Here's a good example of #greenwashing, industrial farming is the problem, but we'll mess with the cows.
#climatechange #climateaction #climatecrisis #industrialfarming
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/climate-friendly-cows-bred-belch-less-methane-2023-08-08/

An inconvenient misconception: Climate change is not the principal driver of biodiversity loss
"#Extinction is not reversible and land-use change and overexploitation are its primary drivers."

https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12868
#Deforestation #Wildlife #Trade #IndustrialFarming #climate #Conservation #Biodiversity #Habitat #Destruction

Thanks to my daily newsletter from #CarbonBrief for alerting me to this article from #VoxMedia on why the media too often ignores the connection between climate change and meat and dairy consumption (and the industries that support it).

#Meat #Dairy #IndustrialFarming #Beef #Soya #ClimateChange #ClimateEmergency #MeatFree

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23778399/media-ignores-climate-change-beef-meat-dairy

Whatever the climate-changing human activity is, be it burning fuel in vehicles or eating red meat, the solution to mitigate climate change is to do less of it, to reduce those activities.

And to do more of the nature-based solutions such as reforestation, peatland restoration & rewiliding (i.e., habitat restoration)

#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimatePolicy #ClimateAction #nature

#degrowth #FossilFuels #IndustrialFarming #PlasticPollution #Globalization

Meet the #sargassum belt, a 5,000-mile-long snake of #seaweed circling #Florida

Key points:

- Sargassum can contain heavy metals, including arsenic. It has fairly high concentrations of the toxin, that, through leaching, that could impact groundwater.

- Humans are altering the nitrogen cycle. We're using more fertilizer, burning biomass, cutting down forests and increasing wastewater from cities, all of which sends ammonium, nitrate and phosphate down major river systems

March 15, 20235:00 AM ET

"In the open sea, healthy patches of sargassum can soak up carbon dioxide and serve as a critical habitat for fish, crabs, shrimp, turtles and birds.

"But if sargassum moves closer to the coast, the #seaweed can wreak havoc on local #ecosystems, smothering #coral reefs and altering the water's pH balance. Once ashore, clumps of sargassum can choke local economies by closing tourism sites, cutting off marinas and constricting fishing yields.

"Sargassum begins to rot after about 48 hours on land, releasing irritants like #hydrogensulfide, a hazard to anyone with respiratory issues like asthma. Oh, and the resulting smell resembles manure or rotten eggs — not a great spring break aroma.

"It used to be that sargassum rafts were disparate, sporadic bodies, causing little disruption to beach-going.

"But scientists noticed a change in sargassum levels in 2011, when masses of the seaweed multiplied, gaining in density and size, becoming so big they were captured on satellite images.

"Today, the patches comprise a 5,500-mile-long, 10 million-ton belt that circulates annually, starting near West Africa and snaking through the Gulf of Mexico back into the Atlantic."

#WaterIsLife #Pollution #Fertilizers #Runoff #IndustrialFarming

Read more:
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/15/1163385168/sargassum-seaweed-florida-mexico-beaches?utm_source=pocket-newtab

#Nature: Farmed #salmon and #chicken have a #GlobalFootprint — but the burden is concentrated

A small fraction of Earth’s surface bears almost all of the environmental stresses resulting from industrial salmon and chicken farming.

Giorgia Guglielmi

#IndustrialFarming #Agriculture

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00414-5?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=04ec464bcb-briefing-dy-20230215&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-04ec464bcb-46122510

"Ecomodernism is a pro-corporate agenda that will concentrate wealth more than it already is, helping maintain the status quo that has been so damaging to nature, communities, democracy and human well-being."

#FakeFood #IndigenousPeoples #LandRights #GMO #IndustrialFarming #Ecomodernism #Health #Wellbeing #Food #Farming #HumanRights

https://www.lowimpact.org/posts/george-monbiot-and-friends-are-wrong-techno-utopianism-wont-save-us

I was thinking about that post I made on industrial farming, and I wanted to point out that or our communities and infrastructure are organized this way, because that’s how the political and capitalist classes imagined and planned it. I’m not one for conspiracy theories, although people conspire all of the time, especially those in power. And I am usually skeptical of malicious intent. I’m suggesting they necessarily continue to plan our communities this way because that’s their narrative and they can’t imagine any other way. And that’s why not even the progressive party has the will or the way to meaningfully slow climate change. Because slowing would mean change in how we organize our communities, produce, and consume.

