John Kerry targets farmers: ‘We can’t get to Net-Zero…unless agriculture is front & center as part of the solution’ – ‘I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis’

From CLIMATE DEPOT

Great Food Reset: John Kerry targets agriculture as part of climate crusade – Slashing farm emissions critical to fighting climate change, John Kerry says

Kerry: “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission.” … Kerry added that “lives depend” on world leaders and scientists developing the tools necessary to lower agriculture emissions… I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis.”

#

“Mitigating methane is the fastest way to reduce warming in the short term. Food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience. We welcome agriculture ministers participating in the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge,” said John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

By: Admin – Climate Depot

John Kerry targets agriculture as part of climate crusade

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry warned Wednesday that the world can’t tackle climate change without first addressing the agriculture sector’s emissions.

Kerry lamented that agriculture production alone creates 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that reducing those emissions must be “front and center” in the quest to defeat global warming, during remarks Wednesday morning at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit. The former secretary of state also touted so-called climate smart agriculture as a potential solution.

“A lot of people have no clue that agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world,” he said during his keynote address. “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission.”

“Food systems themselves contribute a significant amount of emissions just in the way in which we do the things we’ve been doing,” he continued. “With a growing population on the planet – we just crossed the threshold of 8 billion fellow citizens around the world – emissions from the food system alone are projected to cause another half a degree of warming by mid-century.”

Kerry added that “lives depend” on world leaders and scientists developing the tools necessary to lower agriculture emissions.

Overall, the global food system – which includes land-use change, actual agricultural production, packaging and waste management – generates about 18 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent of 34% of total worldwide emissions, according to a March 2021 study published in the Nature Food journal.

In the U.S., though, agriculture alone generates about 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions, federal data showed.

“This sector needs innovation now more than ever,” Kerry continued Wednesday. “We’re facing record malnutrition at a time when agriculture, more than any other sector, is suffering from the impacts of the climate crisis. And I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis.”

“We need economic, social and policy innovation in order to scale adaptation of these technical solutions and get them into the hands of folks in the fields of small farmers on a worldwide basis. This is the promise of AIM for Climate Summit.”

Slashing farm emissions critical to fighting climate change, John Kerry says

WASHINGTON, May 10 (Reuters) – Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production is essential to the global fight against climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said on Wednesday.

Agriculture generates 10% to 12% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The food system as a whole – including packaging, transportation, and waste management – generates a third of global emissions, according to a 2021 study published in the academic journal Nature Food.

“We can’t get to net zero, we don’t get this job done, unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,” Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, said at the AIM for Climate summit in Washington.

He said that without cutting agricultural emissions, the world may not reach its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – which scientists say must be achieved to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

President Joe Biden has pledged the U.S. will reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Rising global temperatures have severe implications for malnutrition and food security worldwide, Kerry said.

“A 2-degree future could result in another 600 million people not getting enough to eat,” said the former U.S. secretary of state. “You can’t continue to warm the planet while also expecting to feed it.”

AIM for Climate is a global initiative, co-led by the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates, to drive investment in farming practices that cut the sector’s emissions.

#

Major Livestock Producing Countries Commit to Mitigate Methane in Agriculture

Santiago, Chile – Today, the Global Methane Hub announced that agriculture and environment ministers and ambassadors from 13 countries, including the United States, have issued a commitment to reduce methane emissions in agriculture. Last month, the Global Methane Hub collaborated with the Ministries of Agriculture of Chile and Spain to convene the first-ever global ministerial on agricultural practices to reduce methane emissions.

“Mitigating methane is the fastest way to reduce warming in the short term. Food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience. We welcome agriculture ministers participating in the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge,” said John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

#

Related: 

Daily Mail: ‘Leave us alone to do what we do best’: Fury at UK plan to hand millions to farmers to turn 741,000 acres of land into nature reserves pushed by ‘rewilding cult’

  • George Eustice launches £2.4billion-a-year plan replacing EU’s £2.4bn common agricultural policy 
  • Farmers and landowners will be paid for planting trees and restoring wetlands in 15 new nature reserves 
  • The ‘landscape recovery scheme’ will eventually cost the taxpayer £800million a year from 2028  
  • But there are concerns about risk to food security and policy will benefit Britain’s richest landowners 
  • Farmers say Boris Johnson’s ‘mad’ obsession with rewilding will drive smaller farmers out of business 
  • Ministers claim plans will turn 741,000 acres into wildlife habitats in 20 years and will not risk food supply 
4.8 16 votes
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

