The Humane Research and Testing Act Would Save So Many Animals From Cruel Experiments | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Torture paid for by taxpayers: More than 106,000 primates are imprisoned in U.S. laboratories, where they are subjected to invasive, painful, and terrifying experiments, and then killed. (Photo credit: Kelly Deluded/Flickr)

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…

Man with a plan: Joe Biden on the campaign trail at Royal Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, South Carolina, in April 2020. (Photo credit: stingrayschuller/Flickr)

[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…

Giving thanks for cruelty? A member of a crew of investigators and filmmakers documents the horrific conditions inside a turkey factory farm. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 46 million turkeys are eaten on Thanksgiving each year. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals)

Round of applause…

They were here first: The fight is on to save the remaining 400 or so North Atlantic right whales. It is estimated that only 85 are reproductively active females. (Photo credit: NOAA)

“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.

Parting thought…

Friends, not food: At Farm Sanctuary’s annual “Festival for the Turkeys,” rescued turkeys are the special guests and enjoy delicious pies and treats. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals)

“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.

Pets Are Contributing to the Greatest Environmental Crisis Facing Global Ecosystems

Furry friends, furry fiends: There is a dark side to our domestic connection with animal life. (Photo credit: yukariryu/Flickr)

Pets, and the industry that supports them, have been linked to dwindling wildlife populations around the world.

By Peter Christie

8 min read

The following excerpt is from the book Unnatural Companions: Rethinking Our Love of Pets in an Age of Wildlife Extinction. Copyright © 2020 Peter Christie. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.

From Chapter 1 – The Biophilia Paradox

In 2019, an independent international science group—the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services—announced that as many as one million species around the world are currently threatened with extinction. The number, based on a consensus by hundreds of experts and other researchers from 50 countries, made headlines around the world when it was included in the group’s global assessment of biodiversity. One in every five backboned species we know of is at risk of being erased from the earth, and each year, say scientists, about 52 different mammals, birds, and amphibians move one species-at-risk category closer to oblivion. Many biologists believe countless other species are vanishing even before science—so far familiar with about 1.7 million of the planet’s billions of living species—knows they exist. Take insects, for example. Estimates suggest four out of every five insect species remain to be discovered, but the panel report suggests about half a million of these species are at risk of disappearing. In 2017, a German study made news around the world—a favored headline was “Insect Armageddon”—when it found the abundance of flying insects in German nature reserves had fallen to just a quarter of what it was just 27 years ago, as measured by weight.[20]

It’s no small matter. Some warn of what they call an “extinction cascade,” whereby the loss of one species, such as a butterfly or a bee, leads to the secondary extinction of a plant it pollinates, which, in turn, means the end of a specialist plant-eating animal and so on. As more and more of the living pieces in an ecosystem go missing, the system itself risks breaking down. Try removing the parts of your car one by one while still expecting it to get you somewhere. To [ecologist Gerardo] Ceballos’s way of thinking, our general and seemingly growing disregard for the sanctity of life’s variety is like that. If we fail to stop more creatures from vanishing, the natural ecological functions of the world—the ones that keep our air and water clean and our food supply healthy—will most certainly falter. Some scientists warn that our mounting environmental insults may soon take us to a worldwide ecological “tipping point.” Wildlife may be feeling the worst of it now, says Ceballos, but the reckoning for our own species is probably not far off.[21]

“Many scientists in many different fields feel there may be a collapse in civilization if this trend continues in the next 20 to 30 years,” Ceballos tells me. His matter-of-factness is chilling.

Sometime in the mid-to-late 1800s—when Charles Dickens was chronicling the crowded squalor of London and Charles Darwin was championing his queer notion of “descent with modification”—the size of humanity’s great mass eclipsed that of all the wild land mammals on earth. The human population, according to one remarkable estimate, had grown until there were more of us by weight than the combined mass of all our wild mammal brethren. In the race to become the world’s greatest life force, we had finally streaked past nature. Soon, we would leave it behind in our dust. By 1900, we weighed one-third more than wild mammals, and by the end of the following century—after the total weight of mammalian wildlife plummeted by half and the mass of people quadrupled—we became 10 times more abundant (by weight). Now, 7.7 billion of us dwell on this busy planet, and by midcentury, the number could be more like 10 billion. We have arrived at a point at which we absolutely dwarf the wild world. Like the proverbial bull in a china shop, we can scarcely move without breaking something.[22]

Unfortunately, we’re a fidgety species. More than three-quarters of the earth’s land surface (not including Antarctica) and almost 90 percent of oceans have been directly affected by what we’ve done so far. Between 1993 and 2009 alone, the total wilderness flattened to build new farms, towns, and mines around the world equaled an area larger than India. Where the wild lands go, so goes the wildlife; many consider our changes to the global landscape—for agriculture and development—amount to the single greatest threat to life’s diversity in millions of years. But there are others. Our surging population now means excessive hunting, fishing, and harvesting (that is, taking more wildlife than can replenish itself) threaten more than 70 percent of the species facing extinction around the world. Climate change isn’t helping. A fifth of the world’s land surface is expected to see large-scale shifts in climate by the end of the century, thanks to the greenhouse gas consequences from our fondness for oil. Plants and animals that can’t stand the heat will be forced to move or perish. Meanwhile, our penchant for polluting and spreading invasive species and disease only seems to gather steam.[23]

People, after all, will be people. And people—the growing billions of us—will keep pets.

There’s the rub. In his inimitably hopeful way, Edward O. Wilson imagined a growing awareness of our innate biophilia would make our species—even in our clumsy, outsized dominance of the world—more caring about the nonhuman life around us. Our hardwired wonder for other beings was supposed to add delicacy to the way we manage our shared planet. Instead, biophilia may have found another outlet: pets. While one recent estimate suggests the total numbers of wild backboned creatures on earth have been cut by more than half in the last 50 years, the population of pets (at least, dogs and cats in the United States) has more than doubled during the same period. There’s no sign the trend is slowing. Thirty million puppies and kittens are born in the United States each year—a ratio of seven pets born for every human birth. More pet birds, lizards, and other exotic beasts are bred or brought from the jungle. We may finally be acknowledging our genetic need for and attachment to animals—as Wilson wished—but not in the wild; we’ve brought them into our homes instead. Our soaring numbers of pets have become, as author and University of Bristol professor John Bradshaw suggests, our wildlife on demand.[24]

Our relationship with the natural world, meanwhile, is growing more estranged. More than half of the world’s population already dwells in cities, and by midcentury, two out of every three of us will be leading urban lives. The proportion of people who will ever set foot in a wilderness is growing smaller. Those who’ve met a moose on a trail or watched a heron over an evening marsh are a smaller and smaller percentage of us. For the growing majority—among our swelling numbers in cities around the world—dogs, cats, and other pets are our chief experience and familiarity with animals. It’s the pets we meet—and the pets we keep—that have our attention now. We’re drawn to them in the way we’ve always been drawn to other living creatures. And, as Wilson predicted, the urge remains seemingly ancient, deep-seated, and stirring. The only difference is that the animals we’re focused on aren’t wild; they live with us. Increasingly, we seem to prefer having animals in our lives to visiting them in theirs.[25]

