The new food strategy for England, commissioned by the government, lays out in stark detail the damage the current food and farming system wreaks on the environment, as well as our health. It is the biggest destroyer of nature and a major source of climate warming, it says.

The report takes aim at overconsumption of meat. “Our current appetite for meat is unsustainable,” it says. “85% of farmland is used to feed livestock [and] we need some of that land back.”

That 85% of land provides only 32% of the calories we eat, it says: “By contrast, the 15% of farmland that is used to grow plant crops for human consumption provides 68% of our calories.” The report also tackles the myth that grass-fed livestock are greener, saying: “The more intensively you rear some animals, the more carbon-efficient they tend to be.”

The British public should be given a “people’s dividend” worth billions of pounds as part of the national drive to hit targets for net zero carbon emissions and the restoration of nature, according to the most detailed blueprint to date for a green transition.

Free public transport, more green spaces and money for improving homes are at the core of a landmark report that proposes one of the greatest advances in the fairness agenda since the creation of the NHS.

The 70,000-word manifesto by the cross-party environmental justice commission says levelling up must be at the heart of efforts to decarbonise the UK economy to ensure policies have broad public support.

The authors – MPs, citizen’s juries, business executives, union leaders and members of the Institute for Public Policy Research – say they have learned from the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests in France that fuel tax increases will bring a backlash if they are perceived as unfair. Instead, they cite Canada as an example of redistributing carbon tax revenues among citizens. In the UK’s case, they say this should be done in the form of grants and support for better wellbeing.

Caroline Lucas, a Green party MP and one of the co-chairs of the commission, saw parallels with the creation of the NHS in terms of the possible social impact.

After 18 months of deliberation by policymakers and citizens across areas of the UK likely to be most affected by the transition – Tees Valley and County Durham Aberdeenshire, south Wales Valleys and Thurrock in Essex – the final report says the UK is currently failing to ensure that the costs and benefits of the transition to net zero will be fairly shared.

The French schooner De Gallant docked in Falmouth harbour at the end of May, three months after leaving the port of Santa Marta in Colombia laden with tonnes of sustainably sourced coffee beans.

This wind-powered sail cargo of carbon-neutral coffee was worth the wait, according to Yallah Coffee, a single-origin coffee roastery only a few miles away in the Cornish port town.

Yallah’s special Colombian coffee grounds and beans are finding their way into coffee shops and restaurants across the country. Using a sailboat to import the beans into the UK made the first leg of their voyage almost entirely carbon neutral.

For Richard Blake, the owner of Yallah Coffee, the delivery was the culmination of almost five years developing the idea for a sustainably sourced coffee without the huge carbon footprint of most imported beans.