Category: Uncategorized

by REBEKAH WALLACE

When medieval scholars sought to understand the nature of angels, they unwittingly laid the foundations of modern physics

What do the angelic forces of the Heavenly Host have to do with orgasms? The answer, according to the 12th-century philosopher and theologian Maimonides, was simple. Some invisible forces that caused movement could be explained by God working through angels. Quoting a famous rabbi who talked about ‘the angel put in charge of lust’, Maimonides commented that ‘he means to say: the force of orgasm … Thus this force too is called … an angel.’

Before the discovery of gravity, energy or magnetism, it was unclear why the cosmos behaved in the way it did, and angels were one way of accounting for the movement of physical entities. Maimonides argued that the planets, for example, are angelic intelligences because they move in their celestial orbits.

While most physicists would now baulk at angelic forces as an explanation of any natural phenomena, without the medieval belief in angels, physics today might look very different. Even when belief in angels later dissipated, modern physicists continued to posit incorporeal intelligences to help explain the inexplicable. Malevolent angelic forces (ie, demons) have appeared in compelling thought experiments across the history of physics. These well-known ‘demons of physics’ served as useful placeholders, helping physicists find scientific explanations for only vaguely imagined solutions. You can still find them in textbooks today.

But that’s not the most important legacy of medieval angelology. Angels also catalysed ferociously precise debates about the nature of place, bodies and motion, which would inspire something like a modern conceptual toolbox for physicists, honing concepts such as space and dimension.Angels, in short, underpin our understanding of the cosmos.

Angels have been around at least since Biblical times, and are described in various, and sometimes odd, ways. In the Book of Ezekiel, for example, the Cherubim have intersecting wheels sparkling like topaz that move them in all four directions without turning, and their ‘entire bodies, including their backs, their hands and their wings, were completely full of eyes, as were their four wheels’. However, aside from these googly-eyed angels, angels were also, as we can see from Maimonides, a way of explaining movement in the world. They were spiritual substances that could take on the appearance of corporeal beings, but also acted as invisible, intelligent, immaterial forces.

This view of angels as immaterial ‘intelligences’ became pretty standard in medieval philosophy and theology. But the scholastic period saw an increasing desire to systematise, systematise, systematise. The precise nature or essence of angels became a serious cause for debate, and these debates were not mere thought experiments. Rather, because of the real belief in the existence of angels, theologians and philosophers could think through angels as a way of understanding the nature of the physical world and things like place, bodies and motion. This was motivated by significant theological concerns. One concern was that, if angels are immaterial intelligences, then what makes them different to God? For us, our bodies are what make us limited, able to exercise force only directly, such as when I throw a ball. Does this mean angels, having no body, could exist everywhere or act at a distance? This was dangerous territory for theologians, potentially challenging God’s omnipresence and omnipotence.

Aeon for more

by ZAIN HAQ

Nuclear physicist calls for a radical shift in priorities, urging the government to break from the status quo

Pakistan’s failure to dismantle its feudal order has entrenched corruption and deepened environmental and social inequality, physicist and commentator Pervez Hoodbhoy said, warning that the country remains in the grip of dynastic elites. 

“Pakistan’s tragedy is that it was never able to overturn the feudal order,” he said. “Today, our national and provincial assemblies are filled with the sons and sometimes daughters of feudals. Independent people don’t make decisions.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Hoodbhoy called for a radical shift in the country’s priorities, urging the government to break from the status quo. 

“We need to embrace renewable energy, implement effective family planning, and address the root causes of environmental degradation,” he said. “Without these changes, Pakistan will remain trapped in a cycle of crisis.”

On the environmental crisis, the nuclear physicist and activist cautioned about the devastating toll of coal mining, water mismanagement, and the failure to embrace renewable energy, offering a bleak assessment of the country’s future.

On the most pressing issue of the Thar coal mining project in Sindh, Hoodbhoy did not hold back in his criticism. “We are poisoning the water. To run a coal mining project, you have to have lots and lots of water. And when it’s put back into the ground, it is poisoned.” Thar’s coal, he said, is of poor quality, with high sulfur content and low energy efficiency.

