Acidifying oceans are leading to sensory loss in fish. Scientists fear people might be next.

By Clayton Aldern

Imagine you are a clown fish. A juvenile clown fish, specifically, in the year 2100. You live near a coral reef. You are orange and white, which doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you have these little ear stones called otoliths in your inner ear, and when sound waves pass through the water and then through your body, these otoliths move and displace tiny hair cells, which trigger electrochemical signals in your auditory nerve. Nemo, you are hearing.

But you are not hearing well. In this version of century’s end, humankind has managed to pump the climate brakes a smidge, but it has not reversed the trends that were apparent a hundred years earlier. In this 2100, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen from 400 parts per million at the turn of the millennium to 600 parts per million — a middle‑of‑the-road forecast. For you and your otoliths, this increase in carbon dioxide is significant, because your ear stones are made of calcium carbonate, a carbon-based salt, and ocean acidification makes them grow larger. Your ear stones are big and clunky, and the clicks and chirps of resident crustaceans and all the larger reef fish have gone all screwy. Normally, you would avoid these noises, because they suggest predatory danger. Instead, you swim toward them, as a person wearing headphones might walk into an intersection, oblivious to the honking truck with the faulty brakes. Nobody will make a movie about your life, Nemo, because nobody will find you.

It’s not a toy example. In 2011, an international team of researchers led by Hong Young Yan at the Academia Sinica, in Taiwan, simulated these kinds of future acidic conditions in seawater tanks. A previous study had found that ocean acidification could compromise young fishes’ abilities to distinguish between odors of friends and foes, leaving them attracted to smells they’d usually avoid. At the highest levels of acidification, the fish failed to respond to olfactory signals at all. Hong and his colleagues suspected the same phenomenon might apply to fish ears. Rearing dozens of clown fish in tanks of varying carbon dioxide concentrations, the researchers tested their hypothesis by placing waterproof speakers in the water, playing recordings from predator-rich reefs, and assessing whether the fish avoided the source of the sounds. In all but the present-day control conditions, the fish failed to swim away. It was like they couldn’t hear the danger.

In Hong’s study, though, it’s not exactly clear if the whole story is a story of otolith inflation. Other experiments had indeed found that high ocean acidity could spur growth in fish ear stones, but Hong and his colleagues hadn’t actually noticed any in theirs. Besides, marine biologists who later mathematically modeled the effects of oversize otoliths concluded that bigger stones would likely increase the sensitivity of fish ears — which, who knows, “could prove to be beneficial or detrimental, depending on how a fish perceives this increased sensitivity.” The ability to attune to distant sounds could be useful for navigation. On the other hand, maybe ear stones would just pick up more background noise from the sea, and the din of this marine cocktail party would drown out useful vibrations. The researchers didn’t know.

The uncertainty with the otoliths led Hong and his colleagues to conclude that perhaps the carbon dioxide was doing something else — something more sinister in its subtlety. Perhaps, instead, the gas was directly interfering with the fishes’ nervous systems: Perhaps the trouble with their hearing wasn’t exclusively a problem of sensory organs, but rather a manifestation of something more fundamental. Perhaps the fish brains couldn’t process the auditory signals they were receiving from their inner ears.

The following year, a colleague of Hong’s, one Philip Munday at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, appeared to confirm this suspicion. His theory had the look of a hijacking.

A neuron is like a house: insulated, occasionally permeable, maybe a little leaky. Just as one might open a window during a stuffy party to let in a bit of cool air, brain cells take advantage of physical differences across their walls in order to keep the neural conversation flowing. In the case of nervous systems, the differentials don’t come with respect to temperature, though; they’re electrical. Within living bodies float various ions — potassium, sodium, chloride, and the like — and because they’ve gained or lost an electron here or there, they’re all electrically charged. The relative balance of these atoms inside and outside a given neuron induces a voltage difference across the cell’s membrane: Compared to the outside, the inside of most neurons is more negatively charged. But a brain cell’s walls have windows too, and when you open them, ions can flow through, spurring electrical changes.

In practice, a neuron’s windows are proteins spanning their membranes. Like a house’s, they come in a cornucopia of shapes and sizes, and while you can’t fit a couch through a

porthole, a window is still a window when it comes to those physical differentials. If it’s hot inside and cold outside, opening one will always cool you down.

Until it doesn’t.

Here is the clown fish neural hijacking proposed by Philip Munday. What he and his colleagues hypothesized was that excess carbon dioxide in seawater leads to an irregular accumulation of bicarbonate molecules inside fish neurons. The problem for neuronal signaling is that this bicarbonate also carries an electrical charge, and too much of it inside the cells ultimately causes a reversal of the normal electrical conditions. At the neural house party, now it’s colder inside than out. When you open the windows — the ion channels — atoms flow in the opposite direction.

Munday’s theory applied to a particular type of ion channel: one responsible for inhibiting neural activity. One of the things all nervous systems do is balance excitation and inhibition. Too much of the former and you get something like a seizure; too much of the latter and you get something like a coma — it’s in the balance we find the richness of experience. But with a reversal of electrical conditions, Munday’s inhibitory channels become excitatory. And then? All bets are off. For a brain, it would be like pressing a bunch of random buttons in a cockpit and hoping the plane stays in the air. In clown fish, if Munday is right, the acidic seawater appears to short-circuit the fishes’ sense of smell and hearing, and they swim toward peril. It is difficult to ignore the question of what the rest of us might be swimming toward.

From THE WEIGHT OF NATURE: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains by Clayton Page Aldern, to be published on April 9, 2024, by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Clayton Page Aldern.

This excerpt was originally published in Grist and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

The post Climate Change is Rewiring Fish Brains and Human Brains May Be Next appeared first on Green Queen.

The US Pharmacopeia has finally released draft guidelines to allow the use of human-made alternatives to horseshoe crab blood – a critical element in biomedical and pharmaceutical testing. After failing in 2020, can the guidance pass this time around?

They have been around for over 450 million years, with their eggs being a major food source for coastal birds and certain fish species. They’re also known for their bright-blue blood – thanks to the presence of a tiny amount of copper – whose functionality has meant one of the world’s oldest species is now vulnerable.

I’m talking, of course, about horseshoe crabs. Over the last 50 or so years, humans have drained these sea creatures alive – quite literally. That blue blood is considered a vital source for endotoxin testing – it contains important immune cells that are highly sensitive to toxic bacteria. These cells clot around the bacteria to protect the rest of the horseshoe crab’s body from toxins.

Scientists have made use of this functionality by developing a process called limulus amoebocyte lysate (LAL), which tests new human vaccines for bacterial contamination. But this process, of course, involves taking horseshoe crabs, stabbing them in their hearts, and pumping out their blood (sometimes for as long as eight minutes, depleting half the volume of their blood).

However, for decades now, there has been a synthetic, man-made alternative to LAL – and yet, despite their importance to biodiversity, our planet’s history, and the overall ecosystem, the pharmaceutical industry has continued to use horseshoe crabs for vaccine testing. That, at long last, may change soon.

Why alternatives to horseshoe crab blood are important

There are four remaining species of horseshoe crabs, three of which are in Asia. The fourth, Limulus polyphemus, reside near the east coast of North America, and it’s these crabs that are under the spotlight, with the US Pharmacopeia – a non-profit regulatory body in charge of setting national safety standards (independent of the FDA) – publishing draft guidelines in August that will enable the use of synthetic alternatives to LAL.

Each year, around 80 million tests are performed using horseshoe crabs around the world, but within the US, just five companies along the East Coast, drained blood from over 700,000 crabs in 2021, according to NPR – that’s more than any other year since records began in 2004. And it is estimated that as many as 30% of these creatures die as a result of this bleeding process.

It’s not just the pharma industry – many around the world use these crabs as bait during fishing, as well as eat them as a delicacy. This has led to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declaring the American horseshoe crab as a vulnerable species. And in 2019 – along with other conservation groups – it called for stronger rules and more scientific research to protect horseshoe crabs.

These creatures are also crucial for biodiversity. Of the coastal boards that feed on its eggs, the most common is the red knot. These migratory birds rely on horseshoe crabs’ eggs to fuel their nearly 10,000-mile-long from South America to the Arctic every year. But around 94% of red knots have disappeared over the past 40 years, with the IUCN classifying the species as ‘near threatened’. A loss in horseshoe crab numbers would be fatal for these birds.

