Ben De Groeve

🌍 World Animal Day 🐄🐖🐣🐢🐰🐎

In early July, I attended the Animal Advocacy Conference of PHAIR in Edinburgh, Scotland. In celebration of World Animal Day, I want to share some insights from this year’s gathering:
bendegroeve.wordpress.com/sentience-sp...

Policy briefs - TRIGGER project | Ben De Groeve 🌍 World Environmental Health Day: Clean air, healthy people The “environment” is not merely something that surrounds us; our survival and well-being depend on its condition. The air we breathe, the ...

🌍 World Environmental Health Day

The air we breathe, the food we eat, and the climate we live in all directly affect our health. Check our LinkedIn post on this year’s theme “clean air, healthy people”. 🍃💙

🔗 lnkd.in/e_z-h_k4.

www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-de...

🫀Read our #PolicyBrief “Protecting Europe’s Hearts in a Changing Climate: Addressing Cardiovascular Health Impacts of Air Pollution and Temperature Changes”, where we outline how hot temperature shifts strain the body’s ability to regulate itself.

📖 Read more at project-trigger.eu/policy-briefs/

To reduce heat stress from traffic, the organization recommends:
▶️ Use transport as a lever for cooler cities and promote green spaces 🚌🌳
▶️ Promote energy-efficient mobility

Did you know that traffic accounts for up to 30% of human-caused heat in cities? 🚗🌇🥵

I just received a fact sheet on traffic-induced urban heat stress by an Austrian organization specialized in mobility (VCÖ): vcoe.at/files/vcoe/u...

Revealed: More than 24,000 factory farms have opened across Europe Intensive livestock farms such as those found across the US are spreading across the continent, according to new data

😔
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

New paper out in Global Environmental Change - And I’m genuinely so thrilled to see this one published!! 🍾
@martaolazabal.bsky.social @imagineadapt.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Follow #TRIGGER to learn more on how we can prevent and address health impacts of climate change. 🌍☀️

Understanding the health impacts of climate change

#climatechange effects include sea level rise, extreme weather events, food and water shortages and infectious diseases

New summary in the @futurehealthj.bsky.social

@uclgeography.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Are you a climate hothead, easily angered and caught up in heated debates and protests about climate change? 🥵

Oilwell.app helps you let go, tune out, and live a mindless, carefree life on a fully realized Hothouse Earth. 💥🌎

So it's not that we actively intended to control for the effects of moral emotions. It's something we did implicitly when calculating the direct effect in the mediation model.

The 'direct' effect of appeals (vs. control) on willingness opposes the indirect, positive effect of moral emotions. This direct effect is the effect of appeals on willingness, controlling for the effect of moral emotions.

The final sentence is an interpretation, not based on direct measurement.

The 'direct' effect of the appeals (vs. control) on willingness opposed the indirect, positive effect of moral emotions. This direct effect is the effect of the appeals, controlling for the moral emotion effects. Meat-eating justifications may explain some of this counter-active effect, but not all.

1. This is a thread about why Food Waste is so often, and wrongly, identified as the major problem with the food system. Yes, it's an issue, but in the rich world, it's far smaller than many others. It’s massively over-emphasised, while other, far more important problems, are ignored and avoided. 🧵

1. There has been a major effort by that old combination – big business and the far right – to diss foods derived from plants. The meat lobby invests big time in misinformation. And the far right hates “soyboys”, while associating itself with red meat-eating. It's a match made in hell. 🧵

New paper from @fdabl.bsky.social @maiensachis.bsky.social & @swaziadam.bsky.social. They find that scientists can engage in protest without compromising their credibility - good news. However, we must temper expectations that such actions have the desired impact either. Social change is difficult.

bsky.app/profile/bend...

👉 In sum, we find that an image of a pig being stunned (vs. a pork chop) sparks moral emotions that discourage pork chop consumption, while a taste for meat motivates resistance.

🌱 For lasting change, we need to rethink how we relate to animals and food & celebrate delicious plant-based options.

Our findings also align with the push-pull model of moralization (see Figure 👇):
🔗 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Animal cruelty can “push” people to avoid meat by triggering emotions like empathy and anger, while the “pull” of meat’s taste can spark reactance and counter-justification.

Our findings align with research on the meat paradox 🥩🤔—the tension between loving animals and loving meat (see 🧵).

bsky.app/profile/bend...

Two variables we measured offer additional insight:

🐷🦝💗 Caring about animals ("animal solidarity") predicts moral emotions and (to a lesser extent) willingness to change.

🥩🥓❤️ Loving meat ("hedonic motivation") negatively predicts willingness to change and (to a lesser extent) moral emotions.

When we controlled for moral emotions, the animal appeals (vs. control) seemed to *increase* pork-eating justification and *decrease* willingness to change pork consumption, resulting in overall minor changes in these outcome variables.

It's as if moral emotions are, to some extent, ignored.

🤐 These emotions discouraged pork consumption, probably because these emotions, and in particular feelings like empathy/pity and anger/disgust, reduce the need to justify eating pork.

But there’s a twist...

😠 The image showing animal cruelty (the pig being stunned) stirred the strongest emotional reactions, with more empathy and guilt, but also more anger and disgust being expressed when thinking about people involved in making pork chops (perpetrator-oriented emotions).

Seeing either animal image made people feel:

💔 More emotions like empathy and pity for pigs (victim-oriented emotions)
😳 More self-oriented emotions like guilt and shame
👏 Less praising emotions for people involved in making pork chops

We showed 421 meat consumers from the UK one of three images:
🥩 A pork chop (control condition)
🥩🐷🥰 A pork chop + someone petting a pig (caring appeal)
🥩🐷🔪 A pork chop + someone stunning a pig before slaughter (cruelty appeal)

What happened? (2/n)

Most people enjoy meat—but rarely think about the animals behind it.

So what happens when they do make that connection?

🐖 If you're curious, check out our new study:
"‘Meating’ the animal and moral emotions"
🔎 doi.org/10.1016/j.ap...

🧵👇 (1/10)
#MoralPsychology #MeatParadox #AnimalCruelty

Trump team cites wolf ‘de-extinction’ as it seeks to cut endangered species list The interior secretary hailed a biotech company’s claim to have brought back the dire wolf, while the administration and GOP push to roll back species protections.

Technology could play an important role in environmental protection, but this is not the way. The same with investing resources in terraforming Mars, while making Earth less liveable.
www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Did you know that 40% of Europe is covered by forests? 🌳 🌲 Yet, these vital ecosystems don’t get the attention they deserve. On this International Day of Forests, let’s take a moment to appreciate the lungs of nature & all the invaluable benefits they provide.

#InternationalDayOfForests #ForestsDay