Green news of the week

A few milligrams of environmental news.

Quiz

If nothing changes by 2100 in our diets and agricultural practices, our food consumption could warm the Earth by:

A) 0.2 to 0.6°C
B) 0.7 to 0.9°C
C) 0.9 to 1.3°C

Answer : B

A study recently published in Nature Climate Change calculated that by the end of the century, the production and consumption of food could be responsible for a warming of the planet of almost 1°C compared to pre-industrial levels (between 0.7 and 0.9°C according to the increase in world population). By eating meat only once a week, this increase could be reduced by 0.2°C.

800 million birds have disappeared in Europe

Nearly 800 million birds disappeared on the European continent between 1980 and 2016, a dramatic decline of 25%. In agricultural areas, the decline is even more dramatic: nearly 57% of birds have disappeared. These are the results of the largest study of birds in Europe which have just been published in the scholarly journal PNAS. “We find that the intensification of agriculture, in particular the use of pesticides and fertilizers, is the main cause of the decline of most bird populations,” write the authors, who studied 170 species found. on 20,000 sites in 38 countries.

Green, lab meat?

You’ve probably heard of lab “meat” before. Thanks to stem cells, scientists manage to grow muscle tissue from animals. When will such meat be in our grocery stores? Hard to say. But from a climate perspective, this may not be the silver bullet. The global warming potential of lab-grown meat is 4% to 25% higher than that of beef, a life cycle analysis by researchers at the University of California, Davis reveals. The study has been “pre-published”, that is to say, it has not passed the peer review stage.

Eco-responsible packaging

Quebec will give a boost of 18 million to food processing companies to help them use more sustainable materials in their packaging. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, André Lamontagne, made the announcement a few days ago. New food packaging must both meet the new requirements of the regulations governing selective collection while allowing food to be preserved in a safe manner. The assistance is intended to support companies in the design of containers and packaging that meet the criteria of sorting centers of Quebec conditioners and recyclers.

Drift fishing gear

With the help of local captains, researchers from Dalhousie University have removed the equivalent of 25,000 kilograms of ghost fishing gear off the coast of Nova Scotia. Traps, ropes, nets, hooks and drifting cables were recovered in a territory of nearly 4000 kilometers, can we read in an article published in Marine Pollution Bulletin. Nearly 1,000 trips were made between 2019 and 2021. In 68% of cases, these were lost lobster traps, which were between 1 and 37 years old. The experiment released 652 lobsters and 57 fish caught in these gears.