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More than £494bn subsidies a year are harmful to the climate, says report

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Wednesday, September 18, 2024

More than $650bn (£494bn) a year in public subsidies goes to fossil fuel companies, intensive agriculture and other harmful industries in the developing world, new data has shown.The subsidies entrench high greenhouse gas emissions and are fuelling the destruction of the natural world, according to a report from the charity ActionAid.Developed countries are also actively subsidising such harmful activities. The UK, for instance, devotes about $7.3bn a year to effective subsidies for fossil fuels.Taken altogether, the sums involved in the developing world would be enough to pay for the education of all children in sub-Saharan Africa three and a half times over, each year.By contrast, developing countries are receiving only a fraction of those sums in climate finance, which would help them to move away from dirty and polluting industries towards a clean and low-carbon economy. Renewable energy projects in the developing world are receiving 40 times less than the fossil fuel sector, the analysis found.Subsidies for dirty industries and intensive agriculture have for decades been one of the most intractable obstacles to shifting the global economy to a low-carbon footing. The International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and other institutions have repeatedly called for a reduction in these subsidies.However, some of them are used to benefit the poor or to soften the blow of price rises or other shocks. That was the case in recent years in the UK when energy prices rose, prompting the government to help households with an energy price guarantee. Other countries made similar moves, which, ironically, along with the soaring prices helped fossil fuel companies to an unprecedented bonanza, much of which is being re-invested in new oil and gas exploration instead of clean and renewable energy.But in many countries, subsidies are directed towards industries regarded as politically important, or which have powerful lobbies.ActionAid analysts, describing their findings in a report entitled How the Finance Flows: Corporate capture of public finance fuelling the climate crisis in the global south, published on Wednesday, said many of the subsidies were owing to “corporate capture” of the government and public institutions.“This report exposes wealthy corporations’ parasitic behaviour,” said Arthur Larok, the secretary general of ActionAid International. “They are draining the life out of the global south by siphoning public funds and fuelling the climate crisis.”But he blamed governments in rich countries too. “Sadly the promises of climate finance by the global north are as hollow as the empty rhetoric they have been uttering for decades,” he said. “It is time for this circus to end. We need genuine commitments to ending the climate crisis.”ActionAid also found it was not necessary for developing countries to adopt the high-carbon and intensive agricultural practices that have destroyed nature and created the climate crisis, as developing countries could move swiftly to a low-carbon model that would still enable them to grow and prosper.The authors called for an end to destructive subsidies, more public finance from rich countries to be directed towards low-carbon efforts in the developing world, and for more stringent regulation of the banking sector that would require minimum standards for human rights, and social and environmental considerations, before finance is directed towards destructive industries.

ActionAid says ‘parasitic behaviour’ is fuelling the climate crisis and represents ‘corporate capture’ of public financeMore than $650bn (£494bn) a year in public subsidies goes to fossil fuel companies, intensive agriculture and other harmful industries in the developing world, new data has shown.The subsidies entrench high greenhouse gas emissions and are fuelling the destruction of the natural world, according to a report from the charity ActionAid. Continue reading...

More than $650bn (£494bn) a year in public subsidies goes to fossil fuel companies, intensive agriculture and other harmful industries in the developing world, new data has shown.

The subsidies entrench high greenhouse gas emissions and are fuelling the destruction of the natural world, according to a report from the charity ActionAid.

Developed countries are also actively subsidising such harmful activities. The UK, for instance, devotes about $7.3bn a year to effective subsidies for fossil fuels.

Taken altogether, the sums involved in the developing world would be enough to pay for the education of all children in sub-Saharan Africa three and a half times over, each year.

By contrast, developing countries are receiving only a fraction of those sums in climate finance, which would help them to move away from dirty and polluting industries towards a clean and low-carbon economy. Renewable energy projects in the developing world are receiving 40 times less than the fossil fuel sector, the analysis found.

Subsidies for dirty industries and intensive agriculture have for decades been one of the most intractable obstacles to shifting the global economy to a low-carbon footing. The International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and other institutions have repeatedly called for a reduction in these subsidies.

However, some of them are used to benefit the poor or to soften the blow of price rises or other shocks. That was the case in recent years in the UK when energy prices rose, prompting the government to help households with an energy price guarantee. Other countries made similar moves, which, ironically, along with the soaring prices helped fossil fuel companies to an unprecedented bonanza, much of which is being re-invested in new oil and gas exploration instead of clean and renewable energy.

