The world’s biggest supplier of burgers has been fuelling the destruction of the Amazon rainforest by sourcing cattle from ranches linked to deforestation – and British companies are still buying thousands of tonnes of its beef.

This article was published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Marfrig, a Brazilian meat company that has supplied McDonald’s, Burger King and other huge fast food chains around the world, bought cattle from a farm using deforested land in a part of the Amazon currently ravaged by forest fires.

One of the key causes of those fires is farmers clearing land for eventual beef pasture.

Unprecedented research

Marfrig boasts of its green credentials and recently offered $500m in bonds aimed at environmentally conscious investors. Marfrig claims that none of the cattle it buys come from farms involved in deforestation and that it is the only beef company that can guarantee this.

Yet research by Repórter Brasil, working with the Bureau and the Guardian, traced cattle that the company purchased this year back to a farm that had grazed cows in an area of illegally felled rainforest.

Our investigation has also revealed the full extent of the UK’s involvement in the Amazon crisis. Nearly £1bn worth of beef supplied by Marfrig and two other meat giants which have been accused of deforestation — Minerva Foods and JBS — was directly imported to the UK in recent years.

Unprecedented research to be published today claims that the supply chains for exported beef from these three companies are between them linked to up to 500 square kilometres of deforestation every year.

Responding to our findings, Neil Parish, MP, chair of the Commons environment, food and rural affairs select committee, said: “This investigation shows the importance of supply-chain transparency, from farm to fork. We must think more carefully about the environmental impact of food and the greater degree of control we have with British made products. I’m sure British consumers will not want to be contributing to deforestation in the Amazon.”

Illegal felling

Bill McKibben, the veteran environmental campaigner, told the Bureau: “It’s hard to know what’s worse — companies that don’t acknowledge our environmental crisis at all, or those that … do so and then don’t live up to the promises they make.”

In January, inspectors from Ibama, Brazil’s environmental watchdog, found cattle from Limeira Ranch grazing on illegally deforested land inside a protected region, the Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area in Pará state. The region has been devastated by the largest number of forest fires in Brazil this year.

The land where the cattle were found had been placed under an official embargo — which prohibits grazing — three years before, due to illegal felling. Embargoes are imposed for environmental violations and serve both as a punishment and protective measure to allow land to recover.

For breaking the embargo, the ranch was fined R$ 1.19m ($300,000) this year. Despite this, documents obtained by Repórter Brasil show that 144 cattle from Limeira Ranch were subsequently supplied to a Marfrig abattoir in Tucumã, also in Pará. The company also bought cattle from the ranch on multiple occasions in late 2018. There is no evidence that the cattle Marfrig purchased were raised on illegally deforested land.

In response, Marfrig did not dispute that the ranch had broken an embargo at the time of the purchase, but said that official checks it carried out using Ibama data at the time had given the ranch the all-clear.

Sustainable transition?

A spokeswoman for Marfrig said: “Ibama issued a negative certificate assuring that on that date nothing was against the supplier … That’s the only way companies — not just Marfrig — can look for official information in real time.”

The company added that it had stopped buying from the ranch as soon as it learnt of the fine. According to documents seen by the Bureau, Ibama had publicly listed the fine on its website two weeks before the cattle purchase.

Ten years ago Marfrig committed “not to purchase any livestock originating from deforested or conservation areas”, and said in 2017 that it was tightening up its protocols for cattle purchases, adopting a system that “blocks, rather than permits, cattle purchases in the case of any doubts”.

This July Marfrig launched a controversial “transition” bond designed to tap into the growing sustainable investment market. Like “green bonds”, which allow environmentally friendly firms to raise cash, bankers have designed transition bonds for companies with the potential to clean up their practices to fund that change.

However, there is no single definition of a “sustainable transition”. Experts have suggested that the absence of minimum standards could leave the bonds open to exploitation by greenwashers – businesses seeking to exaggerate their environmental commitments.

Business as usual

Joshua Kendall, senior environmental analyst at Insight Investment, said that while the Marfrig bond showed credible sustainable objectives and a commitment to improvement, he had not invested. In his opinion, “it doesn’t go far enough beyond ‘business as usual’ spending. It also lacks indicators that would give us a sense of whether or not it has made improvements,” he said.

Limeira Ranch is not the only deforestation case that can be linked to Marfrig. According to new figures from Trase — a supply-chain initiative run by the Stockholm Environment Institute and NGO Global Canopy — Marfrig’s beef exports could be linked to up to 100 square kilometres of deforestation a year in Brazil.

Trase also calculated figures for JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, and Minerva Foods, another large global supplier of Brazilian beef. JBS beef exports could be linked to up to 300 square kilometres of deforestation per year, and Minerva Foods linked to up to 100 square kilometres, the research says.