That’s not all. Pets and the pet industry are not only replacing the role of nature in our human experience, they’re devastating wildlife directly. In myriad ways, pets pose a clear threat to the wonderful, wild splendor of the rest of life on earth: cats and dogs stalk wildlife as human-subsidized killers; jungles are robbed of animals to satisfy the pet trade; diseases deadly to wild creatures are spread by globe-trotting pets; released pets in nonnative habitats (such as pythons in the Everglades) eat every wild animal in sight or squeeze them out as indomitable competitors; and the pet food business, with its insatiable demand, drains our oceans of vital forage fish.[26] The impacts are considerable. Over the past five centuries, pets have been among the leading culprits in clobbering literally hundreds of species of threatened and extinct birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians around the globe. Domestic cats alone have helped obliterate more than 60 species in that period—including the Stephens Island wren of New Zealand and the Hawaiian crow—creatures lost forever from the rich variety of our living planet. Dogs have been linked to the extinction of 11. Other pets, and the pet industry that supports them, have been linked to other dwindling wildlife populations around the world.[27]

Our biophilia has become fraught. Our love of pets is contributing to what is arguably the greatest environmental crisis faced by global ecosystems. The irony is that pet people are the same animal people the wild world needs to help get it back on its feet. Pet owners care more about animals; they’re more likely to watch birds or to become enthralled by nature documentaries. The only problem is our affection for the animals we hold close at home is obscuring our view of those out of reach in nature. We’re fond of our pets. They’re part of our families. But the wild creatures of the world are vital too. They’re the machinery of natural systems and hold the keys to our survival. They’re part of our evolutionary history and essential to how we think. They’re wild and, unlike pets, remain aloof from our pedestrian lives and human routine: untamed, their mystery survives, complex, inscrutable, and tangled in nature’s vast, delicate web.[28]

Notes

20. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), The Global Assessment Report; Hoffmann et al., “Impact of Conservation”; Larsen et al., “Inordinate Fondness Multiplied and Redistributed”; Stork, “How Many Species of Insects.”
21. Brodie et al., “Secondary Extinctions of Biodiversity”; Barnosky et al., “Has the Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Already Arrived?”
22. Smil, “Harvesting the Biosphere.”
23. Watson et al., “Protect the Last of the Wild”; Maxwell et al., “Ravages of Guns, Nets and Bulldozers”; Davidson et al., “Geography of Current and Future Global Mammal Extinction Risk.”
24. World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Living Planet Report, 75; Rowan, “Companion Animal Statistics”; Gillett, “Pet Overpopulation.”
25. United Nations, World’s Population Increasingly Urban.
26. Waldron et al., “Reductions in Global Biodiversity Loss.”
27. Doherty et al., “Invasive Predators.” 
28. Hooper et al., “A Global Synthesis”; Duffy, Godwin, and Cardinale, “Biodiversity Effects in the Wild Are Common”; Bjerke, Østdahl, and Kleiven, “Attitudes and Activities Related to Urban Wildlife”; Daly and Morton, “Empathic Differences.”

Peter Christie is an award-winning science journalist, pet owner, and author who writes frequently about conservation. Peter is a national Science in Society Journalism Award winner (Canada), a 2008 fellow with the U.S.-based Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources and a recipient of the 2015 Schad Foundation Grant for Conservation Journalism. His stories and features have appeared in the Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, ON Nature (formerly Seasons) magazine, Canadian Geographic, the Ottawa Citizen, the Vancouver Sun, the Edmonton Journal, the Montreal Gazette, the South China Morning Post and a variety of others. His most recent book is Unnatural Companions: Rethinking Our Love of Pets in an Age of Wildlife Extinction, which was published in April 2020.

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.

World’s Biggest Iceberg on Collision Course With Antarctic Penguin Refuge | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Countdown to oblivion: Penguins are among the species under threat by a massive iceberg heading to their home on South Georgia Island. (Photo credit: Antarctica Bound/Flickr)

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.”

Breaking ice: The calving of a massive iceberg from Antarctica’s Larsen ice shelf was captured by NASA satellites on September 16, 2017. (Image credit: NASA)

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…

Clear and present danger: Anti-Trump protesters gathered in London to greet President Trump’s arrival in the United Kingdom on July 13, 2018. (Photo credit: Alisdare Hickson/Flickr)

“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.

Round of applause…

Pro-Joe: People celebrated President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Washington, D.C., on November 7, 2020. (Photo credit: Victoria Pickering/Flickr)

“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.

Parting thought…

Sweet whispers: Susie Colston, national shelter director of Farm Sanctuary, the largest rescue and adoption network for farm animals in the United States, is known as the “Farm Animal Whisperer.” Here, she shares a special bonding moment with Jay the rescued cow, in 2017. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals)

“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.

The U.S. Will Rejoin Paris Agreement—but a Divided Congress Could Stymie Biden’s Climate Plan | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

New climate: Joe Biden at Royal campaigning at Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, South Carolina. (Photo credit: stingrayschuller/Flickr)

President-elect Biden’s climate plan will encounter stiff resistance in the Senate if Republicans maintain their majority.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

7 min read

President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris agreement on day one of his administration, reversing President’s Trump abandonment of the international climate accord that the United States formally left last week. Designed to avoid irreversible climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2° Celsius while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5° Celsius, the Paris agreement seeks to achieve global “climate neutrality”: net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050.

Biden’s commitment to combat the climate crisis, outlined in the “Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice,” includes an enormous federal investment—$2 trillion—to drive an aggressive shift to clean energy and carbon neutrality by 2050. It will encounter stiff resistance in the Senate if Republicans maintain their majority, which they are poised to do. However, Biden campaigned as a centrist, and, having served in the Senate for 36 years, is well-positioned to advance legislation by working across the aisle, and will have the ears of moderate GOP lawmakers like senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine. In addition, he has successfully struck deals with Republicans, most notably with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on passing legislation to raise tax rates on the wealthy in 2012, during his tenure as vice president under President Obama.

​​​​​​McConnell is no friend of the environment. He opposes the Paris agreement, has not put forward his own climate plan, called the Green New Deal “nonsense,” has sent millions of dollars to support his state of Kentucky’s coal mining industry, and received a miserable 7 percent lifetime score for his votes on environmental legislation from the League of Conservation Voters, a nonprofit. But perhaps there is some hope for getting meaningful climate measures passed under a Biden administration. In addition to supporting federal budgets that include energy efficiency and saying he favors “common sense and actually attainable solutions to protect our environment, McConnell last year admitted that human-caused global warming exists.” And though Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) characterized McConnell’s admission as “real progress,” it’s the congenial, long-term relationship between the president-elect and the Senate majority leader that could prove to be the linchpin for any real progress on the climate front. Last week, McConnell called Biden an “old friend.”

