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> if everybody eats plants we would also need a huge amount of water/field sizes to feed everybody.

Keeping non-human animals for the purpose of eating their flesh requires even huger amounts of water/field sizes; so much in fact that half of the world's crops are fed to non-human animals[0].

[0]: https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/half-of-world-crop-is-...



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Those numbers are way off, even if industrial animal husbandry is highly inefficient. You may want to read Meat: a benign extravagance by Simon Fairlie: https://www.amazon.com/Meat-Benign-Extravagance-Simon-Fairli...

Here's some numbers from a peer-reviewed analysis from 2018[0]:

> The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.

I know I was responding to a specific comment about land usage, but I probably wouldn't read that book as I also believe that we should prevent unnecessary pain and suffering, e.g. even if we hypothetically found out that the smoke from the ovens in concentration camps didn't contribute significantly to air pollution, they still wouldn't be a good idea, so of course I object to a book that describes ongoing mass killings as "benign".

But if you have the specific numbers from the book handy, I'd still like to give them a look.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...


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