Funny you don't hear this same bunch, who claim to be so concerned about food emissions, have nothing to say about the vast waste of agricultural land, fertilizers, nitrogen pollution, GHG emissions producing nutty Agrofuels that use more fossil fuel inputs than they replace, as well as having an EROI <1. What's their response? Increase mandates for agrofuel production. What hypocrisy.
"...At the same time, the Biden gang has announced a fake remedy for record high gasoline pump prices. Washington announced the EPA will allow a 50% increase in corn-based biodiesel and ethanol fuel mix for the summer. On April 12 the Secretary of Agriculture announced a “bold” initiative by the US Administration to increase the use of domestically-grown corn-ethanol biofuels. Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed the measure would “reduce energy prices and tackle rising consumer prices caused by Putin’s Price Hike (sic) by tapping into a strong and bright future for the biofuel industry, in cars and trucks and the rail, marine, and aviation sectors and supporting use of E15 fuel this summer.”
"...Only the capitalized “Putin Price Hike” is not a result of Russian actions, but of Washington Green Energy decisions to phase out oil and gas. The energy price inflation is also about to go vastly higher in coming months owing to US and EU economic sanctions on export of Russian oil and likely gas. However the central point is that every acre of US farmland dedicated to growing corn for biofuels removes that food production from the food chain, to burn it as fuel. Since passage of the 2007 US Renewable Fuel Standards Act, which mandated annually rising targets for production of corn for ethanol fuel blends, biofuels have captured a huge part of total corn acreage, more than 40% in 2015. That shift, mandated by law, to burning corn as fuel had added a major price inflation for food well before the covid inflation crisis began. The USA is by far world’s largest corn producer and exporter. Now to mandate a significant increase in corn ethanol for fuel at a time of astronomical fertilizer prices, and fertilizer rail shipping are being blocked reportedly by White House orders, will send corn prices through the roof. Washington knows this very well. It is deliberate..."
To be fair to George Monbiot he recognizes that you can’t just stop people eating meat and that’s why he’s a big advocate of precision fermentation to make the translation painless. The hope is that fake meat can provide the same experience at less cost and so out compete it.
I don’t always agree with him but he is a thoughtful writer who always tries to back up his argument with evidence and numbers so I find him worth listening to. For example he has long been pro nuclear and anti biofuels contrary to many in the green movement.
I think Monbiot is over-generalizing. Certainly Vegan foods should dominate our diet. But in some areas and by some methods meat is competitive. Read Joel Salatin of Polyface farms fame. Ruminants/chickens/ducks/geese replenish the soil and can have a symbiotic relationship with crops, building & replenishing soil. So done properly, meat production is very much a healthy complement to crop production, not so much grains, but certainly vegetables.
And in many areas, there is a destructive level of pests, i.e. rabbits, hogs, deer, that can be harvested to great ecological benefit.
And, of course, there is fish farming and ocean fertilization methods that could be very efficient ways to produce high quality protein and food variety for the population.
Do that, quit agrofuels, and the focus needs to be overwhelmingly, nuclear power & methanol fuel. And quit the idiotic wars.
And that’s the deeper level of engagement I’m talking about, constructive criticism. I’m sure the solution is a mixture of both. I’m sure they are ways of sustainably farming meat but can they do so at western levels of meat consumption for 8 billion people?
Dubious. The idea is that we don't need some self-appointed centralized bureaucracy to dictate how each country should manage their economy & ecology. Especially the UN/WEF/IMF/World Bank/WHO. I would put higher faith in the local high school Ecology Club. More competent and not corrupted. That's why the central tenet should always be the Westphalian system of free & independent nation states, each which will pursue their own individual aspirations. Co-operation is great. Dictates from a Central Authority is Dystopian.
So some countries like Canada, USA, Australia, Russia have sufficient scrub-land to supply a high meat consumption. Other coastal nations may have opportunities for high fish consumption. Other nations will have to restrict meat consumption. This will all occur organically if you allow the Free Market to dictate prices not some corrupt, snot-swallowing, cement-head bureaucrats. Add a CF&D if you are concerned about carbon emissions. Each nation can decide their own policy.
Has anyone tried to work out what the carrying capacity of the earth would be if we allowed the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to rise to, say 2000 ppm or even 3000ppm?
Lets not forget that all the carbon locked up in fossil fuels was once incorporated in the atmosphere and if it wasn't for a quirk of nature, that is dead trees falling in to shallow sea instead of being properly consumed by fungi, it would still be there.
Dear David, I've thoroughly enjoyed many of your other pieces, but this one came across as a bit tabloid.
I don't think many of us in the eco-modernist plant-based gang are against synthetic fertilizer. In fact, if we are able to build out large energy sources (like nuclear), it becomes economical to bind nitrogen out of the air, like with the Birkeland–Eyde process was feasible with hydro power, before HB came along.
