Humanity quietly passes a remarkable milestone

From Adam Tooze

 

Humanity has quietly passed a remarkable milestone: Alcohol consumption is declining, a turning point in a habit at least as old as civilization itself. This unnoticed shift suggests other long-standing habits (from smoking to red meat consumption) could potentially fade just as effortlessly.

Not "effortlessly".  But, yes, smoking is falling in most developed countries, and vegetarianism/veganism is rising.  No government could try and stop meat-eating --- imagine the backlash! --- but as more and more people switch, it will become less and less normal to eat meat.

Meatball from a long extinct mammoth

Vow created the mammoth meatball to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals. Photograph: Aico Lind/Studio Aico

From The Guardian

A mammoth meatball has been created by a cultivated meat company, resurrecting the flesh of the long-extinct animals.

The project aims to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals, and to highlight the link between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis.

The mammoth meatball was produced by Vow, an Australian company, which is taking a different approach to cultured meat.

There are scores of companies working on replacements for conventional meat, such as chicken, pork and beef. But Vow is aiming to mix and match cells from unconventional species to create new kinds of meat.

The company has already investigated the potential of more than 50 species, including alpaca, buffalo, crocodile, kangaroo, peacocks and different types of fish.

The first cultivated meat to be sold to diners will be Japanese quail, which the company expects will be in restaurants in Singapore this year.

“We have a behaviour change problem when it comes to meat consumption,” said George Peppou, CEO of Vow .

“The goal is to transition a few billion meat eaters away from eating [conventional] animal protein to eating things that can be produced in electrified systems.

“And we believe the best way to do that is to invent meat. We look for cells that are easy to grow, really tasty and nutritious, and then mix and match those cells to create really tasty meat.”

Tim Noakesmith, who cofounded Vow with Peppou, said: “We chose the woolly mammoth because it’s a symbol of diversity loss and a symbol of climate change.” The creature is thought to have been driven to extinction by hunting by humans and the warming of the world after the last ice age.

The initial idea was from Bas Korsten at creative agency Wunderman Thompson: “Our aim is to start a conversation about how we eat, and what the future alternatives can look and taste like. Cultured meat is meat, but not as we know it.”

Plant-based alternatives to meat are now common but cultured meat replicates the taste of conventional meat. Cultivated meat – chicken from Good Meat – is currently only sold to consumers in Singapore, but two companies have now passed an approval process in the US.

In 2018, another company used DNA from an extinct animal to create gummy bears made from gelatine from a mastodon, another elephant-like animal.

Vow worked with Prof Ernst Wolvetang, at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Queensland, to create the mammoth muscle protein. His team took the DNA sequence for mammoth myoglobin, a key muscle protein in giving meat its flavour, and filled in the few gaps using elephant DNA.

This sequence was placed in myoblast stem cells from a sheep, which replicated to grow to the 20bn cells subsequently used by the company to grow the mammoth meat.

“It was ridiculously easy and fast,” said Wolvetang. “We did this in a couple of weeks.” Initially, the idea was to produce dodo meat, he said, but the DNA sequences needed do not exist.

No one has yet tasted the mammoth meatball. “We haven’t seen this protein for thousands of years,” said Wolvetang. “So we have no idea how our immune system would react when we eat it. But if we did it again, we could certainly do it in a way that would make it more palatable to regulatory bodies.”

Wolvetang said he could understand people initially being wary of such meat: “It’s a little bit strange and new – it’s always like that at first. But from an environmental and ethical point of view, I personally think [cultivated meat] makes a lot of sense.”

The large-scale production of meat, particularly beef, causes huge damage to the environment, with many studies finding there must be a big reduction in meat-eating in rich nations in order to end the climate crisis.

Cultivated meat uses much less land and water than livestock, and produces no methane emissions. Vow said the energy it uses is all from renewable sources and that foetal bovine serum, a growth medium produced from cattle foetuses, is not used in any of its commercial products. The company has raised US$56m (£46m) in investment to date.

Wolvetang thinks there will be increasing crossover between the technologies used in medical and human stem cell research and the production of cultured meats.

For example, cells can be programmed to develop in response to their immediate environment, meaning cuts of meat containing muscle, fat and connective tissue could be grown.

Seren Kell, at the Good Food Institute Europe, said: “I hope this fascinating project will open up new conversations about cultivated meat’s extraordinary potential to produce more sustainable food.

“However, as the most common sources of meat are farm animals such as cattle, pigs, and poultry, most of the sustainable protein sector is focused on realistically replicating meat from these species.

“By cultivating beef, pork, chicken and seafood we can have the most impact in terms of reducing emissions from conventional animal agriculture.”

You're eating precision fermentation foods already

From green queen

Precision fermentation has been around for decades, and most of us eat foods that contain ingredients made using the technology on a daily basis. Animal-free dairy makers are now using it to bring you the cheese and milk you love without the environmental cost.

As the alternative protein industry matures, it is increasingly under attack from food industry lobbies and interest groups. Of late, precision fermentation technology, used to create animal-free dairy foods, has been the target of the Non-GMO Project, a U.S. based non profit organization focused on alerting consumers to the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in food products. In a press release published during National Dairy Month in the U.S., the organization described animal-free dairy made from precision fermentation as unregulated and dangerous. We thought it would be prudent to address the allegations as a matter of separating fact from fiction.

Let’s start with the most important facts: precision fermentation (PF) is a technology that has been around for 30 years, is entirely safe and is used in dozens (if not hundreds) of products you interact with every day. That cousin of yours that’s Type 1 diabetic? Her insulin is made using PF. The cheese you buy at the grocery store? The enzymes are made using PF. The vitamin supplement you give your teenager for their skin? PF again. That naturally flavored grapefruit soda you love? That’s right, it’s made using PF.

Here’s the thing. Until Perfect Day and its peers crash landed onto our food scene, most of us had never heard of precision fermentation. Now, this technology that we interact with regularly (though perhaps unknowingly), has been put under the microscope by everyone from chefs to media personalities to lobby groups. When something feels or sounds new, it’s entirely natural to have questions. Particularly when it’s related to the food we eat.

When it comes to animal-free dairy, precision fermentation refers to a process used to produce bio-identical milk proteins like casein or whey, without the use of animals. It is done by encoding milk protein DNA sequences into microorganisms, like yeast or fungi, and then fermenting them with nutrients and sugar in fermentation tanks, much like those used to brew beer. During the fermentation process, these unique microbes produce proteins, identical to those found in cow’s dairy milk. These proteins are filtered into a pure milk protein isolate that can be used to create our favorite dairy products such as cheese, yogurt and ice cream, without the use of animals.

The whole point of using precision fermentation is to produce the dairy products we love (think milk, cheese, yogurt) with a fraction of the carbon emissions, land requirements and water usage that the conventional dairy industry requires. This means the hundreds of millions of people who consume dairy products daily can do so without causing global warming.