But in many countries, subsidies are directed towards industries regarded as politically important, or which have powerful lobbies.

ActionAid analysts, describing their findings in a report entitled How the Finance Flows: Corporate capture of public finance fuelling the climate crisis in the global south, published on Wednesday, said many of the subsidies were owing to “corporate capture” of the government and public institutions.

“This report exposes wealthy corporations’ parasitic behaviour,” said Arthur Larok, the secretary general of ActionAid International. “They are draining the life out of the global south by siphoning public funds and fuelling the climate crisis.”

But he blamed governments in rich countries too. “Sadly the promises of climate finance by the global north are as hollow as the empty rhetoric they have been uttering for decades,” he said. “It is time for this circus to end. We need genuine commitments to ending the climate crisis.”

ActionAid also found it was not necessary for developing countries to adopt the high-carbon and intensive agricultural practices that have destroyed nature and created the climate crisis, as developing countries could move swiftly to a low-carbon model that would still enable them to grow and prosper.

The authors called for an end to destructive subsidies, more public finance from rich countries to be directed towards low-carbon efforts in the developing world, and for more stringent regulation of the banking sector that would require minimum standards for human rights, and social and environmental considerations, before finance is directed towards destructive industries.

Read the full story here.

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Biden Administration Nears Approval for Ioneer's Nevada Lithium Mine

By Ernest Scheyder(Reuters) - The Biden administration on Thursday published a key environmental report for ioneer's Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine in...

(Reuters) - The Biden administration on Thursday published a key environmental report for ioneer's Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine in Nevada, the last step needed before approving what would become one of the largest U.S. sources of the electric vehicle battery metal.The move comes after a review process of more than six years and as part of Washington's ongoing efforts to boost domestic critical minerals production and offset China's market dominance. If approved, the mine would be the first lithium project permitted by Biden officials.The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published a final environmental impact statement that sets in motion a review period of at least 30 days before a record of decision - essentially a mine's permit - can be issued. The BLM also published an opinion on how a rare flower at the mine site can best be protected.Shares of ioneer trading in New York jumped 11% on Thursday morning.The proposed mine, roughly 225 miles (362 km) north of Las Vegas, contains one of North America's largest sources of lithium and could produce enough of the metal to power roughly 370,000 EVs each year. Ford Motor signed a binding supply agreement in 2022 with ioneer.The U.S. Geological Survey has labeled lithium a critical mineral vital for the U.S. economy and national security. As part of a push to boost domestic production, the U.S. Department of Energy last year said it would lend ioneer up to $700 million to develop the mine.The site is also home to the Tiehm's buckwheat flower, which is found nowhere else on the planet and was declared an endangered species in 2021. Some conservation groups thus oppose ioneer's project, making it a lightning rod in the debate over whether biodiversity matters more than the fight against climate change.The BLM said on Thursday that it worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the company to craft "significant protections for the plant," including changing mine design plans and a formal protection plan."We're steadfast in our commitment to be responsible stewards of our public lands as we deliver the promise of a clean energy economy," said BLM director Tracy Stone-Manning.The 30-day review process for the environmental report is a routine part of the federal permitting process.Bernard Rowe, ioneer's CEO, said the report reflects the company's willingness to work with the government to protect the flower and develop a domestic source of lithium."It's a testament to the approach that we took, and that was one of engagement, addressing the sensitive issues, seeing if we can come up with solutions. And we've done that," Rowe told Reuters.The mysterious death of more than 17,000 flowers near the mine site in 2020 sparked allegations from conservationists of a "premeditated" attack. Australia-based ioneer denied harming the flowers. The U.S. government later blamed thirsty squirrels.South Africa's Sibanye Stillwater agreed in 2021 to buy half of the project for $490 million, but only once ioneer obtains final permits.(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Conor Humphries)Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.

Climate

Conservation

Energy

The Odd Arctic Military Projects Spawned by the Cold War

Many offbeat research efforts were doomed to fail, from atomic subways to a city under the ice.

