The point of the exercise is to find alternatives that aren't so hard on the environment.
>“By contrast, our process takes a few days to make a steak, has very low water utilization, is carbon negative, uses zero arable land, and minimal land overall.”
The point is not recycling carbon for funsies, but to actually have a positive impact on the environment. Whether the process described actually achieves this is to be determined, but it is evident that animal agriculture today is a big contributor to our environmental issues.
> The point of the exercise is to find alternatives that aren't so hard on the environment.
Cows and grass are "the environment".
Millions of years of evolution refined cows to be the best mechanism for converting grass into meat. Some hippy scientists think they can do better? I doubt.
Yes, the problem is scale. Also, we live in capitalism, so scaling is absolutely necessary to reap huge profits. Cows are not direct problem, just like gun violence?
Cows over those millions of years didn’t have their populations artificially increased beyond sustainable levels for human consumption. The current system of animal agriculture isn’t good for the environment. We don’t have more land to make it sustainable. That’s why “hippy scientists” are trying to find alternatives.
I mean, photosynthesis is only about 1% efficient in the real world, whereas modern solar panels (the ones you can buy, not the ones in a research lab) are already at about 15%. I think there’s plenty of room for improvement in the efficiency of meat production too.
Depends how you measure it. You can indeed achieve higher efficiency than nature if you look at a single number. Where nature always wins is the combined efficiency, because it acts as a whole.
You example is great because it shows just that.
Solar panels might give better absolute numbers but: they are not recyclable, they can't feed cows, they are manufactured in China using materials coming from mines around the world. They need complex set-up and maintenance.
Grass if fully recyclable - in fact it builds soil after dying. It feeds other animals. It protects the soil from erosion. It mines its own materials while growing, in fact it even bootstraps itself given just a seed containing all the code that it ever needs.
A F1 car is faster on a race track, but a bicycle gets the job done much more efficiently in most cities around the world for most tasks.
“… those creatures we behold, are but the hearbs of the field, digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in our selves. Nay further, we are what we all abhorre, Antropophagi and Cannibals, devourers not onely of men, but of our selves; and that not in an allegory, but a positive truth; for all this masse of flesh which wee behold, came in at our mouths: this frame wee looke upon, hath beene upon our trenchers; In briefe, we have devoured our selves.”
Thomas Browne - Religio Medici
