Environmental activists are encouraging us all to become vegans because methane emissions by ruminants are a major cause of climate change. There’s no question that we should be eating less meat but Isabella Tree in her book Wilding: The Return of nature to the British Farm argues that veganism also has environmental downsides. She says:
[Veganism] drives up demand for crops that require high inputs of fertiliser, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides, while demonising sustainable forms of livestock farming that can restore soils and biodiversity, and sequester carbon… Counter-intuitive as it may seem, adding the occasional organic pasture-fed steak to your diet, could be the right way to square the circle.
