What would sustainable agriculture look like? It would be zero carbon consumption or better, deliver food sustainably whilst preserving and enhancing natural capital (including the soils and the peat), offset carbon emissions elsewhere, and pass the assets on to the next generation in good shape. What we have now is no carbon price, no carbon border adjustments, and no overall plan for land use, including carbon sequestration.

Agriculture is the largest carbon emitter relative to size in the economy. We have a bottom-up, case-by-case approach, with ELMs (Environmental Land Management schemes) in England and a voluntary carbon offsetting market that looks like the Wild West. There is a chasm between what is going on and net zero. The scope for improvement is correspondingly vast and the time is short – just 28 years to net zero. Creating a green and prosperous agriculture requires a step change, with credible offsetting, credible public goods funding, and polluters being made to pay. All are perfectly achievable and economically efficient, but not if we continue with the current timid approaches.

Sustainable farming and net zero – a long way to go

In this episode Rob and Stan look at various cybersecurity risks in the critical infrastructure sectors - and how to mitigate against them It has been inspired by a series of blog posts  written by Stan that focus on:
Healthcare and public health
Energy
Financial services
Critical manufacturing

"Some of the threats are common among the different sectors. Certainly these  large scale kind of ransomware attacks is impacting healthcare. Bu it's also impacting the manufacturing sector. You know, 13% of all ransomware attacks last year were attributed to those in the manufacturing sector. Because if your production line’s down you're motivated to pay. And ransomware attackers know that."

" think the reality is we can no longer assume that we have a landscape where people will play nice.  For example what's going on between Ukraine and Russia, where cyber is being used as one of the elements of war. And if we are in a conflict in the future, our adversary is most likely going to be leveraging cyber and will look for weaknesses in our infrastructure.  We've got to change the priority and the voluntary approach doesn't seem to work. So whether it be through carrot or stick we need to  motivate each of these operators to raise their game. Because time's running out."

EXTRA! Cybersecurity in the critical infrastructure sectors

Helm Talks is full of short, 'pull no punches' insights into:
Energy & Climate; 
Regulation, Utilities & Infrastructure; 
Natural Capital & the Environment.

Professor Dieter Helm is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford.

Sustainable farming and net zero – a long way to go

Helm Talks - energy climate infrastructure & more

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