Despite the availability of cheaper and cleaner alternatives like solar energy, Pakistan, he said, remains heavily reliant on coal. Hoodbhoy noted that while solar power is gaining traction at the domestic level, with many households installing panels, large-scale projects are being overlooked in favor of lucrative coal deals.

“Solar has an enormous amount of promise, but it’s small scale and distributed. Coal involves mega infrastructure projects and profits,” he explained.

But coal is only part of a larger crisis. Raising the alarm, Hoodbhoy said that Pakistan’s population is doubling every 25 years, a trend that could have catastrophic consequences.  “If this doesn’t change, we could reach 500 million in 25 years—then a billion. Within six doubling periods, Pakistan’s population could exceed the current global total,” he warned, blaming the clerics for the crisis.  “The clerics have so intimidated the government that it does not dare openly promote contraceptives or say, stop it, because you’re ruining the country.”

When asked about water mismanagement, he warned that the country’s rivers, including the Indus, are drying up due to excessive agricultural use and upstream diversions. “The Indus River barely exists by the time it enters the delta. The sea is encroaching, and it’s not just the climate crisis—it’s the overuse of water for agriculture upstream,” Hoodbhoy explained.

The Express Tribune for more

by MARY TUMA

Dr. Damla Karsan lives in fear for her patients—and for all pregnant Texans. 

The Houston OB-GYN has spent the last four years painfully navigating the state’s draconian abortion bans, oftentimes for patients who face severe complications. With vaguely defined exceptions for medical emergencies, the law has forced doctors to either delay or deny life-saving care out of worry they could face lawsuits or prison time for performing pregnancy termination. 

Karsan knows the risks well: When she promised to perform abortion care in 2023 for Kate Cox, a Dallas mother who saw her health steadily deteriorate after doctors failed to terminate her fatal pregnancy, she was met with direct threats of prosecution from Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cox eventually fled the state. Paxton’s attacks on reproductive healthcare workers have only escalated since then, most recently with the arrest of a Houston-area midwife for allegedly giving abortion pills to a patient—the first criminal charges under the state’s ban that took effect after the 2022 fall of Roe v. Wade.

Karsan has had other patients who were hemorrhaging during a miscarriage—just a few steps away from death—and still faced delayed care at the ER. Some of her patients are too scared to even get pregnant, while others have fled Texas in order to start their families safely. Her experiences mirror the flood of traumatic stories from other Texans and providers. 

“These laws are torturing women, there’s no other way to put it,” Karsan told the Texas Observer in between deliveries from her practice just south of the Houston Medical Center. “It is absolutely horrible having to try to help patients get care when the state has barred us from using our best medical judgment.” 

Texas Observer for more

by VIJAY PRASHAD

There is a rich tradition of women writers on the African continent who have played key roles in publishing and national liberation movements alike, from Andrée Blouin to Flora Nwapa. Learn more about their legacy and efforts to carry forward their torch today.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

In 1962, Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa (1931–1993), mostly known as Flora Nwapa, sent a book manuscript to the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (1930–2013). Four years earlier, Achebe, at the tender age of twenty-eight, had published his landmark novel Things Fall Apart with Heinemann. The novel arrived in Heinemann’s London office as the decolonisation movement began to change the shape of the African continent (Ghana won its independence in 1957, three years before Nigeria – both countries with an English-speaking population, however small, that used Heinemann’s science and English books in their education system). Achebe’s book inspired Heinemann’s Alan Hill to recruit Evander ‘Van’ Milne from Nelson Publishers (where Milne had published the autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah in 1957). Both Hill and Milne had left-wing politics, which is why Heinemann’s African Writers Series (AWS) published the work of Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda, and other national liberation leaders. By the time Flora Nwapa sent her book to Achebe, he was working as an advisor to the AWS and sent her money to mail her manuscript to London.