So it's possible to be for plant based diets, synthetic fertilizer and the reduction of fossil fuel use at the same time.
Neither is anyone seriously suggesting that we take away meat production before there are alternatives at the ready so people will starve.
I'm convinced that plant based foods will eventually push most meat out of the market, if they are allowed to compete on even terms. There simply is so much wasted energy in the meat cycle. It's a bit like hydrogen storage for foods come to think of it. Plant based foods will be cheaper, and get better tasting over time. So it makes no sense to force the markets or make meat illegal. Rather it'll be a steady process of removing subsidies until people realize that the process of producing meat is not just cruel to animals and humans involved, it's also awfully expensive.
That's fair. Let them compete on a fair market basis and stop talking about mandates. The same effect they have had on EVs. It was OK to subsidize them in order to reach mass production, just as they need to do to nuclear, especially SMRs. At that point the subsidies can be removed, as they long ago should have done to wind & solar but haven't, and let them compete fairly in a Free Market. Or at the most, have a Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee & Dividend to give a rational level of bias to low carbon methods. Instead, by forcing EVs down peoples throats with mandates, they have created a hatred of EVs that is just destructive & ugly. Even EV sabotage is becoming common.
That is not what they are doing with food. Just look at this disgusting propaganda film promoted by the Irish government:
UNMISSABLE: Main National TV Station Pumps INSANE Propaganda - ENJOY! Ivor Cummins:
"20 Nov 2023: You're gonna love this one! Our National main TV station just aired an INSANE piece of WEF/UN-style propaganda - it's a parody of itself! Nonetheless I have a great time taking it down hardcore ;-) Please share widely - you can download vid here too, to share elsewhere: https://we.tl/t-ul4uOAkqMg"
Watch how they are trying to train us to love eating bugs. It's in there. And they are doing the same thing by forced reductions in meat consumption.
What they are really advocating is a form of rationing. The thing about rationing is ethically it should be applied equally. No "do as I say not as I do" bullshit. So the wealthy should be equally restricted to say one steak per month. That ain't happening. They have exotic meats flown in from Africa to be served fresh to the diplomats at the COP28. Roasted Gorilla anyone? Quite a luxury food item for our ruling class.
I read a few weeks ago about a Swiss 'expert' who was advocating eating human cadavers for meat protein to save the planet! These Idi Amin sympathisers are displaying deranged disturbed thoughts outside the realms of normal psychology. The catastrophising alarmist they push reminds me of the psychologically disturbed weird American cults that operate outside normal psychology. They've used fear and control to psychologically terrorise people out of normal psychology and made them so overwhelmed by their own emotion they are no longer able to hear or listen to normal rational thought from others. We saw the exact same methods during covid.....stay at home to save your granny, now you have to eat her to save the planet!......These people are dangerous and evil and those already infected by their abnormal psychologically disturbed cult are lacking the capacity to see it.
How do you go from 'lets get rid of plastics out of the ocean' to eating our grandma in what feels like 5 minutes???
My late mother who was born in 1930 often told me that up until the 1950s, rabbit meat was eaten more frequently than chicken. With the modern trend for rewilding in Britain, I suspect we will go back to those times as beef, lamb, pork etc will become increasingly scarce and expensive.
Fortunately it seems that the internet is full of advice on how to start a small rabbit farm.
How about eliminating $trillions in wealth wasted, millions of dead, and vast physical waste & destruction in idiotic endless wars? Ukraine being the latest casualty, >1/2 million dead, a nation destroyed which would've been trivial to avoid through rational diplomacy. And blowing up pipelines releasing massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere and destroying Europe's energy security, a waste of $trillions and massive GHG embodied emissions in vast industrial infrastructure. Funny nobody in the UN or the Climate Change Alarmist crowd wants to talk about that.
And as always, the one sure-fire way to reduce emissions and improve the economy, health & welfare of the population in one fell swoop, which is a rapid expansion of Nuclear power. That's something the Alarmists ain't interested in. They really like punishing people for not being servile to the tenets of their Greenie Religion. While the same bunch just love wasting vast resources on low EROI wind & solar, using massive amounts of mined materials, in the most inefficient way, and destroying excellent agricultural land. Energy inefficiency at the maximum. Hypocrites.
Funny you don't hear this same bunch, who claim to be so concerned about food emissions, have nothing to say about the vast waste of agricultural land, fertilizers, nitrogen pollution, GHG emissions producing nutty Agrofuels that use more fossil fuel inputs than they replace, as well as having an EROI <1. What's their response? Increase mandates for agrofuel production. What hypocrisy.
