All people should become vegetarian

"Some of the many issues we currently face regarding the environment includes global warming, water and air pollution all of which are directly connected to eating meat. There are many wasted resources, as massive amounts of land, food, energy and water are required to raise animals for food. An area of a rainforest the size of seven football fields is destroyed every minute for those purposes." For the purpose of this round I will treat these statistics as true (because they are largely irrelevant) - you may want to link references to your claims however (for any future debates too). "Vast amount of energy are used for the farming of animals. The operation of factory farms, operation of slaughter houses, transportation of meat to grocery stores and the refrigeration required to keep the meat frozen in shops all require energy in very large amounts." Yes we use energy because those processes require it, and the eating of meat being of value to a large majority of individuals. Your standard of action however is unclear. Should we save energy for something else? In which case your argument is moot as energy used is used, regardless of the reason and there are far worse options for energy consumption than fulfilling requirements for survival. See we can't all be farmers, and we don't all own necessary or viable land to cultivate our own produce. Demanding we cut a source of nutrition from somewhere merely requires an additional source to be found, meaning we still use the land for something, we still need additional land as per populace growth, the same as with animal farming. Indeed hypothetically if I had enough land and the ability to reclaim water, decide to be green conscious and plant trees to cover the gas, why shouldn't I farm animals, even if it's at a level to support only myself. Why would *I* then have to be vegetarian? "A United Nations report from 2006 found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases then all cars, trucks, planes and ships in the world combined. "Greenhouse Gases, we know, can lead to major disasters such as floods, tsunamis and hurricanes." Eh debatable - natural cycles of salinity levels are also thought to contribute - as is debatable the nature of greenhouse gases on our environment itself, as well as its outright negatives (we increase rainfall and water is an issue?). The solution however is not to remove those things of value which do not in any meaningful way lead to a negative predictable consequence (knowing if it will impact or when and where hurricanes will occur) - but to be rational when choosing where to live where certain natural disasters are less frequent. :) http://www.thaindian.com... http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov... Hurricanes will occur whether we are here or not, and we may as well try and stop volcanoes for the gases they produce, if they are such a concern. "A lot of water is used for farming animals. Watering crops, water used for drinking by the animals, cleaning filth in slaughterhouses and factory farms are all ways that water is used. You save more water by not eating 0.5 kg of beef then you do by not showering for an entire year. The usage of water to raise animals for food puts a strain on our already limited supply of water." The same argument can be levied against any non pure survivalist action that requires water, even pets. The issue is you have no satisfactory standard for why one should do this, and not any other action that would reduce water consumption, and under your premises any and all non basic water usage should be deemed negative. Nor does it follow even if the premise is accepted, that the solution is to choose an arbitrary element to ban. As humans, we have the distinct unique condition of using our minds as the basic tool of survival. The solution is not, in the case of water, to reduce our standard of living in the vague hope of a future benefit for future some people some where. The ideal situation is to engage those minds willing in finding ways to increase water sources for consumption. Nature is there for us to use. Your argument however reduces to a very basic contradiction. You propose two standards for evaluating action: the environment and the self.However once you recognise the self as the ends of action (for to be good it must be good to someone, not some abstract environment) you must recognise the self as primary over the environment. Either you hold the environment as your primary standard of action (with us as a 'negative' in which case your death, mine, everyones, is the proper conclusion) or you recognise either implicitly or explicitly that an individual is their own ends for ones action, in which case, while one may consider the environment in ones dealings - it is not primary, and actions cannot be demanded of others in sacrifice for it.