There are currently 7.57 billion people living on this planet. Of those 7 billion, 795 million people, or about 1 in 9, are starving. This of course raises the question: is our planet overpopulated? While it is a very complex issue and there many differing opinions, the short answer is no. Scientists have hypothesized that the earth has sufficient resources to hold approximately 10 billion people, a number we are expected to reach by the year 2100. So then you ask yourself, if the earth has enough resources to support 10 billion people, and we currently only have 7 billion, why are so many people starving? The answer is one 4 letter word: meat.
Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of land, food, energy and water. Is this the root cause behind the idea of “overpopulation”?
One reason raising livestock is not sustainable is that they’re the largest drain on our freshwater resources. 844 million people in the world – one in ten – do not have clean water. 2.3 billion people in the world – one in three – do not have a decent toilet. 289,000 children under 5 die each year due to diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That’s 800 a day, or 1 child every 2 minutes. Why are these precious resources wasted so that the rich can have meat? It takes an enormous amount of water to grow crops for animals to eat, clean filthy factory farms and give animals water to drink. A single cow used for milk can drink up to 50 gallons of water per day, or twice that amount in hot weather, and it takes 683 gallons of water to produce just 1 gallon of milk. It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Without livestock, there would be more than enough potable water for everyone on earth.
Another reason raising livestock is not sustainable is, livestock are the number 1 drain on land and food resources. Every day, more humans are born. We simply don’t have the land to grow enough food to feed all humans AND livestock. Using land to grow crops for animals is vastly inefficient. It takes almost 20 times less land to feed someone on a plant-based (vegan) diet than it does to feed a meat-eater, since the crops are consumed directly instead of being used to feed animals. According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, it takes up to 10 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat, and in the United States alone, 56 million acres of land are used to grow feed for animals, while only 4 million acres are producing plants for humans to eat. The United States alone could feed over 800 million people (795 million are starving) with the grain that is being used to raise and nourish livestock. In case you didn’t understand, while it is unlikely to happen, the entire world going vegan would banish starvation from existence. Everyone would have enough to eat.
Earth’s global climate is getting warmer and warmer. If I were to ask you today, what is the single greatest contributor to the earth’s carbon output, you as well as many people, would think this is due to industrial activity. Scientists have found that even if we were to completely stop our carbon output from industrial activity (cars, planes, factories), it would not stop global warming. So what is the greatest contributor? A staggering 51 percent or more of global greenhouse-gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture, according to a report published by the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. All the Carbon output of Industrial services on the other hand account for just 4%. So yes, another major challenge to supporting 10 billion people would be more easily managed if we just stopped raising livestock.
Is the earth overpopulated? Or is humanity’s love for meat preventing us from more adequately managing our resources? You decide.
