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As Seen on TV: Big Oil’s Dystopian View of California’s Climate Agenda

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024

A woman swelters in her darkened bedroom; another stares glumly at the utility bills piled on her desk. A motorist watches with resignation as the gas pump dial spins and the dollar amount climbs while a woman sits behind the wheel of her car and sobs at the hopelessness of it all. The minute-long advertisement’s dystopian take on everyday life in the Golden State is underscored by a singer crooning country singer Cody Jinks’ mournful lyrics: “It’s been too long a time with no peace of mind, and I’m ready for the times to get better.” A still from an advertisement by the Western States Petroleum Association. The ad wasn’t released by a presidential campaign or a social justice organization. Instead, it was produced by the Western States Petroleum Association, the powerhouse oil industry trade and lobbying group. Its implicit message is that policies to fight climate change are hurting regular Californians.  The association ran the slick ad in television markets across the state during the Summer Olympics, said Kevin Slagle, the association’s vice president, strategic communications. Along with a website that features a three-question survey, it is part of a $5 million advertising and polling campaign — more than the petroleum association spent on general lobbying over the first two quarters of the year combined. California’s overarching strategy to limit damage from climate change involves weaning its economy off oil and natural gas. Burning such fossil fuels emits carbon dioxide, the main driver of the climate crisis. The hotter atmosphere has killed people and caused billions of dollars in damage from severe flooding, drought, prolonged heat waves and wildfires — all hallmarks of human-caused climate change.  The oil lobby is trying to defeat bills that would encourage oil companies to clean up thousands of polluting idle wells and allow cities and counties to ban oil drilling.  There are serious questions as to whether California’s climate plans will place an uneven burden on state residents.  Electric vehicles are still too expensive for many lower-income residents, and California gasoline — which already has the highest per-gallon price in the nation — is taxed to pay for climate-friendly low-carbon fuels programs, nudging the price even higher. Drivers could soon be charged even more to make up for lost tax revenue at the pumps. Meanwhile, power bills are rising for lower-income residents to help pay for electrifying buildings, while natural gas users could see further rate spikes.   But a review of the Western States Petroleum Association’s lobbying actions shows that its legislative priorities in the current session focus less on increasing economic equity and more on defeating bills that would curtail the industry.  The oil lobby is trying to defeat bills that would encourage oil companies to clean up thousands of polluting idle wells (AB 1866) and allow cities and counties to ban oil drilling (AB 3233). It also lobbied against a bill to plug low-producing wells near homes (AB 2716): That bill has since been amended to apply only to the Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles. Such actions could benefit working-class Californians, particularly in communities of color that tend to be closest to oil and gas production. And the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that poverty and economic inequality exacerbate the effects of climate change. As the California legislative session winds down in August, all three bills are up for a final vote by lawmakers this week. The measures are part of a “Make Polluters Pay” package championed by climate advocates. It originally included a bill that would have forced companies that emitted a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions or more to pay for damage and preparations for future climate disasters — with 40% reserved for disadvantaged communities. Another would have forced oil companies to cover medical bills for people sickened by oil wells. Neither bill advanced after the Western States Petroleum Association, the California Independent Petroleum Association and the California Chamber of Commerce lobbied against them. Slagle said the Western States Petroleum Association opposed the “Make Polluters Pay” package because California has “already addressed” concerns about local pollution from oil wells, citing a landmark but much-delayed law passed in 2022 that increased the required distance between schools and neighborhoods and oil and gas operations. A still from an advertisement by the Western States Petroleum Association. “We’ll need these products for a while,” Slagle said, referring to oil and gas. The purpose of the petroleum association’s television ad campaign, he said, is to highlight how California’s climate policies — such as “arbitrary timelines” for electrifying vehicles, buildings and home appliances — worsen people’s financial struggles.  The petroleum association hired Probolsky Research to survey 900 people in May. Most respondents agreed they were concerned about how California’s climate goals would affect their daily lives. But the petroleum association didn’t release the methodology behind the survey; Slagle said the association’s ongoing polling is “not scientific.” The California Air Resources Board adopted regulations to prohibit the sale of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2035 and to require that 80% of household appliances such as stoves and water heaters be electric by that year if a house changes hands. The California Energy Commission, meanwhile, wants 90% of the state’s electricity production to come from zero-carbon sources by the same time, a goal set by legislation.  Taken together, such policies could unduly burden lower-income residents. In 2022, the California Air Resources Board reported that the combined effects of transitioning from fossil fuels will lead to a $4.1 billion decline in income for households making less than $100,000 a year by 2035. In contrast, households with higher incomes will see a gain of $3.5 billion.  Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara) introduced AB 1866 directing oil operators to plug wells that are no longer in operation but are likely still releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas. He sees his legislation as a way to protect public health, especially in communities where residents lack the resources to prepare for and recover from sudden climate-driven disasters Companies that do not comply could be charged thousands of dollars per well — a significant increase from the current fees under a state program that has allowed companies to keep wells unplugged for decades. It’s a necessary step since the number of idle wells in California has increased over the last seven years, Hart said.  The think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative estimates that the cost to taxpayers of plugging uncovered wells in California will be at least $6.9 billion.  “The idea that it’s just a business practice where we can idle a well and have [it] leak and not attend to it, that there may be a point in the future where oil prices are high enough and we want to re-open them — that isn’t a great environmental strategy for residents of California,” Hart told Capital & Main.  Slagle said many wells in the state “aren’t temporarily producing” but could come back to life when “market conditions improve.”  An economic forecast by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, a London-based think tank, shows that the costs of plugging oil and gas wells will eclipse potential profits of drilling California’s dwindling reserves — yet companies have been required only to offer up bonds worth a fraction of cleanup costs. The think tank estimates the cost to taxpayers of plugging uncovered wells in California to be at least $6.9 billion. In addition to its TV ad, the Western States Petroleum Association is placing ads on Facebook taking aim at Hart’s bill and AB 3233, sponsored by Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-San Luis Obispo), which would codify the right of cities and counties to prohibit oil and gas production. It would build on recent measures by local governments to prohibit drilling. In 2021, Culver City voted to require oil companies to plug all of their remaining oil wells. The following year, the city and county of Los Angeles separately voted to phase out drilling over the next 20 years.  “The regular Californians that I meet really care deeply about their health,” Addis told Capital & Main. “They care deeply about their air quality and living in a world where we don’t have extreme weather events.” In June, the California Geologic Energy Management Division released an analysis by a scientific advisory panel of more than 72 peer-reviewed studies affirming that people who live closer to gas and oil wells “experience a greater risk of decreased respiratory function and adverse perinatal outcomes” than those those who live farther away.  Slagle dismissed the analysis and that of similar studies. “Frankly, we believe a lot of science in them was designed to meet the political goals,” he said. The Western States Petroleum Association ads contends that Hart’s and Addis’ bills will make gasoline more expensive and result in job losses. “Let us power our state for more affordable energy and progress we can all be proud of,” one of the ads says. Copyright 2024 Capital & Main