 

FACT: Conventional dairy has a global warming problem

Let’s be clear, we are at a critical point in the climate change fight. Unless we significantly reduce the outsized climate impact from conventional agriculture, and that includes dairy farming, we will not be able to achieve the Paris Agreement goals. With half of all habitable land already being used for agriculture and 77% of that devoted to raising animals for food, anyone who is serious about creating a sustainable food industry knows that we cannot go on with the status quo. We certainly cannot nourish a growing global population with an agricultural system that already consumes too much land and water resources and drives biodiversity loss, while also emitting a third of global greenhouse gases. If global animal agriculture continues to expand, it will prevent the decarbonization of our agricultural system and perpetuate the increase of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more powerful at warming the planet on a 20-year scale than carbon dioxide.

When it comes to conventional dairy production, it’s hard to argue with its environmental cost. Producing just one litre of milk releases 3.15kg of CO2, while one kilo of cheese releases a whopping 23.88kgs of CO2- about the same as burning 10kg of coal!

On the water front, things are not much better. To get one litre of milk requires 628 litres of water. A kilo of cheese demands an incredible 5,606 liters of water, the highest among all foods.

Beyond water and emissions, producing conventional dairy foods involves heavy use of antibiotics, a huge amount of arable land and GMO corn/soy animal feed, not to mention that the fields where these are grown are sprayed with pesticides and glyphosate.

FACT: You are already consuming precision fermentation foods and products

Precision fermentation is safely used to make insulin, most vitamins, flavors and countless enzymes found in nearly all commercially produced foods. We’ve all been eating foods produced with the aid of precision fermentation for decades. This is not new. Here’s an overview of common foods and supplements made using PF:

Enzymes: PF is used to make all sorts of enzymes used in food production, from amlysases to keep bread soft and prevent staleness, pectinases to make fruit juices clear instead of cloudy, transglutaminases to make deli meat products such as salami hold together better.

Vitamins: Almost all of the common vitamins we use to fortify foods (in powder form) or to supplement our own diets (in pill form) such as B vitamins (B2 and B12 in particular) and vitamins A, C, D, E and K, are made via precision fermentation technology.

Natural Flavors: Many flavorings and aromas regularly used in food are made via PF such as vanilla flavoring. When you see the term ‘natural flavors’ on an ingredient list? That’s PF too. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (the FDA)’s own definition of “natural flavor/flavoring” includes ingredients made using precision fermentation.

Medicine: Specifically, insulin for Type 1 Diabetes patients to inject themselves with. Until the 1980s, we used to have to inject diabetes patients with insulin obtained from pigs and cows.

Cheese (this one is ironic, given the conventional dairy industry’s anti-PF stance): Rennet is a key ingredient in most cheeses. It is composed of the enzyme chymosin, which helps to separate the milk solids (the parts used in cheesemaking) from the liquids. In other words, rennet enables the formation of firm curds and is crucial in helping cheesemakers achieve their desired cheese texture. 80% of rennet used in global cheese produced comes from precision fermentation using microorganisms as host factories (the rest comes from the stomachs of ruminant animals). So chances are, if you have eaten dairy cheese, you have eaten PF-made rennet. 

FACT: Animal-free dairy is regulated by the US FDA

Animal-free dairy is a regulated industry. The U.S. FDA oversees and regulates any substance that is intentionally added to food as an additive through the GRAS Notification Program. This is also how enzymes, vitamins and flavors are regulated. To date, both Perfect Day and Remilk have followed this process prior to launching products in the U.S. market.

Animal-free dairy proteins do not fall under the USDA National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, because the final product (animal-free milk protein) does not contain any detectable genetic material.

While genetic engineering techniques are used in creation of the microorganisms that produce the dairy proteins, they are filtered out at the end of fermentation. The resulting product is a high purity milk protein isolate, which is bio-identical to milk protein from cows. 

FACT: Animal-free dairy has a lower carbon and water footprint than conventional dairy

The planetary toll of the conventional industry when we are in the midst of a worsening climate crisis that is threatening our global food security is exactly why we need to rethink how we produce food and support nascent industries like animal-free dairy made from precision fermentation. This will allow consumers to continue enjoying the milk and cheese they crave and love at a lower cost to the planet.

In the RethinkX report on agriculture, the authors write that “modern alternatives will be up to 100 times more land efficient, 10-25 times more feedstock efficient, 20 times more time efficient, and 10 times more water efficient. They will also produce an order of magnitude less waste.”

According to a Life Cycle Assessment commissioned by Perfect Day, their technology allows for “a reduction in environmental impact of up to 99% less water use, up to 97% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and up to 60% less renewable energy use compared to traditional (dairy) production methods.”

The future of our planet and the ability to feed next generations depends greatly on our ability to bring these new solutions to life. Precision fermentation is part of a broader ecosystem of sustainable food solutions, which include regenerative organic farming, plant-based foods and animal-free dairy. Without them we are at risk of losing the battle against climate change and in the years ahead, we will face unrelenting challenges to affordably feed 10 billion people.

How big meat lies

lies and disinformation about plant-based meat

From DeSmog

This article by Sentient is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.


The meat industry and its proponents worked hard in 2024 — not only to increase sales, but also to rebrand and remain relevant. While overwhelming climate science continues to point out the harmful impacts of animal agriculture, and plant-based competitors continue to challenge the status quo, meat promoters stepped up this year, crafting and perpetuating clever narratives to keep consumers hooked.

“Amidst a climate crisis driven in no small part by agriculture, there is a growing interest in healthy, sustainable food,” Jennifer Molidor, senior food campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, tells Sentient. “The industry has responded by flooding climate conferences with lobbyists promoting meat and dairy — in full force.”

And that’s not all. From promoting “beneficial” regenerative meat, to criticizing “ultra processed” plants, to promoting cow fat for skin care, to manipulating data, Big Meat sidestepped accountability to keep consumers coming back in 2024. 

Disinformation Trend #1: Meat Is ‘Natural’

One of the more popular PR messages regarding meat in 2024 was that animal products are healthier and more “natural” compared to “ultra processed” plant-based meat alternatives.

This messaging is not new. It’s years in the making, with full-page ads in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal back in 2021, and a $5 million Super Bowl commercial in 2020. Backed by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), the ads vilified newly popular “fake meats” as full of “real chemicals,” highlighting “scary” ingredients like methylcellulose — a generally harmless compound used in many foods.

CCF is led by former tobacco lobbyist Richard Berman, and is supported by “restaurants, food companies and thousands of individual consumers,” according to its website. Forbes once described it as a front group for meat, tobacco and alcohol companies.

The narrative of “natural” meat versus “processed” plants persisted into 2024. The marketing tactic conveniently ignores the fact that 99 percent of animals raised for food in the U.S. are factory farmed in inherently unnatural conditions, and undergo much processing to become meat, dairy and eggs.

But this natural meat fantasy didn’t stop at food in 2024, spreading into lifestyle content, and feeding into a growing anti-technology, off-the-grid (though often still on YouTube), homesteading, carnivore and tradwife trend. Raw milk surged in popularity in 2024, as did eating raw meat, and using cow fat for skin care.

The FDA, CDC and New York State Department of Health put out statements this year warning of the health risks of consuming raw milk, and experts have taken to the media to warn of the risks associated with the carnivore diet, and with eating uncooked meat. Dermatology experts also told Sentient that the benefits of beef fat for the skin are minimal.

