New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2 • Hacker News Board

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#71

Post by jcarrano » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:26 PM UTC

myshpa wrote: post #18

Or we could switch to eating plants now. We already get 82% calories and 63% proteins from plants. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides,…

What's the ultimate purpose? To subsist using the minimal amount of resources? Have you considered that people may want to eat animals?

Every human activity consumes resources. We cannot make the reduction of consumption as a goal in itself. At the end of the road, what that line of thinking leads to is just existing for the mere fact of existing while occupying the minimal space and feeding ourselves enough to meet our required daily values. I do not think that is an existence that makes sense.

Going back to "agricultural land use". Much of the land use for raising animals would not become a lush forest if left alone. There's a reason it is being used for animals and not crops.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#72

Post by robinson7d » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

haswell wrote: post #57

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solutions of "everyone just needs to do " are a dime a dozen. We could solve war if everyone just stopped fighting. It's better to fix incentives such as making meat more expensive through taxes or fewer subsidies on meat or feed grains (corn). Or making vegetables cheaper. I could see a serious PR campaign to support farmers/small business (conservative hook) and eat local planet variety combined with fulfilling…

This isn’t an either/or proposition. Long term goals (“everyone just needs to do ”) can (must) coexist alongside shorter term incentives and PR campaigns. To your point, hyper fixation on the long term goal makes it seem unachievable. But conversely, short term incentives must necessarily be informed by long term goals if there’s hope of establishing a useful incentive structure. Success will require focus on both en…

The comment they were replying to didn’t sound long term. It specified “now” in the first sentence, so at best short-medium term.

The “everyone just needs to do ” part wasn’t a reference to a long term idea, it was them replying to somebody expecting that immediately (or, with a more forgiving reading, in a shorter term)

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#73

Post by kolinko » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

myshpa wrote: post #18

Or we could switch to eating plants now. We already get 82% calories and 63% proteins from plants. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides,…

I noticed that many people who propose this are not aware of a plethora of health issues that people have that make eating plant-based foods extremely difficult.

For many people eating plants only is extremely difficult - e.g. for me personally, with a plethora of food allergies (soy, almonds, various kinds of nuts, apples, peaches and other fruits) and intestine issues causing irritation when consuming multiple other things.

Ditto people that require a low/slow carb diet - there is a limit of how much nuts you can eat a week without getting sick ;)

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#74

Post by boston_clone » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

Notably, this study doesn't focus on current plant-based meat substitutes like Impossible, Beyond, or Gardein, which objectively produce less CO2, use less resources, and cause less suffering.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#75

Post by chiefalchemist » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #48

myshpa wrote: post #18

Or we could switch to eating plants now. We already get 82% calories and 63% proteins from plants. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides,…

The solutions of "everyone just needs to do " are a dime a dozen. We could solve war if everyone just stopped fighting. It's better to fix incentives such as making meat more expensive through taxes or fewer subsidies on meat or feed grains (corn). Or making vegetables cheaper. I could see a serious PR campaign to support farmers/small business (conservative hook) and eat local planet variety combined with fulfilling…

> making meat more expensive through taxes or fewer subsidies on meat or feed grains (corn).

But how is that any less dime a dozen? In theory, I agree with you. But the reality is, we don't have the politicians with the backbone or the will to say "I'm going to make your food more expensive." People lost it when eggs shot up in price. Imagine that across the entire diary and meats section at the supermarket?

Incentive work, but this Fed gov solution is DOA.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#76

Post by idopmstuff » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

haswell wrote: post #57

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solutions of "everyone just needs to do " are a dime a dozen. We could solve war if everyone just stopped fighting. It's better to fix incentives such as making meat more expensive through taxes or fewer subsidies on meat or feed grains (corn). Or making vegetables cheaper. I could see a serious PR campaign to support farmers/small business (conservative hook) and eat local planet variety combined with fulfilling…

This isn’t an either/or proposition. Long term goals (“everyone just needs to do ”) can (must) coexist alongside shorter term incentives and PR campaigns. To your point, hyper fixation on the long term goal makes it seem unachievable. But conversely, short term incentives must necessarily be informed by long term goals if there’s hope of establishing a useful incentive structure. Success will require focus on both en…

> To your point, hyper fixation on the long term goal makes it seem unachievable.

