“Not a single creature on Earth has more or less right to be here.” —Anthony Douglas Williams

Marked by unprecedented change, uncertainty and anxiety, 2020 was a year like no other. We have been challenged not only by the pandemic itself but by the federal government’s failure to respond to the crisis. Perhaps most strikingly, the COVID-19 pandemic, as I wrote in Yes! Magazine, has revealed we are all connected in ways we didn’t completely understand or appreciate before—and that we can make systemwide changes to save the planet from the climate crisis if we want to.

At Earth | Food | Life (EFL), we responded by doing what we do best: producing unique insights and cutting-edge perspectives that deepen our understanding of the interconnected issues facing the climate and the environment, our food and agricultural systems, and the rights of animals and nature. Together, EFL’s writing fellows, reporters and colleagues from around the globe published 100 original articles in 2020, including frontline reports, op-eds, commentaries and “Take Action Tuesday” newsletters, all of which showcased resilience and hope in the face of environmental destruction, corporate malfeasance, governmental negligence and animal cruelty. Representing different areas of expertise and advocacy, the dozens of contributors to EFL have one thing in common: They envision a more just, compassionate and ethical world based on science and respect for all forms of life. And thanks to IMI’s expansive publishing network, EFL has a global reach that is in the millions.

​​​​​2020 has also seen some significant progress, particularly after readers like you signed weekly EFL petitions calling for positive change. Canada announced a ban on single-use plastics. France suspended the use of cruel glue traps that torture and kill birds. The largest producer of chlorpyrifos—linked to neurological problems in children—stopped making the dangerous pesticide. New York state announced plans to drop fossil fuel stocks from its $226 billion pension fund. Governor Newsom signed an executive order calling for all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California to be zero-emission vehicles by 2035. Ricardo Lopes Dias, the evangelical missionary head of Brazil’s Uncontacted Tribes department, was removed from his post following an investigation of his secret visit to Javari Valley, which has the most number of uncontacted tribes in the world. A judge ordered the EPA to tighten its asbestos data collection. Virginia banned the outdoor tethering of animals in extreme weather. Virginia and Rhode Island both committed to 100% renewable energy. Finland’s Social Democratic party voted to work toward ending fur farming and fur sales. Mr Kicco Coffee & Wine banned kopi luwak, a coffee made from the excrement of caged-for-life civet cats. The University of Adelaide ended its forced swim test on animals. President-elect Biden is expected to reverse President Trump’s attacks on public lands. At least a half-dozen major banks pledged not to finance drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Great American Outdoors Act became law. These are just a few of the many victories connected to issues reported by EFL in 2020.

As we wrap up this tremendously difficult year, I want to reach out personally to thank you for being a part of Earth | Food | Life. In 2021, we will be hard at work delivering you more original, cutting-edge content to help navigate the challenging times ahead. If you are able to financially support our work and mission, please consider making a tax-deductible donation here. Your contribution, no matter how small, will directly support the vital work we do to bring you stories and insights that are underreported by the mainstream media.

“Not a single creature on Earth has more or less right to be here,” argues animal rights activist Anthony Douglas Williams in his book “Inside the Divine Pattern.” Our intention at EFL for 2021 is to spread this simple yet powerful idea—and to underscore the reality that each day, we wake up to countless opportunities to bring more respect and compassion not just to humanity, but to all our fellow Earthlings and the Blue Marble that all species call home. With your support, we can do just that.

Wishing you a healthy, happy and peaceful new year, 

Reynard Loki
Senior Fellow, Editor & Chief Correspondent
Earth | Food | Life
Independent Media Institute
@EarthFoodLife

Palm oil is found in 50% of all consumer goods. And it’s killing the environment.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

7 min read

In May, the village Ijaw-Gbene in southern Nigeria was burnt to the ground, leaving more than 80 people without homes. According to a report by Chief Ajele Sunday, the spokesman of the people of the Okomu Kingdom, witnesses identified the perpetrators as members of the security force employed by the Okomu Oil Palm Plantation supported by soldiers in the Nigerian army. It was the fourth village in the region to experience such an attack.

Joseph Miyani, one of the victims of the May attack, said that the company’s security forces and government soldiers fired weapons “before setting our houses ablaze.” He reported that villagers fled into the bush to escape the violence, even jumping into a nearby river to protect themselves. “Since that day my life has been miserable,” Miyani said. “I don’t know where to start from. We are now taking shelter in a church building.”

Okomu is a subsidiary of Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (SOCFIN)—an agribusiness corporation that operates palm oil and rubber plantations across 10 Asian and African countries. “In Cameroon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Cambodia, local people complain about ruthless methods wherever [SOCFIN’s] subsidiaries are active,” reports Rainforest Rescue, a nonprofit environmental organization based in Hamburg, Germany. “Repeatedly, after losing their lands to the company, local communities in Africa and Asia have been subject to violence, intimidation and distress as a result of the palm oil and rubber exploitation,” writesFrédéric Mousseau, policy director at the Oakland Institute, a think tank based in Oakland, California, that focuses on social, economic and environmental issues.