Though plant-based meat alternatives vary greatly when it comes to nutritional profiles, they are generally considered healthy. In fact, a 2024 review published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology found that risk factors for heart disease, such as LDL cholesterol and body weight, showed improvement when animal-based meats were substituted with plant-based meat alternatives. 

Disinformation Trend #2: Meat Is ‘Eco-Friendly’

Another pervasive meat message in 2024 was that beef — the highest-emitting meat — can somehow be good for the environment so long as raised on a farm that is regenerative, eco-friendly, carbon neutral or some other variation of such terms.

Regenerative agriculture, particularly holistic grazing, promises an alternative to our current food system that incorporates livestock in a way that can regenerate depleted soils. Such promises, however, fall short when it comes to actually curbing climate pollution.

Though regenerative agriculture aims to “bring back bovines,” as described in the 2023 documentary Common Ground, this grouping of grass-fed cattle with wild ruminants like bison is not accurate — at least as far as the environment is concerned. “That’s like comparing apples to oranges,” Molidor told Sentient earlier this year. While there is some debate about this, bison tend to graze over further distances in ways that cause less damage to plants and waterways. Cattle, on the other hand, tend to stick close together and eat just one type of plant until it’s gone.

The regenerative movement — which does offer some benefits for soil health — has also since been co-opted by the industrialized meat industry. A 2024 study by New Climate Institute found that 24 of the world’s top 30 food and beverage producers, including Cargill, Danone and Fonterra, refer to regenerative agriculture in their sustainability communication.

That said, 2024 also saw a possible win in the fight against misleading claims about climate-friendly meat, with Tyson Food’s Brazen Beef brand potentially no longer available for sale. After the U.S. Department of Agriculture rolled out a new “climate-friendly” beef label last year, Tyson soon rolled out its own version: Brazen Beef. Journalists and academics were quick to note serious issues with the claims on the product’s label, particularly the claim (with no data in support) of a 10 percent reduction in emissions.

“In order to claim a 10 percent reduction, you need to establish scientifically a baseline that everyone agrees is the common amount that beef produces,” New York University environmental scientist Matthew Hayek told Corporate Knights Magazine. “There doesn’t seem to be any data that the company itself, or the government who it created that certification in conjunction with, is able to provide.”

Tyson was subsequently sued in 2024 by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) for misleading consumers about its efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The suit asked the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to ban Tyson from making “false or misleading marketing claims.” It remains before the court.

At the time this story was published, the webpage for Brazen Meats was not functioning, and the product appeared unavailable for sale, raising questions about the future of the brand. Sentient contacted Tyson about the status of the Brazen line, but did not receive a response by email. We also called Tyson’s consumer relations hotline, and were told by the representative, “I don’t see anything active with that name.” It also appears that a New Jersey meat packer that sold Brazen Beef no longer lists the product on its website.

Caroline Leary, chief operating officer and general counsel for EWG tells Sentient that despite the Brazen Meats webpage being down, the group “remains committed to holding Tyson accountable, by demanding transparency to ensure that consumers are not deceived by false promises of sustainability,” which still exist elsewhere on its site. 

Disinformation Trend #3: Meat Feeds the World

Inflation and food insecurity were also pressing issues in 2024. Meat, dairy and egg industries were there to capitalize, particularly at climate conferences held throughout the year.

At COP28 last spring for example, the Guardian reports that meat lobbyists “celebrated the cut-through of their message that industrial animal agriculture has an important role to play in addressing global hunger.” It adds that U.S. Pork Board representative Jamie Burr also stated that COPs provide an opportunity for U.S. agriculture groups to show how they “feed the world.”

At COP29 last month, the strategy was the same, according to a report by DeSmog. Documents produced by the industry-funded Global Meat Alliance, obtained by DeSmog, encouraged members “to stick to key comms messages, including the idea that meat is beneficial to the environment and will help to ‘feed the world.’”

A spokesperson for the Global Alliance for the Future of Food told the Guardian in April that the idea that industrial agriculture is “critical to address hunger” is one of the greatest myths used by the industry to fend off criticism. Animal agriculture in fact contributes to world hunger, due to the inefficient use of arable land and resources to grow crops for animals, instead of people. Not only that, but the industry’s framing around food insecurity ignores how many climate researchers limit “eat less meat” recommendations to global north populations like the U.S., who consume far more than the global average. Studies suggest that food insecurity could actually be addressed, in-part, by transitioning to a more plant-based food system. Reducing the massive amount of land needed to grow food to feed livestock could lead to more crops being fed directly to people. One study theorizes that if everyone in the U.S. went vegan, an additional 350 million people could be fed. 

Disinformation Trend #4: Trustworthy Academic Research Supports Meat

The year 2024 also saw the meat sector lean even further into academia as a means to appear credible and sustainable.

As environmental scientist Jonathan Foley writes for Project Drawdown: “The livestock industry has spent enormous sums telling us fictitious stories of ‘environmentally-friendly’ beef,” including, he notes, “documentaries, think tanks, university labs, and social media influencer campaigns touting so-called ‘solutions’ to beef’s environmental footprint.”

In 2023, the Guardian exposed The Master of Beef Advocacy, or “MBA” program, created by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, to help meat promoters influence and educate the public on the “sustainability” of beef. That same year, the National Pork Board funded a nearly $8.5 million program with researchers from a variety of U.S. universities, to research and improve the industry’s reputation by boosting public “trust” in pork factory farms. And the year prior, The New York Times exposed how the UC Davis Clear Center did not disclose just how much industry funding it received to promote the environmental friendliness of meat and dairy, under the guise of public sector science.

In 2024, the meat industry took this method of information manipulation a step further, targeting another major competitor: cultivated meat. Once again backed by Richard Berman, another “think tank” was created, the ironically named Center for the Environment and Welfare, this time under the guise of helping “consumers, companies, and stakeholders navigate issues related to sustainability and animal welfare.” In 2024, the group conducted “research” and published media op-eds to thwart the progress of cultivated meat.

The Bottom Line

In 2024, the meat industry’s aggressive rebranding efforts, fueled by clever messaging and industry-backed research, sought to counteract competition from more sustainable plant-based alternatives.

As the inevitable impacts of climate change — along with other issues like bird flu — usher us into 2025, “it’s going to be increasingly difficult,” Molidor says, “for the meat and dairy lobby to rebrand their way out of these serious environmental and human harms.”

I became a vegetarian because I thought eating meat and fish was cruel, not for health or climate change reasons.  I thought it might be bad for my health.  In fact, it was the opposite.  I lost 15 kilos, my blood pressure is normal, my cholesterol is low, my blood sugar is normal, etc, etc.  

 

Let's start with the cow

From a tweet thread by Tony Seba

Let me start with #insulin. In the 1970s, insulin was extracted from the pancreas of animals. In the 1980s, @Genentech, working with Eli Lilly (@LillyPad), developed insulin using a new technology that I call #PrecisionFermentation. It wasn’t animal insulin. It was human insulin.

The mainstream would say: “health care is slow, it can’t be disrupted.” Well, here’s the S-curve of #PrecisionFermentation human insulin. Human insulin disrupted animal insulin in about 13 years.









