October’s Food for thought…

• What We Learned from a Climate Week Full of Conflicting Messages
• Agricultural ETS Exemption – NZ scraps farm methane tax
• MEPs back changes to strengthen farmers’ position in the food supply chain
• Why we might expect Australia's next dietary guidelines to incorporate the environment
• Renewables overtake coal as world's biggest source of electricity

 What We Learned from a Climate Week Full of Conflicting Messages – from Newsweek.  An account of some of the different messages heard during the recent Climate Week NYC.  Read the article

Agricultural ETS Exemption – NZ scraps farm methane tax: relying on Fonterra to force cuts – from edairy news.  New Zealand halves farm methane targets and scraps the emissions tax. The government now relies on Fonterra and exporters to penalize high-emission producers.  Read the article

MEPs back changes to strengthen farmers’ position in the food supply chain from European Parliament News.  MEPs voted and agreed to press the EU Commission and the EU Council to bring in a new definition of meat as ‘edible parts of animals’ by insisting that names such as steak, escalope, sausage or burger be reserved exclusively for products containing meat and must exclude “cell-cultured products,” which they don’t define. Also to act on the labelling of vegetarian products. Read the article

Why we might expect Australia's next dietary guidelines to incorporate the environment – from ABCNews. The Australian dietary guidelines are designed to advise most healthy people about eating a balanced diet that fulfils nutrition requirements.  But some more recent dietary guidelines from elsewhere in the world haven’t just addressed human health — they've incorporated the health of the planet too. Read the article

Renewables overtake coal as world's biggest source of electricity – from BBC News. Renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of this year - a historic first, according to new data from the global energy think tank Ember.  The growth in solar and wind has been so strong it met 100% of the extra electricity demand, even helping drive a slight decline in coal and gas use.  Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation. Read the full article