Of Course He's Vegan ...

The only surprise is it's taken him this long to announce it.

The actor has been on a tour to promote his new documentary, How to Live on Earth. “The irony is not lost on anyone,” he says. “We’re living in the results of climate breakdown so stepping outside is – literally – a call to action.”

What action? 

His film launches on YouTube this month and the actor hopes it is a “blueprint” for how we interact with our besieged planet in the future. It features Cumberbatch delivering monologues from the cavernous halls of the Natural History Museum in London, in between short films showing how activists, scientists and even chefs are learning a “new way to live on Earth” – one that could stop humanity damaging it.

Chefs? 

Cumberbatch has spent the last two decades trying to reframe his relationship with the planet: he’s tried to live more gently on Earth and became vegan. However, this was a problem during the shooting of The Courier, in which he plays captured British spy Greville Wynne, who languishes in a Russian jail. “They said, ‘You can’t have any fibre in the last two weeks. You need to eat lean meat.’ And I was like, ‘I’m vegan!’”

Once again, I’m reminded of Sir Laurence Olivier’s advice to Dustin Hoffman on the set of ‘The Marathon Man’

No fibre for two weeks must have been tough on the bowels? “Yes, it was, but it was much less than what the character I was portraying went through, because it was a true story.” Although he went straight back on the vegetables, the extreme diet caused his blood sugar to plummet and he became unwell. “People were saying, ‘You should think about eating a little bit of meat now, because your body doesn’t really work under these conditions – you’ve lost so much weight.’”

One must suffer for one’s art, mustn’t one? 

Now, Cumberbatch tries to source the meat he does eat ethically, opting for venison, which in the UK needs to be culled as the country has an overpopulation of deer.

So, he’s ditched veganism, but would he get a private jet? “No,” he says, but adds the caveat: “We just waste our energy if we’re naysaying and calling people hypocrites. The fashion industry is a bigger polluter than aviation, and the food industry massively. That’s all of us, that’s everyone.” Not just movie stars.

Well, after you! 

The 50-year-old has long been an environmental campaigner. He visited the Extinction Rebellion protests in 2019 and has been dismayed by the recent government crackdowns on climate protests, with long sentences given to people who have blocked roads and smashed windows for the cause. “We should have the right in a democracy to peaceful action, even if it is direct action,” he says.

Do you need a dictionary? Smashing windows and attacking police isn’t ‘peaceful’ and we don’t have ‘a right’ to it! 

Cumberbatch and company discuss some blue-sky thinking in the documentary, which to the jaded viewer could seem unrealistic.

Translation: to any normal human, not a dweller in the rarified atmosphere of the luvvies, will seem like unrealistic bollocks! 

“Nature that’s alive is actually far more valuable to us than dead nature,” Cumberbatch says. “So an elephant’s tusk is not worth as much as the elephant alive, in terms of what it brings to the savannah, to make the savannah work as an ecosystem.

Imagine what it’s worth to a trophy hunter, who will pay through the nose for the chance to shoot it, which will have to be done anyway when numbers get too high, because too many elephants destroy an ecosystem very efficiently.

Have The Progressives Realised The Lack Of Sympathy For The Pallies At Last?

 

Burning fossil fuels is causing climate chaos, with increasingly deadly and destructive extreme weather events forcing record numbers of people to migrate. The Gulf region is among the most vulnerable to extreme weather and slow-onset climate disasters including drought, desertification, extreme heat and erratic rainfall, as well as environmental degradation, food insecurity and water shortages.

Now will you start to care, if not for the poor terrorist nation, then for the planet itself? 

It is the third and most comprehensive analysis by a team of UK and US-based researchers into the climate cost of the first 15 months of conflict in which more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, in addition to widespread infrastructure damage and environmental catastrophe. It also provides the first, albeit partial, snapshot of the carbon cost of Israel’s other recent regional conflicts.

Just what we were sorely lacking, now can we add to thr 'War is Hell' concept? 

“Whether or not States agree on calling it a genocide, what we are facing is severely impacting all life in Gaza, and also threatening human rights in the region, and even globally, due to the aggravation of climate change.”

You'll note that the 'Guardian ' doesn't use this new research as a lever to insist Hamas release the hostages...

But They DID Advocate For Unproven Interventions…

As a lifelong scientist, I have always believed that if something is possible, we can find a way to achieve it. And yet, one of the starkest realities we now face is that the world is failing to meet its climate goals.

Well, perhaps the mistake was setting them in the first place? 

Scientists agree we need to bring greenhouse gas levels down to below 350 parts per million by the end of this century to ensure a liveable planet for future generations. Achieving this will require a four-pronged approach: reduce, remove, repair and resilience.

And it'll need everyone on the planet to agree with them and be onboard with it. There's your main drawback. 

Reduction – cutting emissions rapidly and deeply – of course remains a critical priority. But we must also pursue the removal of excess carbon, explore repair techniques to stabilise key ecosystems and build resilience against the escalating impacts we are already experiencing.

Such as? 

One of the greatest challenges of climate science today is that many of the necessary levers to regain control are uncomfortable, even controversial. Ideas such as thickening sea ice to prevent collapse or brightening marine clouds to reflect sunlight may once have seemed extreme. Yet, as we contend with an escalating crisis, we must at least explore these possibilities. We do not have the luxury of rejecting solutions outright before we have thoroughly investigated their risks, trade-offs and feasibility.

Yes, we do. That's always our prerogative.  

As scientists, we must never advocate for deploying unproven interventions.

*cough* Covid vaccinations *cough* 

Any repair or removal techniques must undergo rigorous research and assessment before we evaluate full-scale suitability. However, we must also be clear: these investigations must happen with urgency. The longer we delay, the fewer options remain on the table and the more likely that deployment will happen without the proper due diligence at a point of desperation.

I refer you back to Covid... 

There are also many who object on ethical, political or environmental grounds, often for entirely understandable reasons. We must respect these concerns and ensure that any research is conducted transparently, with input from affected communities and with the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous rights-holders.

What? If a possible solution is found, it's not going to come from some bloody witchdoctor, is it? It going to come from western science.  

Throughout history, scientific breakthroughs have changed the course of humanity when leaders and communities worked together to act on the evidence before them. The Montreal protocol successfully phased out CFCs after the discovery of the ozone hole.

And look how long it took for us to see any success of that project. So, why exactly should we jump at the first mad idea to come along simply because people like you are wetting their y-fronts over climate chsnge? Especially when the so-called answers end up costing people's lives...