Who's really destroying the rainforest?

 From Vegan Horizon

We’ve all heard it: “Vegans are destroying the rainforest!” This claim uses one true fact — that soy farming contributes to deforestation — to mask a far larger, more inconvenient truth.

It’s time to set the record straight on meat, soy, and rainforest destruction once and for all.

Yes, deforestation is a massive and growing problem — an existential threat not just to wildlife, but to humanity itself.

But that’s not an argument against going plant-based. It’s a powerful argument for it.

Here’s why 👇

It’s easy to think that vegans are behind most of the world’s soy consumption. But in reality, just 7% of global soy production goes into foods like tofu, tempeh, soy sauce, miso, edamame, or soy milk.

Meanwhile, over three-quarters (about 77%) of the world’s soy production is used to feed farmed animals.

That means animal products consume ten times more soy than vegan foods.

It’s also worth noting that only a tiny fraction of soy-based foods is actually consumed by vegans, since just 1–2% of the global population is vegan (yet). In many countries, including parts of Asia and increasingly in the West, non-vegans also consume soy products — plant-based milks alone are now found in up to 44% of U.S. households. This makes the share of global soy consumed by vegans even smaller.

Animals are a highly inefficient food source because they consume far more feed, water, and energy than the calories they ultimately provide. Producing a given amount of calories from chicken requires about 10 times more feed calories — and producing beef requires around 33 times more.

This is logical because — unlike plants — animals expend energy not only on growth and reproduction but also on movement, maintaining body temperature, and other energy-intensive biological processes.

And these inefficiencies have a major impact on global soy trade. Most countries that currently rely on imports could easily meet their demand for direct human consumption from local sources. It is the enormous quantities required for animal feed production that make soy imports necessary in the first place.

Let’s remember what this is all about: the claim that vegan soy products are destroying the rainforest.

We’ve already busted this claim — but that was just the tip of the iceberg:

Beyond the soy used to feed farmed animals, the animal industry clears vast swathes of rainforest for pasture — a far greater driver of deforestation than soy farming.

Overall, animal farming causes five times more deforestation than any other industry, and is responsible for 80% of deforestation across the Amazon. It’s the number one culprit of deforestation in virtually every Amazon country.

Key Takeaways

• Blaming vegans for rainforest destruction flips the truth on its head — it shields the real culprit and attacks one of the most effective solutions.

• Animal agriculture is — by a wide margin — the world’s leading driver of deforestation and rainforest destruction.

• Living plant-based is one of the most powerful ways individuals can shrink their environmental footprint. Research shows that a plant-based food system is the only option to reliably feed a growing population without further deforestation.

Gas is getting left behind

 From RenewEconomy

Australia’s NEM is increasingly operating as a renewables-and-storage system, with fossil fuels, particularly gas, associated with the costly end of the market.

Daily battery discharge has risen from only 1-2 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in early 2024 to frequent 15-20 GWh days by mid-2026, with recent peaks above 20 GWh (Figure 1).

That is the time-proven case we outlined earlier this year – batteries are no longer merely ancillary assets, they are increasingly shifting renewable generation, especially solar, into higher-value evening periods and displacing gas peakers.

Figure 1. Australian National Electricity Market electricity from daily utility battery discharging 2024-2026 – AEMO data to 13 Aug 2026

In 2024, battery shares were mostly below 0.5% and high price outcomes were common (Figure 2). With massive growth through 2025 and continuing into 2026, daily battery shares frequently exceed 1.5-2.5%, occasionally reaching around 3.5%, while the dense cluster of outcomes is generally around $A40-100/MWh (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Daily battery share vs Daily Volume Weighted Price stratified by half years – AEMO data 2024-2026

This is not proof that batteries alone determine prices, but it is consistent with their growing role in removing high-price, gas-set intervals from the volume-weighted average (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Daily gas share vs Daily Volume Weighted Price stratified by half years – AEMO data 2024-2026

Figure 5. Daily coal share vs Daily Volume Weighted Price stratified by half years – AEMO data 2024-2026

Across updated scatterplots, the relationships align with our earlier analysis:

– Higher renewable shares above 50% bring lower daily prices below A$100/MWh (Figure 4);

– High coal shares remain associated with a wider and more expensive distribution of outcomes (Figure 5);

– Price rises strongly with gas share; the largest daily price spikes (pricing volatility) remain concentrated on higher-gas days, and conversely the lowest prices occur when gas share is contained (Figure 3); and

– Greater battery dispatch coincides with a lower, tighter price band despite their still modest energy share (Figure 2).

