Nicholas D Carter

Revealed: How the Meat Industry Uses Environmental Groups to Make Beef Seem Climate-Friendly Expert says non-profit partners provide a ‘fairy dust’ of legitimacy to beef industry.

Environmental groups are "providing cover for the (livestock) industry and perpetuating the system, and giving it a nice little fairy dusting of respectability,” @profsecchi.bsky.social

Key read here:

www.desmog.com/2025/08/06/r... @rachelsherrington.bsky.social @desmog.com

Revealed: How the Meat Industry Uses Environmental Groups to Make Beef Seem Climate-Friendly Expert says non-profit partners provide a ‘fairy dust’ of legitimacy to beef industry.

The beef lobby playbook: confuse people about the science when it comes to cattle & climate, so you can have your beef & eat it too. Eco groups providing cover for the industry are “giving it a nice little fairy dusting of respectability” says @profsecchi.bsky.social

www.desmog.com/2025/08/06/r...

Manatees have widely varying personalities.

Some rightfully dart off at the sight of a diver.

Others stop to greet a human crossing paths, even after suffering horrible injuries by our hand.

#MarineLife

I know an old post but it showed up in a thread.

This was our attempt, but it admittedly got overly complicated. Brandolini's law.

See our few paragraphs addressing the errors of the UC Davis/Sacred Cow ones being peddled around in this:
changingmarkets.org/wp-content/u...

Global Methane Budget 2000–2020 Abstract. Understanding and quantifying the global methane (CH4) budget is important for assessing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. CH4 is the second most important human-influenced gree...

'Cows just replaced the methane from wild bison'

Not even close.

At their peak, wild ruminants incl. bison emitted ~15 Tg CH₄/yr

Today’s 4+ billion farmed ruminants emit over 100 Tg CH₄/yr

That’s nearly 7x more methane.

essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

Paul Behrens, professor of environmental change at Oxford University: «It’s like saying if I’m dumping 100 barrels of pollution into this river, it’s killing life. And then I dump only 90 barrels, then I should be rewarded for it.»
Boycott animal agriculture!

Expert Matthew Hayek: “adopting [the proposed metric] GWP* can incorrectly make it appear that a country is cooling the atmosphere”
Prof Paul Behrens: "It’s like saying if I’m dumping 100 barrels of pollution into this river, killing life, but then dump only 90 barrels, I should be rewarded for it."

The Methane Wars - Climate Tracker How the livestock industry pushes a metric to hide its climate impact in South America

Frank Mitloehner has been pushing the manipulative GWP* metric in South American countries and there's a push to legitimize it in Brazil at COP30

Uruguay even used tax-payer funds to hear his nonsense

New investigation, by Maximiliano Manzoni, quote from me: climatetrackerlatam.org/reportajes-c...

How Ireland’s ‘Mediocre’ Milk Powder Made it Big in West Africa In a packed function room in Lagos, Nigeria, the jaunty sounds of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Sir Duke’ start to play. Then, as a giant sparkler and confetti cannon erupt, a curtain slowly parts to reveal a spin...

Irish dairy companies export polluting, ultra-processed, fat-filled milk powder to Senegal, Nigeria, and Ghana. They advertise products that cannot be described as 'milk' in Europe as something healthy and sustainable. New investigation from @desmog.com.web.brid.gy‬: www.desmog.com/2025/07/14/i...

Eating this ultraprocessed food may be good for you and the planet, experts say | CNN Plant-based meats have been viewed at times as ultraprocessed and possibly unhealthy. But some experts believe they deserve a second look.

This has always been clear: plant-based meat alternatives are better for the planet and, at least compared to red meat, better for your health. That this is not widely accepted is the product of meat industry disinfo, science illiteracy, and some very stupid journalists.
www.cnn.com/2025/07/21/h...

The Danish national action plan for plant based foods is more impressive than the ag tax that I doubt will stick anyway. I suppose the latter could have helped further fund just transitions and rewilding. Still seems that more of a broader cultural shift is needed.

