Rather than reckoning with the need for meat reduction, the FAO’s Global Roadmap for reducing the climate impacts of food systems, released on December 10 to coincide with COP 28’s “Food, Agriculture, and Water Day,” called for increased livestock productivity coupled with emissions reductions via marginal technical mitigations like feed additives and genetic modifications to cattle. Ahead of the talks, the Bezos Earth Fund committed $30 million—over half of its current tranche of climate funding—to funding research into these technologies. Much as the coal industry started hawking “clean coal” in 2008 to avoid policies promoting a phaseout, the meat industry and its defenders are now arguing for clean cows.
The scale of global food production is hard to overstate. Food systems use half of the world’s total habitable land, contribute about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, and are the biggest culprit in pushing us past planetary boundaries via fresh water use, biodiversity loss, and deforestation.
How effortlessly Bezos sneaks into this.
Right behind the bullshit of the oligarchs who sponsor this to distract from their own massive emissions – we need to stop murdering animals for our health, our climate, and for ethical behaviour.