Allan Savory has made a career claiming that beef can reverse global warming. His working hypothesis—and do note, it is nothing more than that—is that repopulating desertified landscapes with cattle would revive grasslands, sequester carbon, and, no joke, save the planet. For decades his message has skirted the periphery of legitimate science, a largely unknown if renegade idea. But, thanks to a TEDx platform, Savory’s message has recently gone viral among a vocal subculture of beef eating environmentalists who, science be damned, want to be assured that they are not walking contradictions. Skewed by Savory’s fantasy, media coverage of Savory has generally been atrocious. A typical example came just this past week in an alternative paper serving residents of Marin and Napa counties. The short piece celebrates Savory’s hypothesis by quoting Savory himself (“we have no option left but the use of animals  . . . There isn’t an alternative”) and two ranchers. “That whole idea is incredibly revolutionary,” says one. “We’re very much aligned with Allan Savory’s teachings,” says the other. Well, yeah. The only evidence of any opposition to Savory is a quote from me: “There’s no such thing as a beef-eating environmentalist.” But this assessment is immediately followed by Savory … Continue reading Allan Savory’s Fantasy Thrills Ranchers, But He’s Wrong