George Monbiot on why we have to stop farming animals | Fragment 

9:23 with all due respect

cattle naturally eat grasses and similar, and their bodies are designed to absorb nutrients from these foods. Humans are biologically different. We can gain excessive proteins from nuts. A very high energy and high protein natural food.

Vegan FTA. Peace.

Are you a ruminant? Do you have a fermentation vat for a stomach? Because that's how cows do it.

@@rodchung173 cows have more stomachs than many people have braincells 🤣

grazing is a wild ecosystem = planet cannot function without grazing animals = SO MAYBE YOU and GRETA could crowdfund and start food production your preferred way - then you can stop talking and do something positive = people are not going to do what you want - your view on farming is limited by lack of life skills only obtained from work experience

"Carbon sequestration has to do with vegetation growth. It is bigger in agriculture then in an old forest." Actually, that's false: Most types of forests sequester FAR more carbon per acre than do croplands or pasture/grazing lands.

No.. you are sorely misinformed. Carbon is stored in the dirt, and forests store much more carbon than agriculture.

You don't believe literal facts? You can google any of the claims he makes, it's common knowledge. He's not providing anything out of the ordinary, apart from that he suggests doing something about it.

Can you explain why? I don't mean to attack, I'm honestly curious.

@@Hendrik_F It would be an inconvenient truth.

The thing about facts is, you don't need to believe them - that's why theyre called facts.

trick question causes confusion

@@lauralee6628 confusion to who? There’s no trick to the question. Grasslands in dry landscapes evolved with large herds of grazing herbivores (moving frequently, rather than left to graze for extended periods). So the question is how do you prevent oxidation of the grasslands, and the subsequent desertification, if not with livestock? I love the idea of re-wilding as Monbiot suggests, but how will he make it work in dry areas without addressing the oxidation problem?

@@shaunnotsean TO GEORGE it is a Trick Q

Why is oxidation more important than land use, emissions, water use, habitat loss, biodiversity loss, etc?

@@joshbisigtrick question - oxidation is only an issue in low rainfall area - arid zones - drought affected country - livestock trample grasses and bring seeds into contact with soil and so increases groundcovers naturally when it rains

grazing is a wild ecosystem = planet cannot function without grazing animals = SO MAYBE YOU and GRETA could crowdfund and start food production your preferred way - then you can stop talking and do something positive = people are not going to do what you want - your view on farming is limited by lack of life skills only obtained from work experience

@@lauralee6628 🤣You are triggered when somebody unknown recognises the future. That is funny.😌 I do not have to do something, this development will still happen regardless what we think. It will be the economics that leads to this path for the majority. Just like in the energy sector transformation to next gen nuclear energy and renewables or electrification of mobility when price parity to ice cars will be reached. You are as one side track person as Greta to me, but I might be wrong also since one cannot make such assumptions from few written lines in comment section. I advice to look world with broader view and you will see the trends more clearly. Even in Bible it is written that those who decide that nothing will change have seldomly right view😌

@@pr7049 i know the writings of george well - he lacks life skills of actually working the land with animals - as do most/all urban people who follow his views - if you want organic lentils to eat then you/somebody needs to harness the power of grazing animals to grow food without machinery - you need grazing animals to manage forests especially fuel load reductions to counter against fires. you see urban people get uptight when the price of food goes up - economics will determine the future - not an ideologue like george

The climate has always changed throughout history but never as fast as it is doing so now. You can’t dismiss this as a natural event when all the evidence suggests it human driven change.

It's not just the climate, it's the biodiversity and the resources that are sacrificed to produce a small amount of calories. We could feed the vast majority of the human population AND restore wild habitats if we used less land/water. Some people get it some don't

I am eating halal burger right now

@@anshumanjaiswal5787 What makes meat eaters think that saying that is a mic drop answer to all the reasons that they should boycott animal products? Is that the best you can do?