JBS and Minerva both said they did not buy cattle from farms in deforested areas and that they had systems in place to block non-compliant suppliers.

The Trace research mapped supply chains for beef from international markets back to the specific areas of Brazil where the cattle were raised. By cross-referencing these chains with official data on new pastures, deforestation and cattle numbers, the researchers calculated a potential deforestation “risk” — presented as an area in sq km — associated with companies and even specific international markets.

Overall, up to 5,800 sq km of forest — an area four times the size of Greater London — is being felled in the Amazon and other areas annually to be converted into pasture used for cattle farming, according to the Trase report.

Food production 

The Bureau has established that Marfrig, along with Minerva Foods and JBS and their subsidiaries, has shipped at least 147,000 tonnes of beef to the UK in the past five years – enough to make 170m burgers a year.

That much meat is worth £1bn. Much of it was canned corned beef destined for supermarkets and other retailers, as well as frozen meat imported for wholesalers and manufacturers.

From there it could end up in hospital dinners, ready meals and fast food, through a chain of little-known catering and food production companies. The Bureau has identified several of these chains, including one that ends with the Ministry of Defence.

Brazilian canned beef from Marfrig or JBS has been found by the NGO Earthsight at Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl and Asda. The Bureau has also found JBS-produced canned beef at the Co-op. That can was marked with a stamp showing the beef had come from Brazil.

But the link is not always so clear, and it can be impossible for consumers to always know if their food is from companies linked to the destruction of the Amazon. JBS canned beef is also sold to NHS Supply Chain, which manages the sourcing and supply of food across the health service, including at hospital trusts.

Weddel Swift, part of the Randall Parker Food group, is hardly a household name, but it supplies meat products to caterers, wholesalers and retailers. The company has bought £30m worth of Brazilian beef since 2015 from Minerva. The group told the Bureau that only 1.5 percent of its sales had come from Brazil and that it has only imported £240,000 worth of beef this year. Weddel Swift also said it believes Minerva is a responsible beef producer.

Bolstering profits 

Earthsight discovered that beef from Minerva was being supplied to the Ministry of Defence, but the department could also be feeding soldiers JBS beef as well. Vestey Foods, which holds the catering contract for Armed Forces personnel on active deployment in the UK, buys Brazilian beef from JBS.

The MoD said it did not directly contract with Minerva or JBS, and added that it was working with suppliers “to address any concerns surrounding the recent link between sourcing beef from Brazil and deforestation.”

It is impossible to trace specific cans of Brazilian corned beef or a supermarket cottage pie directly back to fields burned out of the Amazon rainforest. Many retailers insist their supply chains contain only sustainable beef, but continue to bolster the profits of businesses which have been linked to deforestation.

Toby Gardner, the Trase director, said that all those involved in the Brazilian beef chain needed to act: “Buyers, whether traders, processors, retailers, need to demand and invest in transparency systems that can guarantee they are sourcing from areas that have not been recently deforested, whilst at the same time working to support producers’ shift to more sustainable and at the same time more productive systems.”

In a statement to the Bureau, Minerva Foods said: “100 percent of Minerva’s purchases come from zero-deforestation areas … Our sustainability department blocks any suppliers that are not compliant … which effectively means that Minerva can’t buy any animals coming from these suppliers.”

Cattle procurements

The company also said all of its cattle procurements were completed after checks on the supplier ranches using public government databases on embargoed areas. It said it has blocked more than 2,000 cattle suppliers who were found not to be in compliance with standards.

JBS told us: “We have a zero deforestation policy in the Amazon and prohibit cattle from deforested farms in the region from entering our supply chain … To date, more than 7,000 potential suppliers have been blocked from our system.”

They added that a recent audit found 100 percent of their cattle purchases were in compliance with their responsible sourcing policies.

Responding to the findings on behalf of supermarkets Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Asda and The Co-op, Leah Riley Brown, of the British Retail Consortium, said: “Illegal deforestation is completely unacceptable, and retailers are collaborating to tackle deforestation and drive greater uptake of certified sustainable products in their supply chains.”

Supply chain

Burger King said: “Our goal is to eliminate deforestation within our global supply chain, and we are working toward this” and that all their suppliers were required to comply with their sustainability and forest protection policies.

McDonald’s said it aimed to eliminate deforestation from its global supply chains by 2030 and that it had “made a commitment not to purchase raw material from any farm in the Amazon … linked with deforestation”.

NHS Supply Chain said: “We are committed to procuring products responsibly and sustainably and actively work with our suppliers on important issues such as sustainability.”

This Author

André Campos, Andrew Wasley, and Alexandra Heal work with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. 

Black carbon particles have been found on the baby’s side of the placenta in women exposed to air pollution during pregnancy, scientists say.

