03 April 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Bernie Sanders | Mr. Bezos, Start Treating Your Workers With the Dignity and Respect They Deserve
Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders' Facebook Page
Sanders writes:
et's be very clear: Amazon is not a poor company. It is not losing money.
This is a company that made a record-breaking $14 billion in profits. This is a company that is worth over $1.5 trillion – that’s trillion with a 'T.' This is a company that paid no federal income taxes in 2017 or 2018 and currently pays a lower federal income tax rate than teachers, truck drivers or nurses.
And this is a company that is owned by a man, Jeff Bezos, who has increased his wealth by $75 billion during this horrific pandemic while millions of Americans cannot afford to feed their families and veterans are sleeping out on the street.
What Mr. Bezos understands is that if workers in Alabama vote yes to form a union, Amazon will need to give those workers a raise. Amazon will need to give them better benefits. Amazon will need to make sure that they are able to receive longer breaks and can go to the bathroom without being monitored.
Well, my message to Mr. Bezos is this: Enough with the intimidation. Enough with the harassment. Enough with the coercion. Enough is enough. You cannot have it all. Start treating your workers with the respect and the dignity that they deserve. Give your workers a seat at the bargaining table. Give your workers the freedom to join a union.
A healthcare worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine inside the Viejas Arena on the campus of San Diego State University in San Diego, California, U.S., Thursday, April 1, 2021. (photo: Getty)
Real-World Data Shows Vaccines Kicking Butt - Including Against Scary Variant
Beth Mole, Ars Technica
Mole writes: "In a small trial, the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine fully protected people from symptomatic COVID-19 caused by the worrisome B.1.351 coronavirus variant widely circulating in South Africa, the companies announced in a press release."
“Very, very good reason for everyone to get vaccinated,” Fauci says.
n a small trial, the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine fully protected people from symptomatic COVID-19 caused by the worrisome B.1.351 coronavirus variant widely circulating in South Africa, the companies announced in a press release.
Though researchers will need more data to confirm the result, it is just the latest bit of positive news to come out this week about how the vaccines are performing with real-world conditions and in real-world settings.
On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released real-world data showing that the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine and Moderna mRNA vaccine were, collectively, 90 percent effective at preventing infections in fully vaccinated health care, frontline, and essential workers.
On Wednesday, Pfizer and BioNtech announced that their vaccine is highly effective in adolescents 12- to 15-years old—not just the adult part of the population. And on Thursday, the companies announced the B.1.351 news as well as new data on durability. That is, the latest monitoring data on people vaccinated in a Phase III trial suggests the vaccine is still 91 percent effective at preventing symptomatic disease up to six months after the second dose. That’s longer efficacy than was previously established, but researchers will need more data still to assess efficacy beyond six months.
“The bottom line message is that vaccines work very well in the real-world setting,” top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said in a White House COVID-19 press briefing Friday. “They work against variants, although we need further data to confirm that. They are durable for at least six months and they work in adolescents. Very, very good reason for everyone to get vaccinated as soon as its becomes available to you.”
Strong suggestions
While all the data is good news, the variant data is particularly heartening. Numerous laboratory experiments have suggested that antibodies produced by vaccines are less potent at knocking back some of the variants, particularly B.1.351. But according to the new data released by Pfizer and BioNTech, their mRNA vaccine showed “efficacy of 100 percent.”
The assertion is based on data from 800 trial participants who live in South Africa, where B.1.351 is widely circulating. Among the 800 participants, there were nine cases of COVID-19, all of which were in people who had received a placebo. Of those nine cases, genetic analysis found that six of them were caused by the B.1.351 variant.
The numbers are small, Fauci noted in today’s press briefing. However, “they showed in the setting of the troublesome B.1.351 South African variant there were six cases in the placebo [group] and zero in the vaccinated group, strongly suggesting the efficacy of the vaccines that we’re using now against problematic variants.”
Nevertheless, earlier this week, the National Institutes of Health announced that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has begun a clinical trial of a tweaked version of the Moderna vaccine, which is specifically designed to target the B.1.351 variant. At the time, Fauci, who is the director of the NIAID, said that the trial was being done “out of an abundance of caution.”