Though Okomu denied their participation in the attack, violence and destruction are increasingly commonplace throughout the global palm oil industry. Just last month, the Associated Press (AP) reported on incidents of sexual abuse, rape, human trafficking, child labor and slavery. “Almost every plantation has problems related to labor,” said Hotler Parsaoran of the Sawit Watch, an Indonesian nonprofit that has investigated abuses in the palm oil sector. “But the conditions of female workers are far worse than men.”

In addition to its role in human rights abuses, the palm oil industry is also a primary driver of deforestation, which not only exacerbates climate change by releasing into the atmosphere carbon that was previously safely stored in trees cut down to make room for plantations, but threatens wildlife and biodiversity. Parsaoran told the AP that ending these abuses is the responsibility of palm oil producers, multinational buyers, governments and the banks that finance plantations. But there is another powerful group that supports this entire industry: consumers. As Martin Hickman reports for the Independent, unwitting consumers “may be contributing to the devastation of the wildlife-rich forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, where orangutans and other species face extinction as their habitat disappears.”

But WWF, a non-governmental environmental organization based in Switzerland, suggests that removing products with palm oil from our shopping lists isn’t necessarily the best course of action for concerned consumers. “Avoiding palm oil could have worse effects because it might take support away from companies that are trying hard to improve the situation,” the group says. “This could encourage companies to use other products that may have even more impact on the environment. Palm oil is by far the most efficient vegetable oil to grow as it takes less land to produce than other vegetable oils. Palm oil can be produced in a responsible manner that respects the environment and the communities where it is commonly grown.”

The group suggests that consumers should look for the RSPO label “to ensure you purchase products made with certified sustainable palm oil.” The certification was established by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which was formed in 2004 to promote the development of sustainable palm oil and is supported by 99 countries. However, the RSPO has been intensely criticized by environmentalists for the very thing it was supposed to prevent: rampant deforestation for palm oil production. In July, a study conducted by researchers at Tomsk State University in Russia and the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Austria showed satellite images revealing that palm oil production that received sustainable certification actually caused deforestation in Sumatra and Borneo that has threatened the habitats of several endangered mammals over the past three decades, including elephants, rhinos, tigers and orangutans.

“We suggest that the phrase ‘sustainable palm oil’ must no longer be used to greenwash this tropical product’s reputation, because it cannot certify that the production of palm oil comes from a non-recent degradation of tropical forests and endangered species habitats,” the study’s authors write. “In fact, we discovered that the current certified palm oil demand is almost fully supplied by those bases and concessions that, in less than three decades, replaced some of the most diverse tropical forests of the world and habitats of big mammals threatened by extinction.”

“Rapid and relentless deforestation for industrial-scale agriculture, particularly palm oil and timber plantations, leaves orangutans without food and shelter, exposing them to hunters who kill orangutans and capture their babies to sell as pets,” writes Earth | Food | Life contributor Alan Knight, chief executive of International Animal Rescue, an animal rights nonprofit based in England. “The apes are also in danger of coming into conflict with local people as they stray into villages and onto farmland in search of food. Fires started on an annual basis as part of land clearance operations in Indonesia are also responsible for the loss of thousands of acres of rainforest and the lives of hundreds if not thousands of orangutans.”

Made from the oil palm plant, palm oil is the world’s most widely traded vegetable oil. It is found in about half of all consumer goods, including common foods like bread, cookies, crackers, doughnuts, peanut butter and breakfast cereal, as well as everyday household products like soap and laundry detergent. Palm oil is also found in a host of cosmetics and beauty products like lipstick, mascara, body lotion, bubble bath and anti-wrinkle creams. The list goes on. Making matters worse for ethical consumers is the fact that ingredient lists rarely say “palm oil,” but rather a specific ingredient or chemical that contains palm oil, like sodium lauryl sulphate, glyceryl stearate, stearic acid and many others.

Boycotting palm oil isn’t the best tactic for ethical consumers. Not only would it be extremely difficult to avoid it altogether due to its ubiquitousness, but other options, like coconut oil, would also have the potential to destroy those very same environments currently plagued by oil palm plantations. Christopher Wille of the Rainforest Alliance told VICE that palm oil is “a bounteous and valuable crop [that is] highly productive compared to other oils, creates jobs and revenues and can be used in an amazing variety of products.” He argues that it’s not the oil palm plant that is the problem, but rather the way it’s grown. He says that ending deforestation, coupled with consumer pressure for “higher sustainable standards” and greater industry transparency about sourcing is the answer. “The hope is that companies will continue making changes to meet market demand. Some lobby for alternative oils, but all farming has a similar impact.”

Consumer pressure works. Earlier this year, the multinational food conglomerate Kellogg’s revised its palm oil policy after more than 780,000 concerned consumers signed an online petition. “If you care about the implications of palm oil,” writes Helen Nianias on VICE, “write emails to companies, ask if manufacturers are committed to zero deforestation. Be that guy. We all need to be that guy.”

• Sign the petition urging Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to protect local communities and ecosystems in Nigeria from the abuses of the palm oil industry.

