r/AskReddit • u/Excellent_Craft_1145 • 1h ago
What would happen to the Earth’s environment if the world population was suddenly vegan?
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u/RPSisBoring 1h ago
tens of billions of chickens would be killed. (this one is vegan specific, we would keep a lot of chickens if we still wanted eggs)
billions of cows (no more milk, no milk farms, no meat farms)
about a billion goats would be culled.
hundreds of millions of pigs that were going to die anyway would die....
Fish and ocean ecosystems would get messed up. (no more fishing) This has wild effects on the world more than anything else above.
We would have a lot less disease spread, cheaper antibiotics.
CO2 would go way down.
Accessible water would be more plentiful
A lot of good things overall but an overnight change to the world would shock our planets oceans.
Some sort of pescatarian is probably best for the world. If not, vegetarian.
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u/Excellent_Craft_1145 26m ago
This was basically the response i was looking for.
I don’t understand why we’d need to kill the animals currently in the farms.
Why would fish be specifically different? Wouldn’t the ocean’s ecosystem eventually stabilize?
What would happen to the need for much more plant farming?
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u/Jorgecurioso7 1h ago
People would be even more annoying than they are now
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u/EasyTelevision6741 1h ago
I assume you are referencing the climate impact of the methane from livestock. May want to point that out. I have no idea personally.
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u/DumpyGoat818 1h ago
This methane from livestock is a stupid argument. If it ruins the world and causes global warming the world would have been uninhabitable after the dinosaurs.
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u/Strong-Penguin-Bias 1h ago
I don't think you're suggesting we kill all livestock so I guess we'd release them to the wilds and they'll breed on their own flooding the ecosystem with billions of new animals
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u/Legal_Sleep_4731 1h ago
less methane which is a greenhouse gas.
"Methane is a potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas. The amount of methane in the atmosphere has increased in recent decades as observed by scientific measurements. An estimated 60% of today’s methane emissions are the result of human activities
Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas and is the second-largest contributor to Earth's warming after carbon dioxide (CO2). A molecule of methane traps more heat than a molecule of CO2, but methane has a relatively short lifespan of 7 to 12 years in the atmosphere. CO2 can persist for hundreds of years or more.
Methane comes from both natural sources and human activities. An estimated 60% of today’s methane emissions are the result of human activities. The largest sources of methane are agriculture, fossil fuels, and decomposing landfill waste. Natural processes account for 40% of methane emissions, with wetlands being the largest natural source." ---nasa., trump administration nasa now .
"The path of methane from cows to the atmosphere to plants and back to cows is known as the biogenic carbon cycle." --university of california
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u/Embarrassed_Emu1615 1h ago
Massive drop in methane emissions. Much less transport too. It would be good.