How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change | Allan Savory

TED · 6M views · 2013-03-04 · 22:20

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

Allan Savory's TED talk arguing that desertification of grasslands can be reversed with holistic managed grazing, which he says would also help reverse climate change. TED notes that other scientists have challenged his claims.

On Hacker News

HN commenters bring it up in climate and food threads as a hopeful, if contested, idea about grazing and soil carbon.

Recommended by 9 HN people across 9 months · HN mentions 2013–2023

Topics

Environment, agriculture & food systems Climate policy, solutions & debate

What people said

monktastic1 · 2018-12 · Strong recommendation
> This view ran counter to a lot of conservationist thought, as well as a great deal of evidence. Grazing has been blamed for turning vast swaths of the world into deserts. But from Creque’s perspective, how you graze makes all the difference. This is the idea behind this fantastic TED talk: [VIDEO] We're largely focused on high-tech ways to "fix" the Earth, but the Earth has known how to do it since forever. Finding ways to use her own intelligence seems like a great idea.
Read the original HN comment ↗

hitpointdrew · 2022-11 · Recommendation
> I'm not entirely convinced by this argument. It’s been proven by Allen Savory and others, you can check his Ted talk here [VIDEO] Even if lab grown meat is the next best thing since sliced bread it would be a complete climate disaster to not continue, and expand, holistic cattle farming.
Read the original HN comment ↗

lcamach84 · 2021-03 · Recommendation
When the herd eat grass it stimulates grass growth and grass is a huge carbon sink. there is a cool ted talk about this. [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by TED, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks

SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources