Will My Children Have to Become Vegetarians?

[img_assist|nid=72219|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=66]I love to eat meat. I'm from Kansas City where we love to BBQ everything.   There have been times in my life when I consistently ate at least a pound of meat a day.  So let me tell you, that I'm frightened by the idea that in the future becoming a vegetarian might be increasingly an issue of justice, but that may be what happens over the next century. 

I recently read and article in the Economist that argued that there is an upcoming water shortage that may have an even larger effect on human life than climate change.  Here is the basic issue.  It takes about one liter of water to farm one calorie of food.  For meat, it takes ten times that amount to produce one calorie of meat. 

As the world's population grows, there is a limited supply of fresh water that becomes one of the main limiting factors on food production.  The article argues that by 2025 that water shortages could cause "annual losses equivalent to the entire grain crops of India and the United States combined.”

Currently, when people starve in the world, it is not because we don't have enough food in the world.  It's that the food doesn't get to the people that need it.  So all those times your mom told you to eat your food at the dinner table because there are people starving in Africa, she actually was wrong.  You eating less wouldn't affect how much food they get.  In fact the best thing you could do is not to eat less, but to shop less and then give money to organizations that help distribute food. 

Over the next century, that is likely to change as there are shortages of fresh water and petroleum-based fertilizers. The issue becomes if there just isn't enough food to go around, how can I justify eating so much meat, which requires 10 times the resources to produce one calorie.  In the next century, becoming a vegetarian or eating a low-meat diet will increasingly become an issue of Christian justice.

So if my children may not have to become vegetarians as a matter of justice, than it is very likely that their children will or at least eat a low-meat diet.  This is what the difference is between secular environmentalist (often derided as tree huggers) and Christians for Environmental Justice:  Environmental Justice is about the effect of the environment has on people. 

If our impact on the environment hurts others, then we are responsible.  All I can say is I'm glad I was born when I was because I love meat.

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