I’ll note that if this works, it solves the methane problem, but not the land use problem associated with cattle.
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Men would literally re-engineer the Cow before eating fewer burgers
Not too surprising; we’ve been using selective breeding to radically alter everything we eat since the development of agriculture.
Artificial selection and gene editing aren’t exactly the same thing. Also, trying to use technology to get out of technology-caused problems (the issues from raising and slaughtering tens of billions of bovine a year) is a modern techbrobillionaire-promoted pipedream, like us being able to colonize mars when we fail to address human-caused climate change on this planet
Technical solutions aren’t crazy; we’ve pulled them off before for other problems. (Eg: sewage)
It’s a question of whether the specific tradeoffs associated with a particular technical approach to a particular problem are worthwhile.
I never said technical solutions were crazy. I just mean to draw attention to the fact that we’re reading a story published in a publication owned by the world’s richest man that says we don’t need to curb consumption currently causing a huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions that we know beyond all reasonable doubt are killing our planet and compromising the longevity of our species - because a sometime-in-the-future technology will rescue things, enabling us to keep consuming at levels that are unsustainable in many other areas beyond methane emissions.
We are in the midst of a great propaganda effort to undermine concern about planetary health in the masses so that the investor class’ profits don’t slow down as the planet turns to shit. This article is a part of that
Or maybe we should cut down on the demand for beef and pork. We (especially in the US) have grown accustomed to eating meat as the primary element of nearly every meal. Eating a more balanced diet is better for you and better for the environment.
Going vegan could save as much as 50% of diet-based greenhouse gas emissions, which in total is around 20% of all ghg emissions.
Or, y’know, we could overengineer a solution without knowing what the unintended consequences are and end up shifting from one global crisis to another, but at least our tastebuds wouldn’t have to miss out on our precious rotting corpse flavor.
all of agriculture is only about 20% of our GHG emissions. at least according to owid. do you have another source?
Having one digestive tract per cow is kinda wasteful. Why not have dozens of cows hooked up to one central digestive system? The same goes from nervous systems.
Has anyone tried reversing polarity?
If my cowculations are correct that should allow them to breath methane and fart oxygen
Sounds like precision fermentation is probably a better solution, but we should be exploring all avenues for sure.
