Corporate Knights Winter 2024

Bugs have feelings, too I read Chris St. Prince’s November 15 article on farming insects for food and animal feed. As a former entomologist and current bug enthusiast, it was encouraging to see such sensitive and articulate reporting on insect welfare. I want producers, regulators and consumers to meaningfully grapple with the implications of putting trillions more animals through intensive farming. —Katrina Loewy, Englewood, Colorado CK: Thank you, Katrina. Hopefully, the story provoked discussion among those touting insect farming as a climate solution. Fairness for the next generation [RE: “Succession: Climate Edition”] It’s positive to look [at] this transfer of wealth as a chance for better stewardship. Nations will benefit if we also promote social justice where, irrespective of a child’s background, there is equality of opportunity. —Grant Gordon, via…

My mother grew up with Christmas being a spartan time. For me, she was determined to do the opposite. We had an abundance of festive cheer, and I always had a pile of presents under the tree. Probably my most memorable gift was the Millennium Falcon. It was the signature piece from the Star Wars series and a gateway into a world of lightsabers, space, a worrywart robot named C-3PO and the mysterious force, described by Obi-Wan Kenobi as “an energy field created by all living things.” It served as a sort of connective tissue for all living things and could be tapped into for dark or light purposes. I couldn’t help but notice the parallels at this year’s annual UN Climate Change Conference, COP28, when the CEO of ExxonMobil,…

WINTER 2024 VOL 23 ISSUE 1 A first nail in the coffin for the fossil fuel industry After round-the-clock negotiations at the climate summit in Dubai in mid-December, a flawed but potentially transformative declaration was reached, calling for a shift away from oil and gas for the first time in United Nations climate agreement history. The COP28 decision text included language about “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” and “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, or before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science.” That phrasing reflected a hard-fought battle that pitted more than 100 countries favouring a fossil fuel phasedown or phaseout against the nearly 2,500 fossil fuel lobbyists that…

While the COVID-19 pandemic caused long-lasting pain on many economic fronts, it failed to slow down green job growth. The clean energy sector added 4.7 million jobs between 2019 and 2022, according to the second annual World Energy Employment report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), published in November. That puts the total number of jobs in clean energy at 35 million in 2022, compared to just 32 million in oil, gas and coal. The fossil fuel sector created 1.3 million fewer jobs than it did in 2019. “Solar [photovoltaic] is by far the largest employer, accounting for 4 million jobs, while EVs and batteries were the fastest growing, adding well over 1 million jobs since 2019,” the report says. Chart source: International Energy Agency The power generation sector employed…

The planet is getting hotter, faster, but there are victories too. One is in the lungs of the earth. After years of rampant deforestation in the Amazon, the trend is reversing. Deforestation levels are down a dramatic 55.8% from 2022 to 2023, according to the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP). The largest declines occurred in the Brazilian-controlled part of the jungle, which dropped 59%, and in Colombia, which plunged 67%. Peru’s forest loss dropped 37%. “Compared to the peak year of 2020, forest loss has dropped by over two-thirds, or 67.7%,” MAAP said in a press release. “These data show there is still hope for the Amazon,” MAAP’s director, Matt Finer, told Reuters. The political backdrop is impossible to ignore. President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, Brazil’s left-wing…

When it comes to the ecological harms of industrial farming, pesticides and nitrous-oxide-spewing fertilizers are often top concerns for environmentalists. But agriculture’s overall use of fossil fuels is also an enormous problem, according to a recent analysis by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. The report estimates that agriculture’s supply chain is responsible for at least 15% of the world’s fossil fuel use and for driving the equivalent annual carbon emissions of the European Union and Russia combined. This is thanks to the ways we produce, transport and store food. As is the case with many industries, fossil fuels are deeply entrenched in agricultural supply chains, from using combustion-engine tractors to packaging foods in plastic wrapping. “Industrial food systems have a fossil fuel problem,” said Patty Fong, a…