I think you're right, but there might be another way. What if there were a Tesla-like company? Tesla didn't just produce cars that are better for the environment, they made them awesome in every other way as well.
I imagine that meat will eventually be replaced by lab-grown meat that had been engineered to be as delicious (or moreso!) as the highest grade beef, but perhaps more healthy & cheaper. The fact that it would be better for the environment and animal rights needs to be listed as a benefit, but not the focus.
> Tesla didn't just produce cars that are better for the environment, they made them awesome in every other way as well.
as a former tesla owner, i dispute both of these assumptions.
> ... lab-grown meat ...
tesla builds cars. cars are a recent human invention.
cattle on the other hand is a product of millions of years of evolution.
i think it will take a bit more time to get lab meat that is as good as the real thing.
It didn't select to be environmentally friendly. Humans scaled up animal growth fairly recently too, so we hadn't had enough time to figure out pathogen issue and ethics.
I disagree. Evolution has created signals -- "tasty" -- for things that are good for us. Fats, salts, and sugars are comparatively rare in a wild environment, and thus they taste good.
Sure, but that's us evolving, not the animals, right? We have made quite a few other nutrient-dense foods that hack those signals. Evolution did not make cheese or chocolate in all these years, because it doesn't target our palate, rather the other way around. (Notable recent counterargument is the selective breeding of cattle for food, but that's thousands, not millions of years.)
I don't think the evolution of cattle is a good indicator of the difficulty of creating great plant protein products.
I imagine that meat will eventually be replaced by lab-grown meat that had been engineered to be as delicious (or moreso!) as the highest grade beef, but perhaps more healthy & cheaper. The fact that it would be better for the environment and animal rights needs to be listed as a benefit, but not the focus.