Citizen Cartwright

AP’s protein problem series: Meat substitutes

For people who want to do their part to limit climate change but find going meatless unpalatable, there are plant-based and lab-grown meat options.

 

Plant-based meat

 

According to a University of Michigan study, if half of U.S. animal-based food was replaced with plant-based substitutes by 2030, the reduction in emissions for that year would be the equivalent of taking 47.5 million vehicles off the road.

"An explosion of new types of plant-based 'meat' — the burgers, nuggets, sausages and other cuts that closely resemble meat but are made from soybeans and other plants — is attracting customers all over the world," says The Associated Press. "Even in Germany, where cities like Hamburg and Frankfurt have given their names to iconic meat dishes, plant-based meat is becoming more popular."

But sales aren’t growing fast enough in enough places to reverse the global boom in meat consumption, AP says. To many people, it's still a novelty.

 

Lab-grown meat

 

More than 150 startups are working on meat that doesn’t require raising and killing animals, that's affordable and tastes and feels like the meat people are used to. 

Companies using cell biology to make so-called “cultivated,” or “cultured” meat, which also is popularly known as “lab-grown” meat, are trying to scale up quickly — partnering with traditional meat companies, drawing more and more investors and breaking ground on new production facilities in the United States and elsewhere, AP says.

But widespread adoption of meat from cells is nowhere near assured: The meat is expensive to make. There are scientific challenges, like learning how to mimic the complex structure of steak. Government regulation is another obstacle; only the United States and Singapore allow sales of cultivated meat.

AP’s protein problem series: ‘Raising better beef’

Worldwide, beef is the biggest agricultural source of greenhouse gases, and it has a bigger carbon footprint than any other type of protein, reports The Associated Press.

Climate scientists say the remedy is simple: Eat less beef and raise fewer cattle. 

 

But even with the wide availability of plant protein and the popularity of initiatives like Meatless Monday, most people around the world are eating more beef, not less, AP says. And as the population grows and more people move into the middle class, demand is expected to grow.

 

Researchers and an increasing number of ranchers agree that there are solutions that address climate change and satisfy demand, AP says.

 

They point to efforts to change the way cattle are raised to develop feed supplements that reduce gas releases, and to make genetic breakthroughs so animals digest their food without creating harmful gases.

 

For some ranchers, the solution is in the practice of regenerative ranching. In theory, it’s a holistic way to look at the earth, animals and water and the way they all interact. In practice, it’s an exhausting, never-ending process of moving cattle to different pastures in an effort to restore the soil, AP says.

The world’s ‘protein problem’

Before Thanksgiving, The Associated Press published a series of articles titled “The Protein Problem," on the global increase in animal food products and the environmental impacts.

 

It felt kinda churlish and out of sync to focus on the series in the run up to America’s Turkey Day but seems appropriate now, in the run up to the global climate talks starting Nov. 30.

 

In 1961, there were about 61.5 grams of protein available daily per person worldwide, and 32 percent came from animal sources, AP says. In 2020, 84.5 grams were available, with about 40 percent from animals.

 

"But livestock take up land, and the animals need to be fed," notes AP. "Some eat grains, which need cropland to grow. Others, like cattle and sheep, can eat grasses in pastures. That doesn’t require additional cropland, but the animals nevertheless emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. And in some places, forests are being cut down to create these pastures."

 

So AP says its series "shows you some of the possible solutions, including better ways to raise beef and farm fish – and even ways to create meat without animals."

 

Let's look at details of some of the articles as time permits over coming days.

Good news on tuberculosis, emissions in China, reforestation in Colombia Amazon

Among the items in the Nov. 15 newsletter from Australia’s Future Crunch:

 

— After setbacks caused by the pandemic, there's been a significant worldwide recovery in the scale-up of diagnosis and treatment for tuberculosis, the World Health Organization reports. Global efforts against TB have saved more than 75 million lives since 2000. 

 

“For millennia, our ancestors suffered and died with tuberculosis, without knowing what it was, what caused it, or how to stop it,” says Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general. “Today, we have knowledge and tools they could only have dreamed of. We have political commitment, and we have an opportunity that no generation in the history of humanity has had: the opportunity to write the final chapter in the story of TB.” 

 

— China’s carbon dioxide emissions are on track to drop in 2024 due to record growth in the installation of new low-carbon energy sources, says Carbon Brief, a British website covering the latest developments in climate science and policy.

 

— Former fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group that entered a peace accord with the government in 2016 to end 5 decades of conflict — are working to restore 1 million native trees to the Colombian Amazon, says Mongabay, an environmental science news platform.

Good news on African health, developed-country dementia, Tanzania electrification

Among the items this week from our friends at Australia’s Future Crunch:

 

— The World Health Organization has released a report on what it calls “one of Africa’s greatest achievements.” There now are 88 million fewer people in Africa requiring interventions against what are categorized as “neglected tropical diseases," such as sleeping sickness and leprosy, than in 2013. 

