How Meat and Fossil Fuel Producers Watered Down the Latest IPCC Report
How Meat and Fossil Fuel Producers Watered Down the Latest IPCC Report
Scientist authors recommended more plant-based diets and phasing out all fossil fuels. But those recommendations didn't make it into the final report.
Earlier this week, the IPCC released their latest report. According to the intergovernmental body, it represents the current scientific evidence on climate change—everything from its causes to the best opportunities for mitigation and adaptation.
But it also represents the views of lobbyists and vested interests that edited the final text.
Like every other IPCC report, this one wasn’t published until delegates from countries around the world had a chance to suggest changes. And some of those changes were significant.
According to leaked documents, meat and fossil fuel producing countries successfully lobbied for changes that are, in many cases, in direct conflict with scientific evidence.
In one instance, delegates from Brazil and Argentina successfully removed any mention of the negative impacts of meat on the environment. They also removed recommendations that people in wealthy countries reduce their meat consumption and shift their diets to include more plant-based foods.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s delegates made changes throughout the report to position carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a climate solution on par with renewable energy.
How delegates distort the truth
Whenever the IPCC releases a major report, media outlets generally refer to “the report” in the singular, just like I did in the first sentence of this story. But this is slightly misleading.
Every seven years scientists from around the world work on a series of reports culminating in one final “synthesis report.” The report released this week was the sixth such report produced since 1990.
Each synthesis report is based on the work of three working groups of scientists. One group of experts reviews all the scientific literature on the physical science of climate change; another group looks at the best opportunities for mitigation; and another group looks at adaptation.
Each of these groups produce their own report that can be anywhere from hundreds to thousands of pages long. Then each working group’s research is distilled into a summary for policymakers.
These summaries, unsurprisingly, inform a lot of policy. They also inform the media, investors, entrepreneurs, and academics around the world. In this way, IPCC reports are a sort of north star, the objective truth on all things climate.
But something important happens after scientists finish their research and before the public sees the final summary for policymakers: Non-scientist delegates from countries around the world get an opportunity to suggest changes.
In 2021, the IPCC told the BBC, “Our processes are designed to guard against lobbying - from all quarters.”
But there’s evidence that these processes have some major issues.
That same year, the IPCC’s scientific authors made it clear in a 1,300 page report that fossil fuels were overwhelmingly responsible for climate change. The report mentioned “fossil fuels” dozens of times. But the 42-page summary report—the one that was mangled by delegates—didn’t mention “fossil fuels” once, as Emily Atkin at HEATED pointed out at the time.
This week’s report didn’t contain such a glaring omission; it mentioned fossil fuels repeatedly and clearly stated that reaching net-zero emissions will require “a substantial reduction in overall fossil fuel use.”
But delegates did successfully remove important language about the most effective ways to mitigate climate change.
Meat producers delete plant-based diet recommendations
Throughout the multi-year long process of producing the latest report, scientists were clear: meat and dairy do more damage to the environment than any other food.
In a special report on climate change and land for the latest assessment, the authors wrote that according to their review of the scientific literature, meat “was consistently identified as the single food with the greatest impact on the environment.”
They cited a 2018 study published in Science that looked at data from 38,000 farms in 119 countries, which found that meat and dairy products are responsible for 10 to 50 times more emissions per kilogram than plant-based foods. (They found similar results when they looked at emissions per gram of protein).
For that reason, IPCC authors wanted to recommend a shift to plant-based diets, especially in wealthy countries where meat and dairy consumption is so high.
A leaked draft of the mitigation working group’s report included the following text (emphasis mine):
A shift to diets with a higher share of plant-based protein in regions with excess consumption of calories and animal-source food can lead to substantial reductions in GHG emissions… Plant-based diets can reduce GHG emissions by up to 50% compared to the average emission intensive Western diet.
But the environmental impacts of meat and the recommendation to shift to plant-based diets didn’t make it into the final report. That’s because delegates from Argentina and Brazil lobbied significantly for their removal.
Rodrigo Rodriguez Tornquist, Argentina’s secretary for climate change, requested that the paragraph recommending plant-based diets be removed entirely.
In a comment, he wrote that there is “no scientific basis for such affirmation on plant based protein diets,” according to documents obtained by Unearthed. He also requested that any reference to plant-based diets be removed from the final text.
Brazil’s delegates made similar requests and supported Argentina’s comments.
The final synthesis report released this week instead recommends “balanced, sustainable healthy diets acknowledging nutritional needs.” Meat and dairy, which are responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions aren’t mentioned at all.
Fossil fuel producers push for carbon capture
In early drafts from the mitigation working group, scientists were also clear about the fact that emissions from existing and planned fossil fuel infrastructure would result in catastrophic levels of warming.
In a draft that leaked in 2021, scientists wrote that the “focus of decarbonisation efforts in the energy systems sector needs to be on rapidly shifting to zero-carbon sources and actively phasing out all fossil fuels.” (emphasis mine)
But an advisor to Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources asked that this sentence be omitted from the mitigation group’s final report, according to the documents obtained by Unearthed.
Instead Saudi Arabia and other fossil fuel producing countries argued that the IPCC should be “technology neutral.” For that reason, they wanted the authors to mention technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon removal as potential mitigation tools.
The authors probably didn’t mention these technologies in their recommendation on the “focus of decarbonization efforts” for a reason: compared to proven technologies like wind and solar, they are expensive and nascent.
According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, the Department of Energy gave $684 million to 8 coal plants for carbon capture projects between 2010 and 2017. Only one project was built, and it closed in 2020 due to high costs. Even when the project was operating, it captured just 7% of the plant’s emissions.
But Saudi Arabia’s lobbying effort worked. The final IPCC report features CCS prominently. In some cases, the technology is positioned alongside renewables as if it offers similar climate mitigation potential.
Whereas the scientists’ draft recommended phasing out all fossil fuels, the summary for policymakers strikes a much different tone:
“Global modeled mitigation pathways reaching net zero CO2 and GHG emissions include transitioning from fossil fuels without carbon capture and storage (CCS) to very low- or zero-carbon energy sources, such as renewables or fossil fuels with CCS.” (emphasis mine)
In the final hours of negotiations over what would be included in the synthesis report text, Saudi Arabia’s delegates continued to fight language that threatened their fossil fuel revenues.
In one instance, the report said that emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure would result in more than 1.5 degrees of warming. Saudi Arabia’s delegates changed the language to say that that would only be true if carbon capture wasn’t added to those plants. Again the implicit recommendation to phase out all fossil fuels was weakened.
Debates over the final report’s language dragged out for two days longer than expected. According to Earth Negotiations Bulletin, many delegates from developing countries weren’t able to change their flights and had to leave before the negotiations ended.
Late on the final night, one delegate fought tears as she said, “The inclusive process is not happening. The ones struggling the most are the ones that are leaving…it is our lives that we are here fighting for!”
Lobbyists are delaying climate action, but not according to the IPCC
These multi-year long lobbying efforts are, of course, not the only examples of climate obstruction by meat and fossil fuel producers. There’s a growing body of scientific research that shows lobbying—whether it’s petrostate’s corrupting international policy recommendations or private corporations buying political influence—is one of the biggest barriers to climate action.
In fact, there’s so much evidence for this that the IPCC authors wanted to include it in their final report. In a leaked draft, scientists cited studies showing the impact of lobbying. They included “vested interests” as one of the “factors limiting ambitious transformation.”
But it appears that those very vested interests deleted this text too. The final report makes no mention of the role that lobbying plays in preventing climate action.
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Awesome work exposing the truth, as always! Glad to have such concise and effective information to share 🌎🤍