But further research is needed to determine whether they are able to reach the foetus.

Researchers say particle transfer across the placenta has been suggested before – but to date, no direct evidence in real-life, human context exists.

Exposed

An observational study published in Nature Communications looked at 28 women.

Professor Tim Nawrot, of Hasselt University in Belgium, and colleagues used high-resolution imaging to detect black carbon particles in placentae collected from five pre-term and 23 full-term births.

They found that 10 mothers who had been exposed to high levels of residential black carbon particles – 2.42 micrograms per cubic metre – during pregnancy had higher levels of particles in the placenta than 10 mothers exposed to low levels of residential black carbon – 0.63 micrograms per cubic metre.

Particles

Black carbon particles are released every day into the air, largely from the combustion of fossil fuels. It is thought these can have detrimental effects on pregnancy outcome.

Researchers say it is important to understand how these particles affect pregnancy – through direct effects on the foetus or indirect effects through the mother – to improve pregnancy care in polluted areas.

The authors wrote: “Our results demonstrate that the human placental barrier is not impenetrable for particles.

Wellbeing

“Our observation based on exposure conditions in real-life is in agreement with previously reported ex vivo and in vivo studies studying the placental transfer of various nanoparticles.”

Andrew Shennan, Professor of Obstetrics, King’s College London (KCL), said: “Small particles, such as through smoking, can cause considerable disease related to the placenta, and these findings of particles in the placenta are a concern.

“Their possible effects on the baby and mother warrant further investigation. The placenta is the interface between mother and baby and is key to nourishing and supporting all the needs of the baby.

“Both the function and structure of the placenta is important, not only to the baby’s growth and wellbeing, but also to that of the mother. High blood pressure and fits in pregnancy have been linked to household pollution.”

This Author

Nina Massey is the PA science correspondent.

Two thirds of people believe in the need to curb air travel to tackle climate change, a survey suggests.

More than a third (37 percent) of those quizzed are very or extremely worried about climate change, up from just a fifth (20 percent) three years ago, the poll for the new Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) found.

Almost half of more than 2,000 adults questioned by YouGov for the centre, which is led by scientists from Cardiff University, felt they had become much or slightly more worried about climate change than they were 12 months ago.

Cut down

When asked why their views had changed, people cited reasons including extreme weather events, greater media coverage and a sense of a lack of political and society-wide action to tackle climate change.

Two thirds (67 percent) agreed that people should definitely or probably limit the amount of flying they do, while just 15 percent thought such a move was not needed.

Just over half thought people should cut down on the amount of meat in their diets to address climate change. A total of 37 percent thought it was not necessary.

Footprint

The £5 million centre, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), is a collaboration between Cardiff, Manchester, York and East Anglia Universities, and the charity Climate Outreach.

It will explore ways people can act to directly cut their own carbon emissions and influence other people and policies, focusing on food and diet, transport and mobility, consumption of goods and heating and cooling.

Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh, director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations said: “Our new survey findings make clear that most people feel climate change is an urgent issue, and are willing to make significant changes to their own lifestyles to help tackle it.”

She said changing travel and food habits were among the most significant things individuals could do to reduce their carbon footprint, and said “it’s very encouraging that there’s support amongst the public for making these changes”.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

The Art of Activism​ is a multi-artist exhibition and fundraiser for Friends of the Earth, which takes inspiration from the whimsical, darkly humorous placards that people create for demonstrations.

Friends of the Earth partnered with theprintspace and The Guardian to ask the public to submit artworks that demonstrate their passion for curbing the irreversible damage being done to our planet.

The shortlisted artworks will be exhibited at theprintspace Gallery over the next month. Artworks will also be offered as fine-art prints via The Guardian, with all profits going to Friends of the Earth to continue protecting the planet through their vital work.

Attention grabbing

Muna Suleiman, campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Friends of the Earth has a long history of environmental activism at a grassroots level. Time and time again we’ve found that the voices of people and communities can lead to big changes for the good.

“Art and design have always been important in activism, making sure that campaigns and demands grab people’s attention and settle in their memory. We’re excited to team up with theprintspace to celebrate the passion of artists and activists, and can’t wait to see people’s creations!” 

Stuart Waplington, CEO of theprintspace, said: “The climate crisis is real and immediate. Change must happen now if we are to have a hope of achieving a sustainable society.

“At theprintspace it’s fair to say we have had a massive realisation that this problem is so urgent that it requires everyone to act immediately. As Greta Thunberg says, I don’t want your hope, I want you to panic.” 

The press statement added: “It would be nice to think that governments might act on the current crisis we face, but so far they have proved woefully unable to grasp the seriousness of the task.

