Comments by "antonyjh1234" (@antonyjh1234) on "The problem with George Monbiot's solution to the climate crisis | Chris Smaje interview" video.

  1. And yet here is where you and most studies are wrong, the land that will be returned is non arable, we can't do anything else with it farmwise, saying we can reduce the use of something is not the same as impossible to be able to use it. Consider this land doesn't have any inputs from us, we don't irrigate it, we don't fertilise it, we don't do much more than what having wild animals on it would mean. All studies except one that I know of only considers food to be to thing we have to replace, the tonnage of pet food needing to be replaced having to come from a grown, fertilised, irrigated crop would make the difference of the inputs of what we put into non arable land. The non arable land is going to have a huge soil microbe loss if you take ruminants off the land, causing huge emissions. Monibot is completely wrong on many points, re-wilding without having a lower input replacement, for all that we get, not just food, we get so so much more, the fats go into the plastics that make your device shiny, the asphalt, the rubber in your tyres, he doesn't consider the amount of arable land in the world to replace more than just meat, I think there's about 11% and 7% is in Africa, there's about 3% of the worlds surface that we could push into but as far as our own populations in the modern world a lot of our waste goes to animals. The farmer is a uninformed in that animals eat more of our waste than what we feed them in human grade grain, 14% of their diet is grain but usually this isn't the best grain so it needs a market, the more waste there is the more it get's fed to animals, but this grain is either corn or wheat, they are grasses, anything that replaces all the nutrition we get PLUS all the inedible we recieve, then it needs to show lower inputs, if cows are predominantly on non arable land with minimal inputs, that are beneficial to the soil then it's hard to beat and rewilding where there are no ruminants, increasing chances of forest fore emissions increasing, especially on a warming planet, increasing forest fire fuel isn't the best way forward. The UN and The IMF now realise changing people's use for the poorest of the poor, those people who use the dried dung for heating/ cooking, the milk for food and animals for draught power and exchanging those things for new forms of heat, new sources of food, tractors and diesel and synthetic fertilisers which absolutely ruin the soil, isn't the best way forward and when animals reduce the risk of starvation and poverty they are recommending them. As far as America is concerned, the lawn is the largest crop, growing your own food should be something we all have the soil to do but nothing about removing animals is going to lower total emissions for all that we get and any soil we can plant on would have to have a massive increase in output, that would mean massive amounts of synthetic fertilisers needed, something that is 300 times worse than carbon as a gas. These people who talk to you that say this kg of meat compared to a kg of wheat is soooo much more polluting without admitting all the emissions have all been lumped onto the meat, are I think lying to you.
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  2. My apologies, from a quick search I found : Our addiction to lawns means that grass is the single largest irrigated agricultural “crop” in America, more than corn, wheat, and fruit orchards combined. A NASA-led study in 2005 found that there were 63,000 square miles of turf grass in the United States" Maybe I left out irrigated. "The non arable land is going to have a huge soil microbe loss if you take ruminants off the land, causing huge emissions." Because the land that has animals on it now has a soil biome that depends on predigested carbon dropping onto it. Much like any crop that once harvested the soil microbe die off is immense and why farmers are trying cover crops and no till, if the soil organims that depend on a source of nutrient have the source taken away they die, releasing all that carbon into the atmosphere. "Why would this be, most climate commentators seem keen to maintain forest areas to ensure CO2 sequestration, albeit the full growth/death cycle of timber is pretty well carbon neutral due to methane emissions from rotting biomass." I would say forestry is even less carbon neutral than advertised. I think they have been using emissions only instead of full life cycle of vehicles, that recently has or is changing making every study done void commercial forestry gets harvested too young to be carbon neutral, the other issue of soil carbon loss, all carbon in the form of life forms that were feeding on the roots of those trees now die off, it's not being measured and its trillions and trillions of organisms each harvest. Are there many fires in maintained forests, if so are they classed as part of the emission factor? @astoni314 
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