Jamie in Chile wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2017 7:00 pm
Monbiot is a smart guy - I enjoyed his writings on travel some years ago- but hasn't got past the mainstream arguments on animal welfare and environment. Fundamental animal rights is too far for him.ically he knows or suspects veganism is ahead, but doesn't really think eating meat is bad enough to make real, complete sacrifices.
In December 2002, Monbiot came out for veganism, citing famine and sustainability: George Monbiot: Why vegans were right all along "It's impossible to avoid the conclusion that the only sustainable and socially just option is for the inhabitants of the rich world to become, like most of the earth's people, broadly vegan, eating meat only on special occasions like Christmas."
In 2010, he returned to the subject, saying:
"I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly"
Simon Fairlie: Meat, A Benign Extravagance is the book he read and based his article on
The core argument of this article is perhaps in this paragraph.
"If pigs are fed on residues and waste, and cattle on straw, stovers and grass from fallows and rangelands – food for which humans don't compete – meat becomes a very efficient means of food production. Even though it is tilted by the profligate use of grain in rich countries, the global average conversion ratio of useful plant food to useful meat is not the 5:1 or 10:1 cited by almost everyone, but less than 2:1. If we stopped feeding edible grain to animals, we could still produce around half the current global meat supply with no loss to human nutrition: in fact it's a significant net gain."
In 2013, he changed back in favour of veganism again:
Why I'm eating my words on veganism – again | George Monbiot
Saying: "Part of the problem is that while livestock could be fed on waste and rangelands, ever less of the meat we eat in the rich nations is produced this way." And adding: "I also came to see extensive livestock rearing as a lot less benign than I – or Fairlie – had assumed. The damage done to biodiversity, to water catchments and carbon stores by sheep and cattle grazing in places unsuitable for arable farming (which means, by and large, the hills) is out of all proportion to the amount of meat produced. Wasteful and destructive as feeding grain to livestock is, ranching appears to be even worse."
In this 2013 article, he says "I tried [a vegan diet] for 18 months and almost faded away. I lost two stone, went as white as a washbasin and could scarcely concentrate. I think I managed the diet badly; some people appear to thrive on it." Now then, I am assuming he tried the diet between 2002 and 2010. Perhaps this failure might have been a factor in his 2010 article? it does seem a common theme the people who decide they want to give up a vegan diet, then seek for a moral position to justify it.
He concludes the article saying: "So can I follow Al Gore, and do it better than I did before? Well, I intend at least to keep cutting my consumption of animal products, and to see how far I can go. It's not easy, especially for a person as greedy and impetuous as I am, but there has to be a way."
Which is brings us on to this week's article, the one already posted above in the OP
I’ve converted to veganism to reduce my impact on the living world | George Monbiot
So now he's mostly vegan. ie not actually vegan.