- Well firstly thank you so much for taking the time
to do this with us and we'll just jump straight
into the questions.
When it comes to climate change there is this significant
amount of data which suggests that a plant-based diet
is the biggest thing an individual can do to reduce
their impact.
So is the best way to tackle it system change
or individual change?
- It has to be system change.
What one of the many wonderful slogans of the youth climate
strikes, who, God I love those guys so much,
they've been so brilliant, is system change
not climate change.
And that's exactly it.
One of the things, the misleading things
we're constantly told is we can do this by ourselves.
You just change your buying decisions,
you alter your lifestyle and we'll fix the problem.
These are structural, systemic issues
and as consumers we have almost no power.
And the only real power we have as consumers
is not to buy stuff, but that doesn't stop
other people from buying them and that doesn't stop
those corporations from lobbying and capturing
governments and all the rest of it.
And so we've really be rendered powerless
by being told we're consumers first.
We're not, we're citizens.
And it's as citizens we have to act, our power
is political and all political means is coming together
as more than one person acting in concert,
that's what politics means.
It doesn't have to be through political parties,
though obviously they play a role,
but it's basically through movements
trying to create change.
That is how we're going to do things.
I don't want to suggest that it's useless to do anything
by ourselves but we can't actually create systemic
change by ourselves.
And it's worth pointing out that one of the reasons
for the amazing shift towards plant-based diets
in the U.K. has been incredible public advocacy
by people like yourselves, by other movements
or parts of the movements.
We've seen it coming together
in groups like Animal Rebellion, which has been amazing.
And it's that sort of shift in culture,
which is absolutely crucial towards the shift
in the individual dietary decisions that we take.
So, even something as personal as that
is also really political in some ways.
But yes, the two biggest changes we can make
in our own impacts on the planet are number one,
the biggest change is dietary shift.
That is the biggest one
and number two is transport patterns.
I.e. not flying above all else and using your bike
and walking and the rest of it.
Those are the two things, which as individuals
we can do most effectively.
But they still need to be embedded
within that wider structural change
and part of that is cultural change.
- So we've seen interest around plant-based diets
grow as more people become aware of the climate
breakdown, why is it more legitimate to promote
an environmental angle than the animal rights angle?
Well actually what I'm seeing is this amazing
convergence of concerns.
And actually being able to make common cause
with people whose main motivation is animal rights
or their own health.
I don't mind really, it's great this convergence
of interests and I don't think there should really be
any separation between our concern for animal rights
and our concern for the living planet as a whole.
You know it's like respect for all life,
isn't that the basis of it?
And, I think all that's happened really is that
the growing prominence of the environmental element
has introduced a new series of arguments and entry points
for people, which supplement what the animal rights
advocates have rightly been saying for so long.
And it's not that I think it's more legitimate
to talk about the environmental issues at all.
I think it just gives us more strings to our bow
and creates new arguments and new intellectual energy
behind the movement.
- People can be very resistant to change
when it comes to diet.
Why do you think people get so defensive when you talk
about what they eat or what they could eat?
- Well, it's literally visceral, isn't it. (laughs)
It's literally visceral.
It's cut straight to the heart of our emotional lives.
And I mean it is a really really emotional thing
partly because it's something we have to engage with,
two, three, four or more times a day.
Partly because it's almost our own remaining connection,
for many people with the natural world.
That food has actually come from the ground
and come from the outdoors into our lives.
And there is that sort of desire to keep connecting
with it, which can be quite a positive desire,
though it can spiral off into some fairly dark places.
And, we should also remember that there's a deep
implantation of cultural norms, starting when we've very
very small children.
About 50% of the books for infants are farm books
and they don't resemble any sort of farming
that I've ever seen. (laughs)
There's one pig, one cow, one horse, one chicken, one cat,
one rosy cheek farmer and they all live together
in harmony like a family and they all talk to each other
and obviously, for obvious reasons
there's no separation, castration, butchery, slaughter,
any of this going on.
There's no idea of what the destiny of those animals
might be and it's really hard to unlearn that
because we learn it from such an early age.
And we see that as the image of farming.
That actually, even I sometimes feel offended
when I've been saying, talking about the problems
with livestock farming.
It's like I offend myself because I thinking,
but that contradicts everything I feel about farming.
And we are really misled by this.
It's very problematic the way children are taught
about livestock farming in particular.
- So taking that into account, should governments
advocate for plant-based diets
and how they legislate for that?
- Well, government's always gonna play a role.
