7 ms·

Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming – and save the planet (2019)

90 points by science4sail 5y ago

ChuckMcM 5y ago
And here we are two years later with farms and the planet still in peril :-). FWIW, and I think I said this when this came up before, farming in the west, and particularly in California, has to change because the drought will destroy farming. It already has put a number of farmers into default in the central valley. So any effort that can make that many acres of land even half to three quarters as productive with the water that is projected to be available will be needed.
- hunter-gatherer 5y ago
  I'd be interested to have an expert in this space comment on these lab grown meat startups. I'm all for it, but the pessimist in me thinks this all sounds too good to be true.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    Not a factory expert but work in agriculture. There are lots of issues with farming animals for meat and carbon output but most can be mitigated. The pathways are reduction of cattle in favour of sheep and goats, changing the gut biome of livestock and removing inefficient breeding stock so the farmers produce the same output with fewer animals. Genetic solutions are available now to address the last two. Factory meat will augment our supply of protein but they won't scale. The farmland used for livestock is mostly useless for the plant matter needed by the meat factories and the factories themselves are hardly going to be carbon neutral when you add in fertiliser and fuel for all that extra harvesting. I wouldn't be too keen on eating an extruded factory carrot, not sure I personally want to replace another natural product in my diet with some chemical mess. I am not alone on that. Full disclosure: my company makes a product that can be used to reduce carbon output of livestock farming.
    - hunter-gatherer 5y ago
      > Factory meat will augment our supply of protein but they won't scale. The farmland used for livestock is mostly useless for the plant matter needed by the meat factories and the factories themselves are hardly going to be carbon neutral when you add in fertiliser and fuel for all that extra harvesting. Thanks for the response. I'm not sure I understand the above paragraph. Are you saying the plant matter needed to feed lab-grown meat cannot be grown on existing space used for livestock?
      - smackeyacky 5y ago
        Yes, grazing land is not always good enough for the kind of high protein legumes and whatnot that make up artificial protein. Availability of affordable clean water, suitability of climate and soil type are all very different for cropping than livestock. Thats not to say a lot of land used for livestock isn't potentially dual purpose but as an example there is a lot of marginal grazing country that is perfectly good for low stock level grazing that would never reliably yield a crop. Climate change is making it worse (droughts etc) but trying to switch a significant portion of protein production to factories might make it worse when we could be working smarter with what we have. A lot of the artificial protein startups concentrate on burgers, when they really should be going after the poultry and pork industries if they want to show a difference. Those industries are heavily industrialised and needlessly cruel.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      How does your companies product compare to simply feed them more red sea weed, considering all externalities?
- ub99 5y ago
  The change is happening right as we speak. Just several weeks ago the first cultured meat factory has been launched in Israel. It produces just 500kg per day - but it’s a huge step for the industry. Cultured chicken is already being sold to consumers in Singapore. Cultured dairy is being sold in the US (right now only 2 ice cream companies - but it’s also a significant cultural milestone). There is a growing number of startups producing all kinds of cultured products - so the cultured meat revolution is coming, soon.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Followed by the rise of cancer then lawsuits.
    - Centigonal 5y ago
      That's a huge reach.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    I'm mostly unimpressed with what I've tried so far. Some 'vegan' beef jerky being the most acceptable, but not really true to the expectation either. Could have done wine gums with chili instead, for the same effect. edit: btw. what you percieve as 'soon' I perceive as drops in an ocean of inertia. This all reads like hype. Why there isn't more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn or any other Ersatz out there? That stuff exists like decades, and before the vegan hype was usually shunned because perceived as fake. I don't really care, may you all grow tits and enjoy futa because trendy. Yay! (Phytoestrogens, get it?)
    - detaro 5y ago
      How is "vegan beef jerky" relevant to cultured meat?
      - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        For me, as consumer it's just another option of something to eat, which hasn't lived like an animal. The 'cultured' in meat implies a technological process whose internals and details I don't really care about. Tofu, Tempe, cultured, whatever, doesn't matter to me. Until it lands on my plate it has gone through most of the same industrial, logistical and commercial channels as everything else which lands there.
