While many NGOs, charities and activist groups are using COP26 – UN Climate Change Conference 2021 to take place in Glasgow – as an opportunity to pressure governments to reduce carbon emissions, the livestock farming industry seems more interested in maintaining the very profitable status quo.
This has led a number of organizations dedicated to protecting the financial interests of farmers to embark on a public relations campaign to downplay the role of livestock farming in contributing to climate change. The UK’s National Farmers Union (NFU) created a series of infographics to be used as weapons in this pivotal battle for public opinion, demanding that they be shared with capture tokens. prefix with # #BackBritishFarming and #COP26.
While infographics can be useful tools for conveying information in a digestible and engaging way, they are also the perfect tool to turn a story around. As Alberto Cairo argues in his book “How graphs lie: Smarter about visual information“, The charts and statistics have an air of objectivity and reliability, but it as well as easily misleading with numbers as well as withi wrote the wordNS. Since infographics often contain only a small amount of information, it is easy for a lot of important contextual information to be “missed” and misleading the message.
Get the statistics cited in this infographics for example:
The argument presented is essentially like a “less evil” fallacy – the fact that UK beef production causes less emissions, such as, WE beef, will only matter if you are faced with a binary choice between the two. But in reality, when you can choose to produce a variety of plant-based foods instead, the carbon footprint of British beef becomes unjustifiable.
Furthermore, these global averages are heavily skewed by data from developing countries such as Brazil, where calculated emissions from beef production are much higher because they account for deforestation. Widespread occurs to create grazing land, livestock and soybean plantations (which are mainly devoted to growing soybeans for fodder). Given this fact, UK beef producers are particularly annoyed by their (relatively) low emissions, since againjoint investigation center by ITV News, Greenpeace and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have found that soybeans grown on recently cleared land in Brazil have been exported to the UK for use as fodder! In fact, the UK imports 2.6 million tonnes of soybeans a year for use in animal feed, 30% of which comes from Brazil. While most of these soybeans are of course certified as “sustainable”, it is arguably a meaningless distinction, given the greater the demand for “sustainable” Brazilian soybeans for export, the more deforestation to create soybean plantations for the interior of Brazil. animal feed market. There are no “good” options.
The UK’s imports of Brazilian soybeans for use in animal feed roughly mirror how developed nations have done in recent decades, essentially. export their carbon emissionsNS by outsourcing heavy industry and manufacturing to developing countries like China. But of course, the products of those emissions end up in our homes. It’s a cynical game that crosses the carbon limit without doing anything to actually reduce emissions on a global scale.
Perhaps the most important thing to say about the infographic above is that it is not claiming that UK farmers will achieve net zero emissions by 2040, but just that they are committed to trying. But the goal itself is not ambitious enough! Ruminants will always emit large amounts of methane. If UK agriculture could make a plan to reach net zero by 2040 (while calculating methane emissions from Ten thousand of ruminants), so why not aim to make this industry a net source of carbon sink by eliminating emissions from cows and sheep instead? The planet is facing a climate catastrophe, and developing nations will certainly take longer to transition away from fossil fuel dependence and livestock farming. It’s simply not enough for us to do bare bare minimums; to stop contributing to the problem (i.e. net zero). We must be part of the solution.
This means putting food system revolution at the forefront of our efforts to combat the climate crisis, and that’s exactly what the Save the Climate Movement is pushing with Plant-based pact initiative. The Plant-Based Pact outlines a series of much-needed practical steps that governments can take to prevent the destruction of natural ecosystems for livestock and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It includes commitments such as ending deforestation for grazing or fodder production, and shifting to plant-based meal options in schools, hospitals and institutions. other government.
We need solutions commensurate with the size of the problem! That’s why we at the Animal Justice Project are calling on all of our supporters to support the Plant Based Pact and why we are shining a spotlight on green sweeping at critical hour. this weight.
Thanks for your continued support!
As always,
For animals.
