I like meat - am I a tyrant?

[Geoffrey S]

The growth of the world population is going to make meat less attractive. Just work out the energy lost: food needs to be grown, fed to cattle, cattle dies, we eat meat. A large amount of energy goes into allowing the cattle to grow, while it could have been spent on feeding people. As the population grows and the relative amount of land declines, meat is going to become far more expensive in the coming century; land can be better used for growing crops.

Voluntary vegetarianism has little to do with this, rather that meat will become too expensive for consumption on a regular basis for a larger amount of people, even in the west.

[Prodigal]

Soylent Green!

[rory_20_uk]

The growth of the world population is going to make meat less attractive. Just work out the energy lost: food needs to be grown, fed to cattle, cattle dies, we eat meat. A large amount of energy goes into allowing the cattle to grow, while it could have been spent on feeding people. As the population grows and the relative amount of land declines, meat is going to become far more expensive in the coming century; land can be better used for growing crops.

Voluntary vegetarianism has little to do with this, rather that meat will become too expensive for consumption on a regular basis for a larger amount of people, even in the west.

This leaves out the fact that animals can collect resources over a large area, and concentrate it in their own flesh. Fish is a good example of this - it's not as though we'd otherwise be eating the seaweed, is it?

[Geoffrey S]

Those resources however are used for other purposes than growing, and therefore wasted for us. At some point that wastage will be untenable unless we either become more efficient or use the potential of Africa.

[yesdachi]

I read somewhere that the US is only 17% developed on average and in that 17% we could feed the current worlds population a couple of times over if we wanted to. I think we have some time before we need to worry about food, it is the poorly planned out cities that make us feel the punch of "overpopulation". My bigger concern is a decent retirement for all these people that are flooding the country.