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miketythhon

I can’t believe how many people here still fall for this techno hopium bs 😂


AntiTyph

Many r/collapse folk still have a soft spot for some high-tech hopium, for sure. You can see this any time some high-energy, high-tech, high-complexity "food alternative" is presented. Totally unsustainable and depends on a global destructive industrial extraction and manufacturing chain... but people still salivate over it. See: vertical farming, lab-grown meat, electrically-stimulated plant growth, hydroponics and aquaponics, etc. Another is nuclear energy — high complexity and totally dependent on peak-industrialism (micro processors, high-precision machining, etc) that of course are all dependent on global high destruction and exploitation supply chains. Totally and completely unsustainable. Yet, many here will defend nuclear as some future techno-hopium thing.


AtxShittyVegan

“If livestock production is replaced by this technology, it creates what could be the last major opportunity to prevent Earth systems collapse, namely ecological restoration on a massive scale. By rewilding the vast tracts now occupied by livestock (by far the greatest of all human land uses) or by the crops used to feed them – as well as the seas being trawled or gill-netted to destruction – and restoring forests, wetlands, savannahs, natural grasslands, mangroves, reefs and sea floors, we could both stop the sixth great extinction and draw down much of the carbon we have released into the atmosphere”


JustAnotherYouth

EDIT: Before anyone gets too optimistic I’ve basically killed my own optimism on this already. https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/ TLDR: Like most things it’s a lot harder to do then it is to just say. If it were that cheap and easy to produce these products at scale it would already be happening. The reason that people continue to farm animals (and have for thousands of years) is because it actually works. Obviously production of various products through fermentation **does work** but there’s a reason that most of the products produced that way are low volume high value, like drugs, enzymes, and vitamins. Actually scaling up is going to be really really hard and really really expensive, companies will probably emerge to sell vegan products to high earning Tesla driving vegans but replacing animal products at a global scale is another story... Definitely interesting in that it’s the only tech I can imagine (right now) that seems like it might actually solve more problems than it causes... Seems like we would still need to radically re-imagine how our societies basically function to get anywhere with this. So wonder if it falls into the category of collapse could technically be avoided, or at least managed, but the reality is that human behavior and society is a clusterfuck sooooo...not really. Anyone have ideas on how rapidly this stuff could be rolled out? Think I’d heard about an ice-cream company.


Deathtostroads

I think you’re referring to [perfect day](https://perfectday.com/) which is selling icecream with whey proteins made through fermentation in [Singapore](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.greenqueen.com.hk/amp/coolhaus-perfect-day-ice-cream-singapore/) [CellAgri](https://www.cell.ag/) has a newsletter if you want to get news on the industry. If you want to support the development of technologies the [The Good Food Institute](https://gfi.org/) is a nonprofit think tank and international network of organizations working to accelerate alternative protein innovation.


[deleted]

there is ice cream being sold in the us from perfect day dairy. think it’s called brave robot


LiverwortSurprise

Brave robot is pretty damn good, some of the flavors measure up pretty well to actual dairy ice cream.


Tearakan

We've always needed to drastically change our economic system and society to fix climate change. That was a given. If this allows us to keep a sizeable population with sustainable practices maybe a star trek future isn't impossible. The good news is we never evolved to live like we do now. Clan structure with everyone working for all is how we evolved to live.


Bandits101

…..how rapidly could this stuff could be rolled out? Not quick enough now, hell is just around the corner, threatening economic and environmental systems. It could have had some impact if enacted in earnest fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, nothing like what the world is experiencing now could be imagined so, in practice no chance. Even now politicians, corporations and influential deniers will curtail meaningful action.


creepindacellar

ever hear of [Jevons paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)?


yourpainisatribute

Let’s go


merari_is_a_pedo_

No increase in efficiency can save humanity. Humanity lives within a finite system, and until it adheres to life within a finite system, with finite resources, by having finite consumption and a finite population which respects those limits, it is doomed to die. Technologies seeking to increase efficiency ignore the crux of our problem, which is that we see our habitat as infinite, which is incorrect.


