The global meat industry is “borrowing tactics from tobacco companies” to downplay its role in driving the climate crisis and to “confuse and delay regulation” of their planet-harming activities, a major investigation the environmental investigations outlet Desmog has claimed.

Such tactics include routinely downplaying their own greenhouse gas emissions, attacking established science on how livestock farming is driving the climate crisis and casting doubt over the benefits of plant-based alternatives to meat, the investigation said.

“Tobacco didn’t challenge the existence of lung cancer, but they kept denying and deflecting the causal link [with smoking] – and that’s what we’re seeing with beef and dairy,” Dr Jennifer Jacquet, an associate professor of environmental studies at New York University, explained, “Beef and dairy don’t deny that climate change exists, but they are carrying out actions to try to convince us that the causal chain isn’t there.”

The production of meat and dairy accounts for around 14.5 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock farming is particularly polluting because cattle belch out methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In addition, large areas of forest are razed to make space for grazing cattle and animal feed. The world’s largest tropical forest, the Amazon, is particularly threatened by large-scale cattle ranching and animal feed production. The world’s leading scientists say diets must change if the world is to meet its target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This message was reiterated in England’s recent National Food Strategy, which called for the country to cut its meat consumption by 30 per cent in the next 10 years. 

The investigation examines the “climate washing” tactics used by 10 of the world’s largest meat companies and their representative industry groups. Brazilian meat giant JBS was one of 10 companies and industry groups included in the investigation – controls UK companies that supply to many major British supermarkets and fast food outlets. JBS’s two UK subsidiaries alone account for 30 per cent of the UK market for chicken and pork.

Desmog claimed that four of the meat companies analysed underreported their annual emissions when compared to estimates from sustainable farming NGOs. These companies include the US-based Tyson Foods, pork and beef company Danish Crown, Vion and JBS.

“JBS’s environmental and social destruction became a global scandal in 2009 following our own investigation, and yet the company continues to get away with large-scale deforestation and face little or no consequences.” Anna Jones, head of food and forests at Greenpeace UK, said. “This important investigation brings to the fore a dangerous and systematic approach by the meat industry to cover up its role in the climate and nature crisis.” She went on to say, “But to end the climate crisis, protect forests and restore nature, we must transition to a more sustainable diet by reducing meat consumption – the science on that is clear. The age of big meat is over.”

Jonathan Elmer, a Green Party spokesperson, said the investigation should bring about “urgent action” from the government.

“This investigation throws a welcome spotlight on the environmental impact of the meat industry and offers more evidence that we must now see the end of factory farming for good. It’s a black hole of food waste, a huge threat to public health, and a key engine of the climate emergency,” he told The Independent. “What we are seeing here is akin to the historic efforts made by the tobacco and fossil-fuel industries to obfuscate the science and undermine a vital message, which in this case is that people need to eat much less meat.”

Dutch food giant Vion – one of the companies analysed by Desmog – publicly claims that “eating less meat will not necessarily contribute to more sustainability”. Meanwhile, two top meat industry groups – the US-based Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA) and France-based the International Meat Secretariat (IMS) – have publicly attacked leading scientific research on how eating less meat could benefit the planet and human health. A landmark report on how diet change could boost planetary and human health led by a top nutritionist at Harvard University was branded “elitist”, “biased” and “not scientifically well-founded” by the secretary-general of the IMS and “drastic” by the AAA. Hsin Huang, secretary-general of the IMS, told The Independent that he believed that “the health benefits of eating red meat are often ignored” and that “the livestock sector is too often unfairly represented” as a driver of the climate crisis.

 The meat industry also routinely attempting to paint itself as a solution to the climate crisis, the investigation finds. For example, the UK’s Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) – a levy board representing British farmers – is one of many groups promoting the idea that grazing cattle could help to tackle the climate crisis by stimulating soil to take up more carbon from the atmosphere. However, the idea that grass-fed beef can be a climate solution has been challenged by scientists. A report by researchers at the University of Oxford found that grass-fed cows release more greenhouse gas emissions through belching and manure than they are able to offset through boosting soil carbon levels. This means that grass-fed beef is still a net contributor to the climate crisis.