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO26Apr2022.php
"...At the same time, the Biden gang has announced a fake remedy for record high gasoline pump prices. Washington announced the EPA will allow a 50% increase in corn-based biodiesel and ethanol fuel mix for the summer. On April 12 the Secretary of Agriculture announced a “bold” initiative by the US Administration to increase the use of domestically-grown corn-ethanol biofuels. Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed the measure would “reduce energy prices and tackle rising consumer prices caused by Putin’s Price Hike (sic) by tapping into a strong and bright future for the biofuel industry, in cars and trucks and the rail, marine, and aviation sectors and supporting use of E15 fuel this summer.”
"...Only the capitalized “Putin Price Hike” is not a result of Russian actions, but of Washington Green Energy decisions to phase out oil and gas. The energy price inflation is also about to go vastly higher in coming months owing to US and EU economic sanctions on export of Russian oil and likely gas. However the central point is that every acre of US farmland dedicated to growing corn for biofuels removes that food production from the food chain, to burn it as fuel. Since passage of the 2007 US Renewable Fuel Standards Act, which mandated annually rising targets for production of corn for ethanol fuel blends, biofuels have captured a huge part of total corn acreage, more than 40% in 2015. That shift, mandated by law, to burning corn as fuel had added a major price inflation for food well before the covid inflation crisis began. The USA is by far world’s largest corn producer and exporter. Now to mandate a significant increase in corn ethanol for fuel at a time of astronomical fertilizer prices, and fertilizer rail shipping are being blocked reportedly by White House orders, will send corn prices through the roof. Washington knows this very well. It is deliberate..."
To be fair to George Monbiot he recognizes that you can’t just stop people eating meat and that’s why he’s a big advocate of precision fermentation to make the translation painless. The hope is that fake meat can provide the same experience at less cost and so out compete it.
I don’t always agree with him but he is a thoughtful writer who always tries to back up his argument with evidence and numbers so I find him worth listening to. For example he has long been pro nuclear and anti biofuels contrary to many in the green movement.
I think Monbiot is over-generalizing. Certainly Vegan foods should dominate our diet. But in some areas and by some methods meat is competitive. Read Joel Salatin of Polyface farms fame. Ruminants/chickens/ducks/geese replenish the soil and can have a symbiotic relationship with crops, building & replenishing soil. So done properly, meat production is very much a healthy complement to crop production, not so much grains, but certainly vegetables.
And in many areas, there is a destructive level of pests, i.e. rabbits, hogs, deer, that can be harvested to great ecological benefit.
And, of course, there is fish farming and ocean fertilization methods that could be very efficient ways to produce high quality protein and food variety for the population.
Do that, quit agrofuels, and the focus needs to be overwhelmingly, nuclear power & methanol fuel. And quit the idiotic wars.
And that’s the deeper level of engagement I’m talking about, constructive criticism. I’m sure the solution is a mixture of both. I’m sure they are ways of sustainably farming meat but can they do so at western levels of meat consumption for 8 billion people?
Dubious. The idea is that we don't need some self-appointed centralized bureaucracy to dictate how each country should manage their economy & ecology. Especially the UN/WEF/IMF/World Bank/WHO. I would put higher faith in the local high school Ecology Club. More competent and not corrupted. That's why the central tenet should always be the Westphalian system of free & independent nation states, each which will pursue their own individual aspirations. Co-operation is great. Dictates from a Central Authority is Dystopian.
So some countries like Canada, USA, Australia, Russia have sufficient scrub-land to supply a high meat consumption. Other coastal nations may have opportunities for high fish consumption. Other nations will have to restrict meat consumption. This will all occur organically if you allow the Free Market to dictate prices not some corrupt, snot-swallowing, cement-head bureaucrats. Add a CF&D if you are concerned about carbon emissions. Each nation can decide their own policy.
Has anyone tried to work out what the carrying capacity of the earth would be if we allowed the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to rise to, say 2000 ppm or even 3000ppm?
Lets not forget that all the carbon locked up in fossil fuels was once incorporated in the atmosphere and if it wasn't for a quirk of nature, that is dead trees falling in to shallow sea instead of being properly consumed by fungi, it would still be there.
No, you would never get it that high. Burning all the economical fossil fuels might get you to 800ppm max, likely more like 600ppm.
Dear David, I've thoroughly enjoyed many of your other pieces, but this one came across as a bit tabloid.
I don't think many of us in the eco-modernist plant-based gang are against synthetic fertilizer. In fact, if we are able to build out large energy sources (like nuclear), it becomes economical to bind nitrogen out of the air, like with the Birkeland–Eyde process was feasible with hydro power, before HB came along.
So it's possible to be for plant based diets, synthetic fertilizer and the reduction of fossil fuel use at the same time.