As a reminder:

The progressives of the early 20th century, like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, were Marxists, or they at least they bought into the Marxist notion that consolidation and centralization were an inevitable part of late stage capitalism. Inevitable because, among other things, and like Marx and Adam Smith, progressives believed communities once got tired of trading arrow heads for venison and invented money, and money and markets are natural or innate to human societies.

And so for these progressive capitalists, it made sense to allow business or capital to follow the path of least resistance. and keep those pesky workers from competing or becoming independent of capital. For the progressive, it was through industrialization, mergers, and large scale manufacturing that the nation would be most prosperous and the standard of living would be raised for all. Only the large corporations would provide full employment, pensions, and the tax base to fund massive infrastructure and military expansion (Smedley Butler).

So, our communities were designed and completed by governments with the mindset of factories, roads, and industrial farming that would ship produce to cities for processing and sale to the workers corralled in cities or eventually the suburbs with Franklin Roosevelt’s new deal policies. Better to move white people into the suburbs and leave a black proletariate in the city/industrial zone to work and live. Wealthier white people in the suburbs would buy Ford’s and Ford could pay taxes for roads. But these progressives weren’t just capitalists. They were also fascists!

Teddy thought 'Black people inferior to whites, and unworthy of suffrage less the US become like Haiti.’ Wilson praised the KKK and confederacy, and oversaw the segregation of several Federal agencies. Franklin only integrated Black people in 1941 because of the war effort. Make no mistake, the progressives were fascists. Hitler’s more brutal despotic fascism threatened their US democratic sensibilities and power stations, but there were otherwise little difference in ideologies.

Today's progressive party seems far more tolerant, inclusive, and democratic than their predecessors. Even if they are, they haven’t ditched the capitalist economics, their preconceived notion about the way they think we ought to be organized economically, or what an alternative infrastructure looks like when it supports human needs rather than growth and profit.

They can’t imagine anything else! They are like ‘fish who can not contemplate the presence of water, because they can’t imagine it’s absence.’ As Graeber wrote:

“The war against the imagination is the only one the capitalists have actually managed to win.”

The progressives still imagine a capitalist class and working class; a world where people go to work to pay for interest, rents, profits and taxes to make society work. It’s all about growth and profits and organizing our resources and infrastructure around it.

#ClimateChange #Progressives #Capitalism #IndustrialFarming #Suburbs and #Cities

The fight over rewilding - Tortoise

“ …#parliamentaryGroup has resisted efforts to restore the #UK #countryside to #nature at a time when the government is preparing its #post_Brexit plans for #farming”
https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2023/01/08/the-fight-over-rewilding/

#rewilding #RewildScotland #bigAg #BigPharma #IndustrialFarming #Pesticides #Herbicides #biodiversity #ecocide #SilentSpring #Westminster #Lobbying

Multinational corporation #PescanovaCorp plans to open an #octopus farm. Sign the alert to urge #EU and #Spanish authorities to make sure these intelligent, sentient beings are never subjected to the horrors of #IndustrialFarming. 🌊🐙

#BanOctopusFarming #SeeAnimalsAsIndividuals #Spain #EndAnimalAg

https://www.idausa.org/campaign/farmed-animal/latest-news/octopus-farm/

Cheap rotisserie #chickens at #Costco and #BJs are a part of our culture. The Aussie show "Fisk" has incidental dialog about Costco selling them at a loss. It's possible because the "efficiencies" of #industrialfarming are the metaphorical sausage whose ingredients we "don't want to know." Without the mass production, this wouldn't be viable. https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/26/business/rotisserie-chicken-food-grocery-stores/index.html

Industrial-sized #pig and #chicken #farming continuing to rise in #UK | #Environment | The Guardian

This form of #agriculture is inhumane.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/07/industrial-sized-pig-and-chicken-farming-continuing-to-rise-in-uk

#IndustrialFarming #IntensiveFarming #Meat