#PrecisionFermentation is a concept that I coined in my  @rethink_x report ‘Rethinking Food and Agriculture’ with @CatherineTubb in September 2019.

Think about beer #fermentation. You take a microorganism (a yeast) and feed it sugar, wheat, nitrogen.. and out comes beer.

The difference with #PrecisionFermentation: you genetically modify the yeast, so it can produce the ingredient you want. In this case, a #protein.

The #protein itself cannot be #GeneticallyModified. The yeast is, but there’s no genetic material in proteins. None. Anyone who tells you “#GMOprotein” is lying to you. Proteins have exactly no generic material.

How is #PrecisionFermentation going to disrupt #milk? — Milk is almost 90% water. 3.3% of milk is #proteins, and that is the commercially valuable part of #dairy. So, essentially, you disrupt 3% of that milk bottle and the entire dairy industry is gone.

The #PrecisionFermentation disruption of #dairy is a #B2B ingredient #disruption. No consumer behavior change is needed. All the industry needs to do is disrupt protein shakes, protein bars etc. and ⅓ of #dairy industry revenues go away.

This technology has existed for 40 years and they’ve gone through an incredible capability cost curve. #PrecisionFermentation dairy proteins are already in the market (cheese, chocolate, ice cream etc). This is not in the future. This is now.

To give you an idea of the cost curve of #PrecisionFermentation, between 2000 and 2020, the cost per kilo/pound went down by about 10,000x in 20 years from ~$1m to ~$100. That cost curve makes #MooresLaw (computing) look like a straight line into the future.




Over the next ten years, we’re going to experience the #disruption of #food and #agriculture. And I am going to focus on the cow.

Because the cow is — by far — the most inefficient food production technology on the planet.

Every #animal that we use for #livestock is going to be #disrupted. If the cost curve keeps improving the way it has over the last few decades, the cost-per-kilo of #PrecisionFermentation proteins will reach price parity with the cow by ~2025. That’s only three years away.

We know that in #food and #ingredients, #disruptions happen quickly and they happen as S-curves. Think about Pepsi and Coca Cola. In the 1980s, in the United States, they went from all cane sugar to all corn-based sugar in only four years.

This is not a “veggie revolution”.  What is happening today is the ‘Second Domestication of Plants and Animals’. We’re going from domesticating large organisms — cow sheep horse chicken — to microorganisms as a source of food.

#PrecisionFermentation proteins are 5-100x more resource-efficient than the cow. #PFproteins, casein and whey, can be made today using 100x less land than the cow. Think about it. 100x less land.

An Israeli company called @Remilk_Foods announced that they’re going to open the world’s largest facility to create cow-free milk in Denmark. They’re going to make the dairy equivalent of 50,000 cows on 750,000 sq-ft = a standard industrial-size facility. A fermentation farm.

Canada’s dairy industry has about 1 million cows (whole country). Take 20 @Remilk_Foods facilities, i.e. #PrecisionFermentation farms, and they could produce the equivalent of 1m cows. This would take 344 acres and disrupt the whole dairy industry in Canada. That’s it. Gone!

How quickly is this going to happen? — The CEO of @Remilk_Foods says they can produce dairy as cheap as animal protein by 2024, which is within the cost curve that I published 3 years ago. That’s only 3 years away, not 20 or 30 as the mainstream would suggest. We need to prepare.

#FermentationFarms are the new #FoodFarms where we are going to create our proteins. New business model innovations and possibilities will open up, in this case, for example: #FoodAsSoftware.

The #proteins we eat today come from just a few #plants and #animals that we domesticated thousands of years ago. 12 plants and 5 animals account for 75% of food. There are millions of plants & animals on Earth. There’s a huge possibility space out there. #PrecisionFermentation

With #FoodAsSoftware and #PrecisionFermentation, we can make proteins from any animal, from any plant, at speed and scale. The number of possible #proteins mathematically is infinite. I did the numbers. It is larger than the number of atoms in the universe.

And it’s not just about the cow. It’s not even about food. #PrecisionFermentation is disruptive across many sectors. It’s being used for #cosmetics. #Collagen, for instance. #HumanCollagen is being made with precision fermentation. Today!

#SweetProteins are going to be so disruptive! One of those proteins — #brazzein — is ~1000x sweeter than cane sugar. 1 pound of brazzein can sweeten the equivalent of 1000 pounds of sugar. Think about that! Without the #insulin reaction.

The magic #ingredient that makes  @ImpossibleFoods’ meat smell and taste like meat is #heme. Heme is only 2% of their burgers. Think about how  @generalelectric got disrupted with only 2% market penetration of solar, wind & batteries (#SWB). Same thing is happening with #meat.

And you may think: “will this fly in x” or “will they eat it in #Texas?” — Yes, they will. I was at the airport in #Houston, and sure enough, they’re selling #ImpossibleNachos & #ImpossibleQuesadillas. And the menu doesn’t even say it’s vegetarian.








This is not just the #disruption of the cow. This is the disruption of all food that comes from animals: pork, fish eggs etc. All of them can be, and will be, disrupted by #PrecisionFermentation and #FoodAsSoftware.

I expect three phases in the “#Disruption of #Food & #Agriculture”. What we’re undergoing now is the first phase, which is #ingredients, #B2B etc.

The second phase, which starts around 2024, is more complex proteins & meats that will be made with #PrecisionFermentation, and later, #CellularAgriculture.

I expect that the animal extraction industry, the livestock-as-food industry, will be gone by 2035. It’s pretty much over. I expect the dairy industry to be bankrupt by 2030 — that’s less than 10 years away — and the whole livestock industry by 2035.

That doesn’t mean you can’t eat a cow after 2035. You can, but it’s going to be a little bit like the horse and the car. You can still ride horses, but it’s not a mainstream form of transportation, and it’s very expensive. Eating cows will be just like owning a horse today


For those of you who think Tony Seba's views are way out there .... you're wrong. He has consistently called it right for at least a decade. He understands that new technologies grow *exponentially*, not linearly.  And given how high emissions from beef, mutton and other meats are, this could save the world.  Because if we're all eating vat meat and vat eggs and drinking vat milk, then all that land freed up by ending animal husbandry will be able to revert to forest.  And that will be the most powerful carbon capture and storage process we could have.

First taste of lab-grown meat

Chef Zach Tyndall prepares Good Meat’s cultivated chicken at the Eat Just office in Alameda, Calif., Wednesday, June 14, 2023. The Agriculture Department issued final approvals Wednesday, June 21 to California firms Upside Foods and Good Meat to sell the products, known as “lab grown” or “cultivated” meat. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

From Associated Press

When I told friends and family I was reporting on the first chicken meat grown from animal cells, their first comment was “Eww.” Their second comment was: “How does it taste?”

The short answer (you’ve probably heard this sentence before in other contexts): Tastes like chicken.

The longer answer, which folds in the “Eww” response, is more nuanced. Yes, it’s strange to think of eating a totally new kind of meat — chicken that doesn’t come from a chicken, meat that will be sold as “cell-cultivated” chicken after the U.S. Agriculture Department on Wednesday gave the green light to two California firms, Upside Foods and Good Meat.

