It's complicated. Some places in the world, livestock is grown quite sustainably and are basically neutral climate-wise. Other places, it is an unmitigated ecol

It's complicated. Some places in the world, livestock is grown quite sustainably and are basically neutral climate-wise. Other places, it is an unmitigated ecological disaster (clearing rain forest, for example). Because we produce so much around the world, on average, it is pretty bad. Generally, livestock takes more land than grain crops in order to produce the same calories. However, there is more to nutrition than simple calories, so optimising for calories per hectare is probably not the right answer either. I once saw a report suggesting that you can feed more people with less total impact if you include livestock in the mix because livestock can graze on more marginal land than you can farm crops on. I am not qualified to comment on the veracity of that report. I think, in the end, going vegan for climate change reasons is an extreme and unjustified position. On the other hand, almost everyone can stand to eat less meat than they currently do and would probably be healthier for it (myself, included). If we reduce overall meat consumption, it would definitely be a net win for climate and ecology reasons as we could concentrate on producing more sustainably on average than we currently do.