“They talk about what is possible rather than what is absolutely necessary, so it now falls to us to ditch the cult of individualism and unite as a community to save the future of our planet.”

The open call for submissions has now closed. Opening night is this Thursday 19 September at theprintworks, 7.30-9.30. The exhibition and charity print sale will run from 20 September to 15 October 2019. 

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from theprintspace. 

Image: Fabric Florin, Flickr. 

The Women’s Environmental Network (Wen) is advocating #PeriodAction, by leading a revolution for healthy eco-friendly menstrual products to be used by all.

Wen’s Environmenstrual​ Coalition​ was founded in 2017 and is made up of 50 organisations and activists, including WI and Friends of the Earth, that aim to make plastic pollution from periods a thing of the past. 

Plastic seems to be a predominant material used in mainstream menstrual products, from the wrappings to the plastic applicators. It has been estimated that u​p to​ 90 percent of a menstrual pad and 6 percent of a tampon is plastic.

Plastic waste

Women and individuals who menstruate in the UK use 11,000 disposable menstrual products in their reproductive lifetime.​ T​hese products include tampons, menstrual pads and panty liners that are all single-use.

​ 2​00,000 tonnes of waste is produced per year​. It ends up on landfills (if thrown in the bin) or in the sea and rivers (if flushed down the toilet) where it will break up into microplastics that take up to 1,000 years to decompose.​ 

Not only does this plastic waste damage the environment (s​uch as killing up to a million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals and marine turtles as well as countless fish each year​), but using products that are made up of plastic can have devastating impacts on human health too.

But it’s not just plastic that is the issue. Non-organic menstrual products are made from cotton sprayed with chemical pesticides, which not only have a detrimental effect on workers producing cotton, but pesticide residues have been found in menstrual pads and tampons.

In addition, the raw ingredient (wood pulp) used to make menstrual pads, is bleached white to remove its natural brown colour. This ‘purification’ process can generate dioxin, which is one of the most highly toxic and persistent chemicals known and has been linked to reproductive disorders and cancer.

Period justice 

As part of the Environmenstrual campaign, Wen has invited individuals, groups, schools, universities and organisations nationally, to take part in the​ E​nvironmenstrual Week of Action​ which will be held from the 12 – 19 October 2019.

The theme of this year’s Week of Action is influencing change, to show how plastic-free movements are linked to period justice.

Natasha Basheer-Piette, Environmenstrual Campaign Manager, said: “We are really excited about this year’s Environmenstrual Week of Action. There is real momentum for change.

“Sainsbury’s has recently announced the removal of plastic tampon applicators from its own range. But we need more manufacturers to come on board and for people to shop with their feet, by trying reusable period products.”

Events will be held around the country, raising awareness of the impact of plastic in menstrual products  while showcasing alternative plastic-free options.

Wen has created adownloadable​ toolkit​ that has detailed advice and resources on how to run an event for the Week of Action. Ideas include, film screenings, creating washable pads, quiz nights, beach cleans and fundraising activities.

Get involved 

Participants can​ r​egister​ their events online as well as check for events happening in their local area. Also contained in the toolkit are letter templates and social media posts, so that people can easily contact manufacturers and retailers, to demand that plastic be removed from single use period products.

Through the Environmenstrual Week of Action, Wen wants to break the taboo surrounding periods. People will be encouraged to try reusable menstrual products, for example menstrual cups, washable pads, period pants or to make the switch to using plastic free and organic single-use options.

To motivate individuals to try a #plasticfreeperiod, Wen have a​ s​upplier list​ and​ d​iscount vouchers​ for plastic free products. Wen also has a​ w​ashable pad pattern​ available to print and suggest that consumers read the​ ​ethical consumer product guide​.

To celebrate this movement, Wen will be hosting the Environmenstrual Festival on Wednesday 16 October at Amnesty International UK in London. The festival will be held from 6.30pm-9.30pm, with guests able to browse stalls, take part in interactive workshops and hear a panel discussion with guest speakers.

Tickets​ for the festival are £10 early bird and thereafter £15. Concession prices are available. You can find the link for booking tickets through​ ​Eventbrite.​

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from the Women’s Environmental Network. 

A sky-blackening 75,000 forest fires were recorded in the Amazon in the first eight months of 2019, a 76 percent increase on the same period last year, according to the National Institute for Space Research.

What must this catastrophe have looked like from outer space? A signal flare; a war raging; a cry for help.

Let’s be clear about how this happened, and who it hurts. Policy is being weaponized against indigenous communities who have called the fires an “atrocity”. Since assuming power this year, President Bolsonaro has presided over a swift and brutal regime of forest clearances and illegal logging. He has flagrantly abused the legal controls in place for the Amazon’s protection, using inflammatory words to claim populist power. This has provided fuel for the work of loggers, miners and agribusiness profiteers.