With the variant data and the durability findings, Pfizer and BioNTech are now moving to apply to have the vaccine fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Currently, the regulatory agency has only granted an Emergency Use Authorization, which is a classification issued during public health emergencies and bypasses the need for the normal amount of data used to secure a full approval. EUAs expire once the emergency is over.
“These data confirm the favorable efficacy and safety profile of our vaccine and position us to submit a Biologics License Application to the US FDA,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in the release. “The high vaccine efficacy observed through up to six months following a second dose and against the variant prevalent in South Africa provides further confidence in our vaccine’s overall effectiveness.”
FedEx is one of at least 55 large corporations in America that paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year. (photo: Getty)
Nike, FedEx and 53 Other Major Corporations Paid $0 in Federal Taxes on 2020 Profits
Matthew Gardner and Steve Wamhoff, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
t least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States. This continues a decades-long trend of corporate tax avoidance by the biggest U.S. corporations, and it appears to be the product of long-standing tax breaks preserved or expanded by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) as well as the CARES Act tax breaks enacted in the spring of 2020.
The tax-avoiding companies represent various industries and collectively enjoyed almost $40.5 billion in U.S. pretax income in 2020, according to their annual financial reports. The statutory federal tax rate for corporate profits is 21 percent. The 55 corporations would have paid a collective total of $8.5 billion for the year had they paid that rate on their 2020 income. Instead, they received $3.5 billion in tax rebates.
Their total corporate tax breaks for 2020, including $8.5 billion in tax avoidance and $3.5 billion in rebates, comes to $12 billion.
This report is based on ITEP’s analysis of annual financial reports filed by the nation’s largest publicly traded U.S.-based corporations in their most recent fiscal year. All data presented here come directly from the income tax notes of these reports. Some companies with unusual fiscal years have not yet filed such reports. Some publicly traded corporations paid nothing on profits in their most recent fiscal year but are not included in this report because they are not part of the S&P 500 or Fortune 500.
No-Tax Corporations Continue a Decades-Long Trend
For decades, the biggest and most profitable U.S. corporations have found ways to shelter their profits from federal income taxation. ITEP reports have documented such tax avoidance since the early years of the Reagan administration’s misguided tax-cutting experiment. A widely cited ITEP analysis of an eight-year period (2008 through 2015) confirmed that federal tax avoidance remained rampant before the TCJA.
Now, with most corporations reporting their third year of results under the new corporate tax laws pushed through by President Donald Trump in 2017, it is crystal clear that the TCJA failed to address loopholes that enable tax dodging—and may have made it worse.
The companies avoiding income taxes in 2020 represent very different sectors of the U.S. economy:
Food conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland enjoyed $438 million of U.S. pretax income last year and received a federal tax rebate of $164 million.
The delivery giant FedEx zeroed out its federal income tax on $1.2 billion of U.S. pretax income in 2020 and received a rebate of $230 million.
The shoe manufacturer Nike didn’t pay a dime of federal income tax on almost $2.9 billion of U.S. pretax income last year, instead enjoying a $109 million tax rebate.
The cable TV provider Dish Network paid no federal income taxes on $2.5 billion of U.S. income in 2020.
The software company Salesforce avoided all federal income taxes on $2.6 billion of U.S. income.
The U.S. income, current federal income tax and effective tax rates in 2020 for all 55 of the zero-tax companies are shown in the following table.
Alejandra Bernal attaches a sign to the fence surrounding the Collin County Jail nearly two weeks after Marvin Scott III died while in custody there. (photo: Shelby Tauber/The Texas Tribune)
He Died in Jail Hours After a Minor Pot Arrest. Now 7 Corrections Officers Have Been Fired.
Tim Elfrink, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Seven Collin County detention officers have been fired for their role in allegedly restraining Marvin Scott III, blasting him with pepper spray and placing a hood over his head as he suffered through what his family has described as a mental health emergency."
arvin Scott III was inside a sprawling outlet mall in Allen last month when police searched him and allegedly found less than 2 ounces of marijuana. They arrested him and eventually took him to the local jail.
Hours later, the 26-year-old was dead.
Now, seven Collin County detention officers have been fired for their role in allegedly restraining Scott, blasting him with pepper spray and placing a hood over his head as he suffered through what his family has described as a mental health emergency. An investigation found the officers had violated policies and procedures, Collin County Sheriff Jim Skinner said Thursday.
