George Monbiot: Can we feed the world without devouring the planet?
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- Опубликовано: 11 июн 2020
- Join this Hertford Conversation between George Monbiot and college Principal, Will Hutton.
George Monbiot is an author, Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner. His best-selling books include Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding and Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning; his latest is Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis.
George co-wrote the concept album Breaking the Spell of Loneliness with musician Ewan McLennan and has made a number of viral videos. One of them, adapted from his 2013 TED talk, How Wolves Change Rivers, has been viewed on RUclips over 40 million times. Another, on Natural Climate Solutions, that he co-presented with Greta Thunberg, has been watched over 50 million times. 
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This video is criminally underrated - this is perhaps the most important subject on Earth, yet the overwhelming majority of people hear nothing about it.
I agree! ... It’s just too much for many people to think about.
@@martinnolan4800 True - I imagine if you’re working 40+ hours a week just to stay afloat, this topic is too big to register. It’s tragic, though, because this is quite literally in everyone’s interest!
Agree entirely. Amazing though how the public can, when prodded become angry, spiteful and militant defenders of neo-liberalism, the status quo, and yet, somehow, a past golden-age, which naturally varies according to culture. The problem seems to me to be (not claiming any original thought here) that the honest are not prepared to play dirty, use propaganda, buy media outlets etc. Perhaps a grass-roots buyout of Newscorp and Facebook could be a start.
@@martinnolan4800 I can’t say. But most people are clearly not confronted with this information. Just look at the amount of views this video has as an example.
You can start helping by sharing.
My left ear enjoyed this
how about your center stomach?
George has a very unique, and likely correct, viewpoint.
Stupidity might not be a very scientific description in this context. Let's call it "illusion of omnicompetence in a high-functioning scholastic mind" instead. But in layman's terms, Monidiot is simply the best illustration for Cipolla's 2nd law of stupidity: The probability that a person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. see: Prof. Carlo M. Cipolla (1976) - The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
George your message must get out. I have sent this Podcast to Russell Brand x
Priceless! Russell Brand is smart and can think for himself while Monidiot is the proverbial "educated fool" who is stuck in his Marxist echo chamber, disconnected from the methods of empirical science...
Brilliant 👨🏿🎓
You don't need to be an environmentalist to care about the environment.
It's now a matter of survival.
We have done so much damage to our home planet that we are threatening it's habitability.
Whatever you care about, you need to care about the habitability of our planet first. And it's in the balance right now.
350.org
Rebellion.earth
You have been well brainwashed...
@@jasonking1284 how so?
@@michaelrch For believing all that garbage you spouted...
@@jasonking1284
Pick a point you disagree with and I will tell you the reasons that I believe it's true.
@@michaelrch This whole AGW is bullshit. Sure there was pollution which has been largely controlled by emmission regulations. CO2 is good, Earth warming is good. Man has added a little to what was already there. And that's all there is to it. No doomsday.
Introduction to Alan Savory and his methods: ruclips.net/video/xMjKcCfBtfI/видео.html
Introduction to Gabe Brown's adaptation that produce a large variety of plant and animal products, but also great biodiversity, prevents erosion, and soil health at the same time: ruclips.net/video/TLwsn8snsMc/видео.html
He literally addressed Alan Savory‘s baseless claims here, and he also has an article where he interviews him that is 7 years old or so.
ruclips.net/p/PLSJAwas-bYxvJeHd7pvpIeV5dd1fm2TV9
Great vid. I see the roll out of small community permaculture food forest gardens. I feel this will only gather pace of interest when we are genuinely hungry.
Perhaps the horror of Brexit shortages will hone the mind of the masses to look to self sufficiency. Like you say this is only possible by valuing our soil.
I fear that - like in the past - a new radical change would only deepen the problem.
More food? We threw radical change in the form of steam power, diesel power, pesticide, gmo, drainage, upscaling, etc etc at that problem..
It only got us more people.
Like in your back yard: Throw in a lot of food - you get a lot of rats..
Worth remembering families have fewer children, as their living standard rises.