Unimaginable scale 

Forest fires in the Amazon are almost always caused by human activity. Logging companies penetrate the forest first, exposing the understory to the sun and leaving a trail of giant kindling behind them. Forests are then flattened for cattle ranches and soy bean fields, where a breath-taking abundance of life once thrived.

Hundreds of thousands of indigenous people call the Amazon home; it is their house first and foremost which is ablaze; and their children’s future going up in smoke.

We must learn from the indigenous communities’ experiences, and their centuries of local resistance. We must protest globally, in the knowledge that the Amazon is central to a safe climate for the Earth.

Not only is the Amazon rainforest crucial to regulating the world’s climate, it is the home to a vast diversity of wildlife, with new species discovered every year. With an area larger than Greater London deforested in July alone, some 870 square miles, the issue is not merely one of damaging arson but of ecocide.

The world’s most biodiverse region is being destroyed on an unimaginable scale: hundreds of thousands of species – all in flames.

Collective action 

Standing with the Amazon’s indigenous communities and its wildlife, we must fight back against the deforestation – caused by chainsaw or fire – with the non-violent channels afforded us.

We must expose those companies that still drive deforestation and demand transparency through their supply chains, demanding proof that the products they produce or sell are not implicated in this violent environmental vandalism and abuse of human rights.

Traders and consumers in Europe have a clear role to play in the battle for the rainforest: we can take away the money and with it much of the power of invasive agribusiness. Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation has a blacklist that shows where not to buy your beef, but since 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the livestock sector, giving up beef altogether is an easy and effective thing you can do for the climate and an action each of us should take.

Supporting the Amazon from afar requires collective action. Facing up to corporations and governments can feel overwhelming, but there are pathways of communication: urge your elected representatives to block trade deals with countries destroying their forests, engage in protest and activism and amplify the voices of those in the global south feeling the worst impacts of climate change.

We won’t get many warnings this big. We are still in the 12 year window of reversibility, capable of limiting this climate change catastrophe. For the indigenous people, for the thousands of species, the world must stand in solidarity and act in support.

Get involved

In the eloquent words of Elaine Brum, Brazilian journalist and novelist: “Bolsonaro is not just a threat to the Amazon. He is a threat to the planet, precisely because he is a threat to the Amazon.

“Confronted with Bolsonarism’s accelerated forces of destruction, all of us, of all nationalities, must emulate the enslaved Africans who rebelled against their oppressors. We must forge communities like those established by Brazil’s escaped slaves.” 

So what can you do? First: hold your elected representatives accountable. Are they doing enough to prevent the mass extinction of the world’s wildlife and the climate crisis? Next, get involved and support organisations that fight for forests around the world. 

It’s fundamental that we also avoid beef. Around 80 percent of the Amazon that has been deforested since the 1960s – approximately 900,000 km2 ­– is now used as pasture for cattle. All meats have a climate impact but beef is by far the highest.

And finally, demand more of your retailers – are the supply chains of the food and products you buy free from deforestation?

This Author 

Steve Trent is the executive director of Environmental Justice Foundation. 

Campaigners will lay down the gauntlet with a rally for a Labour Green New Deal on the first day of Labour Party Conference 2019. Supporters will gather at 4pm on 21 September on Hove Lawn in Central Brighton. 

The rally is being organised by campaign group Labour for a Green New Deal and brings together those leading the calls for a transformative Green New Deal with co-hosts: Momentum, Youth Strikes for Climate, Communications Workers Union (CWU), and Brighton Labour for a Green New Deal. 

Speakers will include Dan Carden, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for International Development; Dave Ward, general secretary of CWU; Matt Wrack, general secretary of FBU; Faiza Shaheen Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green; Ali Milani, Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge and Ruislip constituency; Patrick Foley, Brazil Solidarity Initiative; and Sasha Das Gupta, Labour Against Racism and Fascism. 

Climate emergency

MC’d by Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar, the rally will be reminiscent of the Parliament Square rally which took place in May 2019 as the UK Parliament declare a climate emergency. On that day Parliament laid the foundations for a bold, fair and urgent response to climate breakdown with its declaration. 

That move was backed up by trade unionists, labour members, climate activists and global justice activists at the rally. At Labour Party Conference four months on, this coalition will come back together to demand bold next steps as the labour movement and the left takes charge of building climate justice in the UK.

As Tim Roache, general secretary of the GMB union, argued at Trade Union Congress 2019: “The potential now exists to unite green new dealers and the labour movement around the economic, not just the climate necessities of tackling climate change.” 