But it’s also interesting (and exciting!) to taste test the first offerings of a new era in meat production, which aims to eliminate harm to billions of animals slaughtered for food — and to dramatically reduce the environmental effects of grazing, growing feed for those animals and dealing with their animal waste.

I’m a lifelong meat eater. I’m also a victim of the “meat paradox,” a term scientists use to describe the psychological conflict that occurs in people who like to eat meat but don’t like to contemplate the animals that died providing it.

As someone who has reported on food-borne illness outbreaks and slaughterhouse safety, I’m keenly aware that the chicken on my dinner plate probably suffered to get there. And that fact makes me uneasy if I dwell on it too much.

So I was open to trying a different kind of meat — and also curious to see if it would taste like the real thing.

I’ve tried plant-based options like the Beyond Meat sausage and the Impossible Burger and liked them, even though I didn’t think they were perfect substitutes. To be honest, the Beyond Meat sausage tasted good, but a little mealy. And the Impossible Burger was dry, although I may have cooked it too long. In both cases, I enjoyed the taste of the products but was still aware that I wasn’t actually eating pork or beef.

What about the artificiality of it all? It didn’t bother me that this new cultivated meat is made from cells that grow to epic proportions in big steel vats, only to be shaped and formed — “extruded” is the somewhat unfortunate verb that came to mind — into familiar cutlets, filets and nuggets that would look right at home on the dinner table.

But as with all food, in the end it would come down to taste. And in this case, to the larger question behind it: Is this new material in fact chicken, or is it an impostor?

In January, I traveled to the Upside Foods manufacturing plant in Emeryville, California. There, chef Jess Weaver sauteed a cultivated chicken breast in a white wine butter sauce with tomatoes, capers and green onions.

The aroma was enticing, just like any filet cooked in butter would be. And the taste was light and delicate with a tender texture, just like any chicken breast I’d make at home – if, that is, I were a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America.

Last week, I visited the Alameda, California, plant where Good Meat is poised to begin production of its chicken products. Chef Zach Tyndall was ready with a smoked chicken salad with mayonnaise, golden raisins and walnuts. He followed it with a chicken “thigh” dish — darker meat served on a bed of potato puree with a mushroom-vegetable demi-glace, golden beets and tiny purple cauliflower florets.

The taste was richer than a chicken breast, more like the dark meat of a thigh. And the texture was both tender and chewy, like a well-cooked chicken thigh should be.

That, says Tyndall, is the whole point.

“It needs to be as lifelike as possible for it to catch on,” he said.

While “lifelike” is an interesting word, from my side of the fork I think this will catch on. There are still huge hurdles — how to scale up manufacturing and pare back costs, experts say, and the lingering question of whether chicken without the bird is, in fact, chicken — but if you’re basing it on authentic taste, I’ll leave you with this:

Please pass the “chicken.”

Meat production is a significant contributor to global warming.   As for saying "ewww" when you hear it's mad in a factory, have you seen what a slaughterhouse looks like?  Have you seen the filth animals on farms live in?  Vat meat is an obvious next step in agriculture, one that is less cruel, less polluting and produces fewer greenhouse gases than the "natural" method.   But can vat meat be called vegetarian, I wonder?  

Factory food?

 From a thread by George Monbiot

People object to precision fermentation on the grounds that it would take production of protein-rich foods out of the countryside and into factories. It would. But please remember that almost all the meat you eat has already been taken out of the countryside and into factories.

 

So-called free range chickens

The horror of factory pigs

These factories are places of horror, both astonishingly cruel and highly polluting. We are in massive denial about them. We like to imagine that our meat and eggs are produced in fields. Only a tiny proportion is.

And this tiny proportion tends to be even more damaging than factory farming, which, for all its horrors, is more efficient in its use of land and other resources. Never forget those two great neglected issues: ecological opportunity cost and carbon opportunity cost.

Anyway, even “pasture-fed” and “free range” animals end up in the factory: the slaughterhouse and the packing plant. In life, they are seldom detached from the factory, requiring equipment, materials and often supplementary feed produced there.

I want us to recognise the reality of where our food comes from, and the huge burden of cruelty, destruction and brutalisation required to produce and eat it. I want us to see past the bucolic myths and comforting falsehoods that surround this industry.

The factory is the logical outcome of any drive towards efficiency. Labour efficiency, land efficiency, resource efficiency. No form of efficiency is in all respects good, but the same goes for inefficiencies, which tend to be particularly problematic in environmental terms.

We can harness the efficiencies of the factory while shedding the cruelty and destruction, by *brewing* protein-rich foods instead of raising them in the form of animal flesh and animal secretions.

The potential savings in terms of land, water and nutrients of the switch from farming animals to farming microbes are so enormous that they could make the difference between the collapse of our life support systems and their perpetuation.

Reducing emissions with plant-based proteins

From The Boston Consulting Group

Give credit to the consumer. Our latest research shows that people around the world are buying into alternative proteins—and are very happy with what they find. The market share projections that we made in our first Food for Thought report in 2021 are bearing out: current forecast models indicate that alternative proteins will represent 11% of all protein consumption by 2035, and with some help from technology, investors, and regulators, alternative proteins could command 22% of the global market over this time frame.

This is good news for everyone involved in the global effort to combat climate change. The food system accounts for 26% of current global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Animal agriculture, the largest GHG emitter within the food system, is responsible for 15% of global emissions, roughly matching the emissions from the transportation sector. If we remain on track for an 11% share for alternative proteins by 2035, we will see a reduction of 0.85 gigaton of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) worldwide by 2030—equal to decarbonizing 95% of the aviation industry. In comparison with other solutions, such as flying less or retrofitting existing housing stock, the economic and individual consumer tradeoffs involved in shifting to alternative proteins are relatively small. Our survey shows that consumers understand this: more than 30% of consumers consider having a major positive impact on climate to be a primary reason to switch to alternative proteins.

And this is exactly what alternatives proteins do. Investing in the segment has one of the biggest impacts on decarbonization when assessed in terms of the market value of avoided CO2e emissions per dollar invested in mitigation efforts. We call this impact of capital employed (IoCE)—and investments in alternative proteins produce IoCE that is magnitudes greater than corresponding decarbonization investments in other high-emitting sectors of the economy, such as transportation or buildings, can achieve.

The protein transformation is one part of a broader remodeling of the food system. As value pools form around new technologies and processes that help address such critical issues as taste, health, and cost, the need for some long-standing processes, such as animal slaughtering and meat packing, will decline. Every stakeholder along the value chain is likely to feel the impact of the transformation, and many will find big opportunities in contributing to building a sustainable food system.

Alternative proteins have made substantial strides with consumers, who are broadly aware of this emerging food category and are favorably impressed when they try available products. (See Exhibit 1.) A 2022 survey by BCG and Blue Horizon, encompassing more than 3,700 respondents in seven countries, reveals that consumers in most markets appreciate the product attributes of taste, nutritional value, and health the most. We also found that improvements in three key areas—health, taste, and price—are key to boosting demand. Approximately 75% of respondents said that having a healthier diet is the primary motivator for them to start consuming alternative proteins. When it comes to making a purchasing decision between several products, though, taste emerges as a key criterion. Price remains a sticking point in all markets. Consumers are not prepared to pay a premium for a product that offers only taste parity with animal-based products.