An alternative has existed for decades

The solution to the issue is an alternative that has been around for decades now. The problem, however, is its adoption. In the late 1990s, scientists at the National University of Singapore realised the potential a protein cloned from crab blood – called recombinant Factor C (rFC) – could have for endotoxin detection, sans animals.

Versions of this alternative have been produced by several biotech companies, including France’s bioMérieux and Switzerland’s Lonza. The latter’s rFC had initially been considered by USP to be added to guidelines that govern its international testing, but the effort was abandoned in 2020.

It meant that Big Pharma would continue to use horseshoe crabs for drug testing. USP’s decision came after Charles River Laboratories, a global biomedical giant that provides the pharma industry with over half of its LAL supply, criticised rFC citing safety concerns. Currently, USP’s rules put the synthetic alternative in a separate chapter in its guidelines, meaning that drug companies that want to use rFC need to conduct extra validation experiments.

It’s a heavily criticised move, given the LAL alternative has been commercially available since the 2000s. In 2019, the European Pharmacopoeia approved the use of rFC as an animal-free drug alternative. Around the same time, its Japanese and Chinese counterparts also approved the rFC test for use. In fact, as far back as 2012, the US FDA issued guidance on rFC testing for injectable medicines too.

Now, USP is finally coming on board. Its draft guidance – which is open for comment until the end of January – proposes changing its standards to support the use of synthetic alternatives to harvesting horseshoe crabs for blood. It advocates the use of not just rFC, but another alternative, recombinant cascade reagent (rCR), which contains rFC, recombinant Factor B, and a recombinant proclotting enzyme.

USP also details methods to use these synthetic reagents, as well as steps to verify their use for a specific product. Pharmaceutical companies producing new drugs can use the guidelines without needing to first show comparability LAL, but manufacturers of existing products looking to switch to animal-free testing are required to. However, switching from LAL remains optional.

“We acknowledge the need for information to help drive the adoption of recombinant reagents as alternatives to naturally sourced reagents from horseshoe crabs,” the group said in a statement. “This approach advances USP’s commitment to transition methods from using animal-derived materials to synthetic and recombinant materials.”

More wins for horseshoe crabs

The news around the same time environmental groups announced a settlement in a lawsuit against the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and Charles River, alleging that they permit unlimited amounts of horseshoe crabs to be stored in ponds away from beaches. While the accused parties denied the charge, the settlement requires Charles River to provide for five years of enhanced protections for spawning horseshoe crabs and migrating red knots.

This means the company cannot harvest crabs across 30 island beaches, and is prohibited from keeping female crabs in ponds away from shores. It followed a ruling by the US Fish and Wildlife Service a few weeks earlier, which stated that harvesters can’t take crabs from their refuge anymore – this was the first time a federal agency acted in favour of horseshoe crab harvesting to protect red knots.

New Jersey congressman Frank Pallone welcomed USP’s new standards, which, “if adopted, will provide a viable alternative to the use of horseshoe crab blood in this process”. “Unfortunately, this global reliance on horseshoe crabs has placed an enormous strain on the population of these unique creatures,” he said. “I look forward to this new standard being finalised soon so that we can pave the way for more responsible medical options that do not rely on the vulnerable horseshoe crab population.”

Jaap Venema, the group’s chief science officer, said: “We hope that this will be an encouragement for companies to continue switching to non-animal-derived reagents. We’re only expanding opportunities for companies to start using them.”

The previous guidance in 2020 was thwarted after the public comment period – the hope is that this time will be different, allowing for animal-free testing to save human lives, while safeguarding horseshoe crab and red knot populations. It’s about time.

The post Why Are We Still Killing Horseshoe Crabs? An Alternative Has Existed for Decades appeared first on Green Queen.

Marketing expert Irina Gerry argues that while blended meat, could meet niche consumer needs such as upgraded nutrition or improved flavor, it’s not a ‘big’ idea.

This article is part of our content series exploring the world of hybrid and blended meat products – those blending cultivated or conventional proteins with plant-based ingredients, respectively, and why some think this is the future of reducing meat consumption.

The concept of blended meat — combining plant-based ingredients with animal meat — has recently emerged as a solution to the challenges faced by purely plant-based meats. At first glance, it seems like a compelling proposition, promising enhanced taste compared to plant-based meat, reduced environmental impact versus animal-based meat, and potentially better pricing. Recent entrants into this space include brands like 50/50 Foods, Paul’s Table, and Mush Foods. However, does this idea truly address consumer needs, or is it merely an industry-driven solution?

The Best of Both Worlds: Understanding Flexitarians

The rise of flexitarian diets suggests a willingness to embrace both plant-based and animal products. However, this doesn’t automatically translate into a desire for blended products. Products like almond-dairy milk blend by Live Real Farms or mixed chicken and Raised and Rooted blended meat and plant-based protein burgers by Tyson haven’t performed well in the market. 

The reason for this is the lack of a real consumer need. We don’t see consumers mixing almond and dairy milk in the same glass. They likely have both milks in their fridge, but use them for different occasions or different members of the household, based on a specific set of preferences. Similarly, we rarely see anyone blending a Beyond Burger with ground beef to improve the flavor.

Quality Perception of Blended Meat: A Complicated Relationship

The act of blending can create a perception of lesser quality. Meat enthusiasts often view pure meat as a high-quality product. When you start mixing in soy or pea protein, it’s like watering down a fine wine. Remember when rumors of McDonald’s burger patties getting mixed with soy caused a social media outrage? The company now specifically messages that its patties are 100% beef, with no fillers, as proof of quality.

The same goes for plant-based consumers. When they choose to have a plant-based product, they are doing so consciously, and for a variety of reasons such as health, ethics, or the environment. None of these reasons is strengthened by adding animal protein to the mix. So, the blend likely dilutes the value proposition for both camps.

Choice and Control: The Art of Personalization

Most consumers enjoy a mix of plant-based and animal-based foods, but they do so on their own terms. They might choose a purely plant-based dish one day and mix and match both plant and animal foods another day. Some are vegan at home, whilst indulging in a pepperoni pizza on weekends, or they might stretch ground beef with veggies and bread crumbs for cost savings. The key is personalization and control over the mixing and matching based on specific occasions and recipes. It is unlikely for a single product to satisfy such divergent needs, especially if it’s a standard product like a burger patty.

Narrow Appeal: The Challenge of a Niche Market

Given these factors, blended meat risks becoming a niche product category. For meat eaters, adding plant-based elements may seem like a compromise in quality and taste. For plant-based consumers, the introduction of animal ingredients feels counterintuitive. The appeal might be limited to a small segment of flexitarians, driven by a specific need or usage occasion, likely making it a commercial challenge. 

Blending to meet a specific consumer need, such as lower cost or better nutrition, could be a viable idea, but it’s just not a BIG idea. 

So, What’s the Way Forward?

To give blended meat the best chance of success, we need a consumer-centric approach. Here are two potential positioning strategies:

1. Lead with Flavor: People enjoy exploring new flavors. Incorporating caramelized onions and roasted bell peppers on a burger, or adding a portobello mushroom for an umami boost, can enhance the appeal. This approach focuses on exciting flavors rather than compromising taste or nutritional values. Blending animal-based meat with whole plant ingredients that contribute to an intriguing flavor profile has potential, especially if brands lead with a positive taste experience. However, this might result in occasional purchases due to fractionated usage occasions, leading to low turnover.
2. Better Nutrition without Compromise: Many consumers aspire to eat healthier foods. Blended meat products offering additional nutritional benefits, such as more fiber, reduced saturated fat, and fewer calories, could be appealing. However, ensuring that taste is not compromised is crucial. Since most consumers choose animal-based meat for its taste, any compromise on this front could spell trouble. Thus, a strategy that leads with great taste, while delivering improved nutrition as a secondary benefit, might hold more promise.

Solving The Blended Meat Puzzle

Successfully positioning blended meat products requires navigating the complex landscape of consumer preferences, quality perceptions, cultural influences, and dietary choices. While the idea holds potential, its success hinges on more than just merging two types of proteins, as a logical response to current struggles of plant-based meat. It demands a deep understanding of consumer desires and their choices in integrating plant-based and animal-based foods into their diets. Only by tapping into these nuances can blended meat transcend being a fleeting trend and secure a meaningful place in our diverse and dynamic food landscape.

