AGRICULTURE The most damaging farm products? Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb......George Monbiot  Tue 16 Aug 2022    Analysis: You may be amazed by that answer, but the area of land used for grazing is vast compared with the meat and milk produced. Perhaps the most important of all environmental issues is land use. Every hectare of land we use for extractive industries is a hectare that can’t support wild forests, savannahs, wetlands, natural grasslands and other crucial ecosystems. And farming swallows far more land than any other human activity. What are the world’s most damaging farm products? You might be amazed by the answer: organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb. I realise this is a shocking claim. Of all the statements in my new book, Regenesis, it has triggered the greatest rage. But I’m not trying to wind people up. I’m trying to represent the facts. Let me explain. Arable crops, some of which are fed to farm animals, occupy 12% of the planet’s land surface. But far more land (about 26%) is used for grazing: in other words, for pasture-fed meat and milk. Yet, across this vast area, farm animals that are entirely pasture-fed produce just 1% of the world’s protein. Livestock farmers often claim that their grazing systems “mimic nature”. If so, the mimicry is a crude caricature. A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases. The only category in which numbers fall when grazing by cattle or sheep ceases are those that eat dung. Where there are cattle, there are fewer wild mammals, birds, reptiles and insects on the land, and fewer fish in the rivers. 

The most ambitious goal of the animal movement has always been to eradicate factory farming and inspire people to eat more plants and fewer animals. This only makes sense, as the scale of the violence endemic to industrial farming radically dwarfs all other forms of animal suffering. Beyond the problem of the inevitable suffering involved in the slaughter of animals we consume, factory farming necessitates new forms of animal abuse such as intensive confinement, drugs that keep sick animals just alive enough to be profitable, and genetic modifications that induce diseases. (While genetic modification is often interpreted to mean direct edits to a genome, the USDA’s definition also includes selective breeding, the technique the factory farm industry has used to deform animals beyond recognition.) These harms to animals, as we will see, are tightly linked to harms to humans. But the way forward for the animal movement may be less about swelling the ranks of vegetarians and vegans — which has long been its primary ambition — and more about identifying an overlapping consensus between social movements that center animals and those that center concerns like climate change and public health  . These movements share an interest in shifting toward a more plant-based food system as never before. We should also share resources and tactics. Today, government at every level, from local to federal, actively promotes consuming high levels of animal products and the continued growth of factory farming; large portions of the legal system work primarily to defend industrial farms against ordinary citizens and public advocates rather than the other way around (for one powerful illustration of this, see the documentary The Smell of Money). Only a broad coalition can hope to change this. Increased collaboration with the public health movement will be particularly crucial in encouraging a more plant-based food system. In the short term, though, it is emerging collaborations with the environmental movement that show the most promise. The well-known lower carbon footprint of plant-based diets — as low as a quarter of the emissions of meat-heavy diets — provides a particularly powerful form of common ground.

In terms of economic contributions, immigrants represent a diverse pool of talent and skills for our workforce, which in turn stimulates economic growth.  In fact, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, immigration will help bolster the U.S. economy by about $7 trillion over the next decade and generate approximately $1 trillion in federal tax dollars. Fiscal benefits are not limited to high-skilled immigrants on labor visas either; according to a new Department of Health and Human Services study, refugees and asylum seekers alone made a net positive contribution of nearly $124 billion dollars to local, state, and federal tax coffers from 2005 to 2019. Addressing labor shortages, which have resulted in 8.5 million vacancies, would also bolster the tax base that funds Medicare and Social Security. In fact, immigrants are 80 percent more likely to start businesses, thereby creating jobs, spurring innovation and strengthening our broader economy.  Additionally, immigrants directly contribute to both programs through payroll taxes, including undocumented immigrants who contribute billions of dollars to a benefits system they will likely never be eligible to access themselves. With an aging population and native-born birth rates at an all-time low, immigration also offers much-needed demographic rejuvenation, which is essential for both Medicare and Social Security to survive. By welcoming more immigrants, we revitalize the workforce and support a larger pool of contributors to these programs.....read on  https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4664862-immigration-is-the-demographic-savior-too-many-refuse-to-acknowledge/

Summer wildfire inferno on the horizon, and federal officials are sounding the alarm on drought conditions and higher-than-normal temperatures indicating another record-breaking wildfire season. Nearly the entire country is under moderate drought conditions and has been since spring 2023, according to a government official who briefed the press on Wednesday. The drought has meant less precipitation through winter. Higher temperatures also led to a faster spring thaw, setting the stage for early wildfire conditions. Officials told reporters there are approximately 70 wildfires now burning in Canada. Many survived the winter and are known as zombie fires, which lie dormant under the frost and re-emerge after the thaw. Most of those fires are burning in northern B.C., northern Alberta and southern N.W.T.Federal officials are sounding the alarm on drought conditions and higher-than-normal temperatures indicating another record-breaking wildfire season. Nearly the entire country is under moderate drought conditionsand has been since spring 2023, according to a government official who briefed the press on Wednesday. The drought has meant less precipitation through winter. Higher temperatures also led to a faster spring thaw, setting the stage for early wildfire conditions. Over the next two months, there is increased wildfire risk for northern Ontario, western Quebec, the Prairies, Northwest Territories and British Columbia, according to the official. However, it is still too early to definitively forecast conditions.Officials told reporters there are approximately 70 wildfires now burning in Canada. Many survived the winter and are known as zombie fires, which lie dormant under the frost and re-emerge after the thaw. Most of those fires are burning in northern B.C., northern Alberta and southern N.W.T.  https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/04/11/news/summer-wildfire-inferno-horizon-feds-say