I unfortunately get serious replies very similar to what you said, increasingly on here too

So you think it's pointless to try to reduce any damaging practice in one place, and take a positive/solutions leadership role, because the damaging practice will just be increased elsewhere?

Yes, it's clear you didn't even read the screenshots of it I highlighted easily for you.

Here you go again, below.

Do you think volatile contract low-paying chicken or pig farming, or in a slaughterhouse, are dignified jobs worth fighting for when there's better options that also help the planet?

Yes, agree.

There's tradeoffs, where the solution isn't small scale animal farms or factory farms, but instead the many ways to shift more plant based.

Excellent report highlighting the animal welfare/environment dilemma:
www.wri.org/research/bet...

I agree with the writer and wonder why you think 'factory farming being inhumane' is a myth.

Yes, doesn't need to happen. Agreed.

I'm making a comparison to another damaging industry with labour tied to it.

Did you rethink your jobs talking point after seeing the report I just shared modeling the opposite of what you just peddled?

Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits - Nature A global model finds that the environmental impacts of the food system could increase by 60–90% by 2050, and that dietary changes, improvements in technologies and management, and reductions in food l...

That doesn't include the carbon opportunity cost of land, nor biodiversity or wildlife habitat implications.

Also:
“GHG emissions cannot be sufficiently mitigated without dietary changes towards more plant-based diets”
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Wow many were dead wrong on their projections for how quickly the cost of solar would decline.

The actual progress is off the charts.

Overall consumption is still skyrocketing though, and a minimalist culture is equally needed.

But there's lessons here.

Timestamp: youtu.be/Ztx0Bch3h9s?...

Let's hear your sane debunk

Many people are also employed in fossil fuels. Just transition is key, and as I said, rich countries are the focus.

You should be aware of the opportunities in shifting plant based too, if able to shake the ideology you seem to have: publications.iadb.org/publications...

Source?

There's some signs of peak meat in a few rich countries: www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/11...

There also continues to be fossil fuel extraction. This doesn't mean it's not critical to reverse the trend.

No, we're thinking of animal agriculture's mass scale of land use, biodiversity loss, and extreme use of resources to provide very little back in food. Where alternatively, we could feed billions more on less land if we shift to plants. As with energy, the focus should first be on rich societies.

The meat industry is following a classic playbook, fuelling cultural divides and spinning deception to delay the shift away from arguably the most environmentally damaging human practice.

Quotes from me in the Toronto Star: www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
Open-access: archive.ph/jTrUc

My key points:

1) It's pointless to talk about "sustainable" meat&dairy without talking about much, much less meat&dairy
2) Livestock integrated into regenerative farming & crop rotations (or off nature reserves) yields very little meat. It's not a sustainable food strategy if we all starve!

Misinformation research continues to be urgent science By one account, roughly 70% of Americans regard misinformation as a major threat, outpacing fears about climate change and infectious disease (1). This is true although the current and longer-term imp...

"70% of Americans regard misinformation as a major threat, outpacing fears about climate change and infectious disease."

"The overwhelming majority of research on misinformation...has no partisan agenda and no relationship whatsoever to censorship."
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Uncovering patterns of cattle intensification across South America's dry diagonal - IOPscience Uncovering patterns of cattle intensification across South America’s dry diagonal, Kuemmerle, Tobias, Fernández, Pedro D, Baumann, Matthias, Burton, Jamie

Cattle herds grew over 6x in the Brazilian Amazon over the past few decades (14M-85M; 1980-2019)

And over 3x in the Cerrado (17M-59M; 1970-2017)

There's a big push to intensify now.

A new study uses machine-learning to map cattle confinement areas from space:
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

During covid, trust seemed to erode fastest when leaders pushed health measures then were spotted breaking their own rules. Apathy & conspiracy filled the gap

It's not about perfection but we need authenticity

New study on need for both individual & system change www.cambridge.org/core/service...