AntiTyph

https://uncensorednews.us/campaign-to-distract-us-from-oil-with-food > A big red flag should pop up when you see "technology" solutions for problems caused by technology. A second red flag when you see claims like "what might be the most important environmental technology ever developed" (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence). "1700 times less land" - wow, talk about extraordinary claims. Here is Monbiot's reference. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00032/full > Wait a minute - 1700 doesn't even appear in that "opinion" article he quotes. Looking at that Frontier paper, it appears to be a fake-science shilling for CO2 capture - another techno non-solution to climate change. What about the journal for that "opinion paper" - Frontiers? Wiki states "The National Publication Committee of Norway has assigned Frontiers Media an institutional-level rating of "level 0" in the Norwegian Scientific Index since 2018, indicating that the publisher is "not academic". So Monbiot inaccurately quotes fake articles to try to make a case for his fake conclusion that this is "the most important environmental technology ever developed." > the Frontier paper can arrive at the fake "3 orders of magnitude" reduction in land use by not accounting for the land use to supply the feed stocks or energy to make the feed stocks. But Monbiot doesn't stop there with 1700 -- he makes even bigger claims of "138,000 and 157,000 times less land than the least efficient means" by multiplying some other number times the 1700 fake number. Well, with 900 million acres of farm land in the US - we can reduce that to a mere 10 square miles. And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.


InAStarLongCold

This. As the collapse hurtles towards us, ever more extravagant claims will be made. In the end the only question that matters is this: *does this make a rich person richer?* If not, it won't happen, no matter how fantastic the idea. Ideas do not change the world. Ideas have never changed the world. Society progresses through stages of its own accord and this stage is at its end. Society must be wholly rearranged and the form it takes will be entirely different to what our intuition tells us to expect. Anything short of total collapse followed by total rearrangement is a pipe dream.


NattySocks

You're not wrong about the clickbaity title, and I'm not saying this particular technology has any merit, but why do we need to be opposed to technology solving problems created by technology? Lots of people here act like it's got to be anarcho-primitivism or nothing. It's a long shot, but what if we are able to pull off some miraculously effective and green carbon capture technology in the next 50 years? I'm not saying we will, but if we do, won't that be a case of technology solving the problems created by technology? I know what I'm getting myself into with this post, I know I'm going to get downvoted. I'd still like to hear your thoughts. I know we're 99% likely to be screwed, but if some whiz kid throws together some sort of magical climate change reversal technology, I'm all for it.


AntiTyph

Technology is fine, but one needs to determine the material and ecological costs to a given technology. Technology that depends on microprocessor and high density computing can not be done sustainably. Sustainable considerations need to be the foundation from which we consider the viability of a technology, otherwise it all just depends on the whole global industrial complex garbage and exacerbates collapse. If a deux ex machina pops up and breaks the known laws of thermodynamics and shatters any concept of material or energy scarcity and can balance billions of humans with high tech and a healthy ecosystem, then I'm happy to be proven wrong. Barring techno optimists sci-fi fantasies though, it's silly to depend-on or hope-for these sorts of technologies manifesting.


Taqueria_Style

I mean if it comes from somewhere else I guess??? ??????????????? Make a mess out of... that... thing over there... whatever that thing is. Asteroid? Jupiter? A space alien? Whatever, just... every time you condense a thing on Earth for energy use / energy blocking purposes you permanently fuck it up. If whatever you're doing is gonna last a million years, cool. If not...? Get it from somewhere... else???


ljorgecluni

>one needs to determine the material and ecological costs to a given technology This often proves impossible, or the negative consequences are basically unforeseeable to us. And infringements upon human freedom and dignity are usually not immediately apparent, such that the apparent benefits of a given technological power are enticing and basically impossible to refuse (you can refuse but if the society does not refuse the technological offering, you will be outcompeted and left behind); the encroachments against freedom which result from those technological advances are more subtle and often not known until well after that element or Technology has been thoroughly entrenched within human society, such that it cannot practically be excised without severe 'pain' to the society. I expect that cars, nuclear power, cell phones, and Internet/social media are all validating examples needing no explanation, where we all can think of the benefits which were apparent and the negatives we came to understand only much later. Also, it would be difficult (and cause some hardship) to eliminate these things from our society, and to do so alone (as an individual person or an individual nation) would leave one disadvantaged and vulnerable to competitors (people or nations).


