AEP’s Climate War On Big Food

By Paul Homewood

 

h/t Patsy Lacey

  

What is it about otherwise perfectly sane journalists, that they lose all critical faculties when discussing climate change?

 

This is AEP’s latest effort in the Telegraph. It is behind a paywall, and they don’t like me showing the whole piece, but the first bit gives a pretty good clue to the drivel to follow:

 

 

First it was the fossil energy industry. Then came plastics. Now society is turning the screws on agriculture and Big Food. The global land economy generates a quarter of man-made greenhouse emissions in one way or another.

Among them are methane and nitrous oxide, which pack an immediate punch. It is no longer tenable to exempt this behemoth from full accountability.

Farmers and food producers will have to slash emissions like everybody else after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave us 12 years to avert a potential catastrophe.

The safety buffer for our ecosystem is lower than we thought. The limit is 1.5 degrees and we have already used up two thirds of it. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/02/21/agri-tech-will-next-boom-industry-climate-warriors-turn-big/

 

One reader commented that he gave up reading after this introduction, and I can understand why!

So let’s start by dissecting it:

 

 First it was the fossil energy industry-

Society turning the screw? What planet is he on?

In 2017, 85% of the world’s energy came from fossil fuels. On top of this, you can add the use of oil, gas and coal in producing plastics and so on.

Consumption of fossil fuels continues to grow remorselessly, reaching a record high in 2017:

 

BP Energy Review

 

Does that sound as if society is turning the screws? No, I though not.

As for plastics, this is purely a litter problem, and is utterly irrelevant.

Apparently AEP thinks we are now all so concerned about greenhouse emissions from agriculture, that we are going to throw it under a bus, regardless of the consequences.

 

Farmers and food producers will have to slash emissions like everybody else after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave us 12 years to avert a potential catastrophe.

The safety buffer for our ecosystem is lower than we thought. The limit is 1.5 degrees and we have already used up two thirds of it. 

Oh dear, did AEP really believe that piece of fiction from the UN? More to the point, does he think most of the world gives a toss, outside of the climate zealots of the EU?

Has he not realised that the 1.5 degrees is simply a figure pulled out of thin air, because we all refused to be scared by the previous one of 2 degrees?

As for using “two thirds” of it already, maybe he would like to tell us just exactly how our climate, or our ecosystem, is any worse than it was in the 19thC.

 

Here’s some of the other things he has written:

 

This has explosive financial consequences, with winners and losers to match. Big global banks and investment funds are already swarming all over it. A 56-page report by Barclays hones in on the neuralgic issue of livestock, source of 9pc of man-linked global emissions.

“Burping cows are more damaging to the climate than all the cars on this planet,” said authors Sebastian Satz and Alex Steward.

Well, no surprise there then! Big banks are always on the lookout for ways to make money out of scams, particularly when politicians clear the way.

It is a pity AEP is not exposing the con.

 

We are in trouble and doing something about it will involve massive technological and economic disruption. Any incumbent betting that the status quo can continue risks being swept away, much as the great telecom companies of the 1990s were outflanked by mobile phones, or as the sleepy power utilities saw their business models wrecked by solar and wind.

Barclays says investors should brace for a methane tax – or a global ‘red meat tax’ – and “aggressive regulatory change”.

“Sleepy power utilities saw their business models wrecked by solar and wind.”? On the contrary, they have seen them wrecked by obscene government subsidies for solar and wind, two rather different things. As a business correspondent, one would have hoped that AEP would have vehemently protesting against such market distorting policies.

As for phones, mobile phones took over because they offered something better to buyers.

None of this applies to meat producers, or farming in general. As for global meat taxes and aggressive regulation, we are still waiting for the global carbon tax he predicted a few years ago. Readers may recall what AEP wrote in May 2015:

The political noose is tightening on the global fossil fuel industry. It is a fair bet that world leaders will agree this year to impose a draconian “tax” on carbon emissions that entirely changes the financial calculus for coal, oil, and gas, and may ultimately devalue much of their asset base to zero.

In any event, I can’t see many countries prepared to impose food taxes, intended to make us eat less.

 

AgriTech will of course be supremely important in years to come. But not for the reasons AEP says.

Countries around the world don’t care about greenhouse emissions from farting cows. Their one concern is keeping their populations well fed. Increasingly, middle classes in Asia are picking up western eating habits, which will add to demand pressures.

Quoting an Oxford study from last year, AEP writes:

There is no magic formula or technology coming that can avert grim choices. They argue that the only plausible way to feed a population growing by another two billion by mid-century is to switch to a ‘flexitarian’ diet and work on every front at once.

Europeans and Americans will have to cut their consumption of beef and pork by 90pc and milk by 60pc. We will have learn to live on beans and pulses. That is the world’s default setting and our probable future.

That sounds a fun world! I suspect though that progress in AgriTech in decades to come will bring us improvements in farming which we cannot even imagine now.