Here's my article on why both the climate and ecological emergencies demand an urgent switch to a plant-based diet: theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
And here's the argument I had with a beef farmers on plant vs animal diets, on Channel 4 news last night: channel4.com/news/george-mo…
When you see figures like this, you wonder what there is left to discuss. The land and water demand and greenhouse gas emissions of animal protein production are so much greater than those of plant protein that these debates are really just a matter of science vs shouting
PS, there have been quite a few comments about the bodies of the contributors on last night's Channel 4 debate. Please stay kind, and stick to the science. Thanks.
People tell me "the real problem isn't diet, it's population."
Human population growth does of course contribute to the ecological disasters caused by farming.
BUT: Human pop growth is 1.2%
Livestock pop growth is 2.4%
That's the real population crisis theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
By 2050 the world’s living systems will have to support about 120m tonnes of extra humans, and 400m tonnes of extra farm animals. The switch to meat eating as people become richer is an ecological catastrophe.
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1. There have been plenty of debates about whether or not Trump and his circle are fascists. In this column, I argue that the debate solves nothing. We’re seeing a reversion to the default state of politics in centralised societies: autocratic tyranny. 🧵theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. While fascism had peculiar features, it was a variant of this default state. Trumpism will be another such variant. We find these reversions surprising because we imagine that the default state of societies like ours is democracy.
3. These reversions happen because of the patrimonial spiral of wealth accumulation, described by Thomas Piketty. This leads (unless society is prepared actively to stop it) to a patrimonial spiral of power accumulation. Economic power translates into political power.
1. The one benefit of Brexit was a new farm subsidy system, paying for public goods like ecological restoration. But now the government has frozen the new grants, while swiftly cutting off the old ones, leaving farmers high and dry. It's deeply unfair and highly destructive. 🧵
2. It will leave farmers who started investing in restoration out of pocket, and destroy their faith in the green transition. The sharpness of the transition will drive some to bankruptcy.
3. Two obvious questions:
A. What is the government playing at?
B. Where are the big environmental NGOs who asked for this transition, but are now failing to defend it? Why are they not raising hell about this betrayal?
1. People are objecting to my lashing of academics and intellectuals in today's column. I understand this. Here’s my reasoning. I chose examples of topics that are endlessly circled by researchers with ever diminishing returns, while huge and existential questions are ignored.🧵
2. I see the obsession with the Bloomsbury Group etc as highfalutin celebrity culture. The effort and attention spent on it, in scholarship, publishing and reviews, seems to me to signal a deep sickness at the heart of intellectual endeavour. It has a name. Denial.
3. It reminds me of Eliot’s comparison of the mindless gossip in the pub with the mindless gossip in the high society salon in Part II of The Wasteland:
"‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’
But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -
It’s so elegant
So intelligent"
1. A few days ago, I wrote a thread about the pros and cons of staying on this platform and asked for your views. They were very helpful. As a result, I’ve decided to stop using X from January 20. Already I’m mostly posting now on BlueSky (@georgemonbiot.bsky.social) instead.🧵
2. I won’t delete this account, as I don’t want to lose the archive. But I won’t post anything here after then. Will you join me in setting January 20th (a significant date) for the Xodus?
3. I thought for a while that the best alternative would be Threads. But Meta’s deliberate downgrading of political content and suspension of journalists on Threads rules it out as a prime platform for people like me. .theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
1. Who really won the US election? The fossil fuel companies and other polluting industries. We scarcely heard about them during the election campaign, which is just how they like it. Almost everything we *did* hear about was a distraction from the real agenda. 🧵
2. Trump’s campaign was an economic war against the interests of almost everyone on Earth, on behalf of the planet’s most powerful and destructive industries. But it was dressed up, as always, as a culture war: a trick that has been used to great effect for more than a century.
3. It’s not as if Biden/Harris were seriously curtailing polluting industries, especially oil and gas. It’s shocking how little Harris even mentioned the existential threat to humanity that climate breakdown presents. But now? It’s a free-for-all.
1. Here are my thoughts on the pros and cons of staying on this platform.
Pro: We were here long before Musk took it over. We built this.
Con: He has used our creation to help elect a far-right autocrat, and build his own grim political career.
🧵
2. Pro: We should never cede any space, real or virtual, to the far right. Fascist trolls are trying to drive us out. Don't give them the satisfaction.
Con: Our presence could be used to legitimise a far-right hellsite.
3. Pro: It remains, amid the viciousness, a good place to share information, ideas and opinions.
Con: It is also an abysmal, dispiriting place to inhabit, the humour, lightness and kindness crushed by bots and trolls.