It's a point I've been trying to make for a long time: there is no good way to meet even 10% of current demand for animal products. They trash the living world, whichever way you do it. If you want to reduce your impact, switch to a plant-based diet. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Organic eggs have worse impact on climate than eggs from caged chickens

Adopting organic free-range model in UK could lead to greenhouse emissions equivalent to 2,316,000 tonnes of CO2, study suggests

theguardian.com

Projected changes in both mean climate and climate variability drive substantial increases in extreme fire weather in the western United States journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

Record heat is colliding with a snow drought across the Western United States, where snowpack accounts for much of the water supply 🎁 www.nytimes.com/interactive/... w/ @byscottdance.com & @sachimulkey.bsky.social

Fossil fuels push the world towards autocracy. Were we less dependent on them, there might have been no President Trump, no President Putin, no ayatollahs, no Netanyahu, no perpetual Middle East wars. Democracy depends on unhooking ourselves. This week's column. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

We need to be honest about Iran – and how our rampant greed for oil is causing mayhem | George Monbiot

Oil has empowered capitalism, and some of the world’s most exploitative regimes. Move away from it and we can solve some of the key issues we face, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

theguardian.com

agricultural exceptionalism is everywhere

Julian A Nowogrodzki@plantnerd.bsky.social · 7mo ago

In California: 10 million tons of manure unaccounted for - One farm reported producing <1% the manure expected given how many cows it has - One in Santa Ana has 570 dairy cows and reported -- wait for it -- no manure at all @sentientmedia.org sentientmedia.org/ten-million-...

If we made the green energy transition this war would be unthinkable and these authoritarians wouldn’t be in power — not in the US, not in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Russia. Hydrocarbons are killing our freedom and just plain killing us.

There is a popular assumption that if a building is listed then we know everything about it. Modern archaeology has shown that most listed buildings have never been meaningfully researched. I'll be looking at why this is during an online event on 26 Feb... www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reinterpre...

A new paper by @anaigmendez.bsky.social vin Geophysical Research Letters shows that the oxygen isotope ratio of the annual rings of tropical conifers in Central America records rainfall amount and tracks large-scale tropical atmosphere ocean dynamics! agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Oxygen Isotopes in Tree Rings Track Neotropical Climate Dynamics

Tree-ring δ18O from Abies guatemalensis in Central America captures interannual variations in boreal summer rainfall Lighter δ18O years are associated with a weakening of the Caribbean Low-Level ...

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Lots of mentions in the Parliamentary debate today of former MP and DCMS member Ian Lucas’ book on information warfare ‘Digital Gangsters’ — three years old but ever more relevant subscribe.bylinetimes.com/product/digi...

Digital Gangsters – Byline Times Shop

Digital Gangsters The inside story of how greed, lies and technology broke democracy Online campaigning has transformed politics worldwide in the last 5 years. Electoral earthquakes such as Brexit and...

subscribe.bylinetimes.com

Shipping marks on a basement ceiling conifer joist at Cambrian place Swansea 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿. Dated to first quarter of the 19th century

Dendro samples from Gloucester Chambers, maritime quarter Swansea 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Amazingly, Zahawi only got round to deleting the below after the press conference announcing his defection to Reform.

A Black man was killed by ICE (off duty) in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. And like Renée Good, he was an American citizen. But most people have not heard about Keith Porter. I need y’all to realize this. Black people experience this lack of visibility all the time when it comes to being victims.

Happy new year (s)

Thick as mince and thick as thieves. A column about the absolute idiots European legislators have made of themselves over the naming of food, at the behest of meat lobbyists. You laugh and then you weep. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

When is a sausage not really a sausage? Ask the meat lobby | George Monbiot

European legislators may ban plant-based products from using the name to prevent ‘confusion’. Just don’t mention beef tomatoes or buffalo wings, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

theguardian.com

Dugin's 1997 description of the UK as a 'strategic floating base' of the USA that needs to be cut off from the EU keeps popping in my mind. The fact that his wildest dreams have come to pass since then, and the USA is now a Russian ally, is really starting to make this island feel unsafe.

"Interventions in the sex lives of animals are so intrusive and ubiquitous that..bestiality laws had to be rewritten to include explicit exceptions for farmers." love this piece by @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social & Gabe newrepublic.com/article/2036...