The post Opinion: Why Blended Meat is Not a BIG Idea appeared first on Green Queen.

Shortly after launching into the UK, the vegan honey from MeliBio and Narayan Foods is widening its European footprint with the debut of its bee-free product in Aldi/Hofer stores in Switzerland and Austria.

MeliBio’s European launch is well underway. After releasing its bee-free honey product, dubbed vegan H*ney, under Slovenia-based Narayan Foods’ Better Foodie brand in the UK, it is stepping into Europe after striking a deal with Germany-headquartered discount retailer Aldi.

Marketed as Vegan Hanny or Ohney, the new product will be sold under Aldi’s private label Just Veg in Hofer stores in Austria and Switzerland, as part of a wider plan to expand into other European countries.

What MeliBio’s vegan honey is composed of

The launch is born out of MeliBio’s collaboration with Narayan Foods, which was announced in late 2022. The $10M, four-year partnership aims to propel the plant-based honey into 75,000 retailers across Europe.

This isn’t the brand’s first foray into retail, however. In its home market in the US, MeliBio unveiled a vegan honey for foodservice under the Mellody brand. It even teamed up with Michelin-starred restaurant Eleven Madison Park’s e-tail channel Eleven Madison Home – while that partnership has ended, Mellody has evolved into a D2C entity as well, with pre-orders open for its Golden Clover honey.

This product comprises 80% fructose and glucose and 18% water, with a blend of plant extracts like red clover, jasmine, passionflower, chamomile, and seaberry, as well as gluconic acid and natural flavours, making up the rest. But in an interview with AFN, MeliBio co-founder and CEO Darko Mandich confirmed that the formulation is slightly different in the European products.

He added that these first innovations were inspired by light clover and acacia honey. MeliBio has scaled up to the level of a medium-sized honey company, with a capacity of making over 10,000 lbs or more of its vegan honey daily via co-packers. This means it can produce over 15,000 bottles of its European honey every day.

This is key given the troubling decline in bee populations recently. In Europe, 24% of bumblebee species are facing a threat of extinction, while in the UK, 17 species of bees have become extinct, with a further 25 endangered. In fact, beekeepers have reported colony losses in countries like France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Brazil and the US.

There are a host of reasons for this, the primary cause being human activities, including land use change for agriculture or urbanisation, and intensive farming. Plus, honey bees’ very ability to produce the golden liquid has also declined, thanks to widespread herbicide use, conversion of flower-rich land into monocultures, a drop in soil productivity, and climate change. All this makes solutions like MeliBio’s vegan honey increasingly important.

MeliBio’s route to price parity

MeliBio began as a precision fermentation company looking to make bioidentical honey in 2020. But it pivoted to its plant-based product earlier this year, as a way to accelerate its route to market. “We realised that our investors’ samples are becoming more sophisticated, to the point where chefs begged us to launch our plant-based honey,” Mandich told Green Queen in August.

“We heard our customers loud and clear, and that’s how our pivot happened. It shortens our initial five to seven years timeline for product launch down to three years, which is great success.”

However, Mandich confirmed that the company is still working on the novel fermentation tech, with R&D “ongoing and progressing well”: “It will empower us to go beyond the type of product we have right now, and set us [up] for success in launching many new products under the vision of creating the world where humans and bees thrive.”

MeliBio, which has raised $9.4M in total funding, is now looking to close its Series A later this year, which it will set aside for “growth and expansion” only. It will also help the company make its honey price competitive. In the US, a 340g bottle of Mellody costs $19.99, while the Better Foodie one in the UK sells for £5.99 per 300g jar.

This is why partnering with Aldi was key, with the Vegan Hanny priced at €4.99 per 300g jar. “Our approach is really to get the product as close to the real thing as possible at an affordable price point,” Mandich told AFN. “Aldi is a massive global [corporation] that’s very price-sensitive, so by landing this deal we are confirming that MeliBio technology can play at that level of price sensitivity which Aldi requires.”

He added in a statement: “We’ve been overwhelmed by the demand from customers all over the world for our sustainable, bee-friendly products, and we’re glad that working with Aldi will enable European consumers to enjoy what is truly the best honey available on the market.”

Honey is a $9.1B market, and brands like MeliBio are trying to disrupt it with sustainable and ethical alternatives. Others in this space include Gaffney Foods’ Nectar, Blenditup, ChocZero, Plant Based Artisan’s Honea, and Sweet Freedom.

The post MeliBio’s Vegan Honey Expands European Presence with Aldi Deal appeared first on Green Queen.

Forget “rizz.” These 10 words defined the hottest year ever.

By Kate Yoder, Grist

To say that 2023 is one for the record books is a vast understatement — the year was so out of the norm that you’re forced to go back at least 125,000 years for a point of reference. The last time anyone experienced a year as warm as this one, mastodons and giant sloths roamed across North America during the beginning of the late Pleistocene. Suffice it to say, there weren’t many people around to experience it. 

In 2023, it felt like Earth might run out of records to break. For a stretch in early July, the planet snapped its all-time daily heat record four times, one day after another. It added up to the hottest week ever recorded in what became the hottest summer ever recorded. Then, September broke its previous monthly heat record by half a degree Celsius — a margin so stunning that Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist, declared it “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.”

Hausfather’s attention-grabbing phrase showed up in the headlines of The Guardian, Wired, and Bloomberg, adding pizzazz to what might have otherwise felt like yet another story about another broken record. As the world overheats, everyone from scientists to TikTok influencers is reaching for a fresh vocabulary to put words to what’s happening, coining new terms and assigning old ones new meanings. It’s a sign that language is catching up to the history-making environmental changes happening around us.

For North America, it was a year of fire and smoke. Canada burned from coast to coast, with 6,500 fires scorching so much land that the 45.7 million acres burned surpassed the previous record by more than 2.5 times. The fires sent a thick haze into cities in the eastern half of the United States that were unprepared for smoke, from Chicago to New York, making June 7 the all-time worst day of pollution from wildfire smoke for the average American. The country’s deadliest fire in a century ripped through Lahaina on the island of Maui in August, killing 100 people. 

Elsewhere in the world, heavy rains forced nearly 700,000 people to flee their homes in Somalia after years of drought; Hurricane Otis, a storm that rapidly escalated into a Category 5, slammed into Mexico, destroying the homes of roughly 580,000 people; and an avalanche triggered an outburst from a melting glacial lake in the Himalayas in northeast India, sending a deadly wall of water barreling down the mountain valleys into towns below.

Every December, dictionary editors sift through the lexicon and pick a word that best reflects the spirit of the waning year. Their selections this time around suggested a modern-day preoccupation with what’s genuine. Merriam-Webster chose “authentic,” the Scotland-based Collins Dictionary went with “AI,” and the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary picked “rizz,” slang for charm or romantic appeal. Some of the top contenders hinted at a changing environment, such as “heat dome” and “dystopian.”

When putting together our annual list of the most notable words in the climate conversation this year, we had plenty of great options. “Global boiling” stood out in such an overheated year, and “El Niño” seemed like an obvious pick, too. We whittled the candidates down to the following 10 that we thought best captured what it felt like to live through a particularly smoky, sweltering year. Though these words and phrases aren’t all newborns, they’re all very 2023.

AQI

The Air Quality Index, a color-coded measure of how dangerous the air is to breathe.

The AQI used to be something only air quality nerds cared about, until folks coughing through smoke-filled summers in the West over the past decade began checking the index every morning before heading out for the day. In 2023, wildfires in Canada sent dangerous air to places in the United States that had never seen anything like it in living memory, and the AQI entered the rest of the country’s vocabulary. Google searches for AQI spiked along the East Coast and in the Midwest as people scrambled to understand the new threat. Inhaling the fine particles in wildfire smoke has been linked to long-term effects like heart attacks, lung cancer, and dementia. Public officials in New York City were slow to warn the public and distribute N95 masks, even though the AQI reached 484 in parts of Brooklyn, off the charts of the rating system. Anything over 300, colored maroon on the AQI chart, is considered “hazardous,” even for healthy adults.

Carbon insetting

Business-speak for companies reducing emissions in their own supply chains; an alternative to carbon offsetting.