A $5 million prime-time ad campaign is aimed at climate policies the industry claims make life miserable for Californians. The post As Seen on TV: Big Oil’s Dystopian View of California’s Climate Agenda appeared first on .

A woman swelters in her darkened bedroom; another stares glumly at the utility bills piled on her desk. A motorist watches with resignation as the gas pump dial spins and the dollar amount climbs while a woman sits behind the wheel of her car and sobs at the hopelessness of it all.

The minute-long advertisement’s dystopian take on everyday life in the Golden State is underscored by a singer crooning country singer Cody Jinks’ mournful lyrics: “It’s been too long a time with no peace of mind, and I’m ready for the times to get better.”

A still from an advertisement by the Western States Petroleum Association.

The ad wasn’t released by a presidential campaign or a social justice organization. Instead, it was produced by the Western States Petroleum Association, the powerhouse oil industry trade and lobbying group. Its implicit message is that policies to fight climate change are hurting regular Californians. 

The association ran the slick ad in television markets across the state during the Summer Olympics, said Kevin Slagle, the association’s vice president, strategic communications. Along with a website that features a three-question survey, it is part of a $5 million advertising and polling campaign — more than the petroleum association spent on general lobbying over the first two quarters of the year combined.

California’s overarching strategy to limit damage from climate change involves weaning its economy off oil and natural gas. Burning such fossil fuels emits carbon dioxide, the main driver of the climate crisis. The hotter atmosphere has killed people and caused billions of dollars in damage from severe flooding, drought, prolonged heat waves and wildfires — all hallmarks of human-caused climate change.
 

The oil lobby is trying to defeat bills that would encourage oil companies to clean up thousands of polluting idle wells and allow cities and counties to ban oil drilling.

 
There are serious questions as to whether California’s climate plans will place an uneven burden on state residents. 

Electric vehicles are still too expensive for many lower-income residents, and California gasoline — which already has the highest per-gallon price in the nation — is taxed to pay for climate-friendly low-carbon fuels programs, nudging the price even higher. Drivers could soon be charged even more to make up for lost tax revenue at the pumps. Meanwhile, power bills are rising for lower-income residents to help pay for electrifying buildings, while natural gas users could see further rate spikes.  

But a review of the Western States Petroleum Association’s lobbying actions shows that its legislative priorities in the current session focus less on increasing economic equity and more on defeating bills that would curtail the industry. 

The oil lobby is trying to defeat bills that would encourage oil companies to clean up thousands of polluting idle wells (AB 1866) and allow cities and counties to ban oil drilling (AB 3233). It also lobbied against a bill to plug low-producing wells near homes (AB 2716): That bill has since been amended to apply only to the Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles.