In recent years, the Arctic has become a magnet for climate change anxiety, with scientists nervously monitoring the Greenland ice sheet for signs of melting and fretting over rampant environmental degradation. It wasn’t always that way. At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, as the fear of nuclear Armageddon hung over American and Soviet citizens, idealistic scientists and engineers saw the vast Arctic region as a place of unlimited potential for creating a bold new future. Greenland emerged as the most tantalizing proving ground for their research. Scientists and engineers working for and with the U.S. military cooked up a rash of audacious cold-region projects—some innovative, many spitballed and most quickly abandoned. They were the stuff of science fiction: disposing of nuclear waste by letting it melt through the ice; moving people, supplies and missiles below the ice using subways, some perhaps atomic-powered; testing hovercraft to zip over impassable crevasses; making furniture from a frozen mix of ice and soil; and even building a nuclear-powered city under the ice sheet. Today, many of their ideas, and the fever dreams that spawned them, survive only in the yellowed pages and covers of magazines like Real (billed as “the exciting magazine for men”) and dozens of obscure Army technical reports. Karl and Bernhard Philberth, both physicists and ordained priests, thought Greenland’s ice sheet the perfect repository for nuclear waste. Not all the waste—first they’d reprocess spent reactor fuel so that the long-lived nuclides would be recycled. The remaining, mostly short-lived radionuclides would be fused into glass or ceramic and surrounded by a few inches of lead for transport. They imagined several million radioactive medicine balls about 16 inches in diameter scattered over a small area of the ice sheet (about 300 square miles) far from the coast. Because the balls were so radioactive, and thus warm, they would melt their way into the ice, each with the energy of a bit less than two dozen 100-watt incandescent light bulbs—a reasonable leap from Karl Philberth’s expertise designing heated ice drills that worked by melting their way through glaciers. The hope was that by the time the ice carrying the balls emerged at the coast thousands or tens of thousands of years later, the radioactivity would have decayed away. One of the physicists later reported that the idea was shown to him by God, in a vision. A U.S. Air Force C-119 Flying Boxcar delivering a bulldozer to northern Greenland U.S. Air Force Of course, the plan had plenty of unknowns and led to heated discussion at scientific meetings when it was presented—what, for example, would happen if the balls got crushed or caught up in flows of meltwater near the base of the ice sheet? And would the radioactive balls warm the ice so much that the ice flowed faster at the base, speeding the balls’ trip to the coast? Logistical challenges, scientific doubt and politics sunk the project. Producing millions of radioactive glass balls wasn’t yet practical, and the Danes, who at the time controlled Greenland, were never keen on allowing nuclear waste disposal on what they saw as their island. Some skeptics even worried about climate change melting the ice. Nonetheless, the Philberths made visits to the ice sheet and published peer-reviewed scientific papers about their waste dream. Arctic military imagination predates the Cold War. In 1943, that imagination spawned the Kee Bird—a mythical creature. An early description appears in a poem by Aviation Cadet Warren M. Kniskern published in the Army’s weekly magazine for enlisted men, Yank. The bird taunts men across the Arctic with its call: “Kee-Kee-Keerist, but it’s cold!” Its name was widely applied. Best-known was a B-29 bomber named Kee Bird that took off from Alaska with a heading toward the North Pole, but then got badly lost and put down on a frozen Greenland lake in 1947 as it ran out of fuel. An ambitious plan to fly the nearly pristine plane off the ice in the mid-1990s was thwarted by fire. But the Kee Bird lineage was by no means extinct. In 1959, the Detroit Free Press, under the headline “The Crazy, Mixed-Up Keebird Can’t Fly,” reported that the Army was testing a new over-snow vehicle. This Keebird was not a flying machine but rather a snowmobile/tractor/airplane chimera that would cut travel time across the ice sheet by a factor of ten or more. Unlike similar but utilitarian contraptions of the 1930s, developed in the central plains of North America and Russia and equipped with short skis, boxy bodies and propellors that pushed them along, this new single-propped version was built for sheer speed. The prototype hit 40 miles per hour at the Army’s testing facility in Houghton, Michigan, thanks to the “almost friction-proof” Teflon coating on its around 25-foot-long skis and a 300-horsepower airplane engine that spun the propellor. The goal was for the machine to hit 70 miles per hour, but after several failed tests, and a few technical publications, it warranted only the one syndicated newspaper article written by Jean Hanmer Pearson, who was a military pilot in World War II before she became a journalist and one of the first women to set foot on the South Pole. The Soviet version, known as an “airsleigh”, was short, stout and armed with weapons for Arctic combat. There’s no record the Army’s Keebird carrying weapons. In 1964, the Army tested a distant relative of the Keebird in Greenland. The Carabao, which floated over the ground and over water or snow on a cushion of air, was developed by Bell Aerosystems Company and had been previously tested in tropical locales, including southern Florida. It carried two men and 1,000 pounds of cargo, and had a top speed of 100 miles per hour. The air cushion vehicle skimmed over crevasses but was grounded by even moderate winds, an all-too-common occurrence on the ice sheet. U.S. Army test of the Carabao air cushion vehicle over snow in Greenland, in the 1960s U.S. Army Another problem: The craft went uphill fine, but going downhill was another matter, because it had no brakes. Unsurprisingly, the Carabao—its namesake a Philippine water buffalo—proved to be unsuited for ice travel despite the claim that: “All this is no mere pipe-dream following an overdose of science fiction. The acknowledged experts are thinking hard about the future use of hovercraft in polar travel.” Despite all the hard