Test Tube Burger
"The most expensive burger ever made was served in London today(August 5, 2013). It cost more than $300,000 — thanks, Google's Sergey Brin — and didn't taste very good. But the texture was right, and it saved a cow. Maybe one day it can save the Earth.
That's the real play behind the test-tube burgers. The hope, according to Dutch scientist Mark Post, who led the team, is that they can eventually help stop global warming.
The case for moving away from raising and slaughtering animals for food is typically portrayed in terms of animal welfare. But increasingly the argument is about planetary welfare: Meat is simply a huge, huge contributor to climate change, and it's only going to get bigger as the billions of people in emerging economies begin demanding the meat-heavy diets they associate with wealth.
In this 2009 column, I laid out some of the numbers behind this debate. They're worth thinking about today. The column is slightly edited from its original version.
According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. That's larger than the entire transportation sector. Burgers, in other words, are doing more damage to the planet than SUVs.
Some of meat's contribution to climate change is intuitive. It's more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of the contribution is gross. "Manure lagoons," for instance, is the oddly evocative name for the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. And some of it would make Bart Simpson chuckle. Cow gas — interestingly, it's mainly burps, not flatulence — is a real player.
But the result isn't funny at all: Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. "How convenient for him," was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. "He's a vegetarian.""
"
That's the real play behind the test-tube burgers. The hope, according to Dutch scientist Mark Post, who led the team, is that they can eventually help stop global warming.
The case for moving away from raising and slaughtering animals for food is typically portrayed in terms of animal welfare. But increasingly the argument is about planetary welfare: Meat is simply a huge, huge contributor to climate change, and it's only going to get bigger as the billions of people in emerging economies begin demanding the meat-heavy diets they associate with wealth.
In this 2009 column, I laid out some of the numbers behind this debate. They're worth thinking about today. The column is slightly edited from its original version.
According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. That's larger than the entire transportation sector. Burgers, in other words, are doing more damage to the planet than SUVs.
Some of meat's contribution to climate change is intuitive. It's more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of the contribution is gross. "Manure lagoons," for instance, is the oddly evocative name for the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. And some of it would make Bart Simpson chuckle. Cow gas — interestingly, it's mainly burps, not flatulence — is a real player.
But the result isn't funny at all: Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. "How convenient for him," was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. "He's a vegetarian.""
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. I didnt see anything in classics intro about killing furry animals, or any animals. Im off to slash my wrists now. I may not be back 
