You can run some mental gymnast to deny climate change but how can you deny plastic pollution? Totally nuts. What a wasteland we’re leaving for the next generations.
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They won't suffer for long, we will be responsible for most of their annihilation, as long as the likes of Jim can buy another yacht...
orchard
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Yeah, i've been feeling that for a while bro -- recycling's like a performative ritual that fools us into normalising its use and believe that it's being dealt with ecologically because virtually the whole country spends millions of pounds and millions of collective hours a week dealing with it.
As to why were bankrolling a chap who's domiciled in Monaco to establish a factory in Belgium would be better suited to the Brexit thread, seeing as he was a major brexit lobbyist.
A colleague at work was talking about all this to me recently funny enough. Talking about the removal of responsibility from big corporations onto the individual. So while we all feel a bit guilt if we put a plastic bag in regular trash or walk around the supermarket with a special bag for fruit and veg, scum like this carry on regardless and people continue to make a tonne of cash.
Coca Cola, the biggest plastic polluters on the planet, yet continue to post record profits and the brand remains untainted. Something has to give.
Absolutely nothing changes without large scale government action and a fundamental socio-economic rethink at both macro and micro levels. Behaviour change has been mostly focused on the individual and hopelessly contradictory.
It needs both. Why bother recycling if we have to jump in a car and burn an energy resource to travel a significant distance to work? Why bother if the next thing were taking several flights a year on holidays? Both are things actively supported by our socio-economic system (consumer capitalism via marketing and profit making entities etc) and government policy (more roads, kick backs for car makers, support for aviation.
Uncomfortable choices at the individual and societal level.
Bishop Thumpety-Thump
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Wasn’t sure whether to post this here or in the vegans thread, but I’ve just listened to Adam Buxton interviewing environmentalist George Monbiot on his podcast.
Apparently 38% of the planet’s surface area is used for farming. Of that, only 12% is used for growing crops, the other 26% is for producing livestock. Only half of the land used for crops is used for direct human consumption (ie vegetables/fruit) while the other half is to grow soy for livestock to eat. Therefore 32% of the WORLD’S SURFACE is used to grow livestock for human consumption. Of that only 10% is free range, the other 90% is intense factory farming.
I guess the message is change what we eat or we’re finished as a species.
Apparently 38% of the planet’s surface area is used for farming. Of that, only 12% is used for growing crops, the other 26% is for producing livestock. Only half of the land used for crops is used for direct human consumption (ie vegetables/fruit) while the other half is to grow soy for livestock to eat. Therefore 32% of the WORLD’S SURFACE is used to grow livestock for human consumption. Of that only 10% is free range, the other 90% is intense factory farming.
I guess the message is change what we eat or we’re finished as a species.
That's what basic tropic systems teach us, animals are a tropic level above vegetation and therefore absorb the resources needed for vegetation are absorbed by those animals. Carnivores are a trophic level higher again and absorb both sets of cost.
The simplest way to reduce those costs is to stop being a carnivore
orchard
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Here's good mate.
Monbiot, Monbiot, Monbiot. Where to start ? Well, a lot of his criticism of Industrial farming and living is valid, it's when he attempts to build from that (as he currently states 'empirically' or 'scientifically') that his bailer twine frays and his pants start sliding towards his ankles. IMO one of his major problem is his unwillingness to differentiate between Industrial farming and the type of sustainable small-scale farming that feeds billions.
Around ten years ago he told a hall full of people that sheep destroy trees, and I believed him for most of those years. That is until I had my own sheep and realised by chance that, at least my flock, help relieve grass competition on self-sown and whips we've planted, provided they are not in leaf. These young trees would have been lost if it wasn't for them, and i've integrated this little revelation into my management of the flock and organic silvopasture. Seems it not quite so simple or absolute.
Whilst i'm certainly not a defender of industrial farming, those stats seem to be skewed to create a particular impression and lead one to a conclusion Monbiot and his backers desire. Like, i'm sure most of the soy that's being fed to livestock is a secondary usage, after the primary usage, human consumption, has been satisfied. I think 20pc of the bean is extracted as fat for us, and then the 'waste' is secondarily utilised for livestock fodder. Yanno, they use a similar way to calculate water usage to freak people out. They state that each head of livestock has x amount of litres - but they include rainfall on the area in that calculation. So ours have had hundreds of gallons of water over the Winter according to them, but have rarely, if ever, been to their trough for a drink. So, assuming I haven't lost all my audience to the Sand Man, the same applies to land use outside of Industrial Ag.. Our flock have loads of room, I move them daily on a rotation that attempts to mimic the herds that actually used to roam freely and created our great fertile areas, and seem to have a happy life munching on the organic grasses and forbs. But it's stacked, it's not an exclusive arrangement. There are trees and fruit bushes, diverse flora, insects, birds, grass snakes, toads, frogs, rodents, poultry and the microbiome that share the same space. There were even two foxes over Winter that were pouncing on the vole population that must have exploded for some reason.
Change what we do, or we're finished. Food included, but it's being exaggerated to make all the other things seem a little less bad.
orchard
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Whattabout destroying every trophic level with poisons and having monocultures? Monbiot doesn't want to stop that, in fact he wants to intensify it, even though the 'Green' revolution is finding it has to double the quantity it's applying for the same effectiveness every C10 years, you're scientific enough to realise the consequence of the exponential function to this approach better than me mate. Veganism as a (partial) solution to the polycrisis is as effective as plastic recycling. Cut down meat consumption, swerve factory farm doo-doo, eat only organic - certainly. Going vegan and eating non-descript UHP food will not help our particular organism, nor many others.
I've commented on basic trophic principles that remain true to the individual and are a building block fir environmental science. I'm well aware of the dangers monocultures present to resilience levels and that there is no singular solution. But I've no energy for your personal war on Monbiot or internal fracturing within green communities that becomes so self defeating we might aswell call ourselves the labour party.
Deer will destroy trees. Was a big problem during apparently. Not sure how a sheep could destroy anything tbh although they will occasionally eat eggs they come across from ground nesting birds weirdly enough.
orchard
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No need to suggest it's personal, there are plenty of ecologically minded individuals raising concerns about Monbiot's stat's, vision and agenda. I think you're sound, but I believe what you're suggesting is what has led to the likes of Drax, fraudulent carbon trading, etc., and I believe we've wasted too much time on compromised easy solutions.
orchard
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I wouldn't trust them with them when they're in leaf ! Eggs is a weird one though, thankfully, because I use electric nets, I can keep them well away anyway, i'm not sure of the legislation like, but just like hedges, I don't disturb them when nesting.
I didn't even mention Monbiot in my original post though I do have time for the man and consider him an ally. All I've mentioned is the basic principles of trophic levels which is a basic truth of environmental science. Suggesting an individual decision to be more vegan is the same as industrial level exploitation of climate legislation is quite a leap.
Food supply as with energy production will of course require a holistic approach, I don't disagree on that and I'm particularly tribal on any singular solution.
orchard
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