cows could save the planet - tell vegetarians

[5co77ie]

Holistic well respected scientist Allan Savory has an interesting theory on how to reverse climate change - eat meat!

His film makes for interesting viewing and he's clearly put a lot of research in:

http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html?source=facebook#.UThBlzbBjOl.facebook

This is the same scientist that sanctioned the deaths of 40,000 elephants because he believed grazers were causing desertification, now he realises he was wrong. Man needs animal herds which have roamed the world for millennia and keep it in natural balance. If we all went vegetarian and didn't keep herds then the vegetation starts to oxidate, and the only way to clear it is to burn it adding to carbon to the atmosphere, adding to the desertification process, grazing lands can lock carbon in the grass and lower carbon and help stop desertification.

Do your bit - eat meat

(even horse - it all helps)

[Guest]

Che?.... we need herds of animals to graze, so we should eat them?!...

[5co77ie]

There's little money in keeping herds of animals otherwise. Without us as a driving force to eat the things there's not enough motivation to have them, particularly in poor countries. The idea if we all went veggie the fields would still be full of beef cattle, pigs, and the like is fanciful at best.

[Guest]

There's little money in keeping herds of animals otherwise. Without us as a driving force to eat the things there's not enough motivation to have them, particularly in poor countries. The idea if we all went veggie the fields would still be full of beef cattle, pigs, and the like is fanciful at best.

Edited March 8, 2013 by tonyblair

[5co77ie]

agreed him not shooting 40,000 elephants would help.

Actually that's made me think surely this mass proposed cull of deer about to happen in this country is a bad idea as it stops woodland being grazed on

[5co77ie]

I think we'd better start acknowledging that we need to let other animals live, to be be part of the eco-system. And we'd better start realising that we're not here to totally and utterly control the planet and everything that exists on it

[5co77ie]

Actually that's made me think surely this mass proposed cull of deer about to happen in this country is a bad idea as it stops woodland being grazed on

[TheGayTent]

agreed him not shooting 40,000 elephants would help.

Actually that's made me think surely this mass proposed cull of deer about to happen in this country is a bad idea as it stops woodland being grazed on

[TheGayTent]

I also wonder what we're going to do with 750,000 dead deer?

Edited March 8, 2013 by TheGayTent

[5co77ie]

Findus lasagne? Best value ready meal made

[LondonTom]

Aldi bambi burgers more publicly acceptable than horse.

Edited March 8, 2013 by LondonTom

[TheGayTent]

but I refuse to eat dear

[Guest]

I dunno, alot of people like Bambi,....I am basically a carnivore for food, but I refuse to eat dear. (I am not even to fussed about all the horse meat.)

Anyway if we ate more meat, wouldn't we need more cattle etc which would release more methane into the atmosphere? If i remember rightly isn't this one of the main causes of global warming?

[TheGayTent]

there's not enough space already.

Edited March 8, 2013 by TheGayTent

[Guest]

Killing 750,000 deer might help then...

[TheGayTent]

it's us that there's too many of

[Guest]

So let's encourage the North Koreans to start on the South then...?

Edited March 8, 2013 by tonyblair

[fred quimby]

it's us that there's too many of

[5co77ie]

eating more meat, is not the way to go. The population is exploding.. there's not enough space already.

[Guest]

Tony suggesting Human Cull

You heard it here first

[5co77ie]

Tony suggesting Human Cull

You heard it here first

[5co77ie]

or maybe start to think about how we can stop the increase at the rate it is. If we don't, we're fucked.

[Guest]

But as the film points out if we farmed more animals in areas that were becoming desert it would (Savory hypothesises) make land habitable again - thus making more space and invalidating this argument, he also reveals more carbon would be locked in the land that way than all the methane.

I think the shots of where they took cows away and what happened to the land once it wasn't grazed on fascinating (geography student geek mode) who would have thought not having grazing animals would mean grass dies off - grass only exists when it's useful - I guess.

[Guest]

I thought the problem in the UK is not enough young kids - and so we're becoming a demographically more aging population.

[5co77ie]

deserts were deserts before we were around.