Green criminality and factory farms shame us all
“Consider your origin: you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.” —Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno (ca 1321) “Our food system is undermining our ability to feed humanity now and into the future… It is no exaggeration to say that what happens in the next five years will determine the future of life on Earth.” —WWF, Living Planet Report 2024: A System in Peril “The low retail cost of industrialized food can obscure its very high environmental price tag.” —United Nations Environment Programme “We depend on land for our survival. Yet we treat it like dirt.” —UN Secretary-General António Guterres The UN biodiversity summit, the UN climate summit, the UN desertification summit and the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations this autumn all ended in disappointing and far fewer positive negotiations than life on Earth can tolerate. But are individuals doing any better than governments to protect Nature? The over-50s have failed to live up to their potential to facilitate meaningful positive change for life on Earth. Younger generations, if they are to survive, urgently need to forge on past those global north entitled generations and get on with making Earth an equitable place. The following scenario is a microcosm of how we are failing as older adults: a festive group of enthusiasts go out into the “great outdoors” around Christmas with the aim of socializing and communing with wildlife—observing and recording the migratory birds passing over, and others that overwinter in the area. A good feeling of solidarity permeates the tribe, proud that they can be thought of as participating citizen scientists. In this time of increasing ecological uncertainty this group of acquaintances will probably be passing on their data from this outing to help scientists who study birds. Good work from dedicated conservationists! A celebration is called for. How about a delicious organic vegan meal that honours the group and the rest of Nature, and recognizes the connection and continuum of all life on the planet? But no, the opposite happens. Favouring cheap food packaged to be easy to hand out, the group choose instead the flesh of tortured birds who have spent their short lives crammed into the factory farms that contaminate the rivers, air and soil with their effluent and accelerate wildlife extinction. (Besides the harm they perpetrate on the planet, these establishments pay terrible wages. No rural community wants them nearby because of the odours and air pollution and the negative effect on house prices.) It would be fair to ask whether these Christmas revellers are oblivious to the impact their choice has on wildlife, human health and even Indigenous justice issues related to deforestation and climate when buying this celebratory supper. But, as in so many instances, this is far from being the case. Despite knowing full well about the misery and devastation caused by the demand for factory farms, they go ahead and decide to eat antibiotic-laden birds—and even declare that after the meal they will be “doing their bit” by taking the