Will food logistics limit the population of a civilization of obligate carnivores with modern technology?

I'm imagining a world populated with a species of intelligent, social, and "modern" (in terms of technology) humanoids. For the purposes of this question, they and their world can be near identical to us, except they are obligate carnivores.

I think this may be a mildly controversial point, but it is my understanding that the amount of food used to grow livestock could feed a much larger population of humans than the livestock themselves will feed (see here and here for two simple examples). Similarly, top carnivores are frequently the least common animals in the food chain, as a simple consequence of the fact that there needs to be more of everything else for them to find enough to eat (if you pardon the gross oversimplification).

This leads me to believe that, all else being equal, a species of technological carnivores would have more trouble maintaining as large of a population as we do on the same world, due to the logistics of acquiring sufficient food. However, I'm not actually sure if this is true, nor am I sure what the main limiting factors would be (increased land use for food, increased environmental destruction, increased transportation needs etc...) and if they limiting factors might cause more short-term or long-term problems (aka New York city is simply no longer possible for logistic reasons, or modern cities are possible but increased environmental destruction causes more sever global warming). Of course, another possibility is that this won't be an issue at all. To summarize though:

1. Would being an obligate carnivore make it harder for a technological society to enjoy the same sustained population growth that we have had?
2. If not, what are likely to be the primary limiting factors?

posted almost 6 years ago

conman‭

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