Comments by "Michael RCH" (@michaelrch) on "Youth climate protesters urge royal family to rewild royal estates before COP26 summit" video.

Livestock farming is the most destructive industry on the planet. It causes the large majority of deforestation, habitat loss and species extinction. And if we don't cut back on animal agriculture very substantially, we cannot deal with the climate crisis. Farming plants is 6-10x more productive than livestock agriculture so you need a fraction of the land.
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@Anne_Onymous I know. Did you read my while comment? We need much more plant-based food. My point is that it's the livestock farmers that are using nearly all the land and causing nearly all the problems.
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@Anne_Onymous That is a daft argument. It's the drug dealer argument that "if I didn't sell the drugs someone else would." Yes. We have to reduce demand as well, but that is actually pretty straightforward if we wanted to. We could stop subsidising animal agriculture to the tune of billions every year, and we could tax and restrict imports to ensure that imports didn't rise. We could have public information campaigns and education in schools about why it's unhealthy and the catastrophic damage it does to the natural would and the climate. We could ban deceptive marketing and advertising that tries to sell meat as healthy when it's actually a contributing factor to most of the leading causes of death in developed countries. Etc And yes, it's by far the most damaging form of agriculture. It causes nearly all the deforestation in the farm system. 91% of deforestation in the Amazon was caused by cattle ranching. Farms, especially pig and chicken farms cause most of the polluting run off events that kill life in rivers and cause dead zones in the oceans. Animal agriculture causes about 2/3 of the carbon emissions from the food system. Etc. I could go on. And all this for a food that only makes up a fraction of our nutritional intake, we don't need and that we would be healthier without.
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@Anne_Onymous As I said, it's easy if the government would actually do their job and protect citizens from an industry that alone causes 12% of CO2 emissions. Many people fail to realise that meat is not just wrecking the life support systems that they themselves rely on to survive and thrive, but it's also unhealthy in itself. It's bad for you, it's bad for the planet, it's bad for your local environment, it's bad for the workers in the processing industry and it's absolutely horrific for the 80 billion animals that get slaughtered every year. And the justification for all this harm? For the 5 minutes that I spend eating it each day, I slightly prefer the taste to something else I could be eating. It's nothing short of insanity.
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@ianwilson6417 Are you a lion then?! What you just tried to argue is as daft as me saying "cows eat grass and they are healthy on it so grass is healthy for humans"
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