In 1839 Edward Bulwer-Lytton coined the phrase ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’, prior to that figures from Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson expressed the same idea. All early acknowledgers of a shifting power base, from those with a capability for violence to those with a mastery of words.

Gone are the days where problems can be solved by a slap with the glove and duel to the death. No single factor has caused this transition but undoubtedly the growing complexity of the world has played a big role. It is very hard to fight a way through a refugee crisis or a credit crunch. After all, George Osbourne is not snuggling up to the Chinese government because of the strength of the Red Army. It is because of their increasing political and corporate power.

Throughout its ascendance the pen has been the realm and tool of politicians. Whether you like what they are saying or doing, the pen is their weapon of choice. But the power base is shifting. Capitalism is driving deregulation and a power transfer from governments to corporations. As the UK votes to reclaim sovereignty from the EU with one hand, it dishes power and influence out to big business with the other. The irony of the Brexit debate is that the negotiation of TTIP – backed strongly by David Cameron, which will transfer vast power from national governments to corporations – is likely to be a far more important long term issue and distributes wholly undemocratic power but gets no air time.
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The corporate take-over of the western world has been well document and, for better or worse, is hard to dispute. With it comes a stark difference, politicians (in theory) act on behalf of their electorate, corporations act to maximize shareholder value. As control moves from governments to corporations, the role of the consumer and their shopping trolley becomes more and more important. Rather than voting with a ballot paper, we increasingly vote with our consumption. 

But with power, comes responsibility and this is where it falls apart. A great disconnect exists between cause and effect. Everything we consume has a direct impact on the world around us. If we choose to consume cheap meat it is likely we are supporting animal cruelty. If we choose to eat vegetables grown by big agriculture using vast quantities of pesticides, it is likely we are incentivizing the destruction of bees and all the benefits they provide. A good illustration of how broken reality is occurred to me recently; between mouthfuls of Foie gras someone was telling me how much they ‘loved animals’.

Following a recent report, Prof Maarten Hajer, UN expert on food production and the environment, has called for governments to tax meat consumption because of the environmental damage the industry causes. The report shows 24% of greenhouses gases and a staggering 60% of species loss is driven by the industry. It is clear that meat consumption has far bigger implications than just the welfare of the animal eaten.  The links are there and need to be made.

Companies respond to consumption - if their goods are purchased they produce more.  As the UK government continually steps back from every environmental policy it can, the power inevitably shifts to corporations. However, consumers can wield this power if they choose to. The real danger comes when our consumption is purely driven by price, or even worse inertia, and capitalism produces a ruthless race to the bottom, with environmental, humanitarian and societal interests given no protection and being torn to shreds.  

It is a double edged sword; our consumption can be hugely positive or hugely negative. Many people ask what difference one person can make, so decide they won’t bother to take an interest or change their consumption. The simple response is that if everyone takes this view, then the free-market model that the western world is currently flogging is in the long term a dead horse.
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As power bases change, so do the mechanisms for exercising power. The strength of consumers to wield power is increasing but until the cause and effect of our consumption is properly considered, the world is left in a perilous position, because sadly, you can’t have your Foie gras and be an animal lover. 

Everyone loves a panda; it’s very hard not to. According to Simon Watt, a British evolutionary biologist, conservation charities may be biased towards a few of the most visually appealing animals and not focussing equally on the protection of some of “mother nature’s more aesthetically challenged children”. A study from the University of Kent backs up this finding -of the 1200 or so threatened mammalian species in the world only 80 are used by conservation NGOs (Non-Government Organisations) to raise funds, nearly all of which “can be described as large, furry, and cute” .

It seems this desire to protect the animals we find aesthetically pleasing is hard wired into our brains. Janek Lobmaier, a psychologist at the University of Bern tells us “the reason we are so attracted to cute animals appears to be the same mechanism that drives us to protect our babies”.  The mechanism Lobmaier is referring to is the brain’s reward system, a complex combination of chemicals and neural pathways that when triggered make us feel good. Typically, when we see a baby this system is triggered; neurones activate and chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin are released into our brain. The positive feeling this produces makes us want to stick around and care for our offspring. Daniel Langleben from the University of Pennsylvania has observed how our brains react to cute pictures using an MRI scanner. The results showed that the ‘cuter’ the image the more our reward system is triggered and the more we want to care for the subject.

A mixture of emotions rippled across the world following Kenya’s burn of 105 tonnes of ivory in Nairobi National Park last month.

For the past decade, the question of what we should do with the global stockpiles of confiscated ivory has divided conservationists and the public alike. There is no doubt that something needs to be done - holding large quantities of such a high-value product is both costly and dangerous requiring an around-the-clock presence of dedicated anti-poaching guards. However, many people feel that burning the ivory is not the only option.

African elephants have declined by almost 80% in the last 25 years, primarily due to the international trade in ivory, which has tripled since 1998. This is in spite of the 1989 CITES (Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species) ban, which condemned all commercial trade of ivory. With elephants at crisis point, many people feel that opening a legal sale of ivory supplied from these stockpiles could generate much needed funds for the conservation of the species, as well as helping to flood the ivory market to reduce demand.

In theory, this could work. A legal trade supplied from stockpiles or scientifically controlled culls could tackle many of the economic and environmental issues that surround elephants. The threat of poaching is driving elephants to take refuge in National Parks across Africa, often reaching densities far higher than the ecosystems can support. Add to this their size and we see large numbers of elephants causing habitat transformations that have cascading effects on other wildlife. Proponents of a legal ivory trade believe that culling elephants in these high density areas could kill two birds with one stone; both decreasing the problem of local elephant overpopulation and increasing the supply of tusks to sustain a legal market.

However, research suggests that a legal trade is not currently feasible. Firstly, two one-off sales in 1999 and 2008 did not decrease the demand for ivory. Instead, levels of poaching accelerated as demand was anticipated, and the carving industry in China, which had been waning since the CITES ban, was restored. Secondly, it is also feared that illegal ivory will leak into the legal trade, after which, differentiation between the two would be impossible. Unfortunately, the high value of ivory competes with low salaries among government and wildlife officials, leading to corruption along the whole commodity chain. Ivory is often transported out of countries with higher penalties and stored where penalties are lower and border officials can be bribed. The high court of Malawi fined two brothers just $5,000 for trafficking 2.6 tonnes of ivory from Tanzania. In contrast, traffickers in Kenya were fined nearly $1 million for just 18kg ivory. Unless a legal trade is supported by robust management systems that prevent illegal hunting and leakage (e.g. through scientific methods of identifying and marking legal ivory), major incentives to poach elephants will remain.

And so, the burning of stockpiles continues. Ivory burns attract worldwide media attention and increase the stigma attached to owning ivory, in the hope to reduce the demand in Asia. Incredibly, a study in 2012 found that most consumers in China were unaware that their ivory was obtained illegally; illustrating the need to target demand at the source. Burns are also supported and attended by celebrities and highly regarded conservationists; encouraging elephant range state leaders to adopt a no-tolerance attitude to wildlife crime and increase judiciary penalties for poaching.

Destroying ivory stockpiles is an undeniably devastating end to the lives of thousands of elephants, but may currently be the only option to save this species in a world that is wilfully blind to the origin of its commodities.