Talk on “Limits to Growth and Veganism”

I will be giving a talk on “Limits to Growth and Veganism” at the Vegan World 2026 Virtual Convergence. It will be Saturday (TOMORROW, October 31) at 1 PM Mountain Daylight time (= 3 PM Eastern Daylight time = 2 PM Central Daylight time = 12 noon Pacific Daylight).  It will be in the Vegan Infrastructure Room (New Ecology, New Economy, New Governance).   You can get tickets here. They are $49 each, but there is an option to ask to get in free, so no one will be turned away. The links will be sent out to ticket holders.

The convergence will be entirely virtual (you’ll need a PC, laptop, or other device to access it on the internet) and held this weekend (October 31 and November 1). It features Dr. John McDougall (“The Connection between Chronic Disease / Climate Change / COVID19 = Diet”),  Judy Carman (“Homo Ahimsa”), Renee King-Sonnen (the “Rowdy Girl”) and of course Sailesh Rao who will present the “Strategic Action Plan,” among many others.

Here’s a description of my talk:

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This is a broad overview of the problem of limits to economic growth and veganism. We need to reduce consumption, reduce human population, and eliminate or drastically reduce livestock agriculture. We will discuss:

— How limits to critical resources have impacted the economy
— Why a vegan world is necessary but not sufficient
— Why limits to growth is so difficult for our society to engage
— The kinds of cultural, economic, and political changes we need to make
— What proposals have been made by people such as Herman Daly, Robert Goodland, and Kate Raworth

The total time would be an hour or less, about half of that time for discussion and questions.
– – – – – –

Sorry for the late notice; I just found out I was going to be on the schedule yesterday.

12 thoughts on “Talk on “Limits to Growth and Veganism””

  1. Drew Hensley

    How capitalist giants fall. ExxonMobil was world’s largest firm in 2013. Its 2008 profits = $46 billion.Today it is not even in world’s 40 biggest companies; will lose over $3 billion in 2020. Exxon’s corporate geniuses bet on fossil fuels, lost, and just set 1,900 US layoffs. – Professor Richard Wolff

    Dr. Wolff just posted to Facebook. I think Big Oil is in Big Trouble!

  2. Jonathan Wade Maxson

    Hope you and Kate are doing well, Keith, and your Convergence 2026 talk was well-attended.

    Now that Biden is President-elect, can you bring us up to speed on a conservative vegan view of the Paris Agreement? How likely is it to get vegans where we need to go?

    Thanks.

    1. Keith Akers Post author

      I think the word “conservative” in your question might be misunderstood by others . . . I’m not a conservative vegan, so you’d have to ask the “conservative vegans” . . .

      I haven’t actually studied the Paris Agreement in detail. But speaking conservatively, getting back into the Paris Agreement seems like a good thing. Talking to others about global warming and wanting to do something about it is generally a good thing. There probably hasn’t been enough serious attention to the problem of livestock agriculture (among other things), but better to start somewhere than not to start.

      1. Jonathan Wade Maxson

        Thanks much, Keith.

        I wonder if the “conservative” vegans are now on the side of rapid nuclear scale-up + veganism as the only two realistic strategies to prevent collapse…while the “progressive” vegans are on the side or rapid renewables scale-up + conservation and population control + veganism?

        Or maybe that should be the other way around.

        Progressive Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), the only vegan US senator I am aware of, is on the side of nuclear power:

        https://grist.org/article/cory-booker-and-his-full-throated-support-of-nuclear-energy-enters-the-presidential-race/

        Uncharted territory ahead.

  3. Drew Hensley

    So I’m so progressive I think Cory is conservative; but I’m very happy to have conservatives onboard the vegan environmental train. ? – Drew

    “The International Energy Agency (IEA) says solar is now the cheapest form of electricity for utility companies to build. That’s thanks to risk-reducing financial policies around the world, the agency says, and it applies to locations with both the most favorable policies and the easiest access to financing. The report underlines how important these policies are to encouraging development of renewables and other environmentally forward technologies.”

    Professor Katherine Hayhoe, climatologist

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a34372005/solar-cheapest-energy-ever/

    Excerpted From Dr. Hayhoe’s Facebook page.

    1. Jonathan Wade Maxson

      Thanks for the input, Drew. Unless our moderator steps in and tells me I have my terms mixed up, I will play the conservative vegan constitutionalist for the sake of discussion on this blog. That said, it shouldn’t be too hard to convince me that we don’t need a lot more nuclear power to sustainably supply the majority of our prospective vegan states.

      Should it?

      I read the article about the cost of solar power you cited but it doesn’t address the waste problem:

      https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/uncategorized/will-solar-power-fault-next-environmental-crisis/

      I’ve also heard (in a talk by Joshua Goldstein) that we can make nuclear considerably cheaper if we mass produce the reactors and ship them out to their sites.

    1. Keith Akers Post author

      The hosts did not make a recording. I made my own recording but the quality was not very good (it was a Zoom call), so I didn’t post it anywhere. I’m now working on how to make and upload my own video to YouTube. I’m hoping it will be ready by sometime in the new year . . . so stay tuned. This is a topic of very great interest to me.

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