164 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
May 21, 2023 8:09 am

You knew it had to come. First, Global Warming. When that wore thin and it was obvious that it just wasn’t becoming that warm, they rebranded as Climate Change. That garnered some traction, but still has not engendered the requisite fear in the proletariat. Now, it’s a Climate Crisis. I predict a Bud Light future for this new brand.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Shoki
May 21, 2023 9:27 am

I heard this morning that Bud Lite is planning to go to a camouflage green aluminum bottle. The spokesman wasn’t sure if it would be the only Anheuser-Busch brand “transitioning its package”. I swear I’m not making this up.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bud-light-launch-camouflage-bottle-transgender-controversy-report.amp

Reply to  Rich Davis
May 21, 2023 9:48 am

Headline:It took me 20 years to build this brand… they dismantled it in a week’, says man behind Bud’s iconic ads
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/05/11/robert-lachky-bud-light-reputation-destroyed-dylan-mulvaney/

MarkW
Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 22, 2023 11:51 am

Destruction is always easier than construction.

For those who lack the ability to create things, the only way they have of leaving a mark on the world, is to destroy things that others have created.

Lee Riffee
May 21, 2023 8:14 am

“A 2-degree future could result in another 600 million people not getting enough to eat,” said the former U.S. secretary of state. “You can’t continue to warm the planet while also expecting to feed it.”
Just another example of the “cure” being far worse than the “disease” – especially when the disease doesn’t exist! If Lurch thinks that people will starve if the planet warms by 2 degrees, just wait until farmers are prevented from growing enough food to feed the earth’s population. All because of an imaginary crisis.

Reply to  Lee Riffee
May 21, 2023 9:29 am

You can’t continue to warm the planet while also expecting to feed it.

I don’t understand this position at all. If my area averaged 2 degrees warmer I would have a longer growing season and be able to produce more. In the ground sooner, and killed by frost later.

Reply to  Tony_G
May 21, 2023 9:56 am

No you wouldn’t. You’d have the startings of a full blown desert – and deserts get very very cold at night, even in the height of ‘summer’

It only takes one frost to destroy everything you’re hoping of and dreaming of.

Caleb Shaw
Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 21, 2023 1:26 pm

You are jumping to quite a conclusion, Peta of Newark. Warmer temperatures don’t create a desert in the Congo, do they? Warmer temperatures often increase humidity, and that often leads to increased rainfall. It depends on the locale, and parts of the Mid-east and even the Sahara saw lush times in the past, during warmer “climate optimums”. In Syria there are magnificent bridges built by the Romans over rivers that don’t exist any more.

Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 21, 2023 2:01 pm

Peta, Please explain how you manage to go from 2 degrees warmer to desert. As a small scale farmer I just don’t see it doing anything near that – but I see a longer growing season.

MarkW
Reply to  Tony_G
May 22, 2023 11:58 am

Peta lives in a reality that is only partially connected to the one the rest of us inhabit.

Editor
Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 21, 2023 3:06 pm

Warmer temperatures are not a cause of deserts, it’s the other way round: deserts cause higher (and lower) temperatures. Deserts are caused by lack of rainfall, but lower CO2 levels can also contribute to them. Another 2 or more degrees C of global warming would dramatically increase Canada and Russia’s potential for food production, and thus the world’s too.

MarkW
Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 22, 2023 11:57 am

You used to claim that deserts were caused by forest fires.
Now you are claiming they are caused by heat.
I guess that proves the Amazon is nothing but a big desert.

Reply to  Tony_G
May 21, 2023 3:28 pm

American agriculture has shifted all over the country in the last several hundred years.
If the alternative were starvation, I’d bet countries in the Northern Latitudes on each side of the globe would welcome warmer temps.

I now buy fruit and vegetables grown in South America. A more prosperous world can (and does) afford shipments of grain.

Reply to  George Daddis
May 21, 2023 11:30 pm

New strains of wheat have done much more than the presumed growing season lengthening to increase production on the Canadian prairies….oh, and fertilizer…

MarkW
Reply to  Lee Riffee
May 21, 2023 9:37 am

In the world of the climate alarmist. Farmers simply aren’t smart enough to change how they farm in a changing world.

Reply to  Lee Riffee
May 21, 2023 9:54 am

Enough of what to eat….

Please don’t tell me you’re gonna stop what little good stuff there is left (saturated fat) and replace it with the sugar that is presently destroying 80%+ of this world’s population

and the climate
and science
and politics
and personal relations
and baby production
and boys and girls in every sense

Simply growing annual plants destroys the soil, the farms. the landscape, all the critters, the climate. the weather and. not least, the quality of what you grow

Not like starch/sugar has any quality to start with – hence the current mess.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 21, 2023 12:37 pm

Starch?