Cause for concern…

“More than 120 labor, food justice, animal welfare and environmental organizations have banded together to take action against [Tyson Foods],” writes Earth | Food | Life contributor David Coman-Hidy, the president of The Humane League, on Truthout. “Tyson must take immediate action to protect the safety and well-being of its workers, make improvements to support animal welfare and reduce its harsh impact on the environment.

• Tyson exploits consumers just like its animals and the workers who raise them (David Coman-Hidy, Earth | Food | Life via Truthout)
• Biden EPA transition team member helped chemical companies avoid regulation (Reynard Loki, Earth | Food | Life)
• Climate change could create 63 million migrants in South Asia by 2050 (Megan Rowling, Thomson Reuters Foundation)
• Government scientists predicted Trump’s border wall could harm wildlife refuge (Rachel Frazin, The Hill)
• EU court backs ban on animal slaughter without stunning (BBC News)

Round of applause…

A bipartisan bill in Congress would enable the National Institutes of Health to develop, fund and incentivize non-animal methods of research, and move the United States toward a day when animal testing is no longer necessary, reports Earth | Food | Life editor Reynard Loki.

• The Humane Research and Testing Act would save so many animals from cruel experiments (Reynard Loki, Earth | Food |  Life)
• Biden unveils diverse team tasked with ambitious climate agenda (Trevor Hunnicutt, Reuters)
• Climate change legislation included in coronavirus relief deal (Coral Davenport, The New York Times)
• ‘Veganuary’ campaign to combat climate change and future pandemics with vegan diets gains celebrity support (Sam Hall, iNews)
• Vegan seafood is going to be big in 2021 (Yahoo Lifestyle UK)

Parting thought…

“Nature—the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful—offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot.” —Richard Louv, “Last Child in the Woods” (Algonquin Books, 2008)

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

7 min read

In December 2019, at the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s annual Assembly of States Parties in the Hague, the Pacific island state of Vanuatu made an audacious proposal: Make ecocide—the destruction of nature—an international crime. “An amendment of the Rome Statute could criminalize acts that amount to ecocide,” argued Ambassador John Licht of Vanuatu, speaking on behalf of his government to the Assembly’s full plenary session. “We believe this radical idea merits serious discussion.”

The Rome Statute of the ICC, adopted in 1998, established four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression—all of which are not subject to any statute of limitations. If campaigners have their way, ecocide would be the fifth international crime to be adjudicated by the ICC, making those who commit environmental destruction liable to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment.

Ecocide proponents want the law to cover the most egregious crimes against nature, which could ultimately include such massive abuses to the environment as oil spills, illegal deforestation, deep-sea mining, mountaintop removal mining, Arctic oil exploration and extraction, tar sand extraction and factory farming. In 2010, the late Polly Higgins, a British barrister and environmental lobbyist, defined ecocide as “extensive damage… to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished.”

In 2017, Higgins and environmental activist Jojo Mehta founded the Stop Ecocide campaign. Overseen by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, a charitable organization based in the Netherlands, it is the only global campaign to exclusively focus on the establishment of ecocide as an international crime to prevent further devastation to the Earth’s ecosystems. “Protecting the future of life on Earth means stopping the mass damage and destruction of ecosystems taking place globally,” the group states on their website. “And right now, in most of the world, it is legally permitted.”

Vanuatu’s bold proposition was the first time a state representative made an official call for the criminalization of ecocide on the international stage since then-Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme made the argument during his keynote address at the United Nations environmental conference in Stockholm in 1972. “The immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombing, by large scale use of bulldozers and pesticides is an outrage sometimes described as ecocide, which requires urgent international attention,” said Palme in his address. “It is shocking that only preliminary discussions of this matter have been possible so far in the United Nations and at the conferences of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where it has been taken up by my country and others. We fear that the active use of these methods is coupled by a passive resistance to discuss them.”

Regrettably, that passive resistance to discuss the immense destruction of nature at the hands of humanity has largely continued. Though nearly 200 nations have signed the Paris climate agreement, which was designed to avoid irreversible climate change by limiting global warming to “well below” 2° Celsius, the countries’ current commitments put the Earth on course to heat up between 3-4°C above the historic baseline by 2100. So far, the historic agreement has been a historic failure—a failure that inspired more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries to sign a “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” declaration in January. “An immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis,” they warned.

“Had the protections [Palme] urged been fully adopted, our world would be a very different place today,” writes Peder Karlsson, a board member of End Ecocide Sweden, a Swedish-based network working to advance the idea of ​​international ecocide legislation. “In Palme’s vision, an international regulatory system would have set limits to our destruction of nature, limits on human impact, limits to how one generation can take from the next.”

Higgins pointed out the illogical state of our current legal system, which shields perpetrators of crimes against nature: “We have laws that are protecting dangerous industrial activities, such as fracking, despite the fact that there is an abundance of evidence that it is hugely harmful in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and the catastrophic trauma it can cause communities that are impacted by it.”

“The rules of our world are laws, and they can be changed,” she said in 2015. “Laws can restrict or they can enable. What matters is what they serve. Many of the laws in our world serve property—they are based on ownership. But imagine a law that has a higher moral authority … a law that puts people and planet first. Imagine a law that starts from first do no harm, that stops this dangerous game and takes us to a place of safety.”

