But someone else could propose only eating meat to solve the massive use of pesticide. Apart from the possible health issues, he would be as right in his position as you are.
I do not think you can ever consume the same amount of pesticides by eating plants if before that you ate nontrivial amounts of chicken, chicken eggs, beef, milk etc. Cow eats several tons of plants in its lifetime. I'm pretty sure human comes no where close. The bioaccumulation happening there is a serious issue.
That stuff is filled with bioaccumulated pesticides.
This is a classic Tragedy of the Commons. No single individual is incentivized to sacrifice for the good of the group as a whole.
But it's not correct to say that "it's not going to happen" - there are many counter-examples. The most notable is the ozone layer depletion problem that has been largely mitigated over the last 3 decades through concerted action among govts, NGOs and with public education. From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion:
"The Montreal Protocol is considered the most successful international environmental agreement to date. ... The ozone hole was seen as a "hot issue" and imminent risk as lay people feared severe personal consequences such as skin cancer, cataracts, damage to plants, and reduction of plankton populations. ... Americans voluntarily switched away from aerosol sprays, resulting in a 50 percent sales loss even before legislation was enforced."
So yes, at some future point, if govts/NGOs do their part and the average human comes to believe they face imminent personal danger (which we already do but it's hidden), meat production may well become heavily regulated and large numbers of people may switch to vegetarianism.
What is your point. That we shouldn't do anything, because it is all hopeless?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vegetables-contai...
I was watching some Canadian CBC Marketplace videos where they show that some sellers just buy factory produced food and then label it as organic/farmer produced.
Antibacterial resistance is becoming more evident. Beside regulate the use of antibotics (and pesticide) in food source, we should not overlook the overuse of antibotics in medical treatments [1][2][3].
Patients often do not understand what antibotics are for, and they would ask their doctors to prescribe antibotics even when antibotics are absolutely unnecessary. Some doctors will give in because the prescription would avoid confrontation with the patient and therefore will give the patient an illusion he/she is receiving the full treatment.
Antibacterial resistance affects now and our future generations. Look up “antibotic resistance” in Google News and you will find hundreds of news articles over the years.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/features/antibioticuse/index.html
[2]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170509121924.h...
[3]: http://www.utswmedicine.org/stories/articles/year-2017/antib...