Forever chemicals in my blood

 

From the BBC

As I walked into the medical clinic for my blood test, all I could think about was how to avoid looking like a wimp on camera. I didn't really contemplate what the test would reveal.

I am not great with needles - but as part of a BBC Panorama investigation into so-called forever chemicals, I was being tested to see what level of them I had in my blood. As a mum with two small children, I also wanted to know whether they may be having an impact on my family.

Forever chemicals, or PFAS (per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances), are a group of about 10,000 chemicals. They have been used for decades, in anything from waterproof clothes, to cookware, electronics and medical equipment.

They are persistent pollutants, meaning they don't degrade easily and instead build up in the environment.

They exist in our homes, our water and in our food.

Scientists have linked a small number of them to serious harms, such as infertility and cancer.

Any level of PFAS above 2ng (nanograms) per millilitre of blood is considered to bring health risks, according to Dr Sabine Donnai, a specialist in preventative healthcare. She has never met anyone without at least some PFAS in their bloodstream.

My result was 9.8ng per millilitre.

Dr Donnai delivered the news very gently - but it still hit me hard.

The forever chemicals in my blood would "most likely" have an impact on my health, she told me.

I also learned that, sadly, my body would have rid itself of some of these chemicals during pregnancy, by passing it on to my babies.

That was the moment this investigation stopped being just work and felt very personal.

"They [PFAS levels] would have been even higher before your pregnancies," Dr Donnai told me.

"You will have passed on to your children for sure."

I was worried, but I also felt angry about how this could have happened without me having any knowledge, and very little control.

I wanted to know more about these substances and the health issues they have been linked to.

PFAS chemicals "don't break down", said Stephanie Metzger from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

"Once they get into our bodies, they stick around and build up little-by-little until they start to interfere with our systems.

"Some PFAS have been linked to thyroid problems, some to kidney and liver cancer, and some have been shown to affect fertility."

As for me, it is "unlikely" I will be able to bring my levels to zero, said Dr Donnai.

"But you can reduce it over the next two or three years with a strategy."

She suggested I increase my fibre intake - either by eating more oats, barley, beans, nuts and seeds, or by taking supplements of gel-forming fibre. Increased fibre in our diet is "the strongest evidence to date that might help", she said.

If I did these things, menstruation would also help reduce my current PFAS levels over time, she added.

She also told me to identify the biggest sources of exposure in my home - replace my non-stick cookware with ceramic, stainless steel or cast iron alternatives, use a water filter and switch to eco-friendly cleaning products which are transparent about being PFAS-free.

Look for PFAS-free make-up and hair products and avoid ingredients with "fluoro" or "PTFE" in the name, she added.

Similar advice was given to mum-to-be Pam Kavanagh, who we visited at home in Berkshire with Dr Federica Amati of Imperial College London.

Pam was eager to know how to reduce the possible household risks of PFAS to her baby - and Dr Amati has studied how babies and children can be affected by forever chemicals.

"When we drink tap water, we are, depending on where you live, at varying levels of exposure to PFAS," Dr Amati said.

Just buying a water filter can help to reduce exposure, she said - whether that is a jug with a filter in it, or a filter installed into the actual sink.

Any non-stick frying pans with scratches on them should be thrown out, Dr Amati advised.

Stainless steel or ceramic pans "are far safer", she said.

Carpets can be treated with PFAS to make them more stain resistant, she added, suggesting that people vacuum their carpets every day.

"Making sure you ventilate the room by opening the windows every single day is a good idea [because] it really collects as house dust," she added

Dr Amati then turned to children's clothing. Pam was left "speechless" to discover that waterproof or stain-resistant clothing can contain PFAS. Manufacturers are under no obligation to disclose this information.

Some children's products are not PFAS-free, despite claiming to be, the BBC learned.

We found PFAS in a children's coat we bought from the Mountain Warehouse website a few months ago, even though the site says that none of its children's products are made with forever chemicals.

