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‘Climate-Friendly’ Meat May Not Sell in Europe, Literally
(sentientmedia.org)
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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Lab-grown meat is certainly going to be less climate-friendly, less healthy, and more expensive than legumes, whole grains, and nuts (and most processed products made from these ingredients[1])—e.g. red meat is carcinogenic no matter what the source is. For the moment, lab meat is mostly a venture-funded pipe dream.
On the other hand, legumes, whole grains, and nuts are scaled, cheap, healthy, and proven in pretty much every way.
[1] There are pitfalls, of course, such as products that include things like carrageenan, saturated fats, artificial colorants, or too much salt. But you can check for those and skip the offenders.
I understand that veggies exist. That's irrelevant to my desire to eat delicious meat that doesn't come from conscious organisms capable of suffering. Avoiding meat is entirely ethically-based for me.
Coffee is carcinogenic. So are roasted veggies, as well as common food additives. There's reasonable risk mitigation and then there's unreasonable (and impossible) risk elimination. I balance health and quality of life.
I don't think the climate impact of lab-grown meat (when, not if, it is perfected) would be anywhere near the emissions of CAFOs. That's an absurd area to focus on in place of targeting CAFOs, car emissions, jets, etc. that actually are significant sources of emissions.
Apparently it's quite the opposite.
That really depends on how dark you need your veggies.
And you can often avoid them easily. Granted, you may be US-based which may make finding good food harder.
As yet, that's entirely unclear. Right now, most of the companies in the space are pretty tight-lipped. We know that at scale, these companies will need a ton of electricity and they will also need input nutrients, aka perfectly human-edible plants. Some of the calories going in will be lost. How much, we don't know, because right now these companies have no scale and are mostly in a transitional phase where they are replacing animal-based input nutrients.
Going vegan is an immediate, effective, and cost-neutral climate-positive thing you can do individually. It can shave around 1 to 2t of CO2e/year from your impact and it also helps with a host of other issues (water, land use, species extinction, animal cruelty, ...).
15% of global CO2e emissions are from agriculture, the vast majority is directly or indirectly caused by animal agriculture. That number is higher in countries with a high-meat diet.
Reducing land use actually allows for rewilding, thus allowing for offsetting additional emissions.
"I can't do thing X because I am doing unrelated thing Y" seems like a logical fallacy.
The only thing to replace those at scale, right now, is plants. "Grass-fed" is sleight-of-hand bushlit. Lab-grown meats at scale are probably ten years out from now.
As usual, there's no need for a complex technological solution that's worse than the solution we already have.
I say "as usual" because there are a lot of these: public transit v/ self-driving/electric cars; packaging deposit systems v/ plastics recycling; just consuming fewer products v/ CO2-optimizing bullshit products; ... The commonality between all of these examples is that the underlying conflict is public benefit v/ some investor getting rich.
No doubt these need to be targeted as well — but for one, individually, you (probably) can't do much about any of them. For two, if you can optimize or help influence decision-making, go for it.
you can't do anything about cafos, either.
With meat, there is a definite demand-side issue. So yes, individually removing demand does help. And that's beside all the individual advantages.
when did you stop buying meat?
And there were planes in the air last year too, despite me not using one. That's proof that my actions count for less than nothing, thanks!
I said veganism is one effective climate-friendly thing you can do individually. I did not say that one person becoming vegan stops China or Brazil or anyone else in their expansion of animal farming. I did not say that you should stop advocating for change or stop making other changes to your life.
Where is consumption growth coming from?
so you can see that your choices don't decrease cafo production or air travel, right?