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Monarchy is sold to us as tradition. As culture. As harmless pomp and pageantry. But it’s not harmless, it’s a blueprint. It’s the prototype for every hierarchy that tells someone they matter more than someone else. And it’s not just bad for humans. It’s bad for every other animal we share this world with.Because at the root of monarchy is a lie. A lie we’ve been fed since birth: that there are “higher” beings and “lower” beings, and that some lives naturally belong on pedestals while others are stepped on. That’s the logic behind monarchy. It’s also the logic behind animal use.Monarchy says, “Some people are born to rule.” Animal use says, “Some beings are born to serve.” Neither is true. Both are supremacism.Royalty doesn’t earn power. It inherits it. The concept of “royal blood” is a myth so entrenched many don’t stop to ask how absurd it is. Power passed down through bloodlines is nothing more than glorified nepotism wrapped in velvet.And this idea, that birth determines worth, is the exact same lie that props up speciesism. If someone is born human, they’re seen as worthy of rights, protection, and freedom. Born a pig? You’re property. Born a cow? You’re a resource. Born a sheep? You’re wool on someone’s back. Just as monarchy ranks humans above each other based on recent lineage, speciesism ranks lives by distant lineage and grants or denies rights accordingly. One hierarchy justifies the next.We’re taught to bow. To curtsy. To address monarchs with titles like “Your Majesty,” to walk behind them, not speak before them, not look them in the eye unless permitted. It’s easy to laugh this off as old-fashioned theatre, but it trains us, from childhood, to see hierarchy as natural. To accept inequality. To internalise the idea that some people deserve more than others by default, and once you’ve accepted that some humans are more important than others, it’s a short step to believing that some lives don’t count at all.You don’t abolish animal use without abolishing the mindset that enables it.Monarchy is always defended as a source of stability. But stability for who? For the elite? For the institution? It certainly doesn’t provide stability for the lives opressed to uphold the illusion, whether they’re humans working under exploitative systems or animals confined, commodified, and killed by those same structures.Animals are displayed in royal zoos and murdered on royal estates. The British royal family alone is tied to blood sports, horse racing, trophy hunting, and gamebird shooting, all carried out in the name of tradition and prestige. Every royal parade, every wedding, every coronation is a ceremony of human superiority. Not just over other humans, but over all beings. It’s a celebration of power acquired by birth and maintained by obedience. It says, “Some lives are meant to be worshipped. Some lives are meant to serve."To those who claim that monarchy is “just symbolic,” ask yourself what it symbolises. You can’t separate the crown from the concept. And the concept is this: there is a natural order. And in that order, some beings are born to be served, and others are born to serve.&nbsp;That’s the same mindset that drives every form of domination. Patriarchy. Racism. Ableism. Classism. Speciesism. Monarchy doesn’t challenge those systems, it reinforces them. It’s the royal stamp of approval on injustice.And if you think it ends with humans, you’re not paying attention.To believe in monarchy is to believe in hierarchy. And to believe in hierarchy is to accept that freedom isn’t universal. That some deserve it, and some do not. That belief spills over into everything: how we treat animals, how we treat the planet, how we treat each other.The cost of obedience isn’t just a bowed head or a silent voice, it’s a blind eye. It’s the belief that because something has always been done, it should continue.Obedience is not peace. It’s suppression.You can’t dismantle supremacism selectively. You can’t say you believe in justice while defending a monarchy. You can’t say you oppose oppression while still categorising lives into worth and worthlessness. Emancipation doesn’t stop at humans. It doesn’t stop at classes. It doesn’t stop at borders. It stops when no one is property.A world with true justice has no throne.