thinking, hovercraft have yet to catch on and are still rarely used for Arctic travel and research. In 1956, Colliers, a weekly magazine once read by millions of Americans, published an article titled “Subways Under the Icecap.” It was a sensationalized report of Army activities in Greenland and opened with a photograph of an enlisted soldier holding a pick. Behind him, a 250-foot tunnel, mostly excavated by hand and lit only by lanterns, probed the Greenland ice sheet. Colliers included a simple map and a stylistic cut-away showing an imaginary rail line slicing across northwestern Greenland. But the Army’s ice tunnels ended only about a thousand feet from where they started—doomed by the fragility of their icy walls, which crept inward up to several feet each year, closing the tunnels like a healing wound. The subway never happened. That didn’t stop the Army from proposing Project Iceworm—a top-secret plan that might represent peak weirdness. A network of tunnels would crisscross northern Greenland over an area about the size of Alabama. Hundreds of missiles, topped with nuclear warheads, would roll through the tunnels on trains, pop up at firing points and, if needed, respond to Soviet aggression by many annihilating many Eastern Bloc targets. Greenland was much closer to Europe than North America, allowing a prompt strategic response, and the snow provided cover and blast protection. Iceworm would be a giant under-snow shell game of sorts, which the Army would power using portable nuclear reactors. A tunnel cut into the Greenland ice sheet by the Army in the 1950s, mostly using hand tools. The tunnel was a prototype for a subway system—in part to move nuclear missiles under the ice—that never came to fruition. U.S. Army via United Press Except it wasn’t a game. The Army hired the Spur and Siding Constructors Company of Detroit to scope out and price the rail project. A 1965 report, complete with maps of stations and sidings where trains would sit when not in use, concluded that contractors could build a railroad stretching 22 miles over land and 138 miles inside the ice sheet for a mere $47 million (or roughly $470 million today). The company suggested studying nuclear-powered locomotives because they reduced the risk of heat from diesel engines melting the frozen tunnels. Never mind that no one had ever built a nuclear locomotive or run rails through tunnels crossing constantly shifting crevasses. But in the end, Iceworm amounted only to a single railcar, 1,300 feet of track and an abandoned military truck on railroad wheels. The split personality of Arctic permafrost frustrated Army engineers. When frozen in the winter, it was stable but difficult to excavate. But in the summer, under the warmth of 24-hour sunshine, the top foot or two of soil melted, creating an impassable quagmire for people and vehicles. When the permafrost under airstrips melted, the pavement buckled, and the resulting potholes could damage landing gear. The military responded by painting Arctic runways white to reflect the constant summer sunshine and keep the underlying permafrost cool—a potentially good idea grounded in physics that was stymied by the fact that the paint reduced the braking ability of planes. The military engineers, ever optimistic, put a more positive spin on permafrost. Trying to use native materials in the Arctic, where transportation costs were exceptionally high, they made a synthetic version of permafrost that they nicknamed permacrete—a mash-up of the words permafrost and concrete. First, they mixed the optimal amount of water and dry soil. Then, after allowing the mix to freeze solid in molds, they made beams, bricks, tunnel linings and even a chair. But permacrete never caught on as a building material, likely because one warm day was all it would take to turn even the most robust construction project into a puddle of mud. The Army’s most ambitious Arctic dream actually came true. In 1959, engineers began building Camp Century, known by many as the City Under the Ice. A 138-mile ice road led to the camp that was about 100 miles inland from the edge of the ice sheet. Almost a vertical mile of ice separated the camp from the rock and soil below. Camp Century contained several dozen massive trenches, one more than a thousand feet long, all carved into the ice sheet by giant snowplows and then covered with metal arches and more snow. Inside were heated bunkrooms for several hundred men, a mess hall and a portable nuclear power plant. The first of its kind, the reactor provided unlimited hot showers and plenty of electrical power. The camp was ephemeral. In less than a decade, flowing ice crushed Century—but not before scientists and engineers drilled the first deep ice core that eventually penetrated the full thickness of Greenland’s ice sheet. In 1966, the last season the Army occupied Camp Century, drillers recovered more than 11 feet of frozen soil from beneath the ice—another first. One module of a portable nuclear reactor being moved into Camp Century. The first of its kind, the reactor provided unlimited hot showers and plenty of electrical power to the camp. Jon Fresch / U.S. Army Little studied, the Camp Century soil vanished in the early 1990s, but it was rediscovered by Danish scientists in the late 2010s, safely frozen in Copenhagen. Samples revealed that the soil contained abundant plant and insect fossils, unambiguous evidence that large parts of Greenland were free of ice some 400,000 years ago, when the Earth was about the same temperature as today but had almost 30 percent less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the half century or so since the demise of Camp Century, global warming has begun melting large amounts of Greenland’s ice. The past ten years are the warmest on record, and the ice sheet is shrinking a bit more every year. That’s science, not fiction, and a world away from the heady optimism of the Cold War dreamers who once envisioned a future embedded in ice.Paul Bierman is a geoscientist who teaches at the University of Vermont. He is the author, most recently, of When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth’s Tumultuous History and Perilous Future, a study of Greenland, the Cold War, and the collection and analysis of the world’s first deep ice core. Bierman’s research in Greenland is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article. Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

