alanjjohnstone
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The new report, launched at the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, follows other major scientific analyses showing that huge reductions in meat-eating are “essential” to avoid dangerous climate change. Another found that avoiding meat and dairy products was the single biggest way to reduce an individual’s environmental impact on the planet, from slowing the annihilation of wildlife to healing dead zones in the oceans.
More than 50% more food will be needed by 2050, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI) report, but greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture will have to fall by two-thirds at the same time. The extra food will have to be produced without creating new farmland, it says, otherwise the world’s remaining forests face destruction.
Tim Searchinger, of the WRI and Princeton University, said: “If we tried to produce all the food needed in 2050 using today’s production systems, the world would have to convert most of its remaining forest, and agriculture alone would produce almost twice the emissions allowable from all human activities.”
Meat and dairy production use 83% of farmland and produce 60% of agriculture’s emissions. After increased productivity, the WRI report focuses on meat from ruminant animals. The digestion of cattle and sheep produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Beef provided 3% of the calories in the diet of US citizens but was responsible for half the emissions, the WRI said.
Increasing the amount of food produced per hectare was the most critical step, the experts said, followed by cutting meat-eating and putting a stop to the wasting of one-third of food produced.
“We have to change how we produce and consume food, not just for environmental reasons, but because this is an existential issue for humans,” said Janet Ranganathan, vice-president for science and research at the WRI.
The report recommends that 2 billion people across countries including the US, Russia and Brazil cut their beef and lamb consumption by 40%, limiting it to 1.5 servings a week on average. Most of the world’s citizens would continue to eat relatively little beef in the WRI scenario.
This essay makes some pertinent points on capitalism’s inability to reform itself without creating the conditions for a global economic crash.
However, its “eco-socialist” solutions are nationalisation and a “war-economy” It too resurrects FDR’s New Deal as the model to follow and endorses the Green New Deal policies as proposed by the leftwing of the Democratic Party
Who cares about climate change? UK businesses don’t.
Just 10 per cent of UK companies have a strategy for reducing carbon emissions, according to findings by energy consultancy Carbon Credentials which carried out a survey of 1,000 business leaders with responsibility for sustainability or energy, as well as 1,000 company employees in different roles.
None of the companies with a carbon reduction plan have set a science-based target – which would factor in a requirement to keep the global temperature increase below 2C compared to pre-industrial temperatures. This aim follows the advice of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The staff surveyed said they felt that companies are failing to engage with them on the issue.
Mr Lewis said: “Staff are engaged and willing to help organisations to be more carbon efficient, but they aren’t being given the incentives, tools and sometimes the support to do this.”
The top action taken in the last year were: introducing office recycling bins (38 per cent of companies did this)
The American business lobby in action
“…state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists last week voted for a slate of anti-environment measures. They approved resolutions supporting stripping tax benefits from electric vehicles and endorsing Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel energy agenda. And they voted down a proposal to limit monopoly control of the power industry, which backers said would give consumers more choice and help grow renewable electricity faster and more cheaply. They barred press… to keep the process confidential from reporters…”
Maybe this is the start?
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46445913
Wall Street shares tumbled on Tuesday, sending all three major indexes down more than 3% in some of the steepest declines in weeks.
If i am found in contempt, i get punished. Will the government face a legal sanction for being found to be in contempt?
What i find strange is that this contempt procedure was not evoked about the non-publication of the legal opinion on the Iraq War
Perhaps being the “voice of the BBC” with his dulcet tone, Attenborough will achieve more media coverage and perhaps he will get those “ordinary non-political” talking about it.
“The world’s people have spoken, their message is clear, time is running out, they want you, the decision-makers, to act now. They’re supporting you in making tough decisions but they’re also willing to make sacrifices in their daily lives,” he added.
Ahhh, but are the French yellow vests listening when Macron acts?
Will the Polish miners make the necessary sacrifices and accept the promise of future green jobs?
https://en.prothomalo.com/environment/news/187399/A-way-of-life-for-Poland-s-mining-region
But i share your doubts that Attenborough’s appeal will be effective. We shall see how COP24 pans out but i think our blog expressed the skepticism many socialists hold. We’ve been here before…23 times before
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/12/change-system-not-climate.html
Still early days so i wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of a more dramatic demonstration in Katowice. One thing we have learned, there are no shortage of people prepared to be political martyrs.
The Israeli Propagandists
And in the UK
I am afraid Attenborough is not the best person to have as the “peoples” spokesperson.
He is a prominent member of the Malthusian Population Matters organisation and believes that overpopulation is a problem for the environment. Not sure if he referenced this in his speech. But the blog has highlighted his anti-human attitude once calling food aid to famine victims as “barmy”.
Of course, those citizen observers status and UN “peoples seat” is compensation for the bans on eco-protests in Poland.
This article by this anarchist makes out that the Green Party talks the talk. We, however, are more concerned that they walk the walk.
Why there will be few protests at COP24 .
Earlier this year the Polish government adopted a bill that prevents activists, NGOs and the general public from holding spontaneous assemblies outside the talks. Demonstrators must notify the city authorities in advance or risk prosecution.
The bill also gives police extra powers to put conference participants under enhanced surveillance without their knowledge. Essentially, the Polish authorities can treat COP24 as an opportunity to gather data on NGOs and strengthen their police powers.
This comes in the context of an escalating crackdown on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in Poland, characterized by a raft of legislation.
SOYMB on AMLO
Perhaps as a beginning, you might like to see our criteria for membership
In Mexico we have a new populist president, AMLO, and journalists can’t decide if he is left or right wing as he presents himself as a friend to all
In Brussels urging governments to respect commitments on countering climate change as a United Nations conference on keeping global warming in check opened in Poland police said some 65,000 people participated in Sunday’s “Claim The Climate” demonstration. The organisers called for ambitious climate policies to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with goals set by the Paris Agreement in 201
