George Monbiot, author, journalist, and environmental activist, joins The Plantbased Business Hour to discuss how to best fight for the planet and how to take no prisoners when it comes to taking on the meat industry and its lobby. He goes for the jugular and this is a do-not-miss interview.
Specifically, we discuss
- How does the big meat misinformation campaign differ from big tobacco and fossil fuels’ misinformation campaigns?
- What do you do against the misinformation campaign, especially if it is protected by certain government organizations? Is there a strategy for impact when we are woefully outspent?
- What is it going to take to move the needle? For people to be outraged? A health crisis? Another pandemic? Capitalism and free markets?
- The ills of big meat are many: air pollution, health crisis, climate change, deforestation & biodiversity loss, antibiotic resistance, food insecurity, workers’ rights, – which angle is the right angle to take and with whom: Governments? Industry? Consumers?
- Do you see any progress? If so, in what areas? Where do you find hope?
- George’s predictions for the next 3 years.
Below is a highlight clip and transcription from our long-form conversation.
Elysabeth: Author, journalist and environmental activist, George Monbiot, how does the big meat misinformation campaign differ from big tobacco and fossil fuels if at all? Or is it the same playbook?
George Monbiot: It really is the same playbook and there’s no coincidence about that because in some cases it’s the exact same people who are reading from that playbook. They’re the people who devised some of the tobacco industry tactics who were then hired by the fossil fuel companies to import those tactics into the fight to deny the climate breakdown and to prevent action from being taken. And now the same people are cropping up in the employer of big meat defending the livestock industry against its critics and putting out a plethora of lies. One of the things that they’re trying to do is to present this industry, the livestock industry which is one of the two most damaging industries on earth, as the planet’s savior.
Elysabeth: How does one combat this?
George Monbiot: Well, first of all we have to understand it. One of the tactics is just to turn around all of the criticism which the industry rightly receives and to firehose it at its opponents and to create the impression that the exact reverse of the truth applies. We see the meat industry, the livestock industry, championing these claims which are entirely false. That livestock farming can retire more greenhouse gas emissions than it produces and there’s absolutely zero evidence for that and yet it’s pushed out again and again relentlessly and as we know from history, you tell a lie often enough and people accept it as true.
So the first thing is to understand it. We must understand what’s happening, why it’s happening, how this works, and the fact that it’s not unique. This is something that’s happened again and again and again. So we have to expose those tactics, describe those tactics, and then we have to confront them by explaining what’s really going on.
Elysabeth: When people take to the streets, so to speak, social media has become the new street and so I want to encourage everyone who was listening to what George said right at the beginning. First we need to understand and then we need to show that this is just a tried and true playbook. What I love about that is that you’re not saying, “Listen to me. I make rice and beans so you should too,” and you’re not saying, “Oh vegan is the right way to go” or “plant-based is this or that.” You’re saying that the meat industry has this misinformation campaign which is just following big tobacco which is followed by the fossil fuel industry.
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