quijoteuniv 5y ago
This read to me, lab-grown food will soon destroy farming - make richer another multinational and give a product/together with most chemicals that is not fully tested for consumers on the long haul. Save the world is just marketing
- jw1224 5y ago
  It won’t destroy farming, it will just encourage farmers to use their land for different purposes. We still need to eat fruit, vegetables, and grains. The land use required to rear cattle is phenomenal, not to mention the carbon footprint associated with the animals. This is more than just “marketing”.
  - quijoteuniv 5y ago
    Yes, we need less cattle 100%, but this product is more like to be just taking another CEO for a fun ride to space, than «saving» the planet. Is important not to be naive. We need to go green but we need to make sure the green wave is really green. Not just more money for the rich guys.
- NullPrefix 5y ago
  What if those chemicals will depopulate some humans in the end saving the world?
  - hcurtiss 5y ago
    Sounds great, so long as it’s not me or anyone I care about.
    - NullPrefix 5y ago
      I should have worded that as "all humans" instead of "some humans"
  - oivey 5y ago
    Population isn’t the problem. Consumption is.
watertom 5y ago
Agriculture produces 10% of the greenhouse gases emitted by humans. Let's say we can make a wish, and snap our fingers and have all the necessary factories in place to replace *ALL* food farming for the globe. I doubt the entirety of the 10% of green houses gases will be eliminated, probably cut in half, however then we'll need to take into account the electricity needed to run all the new food factories, which will probably add back in another 3%, so once the dust clears we'll see a reduction of about %2 of green house gases, that's assuming all food agriculture is automatically replaced, via a wish.
- lkramer 5y ago
  Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Where did the first 5% come from if not electricity to run factories? Also climate impact is more than just greenhouse gasses, water usage is huge and if it can be optimized can be a huge win. I'm also not sure about your 10% figure, 25% is the first figure I stumble across, of which animal production for food consists of about 50%: https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ollifi 5y ago
  Where is the 10% figure from? IPCC puts agriculture, forestry and other land use at 24% https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
  - Ma8ee 5y ago
    There's no contradiction between only agriculture at 10% and agriculture, forestry and other land use at 24%.
- awillen 5y ago
  First off, removing 2% of greenhouse gases isn't something to scoff at - it would be a really important accomplishment. Secondly, your back of the napkin math doesn't seem great - you're just making up that gases would be cut in half with nothing to back that up. You seem to ignore the fact that electricity for agriculture would disappear but then you factor in electricity that would be added back for food factories, so that doesn't make sense either. Then of course there's the fact that lab-grown meat doesn't require the vast swaths of land required by traditional agriculture. That means you can put food factories closer to urban centers, so now you've eliminated a lot of emissions from transportation.
burtonator 5y ago
I want lab grown FISH... I'm a fisherman and LOVE fish and we're ruining the ocean. Are there any firms working on artificial fish? Fish are seriously underrated because we can't really connect with them like we can with dogs or cats but they're VERY intelligent. I've been a fisherman for 30+ years (since I was a boy) and they constantly surprise me with their behavior.
- detaro 5y ago
  From a quick look, a company called Wildtype is doing lab-grown salmon: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/S-F-is-getting-the-world-s-first-cultured-16280296.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/S-F-is-getting-the-... (EDIT: article seemed interesting enough I submitted it)
  - awillen 5y ago
    The other one I'm aware of is BlueNalu: https://www.bluenalu.com/ https://www.bluenalu.com/
  - ub99 5y ago
    Yup - Wildtype is already producing and testing (with famous chefs) great looking salmon. Check out their Instagram for product photos.
  - burtonator 5y ago
    The other reason this is awesome is because domesticated trout/salmon are really sad. When you catch them they just don't look happy. :-/
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Very slightly related, I've spent more time in the forest since ~covid, and even squirrels I found seriously fascinating (they move over branches like superheros in movies) .. i'm kinda "regressing" into animalism.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
jhgb 5y ago
I'm still waiting for my zymosteak.
- ggm 5y ago
  Zymoveal surely?
treeman79 5y ago
Seems like the startups that focus on this eventually just switch to pot. Pays a lot better.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Pot is good. Besides, slightly related to the topic at hand, depending on the kind of pot, one can be superproductive and have the opposite of munchies because of that!
boboche 5y ago