Such actions could benefit working-class Californians, particularly in communities of color that tend to be closest to oil and gas production. And the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that poverty and economic inequality exacerbate the effects of climate change. As the California legislative session winds down in August, all three bills are up for a final vote by lawmakers this week.

The measures are part of a “Make Polluters Pay” package championed by climate advocates. It originally included a bill that would have forced companies that emitted a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions or more to pay for damage and preparations for future climate disasters — with 40% reserved for disadvantaged communities. Another would have forced oil companies to cover medical bills for people sickened by oil wells.

Neither bill advanced after the Western States Petroleum Association, the California Independent Petroleum Association and the California Chamber of Commerce lobbied against them.

Slagle said the Western States Petroleum Association opposed the “Make Polluters Pay” package because California has “already addressed” concerns about local pollution from oil wells, citing a landmark but much-delayed law passed in 2022 that increased the required distance between schools and neighborhoods and oil and gas operations.

A still from an advertisement by the Western States Petroleum Association.

“We’ll need these products for a while,” Slagle said, referring to oil and gas. The purpose of the petroleum association’s television ad campaign, he said, is to highlight how California’s climate policies — such as “arbitrary timelines” for electrifying vehicles, buildings and home appliances — worsen people’s financial struggles. 

The petroleum association hired Probolsky Research to survey 900 people in May. Most respondents agreed they were concerned about how California’s climate goals would affect their daily lives. But the petroleum association didn’t release the methodology behind the survey; Slagle said the association’s ongoing polling is “not scientific.”

The California Air Resources Board adopted regulations to prohibit the sale of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2035 and to require that 80% of household appliances such as stoves and water heaters be electric by that year if a house changes hands. The California Energy Commission, meanwhile, wants 90% of the state’s electricity production to come from zero-carbon sources by the same time, a goal set by legislation. 

Taken together, such policies could unduly burden lower-income residents. In 2022, the California Air Resources Board reported that the combined effects of transitioning from fossil fuels will lead to a $4.1 billion decline in income for households making less than $100,000 a year by 2035. In contrast, households with higher incomes will see a gain of $3.5 billion. 

Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara) introduced AB 1866 directing oil operators to plug wells that are no longer in operation but are likely still releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas. He sees his legislation as a way to protect public health, especially in communities where residents lack the resources to prepare for and recover from sudden climate-driven disasters

Companies that do not comply could be charged thousands of dollars per well — a significant increase from the current fees under a state program that has allowed companies to keep wells unplugged for decades. It’s a necessary step since the number of idle wells in California has increased over the last seven years, Hart said.
 

The think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative estimates that the cost to taxpayers of plugging uncovered wells in California will be at least $6.9 billion.

 
“The idea that it’s just a business practice where we can idle a well and have [it] leak and not attend to it, that there may be a point in the future where oil prices are high enough and we want to re-open them — that isn’t a great environmental strategy for residents of California,” Hart told Capital & Main. 

Slagle said many wells in the state “aren’t temporarily producing” but could come back to life when “market conditions improve.” 

An economic forecast by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, a London-based think tank, shows that the costs of plugging oil and gas wells will eclipse potential profits of drilling California’s dwindling reserves — yet companies have been required only to offer up bonds worth a fraction of cleanup costs. The think tank estimates the cost to taxpayers of plugging uncovered wells in California to be at least $6.9 billion.

In addition to its TV ad, the Western States Petroleum Association is placing ads on Facebook taking aim at Hart’s bill and AB 3233, sponsored by Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-San Luis Obispo), which would codify the right of cities and counties to prohibit oil and gas production. It would build on recent measures by local governments to prohibit drilling.

In 2021, Culver City voted to require oil companies to plug all of their remaining oil wells. The following year, the city and county of Los Angeles separately voted to phase out drilling over the next 20 years. 

“The regular Californians that I meet really care deeply about their health,” Addis told Capital & Main. “They care deeply about their air quality and living in a world where we don’t have extreme weather events.”

In June, the California Geologic Energy Management Division released an analysis by a scientific advisory panel of more than 72 peer-reviewed studies affirming that people who live closer to gas and oil wells “experience a greater risk of decreased respiratory function and adverse perinatal outcomes” than those those who live farther away. 

Slagle dismissed the analysis and that of similar studies. “Frankly, we believe a lot of science in them was designed to meet the political goals,” he said.

The Western States Petroleum Association ads contends that Hart’s and Addis’ bills will make gasoline more expensive and result in job losses. “Let us power our state for more affordable energy and progress we can all be proud of,” one of the ads says.