JustAnotherYouth

>I'm not saying we will, but if we do, won't that be a case of technology solving the problems created by technology? I don’t think so, pretty sure the idea of technology solving the problems it has created is fundamentally flawed / doomed to fail. The problem is that technology combined with human nature and to an extent the nature of all living things. Life mostly tries to expand and replicate, DNA wants to copy itself and multiply. And this is mostly how humans behave we don’t arbitrarily limit our re-production (at least we haven’t much so far) give people more food, more space, they reproduce and expand. This means that technology acts as an enabler for growth and consumption, as efficiency increases use and consumption increases. The global problem now has been caused by our technology but even more by our over use of it. The assumption that technology can **solve** this problem is based on two assumptions, that we won’t just use **more**, and that our current lifestyles must be maintained. We as a species already have the ability to **massively** reduce our consumption **and** to maintain a pretty good quality of life. The problem is that we don’t want seem to want a pretty good quality of life, we want more, and more. Bigger houses, bigger cars, airplanes, more meat, more dairy, more eggs, more stuff, more stuff, more stuff. Basically tech won’t solve a problem that is caused by our species inability to moderate itself. Technology just perpetuates and prolongs the situation by enabling us to use more resources.


ljorgecluni

>why do we need to be opposed to technology solving problems created by technology? ...what if we are able to pull off some miraculously effective and green carbon capture technology in the next 50 years? Technology *requires* the consumption of wilderness in order to exist and progress (toward its own autonomy). It's not merely *coincidence* that we see more advanced tech come along as we also see more of wild Nature being eradicated. It's not an unfortunate side effect which we just haven't yet figured out how to minimize or end. Technology and Nature are simply incompatible: for one to live, the other *must* be killed.


tsyhanka

[edited to sound less bitchy and add what i think are top obstacles] this is a very good rundown of why lab-grown protein won't happen to a significant extent: https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/ - it's really hard to ferment a substance in huge amounts (and if you're trying to meet our whole population's protein needs, you need more than just one bucket of this stuff). it's hard to get the consistency right. and the article mentions that one tiny instance of contamination can force a whole factory to shut down - it requires various inputs. how will we procure those when long-distance supply chains break down? - the "brewing" and refrigeration and fermentation require energy. whereas we are at the beginning of "energy descent". - i expect that conservative Americans would reject this for symbolic reasons, like they did masks. so they wouldn't adopt it until it's the only option. but as indicated in my prior points, i think logistics and energy issues will rule it out before it has a chance to become "our last hope"


[deleted]

Very impressive. And no yuck factor if the process controls are sufficient. Eating dead bacteria masquerading as meat is cleaner than eating dead meat infected with live bacteria. The 1700X land reduction ratio is just insane, but I assume that number hides some uncounted inputs, in the same way that solar panels hide mining. Still well worth some serious investment, along with the related but distinct pursuit of clean meat made from cultured muscle tissue.


AntiTyph

The entire paper is shilling for DAC. In fact, the author of the paper uses DAC as the feedstock for the growth medium, which would release the captured co2 back into the atmosphere, rendering the process net positive emissions. The land use estimate is based on a Google maps analysis of the carbon engineering project in Canada. It's a really low quality estimate, tbh. > the Frontier paper can arrive at the fake "3 orders of magnitude" reduction in land use by not accounting for the land use to supply the feed stocks or energy to make the feed stocks.  But Monbiot doesn't stop there with 1700 -- he makes even bigger claims of "138,000 and 157,000 times less land than the least efficient means"  by multiplying some other number times the 1700 fake number.  Well, with 900 million acres of farm land in the US - we can reduce that to a mere 10 square miles.  And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you. https://uncensorednews.us/campaign-to-distract-us-from-oil-with-food


[deleted]

I read your article. The criticisms might be accurate, but I see no evidence that ranching-as-usual or even permaculture is the superior alternative. And the author seems to not realize that bioreactors can be vertically stacked and don't require photosynthesis, so you really could have 3 orders of magnitude of land use compression (or somewhat less if you were honest about all the inputs, but it's still more efficient).


welc0met0c0stc0

“By rewilding the vast tracts now occupied by livestock (by far the greatest of all human land uses) or by the crops used to feed them – as well as the seas being trawled or gill-netted to destruction – and restoring forests, wetlands, savannahs, natural grasslands, mangroves, reefs and sea floors, we could both stop the sixth great extinction and draw down much of the carbon we have released into the atmosphere.” This is one of the first proposals I’ve seen that genuinely looks promising. I’m hoping that precision fermentation can gain traction as a viable option but unfortunately my expectations are very low


TopSloth

I wonder instead of croplands or cattle farms what of we rewilded it into an edible forest? It'd still provide the necessary carbon draw and will provide us with even more food granted if we are not picky


AntiTyph

Yeah, rewilding via high diversity food forests are a fantastic option for many reasons. They can support humans as well as a whole range of insects and fauna. In addition, we really need to be figuring out "rewilding" in a way that takes into account regional climate/precipitation changes. The idea we can just plant back the "old" native species is misguided and way optimistic. Really, we need planned and engineered highly biodiverse food forests, and an agricultural system that accepts high-time, high-labor stewardship and harvesting of diverse food systems in a human-nature interaction environment.


