Like, I do think in an ideal world everyone would be vegan and all animals would be free not to be our food...
...Buuuttt I've been eating their products for my entire life and they constitute the vast majority of my favorite foods/drinks and foods/drinks I just like in general, and am thus unwilling to give them up even if I know it would be the better thing to do.
I mean, I probably could if I really, really wanted to, but I just don't want to.
I mean this in no way applies to me right now, but in certain climates meat can become an extremely efficient way of obtaining calories. For example, on the steppes. It doesn't rain enough to sustain agriculture, but does rain enough to sustain grass. Said grass is inedible to humans but can be eaten by animals, who in turn may be eaten by humans. Nomadic omnivorous humans roaming in this region would be carbon neutral at the very least.
Introducing agriculture to areas not suited for agriculture, and clearing native flora for introduced Western crops also may not be the best thing for the environment. I live around farms (eastern, but not coastal Australia) that every decade or so get absolutely demolished by the Australian weather & El Nino and they have to rely on mutual aid and government assistance to survive. Then they get back on their feet, they think it's a one off disaster and continue farming wheat or sometimes in the worst case cotton in the driest (non Antarctica) continent on the planet. Also they're much less fire resistant than native flora, I'm sure you've seen what the bushfires are like. The native Australians have been living in this region for 40,000 years and have flourished. Controlled burns of overgrowth. Not planting a fuckload of more flammable plants in close proximity to maximise profit. The Anglos have been here for 200 and need to resort to begging to survive every decade or so, just to maintain a European diet instead of eating like the people of the nations they invaded.
A strict vegan living here eating a western diet, 100%, undoubtedly does more damage to this environment than an omnivore eating mostly native plants but the occasional kangaroo.
tl;dr some climates do not agree with plant based diets, though OP's statement is generally correct.
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australia could not feed 25 million people off native plants and animals, high intensity food production is better then clearing more land or hunting animals to extinction
Probably not, but nor could any variation of current western diets, vegan or omnivorous. Wheat simply is not suited for the vast majority of the Australian continent. In a fantasy land where private property is abolished and so is for profit farming and the entire concept of Suburbia (fuck America for inventing this, btw), I would say even high intensity food production would not be able to meet the needs of modern Australia, let alone a future one. It's simply too dry to sustain a western diet as the sole caloric intake. There are many indigenous plants not being utilized by the European inspired diet. Certainly bush tucker is much more suited for the environment than anything else currently available, but good luck trying to persuade Anglos at large into that.
On top of that, there are vast swathes of western NSW and west-ish Queensland (i.e. not desert) that could possibly support grass and therefore grazing animals but not intense farming. Every square centimeter of land must be utilized as efficiently as possible if humanity hopes to survive without destroying the planet and/or having a bunch of poor people die. However this is a dream not likely to be realized. There are profitable cotton farms that must be protected by local/state governments, you see. Water must be first diverted to the rich before the commoners. At least on a local level, I see cotton farmers being lumped in with "the farmers" as if their production is actually as necessary as food. Propaganda for saving these water intensive crops because they're supposedly 'salt of the earth farmers just trying to make a living' when in fact they're underpaying overseas workers for a visa to continue to grow their non-indigenous crop and siphoning water from already struggling people is disgusting and yet again we find the long arm of capitalism impeding the needs of the people.
or idk im kinda drunk