Kudos for so many years of doing the right thing! I have only been vegan for 6 years, but I will never eat animals or what comes out of them for the rest of my life! Once I learned the facts, there was only one conclusion.

grazing is a wild ecosystem = planet cannot function without grazing animals = SO MAYBE YOU and GRETA could crowdfund and start food production your preferred way - then you can stop talking and do something positive = people are not going to do what you want - your view on farming is limited by lack of life skills only obtained from work experience

"planet cannot function without grazing animal" Uhh, to prevent the collapse of ecosystems, we need the number of livestock to drop dramatically and the number of wild animals to increase dramatically. Our livestock now outweigh all the wild mammals on Earth by a ratio of 15 to 1, so let's not pretend that we haven't hijacked much of Earth's land with cattle and sheep and livestock feed crops that don't belong there. Also, even where grazing livestock are part of the ecosystem, there's nothing natural about killing all of a given species at age two and taking the nutrients in its body out of that ecosystem. P.S. There are grasslands that evolved without large grazing animals AND people doing veganic farming without any inputs from livestock/animals.

Who is God? and how did he make make man? I thought evolution had clearly put paid to that theory many years ago.

God is NOT A THEORY, EVOLUTION IS IN FACT A THEORY. IT IS KNOWN AS "the THEORY of EVOLUTION." And it is TOTAL GARBAGE!!! Answer this question: How did Matter (material) receive energy???? Not even the cleverest evolution guru can answer that because the THEORY if evolution is TOTAL. Only JESUS CHRIST has ALL the answers.

When did he lie??

@@jiggersotoole7823 Where would you like to start? His extrapolated figures that he generously ascribes to the whole world (based on a study from a 400 hectare farm where 10 soil samples were taken over a number of months) and labels it as ‘the science’? The lies about what proportion of feed given to animals is food that humans can eat. They can’t. Close to 90% of animal feed is inedible to humans.

@@jiggersotoole7823 Monbiot said there are three conditions that have to apply in order for grazing to be essential to mitigating climate change: 1. Store more carbon than would otherwise been stored. 2. The carbon stored must be more than all the emissions from the livestock production chain. 3. Carbon opportunity cost, the cost of not being able to do something else (e.g. reforestation), must be counted in. While those points may sound reasonable, once you look into the details you realise it is not all that simple. Globally, most grasslands are the “natural” land cover, and the question is about how they are managed and not if they could be something else than grasslands. In addition, most of the grasslands are not grazed by domestic livestock at all. Domestic herbivores can be replaced by wild herbivores, but while that may be preferable from a bio-diversity perspective that will make no difference in the emissions of methane or nitrous oxide. Even if the land is just left to rest, termites, grasshoppers and other organisms will graze grass or it will be consumed in megafires. All that grows will also have to be consumed one way or the other. Those simple ecological functions seem to get lost when George Monbiot (cherry) picks research papers. In the UK, where the debate took place, I guess some grasslands could probably be reverted to forests, after all England has very little forests. But even in a European perspective the abandonment of grasslands and conversion to tree plantations or roads is a major environmental problem and in many places the main threat to bio-diversity. And even in Europe, a mosaic landscape is more “natural” than dense forests´. While there is little, or no, evidence that the quote from Allan Savory’s TED-talk holds water, George Monbiot also made unsubstantiated statements such as “Grazing livestock is far worse than intensively farmed livestock” and “Grazing livestock is one of the most devastating processes on earth.” He also contradicted himself several times. For instance he claims (25:40 in the video) that in order to bind more carbon in soils more nitrogen must be added. But that is really a very simplistic view with no empirical evidence. After all, most of the best crop lands in the world are former grasslands where carbon was accumulated over millennia without any external nitrogen addition. In addition, if it were true, the conversion of grasslands to forests, which is the basis for the calculation of “carbon opportunity costs” would not allow for any increased carbon sink, without the use of nitrogen fertilizers (which alone is the biggest source of agriculture emissions). George Monbiot also built heavily on the dubious concept of “carbon opportunity costs” promoted by Tim Searchinger and Stefan Wirsenius (but not endorsed by the IPCC or other major science body). In this concept all land use is compared with a theoretical maximum carbon storage scenario and burdened with the difference between its carbon storage and that theoretical maximum (which is often a forest). But it is obvious that carbon opportunity costs as a concept are based on many subjective judgments about time horizon, discount rates and alike. There are flawed assumptions that forests are stable ecosystems while forests fires, storms or massive pest attacks can all easily bring down a forest, and release all the carbon stored. Carbon stored in grassland soils is actually much better protected than carbon stored in trunks of trees. But in the end, this kind of pissing contest between ecosystems based on their ability to store carbon is not fruitful. Peat bogs are probably the best carbon stores, but has rather low bio-diversity and don’t support many animals (wild or domestic) or humans. Monbiot equated all livestock with industrial livestock. This is of course contradictory as one cannot on the one hand claim that most cattle in the world are fed with crops grown on arable land and at the same time claim that grazing of the same livestock is a major driver of bio-diversity destruction. The reality is actually that 1) The world’s ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats etc) are predominantly fed on grass and not crops grown on arable land. 2) Global pasture area has not increased at all the last 25 years (but it has expanded in the tropics and reduced considerably in Europe, Russia and North America) 3) Global per capita ruminant meat consumption has not increased at all since 1960, and milk consumption just a little. The increase in per capita meat consumption is attributable to pigs and even more chicken. 4) The majority of the world’s ruminants are not part of the “industrial livestock sector” George Monbiot talks about. India alone has more than 1/5 of all cattle and Africa has more cattle than Europe, North America and Australia together.