If fabrics containing PFAS come into "prolonged contact with human skin" there's the potential the chemicals can be absorbed across the skin, explained Prof Stuart Harrad at the University of Birmingham, who tested the coat for us.

To reduce the risk, opt for untreated fabrics and avoid "waterproof" or "stain-repellent" labels unless they have a PFAS-free certification, said Dr Donnai.

This piece on Wikipedia shows how ubiquitous and how dangerous PFAs are. 

Why don't we ban their manufacture?  Why do you think?  Because of money.  Because of "donations" from companies to politicians.  Because lobbyists stop action.  It's the same with microplastics or nanoplastics.  We know they are deadly.  But we go on producing them.  We know burning fossil fuels is leading to climate catastrophe.  But we allow oil and gas companies to pervert our political system, and even invite their representatives and lobbyists to the COP conferences.  We know that pesticides are leading to insectageddon, yet still we do not act.  Ask yourself why.

Source: Wikipedia

The seas are dying

 By Fiona Katauskas.  The cartoon refers to the toxic bloom in the seas off South Australia.

The seas are dying.  The land is subject to extreme heatwaves, droughts, bushfires and flooding.  Insect populations are collapsing.

Yet still we do nothing.

Half the tree of life is going extinct

Light traps have long been used to monitor nocturnal insect numbers. In a photograph of one taken in 1978, about 3,000 species were identified. Photograph: Patrick Greenfield/The Guardian

This is one of the most depressing and dispiriting pieces I've seen in a long time.

From The Guardian.  Lightly edited] 

In front of him was a world seething with life. Every branch of every tree seemed to host its own small metropolis of creatures hunting, flying, crawling, eating. The research facility lay in a patchwork of protected rainforest, dry forest, cloud forest, mangroves and coastline covering an area the size of New York, and astonishingly rich in biodiverse life. Here, the bugs gorged, coating the leaf litter with a thick carpet of droppings.

But the real show was at night: for two hours each evening, the site got power and a 25-watt bulb flickered on above the porch. Out of the forest darkness, a tornado of insects would flock to its glow, spinning and dancing before the light. Lit up, the side of the house would be “absolutely plastered with moths – tens of thousands of them”, Janzen says.

Inspired, he decided to erect a sheet for a light trap with a camera – a common way to document flying insect numbers and diversity. In that first photograph, taken in 1978, the lit-up sheet is so thickly studded with moths that in places the fabric is barely visible, transformed into what looks like densely patterned, crawling wallpaper.

Scientists identified an astonishing 3,000 species from that light trap, and the trajectory of Janzen’s career was transformed, from the study of seeds to a lifetime specialising in the forest’s barely documented populations of caterpillars and moths.

Now 86, Janzen still works in the same research hut in the Guanacaste conservation area, alongside his longtime collaborator, spouse and fellow ecologist, Winnie Hallwachs. But in the forest that surrounds them, something has changed. Trees that once crawled with insects lie uncannily still.

The hum of wild bees has faded, and leaves that should be chewed to the stem hang whole and un-nibbled. It is these glossy, untouched leaves that most spook Janzen and Hallwachs. They are more like a pristine greenhouse than a living ecosystem: a wilderness that has been fumigated and left sterile. Not a forest, but a museum.

Over the decades, Janzen has repeated his light traps, hanging the sheet, watching for what comes. Today, some moths flutter to the glow, but their numbers are far fewer.

“It’s the same sheet, with the same lights, in the same place, looking over the same vegetation. Same time of year, same time of the moon cycle, everything about it is identical,” he says. “There’s just no moths on that sheet.” 

The declines witnessed by Janzen – and described by others around the world – are part of what some ecologists call a “new era” of ecological collapse, where rapid extinctions occur in regions that have little direct contact with people.

Reports of falling insect numbers around the world are not new. International reviews have estimated annual losses globally of between 1% and 2.5% of total biomass every year.

Widespread use of pesticides and fertilisers, light and chemical pollution, loss of habitat and the growth of industrial agriculture have all carved into their numbers. Often, these were deaths of proximity: insects are sensitive creatures, and any nearby source of pollution can send their populations crumbling.

