Daily-Dose

Contents

From New Yorker

From Vox

Alarmism over imagined threats to meat consumption is nothing new. In 2012, an internal USDA newsletter about the agency’s sustainability efforts mentioned Meatless Mondays, which prompted pushback from congressional Republicans. But the sparring over meat has escalated in recent years, which is terrible news for the planet. Leading environmental researchers warn that even if we do stop all fossil fuel use, we’re still cooked if we don’t change what we eat.

Agriculture accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, with meat, dairy, and eggs making up the bulk of those emissions. And farmers won’t be spared from the effects of a changing climate. Extreme weather events, like droughts, wildfires, and floods, can destroy harvests and kill farmed animals. Rising temperatures and changing ecosystems lower livestock productivity, reduce crop yields, and degrade nutritional quality.

Dragging plant-based meat into the culture war could also hurt Nebraska farmers’ bottom line in another way: The state is devoting more acreage to crops that go into plant-based meat. Late last year, the ingredient company Puris, which subcontracts for Beyond Meat, told the Independent it had increased pea production in Nebraska by 81 percent from 2019 to 2021 and expected further growth in the state. (The farmer interviewed also raises cattle and joked that he’s grabbing “both of these markets.”)

Nebraska is also a leader in growing beans, a longtime staple of plant-based products.

Johnathan Hladik, policy director for the Center for Rural Affairs — a Nebraska-based nonprofit that works to improve quality of life for small farmers and rural citizens — said farmers in the state don’t see plant-based meat as a significant threat. “It might be a humorous line in a conversation or a political punchline that gets good laughs and cheers,” he told me. “I don’t hear anybody having serious conversations about it.” Hladik’s family farms corn, soybeans, and cattle, and he raises animals himself that he sells directly to consumers.

Grant Schulte/AP
Governor-elect Jim Pillen at the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln on January 18.

According to Graham Christensen, a corn and soybean farmer and the head of a renewable energy company in Nebraska, plant-based meat and other issues invoked by Pillen — like state agriculture regulation, the EPA’s clean water rule, and the Biden administration’s conservation programs — are trotted out as boogeymen to distract from problems wrought by large meat producers like the governor-elect.

“This is a psychological scheme that has been deployed over and over on good rural Nebraska people and beyond, in order to allow business to go forward as is,” said Christensen, who isn’t a fan of plant-based meat but agrees the US needs to cut back on meat consumption.

What most worries farmers and advocates like Hladik and Christensen, more than the rise of plant-based meat, is the rapid consolidation of the meat and feed industries, which has squeezed out smaller farmers, as well as the scourge of air and water pollution across the Midwest that’s been caused largely by industrialized agriculture. Pillen, who has inveighed against “environmental crazies” and “the assault on modern agriculture,” is unlikely to address either.

Pillen’s not wrong that what he calls modern agriculture, a euphemism for large-scale, industrialized animal agriculture, is under attack. But in Nebraska, it’s not necessarily from the specter of plant-based meat or the Biden administration, which has largely taken the same hands-off approach to agricultural pollution that Pillen advocates. Rather, it’s often from Nebraskans angry that their state government has known about its water pollution problem for decades and has only allowed it to get worse.

“Don’t tell me how to farm”

Nebraska is home to around 100 million farmed animals, fattened up with a lot of corn and soybeans. An even bigger proportion of the state’s corn production goes to make ethanol that’s blended with gasoline, which researchers say is an inefficient use of land. Most farmers apply nitrogen-based fertilizers to make the corn and soybeans grow as big and fast as possible, which means they usually need less land to grow more feed than organic farmers — a good thing. But the synthetic fertilizer comes with a steep public health toll: Nitrogen from fertilizer leaks out as nitrate into groundwater, which some 85 percent of Nebraskans rely on for drinking water. Researchers have found that areas with high nitrate levels have higher rates of childhood cancer and birth defects, and high nitrate levels are linked to colorectal cancer and thyroid disease.

Rain, as well as water used to irrigate crops, also carries nitrogen off the land and into rivers and streams, which can kill off fish and pollute waterways.

The other major source of nitrogen pollution comes from farmed animals themselves. Farmers spread their manure onto crops as a natural fertilizer, but some of it — like the synthetic stuff — leaches into waterways and groundwater.

A tractor on a field spraying fertilizer from a small tank attached to the tractor. Nati Harnik/AP
A farmer applies fertilizer to a field near Gretna, Nebraska.

According to a damning recent investigation by the Flatwater Free Press, 59 of Nebraska’s 500 or so public water systems have violated the EPA’s nitrate limit of 10 parts per million since 2010 — a limit some researchers argue is still unsafe for children.