Ladies and gentlemen we have a Peta breakthrough moment. Wheat and oats and barley and maize —no longer made of sugar!

Next we’ll learn that ethanol isn’t actually a sugar either. And I’ll drink to that.

Caleb Shaw
Reply to  Rich Davis
May 21, 2023 1:35 pm

Actually this Peta from Newark is an intriguing raver. Ask him some more questions about the evils of starch. I’m hoping to learn what proffesor he studied under.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Caleb Shaw
May 21, 2023 3:21 pm

Is Peta a he/him?

Many recent clues makes me suspect she/her

“They” won’t say.

old cocky
Reply to  Rich Davis
May 21, 2023 6:17 pm

Peta is usually a girl or woman’s name.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 21, 2023 12:57 pm

You know Peta, if you would take the reasonable position that people should stop fearing saturated fats, or if you simply stated that replacing fat with carbohydrates is a cause of pre-diabetes, I, and I’m sure many others, would be quick to agree.

If the point of your tirades has actually been that animal husbandry helps balance the farm ecology and a switch to veganism would disrupt that, then again, I am sure that a solid majority would back you up.

If you argued that vegetarian diets make it difficult to get all the micronutrients necessary for good health, most of us would be on your page.

It’s when you veer off into claims that growing annual crops is creating deserts that you really lack any evidence and lose credibility.

MarkW
Reply to  Peta of Newark
May 22, 2023 12:05 pm

People have been growing annual plants since the dawn of agriculture, at least 5000 years ago.
If your theories had any validity, most of the planet would be desert by now.

Reply to  Lee Riffee
May 21, 2023 2:18 pm

Some extra warming would be in the higher latitudes, and would open up VAST SWATHES OF LAND for farming.

Kerry is an ignorant, gormless piece of human waste product.

Rich Davis
Reply to  bnice2000
May 21, 2023 4:37 pm

I’d suggest that he’s not merely gormless, he’s a pathetically vapid, gormlessly insipid prat. But I find it difficult to be as nice as you! 😝

MarkW
Reply to  bnice2000
May 22, 2023 12:10 pm

That’s in the northern hemisphere. Continents get skinnier as you approach the pole in the southern hemisphere.
Though the increases in the northern hemisphere are way larger than the decreases in the southern.

MarkW
Reply to  Lee Riffee
May 22, 2023 11:53 am

According to them, the world has already warmed up 1.5C. During this time agriculture output has gone up by several orders of magnitude.
Despite this, they want us to believe that another 0.5C of warming will bring all this progress to a screeching halt.

MarkW
Reply to  MarkW
May 22, 2023 11:55 am

For the vast majority of the last 15000 years, the earth has been warmer than it is today, by as much as 3 to 5C, yet none of the catastrophes that these Casandra’s are trying to sell us, happened.

May 21, 2023 8:14 am

The ( green) Great Leap Forward. Going to be a long ordeal trying to drive a stake through the heart of these blood suckers.

Dr. Bob
May 21, 2023 8:19 am

We have E-Fuels coming, so why not E-Food. Convert all farmland to solar panels and make food from CO2 via Direct Air Capture. How hard can that be? You can make methanol, ethanol, hydrocarbons and so much more via solar power, so food should be trivial.
And look, there is no destruction of habitat or any other drawbacks to solar. Just see this article: How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’ (msn.com).
So, save the desert, convert farmland to solar panels. And you can even put windmills on top of solar fields and get a double whammy out of the land. What could be better than that. And if we are to electrify everything, this simply must be done. Thus, the need to demonize farming so that we can justify conversion to solar fields.

May 21, 2023 8:22 am

Can you imagine the trouble the US would be in if Gore a/o Kerry had become President of the US? Unthinkable, except it seems the EU has done itself in without prodding from us. Whom are the European equivalent idiots?

Reply to  BobM
May 21, 2023 11:05 am

All of them?
Pick’em

Reply to  BobM
May 21, 2023 3:30 pm

Very similar to the disaster we would face if Joe Biden were ever elected! /sarc

Mr Ed
May 21, 2023 8:24 am

The devil is in the details. I’d like to see exactly what practices Kerry is saying
the small farmers need to adopt. I recall a few years ago a neighbor rigged
up a flexible metal tube from his tractor’s exhaust and routed it to his tillage implement,
putting the exhaust in the ground. He claimed it would help fertilize the soil.
I tried not to laugh but couldn’t help it. I think he got some kind of a
tax break for doing that. He goes to a a lot of farm practices forums and is
cutting edge in a lot of ways.

