"The American Beef Industry Understood Its Climate Impact Decades Ago"

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14032025/american-beef-industry-knew-climate-impact-decades-ago/

People need to know about the anti-science and pseudoscience promoted by the meat industry, especially the cow meat industry, to hide the non-slaughter horrors of their bloody industry.

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Jacquet, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami, noted that the 2006 UN report represented an inflection point, not only making the public aware of livestock’s climate impact, but putting the industry on notice that it could potentially be targeted for regulation. The report said that livestock’s climate emissions—which come from converting forests to pasture, growing feed, methane-emitting cow burps and manure storage—were about 18 percent of the global total, more even than the transportation sector.
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In 1989—the year after NASA’s James Hansen famously told Congress that climate change posed a global threat—the Environmental Protection Agency held a workshop focusing on methane emissions from livestock and, soon after, published a report, “Reducing Methane Emissions from Livestock.” The report said that livestock were a major source of methane and estimated that a 50 percent decrease in global emissions from livestock would yield huge benefits for stabilizing this especially potent greenhouse gas. Tucked into an appendix was the following suggestion: “Reducing methane emissions from ruminants should be pursued as part of an overall investigation into alternatives for reducing future global warming and its impacts.”
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Jacquet and her co-authors note that representatives from the meat and dairy industry attended the 1989 EPA workshop, including a member of the National Cattlemen’s Association. Several months and a handful of planning meetings later, the association, which is the country’s biggest beef lobby and now known as the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, or NCBA, developed a “Strategic Plan on the Environment” to counter anticipated public relations problems or regulations related to climate change. The plan included suggestions to reach out to “key influencers” with research and positive messaging about the industry’s environmental benefits.
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In a separate study, published this week, Jacquet and another University of Miami researcher, Loredana Loy, trace the meat industry’s efforts to derail advocacy groups’ attempts to persuade the public to eat less meat as a climate strategy. These attempts include the Beyond Beef campaign and others, including Diet for a New America and Meatless Monday.
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The study says the livestock industry took a different approach than the oil and gas industry, which tried to convince the public it was only continuing to develop fossil fuels because consumers called for them. The livestock industry, on the other hand, tried to convince consumers that their dietary choices would make no difference.
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Trump taps #OilIndustry insider to oversee drilling on #PublicLands

#BureauOfLandManagement nominee #KathleenSgamma heads a #FossilFuel industry trade group that sued the Biden administration over a landmark #conservation rule.

By Maxine Joselow

"President Donald #Trump has nominated oil and gas advocate #KathleenSgamma to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, the agency tasked with managing millions of acres of public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans.

"The nomination of Sgamma, who heads a Denver-based oil and gas industry trade group called the #WesternEnergyAlliance, heralds a seismic shift in the management of roughly 245 million acres of public property — about one-tenth of the nation’s land mass.

"If confirmed by the Senate, she would be a key architect of Trump’s #DrillBabyDrill agenda alongside Interior Secretary and '#EnergyCzar' #DougBurgum. An MIT graduate who previously worked in consulting, she has advocated for the BLM to prioritize oil and gas drilling, #HardrockMining and #livestock grazing on public lands nationwide.

"A spokesman for Sgamma did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"During his first term, Trump tapped conservative lawyer William Perry Pendley to lead the BLM on an acting basis. But Trump never nominated Pendley, a vocal advocate of selling off public lands, to helm the agency on a permanent basis, prompting a rebuke from a federal judge.

"President Joe Biden in 2021 chose Tracy Stone-Manning, a prominent Montana-based #environmentalist, to lead the BLM. Earlier in her career, Stone-Manning worked on conservation policy at the #NationalWildlifeFederation and led Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality.

"Under Biden, the BLM finalized a landmark rule that sought to put conservation, #recreation and #RenewableEnergy development on equal footing with #ResourceExtraction on public lands. Sgamma’s Western Energy Alliance filed a lawsuit challenging that rule, which the Trump administration is expected to overturn.

"In an interview with The Washington Post in April, Sgamma criticized the regulation for allowing ranchers, renewable-energy developers and other interests to lease federal lands for the purpose of #conservation and #HabitatRestoration.

"We have no choice but to litigate,' she said. 'These conservation leases seem to be designed to preclude energy development on federal lands.'

#Environmentalists criticized #Sgamma’s nomination.

"'This choice shows that the new administration will leave no favor ungranted for the oil and gas industry and the wealthy #FossilFuel #executives who funded Trump’s campaign,' #AlanZibel, oil and gas research director with the liberal advocacy group #PublicCitizen, said in an email.

"#JeffEshelman, president and #CEO of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents small oil producers, praised Sgamma’s selection while critiquing the Biden administration."

Original article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/02/12/trump-bureau-land-management-kathleen-sgamma/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/tmTH6#selection-645.0-724.1
#USPol #BigOilAndGas #Oiligarchy #Oligarchy #BigOilAndGas #BigOilKnew #KillCapitalism #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #CorporateColonialism #Corporatocracy #BigOilCriminals #ClimateEmergency #ClimateCatastrophe #ClimateCrisis
#NoMiningWithoutConsent #NoMiningOnConservationLands #DrainTheSwamp? More like, #OilUpTheSwamp!#IndepdendentPetroleumAssociationOfAmerica