Re: Overpopulation?
Originally Posted by
Grumblewagon
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I'm not opposed to vegetarianism, but neither would I discourage anyone from eating meat. Leaving aside the problems of needing more suitable land to grow crops, not eating meat would result in most farm animals becoming virtually extinct (except for a few in zoos - and there are people who would have them banned).
Not only food, what about all the other resources - water, energy, waste disposal, transport, housing, work etc etc....
MJK, I will agree with you on the point of 'developed countries' and many places may need help in improving healthare, reducing child mortality etc before population control will be effective.
This is where I think people have got the wrong end of the stick. Masses of land is put aside for the cultivation of cattle feed - crops! It makes no sense at all to grow crops to feed cattle to obtain protein whereby we could just grow crops: end of! By growing crops only we would be able to grow far more crops / protein than we need to feed everyone. Imagine how much one single cow or bull needs to eat in a year of grain and the like? Year in and year out.
There is no need to eat animal protein. It is just a misguided notion we need to eat such stuff to remain healthy. If a steak was made out of plant protein yet looked the same and tasted the same then no-one would have cause to complain; therefore we are only eating such stuff to satisfy an ingrained psychological disposition, one of which we could easily alter. We need to retrain our brains: not mine I might hasten to add as I can easily adjust either way.
Once a country is 'developed' not only are people wealthy financially but also considered 'wealthy' in knowledge. They are then able to fight back against indoctrination and social pressures; in other words they are able to make up their own minds about lots of things including whether or not to have children at all: they no longer accept anything at face value be it even advice from their parents, which is the key to stifling the birth rate. This newly adopted attitude can be taken too far though and the birth rate falls off completely, especially when you consider the 'drive' for most economies is based on capitalism which is ruthless by nature, but mainly because people become far more responsible.
As for animals dieing off entirely that ain't going to happen overnight. There are probably billions of cattle on the planet at this moment in time.