Heinemann published Nwapa’s book Efuru in 1966, making it one of the first English-language novels by an African woman to be published and the twenty-sixth in the series. The next book by a woman, again Nwapa, was Idu (1970), the fifty-sixth in the series. The women authors in this landmark series of African fiction were stunning both for their brilliance and their rarity:

No. 100: Bessie Head (South Africa), Maru (1972)
No. 131: Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe), The Grass is Singing (1973)
No. 149: Bessie Head (South Africa), A Question of Power (1974)
No. 159: Martha Mvungi (Tanzania), Three Solid Stones (1975)
No. 177: Nadine Gordimer (South Africa). Some Monday for Sure (1976)
No. 182: Bessie Head (South Africa), The Collector of Treasures (1977)
No. 203: Rebeka Njau (Kenya), Ripples in the Pool (1978)
No. 227: Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria), The Joys of Motherhood (1979)
No. 220: Bessie Head (South Africa), Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981)
No. 248: Mariama Bâ (Senegal), So Long a Letter (1989)

The former French and Portuguese colonies were no different in this regard. Aminata Sow Fall of Senegal led the way with Le revenant (The Ghost, Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, c. 1976) in French while Paulina Chiziane of Mozambique led the way in Portuguese with Balada de Amor ao Vento (Love Ballad to the Wind, Maputo: Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos, 1990) alongside Filomena Embaló of Guinea-Bissau with Tiara (Tiara, Lisboa: Instituto Camões, 1999). Each of these books is grounded in the struggle for freedom.

Meanwhile, Mabel Dove Danquah and Efua Sutherland pioneered journalism in Ghana, with Danquah running Accra Evening News in 1951 and Sutherland running the literary magazine Okyeame and founding the Ghana Society of Writers in 1957 (Sutherland also created the Ghana Experimental Players and Ghana Drama Studio in 1961). In South Africa, Noni Jabavu published her memoir Drawn in Colour: African Contrasts with the London-based publisher John Murray in 1960 while Miriam Tlali published her fabulous novel Between Two Worlds (originally released as Muriel at Metropolitan) with Ravan Press in 1975. In Kenya, Grace Ogot became the first woman to be published by the East African Publishing House with her novel The Promised Land (1966) while in Nigeria Zulu Sofola produced her play The Deer and The Hunters Pearl (1969). Egypt’s Nawal El Saadawi, Morocco’s Khanata Banuna, and Algeria’s Assia Djebar broke ground for many other women writing in Arabic. There is a rich tradition of women writing on the African continent.

The Tricontinental for more

by MEHMET OZBAGCI

On March 18, Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) presidential candidate, had his university diploma revoked. The decision was made by a committee at Istanbul University, where ?mamo?lu had graduated, with a majority vote. Under Turkish law, a university degree is required to run for president, so the decision effectively disqualified ?mamo?lu’s candidacy.

Many saw the ?mamo?lu as the only politician capable of defeating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ruled the country for 23 years. Imamoglu’s disqualification through such a crude maneuver sparked widespread anger among opposition supporters. However, in line with a longstanding tradition within Turkey’s opposition, Imamoglu himself chose to absorb this anger rather than mobilize it. He responded to the annulment of his diploma with a restrained video statement filmed at a Ramadan dinner. In the video, he emphasized the Islamic concept of “kul hakki” (right of the believer), and argued that the revocation of the diploma he obtained 33 years ago signaled a broader threat to private property and civil rights in Turkey. Imamoglu’s statement included neither a call to protest the decision nor a clear roadmap for how he intended to challenge it.

The cost of this restraint would be heavy. On the morning after the university’s decision, dozens of police vehicles were stationed in front of Imamoglu’s home. The mayor of Turkey’s most populous city was taken into custody. Around the same time, nearly 100 individuals, including journalists, opposition politicians, and municipal staff, were also detained, and Imamoglu’s construction company was seized by the government. The charges against him included leading a criminal organization, corruption, bribery, and money laundering. A few days later, on March 23, ?mamo?lu was officially arrested.