While the ecocide movement was dealt a blow when Higgins died last year after a battle with cancer, it is picking up speed, aided not only by Vanuatu’s proposal last year but also by high-profile supporters like French president Emmanuel Macron, who said, “The mother of all battles is international: to ensure that this term is enshrined in international law so that leaders … are accountable before the International Criminal Court.”

Environmental protection is becoming more of a concern among the general public, many of whom take a dim view of inaction by elected leaders. A Pew Research Center poll published in June found that a majority of Americans now believe that the government should do more to protect the climate, wildlife, and air and water quality. Three-quarters want the U.S. to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources within 15 years, according to a poll conducted by the Guardian and Vice in the run-up to the November election. On Saturday, as world leaders marked the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate accord, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on every country to declare a “climate emergency.” 

And people are warming to the idea of criminalizing the destruction of nature, with more than 99% of the French “citizens’ climate assembly,” a group of 150 people randomly selected to help guide the nation’s climate policy, voting to make ecocide a crime.

“If something’s a crime, we place it below a moral red line. At the moment, you can still go to the government and get a permit to frack or mine or drill for oil, whereas you can’t just get a permit to kill people, because it’s criminal,” said Mehta. “Once you set that parameter in place, you shift the cultural mindset as well as the legal reality.”

“The air we breathe is not the property of any one nation—we share it,” Palme said in his 1972 address. “The big oceans are not divided by national frontiers—they are our common property. … In the field of human environment, there is no individual future, neither for humans nor for nations. Our future is common. We must share it together. We must shape it together.” Nearly half a century later, Palme’s words still ring true. And the rampant destruction of nature continues, going unpunished. The growing ecocide campaign could change that.

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who has become the face of the international youth climate movement, called for a shift in our legal system when it comes to the environment. “We will not save the world by playing by the rules. We need to change the rules.”

• Sign the petition calling on world governments to support making ecocide an international crime.

Cause for concern…

“If I wanted to design a means to select for the most dangerous pathogens imaginable, I would probably do it along the lines of how hog farms are actually operated now,” Robert Wallace, author of “Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19” and “Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science,” told VICE. “If you have several thousand hogs packed in together and they’re all genetically largely the same, that selects for the most virulent pathogens that are possible.”

• The next pandemic could come from an American factory farm (Valerie Kipnis and Joe Hill, VICE)
• Climate racism is real: Researchers found it in U.S. cities (Chelsea Harvey, E&E News)
• Oil and gas leases on federal public lands in California were put up for auction for the first time in eight years (The Associated Press)
• Snow leopards are the latest cats to be infected with the coronavirus (James Gorman, The New York Times)
• California’s ancient redwoods face new challenge from wildfires and warming climate (Eric Westervelt, NPR)

Round of applause…

“A recent study has uncovered a small area off the coast of Kenya and Tanzania harboring a vast array of ocean life,” reports the World Conservation Society. “Labeled a jewel of biodiversity by researchers, the reef complex is located in a rare ocean cool spot that is helping to protect large populations of corals and marine mammals from the devastating impacts of climate change.”

• Rare climate refuge for coral reefs discovered off the coast of Kenya and Tanzania (World Conservation Society)
• For Biden’s economic team, an early focus on climate (Jim Tankersley and Lisa Friedman, The New York Times)
• New York’s $226 billion pension fund is dropping fossil fuel stocks (Anne Barnard, The New York Times)
• Bowhead whale populations have rebounded and are nearing pre-commercial whaling numbers in U.S. waters (Rachel Fritts, The Guardian)
• Vegan scientists working with microbes to create animal-free meat substitutes (Cowboy State Daily)

Parting thought…

“Natural farming is more than just a revolution in agricultural techniques. It is the practical foundation of a spiritual movement, of a revolution to change the way man lives.” —Masanobu Fukuoka

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

7 min read

World governments continue to prop up the fossil fuel industry with astronomical amounts of cash: in excess of $5 trillion every single year, according to a 2019 paper published by the International Monetary Fund. If we want to avoid climate catastrophe and quickly move society to a low-carbon future, propping up the fossil fuel industry is exactly the wrong strategy, as subsidies reinforce bad behavior: continued production, usage and reliance on dirty fuel.

“That’s enough money to buy Apple,” said Mark Todd of Fauna & Flora International (FFI), in a recent email. “It’s enough to buy Google as well. It’s enough to also buy Coca Cola and McDonald’s and Unilever and Walmart and JP Morgan and Nike and Disney and still have a tidy hundred billion or so left over. It’s enough to buy every single item, product and service that the U.K. produces in a year. Almost twice.”

“We need countries around the planet to get their priorities straight, and that’s why we’re calling on global governments to redirect some of that commitment—instead using it to protect nature,” said Todd. “That’s the only way we’ll escape this crisis.” FFI has launched a public petition calling on world governments to commit an initial $500 billion to protect nature, with that amount increasing every year.