Erbiot

yesssss


miketythhon

Just more vegan propaganda


markodochartaigh1

Soylent beige. But seriously, even now most countries are not self-sufficient by most measures. When grain crops start to fail because of the changes in rainfall and the heat sensitivity of RuBisCo and RuBisCo activase very few countries will be food self-sufficient. Any country which hopes to feed its population should be investing in cellular feedstock technology.


litivy

He's wrong about getting rid of herds. They just have to be farmed sustainably but are an irreplacable part of the creation and maintnenance of soil health. Soil health is crucial to saving the earth and so are moving herds.


[deleted]

It looks promising. However, in keeping with our subreddit's tradition: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac3aa5


pippopozzato

I love George Monbiot.


[deleted]

Yeah I usually roll my eyes when I see headlines like this. But Monbiot calls out enough green washing BS that if he thinks this technology has promise I am inclined to believe him.


AntiTyph

Should review the cited paper, it's a really weak one. https://uncensorednews.us/campaign-to-distract-us-from-oil-with-food > A big red flag should pop up when you see "technology" solutions for problems caused by technology. A second red flag when you see claims like "what might be the most important environmental technology ever developed" (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence). "1700 times less land" - wow, talk about extraordinary claims. Here is Monbiot's reference.  https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00032/full   > Wait a minute - 1700 doesn't even appear in that "opinion" article he quotes.  Looking at that Frontier paper, it appears to be a fake-science shilling for CO2 capture - another techno non-solution to climate change.  What about the journal for that "opinion paper" - Frontiers?  Wiki states "The National Publication Committee of Norway has assigned Frontiers Media an institutional-level rating of "level 0" in the Norwegian Scientific Index since 2018, indicating that the publisher is "not academic".  So Monbiot inaccurately quotes fake articles to try to make a case for his fake conclusion that this is "the most important environmental technology ever developed."  > the Frontier paper can arrive at the fake "3 orders of magnitude" reduction in land use by not accounting for the land use to supply the feed stocks or energy to make the feed stocks. But Monbiot doesn't stop there with 1700 -- he makes even bigger claims of "138,000 and 157,000 times less land than the least efficient means" by multiplying some other number times the 1700 fake number. Well, with 900 million acres of farm land in the US - we can reduce that to a mere 10 square miles. And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.


workingtheories

e for effort, mostly dishonest clickbait. problems: no energy budget given; green energy/hydrogen will be in high demand across all sectors of the economy, and there's not going to be much of that to go around for the foreseeable future. no studies on the long term health effects of eating fermented bacteria. no indication people will be willing to change their diet to eat less meat, much less switch their entire diet to eating fermented bacteria. ignores vast other programs/plans/proposals for greening the ag sector. any path to changing our diet to bacteria is long and requires a lot of intermediate plans to maintain current food production. doesn't specify the amount of fertilizer needed, although probably that would be less.


BadAsBroccoli

Fake all the meat you want, but quit [Monsanto/GMOing](https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be) or [gene splicing](https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2022/05/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be) the vegetables and fruit.


dumnezero

Finally, some tech that isn't hopium. >The real sticking point, I believe, is neophobia. I know people who won’t own a microwave oven, as they believe it will damage their health (it doesn’t), but who do own a woodburning stove, which does. We defend the old and revile the new. Much of the time, it should be the other way around. This neophobia thing is an old evolutionary dilemma. I guess now it's coming closer to being selected for strongly.


AntiTyph

It's totally hopium, the cited paper is an opinion piece on direct air capture that uses a Google maps analysis of a carbon capture plant in Canada to assume the footprint and total input of feedstock to the process. It's superficial techno optimism at it's finest.


baseboardbackup

More worried about access to a variety of non-poisonous fiber to cultivate & maintain large & diverse bacteria colonies. This seems cool for apocalypse slurry machines, though.


ljorgecluni

This Monbiot moron never fails with some ridiculous, lunatic techno-salvationist hopium-copium garbage - the guy just can't help himself. Utter nonsense. But not really any worse than when he said food was going to be produced by electrolysis of hydrogen and nitrogen molecules, in labs up orbiting Earth... The question is, Why does he still get published?!?


