I have a very high regard for the reporting at the venerable “Economist.” (Somewhat less so for the editorial writers.) In a perfectly informative, relatively important article recently on water quality and quantity issues worldwide, I thought the writer overstepped the bounds of reason on one particular point. For the record, here is my letter to the Editor:
Sir,
In your otherwise thorough and penetrating article on water shortages (“Sin aqua non, April 11th, 2009), one sentence jumped off the page at me, striking me as singularly wrongheaded: “The shift of diet will be impossible to reverse since it is a product of rising wealth and urbanisation.” Given the burden on health from an inordinately meat-based diet; the pressure on food prices and water resources that you so accurately describe; the further thoroughly documented contributions that animal agriculture, particularly beef production, makes to global climate change owing to devastating land-use practices, the build-up of nitrous oxide from the inorganic fertilizers used to grow feed, and the methane from manure and the animals themselves; not to mention the extraordinary toxic soup of pesticides, steroids and antibiotics that are increasingly used in the production of meat; then one would have to assume that societies around the world would choose a different path to “affluence.” It would not only not be impossible for developing nations to “leapfrog” into diets that are more traditional and infinitely healthier for their populations and local environments, it would be, given the dissemination of knowledge about smarter, cheaper and healthier ways to eat and a reduced obedience to the relentless marketing of interests that promote this behavior, preferable.