Monarchy: No One Is Born to Kneel

The beef industry doesn't just pollute our atmosphere, it pollutes young minds, quietly rewriting climate science to sustain its own destructive agenda.Food production is a major source of global greenhouse gas emissions, and cow flesh sits atop this environmental disaster. Cattle generate massive amounts of methane, a potent climate pollutant, while consuming vast swathes of land, water, and feed. Scientists overwhelmingly agree that reducing cow flesh consumption is essential to mitigating climate catastrophe. Yet the meat industry continues to shape public perception by manipulating educational curriculums, misleading children about sustainability, and ensuring discussions around eating less meat remain off the table.Since the 1990s, industry-funded campaigns like the U.S. Beef Checkoff program have strategically targeted classrooms, carefully curating "educational" materials that frame beef production as both environmentally responsible and nutritionally indispensable. Under the guise of teaching science through "the lens of beef production," these materials omit any genuine solutions involving reduced beef consumption. This manipulation reaches students as young as kindergarten, embedding industry propaganda early and often.Jennifer Jacquet, professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami, <a data-mce-href="https://sentientmedia.org/beef-industry-is-rewriting-climate-science-for-kids/" href="https://sentientmedia.org/beef-industry-is-rewriting-climate-science-for-kids/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reveals a disturbing history of the meat industry intervening in childhood education on climate issues</a>. Industry documents dating back to 1989 show deliberate strategies to influence educators and media, ensuring public opinion stays favourable, or at least neutral, toward beef.Today's classroom materials actively suppress scientifically validated climate solutions. High school activities addressing methane emissions from cattle fail to mention dietary reduction, a measure repeatedly identified by Project Drawdown and climate scientists as crucial. Instead, students encounter a deceptive binary: eliminate cattle entirely or accept beef as unavoidable. This framing intentionally portrays dietary changes as radical rather than sensible and essential.Further misinformation argues that without cattle, Earth’s land would be unusable for agriculture, citing manure's role in fertilisation. Reality starkly contrasts this claim. Animal agriculture in the U.S. generates a staggering 940 billion pounds of manure annually, far more than cropland needs, resulting in widespread pollution and documented health crises in surrounding communities.Even purported technological solutions promoted by the beef industry, like improved cattle genetics or dietary feed additives, offer minimal environmental benefits. These methods might slightly reduce per-animal emissions, but scientists confirm they're wholly insufficient without significantly cutting beef consumption. Alleged carbon sequestration through cattle grazing is temporary, limited, and unreliable, inevitably overshadowed by substantial methane emissions.Meanwhile, the climate emergency escalates. <a data-mce-href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/28/global-temperatures-break-annual-heat-record-next-five-years-world-meteorological-organization" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/28/global-temperatures-break-annual-heat-record-next-five-years-world-meteorological-organization" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">A recent report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) forecasts an 80% chance that global temperatures will break annual heat records within five years</a>, amplifying extreme droughts, floods, and wildfires. Astonishingly, there's now a small but shocking probability that global temperatures could briefly surpass 2°C above pre-industrial levels before 2030, a scenario previously considered impossible in such a short timeframe.The urgency of immediate climate action is undeniable. Yet, rather than guiding students toward responsible dietary choices, the beef industry's manipulative curriculum seeks to foster trust and secure future beef consumption. These materials infiltrate classrooms quietly through direct mailings, teacher training programs, and industry partnerships, often escaping thorough oversight.This calculated indoctrination poses a profound threat. Children are taught to view minor technological tweaks as genuine sustainability solutions, while effective, science-backed measures like eating more plant-based foods are systematically sidelined.It’s clear: the beef industry's interference isn't about education, it’s about preserving profits at the expense of our planet's future and children's understanding of reality.The path forward demands rejecting industry manipulation in education and embracing real, evidence-based climate action. Eliminating cow flesh consumption isn't radical, it's rational, urgent, and necessary.

