[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.