wolfyvegan

The world’s largest meat company, JBS, looks set to break its Amazon rainforest protection promises again, according to frontline workers.

Beef production is the primary driver of deforestation, as trees are cleared to raise cattle, and scientists warn this is pushing the Amazon close to a tipping point that would accelerate its shift from a carbon sink into a carbon emitter. JBS, the Brazil-headquartered multinational that dominates the Brazilian cattle market, promised to address this with a commitment to clean up its beef supply chain in the region by the end of 2025.

In a project to understand the barriers to progress on Amazon deforestation, a team of journalists from the Guardian, Unearthed and Repórter Brasil interviewed more than 35 people, including ranchers and ranching union leaders who represent thousands of farms in the states of Pará and Rondônia. The investigation found widespread disbelief that JBS would be able to complete the groundwork and hit its deforestation targets.

“They certainly have the will to do it, just as we have the will to do it,” said one rancher. But the goal that all the cattle they bought would be deforestation-free was unreachable, he said. “They say this is going to be implemented. I’d say straight away: that’s impossible.”

https://archive.ph/iS7pg

The world’s largest meat company, JBS, looks set to break its Amazon rainforest protection promises again, according to frontline workers.

Beef production is the primary driver of deforestation, as trees are cleared to raise cattle, and scientists warn this is pushing the Amazon close to a tipping point that would accelerate its shift from a carbon sink into a carbon emitter. JBS, the Brazil-headquartered multinational that dominates the Brazilian cattle market, promised to address this with a commitment to clean up its beef supply chain in the region by the end of 2025.

In a project to understand the barriers to progress on Amazon deforestation, a team of journalists from the Guardian, Unearthed and Repórter Brasil interviewed more than 35 people, including ranchers and ranching union leaders who represent thousands of farms in the states of Pará and Rondônia. The investigation found widespread disbelief that JBS would be able to complete the groundwork and hit its deforestation targets.

“They certainly have the will to do it, just as we have the will to do it,” said one rancher. But the goal that all the cattle they bought would be deforestation-free was unreachable, he said. “They say this is going to be implemented. I’d say straight away: that’s impossible.”

https://archive.ph/iS7pg

Shrouded in the lush vegetation of the páramo, the Andean tundra landscape, the quiet wetlands and moorlands of Quimsacocha in southern Ecuador are at the center of a dispute. Hortensia Zhagüi, a water defender and leader of the Tarqui community in the country’s Cuenca canton, said members of her community have campaigned against a mining project on these lands for the last three decades.

“All the páramos, everything that is our life, are about to be destroyed,” Zhagüi, who is also a member of the Kimsacocha Women’s School of Agroecology, told Mongabay by phone. “That’s why we’re fighting to defend it. Our principles are formed this way because our parents and ancestors also preserved these beautiful places.”

For 30 years, the protected páramo of Quimsacocha, at an elevation of 3,000 meters (9,800 feet), between the cantons of Cuenca and Girón in Azuay province, has faced the imminent threat of underground mining. The Loma Larga mine project, owned by Canada-based Dundee Precious Metals Inc., is still prospecting for gold, silver and copper. It spans 7,960 hectares (19,669 acres) and has plans to extract 3,000 metric tons of metal-containing ore per day, and more than 14 million tons over a 12-year project life.

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The climate implications of this biocide compound the tragedy beyond mere species loss. When ancient forests burn or decompose following clearance, carbon stores accumulated over centuries release into the atmosphere with astonishing rapidity. The southeastern Amazon, once a reliable carbon sink that helped moderate humanity’s fossil fuel addiction, has now become — through our collective negligence — a carbon source. This perverse inversion represents not just an ecological tipping point but a moral one: we have transformed one of Earth’s great life-support systems into a contributor to planetary fever. The disruption extends beyond carbon cycling; hydrological patterns shift as forest cover diminishes, potentially altering rainfall across South America. The ripple effects could destabilize agricultural productivity across multiple countries — a self-defeating prophecy in which forest clearing for agriculture ultimately undermines agricultural viability itself.

The human suffering entangled with deforestation receives criminally insufficient attention in policy discussions. Indigenous communities — many with cultural histories extending thousands of years before European arrival — face violent displacement that would provoke international condemnation if perpetrated against Europeans. Land defenders face assassination with depressing regularity; between 2012 and 2020, over 1,500 environmental activists were murdered globally, with Brazil consistently ranking among the deadliest countries for such work. The soy-cattle complex drains aquifers and poisons waterways with agrochemicals, forcing local communities to bear the externalized costs of a production system designed to benefit distant consumers and multinational corporations. This arrangement constitutes a form of ecological colonialism; the wealthy consume the products while the vulnerable suffer the consequences. The moral mathematics should disgust any person with functioning conscience: no hamburger can justify this human cost.

Yet against this landscape of devastation, empirical evidence points toward a solution so straightforward that its continued marginalization represents a profound failure of both policy and imagination: plant-based diets. The Oxford research quantifying this potential reads like environmental science fiction — global farmland requirements could contract by 75%, an area equivalent to the combined landmasses of the United States, China, European Union, and Australia. The efficiency differential between growing soy for direct human consumption versus cycling it through livestock approaches mathematical absurdity; direct consumption could reduce associated deforestation by 94%. This figure deserves repetition: ninety-four percent. Such a reduction would not represent incremental progress but transformative change — millions of hectares of forest standing rather than burning. The obstinate refusal to acknowledge this solution constitutes not merely oversight but willful blindness to empirical reality.

