Yet another reason why George Monbiot is wrong

We will admit to - very occasionally - having a sneaking admiration for George Monbiot. He is willing, just the occasional time, to change his mind. As with nuclear power after Fukushima. Given that the combined earthquake and tsunami knocked over three entire reactor cores and no one at all was killed from that - but 13,000 or so from the earthquake and tsunami - then, well, yes, nuclear power is pretty safe.

True, reality does have to give Mr. Monbiot a really hard slap in the face to get that mind changed but even that’s a much better reaction than all too many out there.

More normally matters are a little different. Monbiot does seem to have an almost puppyish enthusiasm for the next Big Thing. Or recently found out Old Thing - here we think of his insistence, stemming from a very strange and minor Indian activist, that the Brits stole £40 trillion from India. The new thing now:

It turns out, there’s something really massive we can do which is to replace protein-rich and fat-rich foods that we now get from the flesh and secretions of animals with food produced by bacteria.

We’re not quite sure whether that’s a step up or down the food chain from all those others insisting we should be eating insects. But still:

“The way we produce our protein-rich foods at the moment requires a massive amount of environmental resources, a huge amount of land - far more than the land for anything else, particularly when it comes from pasture-fed meat, which is the most damaging of all farm products,” says George.

No, that’s factually wrong. But then there’s this:

“Our food system is by far and away the most damaging impact we have on the living world. Worse than fossil fuels, worse than plastics, it is the worst thing we’re doing. It’s the biggest cause of habitat destruction, of wildlife loss, of extinction, of soil degradation, of freshwater use. And one of the biggest causes of climate breakdown and water pollution and air pollution. And anything we can do to reduce that burden would make an enormous difference.”

Again, no.

We’ve no worry at all about eating bacteria. We’ve long been in favour of the output of yeasts in fermentations* so we see no real problem with going the stage further. Nor, even, with insects. We’d only insist that it has to be demand led - people get to choose and only do as they wish.

But there’s still this vast logical problem with what Monbiot is thinking here. For everything that is alive dies, everything that has been alive gets eaten by something or other other that is alive. Sometimes, distressingly, while still alive, as with crocodiles and necrotising fasciitis. But life dies and gets eaten. So, our changing our place on that food chain doesn’t, in fact, change that circle of life.

If humans stop eating bovines and consume only bacteria, well, what next? Roughly the same weight of mammals will be out there, being eaten by something or other. We eat cows, we’re eaten by the worms. The replacement might be that cows are eaten by lions and the lions are, in their time, eaten by worms. Sure, if the lions are armed with lasers that would be pretty cool but other than that we’re not seeing the huge difference here. All the plants are going to be eaten by some form of herbivore, the herbivores by carnivores, the carnivores by the bugs and, well? Whether we’re in that cycle or not, we’re not seeing that huge difference.

And that’s the problem with this whole idea. The only thing in it is that the one apex predator should be replaced by another. Humans by lions with lasers, say. Which could be, as we say, pretty cool with those lasers but other than that it seems to be nothing but misanthropy writ large.

Which is, we think, why George so often does go quite so wrong. We ourselves have our dislikes among our fellow humans but we don’t regret the entire species. We’re not sure if Monbiot is on the right - the correct - side of that same judgement.

*Why, yes, of course we mean bread, not beer. What do you think we are, journalists?