A piece in my semi-local newspaper (yes I still get one delivered!) posited: "If we all did it (i.e. switch to a plant based diet), it could save us" and even if we "just befriend them" (cows are her main focus), we're part of the problem." That argument is naive.
The negative environmental impacts associated with meat are caused not by the act of eating it, but by the animals themselves...think cows, yes, but all ruminants. I get the simplistic idea of a demand-supply solution but this is a much more complicated scientific, social and economic issue.
If we all stopped eating cows what would happen to the estimated 1-1.5 billion cows that are alive today? Do we just kill them and make the species endangered if not extinct? The naturalists wouldn't much like that!. And, I doubt that Hindu folks would tolerate a world cull as cows are held to be sacred by many. If we don't kill them all - and more particularly all the bulls - then surely they'll have even more cows over time...unless we sterilize them all or let them all have abortions. And if cow families are still around, do we continue to feed and care for them? And if we do,won't there will still be the land use, water and methane gas producing belching and pooping problems?
Canada has about 12 million cows. Brazil and India are of order, 200 million each! And if we were to go 100% plant based, what about the 22 billion chickens, and the 2 billion pigs and the 1+ billion sheep that share our world? We surely can't adopt them all, and they'd still graze the land, eat, drink, be merry...burping and pooping and emitting tons of methane all the while.
There are many other initiatives being tried that we don't seem to read about. Only the loudest lobby seems to get the ink. There are several different experiments aimed at decreasing the amount of methane the ruminant actually produces and many others which attempt to harvest the methane and put it to good uses.
Eating less meat sounds like a good idea, but it won't "SAVE us".
"Baaa (Moo or Oink) Humbug" to the exaggeration proffered by the Stop Meat Eaters Movement. It is full of methane.