Copyright 2024 Capital & Main

Read the full story here.
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Climate Scientists Raise a Middle Finger to Trump’s Censorship Efforts

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Researchers across the United States and the world who raced to protect climate data, public reports and other information from the Trump administration’s budget cuts, firings, and scrubbing of federal websites are launching their own climate information portals. […]

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Researchers across the United States and the world who raced to protect climate data, public reports and other information from the Trump administration’s budget cuts, firings, and scrubbing of federal websites are launching their own climate information portals. A group of scientists and other experts who formerly worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently launched Climate.us, where they eventually hope to replicate much of the public-oriented climate content from Climate.gov.  In a parallel effort, two major scientific institutions, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, have started soliciting studies for a special “Climate Collection” to maintain momentum on the work that was already under way on a Congressionally mandated 6th National Climate Assessment, due in 2028, before all the scientists working on the report were fired and cabinet-level team that led the effort disbanded. “It’s unbelievable…We were literally forced to word search our own website and take down articles because they didn’t want to read the word ‘equity’ “ The new efforts demonstrate how difficult it is to erase or obscure climate science from the public in an era when thousands of scientists and computers around the world are continuously calculating and measuring climate and greenhouse gas emissions. Other science rescue efforts have focused on preserving those data sets, but the public-facing portals are also important, experts said. Current efforts by the US government to make it harder for people to get scientific information are a clear-cut case of censorship, said Haley Crim, currently a climate solutions researcher at MIT and one of the leaders of an effort to restore important climate information that officials in the Trump administration purged from federal websites. Along with significant funding and personnel cuts to various federal climate programs and other scientific efforts, some scientists report facing increased harassment and threats online. Others worry that misleading, inaccurate and potentially dangerous misinformation is being posted on official government websites. Gaining traction for new climate websites can be a challenge in a world filled with misleading and false scientific information, but the latest efforts have endorsements from leading scientists and scientific institutions. And the researchers working on the science preservation and restoration efforts say that, in the long run, the projects may result in new ways to store and share scientific information, and perhaps even better ways to make that information more relevant to the growing number of people experiencing deadly and disruptive climate impacts in the US and around the world.  During her last few months working on the Climate.gov website, Crim said she was ordered to remove articles mentioning diversity and other terms identified by political appointees. The altered version of the website remains online, but its future beyond the end of this year is uncertain.  A NOAA spokesperson said that changes to Climate.gov were made in compliance with an executive order, and that all research products from climate.gov will be relocated to Noaa.gov to “centralize and consolidate resources.” “It’s unbelievable, and it is censorship, and I think people were afraid to say that for a long time,” Crim said. “We were literally forced to word search our own website and take down articles because they didn’t want to read the word ‘equity’, or other related terms.” The administration could still use Climate.gov to publish misleading information, like a recent debunked climate report from Trump’s DOE. 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The long-term goal is to ensure there is as complete a backup as possible, including censored material, if Climate.gov goes offline. “They removed anything about trying to increase diversity in the sciences, and the fact that the impacts of human-caused climate change are going to be disproportionately felt by people who are already marginalized,” Lindsey said, adding that the team wants to revive that potentially life-saving information. Through mid-September, crowdfunding efforts have enabled the volunteers to launch their new website and, in a big step, to post the Fifth National Climate Assessment.  The NCA5, published in 2023, is the most comprehensive federal report on human-caused warming and its impacts and serves as a critical resource for communities facing wildfires, rising sea levels and other climate-related challenges. It was relegated to an archival website in June when the administration shut down the interagency US Global Change Research Program, which had a congressional mandate to produce the report. In a worst-case scenario, Lindsey added, the administration could use the popular Climate.gov portal to publish deliberately misleading information, like a recent debunked climate report from the US Department of Energy. To establish the new website’s credibility, the team plans to partner with authoritative institutions, such as the World Meteorological Organization and the American Meteorological Society, and recruit an independent science advisory panel for expert review and oversight, she said. Parallel to the efforts to re-create the Climate.gov information portal, the AGU and the AMS are working to ensure that climate information relevant to the United States’ interests is being properly cataloged in a format that could be used in a future national climate assessment. 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The rich must eat less meat

Here’s a sobering fact: Even if the entire world transitions away from fossil fuels, the way we farm and eat will cause global temperatures to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the critical threshold set in the Paris Climate Agreement. The further we go above that limit, the more intense the effects of […]