Since almost a third of consumers say that they would switch their diets to alternative proteins if doing so would have a major positive impact on climate, there is a clear need for more active positioning and consumer education.

Consumers in all markets express a strong willingness to shift their consumption patterns further if their biggest inhibitions regarding the products—health and nutrition, taste, and safety—are addressed. In that case, the share of respondents who consume mostly or only alternative proteins would double (from 13% to 27%), and the number of people who balance consumption between alternative and conventional proteins would increase by almost a third.


All of this progress comes at a critical time. Reducing animal agriculture in the food value chain is an exceptionally high-impact solution to the global climate crisis.

The UN has projected that GHG emissions will reach 55 gigatons by 2030, absent any change in current government policies. In our 2021 Food for Thought report, we estimated that the shift to alternative beef, pork, chicken, and egg alternatives will save more than 1 gigaton (Gt) of CO2e by 2035—or about 0.85 Gt CO2e. This is equal to decarbonizing most of the aviation or shipping industries or about 22% of the building industry. In our upside scenario (which envisages alternative proteins capturing 22% market share), we see decarbonization of 2.2 Gt CO2e, or 4% of emissions under the UN’s current policies scenario, by 2030. If alternative proteins were to replace the total addressable market of animal proteins with like-for-like alternatives, building on current technology, global emissions would fall by 6.1 Gt CO2e —11% of projected current emissions in 2030. (See Exhibit 2.)

There’s also a climate bonus. Any significant overall change in diets toward more alternative proteins will have an immediate cooling effect on the planet, since GHG emissions from animal farming include a substantial portion of methane—as much as 50%. Methane has a much higher global warming potential than CO2 and a much shorter atmospheric lifetime. Consequently, reducing methane levels in the atmosphere doesn’t just prevent further warming; it comes with a cooling effect. [This implies that the reduction in methane emissions has not been included in the overall calculations]

This is a big opportunity for the food sector. From a macroeconomic perspective, investment in plant-based proteins has the highest CO2e savings per dollar of invested capital of any sector—and therefore the highest IoCE. But despite the favorable economics and attractive potential, including ready consumer interest, investment in sustainable foods is only a fraction of that committed to other sectors. Likewise, other sectors have received many times more mitigation capital than food production, even though emissions are much lower.

20 Things which will change the world by 2040

Here are 20 things in no particular order which I think will totally change the world over the next 20 years.

1.  CHEAP ELECTRICITY

 Wind costs are falling by 5-10% per annum, solar by 10% to 20% and batteries by 15% plus.  Wind's cost declines will prolly slow over the next 10 years—it's a mature technology.  But the cost declines in solar are likely to continue, and in batteries, there's a real chance they'll accelerate.  If these trends continue (and why won't they?), in 10 years electricity will cost 25% of what it does now.  If the trend decline then halves to, say 7% a year, then in 20 years, electricity will cost just 10% of what it does now.  Cheap energy supercharges economic growth.  The low oil price from 1945 to 1973 helped drive rapid and sustained growth in the world economy.  Cheap renewables will do the same over the next 20 years and beyond.

2.  EVS

They're going to be cheaper than ICEVs (internal combustion vehicles) to buy, and much cheaper to run.  They'll be replacing ICEVs  so the shifts in society might not seem dramatic.  But with AIs running them, transport as a service will become common.  You'll summon a car using your phone, and it will drive itself to where you are and then to where you want to go.  Because EVs will last much longer than ICEVs and will be significantly cheaper to run, "transport as a service" will be a popular way for people to get around.  Car sales are likely to decline by 50% plus, as TAAS takes off.  Air pollution in cities will end.  By 2040, most of the world's vehicle fleet will be electric.  Maybe hydrogen fuel-cell, but I doubt it.  The cost of building a hydrogen refuelling network will be much more costly than just attaching your car to an already existing network, the electric grid.  And the energy efficiency of the hydrogen cycle is much lower than batteries.

3.  AI

I don't think we'll have true AI, as in sentient robots.  But we will have very sophisticated computerised control systems, such as those which will allow for self-driving cars and self-landing rockets.  This has been made possible by the 5 or 6 orders of magnitude decline in the costs of and size of super computers, as Tony Seba points out.  SpaceX's ability to land and re-use its rockets would not have been possible without the advances in computing power.  These advances and changes all interact.

4.  3-D PRINTING

This cuts the cost of manufacturing metal things by at least half, because there's much less scrap.  It also reduces the stock of parts you have to keep on hand.  And allows you to make more complicated things, like SpaceX's extraordinary new Raptor rocket engines.  On the ISS, there is a 3-D printer to make spare parts.  On Mars, and the Moon, 3-D printers will be used to build habitats; to make things which would take too long or are too expensive to get from Earth; and to make things which have short production runs or are experimental.

5.  VAT MEAT, MILK AND FISH

Cheap energy will change agriculture.  Right now, 20% of Australia's tomatoes come from a factory in the semi-desert in the north of the State of South Australia, using desalinated sea water and growing the tomatoes in greenhouses.  This undertaking uses no fossil fuel at all.  Animal rearing  uses vast areas of land, is highly polluting, and contributes 20% to global CO₂ emissions.  Vat meats and fish are already starting to take off.  Their costs are declining year by year.  By 2040, they will become the norm.  

There won't be "real" meat on Mars or on the Moon or in Space Stations .  There just aren't the resources to grow it.  If vat meat, fish and milk taste like the real thing, cost about the same or less, are environmentally kinder, and involve no animal suffering, why wouldn't you switch?  This will reduce emissions by 20% while allowing the rewilding of unused fields and grasslands.

6.  CHEAP ACCESS TO SPACE

Cheap access to space will change everything.  To settle Mars, we'll need to rapidly improve a whole range of technologies, like vat meat production, genuine air conditioning (meaning far more than just heating and cooling), hydroponics, water purification, extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere, genetic modification, medicine, and so on.

By the time SpaceX's Starship is running, SpaceX will have cut the cost of launching a kilogram to LEO (Low Earth Orbit) from $22,000 to ~$20.  Whenever you have a 10-fold decrease in costs you get disruption, as new technolgies take off.   This will be a 1000-fold decrease in cost.  We're already seeing the consequences of cheaper launches in the roll-out of SpaceX's Starlink super fast internet.  The development of a space-faring civilisation will spawn new technologies we haven't even thought of.  Who would have thought 20 years ago that we would carry computers in our pockets millions of times more powerful than the first IBM computer, computers which connect us to a massive knowledge network as well as news, videos, maps, Wikipedia?   None of that was predicted.  Yet think of the businesses which have developed because of those twin inventions, the smart phone and the internet (Apple, Google, Uber, Air BnB ....).  And think also how the explosive growth of smart phone sales also drove down li-ion battery prices,  allowing EVs and grid energy storage to happen.

7.  ASTEROID MINING

With cheap access to space also comes asteroid mining.  Because the asteroids aren't in deep gravity wells like the Earth or Mars, nudging them into orbits which intersect Earth's or Mars's will be cheap.  The resources of a single medium-sized  asteroid, for example for rare earth metals, will more than equal all the rare earth metals that have ever been mined on Earth.   We will prolly stop stripping the Earth to produce metals and minerals and instead start disassembling asteroids to do that.  The world's major resource companies will be asteroid miners.