Global meat industry ‘using tobacco company tactics’ to downplay role in driving the climate crisis, investigation claims | The Independent

Fed by hot, dry winds, America’s biggest wildfire burned through more acreage in a southern Oregon forest with more than 2,100 residents near the California border ordered from their homes. The fire named Bootleg grew by an additional 4,000 acres overnight to nearly 304,000 acres (123,020 hectares.) 2,200 fire-fighting personnel battling the fire. The Bootleg fire is the largest of 80 active wildfires that have burned nearly 1.2 million acres in 13 states and are being battled by more than 19,600 firefighters and support personnel.

“This fire is large and moving so fast, every day it progresses 4 to 5 miles,” said Oregon Department of Forestry Incident Commander Joe Hassel. 

In California, the Dixie fire has burned more than over 30,000 acres (12,140 hectares) as more than 1,900 fire-fighters attempted to contain it. The Dixie fire, the biggest in the state, prompted some evacuation orders for Plumas and Butte counties.

Meanwhile, in Russia’s Siberian region,  planes seeded clouds to bring rain to dampen huge wildfires. Amid a heatwave, forest fires have burned through over 1.5 million hectares of land in Yakutia, the worst-hit region. Around 123 fires raged on Monday over an area of more than 885,000 hectares, In less than two months, fires in the region have spewed out around 150 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent – close to the 2017 annual fossil fuel emissions of Venezuela, according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), part of a European Union observation programme.

Meantime, in Europe,  water-carrying planes battled to control a wildfire in Spain’s Costa Brava region that has forced 350 people to be evacuated from their homes.

  Since the Paris climate agreement, G20 countries have provided more than $3.3tn (£2.4tn) in subsidies for fossil fuels.

The report, by BloombergNEF and Bloomberg Philanthropies described this backing for coal, oil and gas is “​​reckless” in the face of the escalating climate emergency. The $3.3tn could have built solar plants equivalent to three times the US electricity grid, the report says.

The report says all G20 member states continue to provide substantial financial support for fossil-fuel production and consumption. 

 The biggest subsidies came from China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and India, which together accounted for about half of all the subsidies. Australia increased its fossil fuel subsidies by 48% over the period, Canada’s support rose by 40% and that from the US by 37%.

“On paper, global leaders and governments are recognising the urgency of the climate challenge and the G20 countries have all made ambitious commitments to scale down fossil fuel development and transition to a low-carbon economy,” said Antha Williams, the environment lead at Bloomberg Philanthropies. “But, in reality, the action taken by these countries up until this point is a far cry from what is needed. As a host of climate emergencies intensify around the world, the continued development of fossil fuel infrastructure is nothing short of reckless. We need more than just words – we need action.”

“New commitments and net-zero targets from some G20 countries are warmly welcome,” said Günther Thallinger, at the financial services firm Allianz and the chair of NZAOA. “However, pledges and targets alone will not be sufficient to change course.”

‘Reckless’: G20 states subsidised fossil fuels by $3tn since 2015, says report | Fossil fuels | The Guardian

Global greenhouse gas emissions are likely to rise to record levels as governments fail to “build back better” from the Covid-19 pandemic. CO2 emissions have already rebounded strongly after their sudden plunge last spring, when governments around the world sent their countries into successive lockdowns. They are set to jump this year by the second highest amount on record.

Emissions will rise again this year and next year and 2023 is now on track to see the highest levels of carbon dioxide output in human history, according to forecasts released by the International Energy Agency. Such a rise would put the goals of the Paris climate agreement all but out of reach. The reason for the sharp rise is that governments have failed to invest in green energy as they have sought to rebuild their economies from the Covid-19 pandemic.

 Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA and one of the world’s foremost energy economists, said: “Of more than $16tn [£11.7tn, being spent on recovery from Covid-19] only 2% is going to clean energy investments. This is by far not enough. What we will see is that 2023 will reach an all-time record high [in emissions]. This is very worrying.”

Countries such as India, Indonesia, Latin American countries and other emerging economies are falling behind in clean energy investments. China, the world’s biggest emitter, has  been investing in renewable energy but also has strong and continuing investments in coal and high-CO2 infrastructure. About 90% of the forecast growth in emissions will come from the developing world. 