Here’s a sobering fact: Even if the entire world transitions away from fossil fuels, the way we farm and eat will cause global temperatures to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the critical threshold set in the Paris Climate Agreement. The further we go above that limit, the more intense the effects of climate change will get. The good news is that we know the most effective way to avert catastrophe: People in wealthier countries have to eat more plant-based foods and less red meat, poultry, and dairy. Such a shift in diets — combined with reducing global food waste and improving agricultural productivity — could cut annual climate-warming emissions from food systems by more than half. That’s one of the main findings from a new report by the EAT-Lancet Commission, a prestigious research body composed of dozens of experts in nutrition, climate, economics, agriculture, and other fields.   The report lays out how agriculture has played a major role in breaking several “planetary boundaries”; there’s greenhouse gas emissions — of which food and farming account for 30 percent — but also deforestation and air and water pollution. The new report builds on the commission’s first report, published in 2019 — an enormous undertaking that examined how to meet the nutritional needs of a growing global population while staying within planetary boundaries. It was highly influential and widely cited in both policy and academic literature, but it was also ruthlessly attacked in an intensive smear campaign by meat industry-aligned groups, academics, and influencers  — a form of “mis- and disinformation and denialism on climate science,” Johan Rockström, a co-author of the report, said in a recent press conference.   Our food’s massive environmental footprint stems from several sources: land-clearing to graze cattle and grow crops (much of them grown to feed farmed animals); the trillions of pounds of manure those farmed animals release; cattle’s methane-rich burps; food waste; fertilizer production and pollution; and fossil fuels used to power farms and supply chains. But this destruction is disproportionately committed to supply rich countries’ meat- and dairy-heavy diets, representing a kind of global dietary inequality. “The diets of the richest 30% of the global population contribute to more than 70% of the environmental pressures from food systems,” the new report reads.  To set humanity on a healthier, more sustainable path, the commission recommends what they call the Planetary Health Diet, which consists of more whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts than what most people in high- and upper-middle-income countries consume, along with less meat, dairy, and sugar. But in poor regions, like Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the commission recommends an increase in most animal products, as well as a greater variety of plant-based foods. If globally adopted, this plant-rich diet would prevent up to 15 million premature deaths each year. (The commission notes that the diet is a starting point and should be adjusted to accommodate individual needs and preferences, local diets, food availability, and other factors.) It would also reshape the global food industry, resulting in billions of fewer land animals raised for meat each year and a significant increase in legume, nut, fish, and whole grain production (while many regions currently eat more fish per capita than the report recommends, total global fish production would increase over time under the report’s parameters to meet demand from growing populations).  Rather than expecting billions of people to actively change how they eat, the commission recommends a number of policies, including reforming school meals, federal dietary guidelines, and farming subsidies; restricting marketing of unhealthy foods; and stronger environmental regulations for farms. If EAT-Lancet’s main recommendations were to be implemented, shifting to plant-rich diets would account for three-quarters of the major reduction in agricultural emissions. Other recommendations, like improving crop and livestock productivity and reducing food waste, are important, but their impact would be much smaller than diet change, contributing a quarter of expected agricultural emissions reductions.   The report is thorough and nuanced, but its conclusions aren’t exactly novel; for the past two decades, scientists have published a trove of studies on the environmental impact of agriculture and have landed on the same takeaways — especially that rich countries must shift their diets to be more plant-based. But that message has, with few exceptions, failed to incite action by governments and food companies, or even the environmental movement itself.  That failure can be explained, in part, by the meat industry’s aggressive, denialist response to the scientific consensus on meat, pollution, and climate change. The meat industry’s anti-science crusade, briefly explained In the 2010s, it seemed possible that the US and other wealthy countries might adopt more plant-based diets: Some researchers and journalists predicted that better plant-based meat products, from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, could disrupt the conventional meat industry; governments in several countries recommended more plant-based diets; and campaigns like Meatless Monday and Veganuary had gained momentum. This story was first featured in the Processing Meat newsletter Sign up here for Future Perfect’s biweekly newsletter from Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella, exploring how the meat and dairy industries shape our health, politics, culture, environment, and more. Have questions or comments on this newsletter? Email us at futureperfect@vox.com! These trends posed an existential threat to the livestock sector, and it was in this environment that the first EAT-Lancet report was published. It made international headlines, but the backlash was swift: The meat industry coordinated an intense and successful online backlash operation. Shortly after, the World Health Organization pulled its support for an EAT-Lancet report launch event. One report author said she was “overwhelmed” with “really nasty” comments, and another said he faced career repercussions.   