As renewables and batteries expand, they reduce exposure to fuel-driven price spikes and push gas toward a diminishing high-cost role.

Figure 6. Australia National Electricity Market annual generation by major source 2010-2026 – AEMO data 2025 via OpenElectricity

The 2026 data adds weight to the case that “solar daylight saving” – charging batteries in abundant daytime solar and dispatching later – is now a material market force, and no longer just a future promise.

Once battery capacity is sufficient, there will be no role for gas.

During Australia's long transition to renewables, the constant cry from the Right has been that "renewables cost more", "renewables are unreliable", "we'll never be able to run the economy on wind turbines and solar panels".  All these have proved to be false.  We are already at 50% renewables (Figure 6), and wholesale electricity costs are falling.  Although this is the situation in Australia, these lessons are valid for every region or country in the world.  Wind plus solar plus batteries can power the entire grid.

The North Sea has never been this warm

 From Christopher Cartwright

21.5c in the North Sea in 2026 INCREDIBLE #ClimateCrisis #Metacrisis

My translation:  North Sea never so warm before
Measurements at the Light Island Goeree since 1984
21.5 degrees C on 17 August 2026

It's just one place in the North Sea, but it surely mirrors soaring temperatures across Europe.

Preventing a climate calamity is still possible.

 This is an informative video from Climate Adam.  He uses an analogy I've used before: a bathtub.  Virtually every year since 1850, the CO2 we push out into the atmosphere has risen.  Because the outflow from the atmosphere (natural carbon sinks) is less than what we're pumping into the air, the level of CO2 has risen.  Emissions have flatlined over the last 10 years, but they're still more than the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere via carbon sinks.  Using the analogy, the level of water (CO2) in the tub (atmosphere) is continuing to rise, just more slowly.  And thus temperatures continue to rise.  But if we could cut emissions so that they are the same as outflows, the level of water (CO2) would stop rising, and so would temperatures.

Adam makes the point that carbon sinks (where CO2 gets sucked out of the atmosphere) take up around 50% of emissions.  This is only a temporary help, because the carbon sinks (the sea, forests and marshes) are taking less and less out of the atmosphere.  They're filling up.  But it does mean that if we could cut emissions by 50%, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and therefore temperatures, would stop rising (or at least, rise more slowly), though we would still need to cut emissions over time to near zero.  It used to be thought that temperatures would go on rising for decades even after we achieved zero emissions, but this is no longer the scientific consensus.

Now, the good news is that together, emissions from electricity generation and land transport, on average across the world, are roughly 50% of total CO2 emissions.  If we could replace coal and gas in electricity generation, and convert the global car, lorry and bus fleets to electricity, we would have cut emissions by 50%.  In other words, stopping temperatures rising is achievable, and achievable over the next decade.  We would still have to achieve zero emissions, because with the oceans, the carbon sink reduction (the oceans offset and bury CO2) is offset by their thermal inertia — they will continue to release heat into the atmosphere as long as they are cooler than the atmosphere.   But switching to renewables and EVs would give us time to cut emissions from all the other more difficult sectors like cement, steel, air and sea transport and agriculture.

The other climate-warming gas Adam talks about is methane.  Methane comes from gas leaks, rubbish dumps, and cattle and sheep.  Methane has been rising fast, and shows no signs of peaking.  Over a ten-year time frame, methane is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2.  But it quickly decays into CO2, so if we could cut methane emissions, the effects would be rapid.  One third of the rise in temperatures since pre-industrial times is from methane.  So, as we replace gas in electricity generation (and we will for now still need 5 - 10% gas generation to cover dunkelflaute events, because we don't have workable long-term storage), gas leaks will fall.  There are super emitters of methane from rubbish dumps.  And that's easy to stop: just cover your rubbish dumps with a thick layer of earth.  Finally, each of us can avoid beef, mutton and milk.  That's something we can directly do to cut emissions.  Turning vegetarian could be your single biggest step to cutting emissions!  (Buying an EV is another.)

The moral of all this is that we are far from helpless.  CO2 emissions have peaked.  Our task is to bend that curve down, until the level of CO2 in the atmosphere also peaks.  We have to turn the CO2 and methane taps off, and then we will actually be able to avoid a catastrophic climate future.

(One really scary factor driving increasing emissions is AI datacentres.  We need to stop their construction.  Now.)

Elon Musk dines alone

 

Here's you

 By Drew Sheneman

Can I collect the insurance?

By Drew Sheneman