“As societies grow more unequal and extractive, decision making becomes worse… Warlordism, statehood, and organized crime all have similar ingredients: a hierarchy that coercively extracts resources from a territory and population.”

—Luke Kemp, Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse 

The 2009 film The Age of Stupid examines, from the not-so-distant vantage point of 2055, a wrenching question: if humans were able to see the devastation caused by human-induced climate change in the beginning years of the 21st century, why did they do nothing to stop it?

The answer can perhaps be found in the ways oligarchs, plutocrats, psychopaths and autocrats nourish inequality. If rich societies since 1850 could extract and then dump their carbon, plastic and pesticide waste around the world, why not continue and basically refuse to help others adapt to their created mess?

While climate justice is all about stopping societal collapse by not being ransomed by deliberate under-education and abject greed, an extractive patriarchal and hierarchical society will always collapse, historians and archaeologists tell us. Profit-driven groups can’t possibly contemplate a degrowth template for turning away from the precipice. 

One way in which we can address the inequities of human-induced climate breakdown is by considering the food on our plates. Long-standing campaign group Compassion in World Farming states: “Over the last half a century, factory farming has risen to become one of the major issues affecting the future of our planet. It is the world’s biggest cause of animal cruelty and a primary driver of wildlife declines. At the same time, it is a serious pollutant, contributing to climate change and marine dead zones, and a potent source of disease that risks future pandemics. In a world of growing climate, Nature collapse, and pandemic emergencies, ending factory farming has never been more urgent.” https://tinyurl.com/factory-industrial-animals

When speaking about the enormous concerns regarding industrial farming, individuals, companies and governments are often both afraid to act to bring about the urgent change needed and unwilling to be the first to enact that change. Industrial agriculture’s megalithic status quo will eventually fail, but until then what is left to spring the Earth’s biosphere back to health?

Last month’s climate summit (COP30) in Belém, Brazil should have been a place to start this conversation. The ecologically destabilizing deforestation taking place in Brazil has forged Indigenous alliances. They have been shut out of past climate conferences, but at COP30 they were easily heard, even if it meant breaking down the barriers.

And encouragingly, just prior to the summit, the Brazilian government launched a vital new project, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, which aims to reverse tropical deforestation, with a US$1 billion seed fund. The fund rose to 5.5 billion dollars during the conference and will hopefully reach 125 billion. https://tinyurl.com/TFFF-seed-fund 

However, pressed by agriculture conglomerates, Brazil has permitted more Amazon and Cerrado clearance, primarily for soybean cultivation and animal farming, and there are also plenty of illegal operations. All this is playing havoc with the country’s water reserves, and on top of this Brazil’s jaguars, half of the world population, are being forced out of the Amazon to make way for plantations of soya for the global production of industrially raised chickens. See this short video to learn some of what is at stake: https://tinyurl.com/cerrado-destruction

Speciesism (prejudice and discrimination against other species) is alive and well in many Canadians’ hearts. Soybean meal and grains from Brazil, the US and Canada feed North America’s growing and seemingly unquenchable lust for eating intensively reared chickens and cows. (Tens of billions of factory-produced chickens are killed each year.) Why feed perfectly nutritious foods such as soybeans and grains to caged animals when humans can have far better and more efficient access by eating these foods direct? 

It should be obvious to anyone living in 2025 that what is happening to Brazil’s forests will eventually impact the widespread disregard for the planet shown by people in the global north, including Canadian citizens. The building of roads and the burning down of tropical forests for soybeans to fatten factory chickens accelerate climate breakdown and will affect us all, just as the recent wildfires caused by human climate malfeasance in Canada affect the rest of the world well after those fires stop smouldering. 

Starvation shouldn’t be a policy of governments. Study after study shows that wildlife is directly in the crosshairs of intensive farms, whether that be in Africa, Asia, South America or North America. If we love wildlife, one answer to protect it is to stop eating intensively raised animals.

The Humane League points out that chickens “are subjected to some of the most inhumane treatments of any factory-farmed animal. Extreme confinement, surgical procedures performed without painkillers, and the denial of normal socialization opportunities are among the many factors that make these chickens’ lives difficult and at times unbearable.”https://tinyurl.com/farm-cruelty

On top of the cruelty of these hapless animals’ short lives, and the enormous wastage of clean water by industrial farms, the manure produced impacts lands, rivers and lakes and pollutes our air. Ellen K. Silbergeld in her timely book Chickenizing Farms and Food: How Industrial Meat Production Endangers Workers, Animals and Consumers, explains: 

“Ecologically, overloading soils with waste-borne nutrients results in overloading surface waters with these nutrients. With rains and runoff, as much as 50 percent of the applied nutrients are lost before they can be absorbed into soils. This results in enriching surface waters, which is a major contributor to the degradation of these systems. In many regions, food animal production is the major source of adverse impacts on the health of surface waters and coastal waters… The impacts can be chronic, impairing the habitability of waterways for aquatic life and their utility for human recreation, or acute, resulting in massive fish kills and harmful algal blooms…” 

Unbridled extreme extractive growth is not only being served up at the tables of billionaires. The recent frenzy of Black Friday’s month-long extravaganza of super-consumerism, together with its green-washing spin-offs, permeates many Canadians’ dreams to join the oligarchs’ clubs. Cheap goods and nutritionally poor food hyper-drive us towards a depleted Earth and a wasting democracy. Enter populist demagogues who are more than pleased to rip off an addicted population in the name of promises of security and low food prices: the industrial mega-farm is a dream come true.

A comprehensive report by the Center for Biological Diversity explains that “the industry also contributes to food insecurity, poor public health, antibiotic resistance, environmental injustice, dangerous worker conditions, inequality and the inhumane treatment of other animals.” https://tinyurl.com/extinction-plate

Food waste contributes to hunger and the despoiling of land that produces that same food. Food justice enables the poorest people to move away from the often toxic contaminated menus originating in factory farms. 

How can we transition to a kinder, more equitable food system? Here we might turn again to Silbergeld:

“Reform—feasible and sustainable reform for an agriculture that feeds the world — needs the participation and stamina of all of us to achieve the changes necessary for health, nutrition, animal welfare, social dignity, and sustainability. The power of ordinary people eventually becomes the power of change. The food industry is remarkably responsive when it comes to consumer disfavor.”

Even those of us who don’t want to protest on the streets can play their part. Earth-friendly diets are a way out from supporting, perhaps inadvertently, the horrors of feeding oligarchs’ love for wildlife extinction and climate chaos. https://tinyurl.com/extinction-off-table

Right now, as well as in good time for the end-of-year holidays, you can find some fabulous recipes that don’t cost the Earth at https://tinyurl.com/earth-friendly-recipes