In the years that followed, the industry ramped up its efforts to steer policy and narratives in its favor and out of line with scientific consensus:  From 2020 to 2023, European meat companies and industry groups successfully weakened EU climate policy.  The number of delegates representing the meat industry at the UN’s annual climate change conference tripled from 2022 to 2023. A 2023 United Nations report on reducing climate emissions in the food system omitted meat reduction as an approach, which some environmental scientists found “bewildering” (this could be due to intense meat industry pressure imposed on UN officials). The industry spent a great deal of money attacking plant-based meat companies, downplaying meat’s environmental impact, cozying up to environmental nonprofits, and spreading the narrative that voluntary, incremental tweaks to animal farming methods are sufficient — not regulations and diet shifts. Now, as global ambitions to reduce meat consumption and livestock production have shriveled in the face of intense pressure from industry, the new EAT-Lancet report feels more important, and also more vulnerable, than ever. But I worry most of the climate movement is only too eager to go along with the industry’s preferred approaches and narratives because many environmental advocates, like virtually everyone else across society, don’t want to accept that meat reduction in richer countries is non-negotiable. That much was evident when I attended last month’s Climate Week NYC, the world’s second-largest climate change gathering. The meat conversation missing from Climate Week The annual event brings together some 100,000 attendees for more than 1,000 events across the city. This year, only five events centered on plant-based food as a solution to climate change. In other words, what environmental scientists consider to be the most effective solution to addressing around 16 percent of greenhouse gas emissions received around 0.5 percent of the week’s programming. At the same time, the meat and dairy sectors managed to establish a large presence at Climate Week’s food and agriculture programs.  The Protein Pact, a coalition of meat and dairy companies and trade groups, sponsored a panel put on by the climate events company Nest Climate Campus, which listed one of Protein Pact’s representatives — who spoke on its main stage — as a “climate action expert.” The Protein Pact is also a leading sponsor of Regen House, an agriculture events company that hosted several days of Climate Week programming. Meanwhile, the Meat Institute — the founder of the Protein Pact — sponsored events put on by Food Tank, a nonprofit think tank. It would be one thing if the Protein Pact were open to compromise on environmental regulation and spoke more honestly about their industries’ climate impact. But many of its members lobby against environmental action and downplay the industry’s environmental footprint. Some even participated in the campaign against EAT-Lancet’s first report. Given this track record, it’s hard to see the industry’s presence at Climate Week as anything but a reputation laundering effort.  The Meat Institute, Food Tank, Nest Climate Campus, and Regen House didn’t respond to requests for comment.  This dynamic — in which meat industry narratives are welcomed and legitimized in much of the environmental movement — has contributed to public ignorance of the industry’s pollution and its underreporting in the news media.  According to a new, exclusive analysis from the environmental nonprofit Madre Brava, only 0.4 percent of climate coverage in US, UK, and European English-language news outlets mention meat and livestock. Madre Brava also polled US and Great Britain residents and found they underestimated animal agriculture’s environmental impact.  Finding hope in Climate Week’s Food Day   A lot of climate news coverage — including this story — is depressing and fatalistic, so I’ll try to end on a hopeful note. I felt a bit of this strange emotion at Food Day, a Climate Week event organized by Tilt Collective, a philanthropic climate foundation advocating for plant-rich diets. I’ve attended a lot of conferences on shifting humanity toward more plant-based diets, and I usually end up seeing a lot of the same people. That wasn’t the case at Food Day. There were a lot of unrecognizable faces — people from climate foundations, environmental nonprofits, government agencies, and universities — all eager to take on this big, challenging, fascinating problem, however intimidating it may be.  The following day, I attended a climate journalism event hosted by Sentient, a nonprofit news outlet that covers meat and the environment. Similarly, the room was packed with journalists and communications professionals, most of whom don’t cover these issues but were there to learn about them. These events — and the few others that centered on plant-based foods — were overshadowed by the meat industry’s Climate Week presence. But the events did suggest that there’s growing acceptance that we must change the way we eat, and that time is running out to do something about it. That’s not enough, but it’s better than nothing. Given the state of our politics and environmental policy, that’s maybe the best one can hope for.  

