It's a hard problem. I'd like to imagine factory meat will free up land for use as wild nature preserves, which are the only real way to, well, preserve nature.

It's a hard problem. I'd like to imagine factory meat will free up land for use as wild nature preserves, which are the only real way to, well, preserve nature. But land has many other alternative uses. Until we value every one of those alternative uses less than we value preserving nature itself, we'll tend to use the land for something else. Of course it depends on the land in question. Any land that is currently good for grazing and nothing should immediately be freed up once grazing stops being economical. Unfortunately, the land like that is not the most biodiverse -- it's rocky scrub, not forest -- but I'll be happy to see it added to the set of lands we don't want to mess with.