Grade A Propaganda

The UK fishing industry is <a data-mce-href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/26/the-seabed-is-full-of-them-english-fishers-enjoy-surprise-octopus-boom" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/26/the-seabed-is-full-of-them-english-fishers-enjoy-surprise-octopus-boom" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">celebrating</a>. Not because of innovation, or progress, or anything remotely commendable, but because warmer waters have brought a sudden boom in octopuses off the coasts of Devon and Cornwall.They’re calling it a “financial bonus.” Markets are flooded. Cafe walls are painted in tribute. Even a Christmas decoration named Octavia is now lit up nightly in Brixham, as if stringing up a mollusc in fairy lights makes this grotesque harvest more palatable.In March, temperatures in the region surged 2 to 4°C above seasonal norms, triggering an explosion in octopus numbers. The response from the industry? Trawlers doubled down. Forty-nine-year veteran fishmonger Ian Perkes calls it a once-in-a-career event. Trawlers are scooping up 36 tonnes a day, compared to just 200kg last year. They're delighted. The seabed is “full of them,” they say. And they want it emptied.This is not a happy accident. This is the direct result of human-induced climate breakdown, a symptom of global heating that now serves as a payday for those accelerating the crisis.And it gets darker.There’s no quota for octopus. No limits. No protections. These highly intelligent beings, capable of complex problem-solving, play, and dreams, are being captured en masse and sold for profit. They’re fetching £8 a kilo, with 70–80% exported abroad. Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, all part of a sprawling market that commodifies minds with nine brains and three hearts as if they were sacks of flour.Meanwhile, octopuses are being blamed for doing what any intelligent, hungry being would do: finding food. They’re entering crab pots and eating what’s inside. And rather than questioning whether we should be laying those traps in the first place, the industry is debating how to redesign them to catch more octopuses.This isn't economic opportunity. It's ecological opportunism. It’s animal exploitation dressed up as commerce. And it's being greenlit by a government that, on paper, recognises octopuses as sentient.Yes, in 2021, the UK updated its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill to include cephalopods like octopuses, based on overwhelming evidence that they experience pain, joy, excitement, and more. Over 300 studies were reviewed. Experts at the London School of Economics confirmed what anyone who's ever observed an octopus already knew: these animals feel. They suffer.And yet… nothing changed.Sentience was recognised, but not protected. The law, full of promises and caveats, was neutered before it was born. Fisheries weren’t impacted. Commercial slaughter methods, however horrific, were left untouched. And now we’re witnessing exactly what that loophole has enabled: an open season on sentient beings, sanctioned by silence.They’re not “stock” or “units.” These are individuals with brains in each limb, who can navigate mazes, use tools, and taste with their skin. They don’t live long, but they live fully. They explore. They observe. They bond. And now, they die. In bulk.So let’s stop calling this a “boom” like it’s some kind of prize. Let’s call it what it is: a massacre, sparked by climate breakdown, driven by profit, and cheered on by those with their hands in the pots.If octopuses are truly recognised as sentient, as the UK government claims, then this should be a scandal, not a celebration.If we're serious about respecting sentience, then the killing must stop, not scale up.And if we want a liveable future, maybe, just maybe, we stop glorifying financial windfalls that come from ecological collapse and start talking about justice. For the oceans. For the climate. And for those whose lives are treated as currency just because they happen to live beneath the waves.Octopuses don’t belong in pots. They belong in the sea. Let them be.

The Great British Cephalopod Slaughter

The UK Government has announced so-called “<a data-mce-href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq548lq8jldo.amp" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq548lq8jldo.amp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">modern welfare reforms</a>” for zoos boasting about more space, longer chains, and fewer photo ops with octopuses. This isn’t progress. It’s a distraction.Because no amount of policy padding, enclosure enlarging, or fish-fondling bans can hide the truth: no one, elephant, octopus, or human, deserves to be born into a cage for someone else's entertainment.While ministers and zookeepers pat each other on the back for 196 pages of bureaucratic compromise, young elephants are still dying in concrete pens. Chester Zoo has lost twelve since 2009, eight before they even turned five. Stress-related viruses like EEHV thrive in captivity. In the wild? Not so much. But rather than address the root cause, captivity itself, zoos just keep shuffling elephants around, breeding more, and calling it conservation.A 2-hectare minimum enclosure for an animal who naturally ranges across hundreds of square kilometres isn’t reform. It’s insult. Elephants aren’t dying for lack of paperwork. They’re dying because they don’t belong here.And don’t be fooled by the “conservation” claims. None of these captive-born elephants will ever see the wild. Zoos breed them to replenish their displays, not to rebuild wild populations. It’s PR dressed up as preservation.This isn’t about slightly better cages. It’s about recognising that no cage is acceptable.&nbsp;If we claim to love animals, we don’t imprison them. We protect their freedom. We fight for their right to not be put on display. We campaign, we speak up, we act.<a data-mce-href="https://www.change.org/p/uk-government-end-elephant-captivity" href="https://www.change.org/p/uk-government-end-elephant-captivity" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">Sign and share the petition calling for a full ban on keeping elephants in UK zoos.</a>We’ve already ended the use of wild animals in circuses, zoos are no different. This isn’t welfare. It’s whitewash. And it’s time to stop pretending otherwise.

