It is biological fact, as the diversity of life in the ocean decays, ecosystems will collapse as important species will be extinct. If you want me to modify my statement: there will be no pretty or edible life in the oceans in 60 years due to pollution and overfishing. There will still be bacteria and micro organisms and maybe a few other things. Biomass, however, will be but a tiny fraction of what it is now.
Humanity has the power to due a lot of destructive things, your proposition is ridiculous in the face of nuclear bombs, so I'm not interested in discussing it.
Oh please. Earth has been hit by objects from space estimated to have power on a completely different scale than all the nuclear war heads humanity has put together. We have the power to destroy ourselves and our interdependently evolved species; but life on earth? No. Life in the ocean, which is still the foundation of life on earth and the vast majority of life forms on earth-- no.
Humanity could do its very worst to the planet, and in a hundred million years after we'd gone extinct, the planet would have done a lot of recovering, maybe even replacing all of its bio-diversity.
I find it absurdly egotistical when environmentalists say we're causing the end of the world; not really, we're only causing the end of ourselves and a few hundred thousand species that will go along with us. Evolution can easily replace us. The planet doesn't need us to protect it, but humanity could definitely afford to protect itself. That's what environmentalism really has at stake: saving us.
Don't get me wrong, we can definitely cause the collapse of many balanced food chains, but natural selection will just make new ones. If you think those new ones would be less useful to us; definitely true. Less pretty? Well, that's subjective but maybe (probably, yeah, pretty close to definitely here too). On the big picture though, bio diversity won't change much. Only on the visible level of big animals we humans seem to like.
But if you think humanity can reduce life in the earth's ocean to micro-orgasms, that's absolutely absurd; you're giving the adaptive power of nature way too little credit. It's a lot more powerful than us puny humans with our puny nuclear weapons infinitely less powerful than nature's own "big events."
Also your assertion that people eat cheeseburgers for complete protein is way more ridiculous than my claims about life in the ocean in 60 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_fishing
see the second paragraph^
True Mckay D's kinda burns all the nutrients out of it... ok, a 2 dollar can of tuna instead; happy?
"Running out of wild caught seafood" is a far cry of ending life in the ocean. lol
The type of thinking that insists on consumption of meat is precisely why the food industry has created a situation where vegetables are more expensive. There is not sufficient demand for massive increase in vegetable consumption of all forms, which would lower the price of vegetables in conjunction with a decrease in consumption of meat. If there were such conditions, we could simply convert land to vegetable farms and produce a shit ton of vegetables some of which could be sold fresh and others of which could be preserved effortlessly through canning (cans can be recycled so this is sustainable). This huge glut of vegetables would reduce the price of vegetables to a point where it would be cheaper for the average person to consume them than meat, even given the same desired nutrients. Many combinations of vegetables yield complete protein the way meat does. Beans and rice are complete protein, and very cheap for example. Soy fermentation, etc. I actually think soy is the food of the future, though it is also a common allergen, it has so many flavor and nutritional possibilities.
I'm not denying that the economic forces of today are what makes meat consumption cheaper than vegetable consumption; but I just outlined the real facts of today. I was being realistic.
I have to find it amusingly hilarious that you talked down to the insect plan as unrealistic straw-hatting, when getting the meat industry to disappear and expect everyone to make way and get on board for the economic/dietary revolution of vegetarianism for the good of all mankind to be any less fanciful. If you're going to talk about unrealistic ideals, you might as well play with other people's ideals. >__>