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CO2

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Methane Levels Still Rising, Despite Global Methane Pledge

Satellite data shows the U.S. releasing more and more of the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, researchers said, despite pledges to cut back.

The United States’ booming fossil-fuel industry continues to emit more and more planet-warming methane into the atmosphere, new research showed, despite a U.S.-led effort to encourage other countries to cut emissions globally.Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases, and “one of the worst performers in our study is the U.S., even though it was an instigator of the Global Methane Pledge,” said Antoine Halff, the co-founder of Kayrros, the environmental data company issuing the report. “Those are red flags.”Much of the world’s efforts to combat climate change focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which result largely from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, and whose heat-trapping particles can linger in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. But methane’s effects on the climate — which have earned it the moniker “super pollutant” — have become better appreciated recently, with the advent of more advanced leak-detection technology, including satellites.Unlike carbon dioxide, methane emissions don’t derive from consumption, but rather from production and transportation of the gas, which is the main component of what is commonly known as natural gas. Methane can leak from storage facilities, pipelines and tankers, and is also often deliberately released. Methane is also released from livestock and landfills, and occurs naturally in wetlands.Kayrros focused on fossil fuel facilities, where the practices of “venting,” or the intentional release of large quantities of methane, and “flaring,” which is when it is intentionally burned off, are both common. Kayrros used satellite data combined with artificial intelligence analysis of the data to draw its conclusions.

Climate

CO2

Technology

Climate change is sending ticks into new areas. Georgia researchers are on it.

They've mapped an welcome guest: the lone star tick.