Any public traded companies to look out for for potential investment?
- ub99 5y ago
  The only publicly traded lab-grown meat company is MeaTech 3D (MITC). Saying that, some investors believe that large beer producers such as Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) are in an advantageous position to scale up cultured meat production in the future (due to their fermentation tech experience and volume).
morpheos137 5y ago
Seems like the world is getting dumber. Lab grown food will only "destroy" farming if and when it produces a product that consumers prefer. That requires that it is both palatable and cost competitive. neither of those two things is likely anytime soon.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  Yes and the world only needs three computers, right? You might have a different view of what the near/far future looks like but calling people who have a different understanding than you 'dumb' rather reveals that you haven't put any thought into your position.
- ub99 5y ago
  1. Future Meat has reduced the price from hundreds of dollars to below $4 for 100g of cultured chicken in the last decade. They are projecting to reach cost parity with traditional meat within the next 8 years. The story is very similar for other types of cultured meat. 2. Even if we replace the meat-based goo used by the biggest fast food chains it’s going to have a massive impact on numerous industries. Cleaner, safer cultured meat with a flavor profile completely controlled by said fast food chains? What would consumers not like here?
bookofsand 5y ago
Yet another short-sighted techno-optimist that can't be bothered to look beyond his own lifespan. Biological systems grow exponentially until they reach the brink of starvation. More efficient farming methods mean more carrying capacity, which is to be rapidly filled up by exponentially more mouths to feed. Until all of Earth is covered with solar collectors on top of fermentation vats, turning every sip of available energy into soylent to feed the trillions of people that the new technology enabled. Mercifully(!) it all crashes down and low efficiency life with its glorious diversity may return. Hunger is never solved by technology, it's merely pushed into the relatively near future. Decades, centuries at best. Hunger solving futurists should deeply ponder this chart: https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#world-population-from-10-000-bc-to-today https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#world-pop... * 10,000 BCE: 4M * 0 AD: 190M * 1700 AD: 600M * 1800 AD: 1B * 1928 AD: 2B * 1975 AD: 4B * 2011 AD: 7B Doubling every 50 years until 20,000x carrying capacity reached, rough estimates. * 2050 AD: 10B * 2100 AD: 20B ... * 2400 AD: 1T ... * 2750 AD: 200T If the technology in the article pans out, as of early 2000s, we are about as close to a mindbendingly dystopian 200T population as we are to Magna Charta. Please stop.
- rowanG077 5y ago
  How do you square your viewpoint with the less then replenishing birthrate in first world countries? There most definitely is not a food shortage there.
  - bookofsand 5y ago
    I don't have an incontrovertible proof and I secretly hope I'm wrong. A few observations: * We already observed a techno "Green Revolution" in our recent past. Norman Borlaug, starting in the '60s and '70s. Directly maps to wild unprecedented population growth rates and population levels. 12 years to add 1 billion mouths to feed, 4 billions in a row. * There are fluctuations in the growth rate over time and space, but this has less impact than our intuition usually grants because we don't intuit exponential processes well. Low growth rate populations are quickly (in historical terms) taken over by high growth rates populations. It's the very logic of biology: the eternal race between exponential growth and entropic decay is won by the populations with highest growth rate * entropy resilience. We can observe it with out fail in a Petri dish. We can also observe this all over the industrialized world, with the (temporary?) exception of insular nations like Japan and South Korea. The Amish will inherit the world. * Adapting to the industrialized world may have temporarily created the illusion that the carrying capacity is much smaller than it actually is. People started to think that they need 5000 kWh / capita / year instead of the traditional 50 kWh. In the long run, as populations bulge, people will come to terms with reality and accept, out of necessity, much lower per capita energy consumption. In socioeconomic terms, more and more people will get used to "poverty". Techno-optimist socioeconomic palliatives like UBI will, inadvertently but likely, accelerate this process. Edit. A few words about "poverty", seen as low per capita energy requirements. There are worlds of difference between: * 2000 BC. Running for food in the big plains / forests. * 1000 AD. Working the fields in a medieval setting. * 1950 AD. Living packed in small pockets of industrial high rises. * 2200 AD (?). Living in a world-wide sprawl of high rises. * 2700 AD (?). Living in a world-wide artificial dome, Trantor style. Perhaps the limiting factor will turn out to be that our mammal brains break down before the nigthmare landscape that our ever more efficient techno world will eventually produce.