 

Seeping sickness has been eliminated as a public health problem in seven countries. The number of leprosy cases steadily decreased between 2012 and 2021, with eight countries reporting no new local cases among children for at least five consecutive years. 

 

"Successes of the past decade are built on over 70 years of shared experiences and learnings,” the WHO says.

 

— “Despite the widely held belief that dementia is destined to rise exponentially as global populations age, experts believe that, in the developed world at least, the prospects of avoiding dementia are stronger than they were a generation ago,” says the Financial Times.

 

The reasons for the reduction aren’t fully understood yet, but Albert Hofman, who chairs the department of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, believes better cardiovascular health is likely to be a significant factor.

 

— Longtime readers of this blog may remember my postings when my daughter and I spent a month volunteering in a village in Tanzania in 2009. (Those postings are in the Tanzania category on www.citizencartwright.com.)

 

So I’m especially happy to see that Future Crunch has come across a World Bank report saying its Tanzania Rural Electrification Expansion Program has helped the country achieve one of the fastest access expansion rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. From the program’s start in 2017 to 2022, it's provided more than 4.5 million people with access to electricity and added new connections for more than 1,600 healthcare facilities and nearly 6,000 education facilities.

Good news on girls’ education, crime in Britain, microplastics in EU

Among the items in this week’s edition of Future Crunch:

 

— Globally, there are 50 million more girls in school than in 2015, UNESCO reports. Completion rates of girls have increased from 86 percent to 89 percent in primary education, from 74 percent to 79 percent in lower secondary education and 54 percent to 61 percent in upper secondary education since 2015.

 

— Data from Britain's Office for National Statistics shows that crime in England and Wales has dropped to its lowest level on record, BBC News reports.

 

— The EU is banning microplastics in products including cosmetics, detergents, glitter, fertilizers, toys, medicines, medical devices and artificial sport surfaces, reports Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcaster. An estimated 42,000 tons of these tiny pieces of plastic are released in products in the EU each year.

What the good-news people have to say about ‘a bad week for humanity’

This week’s edition of Future Crunch begins with this:

 

"The news is a lot right now. Israel is still reeling from the deadliest single day in its 75-year history, an indiscriminate massacre that killed over a thousand civilians in the most brutal manner imaginable. Two million people are now under siege in Gaza without food, water, medicine or power, and over a thousand are already dead. The horror of it all is compounded by the collective fear of what might yet be to come. Cynicism is easy because you're never wrong. If you keep on insisting the world is an awful place, and that it's only going to get worse, eventually a week like this comes along and proves you right. 

"There was talk of peace in recent months, hope that something was changing. Overnight, that's been replaced by despair, and the familiar moral darkness that seems to hang so heavily over this part of the world. In the choice between barbarism and civilization nobody should waffle, but what the past few days have also revealed is that a lot of people will mourn for dead Israeli civilians but not dead Palestinian ones, and a lot of people will mourn for dead Palestinian civilians but not dead Israeli ones. What has happened to our collective humanity?

"In times like this it feels strange to be writing a newsletter that celebrates progress. Disrespectful even. This is not a kumbaya though. Our aim isn't to say 'Look over here! There's good stuff too!’ Suffering isn't relative, there's no Benthamesque, cosmic scale weighing things up and pronouncing its verdict on world events. There are moments when the world feels like it hangs by a thread. This is one of them. We're feeling it intensely too, that sense of worry and fear. 

 

"This week, our goal is just to stop you from going numb. The global media is chasing ambulances right now, and at some point it's going to become too much. When you feel that, try to remember there's a big planet out there, and a lot of other stories surrounding the Israel-Gaza one. People in power on both sides want war. But they don’t speak for all. What we can do is keep showing up with our attention and our humanity. Don't switch off, stay with it. Here are some other stories that might make that easier.”

 

I’m running Future Crunch today instead of our usual Friday because I want to share something else with you tomorrow about an approach to our common humanity.

 

Among the items in this Future Crunch:

 

— Global poverty reduction is back on track after three years lost to the pandemic. The World Bank estimates that for 2023, 691 million people — 8.6 percent of the global population — are living in extreme poverty. That's the lowest proportion in history, Future Crunch says. 

 

— New global rules for the safe handling of chemicals were adopted at a United Nations conference in Germany on Sept. 30. The Global Framework on Chemicals sets out 28 concrete targets and guidelines for key sectors from production to waste. These include preventing illegal trafficking of chemicals and waste, introducing national laws and phasing out by 2035 highly dangerous pesticides in agriculture, says Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle.

 

— The North American subspecies of the monarch butterfly has been upgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable,” reports Science. The change follows a researcher’s challenge to existing population models, concluding that though the insect’s population had fallen in Mexico, it had increased in other places and overall is in fact “doing really well.” 