But what Janzen and Hallwachs are witnessing is a part of a newer phenomenon: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations in supposedly protected regions of forest. “In the parts of Costa Rica that are heavily hit by pesticides, the insects are completely wiped out,” Hallwachs says.

 “But what we see here in the preserved areas – that as far as we can tell, are free of even these destructive insecticides and pesticides – even here, the insect numbers are going down horrifyingly dramatically,” she says.

Long-term data for insect populations – particularly less charismatic species – is still patchy, but Janzen and Hallwachs join a number of scientists that have recorded huge die-offs of insects in nature reserves around the world.

They include in Germany, where flying insects across 63 insect reserves dropped 75% in less than 30 years; the US, where beetle numbers dropped 83% in 45 years; and Puerto Rico, where insect biomass dropped up to 60-fold since the 1970s. These declines are occurring in ecosystems that are otherwise protected from direct human influence.

When David Wagner stepped out into the US’s southern wilderness this spring, he found landscapes emptied of life. The entomologist has devoted much of his career to documenting the vast diversity of US insect life, particularly rare caterpillars. He traverses the country to find specimens, often on long road trips searching for caterpillars by day and moths by night.

Now, he finds himself coming home empty-handed. “I just got back from Texas, and it was the most unsuccessful trip I’ve ever taken,” he says. “There just wasn’t any insect life to speak of.”

It was not only the insects missing, he says, it was everything. “Everything was crispy, fried; the lizard numbers were down to the lowest numbers I can ever remember. And then the things that eat lizards were not present – I didn’t see a single snake the entire time.”

Wagner recalls when a series of international reviews began hitting headlines in 2019, saying global insect biomass was declining at a rate of 1% a year (although some estimates put it as high as 2.5%).

“We [entomologists] were thinking conservatively,” he says, looking at the data that has emerged in the five years since then.

“I now think that that’s too low. Now I would say that 2% is happening in some areas, and we’re seeing some places threatened by climate change or urbanisation or agriculture get as high as 5% decline per year.” 

Those who doubt there is sufficient species data to prove the “insectageddon” can now track it by proxy, Wagner says: via the sharp declines in birds, lizards and other creatures that depend on them for food.

Scientists in the US, Brazil, Ecuador and Panama have now reported the catastrophic declines of birds in “untouched” regions – including reserves inside millions of hectares of pristine forest. In each case, the worst losses were among insectivorous birds.

At one research centre – falling within a 22,000-hectare (85 sq mile) stretch of intact forest in Panama – scientists comparing current bird numbers with the 1970s found 70% of species had declined, and 88% of these had lost more than half of their population.

In 2019, researchers found that almost a third of US birds – about 3 billion – had disappeared from the skies since the 1970s. The losses, however, were not evenly distributed: those birds that ate insects as their main food had declined by 2.9 billion. Those that didn’t depend on insects had actually gained, increasing by 26 million.

More recent research from the US found a decline in three-quarters of nearly 500 bird species studied – with the steepest downward trend in stronghold areas, where they once thrived.

In Puerto Rico’s Luquillo rainforest, scientists in 2018 mapped how the loss of insects set other dominoes falling: as bugs declined, so too did the populations of lizards, frogs and birds. Their disappearance, they wrote, had triggered “a bottom-up trophic cascade and consequent collapse of the forest food web”.

 In Costa Rica, Janzen described the fall in numbers of insectivorous birds in the reserve as “cratering”. A colony of about 20 nectar-eating bats have long nested in the dark nooks of Janzen and Hallwachs’ house, but Janzen has noticed the flowers they used to feed from are now failing to bloom.

Hallwachs began to find their small, emaciated bodies lying on the floor. “Over a period of five days, I found three of these bats dead,” she says. Researchers at another site 20 miles away told her they were witnessing the same thing.

 

 Behind the steepening declines, a clear culprit is beginning to emerge: global heating. A tropical forest ecosystem is “a finely tuned Swiss watch”, Hallwachs says – perfectly engineered to sustain a vastly biodiverse system of creatures.