Here is a link to a state of the art dairy farm in MN. 8800 cows under one roof, 20 acre
barn. You wouldn’t want one of these to be build upwind from your house. They capture
the methane from the manure and run a generator off it to provide all the power used.
Not much English spoken there, all workers from top to bottom are Spanish speaking
and live on site. That area brought in Mexican labor in the 90’s then the Muslims later
at the Jennie-O’s turkey plant.

https://www.facebook.com/DeLavalUS/posts/meadow-star-dairy-owned-and-operated-by-riverview-llp-in-pennock-minnesota-is-an/1426911704061901/

Caleb Shaw
Reply to  Mr Ed
May 21, 2023 1:40 pm

Yikes. A milking machine that holds 108 cows.

Mr Ed
Reply to  Caleb Shaw
May 21, 2023 2:59 pm

When you drive by these “food factories” along the highway you can
“smell the money” miles away. After the MeadowStar was built I read
there were a dozen or so built in a 50+ mile radius in that area.
After 9-11 the potato growers in S Idaho went under and now there
are multiple dairies like these minus the buildings along the highway
producing milk for CA I’ve been told. Poultry and Pork are much
the same also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVWkH3mKlMA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jI75kqLxRA&t=13s

I think Kerry and his group want to kill the small players and
have these factory’s replace the small producer, it will give them
more control over the population. Might be why the border has
been so open.

May 21, 2023 8:36 am

It is pretty technically and financially inept to chase methane very hard, other than to place a value on it as a fuel (which it already has) and to burn it to CO2 if it must be released when the source is sufficiently concentrated (cow flatulence is not).

Draw a vertical line through the CH4 absorption peaks, 3.3 and 7.7 microns….ooops masked by water vapor and nitrogen oxides at 7.7, while at 3.3 microns incoming SW has little energy. So 95% junk science. It is actually indirect proof that propaganda is being used to enable rent seekers to control consumption, industries, and taxation.

IMG_0415.jpeg
Reply to  DMacKenzie
May 21, 2023 11:04 am

It’s actually direct proof

May 21, 2023 8:47 am

He must justify his lofty position by making stupid claims; otherwise, there would be no need for a “Climate Czar.”

David S
May 21, 2023 9:02 am

Solution: Trump2024

SurfinUSA
May 21, 2023 9:24 am

The only threat of a climate crisis comes from a bag of gas like the pompous Elite, John Kerry. Spewing his acidic and putrid bile is poisoning the freedoms of American citizens.

May 21, 2023 9:30 am

Let’s see here. Increase farm productivity by banning fertilizer? Kerry was born an idiot and going downhill ever since.

May 21, 2023 9:38 am
Reply to  Mike Maguire
May 21, 2023 9:45 am

“President Joe Biden has pledged the U.S. will reach net zero emissions by 2050.”

Chances for meeting that pledge are near zero. The EIA and any serious source of reliable energy information knows it.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/12/there-is-no-energy-transition-just-energy-addition/

Screenshot 2023-05-21 at 11-44-15 There Is No Energy Transition Just Energy Addition.png
Reply to  Mike Maguire
May 21, 2023 3:33 pm

He personally guarantees it!
If it doesn’t happen, come see him in 2051 for an apology.

ScienceABC123
May 21, 2023 10:02 am

I think this has more to do with wanting to reduce world population than anything else (i.e. “let’s starve them to death”).

Harry Passfield
May 21, 2023 10:33 am

The question John Kerry needs to answer is: You’re 79 years old. Do you expect to be around to see either, the success of your advocacy, or the profound failure of it. Bearing in mind that others will have to live with either?

May 21, 2023 11:21 am

Although I am not American, I feel entitled to criticize “The United States special presidential envoy for climate”, John Kerry, since he put my country in the same bag of emitters (non-emitter, in our case).

He speaks without having the slightest idea of what he is talking about. For instance, clueless Kerry states that agriculture emits methane, which is false. Cows do and that is called livestock.

Is it that he doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the disaster that his same destructive policies have wrought in the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and, sooner than later, in Germany, and that he now wants to impose in his own country seeking for support in thirteen other lackey Marxist nations? At least, Mr. Kerry, be polite and mind your own business as we’ve had more than enough with your friend you invited out for beers in Canada, the so-called “president”, drug addict, thief and communist who has led us to economic collapse and, out of control drug trafficking, immigration and terrorism. He, your friend, deeply supports you.

Does Mr. Kerry now want to go even further down the path of economic destruction adding food shortages, skyrocketing food prices and famine in America because of the imperceptible, negligible, harmless and short-life traces of nitrous oxide and methane?

