At what rate of change would ppl need to stop eating meat 4 it not to have a devastating effect on the world?!
Answers: Hypothetically
I can't answer a hypothetcal question about a situation that is a statistical impossibility. The only forseeable "theoritical" situations wherein humans stop the consumption of meat are:
1) meat consumption is banned by dictatorial or fascist rule (and this is perhaps only 90-99 pecent enforcable at best)
2) ALL animals die out naturally or due to some unforseen catastrophic event. since humans are biologically animals, then such an event would be catastrophic for humans as well.
What do you class as 'devastating'?
Right now I'm not concerned with the whole world eating meat, just myself
I understand what you mean. Hundreds of thousands of people globally would be without jobs and it would take a real toll on the world economy.
This is our belief. It's not our job to make sure everyone follows our belief. If there were no diversity of thought, we'd all be robots.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "devastating," but you get a star for an interesting question.
Raising meat for consumption is a lot less energy/material efficient than raising plants for food. Think of how much cattle have to eat and how much water they consume. Think about all of the waste they produce and all of the land they take up. It's been said that if everyone went vegetarian (vegan), there would be enough food to feed the whole world.
Cattle lots and factory farms could be replaced with crops, which would require just as many workers so no one would be losing their job. The air would be cleaner. The carbon emissions would be far less.
Did you know that the meat industry produces more pollution than any other industry in the world? That was not mentioned in "An Inconvenient Truth" because Al Gore's family were cattle farmers.
But hopefully as global warming becomes more of an issue and more people get better educations, meat consumption will go down.
Here's a cute website to put some things in perspective.
http://www.pbjcampaign.org/