This talk explores the public health and environmental consequences of harmful agricultural practices, including intensive livestock production and monocropping heavily reliant on chemical inputs—and exposes the deceptive “clean energy” narratives spun by the biofuels industry. We’ll closely examine the rise of manure-based biogas and other waste-to-energy schemes that entangle our food, farm, and fossil fuel systems—and exacerbate plastic pollution.

Biofuels, marketed as win-win solutions for the climate, farmers, and rural economies, are, in reality, false climate fixes with real human health harms. Their economic viability depends on a complex web of taxpayer subsidies and incentives, including lucrative carbon credits sanctioned by state and federal programs—benefits that flow overwhelmingly to fossil fuel interests and the pro-biogas lobby. These same interests are now pushing for a Michigan Clean Fuels Standard that would disproportionately reward manure biogas and other combustion-based biofuels over truly clean energy sources like wind and solar.

We’ll also dismantle the dominant…