[crackpotbaker]

I'm surprised Gates, for all his work in this field, has failed to recognise that we're burning up more food growing cattle and farming animals, than if we were to just eat the plant resources we use to feed the animals.

It's mathematically crazy that, during a mass shortage of food in some parts of the world, we're feeding a net loss of food in order to eat animal produce.

He's even insane enough to support getting more meat, dairy and eggs to Africa, instead of just bringing the nutrient filled crops.

With his attitude about energy and carbon footprint reduction, there's no way, India, China and Africa live sustainably on a meat filled diet.

[henrikschroder]

We will not solve the problems of the meat industry by convincing people to eat less meat, asceticism never works as public policy.

The way forward on that issue is to develop synthetic meat products that can out-compete animal meat on economical/ethical/environmental dimensions.

[jackpirate]

You just have to put a sin tax on it like we do with (for example) cigarettes.

[crackpotbaker]

This is true. If the US stopped giving tax breaks, money, to the corn guys, the hamburger would be a more expensive meal.

Tax-payers are currently paying for people to get cardiovascular diseases.

[crackpotbaker]

> We will not solve the problems of the meat industry by convincing people to eat less meat, asceticism never works as public policy.

This is exactly what Bill Gates seems to want to do.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Should-We-Eat-Meat

The arguments for why he wants to do it are in the article to one of the repliers to my OP.

> ?—one solution would be to ask the biggest carnivores (Americans and others) to cut back, by as much as half. -- Bill Gates, the pink glasses guy

Other solutions are miracle agricultural and technological breakthroughs. He's ignoring scientific facts when it comes to energy conversion from sun to plants, the long time of investment return of \w+ponics technologies and transition costs. The largest energy and efficiency gains can be made by improving logistics, everything else is set in stone by the laws of physics.

Yeah, I'll praise the synthetic meat, but really, 2048 - year of massive oceanic ecosystem collapse, due to pollution and the number of species going extinct directly because of the animal agribusiness is heavily increasing. Not to mention Amazon rainforest and similar issues. The damage is already done, there's no turning back. What Bill Gates is doing is just more damage and accelerating the process. This problem cannot be solved in 20 years time, it might be the case that it should have been solved by now to avoid the catastrophic side-effects.

> asceticism never works as public policy.

Yeah, me the first-world ascetic not eating meat. This statement makes no sense. Asceticism can in no way be compared to removing products from animal sources.

Let's ignore the first world, let's concentrate on the developing India+Africa.

India would have a food crisis if 40% of its population weren't vegetarians.

Why not encourage plant-based diets instead of pushing, through his Foundation the meat, dairy and eggs?

The guy is irrational. There's nothing more about it.

[FlyingLawnmower]

I'm inclined to agree here -- the energy inefficiency of meat is really quite astonishing when you look into it [1].

Not to mention the global environmental benefits, etc.

[1] http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-mi...

[ZenoArrow]

I think he's wise not to tackle this issue.

Food is more than just a means to an end, it's also a core part of human culture. We can't expect to fix cultural issues with money alone, even if philanthropists made it very easy to live a vegan lifestyle there would still be people who chose to eat meat regardless. It has to be a cultural change to stand a chance in succeeding, it's up to us as individuals to make this change.

[crackpotbaker]

Okay, I can definitely agree that this issue shouldn't be tackled by him -- there's too much emotion linked to diet and people seem to think their behavioural changes consisting of recycling and saving water are enough. But he, as the richest man in the world, could just say that he's on a plant based diet (he's currently not).

I believe a lot of people would quit the luxurious flesh eating habits if someone as Bill Gates says he's a vegan and just states his reasons.

Yes, it would be a pretty hypocritical statement since he's probably having a bigger footprint than most of the people on the planet but still, he shouldn't force his meat-dairy-eggs culture onto the impoverished nations of Africa. He's doing exactly that, stating also that there are enormous health benefits to eating meat - being surely wrong.

From just energy perspective it's level-2 diet. Level-0 would be picking berries, trees, hunting animals etc., Level-1 is raising plants, level-2 is raising plants to raise animals.