I understand that fostering, encouraging and promoting genocide is punishable by crimes against humanity, which is what Mr. Kerry is precisely doing as he goes ahead with his totalitarian Communist-UN agenda and his perverted and perverse net-zero fantasy.

At the limit that green madness has reached, not only the USA, but the entire West urgently needs Donald Trump back in office, whether we like him or not.

I do because I believe and trust in facts and in promises kept. So, would you be so kind as to lend us your former president even for just one day?

Thank you.
 

OweninGA
Reply to  Douglas Pollock
May 21, 2023 2:53 pm

OK, now tell us how you REALLY feel. 🙂

Trudeau and Kerry are both idiots that unfortunately have too many people bamboozled.

viteye
May 21, 2023 12:38 pm

Truly amazing Kerry must be some mutant superhero. No normal human could contain the ignorance of 3 people like Kerry does. He can go defecate in a bottle of his wife’s Heinz catsup.

mikelowe2013
May 21, 2023 1:14 pm

So first it was Carbon Dioxide, and now they move on to Methane. Without ever admitting they were wrong about CO2! What will be next, in their crazy search for the unidentifiable?

terry
May 21, 2023 1:20 pm

Kerry’s got a cellar full of ketchup in each mega mansion. What me worry

garboard
May 21, 2023 2:09 pm

we need to eliminate all creatures and machines which are based on oxidation . if we can eliminate oxygen and oxygen based life from constantly demanding to oxidize other living things we could stay below 1.5 . oxygen is the great consumer driving the destruction of the planet . co2 is the basis of all plant life and thus all life , oxygen is the great and evil destroyer . end relentless consumption by oxygen based life forms . power to the plants !

artimms
May 21, 2023 2:18 pm

Given all of the unhinged madness surrounding the projected damage to the climate caused by CO2, I cannot believe that we do not have one brilliant scientist anywhere on earth that can competently and completely destroy the CO2 theory. We soon won’t need to worry about climate change being an existential threat, because policy decisions made by ignorant politicians like Kerry will become an even greater threat to mankind.

Edward Katz
May 21, 2023 2:27 pm

If it’s a crisis why’s the global population increasing as well as life expectancies and agricultural production? Wasn’t it Adolf Hitler or some other autocrat who claimed that if the same lie is repeated often enough the majority of people become duped into accepting it as a fact. John Kerry and plenty of other con-men have been trying this gimmick with climate alarmism for years now except anyone with even half a brain can see through them and certainly don’t intend to make any big lifestyle changes to combat the so-called “threat”. Nor will they support any government that dances to the tune because to do so would only lead to higher taxes, new laws and restrictions.

Reply to  Edward Katz
May 21, 2023 3:41 pm

Climate extremes (intensity and frequency) have been level (or reduced) over the last 100 years. Climate mortalities have shrunk by an order of magnitude.
The only thing they can hang their hat on justify their “phony-baloney jobs” (h/t Mel Brooks) is an AVERAGE of wildly divergent climate models.

Reply to  Edward Katz
May 22, 2023 5:55 am

People aren’t stupid. They know that you can go south 250 mi. and experience a 1.5 to 2.0 degree difference. That doesn’t make those areas deserts. That is why climate change is so low on everyone’s list! It’s being pushed so hard right now because it’s something Joe Biden can crow about without showing any current evidence one way or the other.

May 21, 2023 2:51 pm

Perhaps its time to have the first global referendum in world history:

Resolved: the world will give up meat, dairy and rice in order to reduce potential warming by 0.1c.

May 21, 2023 3:03 pm

I apparently missed John Kerry’s lecture to the Chinese government regarding their increases under the agreement he and Slo’ Joe negotiated (under Obama) that will be greater than the US reductions if we were to attain “net zero”. (Or possibly even absolute zero CO2 emissions)

old cocky
May 21, 2023 3:06 pm

Perhaps somebody can tell him about pho-to-syn-the-sis, in words of 1 syllable or less.

Dave Fair
May 21, 2023 3:49 pm

Who do you think can best feed the peoples of the world: Farmers or Leftist ideologues? The minor warming we’ve had, coupled with an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations has led to significantly increased agricultural output. Name a farmer that thinks going back to the global temperatures of the Little Ice Age is a good idea.

artimms
Reply to  Dave Fair
May 21, 2023 9:24 pm

I agree completely, but why is it that the majority of the population hasn’t even heard of the LIA and its relevance to the climate change narrative? They just pay the higher energy costs and complain without any understanding of what is going on, other than parroting the CO2 bullshit. I live in Alberta Canada and I’ve witnessed the destructive impact on thousands of jobs caused by this global propaganda agenda.