Climate change ‘evangelist’ Al Gore is optimistic

My thanks to the reader who alerted me to an interview with Gore in The New Yorker.

Gore, who is best known for his work on climate change, was a member of the House and Senate before serving as Bill Clinton’s vice president. He won the popular vote for president in 2000 but lost the electoral vote. He was the subject of the Oscar-winnning 2006 documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth,” on the risks of climate change, and has written numerous books on the issue. Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their climate work.

Here are some of Gore's key comments in the interview:

"Climate-related extreme events have become so common and so dangerous that people who wanted to dismiss it are now waking up to the reality that we’re facing. And, of course, the underlying substance is shocking. We’re still using the sky as an open sewer for the heat-trapping, gaseous pollution that we spew into it at the rate of a hundred and sixty-two million tons every single day. And we know how to solve it. We have the means to solve it. I’ve used the metaphor of flipping a switch, and some people have objected to that. But, really, we have a switch we can flip.

"The climate crisis is really a fossil-fuel crisis. There are other components of it, for sure, but eighty per cent of it is the burning of fossil fuels. And scientists now know — and this is a relatively new finding, a very firm understanding — that, once we stop net additions to the overburden of greenhouse gases, once we reach so-called net zero, then temperatures on Earth will stop going up almost immediately. The lag time is as little as three to five years. They used to think that temperatures would keep on worsening because of positive-feedback loops — and some things, tragically, will. The melting of the ice, for example, will continue, though we can moderate the pace of that; the extinction crisis will continue without other major changes. But we can stop temperatures from going up almost immediately, and that’s the switch we need to flip. And then, if we can stay at true net zero, half of all human-caused greenhouse-gas pollution will fall out of the atmosphere in twenty-five to thirty years. So we can start the long and slow healing process almost immediately, if we act.

“We’re getting closer and closer [to overcoming the use of fossil fuels]. I’ll give you one statistic. If you were asked what percentage of the new electricity generation in the most populous country in the world — India — came from solar and wind last year, you might be surprised to hear that the answer was ninety-two per cent. Globally, eighty-eight per cent of all the new electricity generation last year was from renewables — eighty per cent from solar and wind. And yet we are still building more fossil-fuel facilities. There is now more money going into renewables than into fossil fuels, but the base of fossil-fuel generation is so large that it continues.

"What Joe Biden did last year, in passing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is really a climate bill, was the most extraordinary legislative achievement of any head of state and any country in history. However, we are still permitting fossil-fuel production on public lands. What would be the political cost for him of bringing it to a halt on public lands? Significant — and it can’t be blinked away, because of, again, the influence of the fossil-fuel industry. They have taken over one of our two major political parties, lock, stock, and oil barrel. It’s really quite shocking. But, as someone wrote, Mother Nature is staging an intervention, and I think we’re quite close to crossing a political tipping point.

"The crisis is still getting worse, faster than we are implementing the solutions. However, we are gaining momentum, and we’re gaining momentum so rapidly that I’m convinced we will soon be gaining on the crisis itself.”

Good news on resource use, climate

Because I didn’t blog at the end of last week, we have a double shot of good news from Future Crunch this morning. 

 

Among the gems in the Sept. 21 issue:

 

— As e-waste from our electronics has increased, Britain’s Royal Mint has developed a way to recover gold from circuit boards in laptops and phones and is working to help globalize e-waste recycling technology, says the BBC.

 

In Future Crunch's Sept. 27 issue:

 

— Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s energy sector to net zero and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius remains possible due to the record growth of key clean energy technologies, though momentum needs to increase rapidly in many areas, according to a new edition of the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Roadmap.

 

— President Biden used an executive order to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps. The program will employ more than 20,000 young adults, who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires, The Associated Press reports.

Good news on education, human rights, clean air

As you know, Future Crunch describes itself as bringing “good news you didn't hear about.” This week, I’m happy to say, numerous items in its newsletter are items you and I, in fact, already have heard about from mainstream media.

 

Other good news:

 

— In Punjab province, home to more than half of Pakistan’s population, education has increased from 13 million in 1998 to 26 million by 2020, effectively doubling the number of children aged 6-15 in school, according to the World Bank.

 

— The European Court of Human Rights last week found that the government of Bulgaria — a member of the EU — was violating European human rights law by failing to legally recognize same-sex couples, Human Rights Watch reports.

 

— China’s air pollution levels in 2021 had fallen 42 percent from 2013, extending the average Chinese citizen’s lifespan by 2.2 years, says CNN, citing the annual Air Quality Life Index report produced by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. 

 

Pollution levels globally have fallen slightly from 2013 to 2021 – which the report says was entirely due to China’s progress. Without China’s improvements, the world’s average pollution would have increased instead.