While a divided Congress is likely to hamper pro-environmental legislation on the federal level, a Biden White House will set a markedly different attitude in Washington, particularly across science-based federal departments and agencies that are critical to the climate fight, many of which Trump gutted, putting them into the hands of pro-industry climate deniers. A leading example of “foxes in charge of the hen house” during the Trump presidency is the Environmental Protection Agency, which is currently headed by Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist who said climate change isn’t an “existential threat” even as many leading scientists say it is exactly that. A 2019 paper published by the Melbourne-based Breakthrough National Center for Climate Restoration warns that climate change at present poses a “near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilization.”

Drawing on existing scientific research and climate modeling, David Spratt and Ian Dunlop—two longtime climate researchers who authored the paper—forecasted that if global temperatures rise 3° Celsius by 2050, 55 percent of the world’s human population across 35 percent of its land area would experience more than 20 days of lethal heat per year, which is “beyond the threshold of human survivability.” This is the kind of science-based analysis that Biden has said will underscore his administration’s decisions. After four grueling years of anti-science and anti-fact policies rolling out of Trump’s White House, scientists expressed relief that Biden won the election. “Our long national nightmare is over,” said bioethicist Alta Charo from the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, quoting President Gerald Ford’s famous 1974 remarks about the scandal that led to his predecessor Richard Nixon’s political demise. “I couldn’t say it any better than that.”

In addition to putting the federal government on a proactive climate footing, Biden can provide federal support to state and local initiatives, which some experts see as the primary levers that the nation has to combat climate change, particularly when Washington is deadlocked. Fifteen states currently have legally binding plans to achieve meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Eight states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico have legally mandated goals—made through new laws or executive order—to reach 100-percent clean energy.

The president-elect will also wield a powerful tool that does not require congressional approval to use: executive orders. It is likely he will go this route to undo the majority of President Trump’s 125 environmental rollbacks, which have weakened a host of key regulations, including protections for endangered species, protections for wilderness from logging and fossil fuel development, and environmental risk assessments for building new infrastructure. Moreover, environmentalists can cheer Biden’s decision to—in his first year in office—convene a summit of the world’s major carbon emitters with the goal of making deeper and quicker reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

​​“With every bout with nature’s fury, caused by our own inaction on climate change, more Americans see and feel the devastation in big cities, small towns, on coastlines and farmlands,” Biden said in remarks on climate change outside the Delaware Museum of Natural History in Wilmington in September. “It is happening everywhere. It is happening now. It affects us all.” It remains to be seen just how much President-elect Biden can turn climate inaction into climate action. But one thing’s for certain: Mother Nature will soon have a much better defender in the White House.

  • Sign the petition telling President-elect Joe Biden—and the world—that you support the Paris climate agreement.

Cause for concern…

More clouds ahead: Clouds fill the sky over Bowman Lake at Montana’s Glacier National Park. (Photo credit: Diana Robinson/Flickr)

Supporters of national parks and world-class trout streams in Montana have raised the alarm over the election of Greg Gianforte to the state’s governorship due to his previous attempts to strip environmental protections, reports Jeff Gailus for the Guardian.

Round of applause…

Nap time: A gray wolf takes a snooze at Minnesota’s Wildlife Science Center. (Photo credit: Derek Bakken/Flickr)


Passing by the slimmest of margins, Colorado’s Proposition 114 directs state wildlife officials to bring gray wolves—which were removed from the endangered species list by the Trump administration—back to the state’s western mountains by 2024, reports NPR’s Sam Brasch.

Parting thought…

Born to run: A herd of wild horses gathers at sunset on Pine Nut Range, east of Gardnerville, Nevada. (Photo credit: Jackie Gorton/BLM Nevada/Flickr)

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands
of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 32

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.

Trump Strips Protections From ‘America’s Last Climate Sanctuary’ | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Paradise lost: A grizzly bear catches a salmon in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. (Photo credit: 
U.S. Forest Service)

For nearly two decades, America’s largest forest has been protected from logging and development. Trump has ended that.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

5 min read

The Trump administration has announced plans to lift restrictions on logging and building roads in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the nation’s largest national forest. Called the nation’s “crown jewel” by the United States Forest Service, the Tongass is a pristine rainforest ecosystem filled with ancient trees that provides critical habitat for many species, including grizzly bears, wolves, bald eagles and all five species of Pacific salmon. Covering most of southeast Alaska, the Tongass supports a host of unique ecosystems, including ice fields, glaciers, and old-growth forests, as well as islands facing the open Pacific Ocean, the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else in America’s national forest system.

The decision was announced on October 28, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which manages the Forest Service, released a notice stating that the Tongass would now be exempt from the “roadless rule,” a federal conservation policy that prohibits timber harvest and road construction on designated roadless areas, with limited exceptions. Established in 2001, the rule has protected 58.5 million acres of roadless land—nearly one-quarter of all land administered by the Forest Service.

Spanning nearly 17 million acres, the Tongass is one of Earth’s largest remaining temperate rainforests and serves as a crucial carbon sink, storing at least 9 percent of all the carbon stored in all of the continental U.S. forests combined, according to the Washington Post, which called the move “one of the most sweeping public lands rollbacks Trump has enacted.” The policy change could impact more than half of this unspoiled wilderness: Around 9.4 million acres of the forest are designated as roadless areas.

Environmental and conservation groups criticized the move and vowed to fight the decision. “While tropical rainforests are the lungs of the planet, the Tongass is the lungs of North America,” Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist with the Earth Island Institute’s Wild Heritage project, told the Post. “It’s America’s last climate sanctuary.”

“The Tongass National Forest provides us with the greatest opportunity in the nation, if not the world, for protecting temperate rainforest at the ecosystem scale, in the face of climate change,” said Audubon, a nonprofit conservation organization based in New York. “It sequesters more carbon than any other type of forest on Earth, providing a much-needed opportunity for climate solutions that can simultaneously bolster regional economies.”

Industry groups welcomed the decision. “There’s a handful of small operators that are working on the Tongass, harvesting timber,” Tessa Axelson of the Alaska Forest Association, a timber industry group, told Alaska Public Media. “In order to continue to survive, those businesses are dependent on a predictable supply of timber.” Frank Bergstrom, a mining consultant in Juneau, said the rollback could attract investors to mineral exploration in the region.“There’s no roadmap to these things,” he said. “Maybe it’ll lead to a little more optimism.”

The decision flies in the face of public sentiment. As Alaska Public Media reported, an information request from the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council found that Americans overwhelmingly support protections on the Tongass, with 96 percent of public comments from within and outside Alaska favoring the maintenance of the roadless rule.

