A Beef: No, Joe Biden Is Not Going To Take Away Your Burgers

Michael Siegel

Michael Siegel is an astronomer living in Pennsylvania. He blogs at his own site, and has written a novel.

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187 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    There are a bunch of cat/dog foods that are switching to insect protein instead of their traditional meat by-product ingredients. Unfortunately, this insect-based pet food costs more than the old kind.

    They need to solve that problem first.

    Then we can talk about how nobody is arguing that you’re going to have to eat bugs.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

      Well, first we have to argue with all the people who aren’t arguing that we’re going to be forced to eat pet food.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

      I once met a faux-beef (i.e., Beyond/Impossible Burgers) enthusiast. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was a true believer or was somehow invested in the tech. Anyway, it was an interesting conversation.

      “Is it healthier than beef?”
      “It pretty much has the same nutritional values.”
      “Does it taste as good as beef?”
      “Lots of people can’t tell the difference.”
      “What about the costs?”
      “It’s only somewhat more expensive.”

      “So… it offers no health benefits, no taste benefits, and costs more?”
      “But you’re saving the planet! Just think: who would say no to a meat substitute that is indistinguishable from meat but doesn’t harm any animals and helps the planet???”
      “But… you just said it isn’t indistinguishable…”
      “WE’LL GET THERE!!!”
      “Okay, call me when you do.”

      My hunch is that, for a while at least, substitutes for the meat we are accustomed to will run into the “Choose 2 out of 3: fast, cheap, good” problem.
      And that’s before you consider premium pricing on this stuff.

      I’ve had the meat substitutes. If you have a busy enough burger and no one told me it wasn’t beef, I probably wouldn’t notice. But if we’re grilling in the backyard and its meat-and-bun and nonmeat-and-bun, it’s pretty noticeable.

      And I’m not a meat snob. I don’t eat a ton of beef and I often opt for a really yummy chipotle black bean veggie burger. So I’m open to meat alternatives. But charging me more for something that is doing a bad job of pretending to be something else is never really going to work on me.Report

      • Damon in reply to Kazzy says:

        This reminds me of several conversations I had with a now ex girlfriend.

        Her: aren’t you going to recycle that?
        Me: no, I don’t recycle.
        Her: But it’s required.
        Me: No, it’s mandatory for single family houses not townhouses.
        Her: But it’s for the environment.
        Me: Rant about how after the commodities market tanked local jurisdictions were taking recycling and dumping it into the landfill because they could no longer sell it on the open market, then a final comment that “i have no kids, why would I give a damn if the planet goes to hell after I’m dead?

        Conversation ends. 🙂Report

        • Philip H in reply to Damon says:

          I’ll give you this – you are definitely consistent about your rugged individualism. The fact that you believe that you owe the society that gives you a ton of benefit nothing but a middle finger is beyond old, but at least its consistent.Report

          • Damon in reply to Philip H says:

            Frankly, I pay a lot each year to for roads, schools, etc. I use far less than I’m forced to pay for “my share”. Time not working is not paid. I choose my off time activities to maximize benefit to me, not to others. My responsibility is to be a contributing member of society, i.e. work and pay taxes, which I do. You want more from me? Pay me.Report

      • JS in reply to Kazzy says:

        FWIW, fake meat (like Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger) are slightly more fatty and salty, while having no cholesterol. Depending on your health and diet, it would range from “much healthier for you” to “a wash”.

        I happily sub in BM on hamburgers, especially as the cost continues to drop (it’s only about a 10% difference as is).

        And on most hamburgers, it really is indistinguishable — at least to me, and that’s a simple cheeseburger with lettuce, onions, and tomato.Report

        • Kazzy in reply to JS says:

          This convo was years back so I’m sure things have tipped in Faux Meat’s favor.

          And that’s a good thing. More options is better. Like I said, I often opt for meat substitutes but personally prefer when they don’t try to be something they ain’t. But everyone’s mileage may vary.

          I think part of the issue is Faux Meat hasn’t found a clear area of superiority OTHER THAN being Not Meat and that isn’t enough to move the needle for most folks. If they find that angle though, could be a game changer.Report

          • JS in reply to Kazzy says:

            Well, it is significantly better for the environment (water use, C02 footprint) than beef burgers. Like a 90% reduction in water use and C02 footprint, which is a lot when summed up over all the burgers America eats a year.

            Once cost drops a little more, to being competitive instead of a small premium, I expect to see it more and more as ‘default’ instead of ‘an option’. At least for fast food chains, i can’t think of many where the small taste difference wouldn’t be utterly hidden by their burgers — unless you just ordered meat and bun, in which case I’d say half of America still wouldn’t notice. It’s not like McDonald’s is using prime beef.

            Like I said, if a burger place has it I’ll sub it in even though it costs a dollar or two more. A hamburger is never going to be healthy for you, but the drop in cholesterol is nice and frankly i can’t taste the difference — although I do notice the significant increase in fiber.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to JS says:

              It comes back to what Brandon said about ground beef, down thread. Ground beef is everything that can’t be sold as steak or roast or ribs. If demand for steak and roasts remains stable, but vat meat drives down the demand for ground beef, the cost for ground beef will just hit the floor, unless other markets take up the excess supply.

