Ask HN: Why Aren't You Vegan?
<i>This post follows on from my reply to Woadray.  As mentioned therein, this post is my response to that other major strand of veganism—that of environmental veganism.</i><p>I have no doubt that we have a serious problem with the environment and that it&#x27;s getting considerably worse as the world&#x27;s population increases. Also, I&#x27;ve no doubt that those who engage in environmental veganism do so mostly for the best of reasons.  However, I would contend that given the fact that vegans only represent a tiny percentage of the world&#x27;s population, and that the world&#x27;s population is exploding exponentially, that their net effect on the environment is negligible and likely to remain that way into the near future. To put it bluntly, they may as well be pissing in the wind for all that it matters.<p>Sure that comment seems unkind but let&#x27;s look at the figures and then judge:<p><pre><code>  Current world pop:           ≈7,800 million. [1]

  No. of vegans sans India:    ≈195 million, ≈2.5% of world pop. (max) [2]

  No. of vegans in India:      ≈375 million, ≈4.8% of world pop.[3]

  ∴ No. of vegans incl. India: ≈570 million, ≈7.3% of world pop. [3]

  Est. world pop in 2100:       Between 7,300 &amp; 15,600 million [4]
</code></pre>
Assuming the number of vegans continues to grow at its present rate then it will do so mostly outside of India&#x27;s existing vegan population. Whilst India has the highest number of vegans worldwide (375 million), we need to remember that this number is longstanding in that it&#x27;s emergent from a cultural belief of a subset of India&#x27;s population.  As such, the growth in the number of vegans in this section of India&#x27;s population will be identical to the growth in that population (as they&#x27;re one and the same).<p><i>(Thus, the world&#x27;s largest block group of vegans will not follow the substantially higher growth rate as experienced by those outside its ranks as it&#x27;s not subject to the modern popularity of veganism that&#x27;s driving veganism elsewhere (exactly what the average annual growth rate in vegans is worldwide is still unclear).  Thus, estimates of veganism growth rates must be based on the remaining 2.5% figure (as they&#x27;re substantially higher in that group).  Given that the vegan population outside the Indian group is effectively very small at only 2.5%, then it&#x27;s clear that if veganism is to contribute in any significant way towards improving the world&#x27;s ecosystem in the critically short time available left to us, then it will have to increase its growth rate very dramatically to achieve that impact (and on current figures this seems doubtful).</i><p>The enormous elephant in the room is population growth and it&#x27;s not something that people other than demographers are taking with sufficient seriousness. Moreover, population growth is a factor that environmentalists have continually played down for decades, as they well know that proselytizing that people shouldn&#x27;t have any children would severely undermine their mission. They, therefore, push every other factor that has a negative environmental impact on the planet for all it&#x27;s worth. There&#x27;s nothing wrong with this but given the figures it&#x27;s unlikely to be enough to achieve what&#x27;s necessary (as we need the population to fall rapidly). Moreover, to my mind, sweeping the elephant under the carpet is utter hypocrisy and sheer foolishness (remember, the upper estimate of the world&#x27;s population by 2100 is 15.6 billion, if that figure were to be achieved then it would be a catastrophe).<p>As we&#x27;ve seen from the failure of China&#x27;s one-child policy, no one wants to be told that they cannot have more than one child, and no government in the world would be game to impose a population growth limit of less than one child per person (even though some counties, albeit too few, are headed that way). In fact, many governments are concerned that their populations are declining for reasons that have little or nothing to do with the environment (and the fact that they think this way is a real problem). Of course, no one seriously criticizes them for wanting increased population numbers for the very reasons I&#x27;ve already stated.<p>Let&#x27;s address this a little further. In my lifetime, the world&#x27;s population has grown at least 250%—and I&#x27;ve noticed it and I don&#x27;t like what I see for a multitude of infrastructural reasons. Moreover, at present, it&#x27;s growing by nearly a billion people per decade and even though it&#x27;s expected to stabilize eventually, it will not do so for some considerable time.<p>Now let&#x27;s address what that actually means in practical terms: every child that is brought into the world will consume resources. For starters, during that individual&#x27;s life he&#x2F;she will consume about 100 tons of food (some estimates say 70). Can you envisage what 100 tons of food actually looks like? Now multiply that figure by eight, nine or ten billion. Then there&#x27;s all the other goods and accoutrements one gathers throughout one&#x27;s life—clothing, cars, houses, furniture, smartphones and computers (and these electronic devices use a number of valuable elements such as cobalt, tantalum, indium and others that are currently in very short supply). Then there&#x27;s even more children that that child will bring into the world. Moreover, for vegans, your child may be wayward and decide not to follow your veganism. (It doesn&#x27;t look good for the environment, does it?)<p>Simply, if we decrease the population then we lower the demand on every other type of resource proportionally (and that means proportionally less carbon dioxide is produced).  In quantitative terms, reducing the population remains by far the best option to achieve a sustainable world—but one has to concede that it&#x27;s also the most difficult to achieve.<p>Right, vegans will not consume quite as much of the world&#x27;s resources per capita but each individual vegan will still consume a huge amount of resources including all those goods that everyone else will acquire.  Then there&#x27;s all that extra vegetable matter that they&#x27;ll need to supplement and offset the fact that they are not consuming meat. Moreover, this extra bulk vegetable matter will require additional land to grow on—and that land area will need to be incremented even further given the fact that vegan food contains significantly less energy than does meat.  Leafy vegetables have very few calories, carbohydrates, bread etc.: ≈5 calories&#x2F;gram (≈21kJ&#x2F;g); animal protein: 7 calories&#x2F;g (29.4kJ&#x2F;g); animal fat: 9 calories&#x2F;g (37.8kJ&#x2F;g).<p>In the end, given that vegans will also own homes, smartphones and lots of other junk as well as food-eating children, the net benefit of their efforts are unlikely to be anywhere near as effective as they would hope—or that they would have the rest of us believe.  They will however assuage themselves of some degree of guilt and, no doubt, this will add a few happiness utiles to the world.<p>Vegans may be very sincere but the figures show that they&#x27;re not going to make a huge difference in the little time we&#x27;ve left to rectify matters.<p>No matter what, the world has a huge problem left to solve in a very short time.  It still remains very unclear how that will pan out (with population estimates varying wildly between 7,300 and 15,600 million by 2100, then the only thing that is clear is that we still have no definitive plan about how to tackle the problem let alone be way down the path towards fixing it.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldometers.info&#x2F;world-population&#x2F;world-population-by-year&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldometers.info&#x2F;world-population&#x2F;world-populat...</a>)<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vegetarianism_by_country" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vegetarianism_by_country</a>)<p>[3] Note: India&#x27;s huge number of vegans is based on centuries-old custom, and thus this number is lower and more constant when it comes to measuring the potential growth of veganism. Check the other links for specific details.<p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;World_population" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;World_population</a>