Bruce Cotterill: Green Party's identity crisis should be cause for a rebrand

Most of us believe, or would like to believe, that those who put their hands up for public office do so with the intention of seeking something better for the people they represent and the country as a whole.

We are currently seeing an episode play out, almost daily, which suggests that such lofty ideals do not necessarily ring true

Kurt Mahlburg - Lab-grown ‘meat’ worse for environment than retail beef: study

The high-tech utopia we keep hearing about will have to wait, if a recent pre-print study on laboratory-cultured meat products is to be believed.

According to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, Holtville, “sustainable” meat alternatives have a carbon footprint that is likely “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef based on current and near-term production methods.

Cultured meat production may be pumping out between four and 25 times more carbon dioxide per kilogram than regular beef, according to the new research, which assessed energy use and greenhouse gas emissions through all stages of production.

Matt Ridley: The scandal behind the ban on neonicotinoids

To those who have engaged with environmental activists in recent years, the concept of fake news is old hat. From Greenpeace’s hundred-fold exaggeration of the oil in the Brent Spar oil platform in 1995 to Friends of the Earth’s slap-down by Britain’s Advertising Standards Agency over fracking untruths in 2017, we have grown used to being told “alternative facts” that later turn out to be wrong by those with green axes to grind. 

The latest episode of environmental activists playing fast and loose with the facts, however, may be their undoing.