Our calls for a transformative Green New Deal fundamentally recognise the inseparability of workers’ rights, powerful trade unions, and the struggle for climate and global justice. Labour’s plans to expand democratic public ownership of the economy while repealing repressive trade unions laws don’t just complement, but are fundamentally necessary to a just energy transition. 

Labour policy 

The rally for a Labour Green New Deal comes as more than 90 constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) have voted to submit Labour for a Green New Deal’s motion to Labour Party Conference. That motion includes a commitment to zero carbon emissions by 2030, backed up by calls to rapidly phase out fossil fuels; large-scale investment in renewables; green public integrated transport; supporting developing countries’ climate transitions with transfers of finance, technology and capacity; and more. 

These demands are supported by Labour members across the country, but even if the motion passes at Labour Conference its adoption by the Labour Party is not guaranteed. That is at the discretion of the National Policy Forum and Labour leadership. 

That’s why we need a strong mobilisation of people across the labour movement to make it clear that a transformative green new deal is not only necessary for addressing climate breakdown, but also securing workers’ rights as the economy changes and crucially to win the upcoming election for Labour. 

Climate change will define Labour Conference 2019 and dominate the next government. Labour will form that government, and with around a decade left to overt runaway climate breakdown, Labour will be judged on its response to the most existential crisis of our time. Nothing short of a transformative Green New Deal will do. 

This Author

Chris Saltmarsh is co-director of Labour for a Green New Deal. 

I’m a pessimist. I sometimes doubt that human existence is a good thing. And I generally doubt that societies have the capacity to tackle anthropogenic global heating before its effects become truly horrendous.

My pessimism, I’m sorry to say, can be tinged with misanthropy. I reflect more than is healthy on the human capacity (including my own) for cruelty, complacency, selfishness, and bigotry. The political situation across the world, including where I live in the UK, has done nothing to temper this tendency.

One might think, therefore, that I would be a receptive reader of Jonathan Franzen’s recent essay in The New Yorker – “What if we stopped pretending?” – in which he argues that catastrophic climate change is inevitable. But I’m not. First, the article seems flawed in its understanding of the situation. Secondly, it’s over-confident. Like Franzen, I run pessimistic models in my head. Unlike him, I don’t assume that they are reliable guides to reality. 

Climate apocalypse

I find a weird pleasure in reading pessimistic takes like Franzen’s, and the more insightful and nuanced work of Roy Scranton. But I’m aware that my understanding of global heating is very limited. It’s also conditioned by my identity as a depressive middle-aged white man with little scientific training, who lives in a wealthy country that has so far been relatively sheltered from climate change. To someone with my privilege, climate apocalypse has so far been spectator sport, even if I fear that at some point I will end up in the arena.

Franzen’s argument is that little or no progress has been made to address global heating, although the science has been clear for at least thirty years. He sees expressions of hope that the problem can be “solved” as a denial of reality. He therefore takes issue with “progressive” rhetoric (i.e. around the Green New Deal) as well as the outright denialism of some on the right. If the global mean temperature rises by more than two degrees, he suggests, various feedback loops will cause climate change to spiral out of control.

Franzen sees no hope that this target can be met, given human nature and global political and economic structures. He claims: “In the long run, it probably makes no difference how badly we overshoot two degrees; once the point of no return is passed, the world will become self-transforming”. 

He accepts that cutting emissions is worthwhile if it slows down global heating. However, he also sees false hope as harmful. His concern is that it gives too much emphasis to mitigation rather than adaptation, and distracts from more soluble ecological problems. He also points out that large-scale renewable energy initiatives can destroy ecosystems.

His conclusion that we should focus on “smaller, more local battles” – in his case supporting a farm that offers opportunities for homeless people –­ as a way of hedging against the future is unsurprising. An emphasis on local rather than global concerns is often to be found in the work of other “doomist” writers such as Paul Kingsnorth. It is also has a long history in pessimistic thought, going back at least as far as Voltaire’s conclusion in Candide that we are best off cultivating our own gardens.

Climate de-nihilism

Franzen’s article has not been well received by climate scientists and activists. It has been attacked on several grounds including scientific misunderstandings, political confusion, and an irritating lack of self-awareness. (A useful summary of criticisms can be found here.)

Even with my limited knowledge of the science, I am confident that Franzen is wrong that a mean global temperature rise of two degrees (although clearly very bad indeed) constitutes a “point of no return”.

His dichotomy between adaptation and mitigation also seems false, as does his attempt to separate climate change from other pressing ecological concerns.

Some of the rhetoric used to attack Franzen is unhelpful, though. As pointed out by @libshipwreck on Twitter: “Framing those who are very scared about climate change as “climate cowards” is a great way to ensure that people won’t honestly express their worries”. The problem is not that Franzen is pessimistic, but that he has been given a media platform not commensurate with his limited understanding of his subject.  