A lawyer representing Scott’s family called for the officers to face criminal charges in the case, which the Texas Rangers are investigating.
“#MarvinScottIII’s family is relieved these men have been terminated — however they are anxious to see these men arrested and held criminally accountable,” attorney Lee Merritt tweeted Thursday.
The case has sparked outrage in North Texas as Scott’s family and local activists question why he was arrested for such a small amount of marijuana — a drug soon to be fully legal in 16 states and widely decriminalized elsewhere — and why he was subject to force in jail rather than immediately taken for medical treatment.
Many police departments nationwide have stopped making arrests for small amounts of marijuana, a policy already held by several forces around Dallas and adopted by another area agency this week in the wake of Scott’s death.
Police have also faced scrutiny in their response to mental health crises, particularly after the death last year of Daniel T. Prude, a Black man who died after Rochester, New York, police restrained him and used a spit hood to cover his head.
Scott was a beloved brother and son, his family members said after his death.
“He was a gentle giant. He would do anything for anybody,” his sister, LaChay Batts, said at a news conference after his death. “Y’all really took away a good person — a really good person. He was amazing.”
Like Prude, Scott also had mental illness that frequently put him in contact with local police. Scott had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, his family said, and in the past, police had taken him to get medical care when he had a crisis.
“He had been arrested several times before where he was taken to a clinic, given his meds and then released,” Merritt said in a news conference streamed by KXAS-TV.
On March 14, Scott once again ended up in police custody, this time after he was observed acting strangely in the Allen Premium Outlets, a mall in suburban Dallas, and then allegedly found with a small amount of marijuana. Police initially took him to a hospital, Merritt said, but unlike in previous cases, they then took him to the Collin County Jail instead of a local mental health center.
He was booked into the jail around 6:40 p.m., Skinner said at a news conference. According to Merritt, he was put into a cell with eight other people, but later moved into an isolation cell. When the jail staff feared that he might hurt himself, they sent in seven officers to restrain him, Merritt said.
Video of the encounter shows one officer applying an “illegal choke hold” as the others fought to tie down his arms, Merritt alleged.
Skinner confirmed that video was taken of the struggle and said the officers used pepper spray once and restrained Scott in a bed. He declined to discuss any other details about the video recording, pending the ongoing investigation.
At 10:22 p.m., the sheriff said, Scott became unresponsive on the restraining bed. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“As you might imagine, I was brokenhearted to learn that someone had died in our custody,” Skinner said days later, calling his death a “tragedy.”
Seven detention officers — a captain, a lieutenant, two sergeants and three officers, none of whom have been named — were suspended while the sheriff conducted an internal investigation. On Thursday, Skinner announced that they had been fired and said an eighth officer had resigned as a result of the probe.
“Evidence I have seen confirms that these detention officers violated well-established Sheriff’s Office policies and procedures,” Skinner said in a statement shared with The Washington Post. “Everyone in Collin County deserves safe and fair treatment, including those in custody at our jail. I will not tolerate less.”
Merritt praised the move but also pushed for a full accounting of what happened — and criminal charges against those responsible.
“We are pleased with this decision and consider this progress, the first step of many more to come,” he said in a statement to WFAA-TV. “Next, these former officers need to be arrested and brought to justice.”
Atlanta was expected to host the 2021 All-Star Game. (photo: John Amis/AP)
MLB Will Move Its All-Star Game Out of Atlanta as Backlash to Georgia Voting Law Continues
Chelsea Janes, The Washington Post
Janes writes: "Major League Baseball announced Friday that it will be moving this summer's All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to the recent passage of Georgia's sweeping voting law, following the calls of other businesses to protect voting access there and in other states."
MLB’s decision to pull the game, the biggest prize it can award its cities, represents a decisive departure for an organization that traditionally has been reluctant to involve itself in what it views as potentially polarizing political issues. The move follows a week in which executives from more than 170 companies joined the corporate push.
Supporters of the Georgia law say the changes it makes to the state’s voting system are necessary to bolster confidence in elections. Opponents, including many high-profile activist groups, say it will lead to longer lines, partisan control of elections and more difficult logistics for voters trying to cast their ballots by mail.
