A major cause of deforestation is to grow corn / soybeans to feed to livestock. The forests, natural carbon sinks, are lost, and the livestock increase the amount of methane in the atmosphere. It takes 9 times the amount of land to make beef vs. growing plants. It uses a lot more freshwater to grow the food, and much more to give to the animals.
We're already doing that. Not gonna lie, we love meat, but understand it isn't the best choice for the planet, so far we've reduced our meat consumption about 50%.
If you have children, it is also an excellent opportunity to teach them that meat doesn't come from the store, and to help them gain some respect for all the work that goes into getting food on the table.
Also, what would you say is the difference between massive industrial plantations intended to feed livestock vs those intended to feed humans with a less than ideal diet?
As for the plantations: if we all cut out livestock from our diets, there'd be 9x less of them.
And what does "ideal" mean?
I believe that "ideal" is nowhere near a diet requiring supplementation and leading to metabolic and cardiovascular disease.
^: I see this "fact" touted around quite a lot. Could I get a source? Here you can actually see a figure of 67% of global crop yield by weight used to feed humans: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/0340...
0.58 cows per hectare - http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/62085
274 kg meat on a cow - https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/junk/cow.html
10470 kJ of food energy per kilo of beef - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef
1000 days to rear a cow - https://www.withouthotair.com/c13/page_77.shtml
Therefore 0.58 * 274 * 10470 / 1000 = 607 kJ of cow, per day, per hectare.
In comparison, wheat yields 3120 kg per hectare per year - https://www.statista.com/statistics/237705/global-wheat-prod...
1368 kJ per kg - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat
Therefore 3120 * 1368 / 356 = 11989 kJ of wheat, per day, per hectare.
So, by my calculations, you need 19.75x more land to grow a kJ of beef than a kJ of wheat.
That said, free range solves some of the problems with factory farming but it is not the solution to climate change caused by meat production and consumption.
Either way, even if for health reasons you’re not going to become entirely vegetarian, it is possible for most to reduce their meat consumption. A quarter to half a pound of meat daily (or worse, at every meal) is a weird American expectation that’s totally unnecessary.