For years, companies have been making pledges to go “carbon-neutral,” aiming to offset their emissions with tree-planting projects, usually halfway around the world. But offsetting schemes often fail to deliver on what they promise. An investigation by The Guardian in January found that most carbon offsets from rainforest projects are “phantom credits,” with 94 percent of those approved by the world’s biggest certifier, Verra, offering “no benefit to the climate.” Enter carbon insetting, in which companies attempt to remove emissions from within their own supply chains — the string of activities involved in producing and distributing their products. The practice originated in the early 2000s with companies that rely heavily on agriculture, and it’s now being adopted by Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Apple. Still, experts say that without strong standards, insets will have the same problems as offsets. Offsetting, insetting, and whatever-setting are no substitute for just emitting less carbon in the first place.

Climate quitters

People who resign from their jobs over concerns about climate change.

In January, Bloomberg identified a new trend in the workplace: leaving your old job to work on climate change full-time.

So-called “climate quitters” included a former public affairs employee for ExxonMobil who now works for a cleantech communications firm and a restaurant reviewer who started a company to plant tiny native forests in cities. It could be a sign of growing discontent at the lack of large-scale climate action. A survey of 4,000 employees in the United States and United Kingdom this year found that more than 60 percent of employees wanted to see their company take a stronger stance on the environment, and half said they would consider resigning if their companies’ values didn’t align with their own. But does it have any effect besides feeling better about yourself? Publicly quitting can create a PR nightmare for companies, Alexis Normand, the CEO and cofounder of the carbon accounting platform Greenly, told the BBC: “It’s an extremely powerful form of lobbying.” Of course, staying at your current not-very-environmentally-friendly job and advocating for sustainability can make a big difference, too.

Deinfluencers

Social media influencers who (supposedly) want to convince you not to buy things.

TikTok and Instagram aren’t just for entertainment — they’ve become an advertising ecosystem encouraging reckless consumption. Last year, influencers sold more than $3.6 billion worth of products on the online shopping platform LTK alone, and a study from Meta found that 54 percent of Instagram users surveyed made a purchase after seeing a product on the platform. Manufacturing, shipping, and, eventually, disposing of all that stuff when the next trend takes over has created a huge environmental problem, with discarded clothing piling up in Chile’s Atacama Desert and filling the ocean with microfibers. So-called deinfluencers are pushing back against this out-of-control consumerism, targeting fast fashion and pointless crap that has gone viral. “Do not get the Ugg Minis. Do not get the Dyson Airwrap. Do not get the Charlotte Tilbury wand. Do not get the Stanley cup. Do not get Colleen Hoover books. Do not get the AirPods Max,” TikToker @sadgrlswag said in a video in January. By December, videos with the hashtag #deinfluencing had racked up more than 1 billion views. The trend is already at risk of morphing from discouraging overconsumption to simply recommending one product over another — using the mantle of green credentials to sell more stuff and look environmentally-friendly while doing it.

El Niño

A global weather pattern characterized by warmer-than-average temperatures.

One reason 2023 was so hot (apart from climate change)? The arrival of a strong El Niño, which the planet hadn’t seen since 2016, the previous record-holder for hottest year. It replaced La Niña, a cooler pattern that had tempered the heat of the last three years. El Niño brought 101-degree, hot-tub temperatures to the ocean off Florida, steaming coral reefs and fish, anemones, and jellyfish in the Everglades. The weather pattern also tends to fuel the spread of diseases carried by mosquitoes, like malaria and dengue, and other pests that thrive in warmer weather. Thanks to El Niño and climate change, it’s easy to make one reliable prediction for 2024: Global temperatures are likely to be even hotter. The World Meteorological Organization predicted in May that the next five years are sure to be the hottest ones yet.

Global boiling

It’s like global warming, but way more worrying.

António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, is the Shakespeare of scary climate phrases.

In past years, his fiery speeches have brought us “code red for humanity” and dire metaphors such as “We are digging our own graves.” In a year as hot as 2023, Guterres managed to up the ante again. Not only did he warn that humanity had “opened the gates of hell,” but he also declared that Earth had entered the “era of global boiling” in July, the hottest month in at least 125,000 years. The phrase “global warming” has been criticized for sounding too nice — after all, everyone loves summer! The same can’t be said for global boiling, which sounds like it’s going to turn us all into soup.

Greenhushing

When companies go quiet on their environmental commitments.

A few short years ago, even oil companies were assuring everyone that they’d slash their emissions. But things started changing this year. Amazon, which famously named its Seattle sports and concert venue “Climate Pledge Arena,” quietly abandoned one of its key goals around shipping emissions, and oil majors scaled back their climate commitments. The trend of greenhushing has emerged as governments from California to the European Union are crafting regulations to counter false advertising around sustainability (often called “greenwashing”). Given that corporations such as Delta are getting taken to court over deceptive environmental marketing, many executives figure that silence is the safer option. Nearly a quarter of companies around the world are choosing not to publicize their milestones on climate action, according to a report from South Pole, a Switzerland-based climate consultancy that popularized the term greenhushing. While the practice makes it harder to scrutinize what companies are doing, some say greenhushing could be a good thing — after all, it’s stopping misleading advertisements. 

Noctalgia

The feeling of missing a dark night sky.

Ever since humans started looking up, they’d see the starry arc of the Milky Way on a clear night. Nowadays, thanks to light pollution from cities, satellites, and even oil and gas production, our galaxy is becoming a rare sight. Artificial light messes with our sleep and confuses wildlife, and the absence of true darkness is also a loss for culture and science. In August, the astronomers Aparna Venkatesan from the University of San Francisco and John C. Barentine from Dark Sky Consulting came up with a new term to express the loss of dark night skies: noctalgia, or “sky grief.” It’s a play on “nostalgia” that uses the Latin prefix noct-, meaning night. “This represents far more than mere loss of environment: We are witnessing loss of heritage, place-based language, identity, storytelling, millennia-old sky traditions, and our ability to conduct traditional practices,” the duo wrote in a comment to the journal Science.

RICO

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law made for the Mafia and organized crime — now being applied to oil companies.

Eight years ago, investigations found that “Exxon Knew” about the dangers of burning fossil fuels in the 1970s, but worked to undermine the public’s understanding of climate science, sowing “uncertainty” about its effects. Since then, lawsuits against oil, gas, and coal companies have proliferated, most of them arguing that companies violated laws that protect people from deceptive advertising. But a new kind of climate lawsuit has emerged that uses a relic from the past: a federal RICO law passed in 1970 to take down organized crime. In November 2022, 16 towns in Puerto Rico accused Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and other fossil fuel companies of violating the federal RICO law by colluding to conceal how their products contribute to climate change. Six months later, Hoboken, New Jersey, amended its complaint against Exxon and other companies to allege that they violated the state’s RICO law. Racketeering lawsuits have been successful against tobacco companies and pharmaceutical executives tied to the opioid epidemic. Former President Donald Trump and his allies were also hit with a RICO case in Georgia this year, accused of conspiring to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

White hydrogen

Naturally occurring hydrogen found underground.

Hydrogen is a carbon-free fuel that could replace fossil fuels in a range of hard-to-decarbonize industries, from aviation to steelmaking. The problem is that the most abundant element in the universe isn’t normally found on its own, and turning it into a fuel to fly airplanes, for instance, takes lots of energy. There’s a whole rainbow of hydrogens out there, distinguished by how they’re made — expensive “green hydrogen” from renewables, “gray hydrogen” from methane gas, and “brown hydrogen” from coal. Then there’s white hydrogen, which isn’t made from anything at all. Scientists used to think that there weren’t big reserves of hydrogen buried underground, just waiting to be collected, but in recent years, they’ve been discovering more and more. Recently, some scientists looking for oil and gas reserves in France stumbled upon what could be one of the largest reservoirs of white hydrogen to date, containing somewhere within the stunningly wide range of 6 and 250 million metric tons. Untapped reserves in the United States, Australia, Mali, Oman, and parts of Europe could provide clean energy on a large scale — if all goes according to plan. Startups like Gold Hydrogen, based in Australia, and Koloma, based in Denver, are in the early stages of drilling for hydrogen and could be headed to production soon.

This article by Grist is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

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Mangrove forests in Mexico have undergone mass deforestation over the years, alongside hurricane damage that has adversely affected local populations, but a new insurance policy aims to protect the fishermen restoring swamps in the Yucatán Peninsula.

