Meat means murder - but perhaps not how you think

It is probably not news to many people, but a rash of recent articles is drawing renewed attention to the consumption of meat as a major environmental and economic challenge for the planet.
As even establishment corporations like the food multi-national Nestlé point out, a calorie of meat requires ten times as much water to produce as a calorie of food crops. By some estimates a pound of meat requires a mind-boggling 1,800 gallons of water to produce, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization suggests that fully 8% of human water usage is devoted to the production of meat.
As more and more people in developing countries gradually rise up out of poverty, they increasingly aspire to an "American diet" of up to 3,600 calories a day, including a substantial meat element. And, as the world's population is on schedule to soar to almost 10 billion by 2050, world food production will need to increase by an estimated 70% worldwide, and as much as 100% in developing countries. This will put pressure on the world's food production, and particularly on its already stressed water supply. According to Nestlé once again, a third of the world's population is likely to be affected by water shortages within ten years, and the situation will become potentially catastrophic by 2050.
The planet's water resources already appear increasingly unsustainable. Major crop-growing areas like California and northern India, for example, are inherently arid regions, so that crops grown there require more water than elsewhere. The result is that more water is being withdrawn from these areas than can be naturally replenished, leading to a vicious circle of reduced water table, increased salinity, and less productive crops, requiring ever more water.
So, what to do?
Yes, we can try to use our water more carefully, save a bit here, save a bit there. But reducing meat consumption could go a long way to helping a potentially dire situation. I became a vegetarian 30-odd years ago - yes, before it was trendy - and, for me personally, the inefficient protein production argument was one of my main reasons (among many). Bear in mind that, as well as bring wasteful of water, meat production is also about ten times more wasteful of farmable land than plant production (according to the FAO, livestock, and the crops to feed them, take up an estimated 70% of agricultural land, about 30% of the entire land surface of the globe). Livestock is also the single biggest polluter of water worldwide (animal waste, hormones, antibiotics, fertilizers, pesticides, bacteria, viruses, etc). It is only recently that we have begun to understand the extent to which animal husbandry is responsible for climate change (an estimated 18% of total greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transportation sector).
Looked at in that light, a movement towards vegetarianism seems like a no-brainer. But you can imagine the push-back if such a thing were to be legislated, or even talked about in polite society, whether in the developed or developing world. In the meantime, you could just do it because it's the right thing to do. And, actually, it's really not that hard these days. You should have tried it 35 years ago!