“It is the crown jewel of America’s natural forests, and conservation is very much in the interest of all Americans because it is our land and we are the stewards of that land,” said Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) during Senate deliberations of Interior Department budget appropriations in 2003. “When I was up there, I saw glaciers, mountains, growths of hemlock and cedar that grow to be over 200 feet tall. The trees can live as long as a thousand years.”

Sign the petition urging Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to maintain federal protections for the Tongass National Forest.

Letter to the editor…

Cleaning up: A carbon filtration system captures historic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination at the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base near Oscoda. (Photo credit: Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy)

An EFL reader replies to “Trump Threatens to Veto First Ever Congressional Action on ‘Forever Chemicals,’” by EFL contributor Michael Green:

“This is most important work, so please keep it coming. Not enough people are reading and listening, believing.” —Harold Treinen, Portland, Oregon

Cause for concern…

Destructive presidency: Anti-Trump protesters rally at the Climate March in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 2017. (Photo credit: Mark Dixon/Flickr)

“Under Donald Trump, the government has auctioned off millions of acres of public lands to the fossil fuel industry, the Guardian can reveal, in the most comprehensive accounting to date of how much public land the administration has handed over to oil and gas drillers over the past four years,” report Emily Holden, Jimmy Tobias and Alvin Chang for the Guardian.

Earth mother: Fashion designer Eileen Fisher is known for her vision of sustainability and environmental stewardship, which includes commitments to using organic and recycled fibers, green cleaning and reducing carbon emissions. (Photo credit: Matt Dunham/Flickr)

“This is one of the places where we can make a positive impact,” said fashion designer Eileen Fisher in a Vogue interview. “Rather than just pollute less or do less harm, we can actually revive the Earth through the process of making clothes.”

Parting thought…

Ebb and flow: Birds at sunset in Lisbon, Portugal. (Photo credit: chris couderc/Flickr)

“The boundary between us and the rest of the world is so fluid. So I think of myself as a song the universe is singing.” —Rebecca Henderson

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.

Trump’s EPA Gives Big Oil, Big Food Permission to Dump Toxic Chemicals on Indigenous Land

Wasteland: Earl Hatley, a descendant of the Cherokee/Delaware tribe and tribal consultant, talked to Al Jazeera journalist Imran Garda in 2014 about how fracking has impacted Oklahoma while a flare roars in the background. (Photo credit: © jbpribanic for Public Herald via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

6 min read

The steady erosion of Indigenous rights continues under Trump as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is—at the request of Oklahoma’s Republican governor J. Kevin Stitt—relinquishing its oversight of a number of environmental issues across 38 federally recognized tribes’ lands to the state, as Rebecca Beitsch reports for the Hill.

The July 22 request invoked for the first time a provision in a 2005 transportation bill sponsored by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) giving Oklahoma the oversight of environmental issues “in the areas of the state that are in Indian country, without any further demonstration of authority by the state.” In an October 1 letter to Stitt, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler listed several federal authorities mandated under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act that will now be overseen by Oklahoma.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. criticized the move as a “knee-jerk reaction to curtail tribal jurisdiction [that] is not productive.”

“After over 500 years of oppression, lies, genocide, ecocide, and broken treaties, we should have expected the EPA ruling in favor of racist Governor Stitt of Oklahoma, yet it still stings,” Casey Camp-Horinek, elder and hereditary drumkeeper of the Ponca Tribe, said in a statement. “Under the Trump administration, destroying all environmental protection has been ramped up to give the fossil fuel industry life support as it takes its last dying breath.”

The move is a gift to the fossil fuel and agriculture industries, both of which wanted to avoid having to consult tribal governments about environmental issues related to fracking, the dumping of hazardous waste and factory farm pollution runoff. Oklahoma has a cozy relationship with the dirty fuel interests, being one of only 13 states that export more energy than they import. Indigenous lands will now be a dumping ground for a long list of poisonous waste and airborne pollutants, including smog, lead, asbestos, glyphosate and nitrates, which threaten public health and natural ecosystems.

Brook Simmons, president of the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma, an oil and gas industry trade group, expressed concern that the landmark 2020 Supreme Court ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which made the prosecution of crimes committed on tribal lands a matter for federal, not state, courts, could lead to a patchwork of tribal environmental regulations across Oklahoma. “The EPA decision was particularly welcomed by the state’s oil and gas industry,” reported Sean Murphy of the Republic.

“EPA’s letter grants Oklahoma’s request to administer the State’s EPA-approved environmental regulatory programs in certain areas of Indian country. EPA’s letter resolves ambiguity and essentially preserves the regulatory status quo in Oklahoma,” EPA spokesman James Hewitt said in a statement. “Additionally, if any tribe wants to apply for regulatory oversight of these environmental programs, then they can apply through EPA’s Treatment as a State process,” he added.

Stitt defended his request to the EPA, saying in a statement, “This approval helps to better protect public health and our environment by ensuring certainty and one consistent set of regulations for all citizens of Oklahoma, including those who are also citizens of one of Oklahoma’s federally recognized Tribes.”

“It’s disappointing the Cherokee Nation’s request that EPA consult individually with affected Oklahoma tribes was ignored,” said Hoskin. “Unfortunately, the governor’s decision to invoke a 2005 federal law ignores the longstanding relationships between state agencies and the Cherokee Nation.”

“The underlying law is a one-section provision surreptitiously inserted as a midnight rider in the massive (Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act) of 2005 that treats Oklahoma tribes differently than other tribes throughout the United States,” the Muscogee (Creek) Nation said in a statement. “Like the SAFETEA Act itself, this was a swift move meant to circumvent the federal government’s trust, duty and obligation to consult with the tribal nations concerned.”

  • Sign the petition to tell the EPA it must revert environmental regulatory control back to the tribes living on these lands.

Letter to the editor…

Cruelty for cheese: Calves at dairy farms are forcibly separated from their mothers within hours of their birth. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/Djurrattsalliansen/We Animals)

An EFL reader replies to “The Terrible True Cost of Milk, Cheese, Butter and Ice Cream,” by Reynard Loki, October 20, 2020:

“I have been a vegan for 20 plus years because of the terrible abuse towards sweet animals like cows, sheep and chickens. I thank you for getting this information out to everyone. Animals deserve nothing less. We must change our farming industry. We owe it to animals to stop the cruelty, because it is well researched that they feel pain just as we do. My heart goes out to all the dairy cows, to the female pigs who are crated and just have to keep birthing piglets, and to the many chickens who live in crowded disgusting conditions. I am 73 and was raised in the U.K. by my mom and dad who loved animals. I believe that if schools gave young children the opportunity to learn about how animals are like us, and how they have feelings, we could end a lot of the pain endured daily by not only farm animals but by all animals. Circuses have abused large animals for decades and still go on in spite of activism. Again, thanks for keeping information out there. Too many people are ignorant of facts.”