The climate implications of dietary transformation further strengthen the case beyond reasonable dispute. Agricultural emissions would plummet by 84–86% under widespread adoption of plant-based diets — a reduction so substantial it would significantly extend the carbon budget remaining before critical temperature thresholds. Even modest dietary shifts yield disproportionate benefits; halving animal product consumption could decrease agriculture’s climate footprint by nearly a third. The land freed through dietary change could, if allowed to regenerate, sequester 152 gigatons of carbon — a figure that dwarfs many proposed technological solutions. This sequestration potential represents not merely theoretical calculation but tangible hope; forests, if permitted to recover, would draw down atmospheric carbon while simultaneously rebuilding biodiversity. The fact that this approach remains sidelined in climate negotiations while far more speculative technologies receive funding billions represents a triumph of industrial lobbying over scientific judgment.

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Yet against this landscape of devastation, empirical evidence points toward a solution so straightforward that its continued marginalization represents a profound failure of both policy and imagination: plant-based diets. The Oxford research quantifying this potential reads like environmental science fiction — global farmland requirements could contract by 75%, an area equivalent to the combined landmasses of the United States, China, European Union, and Australia. The efficiency differential between growing soy for direct human consumption versus cycling it through livestock approaches mathematical absurdity; direct consumption could reduce associated deforestation by 94%. This figure deserves repetition: ninety-four percent. Such a reduction would not represent incremental progress but transformative change — millions of hectares of forest standing rather than burning. The obstinate refusal to acknowledge this solution constitutes not merely oversight but willful blindness to empirical reality.

The path forward demands reimagining our relationship with both forests and food — a paradigm shift rather than incremental adjustment. Veganism represents not deprivation but liberation — from complicity in unnecessary suffering, from participation in ecological destruction, from the health consequences of excessive animal product consumption. The vision before us is not one of universal dietary conformity but of conscious consumption aligned with planetary boundaries and ethical principles. A food system where forests thrive and diets support rather than undermine ecosystem function represents not merely sustainability but regeneration — the positive legacy we might yet leave for future generations. The choice between continued forest destruction and dietary transformation is not technically complex but morally clarifying: no meal justifies the sacrifice of irreplaceable ecosystems, no flavor warrants the extinction of countless species. The hamburger simply isn’t worth the holocaust.

The opportunity before us transcends mere conservation to encompass redemption — a chance to prove that humanity can recognize ecological limits before crossing irreversible thresholds. The transition toward plant-predominant diets represents perhaps the single most accessible, immediate, and impactful action available to individuals concerned about environmental degradation. Unlike many climate solutions requiring policy change, technological breakthroughs, or massive infrastructure investment, dietary shift can begin with the next meal. This accessibility does not diminish its significance but enhances it; few other individual actions offer comparable potential for collective impact. By choosing plants over animals, we vote not just with our ballots or dollars but with our forks — a direct, daily referendum on the kind of world we wish to create. In this sense, veganism represents not merely ethical consumption but practical hope — a demonstration that alternatives to destruction exist and lie within our grasp.

The forests that remain standing today represent the culmination of evolutionary processes spanning millions of years — a living heritage we have no right to destroy for transient pleasures or marginal economic gains. These ecosystems, once lost, cannot be recreated through technological prowess or ecological restoration; their complexity defies human replication. The soy monocultures replacing biodiverse landscapes constitute not progress but regression — a simplification that undermines resilience and extinguishes evolutionary potential. When viewed through this lens, the choice between forest protection and meat consumption clarifies into moral imperative. We stand at a crossroads between continued destruction and transformative change, between consumption that devours the future and consumption that preserves possibility. The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that plant-based diets represent not merely personal health choice but planetary necessity — a recognition that individual preference must sometimes yield to collective survival. The forests await our decision, and history will judge our choice.

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The scientific consensus regarding dietary change as climate and conservation solution has reached remarkable clarity, resembling the consensus on climate change itself both in evidential strength and in the organized effort to undermine it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change explicitly acknowledges the critical role of reduced meat consumption in meeting climate targets. Studies in prestigious journals like Nature Communications, Science, and PNAS quantify the exact relationship between dietary choices and environmental impacts with increasing precision. As these findings permeate public consciousness, veganism continues its evolution from fringe lifestyle to rational response to planetary boundaries — a transformation accelerated by celebrity endorsements, documentary exposés, and social media. This scientific clarity renders continued resistance to dietary change not merely uninformed but actively anti-intellectual.

The psychological barriers to dietary change reveal much about human cognition and moral reasoning. Cognitive dissonance theory explains why individuals who consider themselves environmentally conscious often react defensively when confronted with evidence linking their food choices to ecological destruction. Rather than adjusting behavior to align with values, many adjust perception instead — minimizing the impact of meat consumption while exaggerating the difficulty of dietary change. Confirmation bias leads consumers toward information supporting continued meat consumption while discounting contradictory evidence. The “meat paradox” further complicates matters; many express concern for animal welfare while continuing practices requiring animal suffering. These psychological patterns highlight the insufficiency of information alone in changing behavior; effective interventions must address emotional and identity-based attachments to meat consumption rather than merely providing facts.

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I've heard a few variations of a story in which you had an altercation with a fig tree. I doubt that an upstanding saviour such as yourself would get upset without just cause, so what really happened between you and that tree? Is the slogan "Jesus Hates Figs" just hyperbole, or is there something nefarious going on with fig trees in general? Do you have any other fruit recommendations? Thanks in advance for clearing this up!

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21085337

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