There are some practical, win-win solutions that Christensen and Hladik would like to see farmers take up to reduce nitrogen pollution, like planting trees and shrubs between cropland and waterways to prevent nitrate runoff, and cover-cropping — planting certain crops alongside corn and soy that can absorb nitrogen or reduce reliance on fertilizer. Silvia Secchi, a natural resource economist at the University of Iowa, told me the benefits of these practices will be limited because they’re voluntary and most farmers will only employ them if they get subsidies, which come and go.

Secchi, Christensen, and Hladik all agree that what’s really needed is regulatory activity and enforcement, such as improving water pollution monitoring and testing, permitting livestock farms so they’re further from homes and schools, fining repeat polluters, and requiring farmers to better manage manure.

But given the outsized political influence meat and animal feed producers wield in the state, it’s a lot to hope for, even at the local level. Nebraska has 23 natural resource districts, or NRDs — local governmental bodies made up of elected boards with the goal of improving water quality (among other issues). One elected NRD member, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, told me most NRDs are stacked with farmers or others involved in agriculture who resist reform.

“I hear this almost every board meeting: ‘Don’t tell me how to farm,’” they told me. The NRDs also have little to no enforcement authority: they can issue cease-and-desist orders that, if violated, can result in fines. The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE) has more authority, but Hladik said it’s underfunded and understaffed.

Even if it had people and money, it would need a mandate from the governor to clean up Nebraska’s wells and waterways. So far, that hasn’t come to pass; neither the NDEE nor any of Nebraska’s 23 NRDs have ever issued a cease-and-desist order or fine for excessive nitrogen fertilizer or manure application, according to the Flatwater Free Press. Meanwhile, cities, towns, and individuals have spent millions to treat water.

Water quality will likely worsen in the coming years, as Costco recently set up hundreds of barns and an enormous slaughter complex in the state to raise and process nearly 100 million chickens each year.

The Nebraska Association of Resources Districts did not respond to an interview request for this story. NDEE, responding to a request for comment, said in an emailed statement that it is “committed to an integrated approach to nutrient reduction that incorporates science-based and cost-effective targeted management practices” and that it “adheres to state statutory requirements and enacts regulatory authority through the department’s rules and regulations.”

Around 75 piglets on slatted floors inside a barn. Getty Images/iStockphoto/Kelli Jo
Piglets on a farm in Nebraska.

Pillen, who has been on the receiving end of numerous state and citizen complaints against his business, benefits from Nebraska’s weak regulatory environment. In 1997, he received a complaint from the state over odors from one of his facilities. In 2000, a group of 18 plaintiffs sued over the stench of his hog operations, reporting a “musty hog shit smell” that “chokes you.” One woman said she felt she was a prisoner in her house, while another plaintiff complained that they couldn’t spend any time outside with their children and grandchildren. In 2013, a group of more than 100 people opposed new hog barns Pillen wanted to set up in Butler County, and two years later Pillen was cited for water pollution in another county.

“It’s really like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse to elect a guy like that,” said Secchi. The NRD member I spoke to used the same phrase when I asked them what they think of a Pillen governorship, as did a farmer.

Pillen and his family have received at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal subsidies from 1995 to 2019, according to the Environmental Working Group’s farm subsidies database.

We can’t afford to drag meat into the culture war

Pillen has entered the political arena during a moment in which agricultural policy is returning to the national political stage; President Biden even mentioned cover crops in his first address to Congress. This is a welcome turn of events. But agriculture is full of counterintuitive trade-offs, and blanket statements made by red-meat conservatives like Pillen, and sometimes by progressive advocates of organic agriculture, only serve to degrade the discourse on a complex, critical issue.

With a global population hitting 8 billion people on a heating planet, we need to be able to ask why we’re growing so much corn to produce so much meat — and ethanol — in the first place, without the conversation devolving to pithy campaign slogans.

America’s meat consumption, at more than 250 pounds per person per year, is simply unsustainable at current levels. If we raised fewer animals in a more ecologically sound fashion, and opted for more plant-based meat, or occasionally swapped meat for Nebraska-grown beans, we wouldn’t need to grow so much animal feed that pollutes waterways and endangers rural communities. It’d be far easier to manage the mountains of waste generated in the US each year by nearly 10 billion animals that makes rural life increasingly unbearable for some. Less meat doesn’t mean rejecting agriculture, but rather rethinking what we devote precious land to — a rethinking that could also help struggling farmers economically diversify, as Christensen told me.

It’s all but guaranteed Pillen would’ve won without his polarizing comments on meat alternatives and his anti-regulatory ethos. But the culture war-ification of meat — intended to shore up rural identity and needlessly divide voters — is something to keep an eye on as the climate footprint of what we eat becomes increasingly impossible to ignore, and essential for policymakers to address.