Imamoglu’s detention sparked large-scale protests, particularly on university campuses. In response, the government canceled police leave, suspended public transportation in major cities, and placed public squares under heavy police control. Twelve years after the nationwide Gezi Protests, Erdogan’s government and opposition groups were once again set to confront each other in the streets.

Timing the Takedown

In political trials, reality and fiction intertwine, and secret witness testimonies and questionable procedural practices are routinely employed. Since its early years, Erdo?an’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has used such trials as its primary tool for political retaliation. Therefore, while the sudden branding of the mayor of the country’s largest city as the leader of a criminal organization was shocking, it was not unexpected. The key question here is why the AKP government felt the need to use this tool at this particular moment.

The primary factor that drove the government to launch an operation against Imamoglu was, without a doubt, his political rise. In the March 2019 municipal elections, Imamoglu defeated AKP’s former prime minister, Binali Yildirim. However, the election was annulled on the grounds of alleged irregularities. When the vote was held again, Imamoglu won with an even larger margin, securing the Istanbul mayoralty. In the 2024 elections, he successfully retained his position, increasing his vote share.

Erdogan, who once served as Istanbul’s mayor himself, had famously stated that “Whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey.” After winning Istanbul three times, and with the CHP emerging as the leading party in the 2024 local elections, it became increasingly clear that Imamoglu’s next target would be the presidency.

Monthly Review Online for more

by MELISSA BERTHET

Humans can effortlessly talk about an infinite number of topics, from neuroscience to pink elephants, by combining words into sentences. This is thanks to compositionality: the ability to combine meaningful units into larger structures whose meaning is derived from the meaning of its units and the way they are combined.

For years, scientists believed that only humans extensively used compositionality. Animal communication was thought to be mostly a mere random assortment of calls, with only rare instances of compositionality. However, our new study, recently published in the journal Science, says otherwise.

By extensively researching the vocal communication of bonobos in their natural habitat, the Kokolopori Community Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we found that vocal communication between bonobos – our closest living relatives, along with chimpanzees – relies extensively on compositionality, just like human language.

A bonobo dictionary

Investigating compositionality in animals first requires a strong understanding of what single calls and their combinations mean. This has long presented a challenge, since accessing the minds of animals and reliably decoding the meaning of their calls is difficult.

To remedy this, we developed a new way of reliably determining the meaning of bonobo vocalisations, and used it to determine the meaning of all of their single calls and combinations.

We assumed that a bonobo call can have different types of meaning. It can give an order (“Run”), announce future actions (“I will travel”), express the internal states (“I am afraid”) or refer to external events (“There is a predator”).

The Conversation for more

by ABBAS NASIR

When historians write about the period we are living in, they would feel — they must feel — compelled to call it an era where international law became meaningless, where morality and humanity disappeared, and where even a facade of Western-democratic values such as human rights were dispensed with.

What other conclusion can there be as a mass murder, a genocide most foul, fills our every waking hour: it is almost impossible to shake off the images of battered, bruised faces of children, of their amputated limbs, or of grieving mothers who are gravely wounded themselves, and of bodies of men, bleeding and, in many cases, bombed beyond recognition as human remains?

The truth is that powerful nations with the ultimate killing machines at their disposal will use their tools of mass murder unashamedly, unabashedly and will also manufacture ‘facts’ to justify their bloodlust. Yes, the more ‘composed’ reader may think I am sounding hysterical, or worse still, am so depressed and despondent that I see no hope, no new dawn.

But I ask how can anyone not be affected, moved, or, to be more accurate, devastated by the genocide in Gaza being conducted by the Israeli Occupation Forces, sanctioned by the Israeli nation, which stakes a claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East.

The Netanyahu government has been given a carte blanche to continue with its ethnic cleansing by mass murder, devastation of homes, starvation and deprivation of the Palestinians by its main enablers, the governments of the US, UK, EU and other democracies in the West and elsewhere.

Israel has been given a carte blanche to continue with its ethnic cleansing by its main enablers, the governments of the US, UK, EU and other democracies.

