I don’t mind if people decide to go vegan or vegetarian. That’s a personal decision demonstrating our exceptionalism as human beings. What other species would forego natural and nutritious food to make a moral point?

But the idea that most of us will give up meat to "save the planet" is, well, hogwash. Yet the "what if" articles keep coming. 

The latest is from Slate, byline B.V. Anderson, who asks: "What if Everyone in the World Became a Vegetarian?"

In 2009 researchers from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency…predicted that universal veganism would reduce agriculture-related carbon emissions by 17 percent, methane emissions by 24 percent, and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 percent by 2050.

What’s more, the Dutch researchers found that worldwide vegetarianism or veganism would achieve these gains at a much lower cost than a purely energy-focused intervention involving carbon taxes and renewable energy technology. The upshot: Universal eschewal of meat wouldn’t single-handedly stave off global warming, but it would go a long way toward mitigating climate change.

The world is almost saved!

At least Anderson notes that doing away with food animals would ruin economies (which is what many warming hysterics want):

If the world actually did collectively go vegetarian or vegan over the course of a decade or two, it’s reasonable to think the economy would tank. According to "Livestock’s Long Shadow," the influential 2006 U.N. report about meat’s devastating environmental effects, livestock production accounts for 1.4 percent of the world’s total GDP.

The production and sale of animal products account for 1.3 billion people’s jobs, and 987 million of those people are poor. If demand for meat were to disappear overnight, those people’s livelihoods would disappear, and they would have to find new ways of making money.

Yeah, well, good luck with that.

Actually, Anderson’s article doesn’t even begin to assess the economic obliteration that doing away with meat animals would cause. Indeed, she fails to address how thoroughly animal products grease the wheels — literally — of society. Here’s a quote from the fanatic animal-rights lawyer Steve Wise in my book, A Rat Is a Pig, Is a Dog, Is a Boy:

Today, the use of nonhuman animal products is so diverse and widespread that it is impossible to live in modern society and not support the nonhuman animal industry directly. For example, the blood of a slaughtered cow is used to manufacture plywood adhesives, fertilizer, fire extinguisher foam, and dyes.

Her fat helps make plastic, tires, crayons, cosmetics, lubricants, soaps, detergents, cough syrup, contraceptive jellies and creams, ink, shaving cream, fabric softeners, synthetic rubber, jet engine lubricants, textiles, corrosion inhibitors, and metal-machining lubricants.

Her collagen is found in pie crusts, yogurts, matches, bank notes, paper, and cardboard glue; her intestines are used in strings for musical instruments and racquets; her bones in charcoal ash for refining sugar, in ceramics, and cleaning and polishing compounds. Medical and scientific uses abound. And there is much, much more.

The subtitle to my book is, The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement. Without animal industries, we would suffer an economic obliteration.

Notice how every bit of the cow is used. That’s productive, efficient, and I think, respectful of each animal’s death.

Good nutrition aside, the catastrophic economic impact of forcing people to stop eating meat — a key goal of the animal rights movement — is one of many reasons why animal rights is part of the ongoing war on humans.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.