90 points by science4sail 5y ago

And here we are two years later with farms and the planet still in peril :-). FWIW, and I think I said this when this came up before, farming in the west, and particularly in California, has to change because the drought will destroy farming. It already has put a number of farmers into default in the central valley. So any effort that can make that many acres of land even half to three quarters as productive with the water that is projected to be available will be needed.

hunter-gatherer 5y ago
I'd be interested to have an expert in this space comment on these lab grown meat startups. I'm all for it, but the pessimist in me thinks this all sounds too good to be true.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  Not a factory expert but work in agriculture. There are lots of issues with farming animals for meat and carbon output but most can be mitigated. The pathways are reduction of cattle in favour of sheep and goats, changing the gut biome of livestock and removing inefficient breeding stock so the farmers produce the same output with fewer animals. Genetic solutions are available now to address the last two. Factory meat will augment our supply of protein but they won't scale. The farmland used for livestock is mostly useless for the plant matter needed by the meat factories and the factories themselves are hardly going to be carbon neutral when you add in fertiliser and fuel for all that extra harvesting. I wouldn't be too keen on eating an extruded factory carrot, not sure I personally want to replace another natural product in my diet with some chemical mess. I am not alone on that. Full disclosure: my company makes a product that can be used to reduce carbon output of livestock farming.
  - hunter-gatherer 5y ago
    > Factory meat will augment our supply of protein but they won't scale. The farmland used for livestock is mostly useless for the plant matter needed by the meat factories and the factories themselves are hardly going to be carbon neutral when you add in fertiliser and fuel for all that extra harvesting. Thanks for the response. I'm not sure I understand the above paragraph. Are you saying the plant matter needed to feed lab-grown meat cannot be grown on existing space used for livestock?
    - smackeyacky 5y ago
      Yes, grazing land is not always good enough for the kind of high protein legumes and whatnot that make up artificial protein. Availability of affordable clean water, suitability of climate and soil type are all very different for cropping than livestock. Thats not to say a lot of land used for livestock isn't potentially dual purpose but as an example there is a lot of marginal grazing country that is perfectly good for low stock level grazing that would never reliably yield a crop. Climate change is making it worse (droughts etc) but trying to switch a significant portion of protein production to factories might make it worse when we could be working smarter with what we have. A lot of the artificial protein startups concentrate on burgers, when they really should be going after the poultry and pork industries if they want to show a difference. Those industries are heavily industrialised and needlessly cruel.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    How does your companies product compare to simply feed them more red sea weed, considering all externalities?
ub99 5y ago
The change is happening right as we speak. Just several weeks ago the first cultured meat factory has been launched in Israel. It produces just 500kg per day - but it’s a huge step for the industry. Cultured chicken is already being sold to consumers in Singapore. Cultured dairy is being sold in the US (right now only 2 ice cream companies - but it’s also a significant cultural milestone). There is a growing number of startups producing all kinds of cultured products - so the cultured meat revolution is coming, soon.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Followed by the rise of cancer then lawsuits.
  - Centigonal 5y ago
    That's a huge reach.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  I'm mostly unimpressed with what I've tried so far. Some 'vegan' beef jerky being the most acceptable, but not really true to the expectation either. Could have done wine gums with chili instead, for the same effect. edit: btw. what you percieve as 'soon' I perceive as drops in an ocean of inertia. This all reads like hype. Why there isn't more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn or any other Ersatz out there? That stuff exists like decades, and before the vegan hype was usually shunned because perceived as fake. I don't really care, may you all grow tits and enjoy futa because trendy. Yay! (Phytoestrogens, get it?)
  - detaro 5y ago
    How is "vegan beef jerky" relevant to cultured meat?
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      For me, as consumer it's just another option of something to eat, which hasn't lived like an animal. The 'cultured' in meat implies a technological process whose internals and details I don't really care about. Tofu, Tempe, cultured, whatever, doesn't matter to me. Until it lands on my plate it has gone through most of the same industrial, logistical and commercial channels as everything else which lands there.