It's not even a feasible long term goal, though. There are plenty of places where steady progress will lead to achievements in the long term that seem unbelievable now - science may yet reverse climate change, achieve nuclear fusion at scale, cure cancer (and aging), etc.

This isn't one of those things, though. There's no path from where we are now to nobody eating animals that involves us just making incremental progress, a bit at a time. Long-term goals are great, but long-term goals that can't plausibly be achieved are bad.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#77

Post by perrygeo » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

aplummer wrote: post #31

I’m surprised at the skepticism here on HN. Was everyone this skeptical / glib when the (insert technology) was useless when it was invented? Anyone seen the efficiency of a solar panel in 1970? Factory farming is a real problem to solve.

The skepticism comes from a keen awareness that technology is not a solution in itself. You've made a common logical fallacy; it is true that factory farming and solar panels can solve specific problems. But measuring the progress of the proposed solution doesn't measure its effectiveness at solving the fundamental problem at scale. Nor does it prove that the technology is appropriate or necessarily better than alternatives.

If solar panels are a solution to replace fossil fuels, then show me a decrease in fossil fuels (nope, solar panel adoption and fossil fuel burn are positively correlated). If factory farms are a solution for providing reducing the impact of traditional farms, then show me a decrease in the total ecological footprint of our agricultural system (nope, we can't even do so on a small scale per this study and others like it). What you call "skepticism", I call critical thinking about empirical data.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#78

Post by NoZebra120vClip » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #48

myshpa wrote: post #18

Or we could switch to eating plants now. We already get 82% calories and 63% proteins from plants. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides,…

The solutions of "everyone just needs to do " are a dime a dozen. We could solve war if everyone just stopped fighting. It's better to fix incentives such as making meat more expensive through taxes or fewer subsidies on meat or feed grains (corn). Or making vegetables cheaper. I could see a serious PR campaign to support farmers/small business (conservative hook) and eat local planet variety combined with fulfilling…

Salads carry a huge profit margin at restaurants.

Everyone loves to eat healthy or at least believe that they're doing so. A salad is a great healthy choice (until you slather it with dressing, which is nutritionally awful stuff.)

But a house salad is composed of the cheapest ingredients ever: you've got tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, cucumbers, a little shredded cheese and croutons. But you can charge at least $7.99 for something that simple. And you can offer a protein to go on top for extra profit.

And truthfully there's very little nutrition of any kind in that ingredients list. When you've grown your lettuce in impoverished soil, and your tomatoes are picked green and "ripen on the vine" or artificially induced, there's not much they can offer. Someone once said to me, "How do you kill an iguana? Feed it nothing but iceberg lettuce."

Now don't get me wrong, salads are a great part of anyone's diet and we should never neglect salads, because they're certainly preferable to a burger and fries every day. But vegetables, being cheap to produce and profitably marked up, are hindering many a plan to stay healthy.

Developed countries do not build food plans based on the good nutrition of the populace, they're based on maximizing shareholder value for the agribusiness conglomerates, and subsidizing the most strategically important crops. We could eat corn until we are literally blue in the face.

As long as your corner convenience store is jammed with corn chips, beef jerky, and beer, Americans will never eat healthy, even if the Food Pyramid is rehabilitated. I have seen some good progress made on bringing fresh produce to food desert areas. I hope those initiatives succeed and continue.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#79

Post by prottog » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

Lutger wrote: post #49

Tade0 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind efficiency - anyone seen the price of a solar panel as recently as in 2000? Good thing someone took one for the team and invested in scaling this up.

That was Germany, they basically financed solar energy with tax money (about 200 billion), then their industry was killed by China.

It's so strange that a mostly cloudy country at 51ºN spent so much money developing solar energy.

Re: New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more CO2

#80

Post by ben_w » Fri, Jun 23, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #61

ben_w wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plant farming eventually strips the nutrients from the soil Crop rotation predates the wheel by about two millennia. We're using the synthetic alternative because it's really amazing not because we don't have alternatives.

> because it's really amazing on the timeframes and liability frameworks that govern industrial decision-making Small but critical detail.

I'd say more "government" timescale; food may technically be from private farms selling on free markets, but they're heavily subsidised because of the fundamental importance to society of making sure we never, ever, under any circumstances, have a famine.

Not after what happened last time.

(What happened last time varying between country, of course).