Halo and welcome, eco-conscious viewers. In its November 1999 issue,
TIMEMagazine published a set of articles that presented what life might
be like in the 21st century.
It asked: Will robots make house calls?
Will we live on Mars?
Will we still read paper books?
In
one of the articles, Ed Ayres then editorial director of the Worldwatch
Institute and author of 『God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a
Sustainable Future,』 posed a startling question:
『Will We Still Eat Meat?』
http://www.time.com/time/reports/v21/health/meat_mag.htmlVO:
『Will We Still Eat Meat?Maybe not, if we wake up to what the mass
production of animal flesh is doing to our health—and the planet's』
By
Ed Ayres 『When Julius Caesar made his triumphal entrance into Rome in
45 B.C., he celebrated by giving a feast at which thousands of guests
gorged on poultryseafood and game. Similar celebrations featuring
exorbitant consumption of animal flesh have marked human victories—in
war, sport, politics and commerce—since our species learned to control
fire.
Throughout the developing world today one of the first
things people do as they climb out of poverty is to shift from their
peasant diet of mainly grains and beans to one that is rich in pork or
beef.
Since 1950, per capita consumption of meat around the
globe has more than doubled.… But in the coming century, that will
change. Much as we have awakened to the full economic and social costs
of cigarettes, we will find we can no longer subsidize or ignore the
costs of mass-producing cattle, poultry, pigs, sheep and fish to feed
our growing population.
These costs include hugely inefficient
use of freshwater and land, heavy pollution from livestock feces,
rising rates of heart disease and other degenerative illnesses,and
spreading destruction of the forests on which much of our planet's life
depends.』