Intro to Rewilding: George Monbiot
Just in case you are not acquainted with “rewilding,” the best introduction I know is a short video with George Monbiot below. Actually I was introduced to Monbiot by the audio of this talk on NPR about ten years ago. The video adds a couple of dimensions, but it might detract from the enthusiasm in Monbiot’s voice. (His enthusiasm is contagious, so if you are looking for a contagion to improve on COVID and flu, a listen here could lift your spirits.) He relates a snippet of his personal journey and expands the view to a planetary scale. If you’ve already heard it, you might still enjoy another go. Check it out:
NEXT: To see what an effort rewilding a significant portion of our planet’s land will take, we have to look at what humans have already seized, largely in the form of agriculture.
The landuse challenge, by the numbers
In Our World in Data, Hannah Ritchie reports that almost half of the world’s habitable land (land not covered by glaciers and deserts) is used for agriculture. A thousand years ago, roughly 4 million square kilometers—less than 4% of habitable land—was used. Now that’s up to 48 million out of 106 million square kilometers: 45%.
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