The Internet Loves These “Gay Sheep.” The Real Story Is Much Darker.

A much-hyped fashion show with wool from “gay rams” obscures the brutal reality of an industry that exploits sheep sexuality at every turn.

newrepublic.com

Very cool work by Bryan Black here at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research establishing the exact date of the Electron Mudflow in the Puget Sound metropolitan area: 'Forest-floor burial in 1507 by the largest Mount Rainier lahar of the past millennium' doi.org/10.1130/G537...

I've signed. Have you? Petition: Call a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics & democracy petition.parliament.uk/petitions/74...

Petition: Call a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics & democracy

We are concerned about reported efforts from Russia to influence democracy in the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere. We believe we must establish the depth and breadth of possible Russian influence campaig...

petition.parliament.uk

Yay!! I couldn’t be there but Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring just won gold at the APA podcast awards!! Whole thing was crowdfunded by @the-citizens.bsky.social to highlight 5-year legal case to get an investigation into Russian interference in UK politics. Power to the people!

There are some people who seem to see the recovery of ecosystems in a deforested waste as a personal affront. It's about power, and different landscapes reflect the different ways in which power is distributed - or concentrated. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Willow trees on Prince William’s land in Devon poisoned with herbicide

Exclusive: Unknown culprit suspected of spraying glyphosate on protected trees hoped to stop peat erosion and flooding

theguardian.com

"as negotiations with EU governments begin, the amendment that everyone assumed would die in the first round is still standing — not because it has a powerful constituency behind it, but because almost no one is expending political capital to bury it." [facepalm] www.politico.eu/article/vegg...

How a ‘veggie burger’ ban nobody wanted became one Brussels might actually pass

A fringe amendment to protect meaty vocabulary has become a test of Europe’s loyalty to tradition and its waning appetite for food innovation.

politico.eu

This is Zelenskyy's "if necessary for years, if necessary alone" moment. A chapter in history that will be remembered both for the shame of Washington's betrayal, and for the dignity, bravery, defiance and resolve of the Ukrainian people in the face of it all.

2025! The traditional end-of-year collage! Available as a 1000 piece jigsaw, limited edition art prints and tea towels! 👇👇👇👇👇 www.coldwarsteve.com/2025/11/18/u...

It's the cow, not the how. Always has been. Always will be. newrepublic.com/article/1775...

The Comforting Lie of Climate-Friendly Meat

The industry insists that meat’s problems can be solved with technical fixes. We’ve seen this before.

newrepublic.com

2017 tweet from Leave.EU thanking Putin for carpet bombing Syria which displaced 14 million & led directly to the refugee/boat crisis.

CAHOKIA, ILLINOIS — Using tree-ring radiocarbon from an A.D. 994 solar event, researchers precisely dated the Mitchell Log—Greater Cahokia’s largest known marker post—to about A.D. 1124, and strontium isotopes show the bald cypress wasn’t local, likely hauled ≥112 miles. Read more:

Age and origin of a Cahokian wooden monument at the Mitchell site, Illinois, USA

Cahokia was the first and largest precolonial city outside of Mesoamerica in what is now the United States. Monuments and exotic goods were central to public life at Cahokia, but no high-resolution…

buff.ly

Two new key papers on climate change and forests in the Northeastern US led by Jaclyn Hatala Matthes. First, a review on the Impacts and Legacies of Extreme Precipitation on Temperate Forests During Critical Ecological Windows www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Impacts and Legacies of Extreme Precipitation on Temperate Forests During Critical Ecological Windows

Within seasonal temperate forests, changes in precipitation structure—its form, duration, and seasonal timing—is a dominant characteristic of climate change. While past research has focused primarily ...

annualreviews.org

For years, there's been a massive over-emphasis on food miles, and a massive under-emphasis on food type. By far and away the best dietary decision you can make, for environmental, humanitarian and public health purposes, is to cut out animal products.

George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Remember this, whenever someone says "alternative proteins - yuck!" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Why are there so many acorns in the UK this year? Oaks everywhere seem to have been laden with acorns. Nice to quoted when the BBC investigated! There are lots of chestnuts too, and beech seeds in some places but not others. Happy squirrels and jays this year! 🐿🌰🌳 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The National Trust explains why there are so many acorns this year

A National Trust gardener said the volume of acorns was

bbc.co.uk