—Ann Marwick, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Cause for concern…

Let the people decide: An activist protests Trump’s Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett outside the Senate building as the Judiciary Committee hearings began on October 12, 2020. (Photo credit: Victoria Pickering/Flickr)

Round of applause…

Comeback: The humpback whale was brought to the edge of extinction. Campaigns to save them began in the 1970s. They were placed on endangered species lists. Commercial whaling was banned. This gave them space to recover. Numbers have climbed ever since. In some parts of the world, they’re flourishing. It’s a huge ecological success. (Credit: Information is Beautiful)​​​​​​​

Parting thought…

Scarred and polluted: In areas where hydraulic fracturing is heavy, a dense web of roads, pipelines and well pads turn continuous forests and grasslands into fragmented islands. (Photo credit: Simon Fraser University/Flickr)

When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money.

—Cree prophecy​​​​​​​

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.

The Terrible True Cost of Milk, Cheese, Butter and Ice Cream | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Cruelty for cheese: Calves at dairy farms are forcibly separated from their mothers within hours of their birth. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/Djurrattsalliansen/
We Animals)

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

6 min read

For more than two years, Erin Wing served as an undercover investigator for Animal Outlook, an animal advocacy organization nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., during which time she conducted multiple investigations, including one of a dairy factory farm in 2019, after which Nestlé dropped the farm and added more vegan options. Her final assignment before choosing to leave the field was to document the cruelty to cows happening every day behind closed doors at Dick Van Dam Dairy, a massive factory farm in San Jacinto, California. Wing recently revealed her true identity, writing earlier this month, “I’m now stepping out of the shadows to shine a light on the stomach-churning horrors I witnessed.”

Using a hidden camera, she documented shocking cruelty, from cows being violently kicked, jabbed and shocked by workers, sick cows producing blood-tinged pink milk, calves covered in flies and left to languish in the mud, and a lack of euthanasia or veterinary care, leaving sick cows to slowly die, with their dead, decomposing bodies left among living cows. In addition, Wing documented “downed” or “spent” cows—cows who are so sick, injured or weak that they are no longer able to stand—dragged by chains and painful “hip clamps,” lifted over walls using tractors. These downed cows, who are no longer useful to the dairy industry, are often killed for their meat. This tragic reality is a reason that “ethical vegetarians” who consume dairy products are actually supporting the beef industry: About a third of dairy cows are ultimately killed for their meat.

“This is where milk comes from—a profit-driven industry that treats these gentle, smart and social animals like mere milk-producing machines or unwanted by-products,” Wing writes. After reviewing the investigation, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, an animal law nonprofit based in Cotati, California, filed a lawsuit against Dick Van Dam Dairy and the individuals caught on camera for violating California animal cruelty laws and the San Jacinto Municipal Code through the neglectful treatment of cows and calves.

While animal cruelty in the industrialized food system is rampant—factory farming is the largest cause of animal abuse in history—consumer views on the treatment of farmed animals changing. Nearly half of Americans would support a ban on the factory farming of animals, according to a 2017 poll, with 70 percent having “some discomfort with the way animals are used in the food industry.”

Now prominent lawmakers in Washington are taking action. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined forces to advance federal legislation that would ban large-scale factory farming in the United States over the next two decades. The Farm System Reform Act seeks to place a moratorium on large-scale factory farming. It would also strengthen the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 to require country of origin labeling on beef, pork and dairy products. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) is also co-sponsoring the effort, introducing companion legislation to the House of Representatives.

These shifting public attitudes are resulting in an increased demand for plant-based (i.e., cruelty-free) milk, which is putting the future of dairy farming into question. Last year, the U.S. saw the largest annual decline in the number of licensed dairy operations in more than 15 years. “The recent acceleration of the decline reflects how difficult it is to operate a dairy, particularly in the last several years,” reported the American Farm Bureau Federation, a lobbying group representing the U.S. agriculture industry, in February. “Since the end of 2014, dairy farmers have struggled with low prices resulting from large supplies outweighing demand, in the U.S. and around the world.”

Dick Van Dam Dairy supplies milk to Dean Foods, America’s largest milk processor, based in Dallas. In November, the company filed for bankruptcy. The majority of its assets, including the brands Alta Dena and TruMoo, are now owned by Dairy Farmers of America, the nation’s largest dairy cooperative. “Dean Foods’ business has struggled as more consumers turn to non-dairy milk,” writes Amelia Lucas of CNBC, noting that the U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows that Americans’ milk consumption has fallen 26 percent over the past 20 years.

While the steady move away from dairy is something for animal advocates to cheer about, we are a long way from reforming our broken and inhumane food system. In the U.S. alone, nearly 10 billion land animals are raised on factory farms and killed in slaughterhouses every single year, accounting for 99 percent of farmed animals in the nation. In the U.S., there are approximately 9 million dairy cows. But these cows are far from just numbers—every one of them is an individual, with an individual personality. Dr. Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He writes on Psychology Today that cows are “highly sentient and intelligent individuals with markedly different personalities … display[ing] a full range of personalities including boldness, shyness, sociability and gregariousness.”

But confined and abused in our inhumane food system, they are treated as nothing more than capitalist objects. Betty Stoneman, who teaches philosophy at Emory University, wrote an essay applying Marx’s theory of “estranged labor” (i.e., workers’ alienation from the products of their labor) to animals on factory farms. She writes: “On factory farms animals live confined to small cages, unable to enjoy the full range of their possible movements and among their own waste. Animals undergo painful physical modifications designed to enhance their productivity and to combat the stress reactions they develop due to their living conditions. Animals are deprived of being able to live their lives as they naturally would either as individuals or as members of social groups.” This misery is generally kept hidden from the public, with the factory farm industry in several states shielded by anti-whistleblower legislation, known as “ag-gag” laws.

It is also worth remembering that a dairy cow is also a mother, with maternal instincts to care for and defend her young. Forcibly impregnated so that she is kept in a constant and painful cycle of pregnancy, birth and lactation, this poor, abused mother must also suffer the relentless theft of her babies, who are taken away from her within hours of their birth. “This forced separation often causes cows to bellow for hours or even days, pacing and searching for their calves,” writes Joe Loria of Mercy for Animals, a nonprofit that, like Animal Outlook, has been at the forefront of exposing the behind-the-scenes horrors of factory farming.

“I saw abuse and neglect every single day,” Wing said about her harrowing undercover mission. “I feel a special bond toward cows now because of it, and it will always stay with me. A part of me will always be with them as well.”

  • Sign the petition urging Dairy Farmers of America to shift at least 20 percent of its supply chain (Dean Foods included) to vegan dairy alternatives, and end cruel dehorning.