They say the bill’s objective is making voting more difficult for people of color, something Democrats see as a direct response to the outcome of November’s presidential and senatorial elections. Led by a large turnout of Black voters, who voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, the state voted for a Democrat in a presidential race for the first time in nearly two decades and eventually elected two Democrats to the Senate, too.
After trying to avoid taking sides in the political debate, corporations of all varieties have begun finding neutrality impossible, and this week has seen an avalanche of statements from executives, including Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, who described the bill as “wrong” and “a step backward.”
On Friday afternoon, MLB became the latest significant entity to take a position.
“Over the last week, we have engaged in thoughtful conversations with Clubs, former and current players, the Players Association, and The Players Alliance, among others, to listen to their views. I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box,” he added. “We proudly used our platform to encourage baseball fans and communities throughout our country to perform their civic duty and actively participate in the voting process. Fair access to voting continues to have our game’s unwavering support.”
Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts, one of the two Black managers in the majors, said he supported the move.
“I’m not completely versed on everything, but my takeaway from the bill was essentially to suppress voting for people of color,” Roberts said. “And that’s something I fundamentally and intrinsically disagree with.”
Support for the move was not universal around baseball, particularly in Atlanta, where the Braves quickly issued a statement saying they were “deeply disappointed” in the decision.
“This was neither our decision, nor our recommendation and we are saddened that fans will not be able to see this event in our city. The Braves organization will continue to stress the importance of equal voting opportunities and we had hoped our city could use this event as a platform to enhance the discussion,” the statement read. “Our city has always been known as a uniter in divided times and we will miss the opportunity to address issues that are important to our community. Unfortunately, businesses, employees, and fans in Georgia are the victims of this decision.”
Georgia lawmakers and public figures expressed anger, disappointment and approval Friday in their responses to the announcement.
Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said MLB needed to “stop listening to their corporate communist sponsors and remember the little guys who buy their tickets."
“Keep the politics off the field and stop ruining everything!” she tweeted.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) threatened MLB’s antitrust exemption in his tweet.
“In light of @MLB’s stance to undermine election integrity laws, I have instructed my staff to begin drafting legislation to remove Major League Baseball’s federal antitrust exception,” he wrote.
Even Democrats have been unable to agree on the role corporations should take in protesting the law. In an interview with ESPN on Wednesday night, Biden said he would “strongly support” moving the game from Atlanta after the passage of the law he referred to as “Jim Crow on steroids.”
Former candidate for Georgia governor and voting rights champion Stacey Abrams had mixed feelings about the move.
“Disappointed @MLB will move the All-Star Game, but proud of their stance on voting rights,” Abrams tweeted. “GA GOP traded economic opportunity for suppression.”
Abrams added that she urged events and productions to “come & speak out or stay & fight” on behalf of people of color who now stood to lose wages because of boycotts.
Newly elected Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who released a statement Thursday opposing boycotts as a response to the law, blamed Republicans for hurting the state’s economy.
“The leadership of Georgia’s Republican Party is out of control and Georgia is hemorrhaging business and jobs because of their disastrous new Jim Crow voting law,” Ossoff said in the statement. “The Governor and the legislature are deliberately making it harder for Black voters to vote. They know it. Everybody knows it and this egregious and immoral assault on voting rights has also put our state’s economy at grave risk.”
MLB suspended all political donations after the Jan. 6 Capitol invasion, but the decision to move the All-Star Game still constitutes a surprise.
Relative to other professional sports leagues such as the NBA and the WNBA, baseball has avoided placing itself at the center of politicized issues. Last year, MLB deviated from that course with its decision to paint a tribute to Black Lives Matter on the back of its pitcher’s mounds in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd — a small but noticeable statement from largely White MLB, which has struggled to build appeal and a sense of belonging for Black players in recent years.
Moves such as the All-Star Game relocation have a history of making a difference. The NFL originally awarded the 1993 Super Bowl to Arizona, aware that the state would be voting on whether to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a paid holiday in November 1990. When the measure did not pass, NFL owners voted to move the game.
“Proud to call myself part of the @mlb family today @morethanavote #BlackLivesMatter,” tweeted NBA star LeBron James, who was active and outspoken in support of voting rights ahead of the November election and officially joined the ownership group of the Boston Red Sox this week.