Each element is delicately tuned and interlocks with the rest: the heat, the humidity, the rainfall, the unfolding of leaves, the length of the seasons, the start and stop of the life cycles of insects and animals.

With each incremental turn of one cog, the rest of the system responds. Insects and animals have evolved to time their hibernations and breeding times precisely to small signals from the system: a change in humidity, a lengthening of the light hours of the day, a small rise or fall in temperature.

But now, the system has one gear spinning wildly out of time: the climate.

“When I arrived here in 1963 the dry season was four months. Today, it is six months,” Janzen says. Insects that typically spend four months underground, waiting for the rains, are now forced to try to survive another two months of hot, dry weather. Many are not succeeding. 

Alongside the changing seasons are other shifts, such as in rainfall or humidity. “It’s just a general disruption of all the little cues and synchronies that would be out there,” Janzen says. Across the entire clock of the forest, plants and creatures are falling out of sync. In the background, the temperature is rising.

“The killer – the cause that’s pulling the trigger – is actually water,” says Wagner. For insects, staying hydrated is a unique physiological challenge: rather than lungs, their bodies are riddled with holes, called spiracles, that carry oxygen directly into the tissue.

“They’re all surface area,” says Wagner. “Insects can’t hold water.” Even a brief drought lasting just a few days can wipe out millions of humidity-dependent insects.

 [Read more here.]

Already, alternating droughts, floods and heatwaves are affecting the production of food.  But without insects, there will be no food.  Mankind is too stupid, too greedy, and too ignorant, to stop the processes that are leading to the destruction of the Earth and of ourselves.  We could stop emissions which cause global heating and catastrophic collapses in insect populations.  But we do not.  We could reduce or even stop using pesticides and insecticides.  We do not.  We could stop producing plastics in the quantities we do.  But we don't. 

Meanwhile, it's not just insects which are dying, but also the seas.  

Millionaires, billionaires and large corporations control our politics, and they stop our politicians taking action on global heating, insecticides, and plastics.  

If you think that is too pessimistic a view, consider that Australia's Labor Party has just won a landslide in an election, wiping out the right-wing, anti-climate L/NP coalition.  A key difference between Labor and the L/NP was, supposedly, their different attitudes to climate change.  Yet, as soon as the election was over, it approved a massive expansion in the life of a gas extraction and exporting facility in NW Australia.  The emissions from the extension of this project alone will produce another 6 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases.  Australia's total CO2 emissions in 2023 were 383 million tonnes.  I needn't even discuss the situation in the USA. And even in countries which purport to do something about climate change, fossil fuel subsidies continue.  We're encouraging people to destroy us and our civilisation.

I despair.

2.9 billion birds gone

From Climate & Capitalism

Worldwide, 49 percent of all wild bird species are in steep decline. BirdLife International’s authoritative report, State of the World’s Birds 2022, estimates that there are now nearly three billion fewer wild birds in Canada and the U.S. than a few decades ago, and about 600 million fewer in the European Union. Less comprehensive data is available for the global south, but studies in some South American, African and Asian countries have shown similar declines.

Many accounts of bird population decline simply list multiple possible causes for the decline — wind turbines, urbanization, climate change, logging, wildfires, hunting and even domestic cats. The absence of data on which factors are most important has been a convenient excuse for doing nothing to save the birds.

An important study published in the May 15 issue of PNAS — the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — takes that excuse away. Its title clearly states its principal finding: Farmland Practices Are Driving Bird Population Decline across Europe. The study “provides strong evidence of a direct and predominant effect of farmland practices at large continental scales.”

This is by far the most extensive study to date of bird population dynamics. Over fifty ornithologists, zoologists, biologists and ecologists analyzed decades of population data for 170 bird species in over 20,000 sites in 28 European countries, measuring them against four known pressures on bird populations: agricultural intensification, change in forest cover, urbanization and temperature change.

Between 1980 and 2016 European bird populations as a whole fell by a quarter, but the number of farmland birds dropped by more than half. Areas dominated by large farms saw bigger declines than areas where most farms are smaller.