Neither is anyone seriously suggesting that we take away meat production before there are alternatives at the ready so people will starve.
I'm convinced that plant based foods will eventually push most meat out of the market, if they are allowed to compete on even terms. There simply is so much wasted energy in the meat cycle. It's a bit like hydrogen storage for foods come to think of it. Plant based foods will be cheaper, and get better tasting over time. So it makes no sense to force the markets or make meat illegal. Rather it'll be a steady process of removing subsidies until people realize that the process of producing meat is not just cruel to animals and humans involved, it's also awfully expensive.
That's fair. Let them compete on a fair market basis and stop talking about mandates. The same effect they have had on EVs. It was OK to subsidize them in order to reach mass production, just as they need to do to nuclear, especially SMRs. At that point the subsidies can be removed, as they long ago should have done to wind & solar but haven't, and let them compete fairly in a Free Market. Or at the most, have a Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee & Dividend to give a rational level of bias to low carbon methods. Instead, by forcing EVs down peoples throats with mandates, they have created a hatred of EVs that is just destructive & ugly. Even EV sabotage is becoming common.
That is not what they are doing with food. Just look at this disgusting propaganda film promoted by the Irish government:
UNMISSABLE: Main National TV Station Pumps INSANE Propaganda - ENJOY! Ivor Cummins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZwdn2kBcmY
"20 Nov 2023: You're gonna love this one! Our National main TV station just aired an INSANE piece of WEF/UN-style propaganda - it's a parody of itself! Nonetheless I have a great time taking it down hardcore ;-) Please share widely - you can download vid here too, to share elsewhere: https://we.tl/t-ul4uOAkqMg"
Watch how they are trying to train us to love eating bugs. It's in there. And they are doing the same thing by forced reductions in meat consumption.
What they are really advocating is a form of rationing. The thing about rationing is ethically it should be applied equally. No "do as I say not as I do" bullshit. So the wealthy should be equally restricted to say one steak per month. That ain't happening. They have exotic meats flown in from Africa to be served fresh to the diplomats at the COP28. Roasted Gorilla anyone? Quite a luxury food item for our ruling class.
I read a few weeks ago about a Swiss 'expert' who was advocating eating human cadavers for meat protein to save the planet! These Idi Amin sympathisers are displaying deranged disturbed thoughts outside the realms of normal psychology. The catastrophising alarmist they push reminds me of the psychologically disturbed weird American cults that operate outside normal psychology. They've used fear and control to psychologically terrorise people out of normal psychology and made them so overwhelmed by their own emotion they are no longer able to hear or listen to normal rational thought from others. We saw the exact same methods during covid.....stay at home to save your granny, now you have to eat her to save the planet!......These people are dangerous and evil and those already infected by their abnormal psychologically disturbed cult are lacking the capacity to see it.
How do you go from 'lets get rid of plastics out of the ocean' to eating our grandma in what feels like 5 minutes???
Soylent Green!
I'd like to see them get rid of the millions of head of livestock in Wales, Scotland and the Highlands and try growing their vegan food.
These people are extremely dangerous and, if they're allowed their way, will cause mass starvation including in the UK.
Sri Lanka tried banning industrial nitrate fertiliser last year didn’t they? How did that go?
My late mother who was born in 1930 often told me that up until the 1950s, rabbit meat was eaten more frequently than chicken. With the modern trend for rewilding in Britain, I suspect we will go back to those times as beef, lamb, pork etc will become increasingly scarce and expensive.
Fortunately it seems that the internet is full of advice on how to start a small rabbit farm.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08d7040f0b64974001872/ZC0146.pdf
https://www.southwestfarmer.co.uk/news/10586213.start-small-scale-rabbit-farm-smallholding/
https://www.profitableventure.com/rabbit-farming-business-plan/
How about eliminating $trillions in wealth wasted, millions of dead, and vast physical waste & destruction in idiotic endless wars? Ukraine being the latest casualty, >1/2 million dead, a nation destroyed which would've been trivial to avoid through rational diplomacy. And blowing up pipelines releasing massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere and destroying Europe's energy security, a waste of $trillions and massive GHG embodied emissions in vast industrial infrastructure. Funny nobody in the UN or the Climate Change Alarmist crowd wants to talk about that.
And as always, the one sure-fire way to reduce emissions and improve the economy, health & welfare of the population in one fell swoop, which is a rapid expansion of Nuclear power. That's something the Alarmists ain't interested in. They really like punishing people for not being servile to the tenets of their Greenie Religion. While the same bunch just love wasting vast resources on low EROI wind & solar, using massive amounts of mined materials, in the most inefficient way, and destroying excellent agricultural land. Energy inefficiency at the maximum. Hypocrites.