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This story originally appeared on Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The meat industry is one of the top contributors to climate change, directly and indirectly producing about 14.5 percent of the world's anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and global meat consumption is on the rise. People generally like eating meat—when poor people start making more money, they almost invariably start buying more meat. As the population grows and eats more animal products, the consequences for climate change, pollution, and land use could be catastrophic.
Attempts to reduce meat consumption usually focus on baby steps—Meatless Monday and "vegan before 6," passable fake chicken, and in vitro burgers. If the world is going to eat less meat, it's going to have to be coaxed and cajoled into doing it, according to conventional wisdom.
But what if the convincing were the easy part? Suppose everyone in the world voluntarily stopped eating meat, en masse. I know it's not actually going to happen. But the best-case scenario from a climate perspective would be if all 7 billion of us woke up one day and realized that PETA was right all along. If this collective change of spirit came to pass, like Peter Singer's dearest fantasy come true, what would the ramifications be?
At least one research team has run the numbers on what global veganism would mean for the planet. In 2009 researchers from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency published their projections of the greenhouse gas consequences if humanity came to eat less meat, no meat, or no animal products at all. The researchers predicted that universal veganism would reduce agriculture-related carbon emissions by 17 percent, methane emissions by 24 percent, and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 percent by 2050. Universal vegetarianism would result in similarly impressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. What's more, the Dutch researchers found that worldwide vegetarianism or veganism would achieve these gains at a much lower cost than a purely energy-focused intervention involving carbon taxes and renewable energy technology. The upshot: Universal eschewal of meat wouldn't single-handedly stave off global warming, but it would go a long way toward mitigating climate change.
The Dutch researchers didn't take into account what else might happen if everyone gave up meat. "In this scenario study we have ignored possible socio-economic implications such as the effect of health changes on GDP and population numbers," wrote Elke Stehfest and her colleagues. "We have not analyzed the agro-economic consequences of the dietary changes and its implications; such consequences might not only involve transition costs, but also impacts on land prices. The costs that are associated with this transition might obviously offset some of the gains discussed here."
Indeed. If the world actually did collectively go vegetarian or vegan over the course of a decade or two, it's reasonable to think the economy would tank. According to "Livestock's Long Shadow," the influential 2006 U.N. report about meat's devastating environmental effects, livestock production accounts for 1.4 percent of the world's total GDP. The production and sale of animal products account for 1.3 billion people's jobs, and 987 million of those people are poor. If demand for meat were to disappear overnight, those people's livelihoods would disappear, and they would have to find new ways of making money. Now, some of them—like the industrial farmers who grow the corn that currently goes to feed animals on factory farms—would be in a position to adapt by shifting to in-demand plant-based food production. Others, namely the "huge number of people involved in livestock for lack of an alternative, particularly in Africa and Asia," would probably be out of luck. (Things would be better for the global poor involved in the livestock trade if everyone continued to consume other animal products, such as eggs, milk, and wool, than if everyone decided to go vegan.) As the economy adjusted to the sudden lack of demand for meat products, we would expect to see widespread suffering and social unrest.
A second major ramification of global vegetarianism would be expanses of new land available. Currently, grazing land for ruminants—cows and their kin—accounts for a staggering 26 percent of the world's ice-free land surface. The Dutch scientists predict that 2.7 billion hectares (about 10.4 million square miles) of that grazing land would be freed up by global vegetarianism, along with 100 million hectares (about 386,000 square miles) of land that's currently used to grow crops for livestock. Not all of this land would be suitable for humans, but surely it stands to reason that this sudden influx of new territory would make land much cheaper on the whole.