The single biggest cause of bird declines is chemical-intensive farming. Some birds are killed by pesticides or herbicides, but the most important impacts are loss of food, especially insects and other invertebrates that most bird species depend on, and the spread of fertilizer-intensive monocultures that eliminate shelter and nesting areas. Insect-eating populations declined more than any others.

In short, the collapse of farmland bird populations is closely related to the Insect Apocalypse in the Anthropocene, discussed here recently. The mass slaughter of insects is killing masses of birds.

Industrial agriculture is not, of course, the only driver. Loss of habitat resulting from urban growth and deforestation caused declines, in those areas, of 27.8% and 17.7% respectively. Climate change had mixed effects — northern, cold-preferring birds fell 39.7%, and southern, warm-preferring bird species dropped 17.1%. Overall, however, the most important bird killer is large-scale capitalist agriculture.

The study concludes:

“Considering both the overwhelming negative impact of agricultural intensification and the homogenization introduced by temperature and land-use changes, our results suggest that the fate of common European bird populations depends on the rapid implementation of transformative change in European societies, and especially in agricultural reform.”

Earthworm numbers have declined by one third

Researchers estimated the number of earthworms had dropped by 33% to 41% in the last quarter of a century. Photograph: blickwinkel/Alamy

From The Guardian

Populations of earthworms in the UK may have fallen by about a third in the past 25 years, an assessment has shown.

Earthworms are vital for the healthy soil that underpins all ecosystems and scientists said a large decline would sit alongside concerns about “insectaggedon” and the global destruction of wildlife.

Plunging populations of insects have been relatively well recorded. But, despite their importance, there has been no long-term monitoring of soil invertebrates.

To fill the gap, researchers collated data from more than 100 different smaller studies ranging from 1928 to 2018. From this they estimated a decline in earthworm abundance of between 33% and 41% in the last quarter of a century, the period for which the best data was available.

The research is being presented at the British Ecological Society’s annual meeting in Edinburgh on Monday and is being peer-reviewed for publication.

“It’s looking like there is evidence of a long-term decline,” said Prof James Pearce-Higgins, the director of science at the British Trust for Ornithology, which conducted the research. “A large-scale decline in soil biodiversity – particularly the loss of earthworms – would sit alongside concerns about ‘insectaggedon’ and the wider biodiversity crisis.

“It would have widespread impacts on the species that feed on soil invertebrates, like birds, but also affect soil processing and nutrient cycling, the whole functioning of our ecosystems,” he said. “Thrushes, starlings and many waders that rely on soil invertebrates are in long-term decline. These declines are greatest in south-east England where hotter, drier summers may also reduce the availability of earthworms to foraging birds.”

Dr Ailidh Barnes, also at the BTO, said there were good reasons to expect declines in earthworms on farmland. “Changes in the UK countryside over the last century, such as extensive drainage, pesticide use and inorganic fertiliser application, are likely to have negatively affected earthworm populations.” Repeated ploughing was also likely to cause harm.

The scientists scoured thousands of studies to find those containing suitable data. They then took account of differences in the methods used to provide the best window into the past available in the absence of a formal monitoring programme. They found earthworm declines appeared greatest on farmland and in broadleaved woodlands. Wilder upland areas, further from human activity, were less affected.

The team concluded: “The [study] suggests that a previously undetected biodiversity decline has occurred in the UK that could have wide-ranging consequences for ecosystem structure and function.”

Pearce-Higgins said the team hoped the study would prompt further investigations and the establishment of proper monitoring. “We need to be concerned about what is happening to biodiversity below the ground in order to protect the biodiversity that we see above ground. We need to look after earthworms.”

Things we can change

 

Lab-grown food will save the planet

We know that we can transition electricity generation to renewables, and that process is now well under way.  By 2030, there won't be that many coal power stations left, because they will simply be too expensive compared to renewables plus storage. 