Proponents of oil and gas can argue that the subsidies are necessary as oil plummets to decades-low prices. By several measures—the fossil fuel industry is on its back foot. Cheaper renewable technologies and the implementation of more forceful governmental policies since the mid-2000s have steadily disrupted its economic grip. The trend has only been accelerated by the sudden drop in usage spurred by the lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The title of a recent brief by the International Energy Agency puts the current situation in stark terms: “The global oil industry is experiencing a shock like no other in its history.”

But while ExxonMobil’s earnings plunged by more than 30 percent last year, the world’s largest oil company still generated $46.2 billion in revenue in the third quarter this year. “We remain confident in our long-term strategy and the fundamentals of our business, and are taking the necessary actions to preserve value while protecting the balance sheet and dividend,” said Exxon’s chairman and CEO Darren Woods after the company reported third-quarter results in October. But does the company and the industry as a whole still need a massive taxpayer handout when we are in the midst of a climate crisis—and when most Americans want to address it by reducing our use of dirty fuel? Six out of 10 Americans—including 80 percent of Democrats and 37 percent of Republicans—say they would favor policies that would reduce emissions to address climate change, according to a Gallup poll last year.

“Where [subsidies] are given to producers, they protect inefficiency in sunset industries which needs to [be] phased out as a matter of urgency to avoid the escalating the climate emergency, and where they are directed to consumers to alleviate energy poverty, they tend to be poorly targeted, mainly benefitting wealthier households,” argue Ian Mitchell and Lee Robinson, policy analysts at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C.

In a 2019 paper, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculated that national fossil fuel subsidies—including direct and indirect financial support for coal, oil and gas—hit $649 billion in 2015. To put that gargantuan figure into perspective, Pentagon spending was $599 billion that same year. But this massive spending is hiding in plain sight. “These subsidies are largely invisible to the public, and don’t appear in national budgets,” writes Tim Dickinson for Rolling Stone.

“Oil, gas and coal companies—and their stooges in public office—have long argued that making consumers pay for the full impacts of fossil fuel use would cripple the economy,” reports Dickinson. “The IMF experts call bullshit on this idea, revealing that the world would, in fact, be more prosperous.” The study found that eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels would have created global “net economic welfare gains” in 2015 of “more than $1.3 trillion, or 1.7 percent of global GDP.” If global fossil fuel subsidies were eliminated, IMF explained, worldwide air pollution-related deaths would almost be halved, while total carbon emissions would fall by nearly 30 percent.

Only China spends more on propping up dirty fuel than the U.S—and on both of these fronts, President-elect Joe Biden wants things to change. His $2-trillion climate plan will be paid for in part by ending fossil fuel subsidies and states that “future bilateral U.S.-China agreements on carbon mitigation … [will be] contingent on China eliminating unjustified export subsidies for coal.” The president-elect remains “steadfast” in his commitment to demand a worldwide ban on fossil fuel subsidies and eliminating them in the United States “during the first year of his presidency,” said Stef Feldman, policy director for the Biden campaign.

But the incoming president is set to face some stiff opposition on this policy in Congress—even from some members of his own party. Gilbert Metcalf, a former deputy assistant secretary for environment and energy at the Treasury Department under President Barack Obama, said that any standalone bill seeking to eliminate tax breaks for the oil and gas industry would be “dead on arrival in the Senate” if the Republicans maintain control of the upper chamber. “[E]ven with a commanding Democratic majority in the Senate in Obama’s first six years in office,” points out Reuters’ Timothy Gardner, “the former president was unable to kill the subsidies.”

“The best climate science says that we have perhaps ten years left to prevent catastrophic damage, including extreme heat, floods, drought, and poverty,” writes Earth | Food | Life contributor David Hastings, a climate scientist. “Candidate Biden seemed to understand both the urgency and the opportunity in the climate crisis. Now it is up to President Biden to deliver. Much is at stake.”

• Sign the petition calling on world governments to commit an initial $500 billion to protect nature, with that amount increasing every year. 

Cause for concern…

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed the growing threat of the climate crisis in a speech last week on the state of the planet at Columbia University in New York, reports Stuart Braun for Deutsche Welle. “The state of the planet is broken, humanity is waging war on nature,” Guterres said. “Nature always strikes back, and is doing so with gathering force and fury.”

• UN chief Antonio Guterres: ‘There’s no vaccine for the planet’ (Stuart Braun, Deutsche Welle)
• Countries fall short of UN pledge to protect 10% of the ocean by 2020 (Chris Arsenault, Mongabay)
• Not waiting for public comment, Trump admin schedules oil lease sale for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Sabrina Shankman, InsideClimate News)
• Global soils underpin life but future looks ‘bleak,’ warns UN report (Damian Carrington, The Guardian)
• ​​​​​Residents kept in dark about storm risks to Louisiana’s chemical plants (Sara Sneath, WWNO and Southerly)

Round of applause…

“The time is right to harness the power of international criminal law to protect our global environment,” said Prof. Philippe Sands QC, of University College London, who co-chairs a new initiative to make ecocide—the destruction of the world’s ecosystems—a legally enforceable crime. “My hope is that this group will be able to … forge a definition that is practical, effective and sustainable, and that might attract support to allow an amendment to the [International Criminal Court] statute to be made.”

