Global agreement

[EvilEye]

Let us assume that we decided the vegans are correct and we should not kill any more animals, and we should stop eating meat... but we should all only eat plants.

What exactly would we do with the livestock we already have? And what several different problems would this create? (ie: rotting carcasses of dead cows that produced more milk than they could feed to their calves... global warming running even more rampant because of cow flatulence - we are no longer killing ANY of them... etc.... I think you get the idea.

I would LOVE to hear a podcast on the effects of a global agreement on any extreme viewpoint.

It doesn't have to be veganism... it could be ANYTHING where everyone agreed.

Imagine a world where everyone spayed or nuetered their pets, or where everyone stopped fishing, or we shut off all the coal powered plants? Anything....

[vita10gy]

It would have to be all organically grown plants too. We would need to ensure we could only adequately feed like 5% of the world's population.

Actually, along these lines it might be cool to compare and contrast how many animals humans have caused to go extinct, vs how many would have if it wasn't for us.

Pandas, for example, just seem destined for extinction. They have the metabolism of bears, but only eat one specific plant in one specific place. They're super picky about their mates and have very few children. It's a wonder they made it as long as they did.

Come to think of it, it doesn't even make sense for them to be here, evolution must be wrong. God did it!

[Newton Fig]

Great mental exercise!

As a quick sidenote before the main topic, the global warming issue is one of these catch 22 situations. Not that cow farts matters all that much. But in the aspect of air pollution dimming the sun enough to reduce the current effects of global warming a bit. After 9/11 there was some good research done on this mainly due to the ability to measure less dimming due to the cessation of air transportation for a few days.

Speaking about the original subject of cows, while I do not know the exact numbers, I truly doubt that there are currently MORE bovine around than there were buffalo in the U.S. right now. Thus, as my answer, I would say let them all go wild. They graze, poop, then all the chickens follow them around, since we would release them too, spread the manure (they dig through cow patties for the maggots that the flies lay), which stimulates more grass growth for the couple weeks until another herd comes by and repeats the process.

Nature had some good stability with maintaining large numbers of these types of animals. We would probably see a huge increase in predatory creatures though. Granted, this could cause many side effects and attacks on humans and pets. As well as the effects on the environment that wild herds trapped in between developed suburbia would have since they would not be able to naturally roam as they should be.

[Bishop746]

There is an example of historical precedence for your question.

North American Indian tribes were a vital part of their enviorment and had effects on animal populations. As an example, some tribes would aggresively hunt around their settlements even to the point of intentionaly taking female animals in an attempt to limit the destruction of crops. However, the surrounding areas saw only limited hunting. When Europeans made contact in the 15th century whole tribes were destroyed by disease. Early Europeans wrote how whole villages were empty except for the remains of the Indians who had no one left to bury them. Later Europeans painted a picture of North America as this place where wildlife was abundant; they did not realize this overabundance of animal life was due to the removal of the Indian tribes that were in balance with the animal life.

If your interested; I based my information on the book "1491:New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles Mann.