A third major ramification of global vegetarianism would be that the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections would plummet. Currently, the routine use of antibiotics in animal farming to promote weight gain and prevent illness in unsanitary conditions is a major contributor to antibiotic resistance. Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that at least 2 million Americans fall ill from antibiotic-resistant pathogens every year and declared that "much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe." The overprescription of antibiotics for humans plays a big role in antibiotic resistance, but eradicating the factory farms from which many antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerge would make it more likely that we could continue to count on antibiotics to cure serious illnesses. (For a sense of what a "post-antibiotics future" would look like, read Maryn McKenna's amazing article on the topic for Medium and her story about a possible solution for chicken farming in Slate.)
So what would be the result, in an all-vegetarian world, of the combination of widespread unemployment and economic disruption, millions of square miles of available land, and a lowered risk of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea? I can only conclude that people would band together to form communes in order to escape capitalism's ruthlessness, squat on the former pasture land, and adopt a lifestyle of free love.
I kid. Mostly. It's easy to get carried away when you're speculating about unlikely scenarios—and sudden intercontinental vegetarianism is very much an unlikely scenario.
But if the result of a worldwide shift to a plant-based diet sounds like a right-winger's worst nightmare, it's worth pointing out that continuing to eat as much meat as we currently do promises to result in a left-winger's worst nightmare: In a world of untrammeled global warming, where disastrous weather events are routine, global conflicts will increase, only the wealthy will thrive, and the poor will suffer.
Let's try a middle path. We're not all going to become vegetarians, but most of us can stop giving our money to factory farms—the biggest and worst offenders, from a pollution and public health perspective. We can eat less meat than we currently do, especially meat from methane-releasing ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.). Just because a sudden global conversion to vegetarianism would have jarring effects doesn't mean we can't gradually reduce our consumption of meat, giving the market time to adjust. We not only can; we must. After all, with the world's population slated to grow to 9 billion by 2050, we'll be needing to take some of the 25 percent of the world's land area back from the cows.