James and Michael Tyler led athletes last year in forming the voting rights advocacy group More Than a Voter. Tyler said the financial impact of the All-Star Game “will be real” but noted that boycotts from other corporations over a long period of time probably would be more devastating than losing a few days of events.
“This is the single greatest example we have right now to demonstrate to lawmakers who are considering these bills in other states — states like Texas, Florida and Arizona — that, as they consider these rules, their actions will be met consequences,” said Tyler, who helped players and organizers use last month’s NBA All-Star Game in Atlanta as a chance to voice opposition to bills they felt would restrict voting rights.
“A boycott is clearly a suboptimal situation,” he added. “In a perfect world, these kind of measures wouldn’t be necessary at all.”
MLB has not announced a replacement venue. The Dodgers were supposed to host the game last year but missed their assigned turn when it was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. MLB assigned the 2022 game as a replacement but could decide to turn to Los Angeles, which probably will be more prepared than a city that hadn’t been expecting to host.
Chimneys and cooling tower of a coal fired power station in dramatic sunset light. (photo: Getty)
US Fossil-Fuel Companies Took Billions in Tax Breaks - and Then Laid Off Thousands
Oliver Milman, Guardian UK
Milman writes: "Almost every one of the fossil-fuel companies laid off workers, with a more than 58,000 people losing their jobs since the onset of the pandemic, or around 16% of the combined workforces."
Figures show 77 companies received $8.2bn under tax changes related to Covid relief and yet almost every one let workers go
ossil-fuel companies have received billions of dollars in tax benefits from the US government as part of coronavirus relief measures, only to lay off tens of thousands of their workers during the pandemic, new figures reveal.
A group of 77 firms involved in the extraction of oil, gas and coal received $8.2bn under tax-code changes that formed part of a major pandemic stimulus bill passed by Congress last year. Five of these companies also got benefits from the paycheck protection program, totaling more than $30m.
Despite this, almost every one of the fossil-fuel companies laid off workers, with a more than 58,000 people losing their jobs since the onset of the pandemic, or around 16% of the combined workforces.
The largest beneficiary of government assistance has been Marathon Petroleum, which has got $2.1bn in tax benefits.
However, in the year to December 2020, the Ohio-based refining company laid off 1,920 workers, or around 9% of its workforce. As a comparative ratio, Marathon has received around $1m for each worker it made redundant, according to BailoutWatch, a nonprofit advocacy group that analyzed Securities and Exchange Commission filings to compile all the data.
Phillips 66, Vistra Corp, National Oilwell Varco and Valero were the next largest beneficiaries of the tax-code changes, with all of them shedding jobs in the past year. In the case of National Oilwell Varco, a Houston-headquartered drilling supply company, 22% of the workforce was fired, despite federal government tax assistance amounting to $591m.
Other major oil and gas companies including Devon Energy and Occidental Petroleum also took in major pandemic tax benefits in the last year while also shedding thousands of workers.
“I’m not surprised that these companies took advantage of these tax benefits, but I’m horrified by the layoffs after they got this money,” said Chris Kuveke, a researcher at BailoutWatch.
“Last year’s stimulus was about keeping the economy going, but these companies didn’t use these resources to retain their workers. These are companies that are polluting the environment, increasing the deadliness of the pandemic and letting go of their workers.”
The tax benefits stems from a change in the Cares Act from March last year that allowed companies that had made a loss since 2013 to use this to offset their taxes, receiving this refund as a payment.
The extended carry-back benefit was embraced by the oil and gas industry, with many companies suffering losses even before Covid-19 hit. Pandemic shutdowns then severely curtailed travel by people for business or pleasure, dealing a major blow to fossil-fuel companies through the plummeting use of oil, with the price of a barrel of oil even entering negative territory at one point last year.
A spokesman for Marathon, the one company to answer questions on the layoffs, said the business made “the very difficult decision” to reduce its workforce, providing severance and extended healthcare benefits to those affected.
“These difficult decisions were part of a broader, comprehensive effort, which also included implementing strict capital discipline and overall expense management to lower our cost structure, to improve the company’s resiliency, and re-position it for long-term success,” the spokesman said. “We look forward to better days ahead for everyone as the nation emerges from the pandemic.”
