We found a very interesting article in the Bill Gates Notes, which we want to present.
Meat is a luxury, because the more money people earn in some regions, the more meat they are consuming. Chinas meat consumption doubled in the 1990 with the economic boom. Same phenomenon can be observed in other developing countries such as Brasil, Mexiko and others.
Even though the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also tries to provide children in Africa with meat, dairy and eggs, Bill Gates points out the negative sides of a carnivore nutrition. The raising of animals is one of the most damaging issues to our environment. Animals are feed much more calories than we can extract from them, also a great part of crops in the world are produced to feed animals. Therefore, forests become more and more eliminated in order to create farmland. Thus, not only the earth gets damaged, the increased amount of raised animals also produces more greenhouse gases and the whole production and processing damages the environment even more.
Gates therefore states: “The richer the world gets, the more meat it eats; the more meat it eats, the bigger the threat to the planet.”
Bill Gates discusses the book Should We Eat Meat? by Vaclav Smil. Smil sets up some statistics in his book, such that the quarter of all ice-free land in our world is used to feed livestock. Raising livestock and producing just one kilogram meat takes several thousands of liters of water, not only for watering animals but also for cleaning them and grow crops for them. However, extracting the greenwater from rain, only about 44 liters are used for one kilogram meat. Nevertheless, as droughts in the world increase, producing and consuming meat becomes a huge problem for our planet.
Therefore, only cutting back on meat and turn to veggie-options will prevent us from destroying our planet. This will not only reduce the environmental damage, but also more people can be fed with the same and even less land amount, which will prevent world hunger. Smil, however, sees a development towards less meat in rich countries like Germany and France, where people become more aware of the environmental issues of a carnivore nutrition. Therefore, it is our task to inform people and raise awareness.
Source:
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Should-We-Eat-Meat
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