The most powerful response that I have read, by Mary Annaïse Heglar, coins the phrase “climate de-nihilists” to describe people (generally white men) who, by preaching the gospel of doom, dangerously distract from the fact “that every slice of a degree matters. And right now, that means everything we do matters”.

Heglar also takes issue with the climate community’s “insistence on hope” and its “tone-policing”.  For  “both smack of the privilege wrought from the deluded belief that this world has ever been perfect and that, therefore, an imperfect version of it is not worth saving, or fighting for”.

As a humanities scholar, I feel ill equipped to face the climate emergency. But my training does at least help me to view with suspicion the absolutist pronouncements that make headlines and publishing deals. We should distrust mantras such as “tech will save us!”, “markets will save us!”, “socialism will save us!”, “planting trees will save us!”, and “we’re all doomed!”. The future will be messier.

The problem of “we”

In a measured response to Franzen, Kate Marvel argues that it is “the fact that we understand the potential driver of doom that changes it from a foregone conclusion to a choice, a terrible outcome in the universe of all possible futures”. On Twitter, Roy Scranton responded sceptically: “Well sure, but whose choice? Who has the power to make these changes?”

It’s a fair point. There’s no one in control of global carbon capitalism, which lumbers around like a blinded giant, crushing everything in its wake. Climate discourse often talks about “we” as if humanity was a unified agent, which is obviously far from the truth.

That’s not to say that things can’t change. As Genevieve Guenther has argued, “we” also occludes the varying degrees of complicity with and responsibility for the world’s fossil fuel addiction. I am highly sceptical that the powerful vested interests that keep the giant alive can be defeated. But I am also sceptical of my scepticism, aware that it has at least as much to do with my emotional makeup as it does with my partial understanding of a complex situation.

When “doomists” write about “we”, they often seem to mean people like themselves. (I probably do the same in this article; it’s hard to avoid.) It’s highly likely that a privileged way of life, fuelled by high consumption and fossil fuels, is coming to an end. But this way of life has only ever been enjoyed by a minority of the global population, and by no means everyone even in the rich countries where it is most prevalent. 

To confuse the end of that way of life with the apocalypse, or even the end of human species, seems (to put it kindly) parochial. It also speaks of a complacency arising from the fact that the people and countries the most responsible for global heating have been, to a large extent, the ones the most sheltered from its effects. This may not remain the case for ever.

Climate possibilities

My pessimism tells me that the worst predictions of David Wallace-Well’s The Uninhabitable Earth and Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees will come to pass. But I do not confuse pessimism with prophecy. And if anything is likely to hold back my misanthropic tendencies, it’s the remarkable efforts of people across the world to tackle global heating.

The climate crisis is not going to be solved. With a huge amount of effort, ingenuity, and luck, it might be possible to mitigate and adapt to its worst effects. I don’t see that we – individually and collectively, locally and globally, in fear or hope or rage or despair or whatever – have much to lose in making the attempt.

This Author 

David Higgins is an associate professor in English Literature at the University of Leeds. His work focuses on British Romanticism and the environmental humanities. His most recent book, British Romanticism, Climate Change, and the Anthropocene: Writing Tambora (Palgrave, 2017). 

Image: NPS Climate Change, Flickr.

The voting age should be lowered to 16 to give young people a voice on their future in the face of environmental breakdown, a think tank has urged.

Today’s youngsters and future generations are facing a “toxic inheritance” of environmental crises caused by climate change, the loss of wildlife and damage to the oceans and soils, a report from IPPR warned.

Without urgent action by the current generation of political leaders, future generations will not just be economically worse off than their parents, they will face huge challenges from environmental damage and its impact on society.

Strikes

The report is calling for votes at 16, as is already the case for Holyrood and local elections in Scotland, to give a voice to those who will face the consequences of what older generations are doing to the world and give them a say on their future.

It also calls for a “Future Generations Act” which would provide a formal legal recognition of the right of future generations to live in a world with a stable environment, and make sure policy-making takes that into account.

And it wants to see greater value given to environmental projects which have long-term benefits for future generations in the process of making public investment decisions.

The report comes ahead of global climate strikes on Friday, when children and students across the UK are set to walk out of lessons and lectures to call for urgent action from politicians to tackle the climate and wildlife crises.

In the UK, one of the demands of the climate strikers is to lower the voting age to 16, in recognition they have the greatest stake in the future.

Breakdown

Luke Murphy, Head of IPPR’s Environmental Justice Commission, said: “Current and future generations face a toxic inheritance as a consequence of environmental breakdown.

“Political leaders and policymakers must recognise the duty they owe to the next and future generations.

“Crucially, they must act to protect them by giving legal recognition to their rights and by giving them a voice in our political system.”

