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by myshpa 1041 days ago
Something even more rarely mentioned is that urban and built up areas are just 1% of habitable earth, forests (37%), urban crops 10% (providing 82% of calories) and animal agriculture 35% (for those remaining 18% of calories).

If we'd switch to plant based diets, we would globally free an area the space of both Americas. If this area were reforested/rewilded, we'd store enough carbon to stop climate change, stop biodiversity loss, droughts, soil erosion, eutrophication and anthropogenic oceanic dead zones, and we'd still have plenty of space to build housing for everybody.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/