Cloverleaf
Retro Guru
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As you say, a shame there weren't more trees but also it's nice to see the enthusiasm. Hopefully this enthusiasm carries on elsewhere.
The thing I don't like around a lot of these figures is that they bandy about numbers based on their own agenda; farmers underplay their impact and vegans overplay it and extrapolate US figures based on grain fed beef and extrapolate it out to UK farms which are generally not intensive in the same way (with factory chicken and pig farms being an exception), and utilise land which otherwise couldn't be used for cropping on any form of efficient basis, if it's at all positive. Land in the Lakes, Wales and the Highlands where it's steep, boggy and otherwise completely unfarmable is ideal for grazing animals, albeit the density needs to be quite low because the nutrient capability of the soil is generally also pretty crap (Bog Asphodell was once thought to cause brittle bones in cattle until they realised that where it grows is just indicative of very poor nutrient supply from the other plant matter around. Now in the UK I don't actually believe that we have even close to 83% of our farmland Now of course this flies in the face of me complaining about deer overgrazing and completely killing the biodiversity of these places so it's all a balance. I'm lucky; I can buy farmed meat from the fields I drive past, procure butchered venison from the herd that's decimating biodiversity on our peninsula, and fish that my monger can identify down to the boat it's been caught from, all with minimal travelling miles.
Personally I won't stop eating meat and I certainly won't be made to feel guilty for it, either from an animal welfare perspective, or a planetary perspective. Meat and dairy are spectacularly healthy in comparison to all the mass produced crap that passes as food for many people. For me it's all a balance; I have no interest in eating a diet full of synthesised or other mass produced junk that requires nutrient supplements to be considered healthy, and to be perfectly honest I really love the taste and satisfaction of eating good quality meat and fish far more than I enjoy a diet filled with beans and pulses in an attempt to get enough protein intake. However, I do care for the planet and thus won't buy cheap chicken or fish from Tesco, get monumentally fucked off with not being able to buy British apples in supermarkets, avoid imported and climate damaging food such as avocados and other similar imported products wherever possible and barely ever fly. We all make our decisions; on the flip of my environment positive choices I enjoy driving and have a 300bhp fun toy car, a 300bhp daily and another 300bhp truck (currently in pieces being restored). But I can only drive one at a time, and it doesn't change my total mileage a year. Additionally we have about 500 trees on the croft plus a healthy peat bog and many, many other plants. 500 trees absorb somewhere between 10 and 13 tons of CO2 a year, plus all the other plant life.
The problem with the environmental side of things is that people (not meaning anyone as an individual here, more the bigger human nature element) have a tendency to say 'I do X and anyone who does Y is terrible', ignoring that person X also does Z but that person Y doesn't. An acquaintance goes on about how my cars are killing the planet for his kids, but he demanded a new carbon frame when the paint was being worn by the cables (and got it, a carbon one that's not recyclable) while I paid to have my Charger 2.1 properly fixed rather than using the warranty that would just give me a new one. He has a Tesla, and replaces it every three years, I keep my cars for much longer and restore them as necessary. I don't fly, he does at least fifteen transatlantic flights a year for work, multiple trips to London a month plus other international flights. He also has a much larger house and likes it to be kept warm. My house is a max of 18c, and if I get cold I put on a woollen jumper. It's all swings and roundabouts and anyone doing something is better than someone doing nothing; and politicians and others flying everywhere either on regular but frequent flights, or private jets, cause a huge issue, and I have zero respect for anyone doing so while preaching that others need to change.
The world is filled with issues, and if we really cared about the planet we'd throw ourselves to the sharks because we are the single biggest problem on it. Fast fashion and consumerism, flights, throwing away food that we don't eat, and general overconsumption are all huge issues. But as humans, unless we can live naked and breathe in only air, not needing to heat anything, then we're going to have an impact on the environment around us. Put clothes on, eat anything or heat something, and we're going to be impacting something. For those who care about the world around us we just need to make sure we're doing things that we are happy doing; there would be zero point in me cutting off every avenue of joy in my life for a negligible blip on the global scale, but that doesn't stop me trying to protect the local ecology that I love, and actively try to improve it where I can. Even if this entire country just shut down and disappeared we still wouldn't have even the slightest blip on global CO2 which seems to be the only thing people care about as a frame of environmental damage, sadly, hence I will not be pressured into not driving an extra few miles, or eating a steak vs pulses etc (either way I like fruit, veg and salads). Not suggesting that you were trying to apply pressure etc, just a general statement against the movement where you see people thinking that because they're Vegan they're saving the planet, conveniently ignoring all the other damage they do by not making choices.
The bottom line is that we need to consume less, repair more, and look after the world around us without destroying it wherever possible. And where we are doing damage, do so in full awareness of the impact we're having rather than the ignorance that much of the world is quite happy to exist in.