In the last 20 years, 35% of the world’s mangrove forests have disappeared – that number rises to 70% in certain areas. This is due to a host of human causes and natural climate events, from deforestation and urbanisation to rising sea levels and cyclones.

But even though the rate of mangrove forest loss has slowed in recent years, climate change and natural disasters are unpredictable, and can hit swamps and local communities hard. In fact, it’s estimated that a further 10-15% of mangroves could be lost by the end of the century, and this already results in damages worth $6-42B annually.

To safeguard conservation efforts and protect the livelihoods of local populations in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, French insurance company AXA and environmental consultant ClimateSeed have introduced a climate insurance policy focusing on the San Crisanto mangrove forests.

Why mangroves are a climate boon

Mangrove forests are unique wetland ecosystems and play a huge role in tackling climate change, reducing the impact of coastal flooding and supporting areas rich in biodiversity. They are powerful carbon sinks that have been capturing CO2 for over 5,000 years – in fact, they can store up to four times as much carbon as other tropical forests.

These swamps are found in over 120 countries and cover 150,000 sq km in area, with over 100 million people living within 10km of large mangrove forests. They provide ecosystem services worth $33,000-57,000 a year, and one mangrove first in Mexico (which houses 6% of the world’s total) is actually the last remnant of a 110,000-year-old lost world.

But, as mentioned above, mangroves are disappearing, through a combination of human acts like fish farming, coastal urbanisation and pollution, and natural disasters such as tropical cyclones, storms, erosion, and rising sea levels. The loss of these forests as a result of deforestation is taking away their ecosystem-supporting abilities. Mangroves also have a tricky relationship with the fossil fuel industry – they have been subject to oil spills, and in Mexico, the state-owned oil company Pemex defied a government order by felling protected mangroves for the construction of an $8B, president-ordered oil refinery.

Meanwhile, in the Yucatán Peninsula (home to two-thirds of Mexico’s mangrove reserves), there’s a fisherman community of over 150 Mayan families, called San Crisanto. Their economic activity is built around 800 hectares of mangrove swamps through restoration and conservation activities, which have been financed through the sale of carbon credits, as well as the development of ecotourism.

San Crisanto’s restoration project has captured about 48,000 tonnes of CO2 (in collaboration with local communities). Moreover, it has continued encouraging the implementation of a community-based sustainable development programme, alongside new sources of income. This demonstrates an ability for such initiatives to evolve into viable offset projects that can support local communities and natural habitats.

However, this community has been highly exposed to climate stress – and not just recently. Case in point: in 2002, Hurricane Isidore destroyed 99% of the area’s mangroves, which gave way to heavy flooding and halted any local economic activity.

AXA and ClimateSeed’s insurance policy for San Crisanto

To strengthen San Crisanto’s climate resilience AXA Climate, AXA Seguros Mexico (the environmental and Mexcian arms of the insurer, respectively) and ClimateSeed have come up with a parametric insurance product specific to the restoration project’s requirements. Parametric insurances are index-based policies that guarantee a payout based on a specific, pre-determined event (like weather events) occurring, instead of calculating the exact losses suffered.

AXA and ClimateSeed’s policy protects San Crisanto against hurricanes – as soon as one hits the protected area, a compensation of up to $100,000 is automatically triggered to the policyholder – i.e., the local community – for adaptation efforts to respond to the damages. The exact amount varies according to the wind strength and how close the hurricane is to the core of the protected area.

The companies argue that this will help regenerate a thriving ecosystem, while ensuring the sustainability of the associated carbon offsets. “With this initial parametric insurance guarantee hinging on the restoration of mangrove forests, we’re taking an innovative step to serve local communities whose survival is intrinsically linked to these forests,” said AXA climate CEO Antoine Denoix.

Sébastien Nunes, CEO of ClimateSeed, which has been a partner of the San Crisanto Foundation since 2020, added that this private-sector collaboration will “enable the foundation to further overcome the financial obstacles and continue with its commitment to the conservation and restoration of mangrove forests”.

The need for climate adaptation finance

While much more investment is needed for climate change adaptation, it’s a positive sign from an insurance sector that has faced “mounting losses” due to extreme weather events. A 2019 survey of global insurance companies revealed that 72% believed climate change would affect their business, but 80% had not taken significant mitigation steps. More starkly, one estimate from last year said only 8% of insurers are preparing adequately to manage the impacts of the climate crisis.

This is why AXA and ClimateSeed’s product is a critical piece of adaptation finance, which was announced during COP28. Here, such funding was in full focus as part of the Global Goal on Adaptation, which states that countries must have a detailed plan to adapt to climate change by 2025, and must show progress in implementing that strategy by 2030. It has also been criticised by nations for not going far enough.

At a panel on women and climate resilience, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton called for a reform of the insurance industry, with companies Increasingly withdrawing financial aid to protect against climate events. “We need to rethink the insurance industry,” she said. “Insurance companies are pulling out of so many places. They’re not insuring homes. They’re not insuring businesses.”

To that point, Insurance Europe reconfirmed its commitment to tackle climate change and overcome “climate protection gaps”. Meanwhile, Mexico’s ministry of finance and public credit, the Insurance Development Forum, UNDP and the German government joined forces last year to develop an insurance programme for climate-vulnerable farmers, in a strong example of public and private sector partnerships for adaptation finance.

AXA Seguros Mexico CEO Daniel Bandle noted how parametric coverage has been vital for resource provision and natural disaster adaptation in Mexico. Explaining how such insurance projects can act quickly, he said: “During Hurricanes Otis and Lidia, the small businesses covered under Ayuda Express Huracán received MXN 10,000 ($586) within 72 hours, and more than 1,430 farmers received MXN 2,200 ($129) per hectare damaged during Hurricane Agatha in 2022.”

José Inés Loría Palma, president of the San Crisanto Foundation, added: “Our commitment as a community to nature commits us to putting our greatest effort and always looking for better alternatives for its conservation. Our mangroves are the essence of the community, without them San Crisanto disappears. Insuring the mangroves strengthens its permanence and gives more certainty to San Crisanto.”

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At COP28, the UK announced its intention to ban imports of everyday essentials linked to illegal deforestation, which will affect large companies with high turnovers. But environmental experts and campaigners have raised questions about the scope of the legislation, and whether it goes far enough.

A year after the EU announced its deforestation ban, its former member state has followed suit. The UK’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has set out its intention to prohibit the import of daily supermarket products that are linked to illegal deforestation, which puts restrictions on palm oil, cocoa, beef, leather and soy.

Announced on COP28’s Nature Day (December 9), the legislation is a secondary regulation, which is an additional law made under the primary law – in this case, the Environmental Act. The UK government says the deforestation ban will “protect the habitats of some of the world’s most precious and endangered species”, including orangutans, leopards, jaguars, tigers and others.

But climate activists have raised concerns about the incoming ban, particularly regarding its scope and scale, as well as its impact on producers who rely on forests.

Why the UK deforestation ban is important

The deforestation ban “will give British shoppers assurance that the goods they buy are not contributing to deforestation that violates the laws and regulations of the countries where they come from”, according to the UK government. The focus on agriculture comes as it’s the biggest driver of deforestation – it accounts for 75% of the total. Defra says an area the size of the UK is ploughed up every year to meet the country’s demand for commodities.

The products namechecked by the government include palm oil, soy and beef – together, they are responsible for 59% of all deforestation globally. While palm oil is the major driver of tropical deforestation, beef and soy are why Brazil tops the list of areas where most forests are felled, accounting for a third of the total share.

In the first six months of the year, the UK imported 13,700 tonnes of beef from Brazil, while 57% of the soybeans imported for animal feed came from the South American giant in 2019. In fact, that year, the UK brought in over a million tonnes of soy linked to deforestation in South America, making up 40% of the crop’s total imports.

This is why the forthcoming ban is important. The British government says it “marks a step change from voluntary approaches already in place, protecting the future of the world’s forests that we need to help tackle climate change, and their wildlife-rich canopies”. It ensures “shoppers can be confident that the money they spend is part of the solution, rather than part of the problem”, according to Environment Secretary Steve Barclay.

