I swear this is true, for the last three years I have had a running joke with colleagues and family about investing in what I termed "Beaker Meat", or the cultured muscles of livestock animals grown in a laboratory and sold as a consumable food product. I read about the technology in a magazine, Scientific American I think, on a flight to Europe, I was very intrigued with the science and possible uses for it as a food source, everyone I explained it to seemed to find my notion quite ridiculous and I started a running joke about the virtues of "Beaker Meat" and how this investment was the future of food. Now Andrew Revkin the King of Climate Change at The New York Times, has published this gem of an article, "Can People Have Meat and a Planet, Too?"
I almost fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard! To think a running source of humour has become a seriously discussed solution in the fight against climate change! The reason the concept is so funny is not the potential, I saw it right away, but it is the attitudes of people around the world in regards to genetically modified foods. Look at the debate that erupted over the safety of cloned animal meat in the food system, cloned still means gestated and grown as a living animal, here we are discussing creating meat without an animal. People have refused to eat genetically modified wheat, and now you want them to eat 100% genetically cultured animal flesh, I think Revkin might lose some of his faithful readers who I freely admit I lump together stereotypically as the whole grain organic, free range food products consumers.
I do have to admit I admire Revkin for advancing this technology to the mainstream as a possible solution to Global Warming at the serious risk of reader backlash, I cannot help but wonder the fate of the world's livestock herds. Are we to slaughter them all to reduce their "Greenhouse Ass Emissions"?
I think that this technology is a long way from being implemented and it will be something to watch moving forward, yet I do not think I can actually support the slaughtering of our food sources any more than I can support turning food into fuel. This kind of radical thinking, while making for interesting copy, is the kind of green distraction that keeps popping up to divert attention from the reality of AGW. Each year that passes and the correlation between GHG and temperature diverges more and more, you will see an increase in these kind of pieces.
I do, and I hope you do as well, appreciate that my precognitive skills were bang on in the realm of artificially grown muscle cells, and I can once again revive my running shtick about the virtues of "Beaker Meat" for the enjoyment of my friends who thought it over finally, poor unsuspecting souls that they are.
Just a thought About Population
I have been seriously looking at world population and the growth projections, combined with human history and the rise of western industrialized society. There is a direct proven correlation between the standard of living and population growth, the higher the standard of living the lower the growth rates. In many countries growth rates have actually reversed and without immigration populations would be reducing in some countries. So the solution is to get the third world and emerging economies up to western standards as fast as possible, this will ease the population growth, and with this elevated standard of living a more balanced immigration can take place to distribute world population more spatially across the planet easing regional resource pressures.
Just a thought.