@poerava cheers. I'll read that in a bit. Bottom line for me is addressing mass car addiction and mass gluttony for economic reasons. ie, the public has to change its ways, and then governments will follow. Nit the other way round.

@@jiggersotoole7823 Amen

but the denisty required to feed all the people who want to eat these animals is counter productive, and that's regardless of even the nessecary animal feed growing and drug industry interactions with these farm animals.

France farmers are protesting eco taxes. Good luck.

@@anshumanjaiswal5787 And yet they aren't protesting when they get subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy , to produce more and more dairy products and meat .

France is a lonely place for us vegans.....

@@soundtracksofsolitude6915 yes, I agree with you😁

grazing is a wild ecosystem = planet cannot function without grazing animals = SO MAYBE YOU and GRETA could crowdfund and start food production your preferred way - then you can stop talking and do something positive = people are not going to do what you want - your view on farming is limited by lack of life skills only obtained from work experience

"Ill stick to feeding my brain with meat instead of poor nutrition carbs." You are confusing a macronutrient with a specific food (meat). As it turns out, high meat consumption is linked to both heart disease and neurological disease but high consumption of WHOLE grains is linked to better heart health and brain health. Most traditional African diets got most of their calories from plant foods, not meat. That "endless space for livestock" should be turned back into wilderness--that's better for the planet.

Then make the case that some of his stats are wrong. It is a well-accepted scientific fact that raising livestock--and especially cattle and sheep--has been staggeringly eco-destructive. It's the #1 cause of loss of wilderness habitat and desertification worldwide.

"No thanks. Our species is built on meat." Actually, most calories and nutrients for most tribes for most of our history came from plant foods. The very earliest humans were nearly vegan.

Probably less than the meat and dairy industry would pay. Not everyone does everything for money. The points he raises about animal agriculture are valid, it is one and often times the greatest cause for a lot of environmental and social problems.

Please articulate an educated debunk of his arguments. Oh wait…..tumbleweed….

@@dystopiaeatsmoney You can't debate bioweapons. These psychos figure out god like weapons because they know you won't change your behavior!

@@marr123n I don't care. 95 percent of the population is the meat and dairy industry. You better hide your veganism when the panic begins.

@catscan2022 No, rewilding. The precision fermentation would require hardly any land at all. You need to actually watch it before commenting.

I quite agree, its frustrating that anyone would listen to him. And not see past his deception.

grazing is a wild ecosystem = planet cannot function without grazing animals = SO MAYBE YOU and GRETA could crowdfund and start food production your preferred way - then you can stop talking and do something positive = people are not going to do what you want - your view on farming is limited by lack of life skills only obtained from work experience

If we're gonna die let's hurry up about it.

@@lauralee6628 What you on about?

@@lauralee6628 It is clear you didn't really listen to what he was saying about extensive farming. It is less damaging, but only can produce a tiny amount of food. You appear motivated by your selfish attitude that the 30 seconds of pleasure you get from a bite of steak is more important than the future of our planet.

I wonder how heavily the meat and dairy industry are financially protected by subsidies from the tax payer.