• International lawyers draft plan to criminalize ecosystem destruction (Owen Bowcott, The Guardian)
• Britain plans to ban live animal exports for slaughter after Brexit (AFP via Free Malaysia Today)
• Tel Aviv’s 3D-printed vegan meat brand goes public, raises $13 million (Nicole Axworthy, VegNews)
• This new vegan ham has hundreds of people on the waiting list (Charlotte Pointing, LIVEKINDLY)
• You can make these vegan holiday cookies with just 5 ingredients (Megan Falk, Shape Magazine)

Parting thought…

“It is curious—curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.” —Mark Twain

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

For years, Michael McCabe lobbied against proposed regulations for DuPont’s toxic PFAS chemical PFOA.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

4 min read

The Biden transition team has named Michael McCabe as a volunteer member of its agency review team at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where he served as the deputy administrator under President Bill Clinton in 2000. The appointment has raised the ire of environmentalists and public health advocates because McCabe, after serving at the EPA, led chemical giant DuPont’s defense against an EPA lawsuit of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).

A pollutant that has been detected in humans and wildlife, PFOA—known colloquially as C8—is used in a number of industrial applications, including textiles, upholstery, carpeting, fire fighting foam and DuPont’s brand of non-stick cookware, Teflon. Known as a “forever chemical” because it can’t be broken down, C8 has been linked to numerous serious medical problems in humans, including kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.

In 2001, after a lawsuit filed by a West Virginia farmer whose cows died after exposure to C8, the EPA was petitioned to regulate the chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act “on the grounds that it ‘may be hazardous to human health and the environment.’” And indeed, documents reveal that DuPont was aware that their chemical was harmful since the early 1960s, but C8 is still unregulated by the federal government.

Had it not been for McCabe and DuPont’s lobbying team, the nation might have been spared from the ongoing health and environmental crisis created by this destructive chemical, which ends up in soils and waterways, where it accumulates in fish and other wildlife all the way up the food chain to humans.

“It should go without saying that someone who advised DuPont on how to avoid regulations is not someone we want advising this new administration,” writes famed environmental justice lawyer Erin Brockovich in an opinion piece in the Guardian.

President-elect Biden “says we need to listen to the science,” writes Brockovich. “Are you really listening to the science or are you listening to an industry insider, who is controlling the message? With a lack of federal guidance on these dangerous chemicals, states have been left to create their own rules to enforce guidance and regulations. This chemical, and others like it, have been poisoning us for decades. Now is the time to act. … Let us not forget where these chemicals came from and who is responsible for putting them in our environment. Let us not bring the fox back into the hen house. DuPont executives should have no place in the Environmental Protection Agency.”

• Sign the petition urging President-elect Joe Biden to drop Michael McCabe and all corporate industry insiders from his cabinet and transition team.

Cause for concern…

• Trump races to weaken environmental and worker protections before January 20 (Isaac Arnsdorf, ProPublica)
• A billion birds at risk as Trump officials move to relax rules on killing them (Bobby Magill, Bloomberg Law)
• Trump administration takes grey wolves off the endangered list (The Economist)
• Wildfire smoke is poisoning California’s kids, with potentially grave effects over the course of their lives (Somini Sengupta, The New York Times)
• 16 Georgia Superfund sites threatened by climate-linked extreme weather (David Hasemyer, InsideClimate News)

Round of applause…

• ‘It’s working!’: Pics show animals aren’t afraid to cross Utah’s new ‘Critter Bridge’ (Tod Perry, Upworthy)
• Environmental justice champion Mustafa Santiago Ali could lead Biden’s White House Council on Environmental Quality (Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Ari Natter, Bloomberg Green)
• After election: making the endangered species act more effective (University of Vermont, ScienceDaily)
• Coronavirus should inspire us to rewild cities to better support our children (Cristina Monteiro, Dezeen)
• Photographer Cristina Mittermeier on dedicating her life to the ocean (Lale Arikoglu and Meredith Carey, Condé Nast Traveler)

Parting thought…

“It is up to us to take care of this planet, it is our only home. To betray nature is to betray us. To save nature is to save us.” —Prince Ea

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

6 min read

The numbers are shocking. More than 100 million animals are experimented on in cruel, inhumane tests and killed in laboratories across the United States every single year. From student biology lessons and medical training, to testing for chemical, drug, food and cosmetic companies, and even simply just experiments in scientific curiosity, monkeys, dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, hamsters, mice, rats, frogs, fish and other species are forced to undergo lives of pain, misery and emotional and psychological trauma at the hands of humans every day. Much of the horror is funded by taxpayers —up to $12 billion each year.

“Before their deaths, some are forced to inhale toxic fumes, others are immobilized in restraint devices for hours, some have holes drilled into their skulls, and others have their skin burned off or their spinal cords crushed,” PETA reports. “In addition to the torment of the actual experiments, animals in laboratories are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them—they are confined to barren cages, socially isolated, and psychologically traumatized. The thinking, feeling animals who are used in experiments are treated like nothing more than disposable laboratory equipment.”