Where the US provides billions of dollars of combat planes, arms and ammunition, including missile and ‘smart’ bombs (the only smartness they seem to demonstrate is in targeting young children), the UK has not denied reports in the media that its daily RAF surveillance flights from its base in Cyprus help the Israelis in target acquisition in Gaza. All of Europe, most notably Germany and Italy, exports weaponry to Israel.

In the 18 months since the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed some 800 civilians and 400 security personnel and in which 251 Israelis were taken hostage, over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. The number of children among them is over a third, and the wounded also run into tens of thousands. The proportionate response argument stands shredded.

To the moral, value-preaching Western democracies, this happened during Israel’s right to self-defence. During the brief ceasefire, the terms of which, nobody will tell you, were violated by Israel as it restarted its military campaign, all but 61 hostages were swapped for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, a majority of whom were detained or kept hostage in Israel under ‘administrative orders’ issued by military courts and were never charged with, or convicted of, any criminal offence.

To many Israel supporters, the Palestinian problem cropped up in October of 2023 with the Hamas attacks. They refuse to see or acknowledge the genesis of the issue, starting with the Nakba (expulsion), occupation and the over 75-year history of the denial of rights of the Palestinians to their land, liberty, equality and dignity.

As the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land simply, yet poignantly demonstrated, Israel is a brutal occupation power and an apartheid state where even ‘Israeli Arabs’ have no equality or dignity and right to free movement, and often remain at the mercy of violent settlers backed by the Israeli security forces.

And Israel does little to hide what it does. In fact, it arrogantly makes sure the world knows the impunity with which it goes about its business. The most recent example was the murder of 15 emergency and rescue workers, whose bodies were found in a shallow mass grave in Gaza.

Israel claimed that ambulances were ‘moving in a suspicious, dangerous manner’ and, therefore, its forces opened fire on them. But, of course, there was no explanation offered why some of the victims had their hands zip-tied behind their backs before being shot at close range.

In fact, the only remaining emergency medical worker left alive, who was taken away and tortured, was released in all probability so he could tell the world of the atrocity. Who knows if this was some sick, psychopathic mind’s idea of how to put the fear into the hearts of the active emergency workers that they should not bother coming to the aid of the wounded.

Among those murdered by the Israelis was an ambulance crew member who, despite being shot twice, returned to work after recovering because he believed in the cause of helping the wounded Gazans at the receiving end of IOF brutality. Read the details of his heroic work before he was killed, on the British newspaper Guardian’s site (it is free to access).

Dawn for more

by SHIVAN MAHENDRARAJAH

As Trump eyes war with Iran to bolster his legacy and appease his pro-Israel backers, Tehran’s likely retaliation could crash global markets, spike oil prices, and bring economic pain directly to the American public – turning support for apocalyptic politics into a crisis at the checkout line.

The “winds of war” are blowing toward Iran. This is the war for which Israeli donors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, along with pro-Israel organizations such as AIPAC and the ADL, paid US President Donald Trump hundreds of millions of dollars over two election cycles. 

But it’s not only the Israeli lobby banging the war drums; American Evangelicals – especially groups like “Christians United for Israel” – also support war, believing it will “save Israel” from the “Iranian menace.” Evangelical membership in the 119th Congress (2025–27) is high. War with Iran is not (yet) popular in the US, but – just as with Iraq – consent will be manufactured by Washington elites and the media.

Trump’s outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin to resolve the Ukraine war partly aims to shift the Pentagon’s attention back to West Asia. He assumes that an early 2025 war with Iran will “save Israel” and secure his legacy, letting him focus on “America First” for the rest of his term. 

But war with Iran could also backfire disastrously, sink his presidency, and derail the ambitions of 2028 Republican hopefuls like Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance. For starters, should the military campaign encounter any unforeseen backlash – which is highly likely, and the reason the Pentagon has assiduously avoided direct confrontation with Iran – the Democratic Party could retake both chambers of Congress after a US stock market crash and recession triggered by the war.