“This will give confidence to British retailers and their customers alike, helping retailers meet their ambitious targets on deforestation and enable a greater supply of deforestation-free products in the UK,” added Andrew Opie, food and sustainability director at the British Retail Consortium. “Tackling deforestation requires global cooperation and we look forward to seeing further detail as to how the legislation will align with European proposals.”

The EU ban he mentions was introduced last year, and included products like beef, soy, palm oil, wood, cocoa, coffee, charcoal, and rubber, as well as some leather and furniture. A similar measure, the Forest Act, was proposed in the US in 2021, but it was stalled until earlier this month when it was reintroduced by policymakers in the House and Senate.

What does the UK miss out on with its legislation?

While the EU was praised for its efforts to clamp down on deforestation, its law came with its own problems, particularly with regard to Indigenous communities and populations relying on food exports as a primary source of income. Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil were among the critics, understandably, but so too were organisations like the WWF and Greenpeace, which said the EU’s definition of forest degradation wasn’t broad enough to include the conversion of primary forests to plantations. Moreover, the law allowed for clear-cutting if the land wasn’t converted to another use.

The UK faces similar issues. The government had promised that high-deforestation-linked imports would be banned back at COP26, but had failed to act until now. One of the main issues is that this doesn’t apply to larger companies: Defra says the legislation will affect businesses that have a global annual turnover of over £50M and use over 500 tonnes of regulated commodities per year.

While these companies will need to perform a due diligence exercise on their supply chains and face “unlimited variable monetary penalties”, environmental groups have criticised the scope of this ban. “Company turnover and local legality loopholes will still leave goods tainted with deforestation on our supermarket shelves,” said Alexandria Reid, senior global policy advisor at corporate watchdog Global Witness.

She lamented the fact that coffee wasn’t on the list of products included in the ban – the crop is also linked to high rates of deforestation. “Ministers need to add this product as soon as possible so the UK public can rest assured their morning brews are deforestation-free,” she said.

This was echoed by Clare Oxborrow, forests campaigner at Friends of the Earth, who said: “Products linked to illegal deforestation won’t be eradicated from UK supermarkets completely unless all high-risk commodities, including coffee, rubber and maize, are captured by the legislation.”

She added: “What’s more, the proposed law only accounts for illegal deforestation, which is notoriously difficult to determine and could see some countries weakening their own protections to reduce the number of products impacted by the ban.”

Reid noted that the UK’s legislation lags behind the EU’s, which bans products regardless of whether the deforestation practices they’re linked to are illegal. This can be seen in the EU’s landmark greenwashing ban too, finalised earlier this year, which prevents companies from making unsubstantiated environmental claims on products. The UK has no such law yet, though it has launched a guide to help companies avoid greenwashing. “We urge ministers to strengthen these laws to ensure we end commodity-driven deforestation by the 2025 global deadline.”

The timeline point is pertinent, as Sophie Bennett, senior forests campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency, pointed out: “The government has still not set a definite timeframe for laying the secondary regulations, only stating that they will be laid when parliamentary time allows.”

“Given the urgency and scale of the climate and nature crisis, the UK really needs to respond with the appropriate level of ambition,” said Oxborrow, whose organisation is “campaigning for a new due diligence law to hold all companies to account for environmental harms and human rights abuses in their supply chains”.

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On the same day leaders around the world signed a COP28 declaration recognising the impact of food on climate change, the Bezos Earth Fund has announced a $57M grant towards tackling climate change, biodiversity loss and food security, which marks the beginning of a $1B climate funding pledge.

The Bezos Earth Fund has earmarked $57M in food-related grants to tackle the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss and preserve the future of food, as part of a larger $1B commitment to mitigate the impact of the food system on climate change.

Founded in 2020 through a $10B grant by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the fund is calling for a greater focus on food system transformation after 134 countries signed the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action today, recognising. the link between food and agriculture and climate change.

The food system contributes to a third of all global emissions and is a major focus of this year’s UN climate summit. The COP28 food declaration will see countries add the impact of food and land use in their nationally determined contributions and climate adaptation plans by COP30, which will be held in Belém do Pará, Brazil in 2025.

Breaking down Bezos Earth Fund’s future food grant

The Bezos Earth Fund says apart from the $57M allocated now, it intends to distribute the rest of the $943M funds to support the ambitious implementation of emerging global agendas on food systems and climate by 2030.

Of the current grant, $30M will go to make livestock more sustainable – animal agriculture is currently responsible for 11-19.5% of all global emissions. This includes cutting livestock methane emissions by up to 30% in the next 10-15 years through a range of innovations, in partnership with the Global Methane Hub’s Enteric Methane R+D Accelerator. Additional grants will provide the capital to identify and develop low-methane feed and low-methane cattle breeding, as well as use a wearable sensor to measure cow methane emissions.

Marcelo Mena, CEO of the Global Methane Hub, said time is of the utmost importance in terms of emissions reductions. “Initiatives like the Accelerator, which concentrate efforts on the highest emitting sector of methane emissions, will advance important research and help create long-term solutions on methane reduction, as well as ensure food and economic security of local communities that participate, particularly in the Global South.”

A $16.3M portion of the fund will help limit Amazon deforestation, with plans to reach zero illegal deforestation in the Brazilian state of Pará within the next three years by creating what the Bezos Earth Fund claims will be the world’s largest animal traceability system. Teaming up with organisations like the Nature Conservancy, IMAFLORA, Earth Innovation Institute, and Aliança da Terra (among others), the initiative will be able to trace meat, dairy and leather to eliminate deforestation from value chains, and bring about “forest-positive incentives” for cattle farmers and ranchers.

Another $8.3M, meanwhile, is earmarked to promote climate-smart agricultural practices. The Earth Fund is increasing its knowledge of soil ecosystems through seismology to assess carbon sequestration potential, facilitated by the Earth Rover Program. And teaming up with the Platform for Agriculture and Climate Transformation, the fund says it’s ensuring that federal financing in the US to decrease farm-level methane emissions reaches producers adopting climate-friendly practices.

Finally, the remaining amount ($2.6M), will support efforts to tackle food loss and waste – a third of all food produced is wasted across the world – alongside the Food and Land Use Coalition. They will do so by setting up an alliance of nations that will work to transform food systems. Moreover, by partnering with the think tank Clim-Eat the Earth Fund will develop food tech innovations and bring together stakeholders to accelerate their deployment.

“At COP28, it’s time to turn pledges and commitments into action and funding for innovative food solutions and food systems transformation,” said Andy Jarvis, director of future food at the Bezos Earth Fund. “Food isn’t just having a moment in COP28 – it’s the start of real momentum, and through the grants, we are announcing we will deliver that.”

Addressing climate inequalities and food emissions

The fund has also collaborated with over 16 other philanthropies to sign a new statement of action, committing to invest, advocate and partner to tackle food security and sustainability, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set out a goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. But this target is already in doubt, with current policies and consumption rates on course to reach 3°C, which will have a calamitous impact on the planet, especially on vulnerable populations.

This $57M grant is part of a broader food portfolio by the Earth Fund to support innovations like low-cost virtual livestock fences and initiatives promoting plant-rich diets and alternative proteins. Research has shown that meat accounts for 60% of all food emissions. Moreover, further analysis has found that replacing just half of our meat and dairy consumption with plant-based alternatives can double climate benefits and halt deforestation while reducing the number of undernourished people globally by 3.6% to 31 million.

A report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization – which will present a roadmap for agrifood systems’ pathway to 1.5°C at COP28 – earlier this month revealed that 70% of the food industry’s hidden costs are health-related, and a quarter linked to the climate, with low-income countries hit the hardest.

And a study by Oxfam has suggested that the richest 1% of the world’s population are responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with emissions high enough to cause heat-related deaths of 1.3 million people in the coming decades. Bezos was third on the list of the multi-billionaires analysed, with the report finding that it would take the bottom 99% over 1,500 years to match the emissions of the top 1%.

“We cannot afford for food to be on the sidelines of climate and nature conversations any longer. Food is a victim, problem, and solution in the climate and nature crises, and we must raise its profile in the discussion,” said Andrew Steer, CEO and president of the Bezos Earth Fund. “We applaud countries raising their ambitions, prioritising food in their climate goals, and urge them to go bigger and bolder. We need to do things differently to feed a growing global population without degrading the planet and now is the moment for action.”