@@dystopiaeatsmoneythat’s because humans can’t live on vegetables.

@@mokitaism except for the humans that already do? There is only one thing we get from animals that we can't get from plants which is vitamin B12. Meat alternatives have B12 added to them, just like meat has B12 added to it, since industrial meat production where animals (barely) graze or graze on overgrazed pastures has not enough natural B12. This means that wheter you eat plant based or eat meat, you'll almost always get B12 supplements. Unless you eat fully grass-fed (and even then...) but purely grass fed animals can't possibly sustain the demand for meat. Even if we transformed every bit of land into grazing area, we would not be able to deliver.

@@mokitaism I have a lot of life-long vegetarian friends including many ftom the indian sub-continent. They are among the happiest and healthiest people i know. Perhaps you could explain to them why they all should be dead?

More nonsense from a fool

Please enlighten me then as to the solution (s). I am all ears.

@@geogoring A fully plant based food system would buy us years of time to convert to renewable energy. It would also reduce the land use by 75%!

grazing is a wild ecosystem = planet cannot function without grazing animals = SO MAYBE YOU and GRETA could crowdfund and start food production your preferred way - then you can stop talking and do something positive = people are not going to do what you want - your view on farming is limited by lack of life skills only obtained from work experience

@@someguy2135 So we all schould become vegan. I wonder, where do You do groceries? Have You try to grow something yourself? It`s not easy. And what about places where every year comes the time like dark and cold winter? Or hot and dry summer? There is no way to give up animals farming worldwide.

Go on then, enlighten us.

Big brain with no solution. There are 8 billions of us, some suggest as high as 9 billions, many millions on starvation diet, or just plain starvation, what ever method of farming we come up with will impact the planet echo system, nothing is free. He is like the ex footballers on a panel who think they know better, but all of them would fail as a manager. He is stating what he think is happening , without coming up with any realistic solution, without starving half the population.

@@marcellogenesi6390 Who created the ability to more than triple the output of grains? That was Norman Borlaug in the 60s working for the Rockefeller Foundation. This made third world countries population explode since 1970 and western population die from abortion and birth control! F U!

@@marcellogenesi6390 I could cite a study which shows that we could feed 350 million more people in the USA alone on a plant based food production system. Google it.

@@someguy2135 Studies are not facts. In my world, you can have a choice not to eat meat, in your world i would not have a choice... hmm, no; I rather live in my world.

​@@marcellogenesi6390 Each study has to be judged for credibility using critical thinking skills to compare the conclusion to opposing conclusions from other sources. Those reading this thread will compare a scientific study to the unsubstantiated opinion of a random guy with an internet connection. Whom would you believe? "More than 41 million Americans find themselves at risk of going hungry at some point during the year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says. But it doesn't have to be this way. New research suggests the country could feed all 327 million Americans - plus roughly 390 million more - by focusing on plants."-LA Times Mar 26, 2018 Title, etc-"By going vegan, America could feed an additional 390 million people, study suggests BY KAREN KAPLANSCIENCE AND MEDICINE EDITOR " Link to the study in the article. I would include a link so you could try to rufute the credibility, but RU-vid often deletes comments that include links to anything other than YT videos.

Humans who farm? Yes.

You don't just replace sheep by badger, you replace sheep by a functioning ecosystem of which a badger is a part. The problem is not the animal itself but the land we use to raise them, land that could and should be used to rewild and restore ecosystems instead of growing animals for food, unnecesserily.

@@ianrussell6177 You argue from bad faith. With meek tribalism in it. Serves no one. I asked questions that yet remain unanswered. And as such you have failed to respond to my comment. You also took an example literal when it only meant to illustrate my question. You also acted as if I made claims that I never made. If you've got anything to add to my comment, or to correct that's fine, but it is not even remotely the beginning of an answer. And personal attacks aren't a substitute for arguments.

@@artiIIerycrusader They answered respectfully and you went on a tirade... you are projecting your tribalism onto them. Their point is that it isn't about replacing sheep with badgers, but returning eco systems. And no, nature doesn't care. We could scorch the planet and it will rebuild itself. But if your goal is survival of species including our own, then that's another matter. Because nature cannot sustain most of current biological life with current human practices.

