Originally Posted by sabertooth
Meat production was not singled out as "the" problem. The claim was that eating less meat would probably be among the top five responses to the question, "What are the most important things I can do to help protect the environment?"
To me, the interesting point is not that agriculture also harms the environment, but that meat production can be so much more harmful than crop production: "To produce one calorie of protein from soy takes two calories of fossil fuel. For beef it takes 54 calories."
The mining issue you point out is probably legitimate (I'm not a hydrogeologist btw). However, it seems logical to me that someone who consumes a car is doing much more damage (by supporting mining) than someone who consumes a bicycle instead. (Here's what the NWEI has to say about cars, btw:
http://www.nwei.org/ecotips/CarImpact.pdf)
The section "What You Can Do" looks at multiple ways to address the problem. For example, instead of telling people to stop eating meat completely, it suggests reducing your consumption and/or buying meat from animals raised locally on small farms.
Neither the problem nor the recommendations seem silly to me.
What I find silly, actually ridiculous, is when veggies, who'll fly around the world on vacations, where synthetic materials, and ride things made of metal, preach to people how bad meat production is to the environment (I'm not arguing its not). What I mean is the whole system is unsustainable and we're all part of the problem. You can preach that by riding a bicycle and not eating meat that you're somehow more responsible than someone who eats veal and drives an H2, but in the end you're a consumer as well and having a negative environmental and social impact on the world. I gave up worrying about that a long time ago and now ride my bike and eat less meat because I want to live longer, but am not under any delusions about the size of footprint I'm leaving behind.