Review of "Regenesis" by George Monbiot

 

One of those rare occasions where I came to scoff and ended up being convinced. I went to hear him speak in Stroud as part of a promo tour for the book and wasn't so impressed, but I read the book anyway, and was simply overwhelmed by the quality and detail of the analysis. I wish I could still believe in regenerative grazing and low-impact animal agriculture, but I can't. I'm not a dogmatic vegan...not really a vegan at all. I could live without meat - I did for about twenty years, but I am really fond of dairy and quite like eggs. But sadly Monbiot has convinced me that animal agriculture is an ecological and planetary disaster, so I am going to have live without them.

There's an interesting section at the end on synthetic foods. During the talk this reminded me of Soylent Green, and of Simon Fairlie's account of James Lovelock's scenario in which much of the planet is rewilded but we are all shut out of it and fed a load of factory-produced food. In the book it's better...though I think if he's serious there should be some proper engagement with how this is going to happen without becoming the patented intellectual property of a few multinationals.

I guess that's the overall shortcoming of George...he's really great on pointing out in overwhelming detail why and how things are bad, and he's quite good at sketching out how they could be better. How to get from here to there isn't his thing.