Climate
Agriculture
Culture

In First Address on Climate Change, Pope Leo Signals Continuity With Francis—and Opposition to Trump

Pope Leo on Wednesday spoke before a slowly melting chunk of glacial ice in Vatican City in his first address on climate change. On a stage adorned with ferns and lush plants, Leo addressed a crowd of roughly 1,000 attendees representing Indigenous groups and environmental organizations across the world. The remarks were the strongest signal […]

The pontiff called on people all over the world to demand action on climate from their governments. Right-wing pundits in the U.S. immediately denounced his message as “woke.”By Carl David Goette-LuciakPope Leo on Wednesday spoke before a slowly melting chunk of glacial ice in Vatican City in his first address on climate change. On a stage adorned with ferns and lush plants, Leo addressed a crowd of roughly 1,000 attendees representing Indigenous groups and environmental organizations across the world. The remarks were the strongest signal yet that the new pope intends to continue his predecessor’s legacy on climate issues, placing the Catholic Church squarely in the fight against global warming. 

Climate
Indigenous

A Recipe for Avoiding 15 Million Deaths a Year and Climate Disaster Is Fixing Food, Scientists Say

Scientists are presenting new evidence that the worst effects of climate change can’t be avoided without a major transformation of food systems

Their conclusion: Without substantial changes to the food system, the worst effects of climate change will be unavoidable, even if humans successfully switch to cleaner energy.“If we do not transition away from the unsustainable food path we’re on today, we will fail on the climate agenda. We will fail on the biodiversity agenda. We will fail on food security. We’ll fail on so many pathways,” said study co-author Johan Rockström, who leads the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.The commission's first report in 2019 was regarded as a “really monumental landmark study” for its willingness to take food system reform seriously while factoring in human and environmental health, said Adam Shriver, director of wellness and nutrition at the Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement. Key points from the latest report: A ‘planetary health diet’ could avert 15 million deaths every year The first EAT-Lancet report proposed a “planetary health diet” centered on grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes. The update maintains that to improve their health while also reducing global warming, it's a good idea for people to eat one serving each of animal protein and dairy per day while limiting red meat to about once a week. This particularly applies to people in developed nations who disproportionately contribute to climate change and have more choices about the foods they eat.The dietary recommendations were based on data about risks of preventable diseases like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, not environmental criteria. Human and planetary health happen to be in alignment, the researchers said.Rockström said it may seem “boring” for an analysis to reach the same conclusion six years later, but he finds this reassuring because food science is a rapidly moving field with many big studies and improving analytics.Food is one of the most deeply personal choices a person can make, and “the health component touches everyone’s heart,” Rockström said. While tackling global challenges is complicated, what individuals can do is relatively straightforward, like reducing meat consumption without eliminating it altogether.“People associate what they eat with identity” and strict diets can scare people off, but even small changes help, said Emily Cassidy, a research associate with climate science nonprofit Project Drawdown. She wasn’t involved with the research. Our food choices could push the planet past a tipping point The researchers looked beyond climate change and greenhouse gas emissions to factors including biodiversity, land use, water quality and agricultural pollution — and concluded that food systems are the biggest culprit in pushing Earth to the brink of thresholds for a livable planet.The report is “super comprehensive” in its scope, said Kathleen Merrigan, a professor of food systems at Arizona State University who also wasn’t involved with the research. It goes deep enough to show how farming and labor practices, consumption habits and other aspects of food production are interconnected — and could be changed, she said. “It’s like we’ve had this slow awakening to the role of food” in discussions about planetary existence, Merrigan said. Changing worldwide diets alone could lead to a 15% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, because the production of meat, particularly red meat, requires releasing a lot of planet-warming gases, researchers concluded. Increased crop productivity, reductions in food waste and other improvements could bump that to 20%, the report said.Cassidy said that if the populations of high- and middle-income countries were to limit beef and lamb consumption to about one serving a week, as recommended in this latest EAT-Lancet report, they could reduce emissions equal to Russia's annual emissions total. Incorporating justice in an unequal world Meanwhile, the report concludes that nearly half the world's population is being denied adequate food, a healthy environment or decent work in the food system. Ethnic minorities, Indigenous peoples, women and children and people in conflict zones all face specific risks to their human rights and access to food.With United Nations climate talks around the corner in November, Rockström and other researchers hope leaders in countries around the world will incorporate scientific perspectives about the food system into their national policies. To do otherwise “takes us in a direction that makes us more and more fragile,” he said.“I mean both in terms of supply of food, but also in terms of health and in terms of stability of our environments,” Rockström said. “And this is a recipe to make societies weaker and weaker.”The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate
Food
Animals

Study Shows the World Is Far More Ablaze Now With Damaging Fires Than in the 1980s

A new study shows that the world's most damaging wildfires are happening four times more often now compared to the 1980s