Birol said developing countries needed financial help to make the leap. “At the global scale, there is no lack of capital [available for investment in green energy] but that capital does not look at these projects in emerging economies,” he said. “There is a perception that the risk is higher.”

Rich countries must also fulfil their promises to ensure at least $100bn a year in climate finance flows to developing countries, to help them cut emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, Birol said. 

“This $100bn should be a floor, not a ceiling,” he added. “We need to have as a purpose how to mobilise investment in clean energy,” he said. “We need this at Cop26 – there is no way out.”

Vivid Economics found that only about a tenth, or about $1.8tn, of all spending on recovery measures would have a beneficial impact on the climate and environment, while about twice that amount would have an environmentally harmful impact.

 Little more than seventy years after the British settled Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania) in 1803, the indigenous community had been virtually wiped out. Yet this genocide at the hands of the British is virtually forgotten today.

 ‘The Last Man’ is the first book specifically to explore the role of the British government and wider British society in this genocide. It positions the destruction as a consequence of British policy and ideology in the region. Tom Lawson, Professor of History at Northumbria University shows how Britain practised cultural destruction and then came to terms with and evaded its genocidal imperial past. 

Although the introduction of European diseases undoubtedly contributed to the decline in the indigenous population, Lawson shows that the British government supported what was effectively the ethnic cleansing of Tasmania – particularly in the period of martial law in 1828-1832. By 1835 the vast majority of the surviving indigenous community had been deported to Flinders Island, where the British government took a keen interest in the attempt to transform them into Christians and Englishmen in a campaign of cultural genocide.

Lawson also illustrates the ways in which the destruction of indigenous Tasmanians was reflected in British culture – both at the time and since – and how it came to play a key part in forging particular versions of British imperial identity. Laments for the lost Tasmanians were a common theme in literary and museum culture, and the mistaken assumption that Tasmanians were doomed to complete extinction was an important part of the emerging science of human origins.

 By exploring the memory of destruction, ‘The Last Man’ provides the first comprehensive picture of the British role in the destruction of the Tasmanian Aboriginal population.

The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania: Tom Lawson: I.B. Tauris (bloomsbury.com)

Royal Dutch Shell published its annual environmental report in April and boasted that it was investing heavily in renewable energy.

The same day, Shell issued a separate report revealing that its single largest donation to political lobby groups last year was made to the American Petroleum Institute, one of the US’s most powerful trade organizations, which drives the oil industry’s relationship with Congress.

 Shell said it is committed to installing hundreds of thousands of charging stations for electric vehicles around the world to help offset the harm caused by burning fossil fuels. Contrary to Shell’s public statements in support of electric vehicles, API’s chief executive, Mike Sommers, has pledged to resist a raft of Joe Biden’s environmental measures, including proposals to fund new charging points in the US. He claims a “rushed transition” to electric vehicles is part of “government action to limit Americans’ transportation choice”.

Shell donated more than $10m to API last year alone. Most other oil conglomerates are also major funders, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, although they have not made their contributions public. Shell and other major oil firms are using API as cover for the industry. While companies run publicity campaigns claiming to take the climate emergency seriously, the trade group works behind the scenes in Congress to stall or weaken environmental legislation.

An Exxon lobbyist in Washington was secretly recorded by Greenpeace describing API as the industry’s “whipping boy” to direct public and political criticism away from individual companies.

How a powerful US lobby group helps big oil to block climate action | Oil | The Guardian

Each new day brings another panacea for our environmental emergency. Whether it is some proposed plan from political leaders or recommendations from the scientific community or the radical demands from the grass-root ecology activists, those of us in the Socialist Party despair at the assumption that the crises can be fixed without addressing the core problem – the economic system of capitalism.

The latest reform initiative is the formation of the Global Alliance for a Green New Deal is inviting “progressive” politicians from legislatures in all countries to work together on policies that would deliver a just transition to a green economy.

