Soylent Green Is People

Much has been said about replacing meat with plant-based foodstuffs due to the usual fears of over-population and other bogey-men that have been predicted for decades and not come to pass.

The powers that be are still not letting up on this:

Supporters of restricting meat consumption say it would drastically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. The agricultural industry is responsible for 11 percent of global greenhouse emissions, mostly from livestock production. A large portion of that comes from methane created by cow burps, but things like manure, fertilizer, shipping and refrigeration of meat also create a significant amount of carbon. The need for grazing land also leads farmers to destroy large swaths of forest, reducing the plants from extracting carbon out of the air.

Critics argue that eating less meat will have less impact relative to potential changes in other sectors, like the energy industry. Others argue that pushing a completely meat-free diet is unrealistic. Asking people to instead reduce how much meat they eat or replace beef in their diet with poultry can still have a substantial effect.

There's also some evidence that a zero meat diet may not reduce emissions as much as initially thought because vegetarians tend to replace the meat in their diet with other animal products like eggs and dairy.

Where can one start?

First of all, carbon isn't a pollutant:

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant and the global warming debate has nothing to do with pollution. The average person has been misled and is confused about what the current global warming debate is about - greenhouse gases. None of which has anything to do with air pollution.
People are confusing smog, carbon monoxide (CO) and the pollutants in car exhaust with the life supporting, essential trace gas in our atmosphere - carbon dioxide (CO2). Real air pollution is already regulated under the 1970's Clean Air Act and regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) will do absolutely nothing to make the air you breath "cleaner".
They are also misled to believe that CO2 is polluting the oceans through acidification but there is nothing unnatural or unprecedented about current measurements of ocean water pH and a future rise in pCO2 will likely yield growth benefits to corals and other sea life.
Thus, regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions through either 'carbon taxes', 'cap and trade' or the EPA will cause all energy prices (e.g. electricity, gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil) to skyrocket.

(Sidebar: which I believe is the point.)


Overpopulation and the contrived crisis of "peak oil" are also not valid concerns given that most areas of the world are not heavily populated, that better farming practices and technologies can produce and deliver food and that the technologies exist to extract, clean and use oil and gas properly with little waste.


When considering the percentage of the world's agricultural land, one must consider what part of that land is arable (to use for growing crops) and what part is merely range land (suitable for cattle to graze on). Canada, for example, has more forested land than land suitable for permanent crops yet its population certainly does not starve and it is able to export meat. The supporters of the plant-based foodstuffs also don't take into account that using all the arable land for whatever is supposed to go into these foodstuffs would not work:

"Surprisingly, however, a vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most efficient in terms of land use," said Peters.

The reason is that fruits, vegetables and grains must be grown on high-quality cropland, he explained. Meat and dairy products from ruminant animals are supported by lower quality, but more widely available, land that can support pasture and hay. A large pool of such land is available in New York state because for sustainable use, most farmland requires a crop rotation with such perennial crops as pasture and hay.

Thus, although vegetarian diets in New York state may require less land per person, they use more high-valued land. "It appears that while meat increases land-use requirements, diets including modest amounts of meat can feed more people than some higher fat vegetarian diets," said Peters.

Then there is that matter of health.

Calling this plant-based foodstuff actual food would be incorrect:

Of nearly 200 meat-free products available in Australia, some had as much as half the recommended salt intake in a single-serving, putting Australians at greater risk of heart attacks, kidney disease and stroke, officials said.

In the U.S., Burger King’s new Impossible Whopper bills itself as 100% whopper, 0% beef. The “burger” is actually an Impossible patty made mostly of soy protein, potato protein, coconut oil, sunflower oil and heme, derived from genetically engineered (GE) yeast.

Highly processed, the Impossible Burger is nothing more than fake food, and certainly not the solution to a sustainable food system.

Not that the vegetarian lifestyle is incredibly healthy for you anyway: 

Researchers who tracked nearly a quarter million adults aged 45 and older in New South Wales found no significant differences in all-cause mortality, meaning the likelihood of dying, of any death, between those who followed a complete, semi- (meat once a week or less) or pesco- (fish permitted) vegetarian diet, and regular meat eaters.

Caulfield, a Canada Research Chair in health law and policy and expert in celebrity health trends, said the study (in which he played no role) fits with an emerging body of evidence that vegetarian diets don’t reduce the risk of premature death.

If you want to eat properly, go to your doctor.

If you want to save the planet, don't listen to the hacks.