The Elephant in the Room Is Captivity

Australia has once again confused violence with virtue. This time, it’s in the form of an aerial massacre. Not of invasive species. Not of so-called pests. But of koalas, one of the country’s most iconic and endangered animals.Around 750 koalas were gunned down from helicopters over Budj Bim National Park in Victoria. Mothers shot from the trees. Joeys clinging to their dying bodies. The government calls this a “compassionate response.” What they mean is: “it was easier to shoot them than help them.”This was not rescue. This was not mercy. This was not care. This was state-sanctioned slaughter of an endangered species, dressed up in PR-friendly concern for “welfare.”Officials say the bushfires left the koalas injured and starving, and that ground rescue was too difficult. So rather than make the effort, they chose to end lives en masse, under the banner of “humane euthanasia.” The same twisted logic that justifies slaughterhouses, trophy hunts, and kangaroo culls: shoot first, spin later.And don’t forget, koalas didn’t start the fires. Humans did. Through climate negligence, land mismanagement, and relentless deforestation. These animals are being killed for the same systems that made them vulnerable in the first place.Wildlife hospitals exist. Rehabilitation centres exist. Emergency protocols exist. And helicopters took to the skies — not to airlift the injured to safety, but to execute them.Activists have rightfully called it a betrayal. A disgrace. A national shame. A massacre hidden behind buzzwords and bureaucracy. While koalas are paraded on tourist brochures and cartoon logos, their real bodies are falling lifeless from scorched trees.The Victorian government has already normalised the commercial killing of kangaroos — often shot to sell their skins for football boots and accessories. Now it seems koalas are simply next on the list of inconvenient lives to be managed by bullet.And where were they shot? In a national park. The very place that’s meant to protect them. Some even argue this is less about “welfare” and more about keeping koalas away from eucalyptus plantations — economic interests once again outweighing lives.When government officials talk about animal welfare, remember this is what it looks like: terrified animals shot from the air because saving them would take too long. And the only thing more disturbing than the violence is how normalised it’s become.This is the slow bureaucratic death of compassion. It’s the apathy of institutions that view wild animals not as someone, but as something to manage, control, and eliminate when they become inconvenient.Koalas have already been pushed to the edge by deforestation, drought, disease, and fire. Their numbers have collapsed across New South Wales and Queensland. Scientists warn they could vanish altogether by 2050. Instead of protecting every remaining life, governments are helping speed up their extinction — one bullet at a time.The public should be outraged. And not just for the koalas. Because what’s done to them will be done again. To other species. In other forests. Under other names. Always wrapped in the same excuses: compassion, necessity, mercy.It’s time the world sees this massacre for what it is: not an isolated incident, but part of a wider pattern of ecocidal politics. And it’s time to say no more.No more killing the survivors of disasters we created.No more pretending mass death is “humane.”No more treating lives as disposable.Koalas don’t need bullets. They need protection.And the real pest in this picture isn’t clinging to a gum tree. It’s in the helicopters. It's in the offices signing off death warrants. It's in every system that turns living beings into problems to be solved by gunfire.Australia’s wildlife is not yours to manage into extinction.

This Isn’t Mercy. It’s a Massacre.

Zombies aren’t real. But fungal pandemics? Those are already happening — just without the clickers and CGI.When The Last of Us hit screens, it gave us a fungal apocalypse with cinematic flair. Cordyceps evolved, jumped to humans, and society collapsed into a blood-soaked mess of spores and screams. Viewers binged the series, terrified — not by fiction, but by the eerie plausibility of it all. Could fungi really adapt to infect humans? Could climate change make it possible? Could that be our end?Short answer: not like that. Long answer: maybe.The Cordyceps that zombifies ants isn’t about to turn your neighbour into a mushroom-headed flesh puppet. Cordyceps is highly specialised. One strain infects a specific species of insect and can’t even hop to other insects, let alone humans. And even if it could, our immune systems and 37°C body temperatures have long been a fungal force field. Most fungi simply can't take the heat.But that last point? That’s where reality starts catching up to horror fiction.Because the planet is heating up. And fungi are adapting. The Real Monsters Don’t Lurch — They MutateFungi don’t need to spread through a TV-style contaminated pancake supply chain. They’re already in the air, the soil, the water, and — thanks to climate change — now in hospitals.Enter Candida auris, a pathogen that thrives in higher temperatures and spreads from person to person. A fungus that emerged on multiple continents around the same time. A fungus that’s multi-drug resistant, deadly to the immunocompromised, and almost impossible to eradicate once it gains a foothold in healthcare settings.It’s not the only one. Species like Aspergillus fumigatus and Histoplasma are on the move, adapting, expanding their range, and making themselves at home in places they couldn’t survive in before. Climate modelling suggests A. fumigatus alone could expose an extra nine million people in Europe to infection by 2100. And this isn’t science fiction. This is published, peer-reviewed, already-in-progress reality. Fire, Drought, Spores, RepeatFungal infections aren’t just hitching a ride on the heat. They’re spreading on the back of our climate chaos.Droughts disturb dry spores. Wildfires create perfect fungal breeding grounds. And agriculture — the leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss — clears space not just for cows, but for pathogens. The more we destroy ecosystems, the more we expose ourselves to microbes we were never meant to meet.2024 was the worst year ever recorded for fire-driven forest loss. Fires fuelled by global heating overtook logging and farming as the number one cause of tropical deforestation. From Brazil to the Congo to Siberia, forests are disappearing — and with them, the natural controls that kept fungal threats in check.This isn’t a distant future problem. This is now. And no one’s ready.The medical system is woefully unprepared for a fungal future. Why? Because antifungals don’t make money.Big Pharma loves a profitable pandemic. COVID? Jackpot. But fungal infections? Not enough sick people to justify the investment — at least not yet. And because fungi are more biologically similar to humans than bacteria, developing treatments that don’t harm us in the process is harder. The result? Resistance is rising. Treatment options are falling. And still, barely anyone’s paying attention.The World Health Organisation finally added fungal pathogens to its priority list in 2022. But only after years of mounting infections and mounting deaths. Less than 10% of fungal species have even been described. Let that sink in. We are walking blind into a fungal storm with next to no maps and almost no medicine. Then There’s the Animal IndustryThis isn't just about rising temperatures. This is also about raising animals — tens of billions of them.The same industries torching forests and fuelling methane emissions are also breeding the perfect storm for fungal evolution. Antibiotic use in animal agriculture isn’t just fuelling bacterial resistance — it’s also wiping out the microbial balance that keeps fungi in check. The result? Opportunistic infections. In humans, in animals, in the soil, and in our hospitals.And don’t expect any honesty from industry. The beef and dairy sectors have been caught red-handed funding disinformation campaigns to downplay their role in climate destruction. They’ve borrowed from the tobacco playbook: deny, distract, discredit. The beef industry knew as far back as the 80s that their emissions were a problem. Instead of reducing them, they paid researchers to tell the public otherwise.Meanwhile, dairy giants are turning a blind eye to methane — one of the most powerful climate accelerants. Coffee chains like Dunkin’ scored zero on methane accountability. Starbucks admits dairy is its largest source of emissions, but won’t commit to phasing it out. And the medical profession? Still serving meat to cardiac patients.Fungi might not be bursting from skulls, but the negligence is no less grotesque. This Is Not About Zombies. It’s About Injustice.The real horror isn’t spores. It’s systems. Systems that refuse to act unless there’s profit in it. Systems that protect industries over people. Systems that prioritise short-term convenience over long-term survival. Heat-resistant fungi are evolving faster than we are. And we’re still arguing over whether beef is really that bad for the planet. Hospitals are unprepared. Drug companies don’t care. Governments are stalling. And the industries fuelling the crisis are funding studies to convince you your diet doesn’t matter.They’d rather let the world burn — and its fungal spores bloom — than acknowledge the obvious: the food system must change. Fast. This Isn’t a Game. This Isn’t a Show.There’s no cinematic showdown coming. No final boss battle. Just a slow, suffocating creep of neglected pathogens into places they’ve never been. Into lungs that used to be safe. Into wounds that used to heal. Into bodies with no immunity, no treatment, and no backup plan.We don’t need a mutated Cordyceps to wipe us out. We’ve already created the conditions for something far scarier: a world where the climate is collapsing, the forests are gone, antibiotics don’t work, and fungi thrive in our absence. And that might be the deadliest script of all.

Herbivore Club

ARTICLES

Monarchy: No One Is Born to Kneel

Grade A Propaganda

The Great British Cephalopod Slaughter

The Elephant in the Room Is Captivity

This Isn’t Mercy. It’s a Massacre.

The Last of Us Had Clickers. We Got Candida