Iran’s military responses

Iranian leaders have vowed “devastating” retaliation for any attack on their soil. This would likely involve missile strikes against Israeli and US military targets – and possibly infrastructure and economic targets within the occupation state. If Israel uses tactical nuclear weapons against Iran’s nuclear facilities, Tehran will escalate further.

Whether or not nukes are used, war would shock the global economy, send oil prices soaring, and halt maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The greatest impact will fall on countries most dependent on West Asian oil. 

The US economy may be less affected in the short term. Its stock markets, already down 10 percent since Trump’s return to the White House, would decline further – but Trump is gambling that households will not feel the pain. But if the Islamic Republic launches economic warfare that “brings the war home,” political dynamics will change. 

Economic warfare

Most Americans are detached from the notion and consequences of war because, since the Civil War, US wars have been fought far from its borders. Even during the World Wars, though American families faced personal loss, the nation did not endure widespread suffering – unlike Britain, which imposed food rationing from 1939 to 1954. 

The “Global War on Terror” impacted some communities, but not the country. US troops often joked in Iraq: “We’re at war; America’s at the mall.” Americans kept spending and enjoying life, while Iraqis and US occupation soldiers endured the brutal costs.

The Cradle for more

by TOM ENGELHARDT

Making (Non)Sense of Donald Trump, or the Success of Failure

Yes, “shock and awe” is back in the second age of Donald Trump. His border czar, Tom Homan, used that very phrase to describe border policy from day one of the new administration and, whether the president has actually said it or not, it’s now regularly in headlines, op-eds, and so much else. If you remember, it was the phrase used, in all its glory, to describe America’s massive bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003. (You remember! The country that supposedly threatened us with nuclear weapons but, in fact, didn’t have any!)

We Americans were, of course, going to shock and awe them. But from that moment on (if not from the moment, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when, rather than simply going after Osama bin Laden and crew, President George W. Bush launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan), you could say that it was we who were truly shocked and awed. After all, in their own disastrous fashion, our post-9/11 wars prepared the way for… yes!… Donald Trump to take the White House the first time around (shock and awe!) — and then blame the final disastrous retreat of the American military from Afghanistan in 2021 on the Biden administration. (“Kamala Harris, Joe Biden — the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world.”) And of course, four years later, his reelection on a functional platform of Trump First, Americans Last, was distinctly a double shock and awe!

And if you’ll excuse my being thoroughly repetitious, that was — or at least should have been seen as — the true definition of shock and awe. Donald Trump! Twice! Even now, can you truly take it in? In fact, more or less every moment since his reelection victory in November 2024 has been — pardon me for the turn of phrase — a first-class S&A experience.

And — shock, if not awe — I haven’t even mentioned Elon Musk yet, have I? I mean, who can take him in either? The richest man on Planet Earth (S&A!) and, at least until President Trump levied those massive tariffs on our three major trading partners (only to partially back off soon after), still making money hand over fist (wrist, pissed?) — about $224 billion extra dollars (S&A!) just between the November 2024 election victory of Donald Trump and the moment he actually took power again in January 2025 — at the expense of the rest of us. Meanwhile, he’s been more or less running this country (into the ground) hand in glove with Donald Trump, who, by the way, is already talking about a possible third term in office! (“They say I can’t run again; that’s the expression… Then somebody said, I don’t think you can. Oh.”) Now, wouldn’t that be an all-American S&A first (or do I mean last?)!

An MMMW World

Phew, I’m already out of breath and exclamation points! No surprise there, of course, given the awesomely shocking and shockingly Trumpified (or do I mean Muskratted?) world we’re now living in and dealing with.

Tom’s Dispatch for more

by ANITA KRAJNC, LAURA LEE CASCADA, & NITAL JETHALAL

Introduction

Global per capita meat, dairy and egg consumption has been accelerating since the 1950s contributing to the breach of five planetary boundaries, specifically climate change, land-use change, biodiversity, phosphorus and nitrogen, and water use.

We’re facing an unprecedented “code red for humanity,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in 2021. Yet global action has stagnated.