參考譯文：
肉類加工業對氣候變化的影響非常大，直接或間接地產生了14.5%的溫室氣體排放量，而且全球肉類消費一直在增長。一般來說，人們喜歡吃肉——窮人賺到錢后幾乎總要買肉。人口和肉制品消費的增長將會對氣候變化，人口質量和土地使用產生災難性的影響。
減少肉類消費的嘗試還處在起步階段——“無肉星期一”和“6點之前吃素食”活動，人造假雞肉和試管漢堡（注：這種漢堡所取用的漢堡肉，不需要通過屠宰動物獲得，而是在實驗室里“培養”出來的）。傳統觀點認為，如果人們開始減少會用肉類，那么也將漸漸養成這種習慣。
但是假如世界上每個人都自愿停止吃肉，這種勸說是否會變得容易？我想這種情況不容易出現。某一天，如果大家醒來后都意識到善待動物組織宣傳的口號是對的，那么對改善氣候來說，這是最好的情況。如果大家都做出這種共同的改變，就像彼得·辛格（注：澳大利亞哲學家、動物解放主義人士）夢寐以求的事情實現了，那么結果會如何？
至少，一個研究小組已經假設了素食主義對地球的影響。在2009年，荷蘭環境評估署發布了一項預測——如果人類逐漸減少消費，停止食用或者生產肉制品，其會對溫室氣體產生的影響。研究者們預測，到2050年，全球范圍的素食主義將減少17%的農業碳排放，24%甲烷排放和一氧化氮排放。廣泛的素食主義在減少溫室氣體排放方面也能產生同樣的作用。而且，荷蘭的研究者們發現，相對于純粹的致力于減少能源消耗的碳稅和能量重復利用技術，全球范圍的素食主義在達到上述效果的同時成本更低。結果就是，普遍的減少肉食不會單方面的減緩全球變暖，改善氣候變化任重道遠。
荷蘭研究者沒有考慮如果人人都不吃肉，還會發生什么。“在這項研究中，我們忽略了可能對社會經濟方面的影響，比如健康改變對GDP和人口數量的影響”，Elke Stehfest和他的同事寫道，“我們沒有分析飲食變化對農業經濟造成的后果以及由此帶來的影響。這不僅包括轉型成本，還包括對土地價格的影響。轉型所產生的成本也許會很明顯地抵消掉我們之前提到的成就。”
確實如此。如果整個世界都吃素或者素食主義實行十年或二十年，我們認為經濟會衰退。根據2006年聯合國關于食用肉制品對環境毀滅性影響的報告《畜牧業的陰影》，畜牧業產品占世界GDP總量的1.4%。動物產品的生產和銷售為13億人提供了工作，其中有9.87億都是窮人。如果一夜之間肉類的需求都消失了，這些人賴以生存的方式就沒有了，就不得不尋找新的方式維生。現在，一些人，像為動物農場提供玉米飼料的農民可以開始種植受歡迎的植物產品。而另外一些人，比如那些大量的除了畜牧業沒有其他工作可做的，尤其是亞洲和非洲國家的人就沒有這么幸運了（如果人們繼續消費其他動物產品，像雞蛋，牛奶和羊毛，而不是完全素食主義，那么情況就會好很多）。經濟在適應突如其來的肉類產品的滯銷同時，我們可以預料到普遍的艱難和社會動蕩。
世界范圍的素食主義帶來的第二個重大影響是有更多可利用的土地。目前，反芻動物像奶牛及其同類的牧場占據了世界上未被冰覆蓋的土地的26%。荷蘭科學家預測世界范圍內的素食主義將使27億公頃（約1.4萬平方千米）的牧場被釋放，包括近期用于種植動物飼料的1億公頃（約386平方千米）。并不是所有這些土地都適合人類使用，但可以肯定的是，從整體上來看，這些突然增加的土地會使其變得更加便宜。
全球素食主義帶來的第三個重大影響是抗藥性傳染病將直線下降。目前，在動物農場中，為了給牲畜增重，在不衛生的環境下保持健康，抗生素被普遍使用，這就成為抗藥性的主要原因。去年疾病防控中心宣稱，每年至少有200萬美國人因感染抗藥性病原體生病，而且“很多動物抗生素的使用都是不必要，不合理的，只會讓人們更加不健康”。在人類身上的抗生素濫用在抗藥性的產生過程中也難逃其咎，但是，如果忽視許多抗藥細菌來自于農場的事實，我們會以為還能繼續寄希望于抗生素來治療疾�。ㄏ胍私馐裁词�“后抗生素時代”，請閱讀麥肯那的《媒介》，以及關于如何在養雞場解決該問題的方法。文章刊載于Slate雜志）。
那么，在一個純素食主義的世界，普遍的失業，經濟衰退，數百萬平方米的土地空置，抗藥性風險低的淋病同時并存，會產生什么樣的結果？我只能推測，人們會團結起來建立公社以逃避資本主義的剝削，抵制之前的牧場開采，自由戀愛。
哈哈，我是開玩笑的。很多時候，當你推測不可能發生的事情的時候，很容易得意忘形——突然之間同步的洲際素食主義簡直不可能發生。但是如果全球性地堅持素食主義，這對于右翼分子來說簡直是噩夢，但是值得指出的是如果繼續保持現在的肉制品消費量，這無疑將會是左翼分子的噩夢：在一個全球變暖失控的世界，氣候災害頻發，國際沖突也會增加，只有富人能夠發展，窮人只會忍受更多痛苦。
那么讓我們取折中路線。我們不會都變成純素食主義者，但是大多數人可以停止將錢投入農場——污染和公共問題的罪魁禍首。我們可以吃更少的肉，特別是產生甲烷的反芻動物（牛，山羊，綿羊等）的肉。突然之間的全球性的素食主義會產生不良后果，不代表我們不能逐步減少現在的肉類消費，給市場調整的時間。我們能夠這樣做，也必須這樣做。畢竟，隨著世界人口不斷增長，到2050年人口將增至90億，我們將需要把約25%的土地從牛羊那里奪回來。
The meat industry is one of the top contributors to climate change, directly and indirectly producing about 14.5 percent of the world's anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and global meat consumption is on the rise. People generally like eating meat—when poor people start making more money, they almost invariably start buying more meat. As the population grows and eats more animal products, the consequences for climate change, pollution, and land use could be catastrophic.