On a blisteringly hot, sunny day this summer, Emory University researcher Arabella Lewis made her way through the underbrush in a patch of woods in Putnam County, Georgia, about an hour southeast of Atlanta. She was after something most people try desperately to avoid while in the woods: ticks. “Sometimes you gotta get back in the weeds to get the best ticks,” she explained, sweeping a large square of white flannel along the forest floor. The idea was that the ticks could sense the movement of the fabric and smell the carbon dioxide Lewis breathed out and would grab onto the flannel flag. “My favorite thing about them is their little grabby front arms, the way that they like wave them around, like they’re trying to grab onto things,” said Lewis, who’s been fascinated by ticks since she was a young kid growing up on a farm — and persistently dealing with ticks. “They have these little organs on their hands that smell, so they smell with their hands.” Once a tick jumped aboard her flannel, Lewis picked it up with the tweezers she wore around her neck and deposited it into a labeled vial. Back at the Emory lab, she would test ticks for the Heartland virus. The tick collection and testing is part of an ongoing effort to get a better handle on Georgia’s tick population and the diseases the ticks carry. Earlier this year, Emory scientists published detailed, localized maps of where the state’s most common ticks are likely to show up. Now, they’re tracking emerging diseases like Heartland, a still-rare virus that causes symptoms like fever, fatigue, nausea and diarrhea. Nationwide, vector-borne diseases — that is, illnesses spread by carriers like ticks and mosquitoes — are on the rise, according to the CDC, and climate change is a major factor. Emory University researcher Arabella Lewis uses tweezers to collect a tick off a square of flannel in the woods of Putnam County, Georgia. Matthew Pearson / WABE / Grist “Changes in climate lead to changes in the environment, which result in changes in ecology, incidence and distribution of these diseases,” said Ben Beard, the deputy director of CDC’s vector-borne disease division. There’s a lot at play with vector-borne disease, not all of it climate change-related. These diseases live in animal hosts, so scientists have to consider how climate change is affecting those animals as well as the vector species like ticks. Humans keep encroaching on forested land full of both host animals and ticks, increasing their interactions and potential exposure. As for the ticks themselves, longer summers and milder winters mean they’re coming out earlier and sticking around for longer. The lone star tick, which carries the Heartland virus and has long been widespread across the South and Mid-Atlantic, is expanding north and west as the climate warms. The black legged tick, which transmits Lyme disease, is also expanding its range – especially into areas that have seen significant warming, Beard said. Clayton Aldern / Grist “So all of those things are kind of coming together,” he said. “And so the net effect is you have potentially more people over a broader geographic distribution, and over a longer period of time during the season potentially exposed to the bites of infected ticks.” That’s exactly why the Georgia researchers are trying to get a better handle on ticks and their diseases: so they can help people avoid getting sick. “My hope is that people in these regions that are predicted to have high probability will take more preventative measures when they’re out on hikes, or just out kind of in the yard, just generally interacting with our environment to hopefully prevent them from getting any tick borne diseases,” said Steph Bellman, who led Emory’s lone star tick mapping project. As for the Heartland virus, it’s still largely a mystery, Lewis said. “There’s no treatment at this point other than just kind of taking care of the symptoms,” she said. “It is considered an emerging pathogen, so pretty rare.” More than 60 cases across 14 states had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as of 2022. That’s still a very small number, but scientists want to be ready in case it grows. “We are taking the steps to understand it now so if an increasing human incidence were to happen, we know what can be done,” said Emory environmental sciences professor Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, who leads this research team. They’re establishing a baseline of knowledge and research, he said, so they can stay on top of these diseases as they move and the climate changes. Read Next As ticks spread, the US is getting closer to understanding the true extent of Lyme disease Zoya Teirstein This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change is sending ticks into new areas. Georgia researchers are on it. on Sep 19, 2024.

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Animals

Forests

Tyson Is Sued Over Labeling of ‘Climate-Smart’ Beef

An environmental group said the company, a major food producer, was misleading shoppers with its claims about eco-friendly practices.

A consumer-protection lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges that Tyson Foods is misleading consumers with claims about its efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group, accused the company of taking advantage of the “well-intentioned preferences” of shoppers by making false statements in marketing materials, like saying it was working toward “net-zero” emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and by advertising “climate-smart” beef.Industrialized beef production, the lawsuit contends, will never be “climate-smart” because of the sheer volume of emissions produced in the process of raising cows on an industrial scale. It also argued that the company had shown no evidence of an effort to get to net-zero emissions, a term used by governments and companies to signal their climate goals.“We are taking a stand to protect consumers and to demand transparency in an industry that significantly affects climate change,” Caroline Leary of EWG said in a call with reporters on Wednesday.Tyson, based in Springdale, Ark., declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit. A company statement pointed to its “long history of sustainable practices that embrace good stewardship of our environmental resources.”According to its website, Tyson produces about 20 percent of the beef, pork and chicken in the United States, as well as other foods under brands like Jimmy Dean and Hillshire Farm, and is one of the world’s largest food companies. The company detailed its plans to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 in a 2022 sustainability report.Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

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