Amidst the lackluster headlines spanning COP27, the UN’s annual climate change convention, held in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, in November 2022, and the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal in December 2022, Guterres—whose own agencies have warned of industrial animal agriculture’s climate perils for more than 15 years—issued a more grassroots plea.

Speaking to the leaders of the C40 cities who gathered in October 2022 at a climate summit of their own, he declared, “With more than half of the world’s population, cities are where the climate battle will largely be won or lost.”

Cities—where unwavering football fandoms are born, debates over classroom curricula are waged, and unique lexicons take form—shape the way we live, learn, and, crucially for planetary health, eat.

Food System Impact on Environment and Climate

The food system accounts for a third of greenhouse gas emissions and would bust the carbon budget even if fossil fuels were ended immediately. The paper cites the 2021 UN Methane Assessment Report, which attributes 32 percent of human-caused methane emissions to animal agriculture, the largest source.

Research from Oxford University’s Joseph Poore published in 2018 found that 83 percent of agricultural land is used for farming animals yet supplies just 18 percent of calories.

Scientific evidence from a 2019 Lancet study shows a plant-based food system will reduce food’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 80 percent and free up more than 3 billion hectares of land for biodiversity and carbon drawdown.

According to the research conducted led by the University of Oxford and published in July 2023 in the journal Nature Food, adopting a vegan diet led to remarkable reductions in climate-heating emissions, water pollution, and land usage, amounting to a significant 75 percent decrease compared to diets that included over 100 grams of meat per day. Moreover, the study revealed that vegan diets also contributed to a substantial 66 percent reduction in the destruction of wildlife and a 54 percent decrease in water consumption.

Background

The Plant Based Treaty has 3Rs and 39 detailed proposals calling for a global transition to a plant-based food system and calls for negotiation of a global treaty as well as local implementation at the municipal level, schools, universities, hospitals, businesses and other local institutions.

The Plant Based Treaty is modeled on the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and inspired by treaties that have addressed the threats of ozone layer depletion and nuclear weapons. Since its launch in August 2021, the initiative has been endorsed by 21 cities, including the Scottish Capital Edinburgh, Los Angeles and Ahmedabad and received support from 100,000 individual endorsers, 5 Nobel laureates, IPCC scientists, Sir Paul, Mary and Stella McCartney, more than 3000 NGOs, community groups and businesses, including Oceanic Preservation Society and chapters of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Extinction Rebellion.

Call to Mayors

Secretary-General Guterres is no stranger to environmental inaction among his peers. In his appeal, he explained that despite decades of tireless work, current national pledges—or a lack thereof—will carry us into the next decade with a 14 percent increase in global emissions.

Facing a near-certain future of mass flooding, heatwaves, biodiversity loss, and displaced populations, Guterres called upon these mayors: “Your citizens look to you to provide leadership, action, and protection that is often lacking at the national level.” These words came just months after a U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report announced a dire need to cut methane emissions by a third. And C40 itself hasn’t minced words in advocating for a two-thirds reduction in the world’s most notorious methane emitter: meat.

For these reasons, our organizations and nearly 200 others urged the mayors of C40 to kickstart immediate action to transform our destructive food system on the eve of their annual summit (where, we noted, beef still had a front-row seat on the menu)—but not just at the event’s catered banquets. Instead of waiting years for commitments to trickle down from above, municipal leaders around the world (and particularly those of C40’s nearly 100 major cities, constituting a quarter of the global economy) must seize a rapidly shrinking opportunity to shape food culture from the ground up by prioritizing plant-based foods.

In Towns and Cities, Success Stories

To grasp the oft-overlooked power of the grassroots, consider the case study of Marshall, a small town in Texas cattle country: six-term Mayor Ed Smith, who reaped health benefits after shifting to a plant-based diet in 2008 following a cancer diagnosis, launched a healthy eating campaign, complete with an annual festival, community potlucks, and even visits by a troupe of plant-powered firefighters. Hailing from a ranching family, Smith was already beloved by his citizenry, and his initiative radiated outward, from local churches to the assistant fire chief who kicked his diabetes meds after going plant-based.

Wiki Observatory for more