Cause for concern…

Environmental racism: Industrial plants in Louisiana have increased concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals in predominantly black and poor communities. (Photo credit: formulanone/Flickr)

“People across the country are waking up to structural racism and coping with police brutality and civil unrest while also living through the nightmare of the COVID-19 pandemic,” writes Earth | Food | Life contributor Sharon Lavigne, on Truthout. “They’re mourning losses and longing for life to get back to normal. But in St. James Parish, Louisiana, where I’m from—a predominantly Black and low-income community nicknamed “Cancer Alley”—racism, brutality, loss and unrest are normal. In fact, a new plastics complex and President Trump’s decision to gut the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) stand to make things even worse.”

Round of applause…

Keeping it local: Workers at Massaro Community Farm in Woodbridge, Connecticut. As Big Food supply chains hit snags during the COVID-19 pandemic, local community-based farms have risen to the challenge, reports Earth | Food | Life contributor Elizabeth Henderson, on Truthout. (Photo credit: Alyssa DesRosier)

In a recent op-ed published by our friends at Local Futures, “big picture activist” Henry Coleman condemns the “corporate-led, techno-globalist future we are being sold,” arguing that localizing our food systems is “the single most meaningful solution to climate breakdown.”

Parting thought…

A life of suffering: Tagged cows at a dairy farm in Taiwan. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals)

“The grocery store became a site for mourning: the innocuous refrigerators filled with milk, yogurt, cheese, butter, and eggs; the freezers of ice cream; the cases of meat, neatly packaged and priced—these suddenly became, to me, the products of immeasurable violence.” —Kathryn Gillespie, The Cow With Ear Tag #1389 (University of Chicago Press, 2018)

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.

America’s Biggest Bank Makes Climate Commitments, but Big Questions Remain | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Fossilized: Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, speaks at the JPMorgan Healthcare Investment Conference on January 8, 2013. (Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson/Flickr)

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

5 min read

JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, recently announced that it is adopting “a financing commitment that is aligned to the goals of the Paris Agreement,” adding that part of this new strategy is “to help clients navigate the challenges and capitalize on the long-term economic and environmental benefits of transitioning to a low-carbon world.”

The Paris Agreement, the international climate agreement joined by 189 countries—and which Trump pulled the United States out of—sets out a global framework to avoid irreversible climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2° Celsius while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5° Celsius. At the heart of the agreement is getting the world to “climate neutrality”: net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050.

But while the announcement may sound good to environmentalists, a closer inspection reveals serious concerns. Unlike the commitment made last month by Morgan Stanley, in which the nation’s sixth largest bank said it is committed to “reach net-zero financed emissions by 2050” and also to “developing the tools and methodologies needed to measure and manage its carbon-related activities,” JPMorgan’s own announcement does not clarify that the bank will reduce its own financed emissions to net zero. Additionally, while Morgan Stanley committed to measuring and disclosing its financed emissions by joining the Steering Committee of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), the global platform that other banks have adopted, JPMorgan made no similar promise.

“In recent decades JPMorgan has plowed billions of dollars into the very industries tearing down rainforests, trampling indigenous rights, and destroying the climate,” said Moira Birss, climate and finance director at Amazon Watch, a nonprofit. “While this is an improvement over its existing policies, the commitment fails to address the full impact of its investments on communities and our climate and grants the bank three more decades to change when we need action now.”

Notably, JPMorgan’s announcement mentioned nothing about reducing the bank’s enormous lending to fossil fuel companies. According to “Banking on Climate Change,” a report on fossil fuel financing published this year by Rainforest Action Network (RAN), a nonprofit, JPMorgan has been the biggest financier of fossil fuels in the four years following the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016. RAN has launched a public petition urging JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to stop bankrolling environmental destruction by ending its funding of fossil fuels.

In fact, by lending $269 billion to support of dirty fuel in 2016-2019, JPMorgan became the first bank to exceed the quarter-trillion dollar mark in post-Paris Agreement fossil financing. These dangerous investments include backing controversial fossil fuel projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, which not only continues our reliance on oil, but violates Indigenous sovereignty, as the reservation of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is directly downstream of the point where the pipeline will cross the Missouri River. It also poses an immediate threat to local environments, including the drinking water of nearby communities and the natural habitats of nine threatened, endangered, and candidate species, such as the swift fox and the greater sage-grouse.

Environmentalists aren’t the only ones who want the bank to get serious about its commitment to the net-zero goal. Earlier this year, nearly 50 percent of JPMorgan’s investors voted in favor of a shareholder resolution filed by As You Sow, a nonprofit, asking the bank to measure, disclose and reduce emissions aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. As You Sow withdrew similar proposals with Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs after these banks made commitments to assess methodologies for measuring financed emissions toward alignment with the Paris goals.

“We are happy to see JPMorgan respond to investors’ resounding vote for climate action,” said Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, in a press statement. “While this announcement is an important step in the right direction, its focus on [clients’] actions rather than its own financing decisions, is a concern. For years, JPMorgan has been the top financier of fossil fuels. Climate progress will be made only by committing to dramatically reduce financing to these high carbon companies and projects. Relying on clients to make change, without turning off the funding spigots, is not a recipe for success. We look forward to more clarity and strong interim financing reduction commitments from JPMorgan.”

Last year, 215 global companies reported nearly $1 trillion at risk from climate impacts, with many likely to happen within the next five years. While this is an alarming scenario, there is also a massive economic benefit to ramping up the fight against climate change. Limiting global warming below below 1.5 degrees versus 2 degrees will save an estimated $20 trillion globally by 2100, according to a study conducted by researchers at Stanford University in California and the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“The world’s largest lender to the fossil fuel industry has clearly signaled that the fossil fuel game is coming to an end,” said Alec Connon, co-coordinator of the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition, about JPMorgan Chase’s announcement to align its financing with the Paris Agreement. “However, if [the bank] is serious about its climate commitments, it’ll need to quickly follow this up with policies that prohibit all lending to coal companies and companies still expanding fossil fuel production. 2050 vision is all well and good, but we need 2020 actions.”

Cause for concern…

Helping the helpless: Actor Joaquin Phoenix was one of the many animal rights activists who came together for the Los Angeles Animal Save vigil at the Farmer John slaughterhouse. The activists gave water to thirsty pigs who arrived in dozens of trucks. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals)

“Animal agriculture industry groups defending factory farms engage in campaigns of surveillance, reputation destruction, and other forms of retaliation against industry critics and animal rights activists, documents obtained through a FOIA request from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal,” reports Glenn Greenwald on the Intercept. “That the USDA possesses these emails and other documents demonstrates the federal government’s knowledge of, if not participation in, these industry campaigns.”

Round of applause…

Quiet, please: A whale breaches the Atlantic waters off Boston, Massachusetts. Seismic testing for undersea oil deposits has proven to be deadly for marine animals like whales and dolphins. (Photo credit: Jose Antonio Navas/
Flickr)

“During a long battle in a South Carolina court, several government permits that allowed seismic testing and harming marine animals slowly expired,” report Darryl Fears and Dino Grandoni for the Washington Post.

