Posted on 04/04/2024 6:12:30 AM PDT by Red Badger
“Such litigation shows promise for addressing gaps left by inadequate regulation and for holding major polluters accountable,” Yale researchers says.
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Anew legal analysis in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law proposes filing lawsuits against America’s agriculture industry, following the same legal playbook climate activists are using against the oil industry.
To be sure, climate activists have for years targeted the agriculture industry, particularly methane emission from cattle and their manure.
The United Nations, in fact, has a program dedicated to educating people about how meat production is contributing to climate change.
In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency has a white paper, updated in February, titled, "Practices to Reduce Methane Emissions from Livestock Manure." And articles regularly appear in left-leaning media telling people that giving up meat is a way they do their part to stop what they say is a crisis.
But agriculture, at least until perhaps now, has largely been a secondary target for climate activists, who have set their sights more on the carbon emission of fossil-burning power and manufacturing plants and the estimated 250 million gas-powered automobiles now on U.S. roads.
Justin Tupper, president of the U.S. Cattlemen's Association, told Just The News that activists trying to demonize the cattle industry are a small but loud group. The attention they get, he said, is far larger than the number of people involved, and they are spreading misinformation about the industry.
“I think the facts are in our favor that we don’t contribute to climate change,” Tupper said.
Despite activists’ outcry, meat consumption in the U.S. has only increased. Rather than try to convince people to turn vegetarian or get legislators to clamp down on the livestock industry, activists are looking to the courts to achieve their goals.
Anti-fossil fuel activists have been launching dozens of lawsuits across the U.S. in an effort to force oil companies to pay billions of dollars for natural disasters they claim are caused or made worse from these companies.
The lawsuits are funded by anti-fossil fuel groups that want to hasten a transition away from the use of fossil fuels. As an activist with 350 Massachusetts explained in an opinion piece in 2022, the suits aim to accomplish with fossil fuels what was accomplished with tobacco. The settlements make companies raise the cost of their products, and in turn, people use less of them.
“Rulings against the fossil fuel industry could expedite the energy transition and help states become more climate-resilient,” activist Frederick Hewett wrote.
In a Yale-based analysis, Daina Bray, an animal advocate and clinical lecturer in Law at Ethics & Animals Program at Yale Law School, and co-author Thomas Poston, a third-year law student, argue that lawsuits against the cattle industry could create policies more favorable to their cause.
“Such litigation shows promise for addressing gaps left by inadequate regulation and for holding major polluters accountable,” the researchers explain.
The report points to the lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Tetita James against a large meat packer as an example of legal strategies that can be used against the industry. The study also points to the success of Held v. Montana, which was a suit filed by young people in Montana, who were led by the anti-fossil fuel group Our Children’s Trust, against the state of Montana.
Citing EPA data, the study says that agriculture accounts for 10% of the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock production was about 4.4% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2021.
For comparison, transportation was 28% of total emissions, and electricity production was 25% of emissions.
Agriculture industry experts say this focus on a small quantity of emissions from livestock is misleading and ignores benefits.
Tupper said that cattle graze on grasses that aren’t digestible. This creates a high-protein food supply for human consumption that would otherwise have no nutritional value for the population. The land cattle graze on, he said, isn’t tillable, meaning it’s not suitable for crop production.
Brett Moline, director of public and government affairs for the Wyoming Farm Bureau, told Just The News that the environmental impact of 87 million cows in the U.S. lower than that of the unmanaged bison herds that roamed the Great Plains prior to the 1800s, which had a population of about 60 million.
“Over the last 100 years, we’ve really figured out how to manage livestock to improve the range,” Moline explained.
The cows fertilize the soil on which the grasses grow, Moline said. Their hooves break up the soil, which further facilitates the growth of plants the cows graze on, and this process, he said, sequesters carbon by encouraging plant growth.
Moline said that cattle ranchers are doing alright financially, with cattle prices at historic highs. However, when costs of fertilizer and diesel rise, it can hit their bottom line. A wave of lawsuits would shave their margins thinner, or possibly erase them entirely.
For the Yale researchers, the strategy looks promising.
“If legislators and executive agencies continue to fail to regulate animal agriculture emissions to any meaningful extent … effective climate governance may fall to these litigants and the courts before which they bring their claims,” Bray and Poston write.
Ping you mass polluter you!................😁
These eco-nuts should lead by example and stop eating food.
Ya target Bill Gates
These eco-nuts should lead by example and stop breathing..................
We’re about 7 years behind Europe on this. What you see there now will eventually come here.
It’s all a part of The Plan...................
These “researchers” are themselves frauds and criminals who attack civilizations through their terrorist use of their laughable “research”.
“After years of targeting fossil fuels, climate activists aim their lawfare at agriculture industry”
Let me translate the meaning of the above into English:
NO MORE MEAT.
***in an effort to force oil companies to pay billions of dollars for natural disasters they claim are caused or made worse from these companies. ***
Don’t remember reading of any problems like this when the South had SLAVES hoeing and picking the cotton.
They really want to go back to those days? NO, they are simply trying to extort billions from those companies for imaginary problems.
In Europe, these efforts are very advanced./
Farmers are protesting a lot, being driven out of business.
It is coming here folks!
climate activists aka excrement of civilization
climate activists....unemployed people with no marketable skill set.................
They have been attacking the poultry industry for years now.
Death by a thousand cuts
Berkeley and Sonoma County have ballot initiatives to end cAFO (concentrated animal feeding operations) this includes Family farms
Newsflash: a several thousand acre cornfield 100 miles from a large media center may not be a good place to demonstrate. Much less a soybean farm in Alabama.
Idiots….just where do the liberals think their organic farm to table foods are going to come from when there are no farms? The pipe dream of synthetic foods becomes even more ridiculous when green policies will not allow enough energy to produce anything. Perhaps cannibalism is the answer. Imagine the WEF members dining on loin of Greta Thunberg with fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Idiots….just where do the liberals think their organic farm to table foods are going to come from.
They have no concept of logic indeed.
File away, Socialists! And when you’re hungry because there’s a lack of food, or it’s so expensive that you can’t AFFORD to eat, don’t come crying to me.
No matter how far up the Food Chain you THINK you are, you’re not. YOUR ‘betters’ will still be eating, while you’re doing their dirty work for them and destroying the people that grow/produce the food. Idiots.
P.S. ‘Chuck’ came back from ‘The Spa’ this week Monday. He’s all tucked away in various freezers awaiting our beef-eating enjoyment. All Gave Some, Chuck Gave All. ;)
Back around the late 1800’s early 1900’s ‘beef’ was considered ‘poor peoples’ food and chicken was the preferred protein of the ‘elites’. Thus the phrase ‘Two chickens in every pot.’ used as a political ploy......................
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