Attempts to reduce meat consumption usually focus on baby steps—Meatless Monday and "vegan before 6," passable fake chicken, and in vitro burgers. If the world is going to eat less meat, it's going to have to be coaxed and cajoled into doing it, according to conventional wisdom.
But what if the convincing were the easy part? Suppose everyone in the world voluntarily stopped eating meat, en masse. I know it's not actually going to happen. But the best-case scenario from a climate perspective would be if all 7 billion of us woke up one day and realized that PETA was right all along. If this collective change of spirit came to pass, like Peter Singer's dearest fantasy come true, what would the ramifications be?
At least one research team has run the numbers on what global veganism would mean for the planet. In 2009 researchers from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency published their projections of the greenhouse gas consequences if humanity came to eat less meat, no meat, or no animal products at all. The researchers predicted that universal veganism would reduce agriculture-related carbon emissions by 17 percent, methane emissions by 24 percent, and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 percent by 2050. Universal vegetarianism would result in similarly impressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. What's more, the Dutch researchers found that worldwide vegetarianism or veganism would achieve these gains at a much lower cost than a purely energy-focused intervention involving carbon taxes and renewable energy technology. The upshot: Universal eschewal of meat wouldn't single-handedly stave off global warming, but it would go a long way toward mitigating climate change.
The Dutch researchers didn't take into account what else might happen if everyone gave up meat. "In this scenario study we have ignored possible socio-economic implications such as the effect of health changes on GDP and population numbers," wrote Elke Stehfest and her colleagues. "We have not analyzed the agro-economic consequences of the dietary changes and its implications; such consequences might not only involve transition costs, but also impacts on land prices. The costs that are associated with this transition might obviously offset some of the gains discussed here."
Indeed. If the world actually did collectively go vegetarian or vegan over the course of a decade or two, it's reasonable to think the economy would tank. According to "Livestock's Long Shadow," the influential 2006 U.N. report about meat's devastating environmental effects, livestock production accounts for 1.4 percent of the world's total GDP. The production and sale of animal products account for 1.3 billion people's jobs, and 987 million of those people are poor. If demand for meat were to disappear overnight, those people's livelihoods would disappear, and they would have to find new ways of making money. Now, some of them—like the industrial farmers who grow the corn that currently goes to feed animals on factory farms—would be in a position to adapt by shifting to in-demand plant-based food production. Others, namely the "huge number of people involved in livestock for lack of an alternative, particularly in Africa and Asia," would probably be out of luck. (Things would be better for the global poor involved in the livestock trade if everyone continued to consume other animal products, such as eggs, milk, and wool, than if everyone decided to go vegan.) As the economy adjusted to the sudden lack of demand for meat products, we would expect to see widespread suffering and social unrest.
A second major ramification of global vegetarianism would be expanses of new land available. Currently, grazing land for ruminants—cows and their kin—accounts for a staggering 26 percent of the world's ice-free land surface. The Dutch scientists predict that 2.7 billion hectares (about 10.4 million square miles) of that grazing land would be freed up by global vegetarianism, along with 100 million hectares (about 386,000 square miles) of land that's currently used to grow crops for livestock. Not all of this land would be suitable for humans, but surely it stands to reason that this sudden influx of new territory would make land much cheaper on the whole.
