Message From the Editor

Just a week ago Sunday, the same day the Earth sizzled to the hottest day ever measured by humans, Joe Biden announced he was withdrawing from the U.S. presidential election. On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris, known for taking on Big Oil when it counts, became the presumptive Democratic nominee for our nation’s highest office.

Will this be a new day for environmentalists? After all, last year at the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, Harris told world leaders that “the urgency of this moment is clear. The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging. And we must make up for lost time.”

She has it right – we are in the fight of our lives against global polluters and the climate crisis. And so many of these polluters cover up their tracks. That’s why this week, we revealed a new report that shows the world’s biggest meat and dairy companies spend just a fraction of their earnings on cutting emissions, despite being among the world’s largest carbon emitters. In fact, major livestock companies spend more on greenwashing ads than they do on cutting emissions, even though they’ve pledged to do the opposite, according to The New Merchants of Doubt.

A lot of people don’t think about (or maybe don’t want to think about!) the fact that cows emit large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions through their burps and farts – and the expansion of the livestock sector is driving emissions as meat consumption grows.

Big Meat and Dairy “claim to be committed to climate solutions while employing deceptive tactics to distract, delay, and derail meaningful action,” said Nusa Urbancic, CEO of Changing Markets Foundation, which released the report. “These tactics mirror those of Big Oil and Big Tobacco, allowing them to continue their harmful practices unchecked.”

We hope Kamala Harris will take on the livestock and dairy industries as much as Big Oil. But sometimes even government regulations fail to speak truth to power. DeSmog’s Julie Dermansky, who has been tracking pollution on the Gulf Coast for years, and Sharon Kelly report that environmental groups are gearing up to sue the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because of rules on pollution from chemical and plastics plants. The groups say the EPA relied too heavily on lowball industry estimates as it sized up the risks to people’s health posed by ethylene oxide (EtO), chloroprene, and other toxic air pollution.

The rules are supposed to reduce dangerous pollution from emitting plants, like the ones found in Texas and Louisiana's Cancer Alley. Check out Dermansky's compelling photographs that illuminate the toxic air that people in those communities have to live with.

Kamala Harris talks about the urgency behind the climate crisis and we have to keep that in mind. From the meat and dairy industry to plastics and chemical plants, it’s time to put our foot down and say, “Enough.”

Send us your story tips or feedback: [email protected]. Want to know what our UK team is up to? Sign up for our UK newsletter. 

Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director

P.S. Readers like you power our journalism dedicated to climate accountability. Can you donate $10 or $20 right now to support more of this essential work?

Image credit:  Andrew Skowron / We Animals Media

Environmental Groups Challenge New Rules on Toxic Air Pollution from Plastic and Chemical Plants

— By Sharon Kelly and Julie Dermansky (6 min. read) —

Environmental groups are teeing up a legal challenge to new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules on pollution from chemical and plastics plants, citing concerns the EPA relied too heavily on lowball industry estimates as it sized up the risks to people’s health posed by ethylene oxide (EtO), chloroprene, and other toxic air pollution.

The EPA just announced the new rules in April, saying they’re intended to “significantly reduce” dangerous pollution from chemical plants and some plastics plants.

World’s Biggest Meat and Dairy Companies Spend More on Ads than Cutting Emissions — New Report

— By Clare Carlile and Brigitte Wear (6 min. read) —

Global meat and dairy giants are investing just a fraction of their revenues into cutting emissions despite being among the world’s largest polluters, according to new estimates. 

Company spending on advertising outstripped that on low-carbon solutions, the report by campaign group Changing Markets Foundation found, as corporations ramped up attempts to win consumers over with their green credentials. 

Dutch and U.S. Climate Deniers Join Forces as Europe Shifts to the Right

— By Nina Tea Zibetti, Alexander Beunder, Merel de Buck and Jilles Mast (9 min) —

“I embrace that high carbon lifestyle […] CO2 is showing huge, huge benefits, and so we should celebrate it,” U.S. climate science denier Gregory Wrightstone tells the audience.

Welcome to Clintel’s fifth anniversary celebration. Here, windmills are referred to as “bird choppers,” and carbon dioxide is not something to fear, but rather a “miracle molecule” that we should emit more of, not less. Apparently, according to Wrightstone, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are now so low that the planet is experiencing a “CO2 famine.”

Labour Urged to Release Cumbria Coal Mine Documents by Ex-Net Zero Tsar

— By Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin (3 min. read) —

Former government net zero tsar Chris Skidmore has called on the new Labour administration to immediately publish the evidence and rationale provided to ministers before they approved a new “net zero” coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria.

Former Conservative MP Skidmore, who authored a landmark report on net zero in 2023, is acting as a witness in a court case brought on behalf of Democracy for Sale that challenges the continued government secrecy around the granting of planning permission for the Whitehaven mine. The case is due to be heard later this summer. 

Tory Leadership Contender Robert Jenrick’s Pro-Coal and Anti-Net Zero Record

— By Adam Barnett and Sam Bright (5 min. read) —

Former Conservative minister Robert Jenrick, who has today entered the race to lead the Tory party, has a growing record of attacks on climate action.

The MP for Newark – who saw a 23.9 percent swing against him in the general election, and served as secretary of state for immigration under former prime minister Rishi Sunak – has attacked what he calls “net zero zealotry”, and has labelled the UK’s net zero target “dangerous fantasy green politics unmoored from reality”. 

From the Climate Disinformation Database: Willie Soon

Willie Soon is an aerospace engineer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and an astronomer. He has continually denied that climate change exists and Greenpeace notes he has received much of his research funding from the oil and gas industry, including  ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and Koch Industries. In 2009, Soon said, “the Sun causes climatic change in the Arctic … It invalidates the hypothesis that CO2 is a major cause of observed climate change – and raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of ‘preventing catastrophic climate change.’”

Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database, Ad & PR Database, and Koch Network Database.