The report warns that younger and future generations will have to experience impacts on the environment which are partly the result of greenhouse gas emissions caused by older generations and “decisions taken by elites in these generations, most of whom have only a small chance of being alive by 2050”.

In order to limit environmental breakdown younger generations will have to use far smaller quantities of resources over their lifetimes than older generations.

Policy

They will have to build sustainable economic models and cope with issues such as food prices pushed up by extreme weather hitting production and the emotional toll of dealing with rapid change and damage to society.

Shadow minister for voter engagement and youth affairs, Cat Smith, said: “Our young people are a force to be reckoned with, who are taking to the street, leading the climate strikes and using their voices to influence positive change.

“Yet instead of being supported and valued, young people continue to have their voices ignored by this Government.

“At the next election, Labour will set out a bold policy agenda that will radically change young people’s lives, including tackling the climate crisis, scrapping tuition fees, and extending the vote to 16-year-olds.”

Vital

But a Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “The age of 18, not 16, is widely recognised as the age at which one becomes an adult.

“Full citizenship rights – from drinking, to smoking, to voting – should only be gained at adulthood.”

“What is vital is that we educate people from a younger age about democracy and give them the confidence and enthusiasm to participate when they are 18.

“The Government has developed a variety of programmes to deliver this and works in partnership with schools and civil society groups across the country.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Food supplies could be at risk as a result of a failure to act on “climate breakdown”, MPs have warned.

People’s health is also at risk from the spread of new diseases and heat stress as the climate warms, with a warning from the MPs that the NHS is not ready for a rise in health problems as a result of environmental damage.

The government should promote healthier and more sustainable diets which benefit the environment and people’s health, including a reduction of meat and dairy consumption, a report by the Environmental Audit Committee said.

Food security

And people in cities should have better access to health, sustainable food – with planning authorities able to restrict the number of fast food outlets without stringent evidence requirements, it urged.

Climate change is projected to have major impacts on food systems around the world, affecting the UK’s ability to deliver healthy, sustainable diets – with agriculture here hit by weather extremes and the spread of livestock diseases.

The government needs to recognise the risks to national food security from importing 40 percent of the UK’s food, including fruit and vegetables from countries which are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

A dependency on imports, combined with Government “complacency” over the impacts rising temperatures could have on food production, is risking national food security – compounded by Brexit trade uncertainty, the report found.

Committee chairwoman, Labour’s Mary Creagh, warned the country faced a “food security crisis” and called on ministers to publish all the information they held on food security and costs in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Pharmaceutical

The MPs raised concerns over the impact food price increases could have on the UK’s poorest people, particularly pensioners and children, and urged the Government to set out how it plans to maintain food security in a changing climate.

Producing more food in the UK could cut the risks associated with depending on imports from a handful of countries, and the MPs said a new national food strategy should support sustainable production of more fruit and veg here.

The Agriculture Bill, which will govern agriculture after the UK quits the EU, should encourage a switch towards more sustainably produced food, including environmentally friendly farming methods to cut greenhouse gases.

Along with damage to agricultural production and provision of nutritious food, rising temperatures could also hit health with direct impacts such as heat-related deaths in heatwaves.

The report raised concerns the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry did not have enough resources to cope with the environmental changes.

Exacerbated

Public Health England (PHE) should broaden its focus to include guidance to GPs and the pharmaceutical industry on Lyme disease, malaria, zika and other emerging tropical diseases.

And PHE should advise local government on the impacts of heat stress and protecting vulnerable people, particularly the elderly, those in care homes and those with kidney failure.

There should be more efforts to protect wildlife, increase “green and blue urban infrastructure”, such as parks and wetlands in cities, improve air quality, and measures to improve energy and water efficiency in homes, the report said.

Ms Creagh said: “Everything we do to the planet, we do to ourselves. The health of the planet matters because it affects what we eat and whether we can eat in future.

“We are facing a food security crisis, exacerbated by uncertainty over the UK’s future trading position with the EU and the rest of the world.

Production

“Ministers must now publish all the information they hold from Operation Yellowhammer on food security and likely costs in the event of a no-deal Brexit.”

And she warned: “More people are living in cities at risk from over-heating and water shortages, they’re breathing polluted air, eating more fast food and getting less exercise.”

She called for “a planetary health champion” to put the agenda of people’s and environmental health at the heart of Government.

A government spokesman said: “We recognise the threat climate change poses to many facets of our national life, including our food production and supply, which is why the UK is the first major economy to legislate for net-zero emissions by 2050.

“We already have a highly resilient food supply chain in the UK, and our National Food Strategy review is considering how we can further address the challenges of a changing climate and continue to deliver safe, healthy, affordable food now and for generations to come.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.