Should We Stop Eating Meat?

• Livestock uses 83% of global farmland but delivers only 18% of global calories; if wealthy nations reduced meat consumption by 50%, the land freed up could sequester carbon equivalent to decades of global emissions while also halting the deforestation that drives biodiversity collapse.
• The 'personal choice' argument collapses when individual choices aggregate to existential-scale harms; we regulate cars, factories, and cigarettes without calling it paternalism, and food is no different when the stakes are atmospheric.
• Lab-grown meat continues to improve in taste and cost trajectory even as the first-generation plant-based products failed; the transition does not require giving up the sensory experience of meat; only the land-intensive, emissions-intensive production method.

Debater: To be announced

• Meat provides critical micronutrients: heme iron, B12, and complete protein, which are hardest to obtain from plant sources; populations with the least dietary diversity and the highest rates of malnutrition cannot afford to reduce animal-source foods on the schedule Western researchers propose.
• The 14.5% emissions figure includes biogenic methane that cycles through the atmosphere in 12 years and net land-carbon that depends on how land was previously used; well-managed ruminants on diverse pasture have a substantially lower footprint than the headline suggests.
• Food culture is one of the deepest expressions of identity, community, and heritage. Dietary imperialism from Global North institutions has a specific history of undermining Indigenous food systems in the name of health.

Debater: To be announced