A third major ramification of global vegetarianism would be that the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections would plummet. Currently, the routine use of antibiotics in animal farming to promote weight gain and prevent illness in unsanitary conditions is a major contributor to antibiotic resistance. Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that at least 2 million Americans fall ill from antibiotic-resistant pathogens every year and declared that "much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe." The overprescription of antibiotics for humans plays a big role in antibiotic resistance, but eradicating the factory farms from which many antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerge would make it more likely that we could continue to count on antibiotics to cure serious illnesses. (For a sense of what a "post-antibiotics future" would look like, read Maryn McKenna's amazing article on the topic for Medium and her story about a possible solution for chicken farming in Slate.)
So what would be the result, in an all-vegetarian world, of the combination of widespread unemployment and economic disruption, millions of square miles of available land, and a lowered risk of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea? I can only conclude that people would band together to form communes in order to escape capitalism's ruthlessness, squat on the former pasture land, and adopt a lifestyle of free love.
I kid. Mostly. It's easy to get carried away when you're speculating about unlikely scenarios—and sudden intercontinental vegetarianism is very much an unlikely scenario.
But if the result of a worldwide shift to a plant-based diet sounds like a right-winger's worst nightmare, it's worth pointing out that continuing to eat as much meat as we currently do promises to result in a left-winger's worst nightmare: In a world of untrammeled global warming, where disastrous weather events are routine, global conflicts will increase, only the wealthy will thrive, and the poor will suffer.
Let's try a middle path. We're not all going to become vegetarians, but most of us can stop giving our money to factory farms—the biggest and worst offenders, from a pollution and public health perspective. We can eat less meat than we currently do, especially meat from methane-releasing ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.). Just because a sudden global conversion to vegetarianism would have jarring effects doesn't mean we can't gradually reduce our consumption of meat, giving the market time to adjust. We not only can; we must. After all, with the world's population slated to grow to 9 billion by 2050, we'll be needing to take some of the 25 percent of the world's land area back from the cows.