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Welcome to Day 2 of #COP28. In our Green Queen COP28 Daily Digest, our editorial team curates the must-reads, the must-bookmarks and the must-knows from around the interwebs to help you ‘skim the overwhelm’.

Catch up: DAY 1

Headlines You Need To Know

The COP-related news you cannot miss.

UN SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS CALLS FOR COMPLETE FOSSIL FUEL PHASEOUT: António Guterres told AFP that COP28 should aim for a full phaseout of fossil fuel use to not just keep the 1.5°C goal alive, but “alive and well”. He warned of a “total disaster” if current trajectories persist.

COUNTRIES SIGN DECLARATION TO INCLUDE FOOD AND LAND USE IN CLIMATE PLANS: In the first-ever COP resolution tackling the link between food production and climate change, 134 leaders including US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Brazil, China and the UK, have endorsed a declaration to transform the food system and include food and land use in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and national adaptation plans by 2025’s COP30 summit.

COP28 HOST UAE ANNOUNCES $30B CLIMATE FUND: UAE president Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed has announced a $30B investment fund for global climate solutions, which aims to bridge the climate finance gap and stimulate $250B of investment by 2030. It came after the Financial Times reported yesterday that the COP28 host was preparing to announce the fund.

UK LEADERS TAKE SEPARATE PRIVATE JETS TO COP28: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing fresh criticism after it emerged that he, Foreign Secretary David Cameron, and King Charles are taking separate private jets to Dubai. Sunak’s entourage has hit back and said it’s “not anti-flying”, citing its investment in Virgin Atlantic’s sustainable aviation fuel flight. The prime minister left after just 11 hours, by the way, before King Charles called this COP a “critical turning point”.

STRIPE LAUNCHES PLATFORM TO PRE-ORDER CARBON REMOVAL TONS: FIntech platform Stripe has launched Climate Orders, which allows businesses to pre-order a specific number of carbon removal tons through its dashboard. Companies can also use the API to incorporate permanent carbon removal into their own climate offerings.

CLIMATE REPORTER AMONG VOX LAYOFFS: As part of its latest round of job cuts, Vox let go of climate reporter Rebecca Leber yesterday, on the first day of the UN climate conference – she announced the news on social media. We just included one of her recent stories as a key resource to read in our Daily Digest yesterday.

Key #COP28 Reports

The food and climate reports you need to know about today.

• Carbon Brief explores the impact of colonialism on climate change: Climate journalism outlet Carbon Brief has published an analysis exploring the impact of colonial rule on the climate crisis, as it was the ruling countries that made the decisions leading to historical emissions. The US still remains top – and by a mile – but many countries see their contributions rise as a result.
• 77% of people want their governments to do what it takes for the climate: A 23-country survey by the Potential Energy Coalition has found that nearly four in five people (77%) agree with the statement: “It is essential that our government does whatever it takes to limit the effects of climate change. Just over 10% disagree. The US ranks the lowest out of the 23 countries in terms of policy support, a factor influenced by political polarisation.
• Renewable energy commitments likely at COP28, but hopes for 1.5° remain low: BloombergNEF’s COP Tracker has suggested that commitments of tripling renewable energy are quite likely at this year’s summit, but countries are expected to score just under 4/10 for progress on the Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5°C.
• SDG2 Advocacy Hub lays out four critical areas for food solutions: The SDG2 Advocacy Hub (for Zero Hunger) has laid out a four-point Good Food for All Plan, including bringing climate and food systems together, adaptation to build resilience, mitigation to secure the future, and aligning finance for transformational impact.

Awesome Resources From Media Friends

A curation of our favourite reads of the day – excellent guides, explainers and op-eds from around the web.

Three things to watch at COP: Writing in TIME’s Climate is Everything newsletter, journalist Jeffrey Kluger lists three big things the magazine is watching at COP28: the global stock-tacking, a fossil fuel phaseout, and loss and damage funds.

Loss and damage funds key to climate justice: Speaking of loss and damage funds, we love the Guardian’s explainer outlining just how important these are to deliver climate justice in developing countries at COP28.

How to talk about COP: Forbes has published a handy guide detailing the history of the UN climate summit, who’s in charge, why it matters, and how to talk about COP (it’s a platform for the unheard, represents the absolute minimum, and it’s just a starting point).

Watch CCNow’s guide to understanding carbon removal: Ahead of COP28, Covering Climate Now held a press briefing to explain everything about carbon removal – what it is, how it’s different from carbon storage, and how the two can help mitigate the climate crisis. Watch the hour-long discussion here.

Lighter Green Fun

Funny stuff, weird stuff, random stuff related to COP you may enjoy.

Cli-fi to be previewed at COP28: There’s a climate fiction novel being previewed at COP28. Written by Steve Willis and Jan Lee, Fairhaven – A Novel of Climate Optimism is set in Asia and offers a more positive approach to climate adaptation and mitigation solutions.

FT ad calls for fossil fuel phaseout: An advert in the Financial Times calls for an end to fossil fuels, saying over 200 businesses, 670 scientists, 100 cities, and 46 million health professionals stand united in that goal and calling on national governments to take a stand. The tagline is the killer: ‘Later is too late.’

Rehab by drug dealers: On a LinkedIn post predicting that nothing useful will happen at the oil-baron-headed COP28 – with the note that climate action is occurring around the world, just outside the summit – one comment summed up the mood, calling the Dubai summit a “rehab session hosted by drug dealers”. You’ve got to laugh while you cry. This sentiment also seems to belong to climate activist Greta Thunberg shares the sentiment. The Swedish straight talker, who hasn’t indicated whether she’ll be attending (her social media is mum), previously described the conference as “blah, blah, blah”.

Follow all our #COP28 coverage. Like what you’re reading? Share it!

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Replacing 30% of meat consumption with plant-based alternatives could offset almost all of global aviation emissions, free up a carbon sink the size of India, and save all the cows alive in the US today, according to a new report by Profundo.

“The benefits of a modest switch to plant proteins are huge,” says Nico Muzi, managing director of Madre Brava, who commissioned the report by Profundo. “The current food system incentivises producing and selling huge amounts of industrial meat, rather than more sustainable, healthier proteins. We need to turn the tide for our health and the health of our planet.”

His words come following the study’s findings that a small switch (30%) in the consumption of beef, pork and chicken with whole foods and plant-based analogues from Impossible Foods (against a 2021 baseline) could save 728 million tons of CO2e annually, which is equal to nearly all global emissions from the aviation industry last year.

Over three-quarters (77%) of the world’s habitable land is used for animal agriculture. Cutting just under a third of our meat consumption would free up 3.4 million sq km of farmland – which is an area bigger than India – and restore it to nature to boost biodiversity and absorb carbon emissions. In addition, the report highlights the high water footprint of livestock farming, with the 30% switch saving 18.9 cubic km of water, equivalent to 7.5 million Olympic-sized swimming pools per year.

And it’s not just the environment, of course. Doing so would help save 420 million pigs, over 22 billion chickens and 100 million cows, which would be the same as sparing all cows alive in the US today.

“A 30% reduction in meat is in line with the widely shared goal of a global 50% reduction by 2040,” says Muzi. “While this goal is global, the exact meat reduction targets will need to be tailored to specific regions or countries based on the relative consumption and emissions.”

The report chimes with similar research published last month, which found that swapping 50% of meat and dairy for plant-based alternatives could reduce agricultural and land-use emissions by 31%, halt deforestation and double overall climate benefits.

North America leads red meat consumption, followed by Europe and South America

The proposed 30% shift model only applies to countries where meat consumption is higher than the recommended daily intake by scientists and organisations like the Eat-Lancet Commission. Profundo’s analysis of Eat-Lancet data found that Americans eat over six times more red meat than advised by the commission – by far the higher of all other regions.

There are two main issues here, according to Muzi. The first is the severe underreporting of the “climate-meat nexus” in US media – a Faunalytics report found that only 7% of all climate stories mention animal agriculture. “It’s hard for the public to know about the oversized role of meat in driving climate change if they are not informed about it,” he says. That perhaps explains why 40% of Americans don’t believe eating less red meat would help climate change, a number that rises to 74% for overall meat consumption according to a separate study.