But some of these will be used in space manufacturing.  Why take stuff into the gravity well when you can build it in LEO?  Asteroid mining will be even more important on Mars, as asteroids will likely provide the volatiles needed to give Mars an atmosphere dense enough for humans to work in without needing to wear pressurised space suits. 

8. BECOME A MULTI-PLANETARY SPECIES

Our first colony will be Mars.  Read  the Red Mars trilogy to see how colonising Mars will change Earth too.  Not just in technological advances but also in social advances.  Looking down on Mars and Earth from space will change mankind's perception of itself.  As Robert Zubrin says, knowing that there is no shortage of resources because we have unlimited resources in space means that most of the causes of war on Earth will disappear.  Of course, no matter how technologically advanced and prosperous humans become, there is no reason to suppose we will ever be more intelligent, less venal, less greedy, and less petty. 

After we colonise Mars, we'll start on Venus.  That'll be much harder.  But by then we will also have colonies in the asteroid belt and large inhabited space stations in orbit round the Earth and Mars.  We will truly be a multi-planetary species.  And that will change everything.

9. TRULY GLOBAL HIGH-SPEED INTERNET

SpaceX's Starlink has kicked off a revolution in high-speed internet.  Starlink's network will be truly global, available in the Arctic and Antarctic,  the Sahara and across the world's oceans.  In countries where wired internet is only available in cities, such as most of Africa, Starlink will provide links to remote villages and towns.  It'll be expensive ($100 per month), but villages could club together to pay for it.  Those same villages are off the electric grid, too, and small solar panels and batteries will change that.  Children who do their homework by candlelight will now be able to do it by LED light, and access the internet, connecting to the ginormous encyclopedia which is the interweb.  20 years ago we didn't have Wikipedia.  Today, even if your village doesn't have a library, even if you  can't afford to buy a book, you'll still be able to study science, maths, languages, technologies.    

10.  TERRAFORMING THE EARTH

The current fall in emissions isn't rapid enough to prevent a rise of more than 1.5 degrees C, maybe even 2 degrees C,  in global temperatures.   We will need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.  One way would be to cover desert and semi-desert areas with forests.  To do this would require desalination plants, powered by solar, which will get cheaper and cheaper over the next 2 decades.  It would be a mammoth undertaking, almost beyond our imagination.  But it will prolly be necessary.  Given the scale of the problem, any de-carbonisation method will have to be massive.  But something will have to be done to remove CO2 from our atmosphere.  Changing a planet's climate to make it more livable is called terraforming.  You might also call it geo-engineering.  Whatever; we will prolly have started to do it by 2040.  We will have no choice.


11.  GENE THERAPY & GENETIC MODIFICATION

The colonisation of Mars and the growth of space travel will accelerate the development of gene therapy, because radiation on Mars and in space will cause genetic damage.   Treating that will become imperative, and as technology often responds to extreme need, it will likely be developed, because it has to be.  Gene therapy will provides cures for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and inherited genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis. 

Creating plants which will grow in our domes on Mars and on space stations to provide us with food will be important to the pioneers.   Dwarf wheat, larger tomatoes, low-rise almond/fruit trees, and so on and so on.  The need for these advances will drive rapid change.  But the advances themselves will drive down the cost of food back here on Earth.  


12.  THE RISE OF AFRICA

Africa is the second-largest continent, in population and size, compared to Asia.  For decades, Africa has been an economic laggard.  But solar favours countries near the equator.   Seasonal storage needs are much less than in high latitudes further from the equator.  8 hours of storage will be enough for most places within 30 degrees north and south of the equator.  Cheap electricity will be even cheaper in Africa.  In addition, Africa's population is young, it speaks English as a first or second language, and it's so far behind the production possibility frontier that high speed internet and distributed solar power will be transforming.    

Until recently, Africa has lagged the world economy, but access to electricity and information will change everything.  Africa will be the new China, with high growth rates, falling poverty and  rapid development, and with that will come greater political power.  China has recognised this reality; the rest of the world has not.  That needs to change.


13.  THE END OF NEO-LIBERALISM

Neo-liberalism has been tried for 40 years.  It has resulted in greater economic and financial instability, and vastly increased inequality of income and wealth (especially in those mostly Anglophone countries which have most enthusiastically embraced it), as well as a lower growth rate.   The rising inequality has also led to increased political extremism.  Economists like to pretend that economics is separate from politics.  But the consequences of increased inequality and greater uncertainty have shown that there is a non-economic price for neo-liberalism: the rise of far right parties and policies. The dogma of small government, low taxes, and deregulation is becoming tarnished.  The Covid crisis has conclusively shown that there are some things government does better than the private sector.  Unlike the neo-liberal dogma, the private sector doesn't inevitably do things better and more cheaply than the public sector, especially when second order effects are considered.  Privatisations of state-owned enterprises have mostly failed: costs are higher, services no better, corruption worse.

Expect a gradual retreat from the extreme tenets of neo-liberalism towards a more measured and pragmatic process.  Big(ger) government is back.  The big borrowings government took up under Covid are not going to be repaid.  Instead, governments will start running deficits again.  The post WW2 pragmatic neo-Keynesian synthesis will once again modify red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism.  

14.  A UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

Technological advances will cause major disruptions to job markets.  So will shifts in economic growth and development.  In the past, dire poverty among the old was reduced by the introduction of a universal basic income or social wage for old people, otherwise known as the old age pension.  A UBI in developed countries, for everyone, has so far been seen as a step too far.  But opinion is changing.  If we are truly to drain the poison of the extreme right, we will need to address the insecurity and poverty of the precariat, which will likely be worsened by the technological and economic changes I think will happen.   A UBI would do that.

15.  HYPERSONIC INTERCONTINENTAL FLIGHTS

SpaceX would like to use Starship to run suborbital long-distance flights.  Musk has said that over long distances, suborbital flights will have a lower cost than conventional jet travel.  At 20 times the speed.  Anybody want to bet it won't happen?

16.  NEURALINK

Musk is afraid that a real AI (as opposed to very clever software) would end up ruling the world and humanity would end up being no more than pets of the machines.  If we even survive.  His response to that is to develop brain-machine interfaces.  This would make us as clever as our AI overlords.  We would have chips in our brain, like a permanently embedded smartphone.  It might never get to that, but if an interface can enable a blind person to see again, or a disabled person to walk, then that would be huge.  And having a small device in your head which allows one to communicate directly with the interweb would be revolutionary.  Not sure I like the security implications of that, though.

17.   ELECTRIC PLANES

We will soon see the introduction of electric planes which will allow short flights (up to 400 km) at 1/20th the cost of jet or jet-prop aircraft of today.  They will be used to connect outlying regions to the spaceports where suborbital ultrasonic flights will depart from and arrive at.  The long-term outlook for conventional airliners isn't good at all.  What these two developments mean together is that one will be able to fly from a small town in the bush to another small town on the other side of the world in a few hours.  A hundred years ago, it took 3 weeks for a ship to sail from Australia to Europe.  Currently, it takes 24 hours to fly that distance.  With suborbital hypersonic rockets, the journey time will be down to just an hour.