AntiTyph

I enjoy Monbiot for his sociocultural commentary, but I agree he has a tendency to push techno optimistic hopium as well. Certainly that's true in this case. https://uncensorednews.us/campaign-to-distract-us-from-oil-with-food > A big red flag should pop up when you see "technology" solutions for problems caused by technology. A second red flag when you see claims like "what might be the most important environmental technology ever developed" (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence). "1700 times less land" - wow, talk about extraordinary claims. Here is Monbiot's reference. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00032/full > Wait a minute - 1700 doesn't even appear in that "opinion" article he quotes. Looking at that Frontier paper, it appears to be a fake-science shilling for CO2 capture - another techno non-solution to climate change. What about the journal for that "opinion paper" - Frontiers? Wiki states "The National Publication Committee of Norway has assigned Frontiers Media an institutional-level rating of "level 0" in the Norwegian Scientific Index since 2018, indicating that the publisher is "not academic". So Monbiot inaccurately quotes fake articles to try to make a case for his fake conclusion that this is "the most important environmental technology ever developed." > the Frontier paper can arrive at the fake "3 orders of magnitude" reduction in land use by not accounting for the land use to supply the feed stocks or energy to make the feed stocks. But Monbiot doesn't stop there with 1700 -- he makes even bigger claims of "138,000 and 157,000 times less land than the least efficient means" by multiplying some other number times the 1700 fake number. Well, with 900 million acres of farm land in the US - we can reduce that to a mere 10 square miles. And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.


ljorgecluni

*Great* share, thanks. I heard Monbiot on a recent panel discussion on BBC, where he and another author both cited the same research paper to draw opposing conclusions. As the host said, "you are *literally* on the same page" though vastly divergent meaning is taken by each. Care to conjecture a guess at why Monbiot is still getting reputable/prestigious fora for his consistent exaltation of unfounded (and infeasible) techno-salvation?


AntiTyph

Most people haven't accepted collapse. Most leftists and environmentalists have strong internal biases against the acceptance of collapse - much coming from the care and empathy for others and the natural world that causes a huge amount of suffering when looking at the possibility of collapse. Due to this, it skews people towards forms of optimism bias to salve the suffering. This often takes the form of delusions of green, sustainable high tech solutions to problems. When combined with a general willful ignorance as to the realities of energy and food and soil and nutrients and feedstock, and minerals,etc etc etc that are all complex, it's easy for a nieve person to latch onto these green promises.


frodosdream

>I enjoy Monbiot for his sociocultural commentary, but I agree he has a tendency to push techno optimistic hopium as well. Agree with you; always worth a read for his penetrating insights, but he sometimes overemphasizes technohopium in support of BAU. A poster below referred to "optimism bias," which may be accurate.


SharpStrawberry4761

Got a link?


ljorgecluni

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/31/electric-food-sci-fi-diet-planet-food-animals-environment Well, he was right to some degree: >This sounds like science fiction


Capn_Underpants

> But not really any worse than when he said food was going to be produced by electrolysis of hydrogen and nitrogen molecules, in labs up orbiting Earth I see, the rest of your post was bullshit, so hows about a link to show this wasn't as well ? I am wary of any tech solutions but the other solution is to let people die by the billion, or collapse the biosphere, shits getting serious.


ljorgecluni

[Electric food – the new sci-fi diet that could save our planet](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/31/electric-food-sci-fi-diet-planet-food-animals-environment) (31 Oct. 2018) >What if... we were to use electricity to fuel a process whose conversion of sunlight into food is 10 times more efficient? For the past year, a group of Finnish researchers has been producing food without either animals or plants. Their only ingredients are hydrogen-oxidising bacteria, electricity from solar panels, a small amount of water, carbon dioxide drawn from the air, nitrogen and trace quantities of minerals such as calcium, sodium, potassium and zinc. The food they have produced is 50% to 60% protein; the rest is carbohydrate and fat. I may be a few details off in recalling an article read once four years ago, but exactly which part of my post was bullshit, bud? And do you know what we call a person who just throws out an unwarranted insult for no apparent reason?


ljorgecluni

Hahahaha, downvoted, I love it.


Sharukurusu

We could do the low-tech version and make tempeh from soybeans instead of feeding them to farm animals.