Ukraine, so far, has been managing these challenges: stepping up public and private efforts to obtain and fund replacement parts, and deploying mitigation efforts like planned blackouts and urging Ukrainians to conserve energy. Officials have also told people who already fled the country they should not return because the energy system is stressed. “Ukrainians became energy efficient not by choice, but by war,” said Maryna Ilchuk, counsel in the Kyiv office of CMS Cameron McKenna LLC and board member of the Women’s Energy Club of Ukraine.

Ukraine does now have more advanced Western air-defense systems to help defend against Russian air bombardments; on Tuesday, an advisor to Zelenskyy said Ukraine shot down 70 of the 90 or so Russian missiles. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that its NASAMS air defense system, delivered recently, has had a “100 percent” success rate intercepting Russian missiles, and Ukraine is likely to push for more such systems to defend against Moscow’s onslaughts.

A lot remains unpredictable. Ukraine’s ability to withstand the winter depends on the things like the frequency and ferocity of Russian attacks, how effective its air defense systems are, or how cold the winter becomes. But the magnitude of the destruction so far, the difficulty of repairs, and Russia’s ability to continue to wage war against the same targets multiple times, means Ukraine will struggle to maintain and protect its infrastructure this winter, to keep the lights and heat on.

But, so far, Russia’s attacks have not diminished Ukrainian morale; if anything, it’s hardened attitudes against Russia, and any sort of negotiated settlement. “Ukrainians,” Shulmeister said, would “rather be frozen and not washed, than becoming part of Russia.”

Russian attacks are debilitating Ukraine’s energy infrastructure

Russian attacks in October damaged five of the six thermal power plants run by DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy investor. They had successfully undergone repairs. But after a pause of a few weeks, Russian again unleashed strikes on Tuesday.

During this latest wave, at least one of those plants was hit, and the rest were running at about 50 percent capacity, DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko told Vox. As of Wednesday, DTEK is still assessing the scale of the damage.

Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images
Employees work on damaged equipment at a high-voltage substation of the Ukrenergo energy transmission system operator after a Russian missile attack in central Ukraine on November 10.

Ukraine generates electricity through a few means — nuclear power, coal, and natural gas, mostly. Russia isn’t really attacking Ukraine’s ability to generate power, but taking out different limbs of the systems that help convert and carry and eventually distribute electricity to homes and businesses.

As experts said, power substations — which are basically the connector between the power-generating facilities to the distribution networks that get electricity to users — are a frequent target. “You have multiple ways to deliver electricity to a city, but all these delivery roads go through the substations. By damaging these large substations, they just cut those power lines effectively coming from power plants to cities,” said Dennis Sakva, a Kyiv-based energy sector analyst at Dragon Capital.

Russia is also targeting things like transmission lines that carry electricity, or transformers that transfer electricity from one circuity to another. Altogether, it means providers can’t deliver enough power to the cities and towns to meet the demand, and so they have to limit consumption with things like planned or “stabilization” blackouts. But if there’s a sudden spike in demand, or another substation or transmission line goes down, the lights, the water, the heat can go out, without notice.

And this isn’t just one substation or a few transmission lines; this is all over Ukraine — dozens and dozens of wounds to the network. “The scale of damages is so large that it makes it almost impossible for timely repairs and getting back to normal,” Sakva said.

Finding spare parts to make repairs is one of the biggest challenges. Energy companies don’t necessarily have huge stocks, and replacements can be difficult to produce. According to Kobolyev, the former energy chief, it can take months; the lead time for one large transformer, he said, is usually 12 months. Some of Ukraine’s infrastructure, like its coal-fired plants, were built during the Soviet era, adding to the difficulty of repairs. Timchenko, of DTEK, said they have to sometimes reallocate parts from other Ukrainian plants, or find similar models from other former Soviet states, like in Eastern Europe, that might have similar specifications. “The biggest concern is that we run out of stock, and it cannot be replaced,” Timchenko said.

Efrem Lukatsky/AP
People charge their phone and try to connect to the internet and make phone calls on the central square in Kherson, Ukraine, on November 15.

Energy companies are coordinating with the Ukrainian government to seek emergency equipment donations from abroad, from private firms and governments, and then direct it to where repairs are most urgently needed. The wish-list includes things like power transformers, generators, pipes, insulators, and welding machines.

This acute scramble, of course, is piling on to the infrastructure struggles Ukraine has faced since Russia launched its full-on assault in Ukraine last February. Even in places like Kyiv, and its suburbs, where Russia retreated from in April, houses are still bombed out, roads still destroyed. In April, Ukrainian officials had estimated that about 30 percent of its transportation infrastructure was damaged, though, Shulmeister said, transport problems are easier to fix than energy ones.

