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Cattle rancher here. The amount of energy it takes to run a cattle ranch is dwarfed by the amount of energy it takes to, say, air condition a moderately large
by wooster 17y ago
Cattle rancher here.
The amount of energy it takes to run a cattle ranch is dwarfed by the amount of energy it takes to, say, air condition a moderately large office building. In this case, you'd probably be air conditioning a huge factory. And what would you feed the lab meat? Some sort of sugar slurry? I'm not sure how that's any better than corn. Or, in your posited scenario of "re-energizing" waste, are you going to cook it? That takes a lot of energy. If not, you're going to end up with serious problems if you create a closed loop protein system (think BSE).
Then the big energy inefficiencies come when you start packing, shipping, refrigerating, and then throwing away (most of it, sadly, as most people don't buy deep freezers) your protein.
- jerf 17y agoThe amount of energy that you pay for is dwarfed by air conditioning, certainly. But if we're going to talk environmental impact, you have to count all the other inputs, too. It would certainly start out less economical, but I still wouldn't care to bet about the final outcome if everything is considered. To some extent it would depend on your accounting; "tons of carbon" isn't my personal favorite.
- wooster 17y agoWhat other inputs? Sunlight and water? Grass is an efficient way of harvesting solar energy. If you're talking about a growth cycle which doesn't involve animal fertilizer inputs, you've got to have a huge external energy source involved to manufacture fertilizer, so that's a pretty big cost of not raising animals on available pastureland. That, and don't even get me started on methane emissions, which is a handy way to deflect discussions about CO2, but not a great way to actually do anything productive (look up radiative forcing and the relative atmospheric lifetimes of greenhouse gases).