‘We must change our diet. The planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters,’ says legendary naturalist
Sir David Attenborough is urging people to go vegetarian or cut back on meat-eating to save species from dying out and to produce more food.
In a new Netflix documentary, A Life On Our Planet, the veteran naturalist says: “We must change our diet. The planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters. “If we had a mostly plant-based diet we could increase the yield of the land,” the Mirror reported him as saying. “The wilder and more diverse, the more effective. We must grow palm and soya on deforested lands. Nature is our biggest ally.”
Experts say that using swathes of land to grow feed solely for livestock is wasteful because animals are inefficient converters of calories, and that growing human-edible crops on the land would provide more total food. Sir David, whose Blue Planet II series prompted widespread efforts to reduce plastic use, also warned that we should make the world wild again to save it.
The growth of animal farming worldwide and rise in demand for meat and dairy are considered key factors in deforestation, which is threatening the extinction of many wild species in the food chain, from insects to elephants and big cats. “The true tragedy of our time is still unfolding – the loss of biodiversity,” Sir David reportedly says in the film. “Half of fertile land on Earth is now farmland, 70 per cent of birds are domestic, majority chickens. We are one third of animals on Earth. This is now our planet run by – and for – humans. “There’s little left for the world. We have completely destroyed it.”
Read the rest here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/david-attenborough-vegetarian-vegan-meat-life-our-planet-netflix-wildlife-earth-a9689816.html