Parting thought…

(Image credit: Animals Australia)

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.

A Vote for Trump Is a Vote Against Endangered Species

Big target: In 1800, an estimated 26 million elephants roamed across Africa. But overhunting and illegal poaching have decimated them. Today, less than half a million elephants remain on the continent. (Brian Ralphs/Flickr)

Endangered species have a formidable enemy in President Trump.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

5 min read

It is hard to ignore the dark irony behind President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. The Science-Denier-in-Chief, who has ignored facts and medical experts, has contracted the deadly disease that he has downplayed from the outset, and which has claimed the lives of more than 209,000 Americans and infected 7.4 million.

And there is another layer to this dark irony: Trump, who has significantly eroded protections for endangered species, has fallen victim to a disease that scientists believe originated with the pangolin, an endangered species that is so overhunted that it is known as “the world’s most trafficked mammal.” In the last two decades alone, more than a million pangolins were poached and illegally traded.

​​​“[I]t is likely for pangolin coronavirus to have originated from bat viruses as a result of illegal trapping of alive animals in East Asia and their sale in the wildlife market of Wuhan, in the Hubei province of China, with a subsequent human-to-human transmission,” according to an international team of researchers in a study published last month in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation. “Animals host pathogens that in normal conditions are rarely transmitted to our species. However, the abuses perpetrated on the environment at a global scale (i.e., wildlife poaching and trade, deforestation, wildfires, climate change, overfishing, etc.) increase the likelihood of interspecies transmission.”

Trump is no friend to endangered species, with his administration steadily eroding longstanding wildlife protections in favor of hunters. In July, for example, the Trump administration proposed a death blow to endangered species by announcing a new, much narrower definition of “critical habitat” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which will impede conservation efforts across the nation. Instead of giving struggling species enough natural habitat so that they can recover and ultimately flourish, the new definition requires the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to “assign weight” to industry claims of economic impacts when designating an area as critical habitat.

“The Trump administration is re-writing the definition of critical habitat solely to make it easier to drill, frack, mine, clearcut, and otherwise exploit lands and waters that endangered wildlife rely on,” said Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice, a nonprofit.. “We are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis and nothing about this new definition helps animals and plants facing extinction. The Endangered Species Act is the last safety net for imperiled wildlife. Rather than just implementing a law that we know works, the Trump administration keeps taking a buzzsaw to it.”

​​​​The ESA is the nation’s bedrock wildlife conservation law, and has received strong bipartisan support since its inception in 1973, when it was signed by Republican president Richard Nixon. But Trump—who enjoys immense support from the hunting lobby and whose sons are avid trophy hunters—has weakened protections for endangered species, destructive moves that have been lauded by powerful industry groups like the American Petroleum Institute.

“Developers and polluters could basically veto any critical habitat protections for endangered species by claiming economic impacts, even without proof,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit. “Wildlife simply can’t survive or recover if they have no place to live, but that’s exactly what will happen if the Trump administration succeeds in turning over the critical habitat designation process to industry.”

In one particularly galling move, the Trump administration in 2018 overturned an Obama-era ban on big game trophy imports. The decision ignores plummeting wildlife populations, particularly keystone species like elephants, rhinos and lions. Near the turn of the 20th century, Africa was home to between three and five million elephants. Now less than half a million remain. In the early 1900s, around 500,000 rhinos roamed across Africa and Asia. Today, only around 27,000 remain in the wild. Seventy-five percent of African lion populations are in decline, with only around 20,000 individuals left in the wild.

“When a species’ greatest value is as a dead trophy, its days will inevitably be numbered, just as they are when the value of their parts—like ivory tusks, tiger skins, or rhino horn—make protection from poachers nearly impossible,” writes Jeffrey Flocken of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a nonprofit.

The Trump administration also has critically endangered polar bears in its crosshairs. Their numbers are dwindling (there are only about 4,000 remaining in Alaska) due to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice caused by global warming. But Trump wants to open up their critical habitat—the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the largest remaining national wildlife refuge in the United States—to the oil and gas industry for drilling.

“This administration doesn’t care about anything but money, and wildlife will suffer,” said Greenwald.

Rhinos in Africa, an organization advocating against the trade in rhino horn, has launched a public petition—signed by more than 132,000 people—supporting the passage of H.R. 2245, the Cecil Act, which seeks to prohibit the import and export of threatened or endangered species.

  • Sign the petition supporting the passage of the Cecil Act to protect endangered species.

Cause for concern…

Burn notice: A fire burns at an oil storage area near Lybrook, New Mexico. (Photo credit: John Fowler/Flickr)

“New Mexico’s regulators have crafted ambitious new rules to limit air pollution from oil and gas wells, but some stakeholders worry that the flexibility they offer to operators will gut them,” reports Elizabeth Miller for the Slick, new state-based reporting project on oil, climate and politics launched by Capital & Main.

Round of applause…

Hold the olives: An adult female Eurasian blackcap, one of the many species of birds that will no longer be threatened by nighttime olive harvesting in Spain and Portugal. (Photo credit: vogelartinfo/Wikipedia)

In 2018, a report found that nighttime mechanical harvesting of olives in Spain and Portugal to produce olive oil was linked to the deaths of wild birds. But after efforts by wildlife conservationists, earlier this year the deadly harvesting method was banned. “As a European and a fan of olive oil, I can’t help but celebrate this excellent news,” writes Iván Ramírez, senior head of conservation at BirdLife International, a nonprofit.

Parting thought…

Lunchtime: A baby rhinoceros being bottle-fed by a caretaker at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a conservation organization and orphan-elephant and rhinoceros rescue and rehabilitation program, in East Africa. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur, WeAnimals)

“Humanity can no longer stand by in silence while our wildlife are being used, abused and exploited. It is time we all stand together, to be the voice of the voiceless before it’s too late. Extinction means forever.” —Paul Oxton, founder of the Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation.

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.

Our Food System Is Broken and Inhumane, but It Can Be Fixed | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

No food is worth this pain: Pigs en route to slaughter. Pigs are intelligent, emotional and cognitively complex, yet are forced to endure intense suffering in our cruel food system. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals)

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

7 min read

The facts are clear and they are shocking: Factory farming is unhealthy for consumers, dangerous for workers, and devastating for the environment, and it is the largest cause of animal cruelty in the history of mankind.

In the United States alone, nearly 10 billion land animals are raised on factory farms and killed in slaughterhouses every single year, accounting for 99 percent of farmed animals in the nation. These animals are subjected to physical, psychological and emotional cruelty on a constant basis, living in extreme confinement where they experience fear and pain daily until they are killed for their meat. The normal lifespan of a chicken is five to eight years. But on a factory farm, they live just 47 days before they are sent to slaughter.