quijoteuniv 5y ago

This read to me, lab-grown food will soon destroy farming - make richer another multinational and give a product/together with most chemicals that is not fully tested for consumers on the long haul. Save the world is just marketing

jw1224 5y ago
It won’t destroy farming, it will just encourage farmers to use their land for different purposes. We still need to eat fruit, vegetables, and grains. The land use required to rear cattle is phenomenal, not to mention the carbon footprint associated with the animals. This is more than just “marketing”.
- quijoteuniv 5y ago
  Yes, we need less cattle 100%, but this product is more like to be just taking another CEO for a fun ride to space, than «saving» the planet. Is important not to be naive. We need to go green but we need to make sure the green wave is really green. Not just more money for the rich guys.
NullPrefix 5y ago
What if those chemicals will depopulate some humans in the end saving the world?
- hcurtiss 5y ago
  Sounds great, so long as it’s not me or anyone I care about.
  - NullPrefix 5y ago
    I should have worded that as "all humans" instead of "some humans"
- oivey 5y ago
  Population isn’t the problem. Consumption is.

watertom 5y ago

Agriculture produces 10% of the greenhouse gases emitted by humans. Let's say we can make a wish, and snap our fingers and have all the necessary factories in place to replace *ALL* food farming for the globe. I doubt the entirety of the 10% of green houses gases will be eliminated, probably cut in half, however then we'll need to take into account the electricity needed to run all the new food factories, which will probably add back in another 3%, so once the dust clears we'll see a reduction of about %2 of green house gases, that's assuming all food agriculture is automatically replaced, via a wish.

lkramer 5y ago
Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Where did the first 5% come from if not electricity to run factories? Also climate impact is more than just greenhouse gasses, water usage is huge and if it can be optimized can be a huge win. I'm also not sure about your 10% figure, 25% is the first figure I stumble across, of which animal production for food consists of about 50%: https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ollifi 5y ago
Where is the 10% figure from? IPCC puts agriculture, forestry and other land use at 24% https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  There's no contradiction between only agriculture at 10% and agriculture, forestry and other land use at 24%.
awillen 5y ago
First off, removing 2% of greenhouse gases isn't something to scoff at - it would be a really important accomplishment. Secondly, your back of the napkin math doesn't seem great - you're just making up that gases would be cut in half with nothing to back that up. You seem to ignore the fact that electricity for agriculture would disappear but then you factor in electricity that would be added back for food factories, so that doesn't make sense either. Then of course there's the fact that lab-grown meat doesn't require the vast swaths of land required by traditional agriculture. That means you can put food factories closer to urban centers, so now you've eliminated a lot of emissions from transportation.

burtonator 5y ago

I want lab grown FISH... I'm a fisherman and LOVE fish and we're ruining the ocean. Are there any firms working on artificial fish? Fish are seriously underrated because we can't really connect with them like we can with dogs or cats but they're VERY intelligent. I've been a fisherman for 30+ years (since I was a boy) and they constantly surprise me with their behavior.

detaro 5y ago
From a quick look, a company called Wildtype is doing lab-grown salmon: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/S-F-is-getting-the-world-s-first-cultured-16280296.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/S-F-is-getting-the-... (EDIT: article seemed interesting enough I submitted it)
- awillen 5y ago
  The other one I'm aware of is BlueNalu: https://www.bluenalu.com/ https://www.bluenalu.com/
- ub99 5y ago
  Yup - Wildtype is already producing and testing (with famous chefs) great looking salmon. Check out their Instagram for product photos.
- burtonator 5y ago
  The other reason this is awesome is because domesticated trout/salmon are really sad. When you catch them they just don't look happy. :-/
agumonkey 5y ago
Very slightly related, I've spent more time in the forest since ~covid, and even squirrels I found seriously fascinating (they move over branches like superheros in movies) .. i'm kinda "regressing" into animalism.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

jhgb 5y ago

I'm still waiting for my zymosteak.

ggm 5y ago
Zymoveal surely?

treeman79 5y ago

Seems like the startups that focus on this eventually just switch to pot. Pays a lot better.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Pot is good. Besides, slightly related to the topic at hand, depending on the kind of pot, one can be superproductive and have the opposite of munchies because of that!

boboche 5y ago

Any public traded companies to look out for for potential investment?

