mouse .  What we can learn from  Wood Mice is dangerous stuff!  So, we will try not to mention the wood mouse in this article.  ...

So what do we know about intelligence?  In the 1960s behaviourists studied animal behaviour in what they then regarded as 'controlled' laboratory conditions.  Rats were placed in boxes or mazes and their behaviour was measured in terms of 'conditioned responses'.  Rats would be 'conditioned' to press a lever for a food reward.  It made an assumption that learning was either reward or aversion based. Wood Mouse  Apodemus sylvaticus,   physical and social environment This approach appeared more 'scientific' because it was 'controlled'.  It is odd that in one sense it looked at an organism as being conditioned by its environment, and yet ignored its interaction with the environment. You take a rat and put it into a laboratory under controlled conditions.  Other variables could be excluded, or held constant, in large part because the animals had been taken out of their rich physical and social environment.  It assumed that this rich envir...

President Trump is right. There is something wrong with global trade, and with the deals that make them possible. What we need, however, are the right kind of solutions. Solutions that help the producers, the farmer and farm workers, as much as the consumers. Solutions that help the planet heal itself from pollution and loss of habitats. Solutions that lift people out of poverty. Solutions that prevent the 'need' to grow crops destined to destroy lives through narcotics abuse. a new deal on trade We need a new global deal that produces sustainable economies with social and environmental objectives. The G7 scurry around trying to repair a broken system. They are rightly angry that Trump has given up on that system, but neither Trump nor the G7 have the right solutions. So they fight over the entrails of a broken system. The neoliberal view of 'free markets' meeting needs is a myth.  Markets are neither 'free'  nor good at meeting social and  environmental n...