In addition to being the main cause of animal cruelty in the world, factory farming is a primary source of environmental degradation. The industrialized meat industry accounts for 37 percent of worldwide emissions of methane, a global warming gas 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first two decades after its release. It is also responsible for 65 percent of human-made emissions of nitrous oxide—a gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide—that depletes the ozone layer, which protects the Earth’s surface from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.

Factory farming also depletes the planet’s fresh water. Just a single egg takes more than 50 gallons of water to produce. A pound of chicken, 468 gallons. A gallon of milk, 880 gallons. A pound of beef, 1,800 gallons. It also requires vast tracts of land, which means the industrial meat industry is also the cause of massive deforestation around the globe, destroying ecosystems, threatening Indigenous communities and their traditional ways of life, and endangering a host of wildlife. Data shows that companies in the supply chain of JBS, the world’s largest supplier of meat, are potentially responsible for the destruction of up to 124 square miles of Brazilian rainforest every single year to produce beef that is exported around the globe.

It won’t be easy to transform the world’s food systems from animal to plants, but as Richard Trethowan, the director of the IA Watson Research Center at the University of Sydney’s Narrabri Plant Breeding Institute, writes in the Conversation, we can feed the human population with plant protein—without increasing the amount of farmland: “governments around the world must turn away from heavily [subsidized] but protein-poor cereals, and aggressively pursue legume production.”

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) contributor Josephine Morris, an expert in food policy and animal welfare with the Humane Society of the United States, works with the largest food companies, from fast-food chains like McDonald’s to foodservice firms like Sodexo, to uphold their commitments to improving the lives of animals in their supply chains. Last month, she wrote about the Food Industry Scorecard, a survey of 95 companies that looked at the progress being made (or not made) in terms of their stated public promises on increasing animal welfare.

“We’ve found that some of them are trying diligently to improve the lives of animals used in their supply chain; others are lagging behind or have backtracked from their pledges altogether,” she writes on NationofChange. “Sodexo is more than 60 percent compliant toward its goal of using only cage-free eggs and is actively working to increase its percentage of plant-based entrees,” Morris reports. “On the other hand, Marriott (and other companies) have repeatedly failed to keep their animal welfare promises, and Subway reports no progress made toward its 2012 promise to ‘rapidly eliminate’ cruel gestation crates from its pork supply.”

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the harsh realities of factory farming, as EFL contributor Linda Tyler, a fellow at Sentient Media who covers animal welfare issues, recently reported on Citizen Truth. “The COVID-19 crisis has played havoc with factory farming’s relentless raise-and-kill operations,” she writes. “Thousands of meatpacking and processing workers have been infected with the coronavirus, leading to the closing down of dozens of slaughterhouses. The animals destined for those slaughterhouses have had nowhere to go, and farmers have killed millions of animals, often in crude and cruel ways, including shooting, suffocation, and even heating the animals to death. Grown animals, as well as born and unborn baby animals, have been slaughtered. Farmers are ill-prepared to carry out this gruesome task, and animals are suffering horribly as a result.”

In addition to being exposed to coronavirus, factory farm workers—often undocumented immigrants—are routinely exploited by factory farm owners as a source of cheap labor and are forced to deal with dangerous working conditions: There is a 50  percent chance that a factory farm worker will be injured on the job. No wonder that U.S. factory farms, despite employing more than 500,000 workers, have one of the largest turnover rates in the nation: up to 100 percent annually.

What can be done? Well, the information gathered in the Food Industry Scorecard can help consumers make decisions about which companies they want to support, and which companies they want to avoid. It can also help shareholders decide where they want to invest and—if they’ve already invested in companies that have failed on their animal welfare commitments—where they might want to apply pressure. “Shareholders owning at least $2,000 worth of stock for at least one year can introduce a resolution,” writes Cameron Harsh, who manages the “Raise Pigs Right” campaign at World Animal Protection, a nonprofit. “In some cases, the submission of a resolution alone can lead to action by the company to address the issue of concern without requiring a full vote. It is in the interest of the company to avoid a public vote, and it can project a progressive image to shareholders ahead of the annual meeting.”

But the best thing we can all do is to reduce—or better yet, eliminate—our meat intake. For each person who chooses to switch to a meat-free diet, an estimated 100 animals per year could be spared a terrible fate. In addition to leaving animal cruelty and the environmental destruction caused by the meat industry off their plates, eaters who move to plant-based diets can experience a wide array of health benefits. Rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes, plant-based diets are full of fiber, packed with vitamins and minerals, low in calories and saturated fat, and cholesterol-free. That translates to better health on multiple fronts: It can reduce the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, and other major illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive conditions. Many people who have transitioned to a plant-based diet “report bigger fitness payoffs, more energy, reduced inflammation, and better health outcomes after making the switch,” reportsForks Over Knives.

Some lawmakers are taking action. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined forces to advance federal legislation that would ban large-scale factory farming in the United States over the next two decades. The Farm System Reform Act seeks to place a moratorium on large-scale factory farming. It would also strengthen the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 to require country of origin labeling on beef, pork and dairy products. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) is also co-sponsoring the effort, introducing companion legislation to the House of Representatives.

“Our food system was not broken by the pandemic and it was not broken by independent family farmers. It was broken by large, multinational corporations like Tyson, Smithfield, and JBS that, because of their buying power and size, have undue influence over the marketplace and over public policy,” Booker said. “That undue influence was on full display with President Trump’s recent executive order prioritizing meatpacker profits over the health and safety of workers.”

In June, Care2 launched a public petition—already signed by more than 131,000 people—to give Americans a chance to lodge their support of the Farm System Reform Act. In addition to signing this petition, you can contact your senators and representative to urge them to co-sponsor these bills. Animals trapped in our broken, inhumane food system don’t have a voice. So it’s up to all of us to speak on their behalf. Together, we can move the country to a healthier, more humane future. As Gandhi—who espoused a total commitment to nonviolence—wisely observed, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

  • Sign the petition to support Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren’s bill to ban factory farming in the United States by 2040.

Cause for concern…

Call for compassion: Animal activists protest factory farming at the March to Close All Slaughterhouses in Toronto in 2018 (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals)

Round of applause…

Meat is murder: Moby, a musician, activist and longtime vegan, who has been an outspoken advocate for animal rights and climate action, co-produced “Takeout,” a new documentary that exposes the truth about deforestation: Humanity’s taste for animal flesh is killing the Amazon rainforest. (Photo credit: Michiel Van Balen/Flickr)

Parting thought…

Cuddle time: Bear the rescued lamb and his human friend Alex share a sweet moment at Farm Sanctuary in Acton, California (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals)

“Our relationship to most living things is and must be, I think, a moral one, not a practical one.” —Carl Safina

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.