This expense management didn’t extend to the pay of Marathon’s chief executive, Michael Hennigan, who made $15.5m in 2020. According to BailoutWatch, Marathon’s chief executive is paid 99 times the average company worker’s salary.
“They had no problem paying their executives for good performance when they didn’t perform well,” said Kuveke. “There is no problem with working Americans retaining their jobs but I don’t believe we should subsidize an industry that has been supported by the government for the past 100 years. It’s time to stop subsidizing them and start facing the climate crisis.”
Faced by growing political and societal pressure in their role in the climate crisis and the deaths of millions of people each year through air pollution, the oil and gas industry has sought to paint itself as the protector of thousands of American workers who face joblessness due to Joe Biden’s climate policies.
“Targeting specific industries with new taxes would only undermine the nation’s economic recovery and jeopardize good-paying jobs, including union jobs,” said Frank Macchiarola, senior vice-president for policy, economic and regulatory affairs at lobby group American Petroleum Institute, following Biden’s announcement of a new climate-focused infrastructure plan on Wednesday.
“It’s important to note that our industry receives no special tax treatment, and we will continue to advocate for a tax code that supports a level playing field for all economic sectors along with policies that sustain and grow the billions of dollars in government revenue that we help generate.”
The world's five biggest meat and dairy producers emit more combined greenhouse gases than ExxonMobil, Shell, or BP. (photo: iStock)
Big Meat and Dairy Companies Have Spent Millions Lobbying Against Climate Action, a New Study Finds
Georgina Gustin, Inside Climate News
Gustin writes: "Top U.S. meat and dairy companies, along with livestock and agricultural lobbying groups, have spent millions campaigning against climate action and sowing doubt about the links between animal agriculture and climate change, according to new research from New York University."
The companies have been slow to make emissions reductions pledges, and have worked to undercut climate and environmental legislation.
The study, published this week in the journal Climatic Change, also said the world’s biggest meat and dairy companies aren’t doing enough to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, with only a handful making pledges to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
“These companies are some of the world’s biggest contributors to climate change,” said Oliver Lazarus, one of the study’s three authors, now a doctoral student at Harvard University. “They’ve spent a considerable amount of time and money downplaying the link between animal agriculture and climate change.”
The research, which builds on data first published in 2017 and 2018 by the advocacy group GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), is the first peer-reviewed study to document the individual carbon footprints of meat and dairy companies.
The authors found that, as of last summer, only four of the 35 companies—Dairy Farmers of America, Nestlé, Danish Crown and Danone—had pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
JBS, Cargill, Hormel, Fonterra and Smithfield had not. China-based Smithfield has since pledged to be carbon-negative by 2030 and Brazil-based JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, announced last week that it would reach net-zero by 2040. A spokeswoman for Hormel said the company was “on a path to zero” and plans to set a target for greenhouse gas reductions by 2023.
These commitments, the authors say, are short on specifics or focus on carbon dioxide reductions, while the bulk of emissions from animal agriculture comes from methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas. In some cases, the companies’ commitments don’t address emissions from their whole supply chain.
JBS, for example, has said in public statements that it does not assess land-use change—a major source of agricultural greenhouse gases—from third-party suppliers. These are emissions, the company said in 2019, “over which the Company has no responsibility or indirect responsibility.”
Overall, animal agriculture is responsible for more than 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. According to calculations by GRAIN and IATP, the five largest livestock-based producers—JBS, Tyson, Cargill, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) and Fonterra—emitted more greenhouse gases than ExxonMobil. The NYU researchers said they’re not aware of more recent and accessible company-level data, although a 2020 report from IATP found that emissions from individual dairy companies climbed in the years since the GRAIN assessment.
Recent reports, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have found that cutting emissions from agriculture is critical for controlling runaway climate change. But the new research found that only seven of the 16 countries where the largest livestock producers are based mention animal agriculture in their plans to meet the targets of the Paris climate agreement.
While the Paris agreement focuses on individual country’s emissions—and their potential to reduce them—the authors of the new report looked at how these companies’ future emissions compared to the emissions reductions pledges of their home countries. They determined that emissions produced by Switzerland-based Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, and New Zealand-based dairy giant, Fonterra, were so high that they would eclipse their respective home country’s emissions pledges, in effect consuming the entirety of those countries’ emissions budgets. Denmark-based Arla, the largest producer of dairy products in Scandinavia, will account for 60 percent of Denmark’s total emissions.