參考譯文：
肉類加工業對氣候變化的影響非常大，直接或間接地產生了14.5%的溫室氣體排放量，而且全球肉類消費一直在增長。一般來說，人們喜歡吃肉——窮人賺到錢后幾乎總要買肉。人口和肉制品消費的增長將會對氣候變化，人口質量和土地使用產生災難性的影響。
減少肉類消費的嘗試還處在起步階段——“無肉星期一”和“6點之前吃素食”活動，人造假雞肉和試管漢堡（注：這種漢堡所取用的漢堡肉，不需要通過屠宰動物獲得，而是在實驗室里“培養”出來的）。傳統觀點認為，如果人們開始減少會用肉類，那么也將漸漸養成這種習慣。
但是假如世界上每個人都自愿停止吃肉，這種勸說是否會變得容易？我想這種情況不容易出現。某一天，如果大家醒來后都意識到善待動物組織宣傳的口號是對的，那么對改善氣候來說，這是最好的情況。如果大家都做出這種共同的改變，就像彼得·辛格（注：澳大利亞哲學家、動物解放主義人士）夢寐以求的事情實現了，那么結果會如何？
至少，一個研究小組已經假設了素食主義對地球的影響。在2009年，荷蘭環境評估署發布了一項預測——如果人類逐漸減少消費，停止食用或者生產肉制品，其會對溫室氣體產生的影響。研究者們預測，到2050年，全球范圍的素食主義將減少17%的農業碳排放，24%甲烷排放和一氧化氮排放。廣泛的素食主義在減少溫室氣體排放方面也能產生同樣的作用。而且，荷蘭的研究者們發現，相對于純粹的致力于減少能源消耗的碳稅和能量重復利用技術，全球范圍的素食主義在達到上述效果的同時成本更低。結果就是，普遍的減少肉食不會單方面的減緩全球變暖，改善氣候變化任重道遠。
荷蘭研究者沒有考慮如果人人都不吃肉，還會發生什么。“在這項研究中，我們忽略了可能對社會經濟方面的影響，比如健康改變對GDP和人口數量的影響”，Elke Stehfest和他的同事寫道，“我們沒有分析飲食變化對農業經濟造成的后果以及由此帶來的影響。這不僅包括轉型成本，還包括對土地價格的影響。轉型所產生的成本也許會很明顯地抵消掉我們之前提到的成就。”
確實如此。如果整個世界都吃素或者素食主義實行十年或二十年，我們認為經濟會衰退。根據2006年聯合國關于食用肉制品對環境毀滅性影響的報告《畜牧業的陰影》，畜牧業產品占世界GDP總量的1.4%。動物產品的生產和銷售為13億人提供了工作，其中有9.87億都是窮人。如果一夜之間肉類的需求都消失了，這些人賴以生存的方式就沒有了，就不得不尋找新的方式維生。現在，一些人，像為動物農場提供玉米飼料的農民可以開始種植受歡迎的植物產品。而另外一些人，比如那些大量的除了畜牧業沒有其他工作可做的，尤其是亞洲和非洲國家的人就沒有這么幸運了（如果人們繼續消費其他動物產品，像雞蛋，牛奶和羊毛，而不是完全素食主義，那么情況就會好很多）。經濟在適應突如其來的肉類產品的滯銷同時，我們可以預料到普遍的艱難和社會動蕩。
世界范圍的素食主義帶來的第二個重大影響是有更多可利用的土地。目前，反芻動物像奶牛及其同類的牧場占據了世界上未被冰覆蓋的土地的26%。荷蘭科學家預測世界范圍內的素食主義將使27億公頃（約1.4萬平方千米）的牧場被釋放，包括近期用于種植動物飼料的1億公頃（約386平方千米）。并不是所有這些土地都適合人類使用，但可以肯定的是，從整體上來看，這些突然增加的土地會使其變得更加便宜。
全球素食主義帶來的第三個重大影響是抗藥性傳染病將直線下降。目前，在動物農場中，為了給牲畜增重，在不衛生的環境下保持健康，抗生素被普遍使用，這就成為抗藥性的主要原因。去年疾病防控中心宣稱，每年至少有200萬美國人因感染抗藥性病原體生病，而且“很多動物抗生素的使用都是不必要，不合理的，只會讓人們更加不健康”。在人類身上的抗生素濫用在抗藥性的產生過程中也難逃其咎，但是，如果忽視許多抗藥細菌來自于農場的事實，我們會以為還能繼續寄希望于抗生素來治療疾�。ㄏ胍私馐裁词�“后抗生素時代”，請閱讀麥肯那的《媒介》，以及關于如何在養雞場解決該問題的方法。文章刊載于Slate雜志）。
那么，在一個純素食主義的世界，普遍的失業，經濟衰退，數百萬平方米的土地空置，抗藥性風險低的淋病同時并存，會產生什么樣的結果？我只能推測，人們會團結起來建立公社以逃避資本主義的剝削，抵制之前的牧場開采，自由戀愛。
哈哈，我是開玩笑的。很多時候，當你推測不可能發生的事情的時候，很容易得意忘形——突然之間同步的洲際素食主義簡直不可能發生。但是如果全球性地堅持素食主義，這對于右翼分子來說簡直是噩夢，但是值得指出的是如果繼續保持現在的肉制品消費量，這無疑將會是左翼分子的噩夢：在一個全球變暖失控的世界，氣候災害頻發，國際沖突也會增加，只有富人能夠發展，窮人只會忍受更多痛苦。
那么讓我們取折中路線。我們不會都變成純素食主義者，但是大多數人可以停止將錢投入農場——污染和公共問題的罪魁禍首。我們可以吃更少的肉，特別是產生甲烷的反芻動物（牛，山羊，綿羊等）的肉。突然之間的全球性的素食主義會產生不良后果，不代表我們不能逐步減少現在的肉類消費，給市場調整的時間。我們能夠這樣做，也必須這樣做。畢竟，隨著世界人口不斷增長，到2050年人口將增至90億，我們將需要把約25%的土地從牛羊那里奪回來。
