I've been getting a lot of links along the lines of, "if meat becomes more expensive, everyone will starve! Is that what liberals want!?" The point of talking about meat in an energy context, however, is not simply that it's extraordinarily resource intensive; it's that it's extraordinarily resource intensive compared to other foods. People are starving because so many of us eat meat. If meat were to become more expensive, and folks began trending towards plant-based diets, world hunger would be substantially alleviated.Unlike plants, which largely require sunlight to grow, animals require food to grow. Given current farming practices, that means grain. But all that grain isn't being reconstituted into delicious burger. It's helping the cow breathe, and walk around, and build strong bones, and make "mooing" sounds. Annoyingly, animals live for awhile before they become steaks, and that period turns out to require a lot of energy. This means it takes about 16 pounds of grain to "produce" one pound of animal flesh. That's grain, of course, that the poor can't eat, because it's bought by richer countries in order to feed livestock. And what grain remains is pricier, because the market for grain is tightened by the 756 million tons going to animal feed.Animals also need land. Even if they're penned up in industrial agriculture settings. And it turns out they need a lot more of it than do most crops. The following graph (which comes from this pdf) tracks usable protein yield per acre for a host of foods. Meat doesn't fare well:
The pity is that this case, which is based around energy efficiency and resource intensity, gets tied up with critiques of "lifestyle liberalism." John Schwenkler, for instance, thinks I want people to eat less meat because I want to "make more people learn to live like I do." But I don't want to live like I do! Bacon is transcendent. The words "porterhouse" and "steak" make my mouth water. Pork belly makes me simultaneously believe in God and doubt my own religious tradition. And because of this, I'm not a full vegetarian. But I should be. And not liking liberals don't change the truth about meat: Industrial agriculture is cruel, meat production is a huge contributor to global warming, and the market for meat contributes to world hunger in a substantial and direct way.
The pity is that this case, which is based around energy efficiency and resource intensity, gets tied up with critiques of "lifestyle liberalism." John Schwenkler, for instance, thinks I want people to eat less meat because I want to "make more people learn to live like I do." But I don't want to live like I do! Bacon is transcendent. The words "porterhouse" and "steak" make my mouth water. Pork belly makes me simultaneously believe in God and doubt my own religious tradition. And because of this, I'm not a full vegetarian. But I should be. And not liking liberals don't change the truth about meat: Industrial agriculture is cruel, meat production is a huge contributor to global warming, and the market for meat contributes to world hunger in a substantial and direct way. 