From an energy perspective it is entirely irrational of him to support this in developing world.

[cgh]

>> stating also that there are enormous health benefits to eating meat - being surely wrong.

No, Bill knows what he's talking about. Animal-based foods are the most nutritious foods for humans. Beef liver, for example, is one of the most nutrient-dense foods you can eat, outclassing vegetables in every way save fibre content.

Animal consumption is an evolutionarily and culturally significant behaviour. Arguments about energy usage aren't enough to overcome these things.

[crackpotbaker]

How much food does a cow need to filter to get that nutrient-dense liver?

My estimate is that it's probably equivalent to several families dining on protein rich, nutrient rich grains throughout the whole year.

Your arguments that appeal to tradition, history, and culture, cannot be considered rational arguments. They also aren't derived from morals (product of rationalism). They are empty.

I wonder how did the Chinese solve their food crisis, I guess it was raising billions of cattle to feed their hungry people beef liver?

It's a luxurious food, not necessary, and given Bill's arguments - he obviously is missing the point. Given the recent WHO report and thousands of papers, including the discovery of mechanistic-molecular processes, causal link to meat consumption and heart disease (LDL cholesterol), they are just papers away from finding the causal link between cancer and meat consumption (sugars found in animal flesh alone). Given the huge amount of evidence it is not rational to call it a healthy food.

Freedom of Information Act documents reveal that the U.S. Department of Agriculture warned the egg industry that saying eggs are nutritious or safe may violate rules against false and misleading advertising.

Same will happen with dairy and milk, for dairy there are also hundreds of papers linking consumption with iron and calcium deficiency.

Claiming that meat, dairy and eggs is good food for developing nations is irrational, incorrect and contrary to the majority of evidence available.

Linking cigarettes with lung disease was done decades before they decided to make laws to ban the marketing. Thousands of papers were written, and everyone was denying it, because cigarettes were the cultural thing of the first-world countries. Call to tradition isn't a rational argument.

[ars]

> How much food does a cow need to filter to get that nutrient-dense liver?

Cows eat food humans can't. That's the entire point of having them!

In some places they feed them other things, but it doesn't have to be that way.

[ZenoArrow]

> "I believe a lot of people would quit the luxurious flesh eating habits if someone as Bill Gates says he's a vegan and just states his reasons."

I don't think you've understood Bill Gates' position in our culture. He's clearly admired as a businessman and as a philanthropist, but I don't see much evidence that people are seeking to emulate his lifestyle choices.

Instead of waiting for Bill Gates to become a vegan, focus your energy on positive changes you can make. For example, want to encourage people to eat more vegetables? Why not start a cookery channel on YouTube that you can use to promote vegan food?

[crackpotbaker]

I'm not really waiting for him to become vegan. I'm waiting for him to become rational - veganism follows from that. He doesn't have to promote it, he just has to live it.

I'm doing plenty of positive changes while waiting and pointing out his irrational argumentation over energy.

One is replying here with a unique opinion.

The other is applying my own engineering skills, tied very tightly to logistics (NP-hard optimization).

Bill Gates is a huge driver for startups and people reinventing the food industry. But his posts on energy never include the biggest luxury of all, the mightiest polluter, the strongest destroyer, the most prolific murderer - the animal agriculture industry. Without it + great logistics, the greenhouse gases emissions he's so eager to reduce would reduce immensely.

When animal agriculture footprint becomes smaller than all traffic combined, when it becomes smaller than all of the heating - then I'll concentrate on other things.

Anyone profiling a program would optimize the big percentages, not the small ones. Having a couple of thousand people watching my region centered vegan cooking videos is nothing.

[ZenoArrow]

> "Having a couple of thousand people watching my region centered vegan cooking videos is nothing."

You're wrong. That's what change from the grass roots looks like.

> "The other is applying my own engineering skills, tied very tightly to logistics (NP-hard optimization)."

Interesting. Is this related to promoting a vegan diet?

[tim333]

>during a mass shortage of food in some parts of the world

Do we have mass shortages at the moment? As opposed to some people being hungry because they are out of cash.