ub99 5y ago
The only publicly traded lab-grown meat company is MeaTech 3D (MITC). Saying that, some investors believe that large beer producers such as Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) are in an advantageous position to scale up cultured meat production in the future (due to their fermentation tech experience and volume).

morpheos137 5y ago

Seems like the world is getting dumber. Lab grown food will only "destroy" farming if and when it produces a product that consumers prefer. That requires that it is both palatable and cost competitive. neither of those two things is likely anytime soon.

estaseuropano 5y ago
Yes and the world only needs three computers, right? You might have a different view of what the near/far future looks like but calling people who have a different understanding than you 'dumb' rather reveals that you haven't put any thought into your position.
ub99 5y ago
1. Future Meat has reduced the price from hundreds of dollars to below $4 for 100g of cultured chicken in the last decade. They are projecting to reach cost parity with traditional meat within the next 8 years. The story is very similar for other types of cultured meat. 2. Even if we replace the meat-based goo used by the biggest fast food chains it’s going to have a massive impact on numerous industries. Cleaner, safer cultured meat with a flavor profile completely controlled by said fast food chains? What would consumers not like here?

bookofsand 5y ago

Yet another short-sighted techno-optimist that can't be bothered to look beyond his own lifespan. Biological systems grow exponentially until they reach the brink of starvation. More efficient farming methods mean more carrying capacity, which is to be rapidly filled up by exponentially more mouths to feed. Until all of Earth is covered with solar collectors on top of fermentation vats, turning every sip of available energy into soylent to feed the trillions of people that the new technology enabled. Mercifully(!) it all crashes down and low efficiency life with its glorious diversity may return. Hunger is never solved by technology, it's merely pushed into the relatively near future. Decades, centuries at best. Hunger solving futurists should deeply ponder this chart: https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#world-population-from-10-000-bc-to-today https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#world-pop... * 10,000 BCE: 4M * 0 AD: 190M * 1700 AD: 600M * 1800 AD: 1B * 1928 AD: 2B * 1975 AD: 4B * 2011 AD: 7B Doubling every 50 years until 20,000x carrying capacity reached, rough estimates. * 2050 AD: 10B * 2100 AD: 20B ... * 2400 AD: 1T ... * 2750 AD: 200T If the technology in the article pans out, as of early 2000s, we are about as close to a mindbendingly dystopian 200T population as we are to Magna Charta. Please stop.

rowanG077 5y ago
How do you square your viewpoint with the less then replenishing birthrate in first world countries? There most definitely is not a food shortage there.
- bookofsand 5y ago
  I don't have an incontrovertible proof and I secretly hope I'm wrong. A few observations: * We already observed a techno "Green Revolution" in our recent past. Norman Borlaug, starting in the '60s and '70s. Directly maps to wild unprecedented population growth rates and population levels. 12 years to add 1 billion mouths to feed, 4 billions in a row. * There are fluctuations in the growth rate over time and space, but this has less impact than our intuition usually grants because we don't intuit exponential processes well. Low growth rate populations are quickly (in historical terms) taken over by high growth rates populations. It's the very logic of biology: the eternal race between exponential growth and entropic decay is won by the populations with highest growth rate * entropy resilience. We can observe it with out fail in a Petri dish. We can also observe this all over the industrialized world, with the (temporary?) exception of insular nations like Japan and South Korea. The Amish will inherit the world. * Adapting to the industrialized world may have temporarily created the illusion that the carrying capacity is much smaller than it actually is. People started to think that they need 5000 kWh / capita / year instead of the traditional 50 kWh. In the long run, as populations bulge, people will come to terms with reality and accept, out of necessity, much lower per capita energy consumption. In socioeconomic terms, more and more people will get used to "poverty". Techno-optimist socioeconomic palliatives like UBI will, inadvertently but likely, accelerate this process. Edit. A few words about "poverty", seen as low per capita energy requirements. There are worlds of difference between: * 2000 BC. Running for food in the big plains / forests. * 1000 AD. Working the fields in a medieval setting. * 1950 AD. Living packed in small pockets of industrial high rises. * 2200 AD (?). Living in a world-wide sprawl of high rises. * 2700 AD (?). Living in a world-wide artificial dome, Trantor style. Perhaps the limiting factor will turn out to be that our mammal brains break down before the nigthmare landscape that our ever more efficient techno world will eventually produce.