Governments may well introduce laws and implement policies to curb the assault on the environment. At best they can act only as palliatives, bringing temporary respite. Legislation and regulation most certainly cannot turn capitalism into an environmentally friendly society. The reality is that capitalism is incapable of solving one single social problem facing humanity, never mind curing climate change. We are more than capable of running our world on renewable energy, of feeding a world population twice the present size and housing every person on the planet, providing them with health care and education. To leave caring for the environment to governments or to hope that Big Business will see sense and turn to sustainable production methods is to misunderstand what the capitalist mode of production is all about. If we are to consciously harmonise our interaction with the rest of nature the only way which this can be done is through the common ownership of the means of production, by and in the interests of all people and the world they live in. A non-exploitative and non-hierarchical society based on the common ownership of natural and industrial resources enabling us to realise our full human potential is a description of socialism as we understand it.

 There is no shortage of renewable energy resources on this planet. There is more energy available than mankind could possibly use. Total ecological and energy benignity is of course an impossible dream, but in socialism full discussion on all aspects will democratically take place before decisions on such matters as fuel and power, which have such all-pervading implications, are taken. With the competitive drive for profits removed, there will no longer be any incentive to produce untried products whose long-term or even short-term effects are toxic. Make no mistake, in the socialist alternative locked labs, secret research will be as impossible as money or markets. Socialism will be a society in which decisions will not be made by an owning minority or a state, nor will decisions be subject to the anarchic fluctuations of the market. Instead decisions on. for example, energy production, will be made by the whole of the community concerned. With the means of production the common heritage of all the people of the world, the scientific knowledge and technological skill which society now possesses can be used for the one purpose of satisfying human needs in accordance with the long-standing socialist principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. 

An important advantage that socialism would enjoy would be the freedom to select and use production methods strictly on their merits. It would not matter that a desirable method might use more labour than an undesirable one. The selection and use of production methods will be free to take into account a broad range of needs, including the enjoyment of work itself, care of the environment, conservation of materials, social safety and animal welfare. Capitalist society accentuates the demand for minerals in a manner that a sane society would think ludicrous. If there were fears of world shortages of minerals it would be doubly criminal to use them in the production of articles to kill, to restrict the freedom of, and to assist the exploitation of man by man.  

The profit-led economic considerations of capitalism will be a thing of the past.  In a socialist society, the world will function as one productive unit, it may not be necessary actually to construct a worldwide grid. With the probability of people living in smaller communities with modern energy-efficient communications reducing transport requirements, we may well see these communities self-sufficient in energy, although some provision for emergencies will be required. The environmentally benign, renewable methods are in many ways better suited to smaller-scale operations, as shown to a certain extent by the instances where they are making headway at present. 

  In Africa, and with Latin America and Asia facing unrelenting health emergencies, the number of health worker deaths from Covid-19 in May was at least 115,000, according to the World Health Organization.  The true figure is likely to be far higher.

In richer countries, the share of foreign-trained or foreign-born doctors and nurses has been rising for two decades. But the pandemic’s double blows of death and migration are leaving behind knowledge gaps in already fragile health systems, where poor pay and conditions are driving staff to leave. The global south has long supplied many of the human resources for health systems in the northern hemisphere. And as the UK, the US and Europe have struggled under the weight of their respective pandemics, demand for imported medical expertise has intensified.

Across the world’s wealthiest countries, nearly 25% of doctors and 16% of nurses were born abroad, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  Nations from where staff were being enticed “were already facing severe shortages of skilled health workers before the Covid-19 pandemic”.

The UK launched its own incentive – a fast-track Health and Care Visa in 2020 to attract more health workers from developing countries – even as the government drastically reduced its foreign aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income, against OECD advice and putting global health systems at risk.

Johan Fagan, an ear, nose and throat disease specialist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said policies such as the UK’s fast-track visa would spur further migration.

“These countries aren’t training enough of their own healthcare professionals and are exploiting the workforce in developing countries,”

The Philippines is the largest contributor of nurses to wealthy countries. India provides the highest number of doctors and the second-highest number of migrant nurses.

The Filipino Nurses Association UK has raised concerns about the disproportionately high rate of deaths among NHS and social care staff from the Philippines, saying that the nationality had the highest mortality of all ethnicities, at about 20%. The group set up a special helpline for Filipino health workers and their families as a result. In the US, more than 30% of nurses who have died of Covid were Filipino, though they make up just 4% of the country’s registered nurses. 

