PowerSource
Member
People gotta eat.
This should probably be split into a couple of categories. By specifically mentioning "factory farming", you are bringing an animal welfare concern and mixing it in with an environmental protection concern.
I'm going to leave the animal welfare issue aside and just address farming in general.
There are legitimate concerns over farming impact on carbon emissions and other environmental issues. People want to eat what they want to eat, and I'm not a big fan of taking enjoyment away from people. We need to move to sustainability, but I think we want to do it in a way that minimizes any negative impact. So the questions I think are as such:
1) How much can we improve existing farming processes to minimize environmental impact? For example, switching all farm machinery to be powered by renewable energy. Sustainable planting practices. That kind of stuff.
2) Once you have reached the best case scenario from question 1, Is that enough to achieve environmental balance? If not, are there other non-farming sectors of society where the difference can be somehow offset?
3) If answers to questions (1) and (2) still aren't enough, then we can look at implementing dietary restrictions on people.
Farming/food is probably the last sector of society I would want to tackle, because we just don't have good substitutes yet for good eats. We already have good sustainable solutions for energy, transport, and other areas that we can implement without any significant impact on quality of life. It's going to be a lot harder to do that with food. Maybe someday there will be lab created proteins that are as good as steaks, for example, but we are still a long way from that right now. This is why I like to focus on energy, transport, and other low hanging fruit. Lets nail that stuff down first, and see how far it gets us. That is my approach anyway.
We should really have sustainability scientists that advise government to figure out what exactly we need to do over time to achieve stability and sustainability. It's not really a simple subject, but it's vital in the long run.
There are a lot of good vegan substitutes for your favorite foods. There was a study (have to google it) that came to the conclusion that half of greenhouse gasses are produced by factory farmed animals. That is pretty significant.
Study: vegan diets healthier for planet, people than meat diets