​@@gallectee6032 An argument from bad faith implies a lack of respect. Furthermore you aren't the authority on what I consider respectful. Putting me in a box and making fun of me for being X is also disrespectful. Furthermore they did not answer me; or address my point. Their point isn't relevant if it is not in response to my question. Furthermore by framing my comment as a tirade you are appealing to emotion rather than, again, addressing the actual point. Also, you're wrong. Literally all biological life that's currently alive is so because of human intervention. 100% of it. And that number will never change.

@@artiIIerycrusader all life form that exists is because of us? That sounds so extremely arrogant, I’d love to see your evidence for such an insane comment?

He means well. His heart's in the right place. Unfortunately, his analysis and solutions are on the wrong track.

@@jiggersotoole7823 right on, the man is a manic

grazing is a wild ecosystem = planet cannot function without grazing animals = SO MAYBE YOU and GRETA could crowdfund and start food production your preferred way - then you can stop talking and do something positive = people are not going to do what you want - your view on farming is limited by lack of life skills only obtained from work experience

George M grazing is a wild ecosystem = planet cannot function without grazing animals = SO MAYBE YOU and GRETA could crowdfund and start food production your preferred way - then you can stop talking and do something positive = people are not going to do what you want - your view on farming is limited by lack of life skills only obtained from work experience

Citations please

"grazing is a wild ecosystem " No, it's not, not with 1 billion cattle and 1 billion sheep. Cattle aren't even the right animals to be grazing the grasslands of the US. It's fine to have some grazing animals, but they should be the ones that fit that ecosystem, and they should be left alone rather than killed and eaten when they get to be 2-3 years olds, thus removing ton after ton of nutrients from that ecosystem. Our man-made grazing systems are very unnatural and disrupted the natural ecosystems that existed before. Ecological scientists identify raising livestock as the most eco-destructive human land-use-change activity ever.

you are indoctrinated it appears from others with limited life skills and experience = if you say we can rewild with bison ??? what is the difference between a brahman and a bison ??? or a bison and a hereford ???

"Water usage. Plants consume more water than animals per gram of nutrients." Actually, diets high in animal foods require roughly double the water inputs of diets high in whole plant foods. "Many countries have too much water, especially the cow farming countries" Globally, lots of of cattle are grazed in quite dry areas. "There is not a single place in the world he can show where grazing cattle resulted in soil-degradation." Cattle have been one of the main causes of desertification and soil degradation in places all over the world. In America, cattle are the wrong animals to be grazing on those grasses--if it is to be grazed, you want bison who don't graze grass down to the nub the way cattle do. "Soil degradation is the result of using NOT ENOUGH fertilizer." That's only true within a modern farming system that is dependent upon artificial chemical inputs. If your mind and practices remain married to factory farming, then. that's how you would see the world. But seen from the world of nature, soil degradation is caused by tilling, herbicides, pesticides, mono-cropping, lack of cover crops, and grazing, which by definition takes more nutrients out of the system than it puts back because you are growing a one ton cow.

Staying vegan is the most important thing. Better late than never.

@@someguy2135agreed. Gatekeeping Veganism is only harming the planet, the animals and humans. I’m vegan, but support part-time vegans… every bit helps since perfection isn’t the goal

@@seitanbeatsyourmeat666 When it comes to the environment, I often tell people that if they don't go vegan, they should at least boycott beef and preferably also dairy, since raising cows has the biggest negative impact.

@@seitanbeatsyourmeat666 The most effective type of reducitarian (aka flexitarian) is one who doesn't eat beef or dairy. Too easy to tell yourself that you reduced enough otherwise.

@@seitanbeatsyourmeat666 On the other hand, going vegan is the most effective way to minimize your environmental footprint. "According to the most comprehensive analysis of farming’s impact on the planet, plant-based food is most effective at combatting climate change. Oxford University researcher Joseph Poore, who led the study, said adopting a vegan diet is “the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth.” “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he explained, which would only reduce greenhouse gas“ Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy,” he added.”. -Joseph Poore, Environmental Science Researcher, University of Oxford. Joseph Poore switched to a plant based diet after seeing the results of the study. Links at my channel under "About.