In Zimbabwe, a country with one of the highest doctor emigration rates, Dr Charles Moyo said Africa would face a healthcare crisis if the tide of health worker losses was not stemmed.

“The healthcare system is already strained by limited resources and by Covid. If more manpower is lost, the entire healthcare system could collapse,” he said.

Migration and Covid deaths depriving poorest nations of health workers | Global development | The Guardian

The wealthiest 1% of Americans controlled about $41.52 trillion in the first quarter.

 Yet the bottom 50% of Americans only controlled about $2.62 trillion collectively, which is roughly 16 times less than those in the top 1%. 

Overall, the net worth of households and nonprofits rose to $136.9 trillion during the first quarter, a 3.8% increase from the end of 2020. But those gains weren’t distributed equally.

Net worth is essentially a calculation of all of a person’s assets — including cash in checking and savings accounts, financial investments and the value of any real estate or vehicles owned — minus all their debt, including credit card balances, student loans and mortgages.

The recent gains in household wealth, in particular, can be largely attributed to stock holdings, which were up about $3.2 trillion, according to the Fed. The rise in home values also played a role, with real estate holdings increasing by $1 trillion.

The wealthiest 10% of Americans, for example, own about 89% of stocks and mutual funds held in the U.S. as of the first quarter of 2021. The bottom 50% of U.S. households hold around 0.5%.

The divide between the wealthiest Americans and the bottom half of U.S. households has widened over the last few decades. In the first quarter of 1990, the top 1% had roughly six times the wealth as the bottom half of Americans. 

How much wealth top 1% of Americans have (cnbc.com)

 In 1972, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Club of Rome developed a scientific model under the title The Limits to Growth that considered the way that humans and the planet interact with each other, the researchers determined that society was heading toward collapse by the mid-21st century, driven largely by over-exploiting limited planetary resources. 

A study published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology in November 2020 and is available on the KPMG website concludes that the current business-as-usual trajectory of global civilization is heading toward the terminal decline of economic growth within the coming decade—and at worst, could trigger societal collapse by around 2040.

As part of her masters’ thesis at Harvard University, Gaya Herrington, Sustainability and Dynamic System Analysis Lead at KPMG, decided to undertake the research as a personal project to understand how well the model stood the test of time.   Herrington analyzed the model using ten variables to check in on how predictive it has been: population, fertility rates, mortality rates, industrial output, food production, services, non-renewable resources, persistent pollution, human welfare, and ecological footprint. By taking the model’s projections of these indicators and up-dating and comparing them to empirical data, she was able to determine how closely the scientists were able to predict our reality, as well as figure out what trajectory we are currently on.

 It produced two possible scenarios. 

There’s the comprehensive technology (CT) scenario, in which economic decline starts at about now with a number of negative outcomes, including a short-term dip in food production and wild swings across a number of categories, including industrial output, as population levels out. The good news, is that society doesn’t collapse under these circumstances. Our habit of draining resources comes to an end as new technology develops, and food production eventually recovers.

Things aren’t so optimistic with the second possibility known as the business-as-usual scenario. This one assumes that we make basically no changes to our current behaviour. This scenario projects that economic growth will start sputtering out soon, hitting a wall around 2030. But instead of a brief blip or stagnation, the business-as-usual trajectory sees things starting to collapse.

Population, food production, industrial output, and other categories all take a steep decline around 2040, with pollution skyrocketing as we rapidly exploit and burn the planet’s remaining available resources with complete disregard for the consequences. The world is hurtling toward economic disaster and societal collapse.

 At the World Economic Forum in 2020 delivered in her capacity as a KPMG director, Herrington argued for ‘agrowth’—an agnostic approach to growth which focuses on other economic goals and priorities.  

“Changing our societal priorities hardly needs to be a capitulation to grim necessity,” she said. “Human activity can be regenerative and our productive capacities can be transformed. In fact, we are seeing examples of that happening right now. Expanding those efforts now creates a world full of opportunity that is also sustainable.” 

There is according to Herrington a third option, the ‘stabilized world’ scenario, a new stable and prosperous civilization operating safely within planetary boundaries, a deliberate change brought about by society turning toward another goal than growth. Socialists would call this the steady-state zero-growth proposal.