Big Meat and Big Dairy spend pittances on cutting emissions

They actually spend considerably more on greenwashing.

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.

The meat and dairy sector – responsible for over 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – has come under increasing pressure in recent years to tackle major climate harms...

None of the companies in the report had targets to cut emissions that aligned with guidance from UN experts.

The report found that the sector failed to take action on tackling emissions, while also spending millions on marketing sustainability claims. Companies have seen a spate of greenwashing allegations in recent years, with multiple firms forced to pull misleading ads – including Brazilian meat giant JBS, which last year was ordered by the U.S. advertising watchdog to stop making “net zero” claims. - DeSmog

Drug-based deportations up, even when the drug is no longer illegal

You can click to the actual report from the linked webpage.

A new joint report from Human Rights Watch and the Drug Policy Alliance shows thousands of people are being deported every year for drug offenses that in many cases no longer exist under state laws, harming and separating immigrant families.

Punitive federal immigration laws separate families, destabilize communities, and terrorize noncitizens, all while overdose deaths have risen and drugs have become more potent and available. - Drug Policy Alliance

Hawai'i bans seabed mining

Would-be miners will of course scurry, shrieking, to the courts. But ultimately this SCOTUS is more or less partial to states' rights, so we'll see.

On July 9, Governor Josh Green signed the Hawai’i Seabed Mining Prevention Act (SB 2575) into law, following the bill’s successful passage in the Hawaii Senate and Assembly. The new law prohibits the mining, extraction, and removal of minerals from the seabed in Hawai‘i’s marine waters while allowing exceptions for beach replenishment and scientific research – aligning with precautionary principles and protecting Native Hawaiian rights. Surfrider’s Hawai’i chapters supported the bill through public education and grassroots advocacy.

While the ban only covers waters out to three miles from shore from Hawaiʻi, it reflects a growing opposition to deep-sea mining across the globe. Industry interest in seabed mining is exploding, but government oversight in international waters remains severely lacking. The United Nations has designated the International Seabed Authority to govern activities, but they have limited authority and have yet to establish regulations or a scientific review process. The passage of the Hawaii bill is indicative of increasing pushback from U.S. states, countries, Indigenous peoples, and the public to seabed mining proposals in the world’s ocean. - Surfrider

The IRA isn't perfect, but it's doing plenty of good

They had to throw a lot of crap, like nuclear and pipelines, into it to get it passed. But the good stuff is working.

The Inflation Reduction Act turns two in August, and the potential impact of the legislation is increasingly coming into view as federal guidance is issued on the law’s provisions and its tax incentives increasingly spur private investment.

So far this year, 41 major clean energy projects and $12.6 billion in private investment have been announced, according to business group E2, and 2024 has seen the IRS issue final guidance for the IRA’s prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements as well as its tax credit transferability mechanism. - Utility Dive

Community solar is getting it done

Now if Big Energy would quit trying to hinder it.

Community solar allows customers to reap electric bill savings by subscribing to a share of a local solar project, rather than installing their own array. It’s an arrangement that ideally makes the benefits of solar more accessible to people who live in rental or multifamily housing and those who just can’t afford the upfront cost of rooftop systems. Forty-two states have community solar projects in place — but the precise nature of who has benefited remained unclear. Until now.

A June study by researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that analyzed data from 11 states found that people who adopt community solar are 6.1 times more likely to live in multifamily buildings, are 4.4 times more likely to rent, and earn 23 percent less annual income than rooftop solar adopters, who skew wealthy.

“Community solar is delivering on its promise,” said Eric O’Shaughnessy, the lead author of the peer-reviewed study, an affiliate at LBNL, and a renewable energy research analyst at Clean Kilowatts. - Canary Media

The Gulf dead zone is still big and dead

There's been no real progress. Big Ag, among others, has seen to that.

The Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, a collaboration of state, federal and tribal agencies charged with controlling fertilizer pollution, told Congress last fall that nitrogen loads in the Mississippi River basin decreased 23% from the baseline period to 2021.

But the five-year running average – which accounts for extremely wet and dry years more common with climate change – tells a different story. By that measure, nitrogen is only slightly below baseline and well above the 20% target. Phosphorus loads worsened since the baseline period.

The oxygen-deprived ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf is predicted to be 5,827 square miles this summer, 5% larger than average, according to a forecast last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Two long-time Gulf researchers predict a smaller ‘dead zone’, but only because of warming ocean temperatures, not because of progress reducing nutrients in the Mississippi River basin. - Investigate Midwest