Can fake meat help solve climate change?
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Bruce Friedrich on why we need to change the meat, not the consumer, to solve the climate crisis.

Host David Roberts speaks to Bruce Friedrich about how fake meat, plant based or lab grown, can reduce our land use substantially, reduce emissions substantially, and end or reduce the cruelty of animal agriculture. Notably, Friedrich contends that fake meats could end up on a learning curve to bring down the price of these meat alternatives to be cheaper than the real stuff. Much in the same way that we got better at making solar panels and flat screen TVs to the point where those items are magnitudes cheaper than they were just 10 years ago.

Friedrich, a vegan himself, chooses to lump plant based imitations together with the more controversial (but possibly more marketable) lab grown animal tissues for purposes of conversation, particularly when it comes to the economics.

Note, this is primarily an environmental tech podcast. And while the host, David Roberts, wishes he had it in him to go vegan, he has had to settle for reducitarian as he, like many, is weak. Much of the conversation is through the environmental lense, but the content is still valuable to this community.

  • Dippy@beehaw.orgOP
    3·
    1 month ago

    Friedrich gets into that towards the end of the piece. He points out that the total investment into these things is just low. They’ve only gotten a few billion dollars total and thats for both R&D and production. Its hardly enough to get off the ground for a whole new product. Which is exactly where beyond and impossible are, just getting off the ground.

    Cultivating meat isnt too bad because its borrowing from an existing field of science, doctors have been growing tissue for surgeries for years. There are life long experts in that. Food imitation is brand new and has to be developed from scratch.

    I have confidence that both will succeed with time and funding. Expect that every doubling of production will yield a precipitous drop in price paired with a rise in quality.