The other problem is the power of the meat lobby. Livestock farming receives 800 times more funding than plant-based companies in the US, according to a study that suggests the “gigantic power” of the meat and dairy lobby is blocking the rise of sustainable alternatives. “There is a well-funded communications machine coming from the meat and dairy industry to promote the sustainability of livestock, and even to push misinformation,” says Muzi.

“Borrowing heavily from the playbook of the oil industry, media reporting and exposés have shown that big meat processors and dairy corporations use their abundant financial resources to manipulate the facts and sow doubts about climate science on animal products,” he adds, pointing to research revealing that the 10 largest livestock companies in the US “have contributed to research that minimises the link between animal agriculture and climate change”.

North America is followed by Europe and Latin American countries Argentina and Brazil, which eat more than four times the recommended amount of red meat. So even with a 30% switch to plant-based alternatives, people will still be able to consume more red meat than is advised.

Overall, meat consumption has increased globally in the past few decades, with high intakes concentrated in a few regions, according to the study. The US, Australia, Argentina and Brazil accounted for over 100kg of meat eaten per capita each year, as opposed to an average of 75kg in the EU and the UK, and less than 5kg in India, Bangladesh or Burundi.

Meat consumption is set to increase

In the sea of reports outlining the graveness of continued meat-eating rates, counter research by the livestock lobby, and consumer confusion from contradictory research and misinformation, meat consumption already rose by 19% from 2011-21. Now, an ever-growing global population, higher incomes in developing economies, and better life expectancy rates to a further rise in meat intake, according to Profundo.

According to the OECD-FAO, global poultry consumption is set to increase by 15% by 2032, with pork consumption expected to grow by 11% and beef by 10%. Profundo stresses that the only way to achieve the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goals is to reduce industrial meat consumption and production. Strategies to address this have included reducing livestock’s emissions intensity by, for example, changing the digestive fermentation process in methane-producing ruminant animals.

But these measures don’t do much. “Even the most optimistic estimates of emissions reductions from intensification and efficiency measures are not enough to bring protein production in line with climate goals. As such, structural solutions focused on making sustainable proteins the cheapest, easiest choice for consumers are critical,” explains Muzi.

“Greater attention needs to be paid to a protein transition, alongside exploring sustainable intensification and methane mitigation technologies,” he adds. How can we do so? “We need to incentivise these products by ensuring they are as cheap, healthy, and convenient as industrial meat products. To do that, we need to level the playing field between animal-based and plant-based products in terms of public and private sector support.”

Muzi continues: “For example, in most countries around the world, meat and dairy production is heavily subsidised and receives public funding for promotion and advertising. In some cases, value-added tax is higher for plant-based foods than it is for meat and dairy products by an order of magnitude.”

He points to how public investment in alt-protein R&D is “significantly lower” (97% in the EU and 95% in the US) than it is for livestock. “Such policy choices run counter to all corporate and governmental efforts made to reverse the triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and water scarcity.”

Going meatless twice a week in the EU & UK has tremendous benefits

If people stop eating meat for two days a week – “Meatless Mondays… and Tuesdays”, as Profundo puts it – in the UK and EU, replacing it with a mix of whole foods and vegan analogues, it could wave 81 million tons of CO2e. This is the same as removing about a quarter (65 million) of all cars in the UK and EU. Doing so would free up land larger than the UK and save 2.2 cubic km of water – or 880,000 swimming pools worth of water per year.

The problem, however, is that Europeans eat 1.4kg of meat each week, which is 80% higher than the global average. Factory farming plays a big role in the region’s emissions, over a third (36%) of which are linked to food, with animal products accounting for 70% of this. Alongside dairy, meat production in the EU – which is set to grow until 2030 – is the single largest source of methane emissions.

Muzi outlines how it’s not just meat-eating that needs to be reduced. Dairy is a massive issue too, and cutting down its intake is necessary to “achieve climate stability” and will be key to ensuring “food security for a growing global population, protection for biodiversity, water availability, reduced air pollution, human health improvements, and better animal welfare”.

“Part of our theory of change is that reducing total beef production and consumption will also support reducing production and consumption of dairy since the industries are linked,” he notes. “For example, in the US and the EU, a major portion of beef – particularly for low-quality meat – comes from dairy cows. As such, driving down demand for beef will reduce the offtake demand for dairy cattle, and impact the profitability of the dairy industry.”

And while a 30% reduction will still mean Europeans will eat more meat than recommended, “it’s in line with a progressive reduction in the decades to come to achieve net-zero by 2050 in the EU”.

Big Food has a big role to play

The report looked at the role of meat producers, foodservice giants and retailers in meat consumption too. In 2021, Cargill, Tyson, JBS and National Beef Packing alone controlled between 55-85% of the beef, pork and chicken markets in the US. The top 20 meat producers account for 15% of the global slaughtering of cattle, chickens and pigs.

But a 30% reduction in the production of meat from these animals by these companies could result in a reduction of 150 million tons of CO2e – nearly the annual GFG emissions of the Netherlands. Moreover, about a million sq km of land would be freed, and 3.6 cubic km of water would be saved.

In terms of retailers and foodservice companies like Carrefour, Lidl, Tesco, Ahold Delhaize, CP All and Sodexo, substituting half of all meat sales with plant-based foods like tofu, pulses, mycoprotein or fermentation-based alternatives could save 31.6 million tons of CO2e, 102,000 sq km of land, and 0.67 cubic km of water.

Meanwhile, a 50% substitution of beef sales at McDonald’s, which is responsible for 1.5% of global annual beef production, with a mix of alt-proteins would save 15 million tons of CO2e (the equivalent of the annual emissions of Slovenia), free up 84,000 sq km of land (equalling the surface area of Austria), and conserve 0.2 cubic km of water (over 80,000 swimming pools’ worth).

But a big problem with meat companies is aggressive political lobbying to thwart the alt-protein sector, as evidenced by recent investigations into the effect of the animal agriculture lobby on work by the UN FAO and the EU. Muzi cites research uncovering how “taken as a share of each company’s total revenue over those time periods [2000-18], Tyson has spent more than double what Exxon has on political campaigns and 21% more on lobbying.” 

Switching from meat to plant-based could produce 14 times more protein

Profundo modelled two uses of farmland to find out how protein production could be impacted by a moderate shift from animal-derived to plant-based meat: it assessed the production of beef and a mix of brands, oats, peas and soybeans.

The report found that the same area of land can yield enough beef to satisfy the needs of 2% of the global population as it can produce plant protein crops that could satisfy 28% of the world. It aligns with similar research that revealed how 63% of the world’s total protein supply comes from plant-based food.

As some cattle-rearing land is unsuitable for crop cultivation (like pastures in hilly areas), the shift from beef to plant proteins could additionally free up 1.3 million sq km of land, an area the size of France, Germany and Italy combined, which can help absorb carbon and boost biodiversity.

“Meat is a very inefficient way of producing cheap unsustainable proteins for a growing world population,” says Muzi. “For food security reasons, world leaders should be looking at boosting the production of protein crops and reducing the production of beef.”

He posits public procurement in schools as an example: “Governments can ensure plant-based proteins are offered to schools to help students understand healthy diets, and reduce consumption of high processed foods high in fat, sugar, and sodium. In many cases, plant-based offerings can also be cheaper to support the high volume needs of public schooling.”

Some companies are coming up with blended and hybrid meat products, mixing conventional meat with vegetables or plant-based alternatives. Could these innovations help drive the transition? Definitely, says Muzi: “Blended products are an important way of introducing plant-based and alternative proteins without having to introduce entirely new products. Ultimately, we want meat eaters to reduce their meat consumption,” he adds. “Ideally, blends are a gateway for dedicated meat-eaters to increasingly reduce their meat consumption and move towards more sustainable diets.”

Muzi touches upon how people’s attitudes and choices have been shaped by the food industry for decades, and implores these corporations to encourage the selection of alt-protein. “Currently, companies and governments incentivise widespread purchasing of cheap, high-emission, unhealthy meat products through pricing, advertising, and product placement among others,” he says.

“The onus should not be put on consumers to choose these products out of their own good will – and such an approach will continue to make plant-based and alternative proteins a niche product for wealthy consumers,” Muzi adds. “Instead, we can view the issue as a systemic problem in which subsidies, taxes, public procurement and corporate strategies can shift to newly incentivised plant-based and alternative proteins.”

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