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth’s nastiest and costliest wildfires are blazing four times more often now than they did in the 1980s because of human-caused climate change and people moving closer to wildlands, a new study found.A study in the journal Science looks at global wildfires, not by acres burned which is the most common measuring stick, but by the harder to calculate economic and human damage they cause. The study concluded there has been a “climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires.”A team of Australian, American and German fire scientists calculated the 200 most damaging fires since 1980 based on the percentage of damage to the country's Gross Domestic Product at the time, taking inflation into account. The frequency of these events has increased about 4.4 times from 1980 to 2023, said study lead author Calum Cunningham, a pyrogeographer at the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that we do have a major wildfire crisis on our hands,” Cunningham said.About 43% of the 200 most damaging fires occurred in the last 10 years of the study. In the 1980s, the globe averaged two of these catastrophic fires a year and a few times hit four a year. From 2014 to 2023, the world averaged nearly nine a year, including 13 in 2021. It noted that the count of these devastating infernos sharply increased in 2015, which “coincided with increasingly extreme climatic conditions.” Though the study date ended in 2023, the last two years have been even more extreme, Cunningham said.Cunningham said often researchers look at how many acres a fire burns as a measuring stick, but he called that flawed because it really doesn't show the effect on people, with area not mattering as much as economics and lives. Hawaii's Lahaina fire wasn't big, but it burned a lot of buildings and killed a lot of people so it was more meaningful than one in sparsely populated regions, he said.“We need to be targeting the fires that matter. And those are the fires that cause major ecological destruction because they’re burning too intensely,” Cunningham said. But economic data is difficult to get with many countries keeping that information private, preventing global trends and totals from being calculated. So Cunningham and colleagues were able to get more than 40 years of global economic date from insurance giant Munich Re and then combine it with the public database from International Disaster Database, which isn't as complete but is collected by the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.The study looked at “fire weather” which is hot, dry and windy conditions that make extreme fires more likely and more dangerous and found that those conditions are increasing, creating a connection to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.“We’ve firstly got that connection that all the disasters by and large occurred during extreme weather. We’ve also got a strong trend of those conditions becoming more common as a result of climate change. That’s indisputable,” Cunningham said. “So that’s a line of evidence there to say that climate change is having a significant effect on at least creating the conditions that are suitable for a major fire disaster.”If there was no human-caused climate change, the world would still have devastating fires, but not as many, he said: “We’re loading the dice in a sense by increasing temperatures.”There are other factors. People are moving closer to fire-prone areas, called the wildland-urban interface, Cunningham said. And society is not getting a handle on dead foliage that becomes fuel, he said. But those factors are harder to quantify compared to climate change, he said."This is an innovative study in terms of the data sources employed, and it mostly confirms common sense expectations: fires causing major fatalities and economic damage tend to be those in densely populated areas and to occur during the extreme fire weather conditions that are becoming more common due to climate change," said Jacob Bendix, a geography and environment professor at Syracuse University who studies fires, but wasn't part of this research team.Not only does the study makes sense, but it's a bad sign for the future, said Mike Flannigan, a fire researcher at Thompson Rivers University in Canada. Flannigan, who wasn't part of research, said: "As the frequency and intensity of extreme fire weather and drought increases the likelihood of disastrous fires increases so we need to do more to be better prepared."The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate
Crisis
Science

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In Pursuit of Passive

Follows the construction of the first net-zero, passive house built in the Greater Tetons-Yellowstone region near Jackson, WY, while explaining the Passive House building approach for designing and constructing more sustainable buildings and exploring the many associated climate and energy performance benefits. Features the home’s designers – Lindsey Love and Lindsay Schack, co-founders of a sustainable architecture and design firm based out of Bozeman, MT and Driggs, ID – along with building and climate experts.

Energy
Solutions
Climate

Voices of Transition

Voices of Transition is an enthusiastic documentary on farmer- and community-led responses to food insecurity in a scenario of climate change, peak oil, and economic crisis. Concrete examples from Cuba, France, and the United Kingdom tell of a future society where our monoculture deserts will be restored to living soil, where fields will be introduced into our cities, and where independence from oil will help us live a richer, more fulfilling life.

Agriculture
Food
Climate

CO2? CO-Nee!

Joep van Dijk is a passionate climate scientist. He likes to search for extreme examples that show how life can be lived sustainably. This documentary follows Joep on his CO2-neutral journey from Amsterdam to the United States of America and shows how this choice inspires himself and others to live a climate conscious life.

Climate
CO2
Sustainable

Can Hydroponic Farming Help Reduce the Effects of Climate Change?

"Can Hydroponic Farming Help Reduce the Effects of Climate Change?" is an entertaining and educational short film. Rachel and her remarkable robot companion, Rex, witness the dire consequences of climate change through news reports of devastating natural disasters. When Rex encounters an alien emissary, he embarks on a journey to a ruined world where pollution and climate change led to the collapse of an entire civilization. Returning to Earth the three main causes of global warming are reveal—electricity production, transportation, and wasteful agriculture—and stress the importance of transitioning to clean energy sources, electric transport, and hydroponic farming. Rex takes on the mission of educating robots and humans alike about combating climate change. The film ends with a global commitment to address the crisis and a poignant celebration of Rex's role in this vital endeavor, reminding us of the urgency to protect our planet from climate catastrophe.

Conservation
Education
Climate

The Whale Guitar: Instrument of Change

Inspired by Herman Melville's epic tale, "Moby-Dick or The Whale", a late-blooming singer/songwriter and former toy designer, Jen Long, acts on a startling vision and commissions the design and build of a remarkable custom electric guitar. It's body is "The Whale" itself as it snags the mad Captain Ahab in the tangled ropes of his own obsession, and prepares to launch a boat of his whalers to their doom. The entire guitar reinterprets Melville's tale as an Anthropocene climate change warning, with the whale representing the seas and storms of climate change arising on this "third day" of late stage capitalism. Hundreds of guitarists, including J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., and Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females, have played and signed this "Instrument of Change" to amplify the alarm to turn our ship of over-production and over-consumption around while there is still time. As the embroidered strap featuring Starbuck's last words implores: "oh! Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist."

Music
Activism
Climate

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