18.   NUCLEAR FUSION

Nuclear fusion is the opposite of nuclear fission, where large atoms, e.g., uranium, are split into smaller atoms, releasing massive amount of energy.  Fusion is what happens inside stars like our sun, where the lightest atoms, hydrogen, are blasted together under intense heat and presure to produce heavier atoms.  And therein lies the difficulty--it's very hard to create those conditions outside the fiery heart of a star.   For 70 years, the joke goes, nuclear fusion has always been 30 years away. But maybe that's changed.  Fusion is likely to make much faster progress now that private firms and individuals are bankrolling research than it has under the aegis of giant bureaucracies, so I think we'll prolly have fusion by 2040.  We will need nuclear fusion on Mars, and to mine the asteroids.  And it will be enormously useful on Erarth, too.

19.  A RETURN TO DEMOCRACY

Winston Churchill said that democracy was the worst system, apart from all the others.  People have pointed to the Chinese and Russian dictatorships as exemplars of how to run politico-economic systems.   Yet both countries have declining growth rates.  This is particularly interesting in the case of China, which is far from being a wealthy country, and where you would expect growth to remain higher than it is, given where it is in the typical development pathway.  For all America's faults, and despite the out-and out dementia of the Right and the Republican Party, the technological developments there are breathtaking.  Perhaps people need freedom if they are to innovate.  Just a thought.  

If we drain the pus of divisiveness and far-right toxins from our democracies by reducing inequality, and again giving ordinary people hope that their lives and the lives of their children will be better, I believe that the autocratic political/social/ economic alternatives of China and Russia will be seen as what they are: relative failures.

20.  SYNERGY

All these changes will interact, just as smartphones and internet did, the one driving the development of the other.  And the interactions will spiral out of control unforecastably. changing the world in ways which will surprise and shock us.  And some of the consequences will be adverse.  But it's going to be a most interesting ride.

Zero carbon by 2050

If we want to stop catastrophic climate change and global heating, we need to cut emissions of CO2 and methane to zero by 2050.  Let's split those 30 years up into decades, aiming to cut emissions by 1/3rd of the 2019 level each decade.

2020-2030

This will be the decade where we have to close down as many coal power stations as we can.  The good news is that in most countries, wind or solar or both are now cheaper than (new) coal.  In developed countries, most coal power stations are old, and will soon have to be retired.  When they are, they will be replaced by wind and solar.  Even with 10 hours of storage, wind and solar are the cheapest power source in the USA, except for existing coal power stations which have been fully depreciated and have had their debt paid off.  But of course, they are precisely the power stations which will need to be retired over the next decade.

Even in China, where coal is cheap, large-scale solar will this year reach grid parity, meaning it can compete with the wholesale price of electricity, which is determined by China's massive coal fleet.  China produces 35% or world CO2 emissions, and is the largest consumer of coal.   A change here will be very important for world emissions and the global climate.

So the target is that by 2030, the number of coal power stations still operating will be small.  They'll simply be too costly to keep going.  This is much faster then even the relatively optimistic BNEF forecasts (they forecast just 25% from renewables by 2030).  Nevertheless, the cost curves as well as the increasing global panic about catastrophic climate change suggest this will be likely.

During this decade, we should also try to switch heating from gas/oil to electric, and we will start the switch to electric transport.  Of which more below.   Electricity and heat production contributes 25% of global CO2 emissions, so we'll need to find more areas to cut emissions by 1/3rd by 2030.

2030-2040

This will be the decade where we electrify transport.  Battery costs are falling by 20% compound per annum.  This means that we should cross the $100/kWh battery pack cost line by 2023, which will mean that the "sticker price" of EVs will be comparable to ICEVs.  Already, in China and India (where it is very important that the growth in demand for personal transport isn't satisfied by petrol cars) small, cheap EVs are available.   Once again, the twin pincers of public anxiety about climate change and the plunging cost of EVs will rapidly squeeze fossil fuels out of the market. Assuming EVs reach 100% of new car sales by 2030, then by 2040, almost all the emissions from road transport will have stopped, assuming a 10 year vehicle life, which is lower than what it is now, but government will likely want to accelerate the transition by banning polluting cars and lorries from town centres as well as buying back aging fossil fuel clunkers.

In developed countries, these emissions are about 1/3rd of total emissions.  In developing countries, they make up a smaller proportion on average, though the percentages vary widely.  But demand for cars is growing fast in developing countries, so a transition to EVs will prevent big rises in emissions from this sector.

It will also be the decade when we make cement production and iron & steel carbon-neutral.  We have the technologies to do this now, but these processes are still more expensive than making them the old way.  Expect carbon taxes or regulations, to force a shift.

Battery technology may well have advanced far enough that we will be able to fly long distance without using jetfuel.  Or we will have shifted to carbon-friendly jetfuel.  Or we'll be flying long distance by SpaceX's suborbital shuttle, fuelled by green methane, and short distance by electric planes.  Once again, carbon taxes will help shift air travel towards zero-carbon alternatives. 

Emissions from transport and industry (iron & steel, cement, chemicals, mostly) make up another third of global emissions.  By 2040, these will have stopped.  They'll have to.  Together with what will have been done in the 2020s, total emissions will have fallen by roughly 2/3rds, a compound rate of decline of 5.5% per annum.

2015.  Source: EPA

2040-2050

By 2040, emissions from electricity generation, transport, and industry will have fallen dramatically.  But there will remain some emissions, by far the most important being agriculture, land-use, land-clearing, etc.  There's no particular reason to wait until 2040 to deal with these.  We could start transitioning now.  After all, we have alternatives to meat.  And perhaps by 2030 or so, most ppl will be terrified enough of climate change to change their personal lifestyles.  But change here will be hard.  With electricity generation, the future is already happening now.  Renewables are simply cheaper.   With EVs that will soon be the case.  But with meat, we're asking people to change life-long habits.  It'll have to be done, it's just that politicians will postpone action as long as they can get away with it.  Once again, a carbon tax would help the shift.   If you think that the outrage generated by trying to get our economy to switch to green electricity was over the top, wait till you tell people they must eat less meat.  Yet, I have hope.  Synthetic meats are taking off.  Vegetarianism and veganism are rising trends.   And if meat substitutes taste just like the real thing but don't inflict dreadful cruelty on animals and have a huge negative effect on the environment, then why not?

2020-2050

In each decade, the necessary year-on-year percentage decline will increase, even though as a percent of the starting point, the decadal declines will be roughly the same.   If we cut emissions 1/3rd by 2030, then we have to cut emissions by 1/2 from 2030 to 2040.  And from 2040 to 2050 by 100%.  These seem to be large percentages, but they will only look like that because of previous successes.

Many of the shifts will begin before the decade I've selected for each of them, though I expect my selected decade will be when they reach their culmination.  If the transitions are sped up, maybe we can reach near-zero emissions by 2040, if we move in all sectors.  And if we start massive re-afforestation we might achieve negative emissions, and will for the first time in the last 200 years see falling atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.  We must surely hope so.