I'm not saying it's a be all and end all
and I don't want an overweening state,
which is gonna control everything.
But I do want a state which is going to intervene
where it's appropriate.
And it is true that the sort of legislative framework
and the fiscal framework has a big influence
on how people think.
So, the fact that cigarette sales are taxed.
The fact that advertising is now banned.
The fact that you've got packaging with health warnings
and horrible pictures on, does change our moral
attitudes to tobacco.
And 40 years ago, most people just didn't have any issues
with tobacco, it's just what you do.
Huge number of people smoked, other people didn't
object to them smoking
and there's been lots of reasons why that's changed
but one of them has been that government,
slowly and reluctantly, far too slowly and reluctantly
because of the work of lobbyists,
has finally moved against the tobacco companies
and said, we treat these companies
as basically being bad.
And then people take a cue from that.
Even if it's a subconscious cue
and think, oh yeah, tobacco is a bit bad, isn't it?
And those companies pushing it are a bit bad.
So, how government best intervenes in this.
I mean that's been an interesting debate.
I think meat tax definitely has something going for it.
I mean the first place I would step in would
be subsidies.
Isn't it just utterly insane that we're subsidizing
some of the most destructive industries on earth,
which are livestock industries.
And not only through the sort of standard package
of subsidies, the European Commission
is currently advertising it's spending public money
on advertising commercial products
in the form of beef and lamb.
It's quite amazing.
And so it's spending, what 10 million euros on advertising
beef, in the newspapers and stuff.
You know buy beef, it's a wonderful product
here's some lovely recipes.
Click on our website, where we can tell you how
to cook it, the European Commission.
And 4 million euros on advertising lamb
and when the vice president of the commission
was challenged on this and said, are you gonna
stop spending public money on advertising
these destructive products?
He said, "Nope, next question."
That was it.
They won't discuss it at all.
And it's just like, this is insane.
So yeah, you would stop that straightaway.
You would completely change the farm subsidy system
to switch it away from basically the system
at the moment in Europe.
Depends on keeping the land bare, you get your subsidy
for land which is in agricultural condition,
which means it doesn't have wildlife habitats on it.
And they'll draw a little ring around every area
of wildlife habitat.
Some scrubland, a pond, a wide stream, wide hedge,
whatever it might be and say this is ineligible
for subsidies.
And so it creates this massive perverse incentive
to clear as much land as possible and keep it clear,
in order that farmers can harvest that money.
And one of the most effective ways of doing that
is by grazing animals on the land.
Because sheep in particular are selective browsers,
which will pick our tree seedlings because they're
highly nutritious and delicious to sheep.
And so they will scour the whole hillside
looking for tree seedlings, nibble them out
and gradually the old trees die off,
there's nothing to replace them
and what we've seen, certainly across Britain
has been this replacement of a largely forested
landscape with a completely bare one.
And if you want to get your subsidies,
you gotta keep your sheep nibbling that landscape.
Because if the trees come back your land becomes
ineligible for public money.
And when you consider that the only thing supporting
that industry is public money because actually
keeping sheep is loss-making, massively loss-making
then you realize that this is entirely an artifact
of our tax money being misused.
- Well my next question was about whether we should
remove subsidies for livestock farming
but you've clearly answered that, thank you very much.
- Well, and it's huge.
I don't think people have really grasped the scale of it.
Lots of people are upset about urban sprawl
and quite rightly, urban sprawl is a bad thing.
We should have out compact cities and we shouldn't
sprawl out into the countryside.
But agricultural sprawl is a far bigger issue
that urban sprawl.
So cities, all the built environment in the U.K.
Cities, towns, villages, including your garden.
Including the parks, all the roads, all the airports,
all the infrastructure, everything amounts to just
over 5% of the U.K.'s land area.
That's 1.7 million hectares.
Sheep farming alone in the Uplands alone
covers roughly 4 million hectares.
More than twice the entire area of the built environment.
And as far as in situ damage to ecosystems is concerned,
it's done far more damage
than the built environment has done.
Partly because it's so much more extensive,
but partly because actually there's a lot more wildlife
in most cities, than there is in most sheep farming areas.
I mean it's quite incredible.
You walk across the hills in Cambria or Snowdonia
or the Pennines or Southern Uplands or the Highlands,
anywhere where there's extensive sheep farming
Dovemore, Exmoor, you'll walk all day
see two crows in one pipet.
Whereas, you sit in a suburban garden for an hour
or two and you see a wide range of birds and other wildlife
coming into that garden.
There's more life in the cities than there is
on those sheep ranches.