The climate has a cash flow problem.
Far more of the world’s money is flowing to the causes of the climate crisis than to the solutions. As the climate crisis escalates, fossil fuels and industrial agriculture – the two industries that are the largest contributors to climate change – continue to expand and thrive. Meanwhile, the solutions needed to address the climate crisis remain woefully underfunded.
The climate impact of burning fossil fuels is well known, but the role of industrialised agriculture in the climate crisis is less widely publicised. Agriculture is the second-largest contributor to climate change, and industrialised approaches marketed and controlled by giant agribusiness corporations are responsible for the bulk of emissions in the sector.1 These industrialised agriculture approaches drive deforestation, aggressively market agrochemicals that lead to large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and expand factory farming. They also undermine billions of smallholder farmers and their agroecological farming systems which could otherwise feed the world while cooling the planet. Industrial agriculture’s reliance on fossil fuels to produce agrochemicals is just one way in which the two industries are deeply co-dependent.