MrWayne said:
Well it depends which vegan you ask, some people are vegan because they don't want animals to suffer, they definitely hate plants more than animals. Other people are vegan because they think eating meat is a huge wast of resources which is true, to get 1 kg of meat, you need 100 times more farmland than for 1 kg of vegetables. |
| Jumpin said: It would be a big positive if the world went vegan. Especially at our current population levels. Food related emissions would drop by 70%. We would reverse the health issues plaguing the world caused by the meteoric rise in meat and animal product consumption; similar to what's been happening with the decrease in smoking. Below is an interesting graphic which details the use of land: basically, a very small amount of the world's calories is acquired from animal products, but nearly 80% of the world's food-based farm land is dedicated to it; that means the remaining little bit of farmland used to grow plants for human consumption provides by far the majority of our nutrients. Basically, we would only need to convert 7-9% of our land to plant based food, and we would be able to regain the 68-70% of the world's food producing farmland to be returned to natural habitats. We could reverse the drastic drop in wildlife (the amount of wildlife left in the world is less than 40% of what it was in the 1970s, less than 20% of what it was before the turn of the 20th century). It makes logical sense from multiple different angles: environmental, ethical, and ecological. The most pressing is obviously the environmental disaster currently in progress. It is occurring slowly relative to our experience, but terrifyingly quickly on a geological scale (currently, about 1 cm every 2 years, which is up from about 1 cm every 9 years in 1900, and 1 cm every 6 years in 1989); the rising economic cost will, unfortunately, only be something that can't be ignored after tremendous and irreversible damage has already been done. If the world went vegan, we would be able to offset this catastrophe by a significant amount. Population growth is a major issue, but we can mitigate the impact (and even reverse some of the current impact) substantially with a global conversion to veganism. |
Not sure if efficiency is the right angle to tackle this. Humans do a lot of things that are highly inefficient just for the sake of a slightly more comfortable or happier life. As long as it's sustainable there is nothing wrong with inefficiency. If we go purely by efficiency we'd all eat grey paste pumped with nutrients. Imagine how much energy we would save if we didn't have to ship and sell untouched vegetables instead of just scrambling everything and delivering it to the paste factory.
The things how they are now have evolved to suit the ever growing demands of humans for both quantity and quality. So far we're doing just fine. I don't believe in a coming world wide food crash, if our current consumption of meat becomes unviable it will become so slowly. Slowly enough that we will take the necessary steps to mitigate it. I'd have absolutely no problem with eating fake meat if they can make it authentic enough.
I believe the "problem" we're currently having is neither ecological, economical or ethical. It's a social problem about the perception of vegan values and the glorification of meat and, forgive me for using the term, toxic masculinity. These arbitrary and toxic values are driven by society and big corporations and that's the thing we have to tackle first. We shouldn't vilify meat and instead promote and normalize a vegan diet. Sadly the most militant vegans are doing the opposite and hurting their case. Thanks to them we're now at a point that's hurting both sides and is socially basically impossible to solve it.
Last edited by vivster - on 09 April 2019If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.