@@HughRiddle ohg i'm too tired to look up the numbers but it was something like: if living standard world wide made to the level of birthrate = 2 we need 5 worlds. or was it 6?
@@spijkerpoes. Sorry you're tired. Maybe just me, but I don't understand your last sentence.
@@HughRiddle sorry not native english.. Birthrate 2 is what we should aim for. Or even 1 for a few generations.
In the 'west' we have high living standards, resulting in lower birth rates (1.8 children per woman or something). Education, women rights, less religiosity, better health care, better prospects, free time and such and such.. All this comes at a price: we all have big phat cars and eat meat, fly all over the place and throw away everything after a day or so.
My point is that the earth struggles supporting the say 2 billion rich western people. Add 6 billion below par living standard people wanting our ridiculous level. It is not going to work. I do not like it. It is not fair. It is not pretty. But I can not unsee this. Also, I do not know of a way out other than war, famine and plague. And above all, the end of ecosystem earth.
and oh lookie here: monbiot is having an upload about just this. Well, I'm curious..
type:
REGENESIS: how to feed 10 billion people AND prevent climate apocalypse (George Monbiot short film)
Not getting enough protein is basically impossible when you consume the RDA of 2000 calories a day in whole food. The only foodstuffs which doesn't have every essential amino acid, is animal gelatin that is missing tryptophan.
Or, as another great mind put it, let them eat cake.
Pulses, legumes, lentils, beans, peas should be eaten much more often. They are tasty, high in protein and also nitrogen fixers for a fertile soil. No great new tech needed to grow them. They are e.g. popular in Indian dishes like dhal. To many vegans want industrial junk to replace meat, but they should try dishes like dhal to widen their taste range. Ween yourself off the meat taste addiction.
Is youtube comments malfunctioning, or did you reply to my post with the following remarks and then delete them?
"I guess people, i.e. demand, are not willing to buy it at the moment. People are still shying away from fake meat to some extent. A real meat eater wants to eat the real deal, the animal. One day, when bad things happen, fake stuff will be much in demand and it will be the industry that provides it, no doubt. In an overpopulated world that loves to consume, industry and big capital will always keep the upper hand. Thinking otherwise is wishful. More people and more demand for stuff are great for the rich who will continue to get richer. Less people would mean more freedom and a better life quality for the average person. And less desperate people to use as work slaves. Which would be a nightmare for the rich."
Assuming a malfunction, you seem to have misunderstood the point I'm making with regard to the video. Monobit claims the energy costs of hydrogen production are prohibitive - but this doesn't make sense. Producing hydrogen is quite energy intensive, that's true. (Monobit could be arguing that we need to harness the limitless heat energy of the earth's molten interior - and convert that to electricity and clean burning hydrogen, but he doesn't. Instead he wants to end agriculture, and for people to eat yeast cakes fed on hydrogen.)
That aside, raising cattle; and growing crops to feed cattle, ploughing land, sowing seed, harvesting, distribution of crops for animal feed surely uses far more energy than electrolysis. So it cannot be that the energy cost of producing yeast cakes is prohibitive.
My implication is that Monobit's claims for these products are overblown; in that, either what may be possible in a laboratory environment is problematic to scale up industrially, or - the product of doing so is such an unnatural and unattractive foodstuff, there's no point doing so. Afterall, fake meat product made from vegetables already exist; and there's a market for it capitalism is quite keen to exploit. So again, Monobit's thesis fails. Ultimately, Monobit is a vegan anti-capitalist ideologue - using sustainability as a justification for his own beliefs and choices, he wishes to impose on others.
You made another comment! 😆
This doesn't make any sense. If producing protein by bacterial growth - fed by hydrogen oxygenation were viable, why would it not be embraced by capitalism? It's inconsistent to argue the energy cost of electrolysis, or thermal fracturing of water - to produce hydrogen as feedstock for bacterial protien production, are an obstacle - when surely the energy inputs and land requirements of growing crops to feed cattle vastly outweigh the energy costs of hydrogen production. If this worked, capitalists would be all over it - and so what I'm getting is a politically motivated, and possibly delusional anti-capitalist justification of veganism.
I guess people, i.e. demand, are not willing to buy it at the moment. People are still shying away from fake meat to some extent. A real meat eater wants to eat the real deal, the animal. One day, when bad things happen, fake stuff will be much in demand and it will be the industry that provides it, no doubt. In an overpopulated world that loves to consume, industry and big capital will always keep the upper hand. Thinking otherwise is wishful. More people and more demand for stuff are great for the rich who will continue to get richer. Less people would mean more freedom and a better life quality for the average person. And less desperate people to use as work slaves. Which would be a nightmare for the rich.
perhaps you should invest in it and see if you make some money... it's very new and it is not yet fully approved by the EU. It will have investors all over it in a few years.
@@helenelizabethcass9505 Had I money to invest, I'd invest in developing magma energy technology - harnessing limitless clean energy from the molten interior of the earth, to produce base load electricity and clean burning hydrogen fuel, and using that energy, among other things - to desalinate water to irrigate land for agriculture.
Everything Monobit says is based on an assumption of fossil fuel powered agriculture. I'd seek to replace fossil fuels with abundant clean energy; rather than force people to veganism to reduce demand, to reduce ghg emissions.
It makes no sense to keep pumping oil while pricing the poor out of the market for food, (heat, light, travel, clothing, manufactured goods and everything else) to reduce atmospheric carbon. Why would Monobit demand something so radical as ending agriculture, before demanding application of magma energy technology? It's bizarre. He's either a vegan fundamentalist, or a communist - and quite possibly both!
Of course it doesn't make sense. People capable of rational thinking with access to facts, data and knowledge of technological processes are not his target group: he is marking his territory in his Neo-Marxist echo-chamber that's ruled by zeitgeist-y belief systems and virtue signalling ... However, pseudo-intellectual teens will always mistake a guy smelling his own farts for a prophet as long as he is confirming their media-induced fears trendy sensibilities😬
George you are a star a voice of reason amongst all the bullshit
George Monbiot.... fearmonger extrodinaire....
I call him "Monidiot" as he is just playing the useful idiot for the big multi-nationals who are trying to bend public opinion so they can get away with the huge land-grab they are very obviously planning...
In general we have to tackle overconsumption and waste. AND population, I disagree with G. Monbiot: There is no racism in promoting contraception and making incentives for a max two child family. All over the world, the West (where the over-consumers live) included. (And the rest of the world is keen to consume like us, mind you!)
Nevertheless, women in developing countries are FAR from being in control of their bodies, from choosing how many children they have. They also get from birth on indoctrinated (there is no other word) into a view of women being mothers of big families, first and foremost. Without many other roles or outlets open to them. Frankly, it was not so different in the West, not long ago. Emancipation and equality made the difference. We are all happy about it (all, but some quite misogynistic reactionaries). That is why progressive people are appalled when reproductive rights are culled in the West, like in the case of Roe v Wade.
But we all shy away from giving women in some developing countries the privilege that women here cherish. I do find that horrible, speaking as a woman here who does have control over her body.
Thinking that women in other countries feel per se dramatically differently from women in the West and not being able to change in that respect is quite RACIST. Humans are similar enough everywhere. Women should be free to choose, should have (sex) education and contraceptives available.
If we just accept the status quo in some countries, we accept male dominance, male supremacy even, that we would find horribly unacceptable in the West. That I call true Western privilege and entitlement.
Why did you make two different comments? Now I can almost take my comment back, because I found this comment from you.
In desperate times (and the climate crisis and several other eco disasters should make us desperate indeed) we need drastic measure. Changing the food sector would not be enough by far, even those ideas George Monbiot presents. Culling the traffic sector, especially flights, will be needed too, but nobody accepts that so far. Many other habits, from our manicured gardens to crypto currencies to the horrible garment industry (fast fashion) to second homes, should be dumped. No sign of that so far. In older times I would have said we change our attitudes in glacial speed. But that would not be correct anymore, would it?
Since we tackle neither population (via contraceptives!) and instead use wishful thinking in that area, nor change drastically in respect of consumption and waste, our timid leaders decided to do some cosmetics on the corpse.