We know that, at some point quite soon, EVs will start to outsell petrol(gasoline)/diesel cars (ICEVs, which stands for 'internal combustion engined vehicles'), again because their up-front costs will fall below those of ICEVs as battery costs fall.  By 2030 at the latest, it is likely that EVs will make up 90%+ of total car/lorry/bus sales.  

We can produce carbon-free cement and iron/steel.  We will prolly, by 2030, have carbon-free sea and air transport.

What will be left then is agriculture. Agriculture is responsible for something between 24% and 30% of greenhouse gases emitted across the world.  And most of that comes from producing meat and milk.  Most people won't give these up, and in developing countries, rising meat consumption as living standards increase is likely to blow our carbon budget out of the water.  

Source: The Guardian, Illustration: Matt Kenyon

Here's an extremely interesting piece by George Monbiot in The Guardian bout how lab-grown food will save the climate and the world.  

It sounds like a miracle, but no great technological leaps were required. In a commercial lab on the outskirts of Helsinki, I watched scientists turn water into food. Through a porthole in a metal tank, I could see a yellow froth churning. It’s a primordial soup of bacteria, taken from the soil and multiplied in the laboratory, using hydrogen extracted from water as its energy source. When the froth was siphoned through a tangle of pipes and squirted on to heated rollers, it turned into a rich yellow flour.

This flour is not yet licensed for sale. But the scientists, working for a company called Solar Foods, were allowed to give me some while filming our documentary Apocalypse Cow. I asked them to make me a pancake: I would be the first person on Earth, beyond the lab staff, to eat such a thing. They set up a frying pan in the lab, mixed the flour with oat milk, and I took my small step for man. It tasted … just like a pancake.

But pancakes are not the intended product. Such flours are likely soon to become the feedstock for almost everything. In their raw state, they can replace the fillers now used in thousands of food products. When the bacteria are modified they will create the specific proteins needed for lab-grown meat, milk and eggs. Other tweaks will produce lauric acid – goodbye palm oil – and long-chain omega-3 fatty acids – hello lab-grown fish. The carbohydrates that remain when proteins and fats have been extracted could replace everything from pasta flour to potato crisps. The first commercial factory built by Solar Foods should be running next year.

The hydrogen pathway used by Solar Foods is about 10 times as efficient as photosynthesis. But because only part of a plant can be eaten, while the bacterial flour is mangetout, you can multiply that efficiency several times. And because it will be brewed in giant vats the land efficiency, the company estimates, is roughly 20,000 times greater. Everyone on Earth could be handsomely fed, and using a tiny fraction of its surface. If, as the company intends, the water used in the process (which is much less than required by farming) is electrolysed with solar power, the best places to build these plants will be deserts.

We are on the cusp of the biggest economic transformation, of any kind, for 200 years. While arguments rage about plant- versus meat-based diets, new technologies will soon make them irrelevant. Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life. After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation. This means multiplying particular micro-organisms, to produce particular products, in factories.I know some people will be horrified by this prospect. I can see some drawbacks. But I believe it comes in the nick of time.

Several impending disasters are converging on our food supply, any of which could be catastrophic. Climate breakdown threatens to cause what scientists call “multiple breadbasket failures”, through synchronous heatwaves and other impacts. The UN forecasts that by 2050 feeding the world will require a 20% expansion in agriculture’s global water use. But water use is already maxed out in many places: aquifers are vanishing, rivers are failing to reach the sea. The glaciers that supply half the population of Asia are rapidly retreating. Inevitable global heating – due to greenhouse gases already released – is likely to reduce dry season rainfall in critical areas, turning fertile plains into dustbowls.

A global soil crisis threatens the very basis of our subsistence, as great tracts of arable land lose their fertility through erosion, compaction and contamination. Phosphate supplies, crucial for agriculture, are dwindling fast. Insectageddon threatens catastrophic pollination failures. It is hard to see how farming can feed us all even until 2050, let alone to the end of the century and beyond.