Zaporizhzhia, the largest power plant in Ukraine and Europe’s largest nuclear plant, came under Russian control, and it shut down its reactors repeatedly because of fighting and safety concerns, cutting it off from the Ukrainian grid. Russian attacks have also taken out renewable energy infrastructure — as much as 50 percent of its solar capacity, and 90 percent of its wind turbines.

“These attacks against critical infrastructure — the reverberating effects for the civilian population have been massive so far,” said Alexander Grif, Ukraine country director for the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “And we have not even entered winter in Ukraine.”

Uncertainty as winter approaches — and a reminder that the costs of war go far beyond the immediate conflict

Ukrainian officials called Russia’s latest barrage the worst of the war to date. It will stress a system already struggling from October’s attacks, with few parts of society or the economy spared.

For civilians, the power going out, of course, means you don’t have lights or television or an internet connection for a few hours. If you use gas for cooking, a few people said, you’re now one of the lucky ones. But electricity is also key to keeping other utilities running, like water and heat. District heating, often used in cities, depends on electric pumps to move hot water, which is used to heat homes; approximately 53 percent of urban households in Ukraine rely on such systems as their main heating source during the winter. As Sakva pointed out, if the heat and water go out, pipes might freeze up, and then when they thaw, it can create a humanitarian disaster. A big city without a water supply is also a sanitation hazard, as it creates hygienic risks and people lack clean drinking water.

Ed Ram/Getty Images
Parents watch their children at a playground in front of damaged buildings in Borodyanka, in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, on November 9. The city was hit particularly hard by Russian airstrikes in the first few weeks of the conflict.

Some people in Kyiv said, right now, the indoors can feel like the outdoors. But the coldest months are not here yet; the temperature in January and February hovers around 30 degrees Fahrenheit in Kyiv. Homes damaged by strikes — blown out windows, or broken pipes — would be hard to heat even if utilities were working at full capacity.

Right now, the priority is getting the most urgent systems up and running. “We are trying to restore the assets that are required immediately to survive during the winter period. So pipes, heating tubes, heated infrastructure, electricity infrastructure, and things like that,” said Vladyslava Grudova, who is tracking infrastructure damages as co-head of the project damaged.in.ua.

The full extent of destruction Russia has unleashed on critical energy infrastructure is hard to fully gauge. Experts and analysts told me that, especially since the Kremlin is targeting these elements, Ukraine is closely protecting that information, though official statements and industry data — along with the realities of everyday Ukrainians — offer at least some clues.

As of September, estimates of damage to energy infrastructure landed somewhere around $13.4 billion, but that predates Russia’s October and November assaults, which means the figure is likely much higher. The Kyiv School of Economics, which is in the process of revising their data for October, estimates about $127 billion in total infrastructure damage as of September 1, with about $50 billion of that just housing costs alone. In September, the World Bank assessed Ukraine’s physical damage at about $97 billion, with the total rebuilding costs somewhere closer to $350 billion.

Ukraine will need economic and humanitarian aid to get through the winter — generators, and winter coats, and clean water supplies, which are being delivered, though the scale of which is still unclear. Strikes and shelling make the delivery of that aid more challenging, too. Authorities are trying to come up with back-up plans, including emergency heating centers and warnings to stock up on firewood as an alternative heating source, although as someone pointed out, it’s not like you can lug a wood-burning stove up to your high-rise apartment.

Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images
Nina Marchenko prepares to light her wood-burning stove at her home in the eastern Ukrainian village of Yampil, near the frontline in the Donbas region, on November 10.

Energy analysts and experts also say that military aid matters here, too, specifically air defense systems that allow Ukraine to intercept Russian strikes. These systems can’t cover everything, but as Spencer said, they do help Ukraine protect the critical infrastructure in major cities, which is exactly what Putin is attacking.

And these energy problems are directly connected to that battle for Ukrainian territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin has targeted civilian infrastructure in response to Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which has successfully wrested back some Russian-controlled territory in the east and south. Ukraine is trying to push ahead to make as many gains as possible ahead of winter, when cold weather and frozen ground and lack of coverage will change the nature of the fighting, and force both sides to adjust tactics.

But Russia sees these attacks on critical systems as a strategy to grind down Ukraine, which means the risk of more destruction will persist. A crippled energy infrastructure will affect every corner of Ukraine, as it disrupts communication and transport networks, banking and postal networks, and food and agricultural production. That will threaten to displace more people and create pockets of humanitarian emergencies.

All of these vulnerabilities may also make it harder for Ukraine to wage war on the front lines, in what will be, no matter what, a very long winter.

From The Hindu: Sports

From The Hindu: National News

From BBC: Europe

From Ars Technica

From Jokes Subreddit