“Those meat and dairy emissions would actually completely wipe out the emissions (those countries) say they’re going to be emitting according to their Paris agreement pledges,” said Jennifer Jacquet, an associate professor in NYU’s Department of Environmental Studies and one of the authors.
In taking this approach, the authors say, they’re assigning responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions to countries on a corporate basis.
“The Paris agreement suggests that Brazil is responsible for what happens in Brazil. What we said was: What if Brazil was responsible for JBS or China for Smithfield?” Jacquet said.
The authors said they were following the pattern of seminal studies on the fossil fuel industry, which calculated historic emissions from individual companies and then assigned responsibility to those companies.
“Essentially what we’re trying to do is build out the climate responsibility of meat and dairy producers,” Jacquet said.
A spokeswoman for Fonterra said its carbon footprint was “46% lower than other major milk producers” and that the company was “actively working on tools and technologies to reduce emissions and help New Zealand reach its climate change commitments.”
Filling a Research Gap
The next goal of the study, Jacquet said, was to examine how these companies and their lobbying groups have fought climate regulation in Congress and before the Environmental Protection Agency, and to analyze how they’ve shaped a narrative around animal agriculture’s role in climate change.
The authors calculated that U.S. agribusiness, which includes meat and dairy companies and also other agricultural companies, spent $750 million on national political candidates from 2000 to 2020. The U.S. energy sector, by comparison, spent $1 billion.
The same agribusinesses spent $2.5 billion on lobbying from 2000 and 2019, compared to $6.2 billion by energy and natural resource companies.
The authors said these companies also spent their lobbying money on issues beyond climate change, including the Farm Bill and farm subsidies. But, they wrote, “it is often difficult to disentangle the two as policy decisions on crop incentives, land-use, and animal production methods have large implications for the extent and intensity of the animal agriculture sector’s emissions.”
The report also looked at the contributions of individual companies. Exxon spent roughly $17 million on political campaigns and more than $240 million on lobbying during the 20 years studied. In the same time frame, Tyson gave $3.2 million to political campaigns. But relative to each company’s revenue, Tyson spent double what Exxon spent on political campaigns and 33 percent more on lobbying.
Industry lobby groups—the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Pork Producers Council, the North American Meat Institute, the National Chicken Council, the International Dairy Foods Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation, along with its state members—spent nearly $200 million, much of it lobbying against climate and environmental regulations, from 2000 to 2019, the authors found.
A spokesperson for the National Pork Producers Council said the organization voted against a cap-and-trade bill specifically because it “would have converted massive amounts of cropland to forest” at a time when pork producers were already struggling to gain access to feed.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the North American Meat Institute (NAMI), the new study said, published or funded research downplaying the emissions from livestock production, often pointing to the low percentage relative to overall U.S. emissions.
Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for NAMI, said the report referenced outdated documents. “NAMI members are at the forefront of research and innovation to strengthen meat’s contributions and ambitious commitments to healthy diets and protecting our environment. The U.S. meat sector has dramatically reduced its impact on the environment in recent decades, including by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions…. This study was already outdated the day it was researched.”
The nine U.S.-based companies covered in the report emitted 6 percent of overall U.S. emissions, the study found, but emitted about 350 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s on the same scale as Brazil, which has the highest carbon footprint from animal agriculture and where the top four livestock companies emitted about 380 million metric tons of the greenhouse gas annually. But that amounts to about 28 percent of that country’s emissions.
“The US industry really leans on Brazil’s terrible carbon footprint to compare to its own,” Jacquet said, but domestic agriculture is “high in terms of absolute emissions.”
The report also notes that the U.S. companies’ emissions totals presented in the study don’t include those connected to production outside of the U.S.
The authors pointed out in an interview that there’s been ample academic research into the fossil fuel industry’s attempts to influence public discourse, but that a similar body of research into the agriculture industry’s efforts has not yet emerged. That could largely be attributed, they said, to the fact that very little agricultural research is done outside of industry-influenced universities or by independent researchers.
“It’s not surprising that they’re this active in shaping climate discourse,” Lazarus said, referring to the livestock companies. “What we’re trying to do is show the extent to which that has largely been ignored.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.