Food production is ripping the living world apart. Fishing and farming are, by a long way, the greatest cause of extinction and loss of the diversity and abundance of wildlife. Farming is a major cause of climate breakdown, the biggest cause of river pollution and a hefty source of air pollution. Across vast tracts of the world’s surface, it has replaced complex wild ecosystems with simplified human food chains. Industrial fishing is driving cascading ecological collapse in seas around the world. Eating is now a moral minefield, as almost everything we put in our mouths – from beef to avocados, cheese to chocolate, almonds to tortilla chips, salmon to peanut butter – has an insupportable environmental cost.

But just as hope appeared to be evaporating, the new technologies I call farmfree food create astonishing possibilities to save both people and planet. Farmfree food will allow us to hand back vast areas of land and sea to nature, permitting rewilding and carbon drawdown on a massive scale. It means an end to the exploitation of animals, an end to most deforestation, a massive reduction in the use of pesticides and fertiliser, the end of trawlers and longliners. It’s our best hope of stopping what some have called the “sixth great extinction”, but I prefer to call the great extermination. And, if it’s done right, it means cheap and abundant food for everyone.

Research by the thinktank RethinkX suggests that proteins from precision fermentation will be around 10 times cheaper than animal protein by 2035. The result, it says, will be the near-complete collapse of the livestock industry. The new food economy will “replace an extravagantly inefficient system that requires enormous quantities of inputs and produces huge amounts of waste with one that is precise, targeted, and tractable”. Using tiny areas of land, with a massively reduced requirement for water and nutrients, it “presents the greatest opportunity for environmental restoration in human history”.

Not only will food be cheaper, it will also be healthier. Because farmfree foods will be built up from simple ingredients, rather than broken down from complex ones, allergens, hard fats and other unhealthy components can be screened out. Meat will still be meat, though it will be grown in factories on collagen scaffolds, rather than in the bodies of animals. Starch will still be starch, fats will still be fats. But food is likely to be better, cheaper and much less damaging to the living planet.

Farmfree production promises a far more stable and reliable food supply that can be grown anywhere, even in countries without farmland. It could be crucial to ending world hunger. But there is a hitch: a clash between consumer and producer interests. Many millions of people, working in farming and food processing, will eventually lose their jobs. Because the new processes are so efficient, the employment they create won’t match the employment they destroy.

RethinkX envisages an extremely rapid “death spiral” in the livestock industry. Only a few components, such as the milk proteins casein and whey, need to be produced through fermentation for profit margins across an entire sector to collapse. Dairy farming in the United States, it claims, will be “all but bankrupt by 2030”. It believes that the American beef industry’s revenues will fall by 90% by 2035. 

[There's more, which you can read here]

For years I have wondered how it would be possible for passengers and crew on space stations and space ships, and on lifeless worlds like Mars or the Moon, to eat meat, fish or dairy.  The space and resources needed are simply impractical.  Lois McMaster Bujold, in her SF novels, talks about vat-meat, vat-chicken and vat-milk, and it is obvious that this is what will happen.  But it's equally likely that this will happen on Earth, too, as Monbiot points out.  Climate change, insectageddon, water shortages—everything points to the inevitable future where our meat and milk doesn't come from cows and pigs and chickens but from proteins grown in labs.  On top of which, it will be cheaper.  An order of magnitude cheaper.  We will be able to end world hunger, permanently.

This trend is starting now—even before we have food grown from bacteria.  I am a vegetarian, and I haven't eaten meat for 40 years.  To be honest, the very idea revolts me, these days.  So when I had one of the new, meat-like vegetarian burgers, which tasted like meat, "bled" like meat, and had a meat-like texture, I was rather put off!  But if you want to stop the horrible cruelty to animals which meat production involves, and if you want to reduce your carbon emissions now, by a good 20%, then you should try them. 

We need to start cutting emissions this year, and ramp up the reductions each year until we get to zero.  We need to stop exterminating insects.  We need to restore the soil.  These are compelling and vital steps, and we cannot dither and phaff any more.  To quote Churchill:  Action this day.

See also:

Imitation & vat meats the norm by 2040

Would giving up meat help the environment?

Agriculture's carbon footprint