That is the sad truth: Changing to renewable energy is not the silver bullet, nor is it veganism in the West. (It could have been enough if we would have implemented that decades ago.) The measures needed would be drastic and need the participation of quasi the entire world. And that may only happen when it is far too late to stop "vicious cycles" in the climate.
True. But I disagree that population is an important issue. I think it is wealth. Many poor people have no significant emissions, including the country they live in. The problem is again wealth and lifestyle, the emission gap/inequality in emissions and climate justice meaning the lack of it.
@@LeanAndMean44 I agree that this is true at the moment, with some people living in perpetual poverty. But we have to consider the future. True poverty is quasi super ecological. The ecological footprint of a poor person is near zero. But poor people do not want to stay poor, which is obvious. And we do not want them to stay poor either. As shown e.g. with the rise of China from poor to much better off (some people still rather poor, some super rich) attitudes change. Consumption gets up, and Western overconsumption is followed as a role model. And this is likely to be the case everywhere, humans are alike. Even in the poorest countries people have internet and see "stuff" and learn to crave more and more "stuff", cars too, and Western lifestyle.
Even if Westerners would (big question mark) get better and consume much, much less, there would be a huge uptake, when billions of people even start to replicate our very bad patterns of consumer behaviour.
Also, and for me as a woman not unimportant, the discussion about contraceptives is always tainted, as if there is per se something wrong with it. Fact is, that women in most countries with hugely growing populations live under some kind of male supremacy, that I would not want to endure. Women s roles are rather secondary (with few exceptions) and the man is the decider. With poisoning any discussion about contraceptives, we just helped to further cement that problem, not to ameliorate it. It did not "empower women" for sure.
In short: We cannot keep poor people in poverty and we cannot curb their enthusiasm for consumption enough to not make all our ecological disasters much worse. Heck, we cannot keep our own population from overconsumption. And we have everything and more. As our mountains of waste show.
Yessss! All marching in eco-lockstep, JAWOHL! You are nothing - the climate is everything. All hail the climate, so let's live in un-heated mud huts and die at 34 (because that's exactly what we will get when we go fully "climate-neutral") ... seriously, do something about your irrational eco-angst (usually media-induced) before it turns into a full-blown psychological problem. A good starting point would be to read Hans Rosling's "Factfulness" - the higher your educational background and your SM/ mainstream media use, the higher the probability that you instinctively assume that "the planet" is in danger, while the opposite trend is true. There ARE areas that need our attention and immediate action but those are few and really, really hard to tackle... Also, have a look at Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" to understand WHY we are constantly being fed the myths of eco-gloom & doom.
Most of the land is not feeding people and is desertifying. Feeding humans, especially vegans, using conventional methods is destroying the environment and consuming the soil through wind and rain errosion at approximately 10 lbs of soil for every pound of human food produced. Alan Savory pioneered the methods, and Gabe Brown and his partners have applied and taught those methods in the US, and indeed the world, in a low tech with little to no inputs to create a very profitable and nutrient dense food.
Produce protein in a lab... No need for cattle... Bacteria needs only nitrogen (I know, its out of context, but still)...
I want my food grown, not produced. I would prefer to be healthy, to be able to grow some onion of tomatos on my own, maybe someday have couple chickens for eggs. Regenerative Agriculture is the answer for todays problems, not yet another plant.
When you try to debunk an hour and 15 minutes of arguments with a few claims…
It is sad that someone with such apparent intelligence could be so limited by his confirmation bias of his predetermined conclusions, and his cognitive dissonance closing his mind to better solutions.
Sorry to say it but you are completely wrong.
@@folkeholmberg3519 Don't be sorry, it's still a free country! But facts trump your feelings, no matter how righteous you think they are.
You are using some big words there but they don't say anything. What are the better solutions?
@@helenelizabethcass9505 I thought only adults would watch this video. You should try googling the words you don't know. Won't help with comprehension, but if you give me an age level, maybe I could rephrase it age appropriately.
The solution is holistically managed regenerative agriculture as developed in Africa by Allan Savory (see his TED Talk), and adapted to the US by Gabe Brown of North Dakota, Greg Judy of Missouri, and Will Harris of southern Georgia.