But now, thanks to a bipartisan bill in Congress introduced by Representatives Alcee Hastings (D-FL) and Vern Buchanan (R-FL), there is hope that this brutal reality may be turning a corner toward a better, more ethical future. The Humane Research and Testing Act of 2020 (H.R. 8633) seeks to establish the National Center for Alternatives to Animals in Research and Testing under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which budgeted nearly $40 billion for research and development in 2019; approximately 47 percent of NIH-funded research involves experimentation on nonhuman animals. The new center would enable NIH to develop, fund and incentivize non-animal methods of research, and move the nation towards a day when animal testing is no longer necessary.

“Science has advanced considerably in the 21st century so that research can be performed using non-animal methods that are more relevant to human medicine,” said Barbara Stagno, president and executive director of Citizens for Alternatives to Animal Research and Experimentation (CAARE), a nonprofit animal rights organization on the front lines of the fight to end nonhuman animal research. “CAARE thanks Representatives Hastings and Buchanan for introducing this landmark legislation that has great promise to change the current paradigm of routine use of laboratory animals in the face of available alternatives. The Humane Research and Testing Act of 2020 will give real impetus to this essential goal of reducing animals by establishing a dedicated center to fund and train scientists in cutting-edge methods that are superior to using animals.

The bill is timely: A 2018 Pew Research Center poll found that a majority (52 percent) of American adults oppose the use of animals in scientific research, and are also “more inclined to consider specific uses of genetic engineering of animals to be taking technology too far.”

Additionally, a 2014 study published in BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) that documented the waste and ineffectiveness of animal experimentation concluded that “if research conducted on animals continues to be unable to reasonably predict what can be expected in humans, the public’s continuing endorsement and funding of preclinical animal research seems misplaced.”

In fact, the majority of animal experiments are inherently flawed and not relevant to human health. Moreover, a 2015 report published in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics found that animal experimentation may actually be harmful to humans through “misleading safety studies, potential abandonment of effective therapeutics, and direction of resources away from more effective testing methods.” The report concluded that “the collective harms and costs to humans from animal experimentation outweigh potential benefits and that resources would be better invested in developing human-based testing methods.”

“It was in 1985 that I first saw with my own eyes the cruel, inhumane, and sterile conditions in which thousands of sentient animals are kept for use in medical research,” said famed primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a United Nations Messenger of Peace, who has joined forces with Citizens for Alternatives to Animal Research and Experimentation, a nonprofit animal rights organization on the front lines of the fight to end nonhuman animal research, to advance H.R. 8633.

“On moral and ethical grounds, I found this shocking and unacceptable,” she said, adding, “We now have the opportunity to support the continuing development of these alternatives that can lead to the ending of the inhumane use of live animals for research and more effective treatment for a wide range of human health conditions. … Much animal research takes place because scientists don’t have the knowledge or support to pursue other methods. The new NIH center proposed by Representatives Hastings and Buchanan would overhaul the current paradigm of widespread, repetitive, and unnecessary animal experiments in a way that nothing has before.”

• Sign the petition urging your representative in the House to co-sponsor H.R. 8633, the Humane Research and Testing Act of 2020.  

Letter to the editor…

[Replying to: Is Joe Biden Ready for the Urgency of the Climate Crisis? by David Hastings]

“Thank you for this candid piece that needs to be stated. I worry about the issues you address in your article.” —Nora, Anaheim, California

Cause for concern…

• Although meatless options exist, the pressures to conform to family dinners centered on a dead turkey are an annual dilemma for many vegans (MyNewsLA)
• Trump moves to loosen safety rules for Arctic Ocean oil drilling (Nichola Groom and Jessica Resnick-Ault, Reuters)
• Federal water rule expected to stay murky through Biden term (Bobby Magill, Bloomberg Environment)
• Scientists say Florida reefs have lost nearly 98% of coral (Hannah Chinn, The Guardian)
• Climate change closes in on Lebanon’s iconic cedar trees (Ruth Sherlock, NPR)

Round of applause…

“As numbers of North Atlantic right whales keep declining because of entanglements with fishing gear and fatal ship strikes, conservationists are using acoustic technology and waging an escalating legal battle to push for more aggressive action to protect the world’s rarest cetacean,” reports Rene Ebersole for Yale Environment 360.

• At sea and in court, the fight to save right whales intensifies (Rene Ebersole, Yale Environment 360)
• This collection of over 100 vegan Thanksgiving recipes has everything you need for a delicious and cruelty-free holiday meal (Connoisseurus Veg)
• Nonprofit physicians group supports ‘beans over beef’ (JoAnne Young, Lincoln Journal Star)
• A push emerges for the first Native American Interior Secretary (Coral Davenport, The New York Times)
• The 2020 VegOut Vegan Holiday Gift Guide (Tammie Ortlieb, VegOut Media)

Parting thought…

“Thanksgiving dinner’s sad and thankless, Christmas dinner’s dark and blue, when you stop and try to see it from the turkey’s point of view.” —Shel Silverstein

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

5 min read

In 2017, a massive iceberg 80 times the size of Manhattan calved off of Antarctica, has been moving through open water, and is now bearing down on South Georgia Island, a British Overseas Territory, threatening a biodiverse ecosystem that supports critical habitat for thousands of animals, including penguins and seals. The iceberg, known as “A68,” is one of the world’s largest—larger than South Georgia itself—and broke off the Larsen ice shelf as a result of human-caused climate change, which is driving the rapid melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet. The gargantuan iceberg, which CNN reported was less than 300 miles away from South Georgia earlier this month and traveling at 0.6 miles per hour, threatens to block seals’ and penguins’ access to their normal feeding grounds at a time of year that is critical for the growth of these colonies.

​​​​​“If [the penguins] have to make massive detours around the iceberg to make the same trip they normally would, they likely won’t be able to get back in time (to feed their young),” Geraint Tarling, an ecologist at the British Antarctic Society, told CNN, adding that because the iceberg is so big, it could remain stuck on the island for years, potentially causing catastrophic damage to the area’s marine life. “When you’re talking about penguins and seals during the period that’s really crucial to them—during pup- and chick-rearing—the actual distance they have to travel to find food (fish and krill) really matters,” said Tarling. “If they have to do a big detour, it means they’re not going to get back to their young in time to prevent them starving to death in the interim.” He added: “Ecosystems can and will bounce back of course, but there’s a danger here that if this iceberg gets stuck, it could be there for 10 years. An iceberg has massive implications for where land-based predators might be able to forage.”

South Georgia and the neighboring South Sandwich Islands are a “haven for wildlife,” according to the local government, which points out that the islands are “home to about five million seals of four different species, and 65 million breeding birds of 30 different species. … The waters surrounding the islands are an important habitat for migrating whales and are host to a vast array of marine benthic fauna. They are also rich in fish species (including commercially important species) and are important for Antarctic krill populations which are a key link in the Southern Ocean food web.”

Scientists are looking to similar past events to see what might happen if the iceberg doesn’t change course, or if humans don’t intervene to rescue the animals. When the massive A38 iceberg ground on South Georgia in 2004, “countless dead penguin chicks and seal pups were found on local beaches,” reports Jonathan Amos for BBC News, noting that the region is “something of a graveyard for Antarctica’s greatest icebergs.”

If humanity fails to limit global warming to well below 2° Celsius, ideally not letting the planet’s surface temperature increase by 1.5° Celsius—the central goal of the Paris climate agreement—the region will also become a graveyard for so many species. In fact, scientists worry that human-caused climate change will devastate biodiversity not just at polar regions experiencing the rapid melting of sea ice, but across the world. A report released in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, an intergovernmental body based in Bonn, Germany, warned that climate change could cause some wildlife populations in Africa to plummet by as much as 50 percent by the end of the century, while up to 90 percent of the Pacific Ocean’s coral reefs—which support so many other species—could undergo deadly bleaching or degrade by the year 2050.

From above, the A68 iceberg is, rather aptly, shaped like a pointing finger. The finger is pointed not only at all the species in its path of destruction on South Georgia Island, but to the one species to blame for this potential environmental calamity: humans.

• Sign the petition urging the British government to fund a scientific mission to rescue the penguins on South Georgia Island.

Cause for concern…

“The Trump administration is advancing plans to auction drilling rights in the U.S. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has vowed to block oil exploration in the rugged Alaska wilderness,” reports Jennifer A. Dlouhy for Bloomberg.

• Trump to rush drilling leases in Arctic before Biden takes over (Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg)
• Climate damage might be Trump’s most profound legacy (Coral Davenport, The New York Times)
• Scientists watch as China’s remote glaciers melt at shocking pace (Martin Quin Pollard, Reuters)
• Jordan’s donkeys suffer from neglect in Petra amid pandemic (Charlie Faulkner and Asmahan Bkerat, Middle East Eye)
• Polish president strongly opposes animal protection bill that would ban fur breeding and exports of ritual slaughter meat (The First News)

Round of applause…

“President-elect Joe Biden is poised to embed action on climate change across the breadth of the federal government, from the departments of Agriculture to Treasury to State—expanding it beyond environmental agencies to speed U.S. efforts to mitigate global warming and to acknowledge that the problem touches many aspects of American life,” report Juliet Eilperin and Annie Linskey for the Washington Post.

• How Biden plans to amp up government’s climate change fight against climate change (Juliet Eilperin and Annie Linskey, The Washington Post)
• Biden SEC likely to push more climate, diversity disclosures (Andrew Ramonas, Bloomberg)
• Count on Biden to restore the national monuments Trump trashed (Chris D’Angelo, HuffPost)
• Biden pledges to set enforceable limits for toxic PFAS in drinking water (Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group)
• Wood buildings should be a requirement of any climate change policy (Nate Berg, Fast Company)

Parting thought…

“Every single sentient being on this world is unique, everyone has their own life with their own thoughts, with their own dreams, with their own feelings of fear and loneliness and every single beautiful being is a gift from our universe. Each of us emerges from the void precious in our nature and as human beings we are meant to be custodians of this beautiful world.” —Robbie Lockie

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.