              If vat meat can start replacing low end steaks and roasts, that could alter the market much more fundamentally.Report

              • JS in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                A drop in ground beef prices will raise the prices of steaks and roasts.

                Which will make trying to lab grow them more economic.

                Whether steaks and roasts will get displaced at the same time as ground beef, I don’t know — it depends on what methods labs find that get the price down to “competitive”.

                But it’s going to be more economical, in the long run, not to bother with the cow. We’ve bred them for a long time, but they’re not exactly all that efficient at turning feedstock into meat. They waste all sorts of energy on other things like “moving” and “thinking” (insofar as cows think. Latest research indicates that humans aren’t that big an outlier, spending 25% of our energy budget on the brain. So at least 10 to 15% of a cow’s food goes to cow thinking) and inefficiencies in digestion.

                And of course methane farts.

                I’m still shocked at the price drop in lab beef from 2013 to now (1.2m to 50 bucks a pound. Dang.)Report

  2. InMD says:

    This is one of the more baffling parts of the right in this country and where we really suffer as a society. I’d read about the seaweed thing a couple weeks ago and thought to myself this is the kind of thing that, assuming it scales, is going to solve this problem. Maybe it knocks out a big chunk of greenhouse gases and buys us more time to keep figuring out CO2. Even better it requires no lifestyle changes and would be pretty easy for the developed world to subsidize.

    So huge breakthrough we can all get behind? Oh wait, we’re talking about this instead.Report

    • Philip H in reply to InMD says:

      Its like republican politicians and pundits don’t know good business opportunities when they see them any more. Cause kelp farming is an actual thing . . . .Report

    • Pinky in reply to InMD says:

      How many of us really are arguing about this, though? And are any of them working against seaweed? Show me how a few tweeters messing up the story has impaired the progress.Report

      • InMD in reply to Pinky says:

        This particularly? I suppose no one is working against it now. But I see no reason the national GOP would start supporting a plan related to the discovery when as best as I can tell they do not support any action on climate change, and many question if it is happening at all.

        This topic is a great example of why I find them unsupportable. The Democrats have some good ideas, some awful ideas, and some totally bizarre ideas (or really more like ideological assertions) they place under the rubric of climate change despite no actual relationship to it. The GOP just has no ideas and refuses to address it outside of the weird culture war/negative partisanship channels like this.Report

        • Pinky in reply to InMD says:

          So we’re talking about this scenario even though it hasn’t happened, because you think it could. Are we really on a higher level than the tweeters cited above?Report

          • InMD in reply to Pinky says:

            Well I’d hope that the standards for us in our role as commenters on a blog are lower than those for a sitting Congresswoman and influential pundits.

            But aside from that my comment was a lament that this is the level of offering we see on the subject from the right. By failing to be solutions oriented we exist in a bad space where every decent D idea is weighed down by the bad ones.Report

  3. Damon says:

    Yeah, Nothing even close to this will ever happen:

    Biden ended by EO all new oil and gas leases. Gavin Newson will end fracking in the state by 2024 and eliminate all extraction by 2045.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/climate/biden-climate-executive-orders.html
    https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/04/23/governor-newsom-takes-action-to-phase-out-oil-extraction-in-california/

    That’s a lot of jobs that people will need to be retrained. Yah, how’s that worked in the past hmm? So color me suspicious that in a few years or 10 or so, we’ll be hearing about this again and again.Report

  4. DensityDuck says:

    It’s absolutely ridiculous to suggest that the government would institute a tax on beef so heavy as to amount to a ban for most people. Ridiculous! The height of conservative anti-government ideation. Why, do you know there have been actual studies linking Republicanism to mental illness? Gosh, this talking makes me thirsty. Let me just take a sip from this straw that’s in my large cup of soda…Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to DensityDuck says:

      I think that this would be wildly unpopular with a large enough portion of the Democratic base that they wouldn’t dare do it. Stereotypes aside, only a small minority of Democrats are vegetarians.

      The big soda ban was in New York City, and only lasted a year and change.Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Brandon Berg says:

        “The big soda ban was in New York City, and only lasted a year and change.”

        The big soda ban was something that was laughably impossible, a stupid dream scenario thought up by right-wing scaremongers, more useful as a satirical joke of Republican thinking than anything that might actually happen, and then they went ahead and banned large soda cups.

        And whenever someone said it might happen the response was not “well maybe they will but they’ll fix it, probably, eventually” it was “that’ll never happen and you’re a god damn idiot if you think it even could“.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck says:

          The other counter-argument I see is that it doesn’t count, because the courts overturned it before it could kick in.Report

        • veronica d in reply to DensityDuck says:

          Honestly, the soda ban was pretty embarrassing.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to DensityDuck says:

          It’s like someone held a seminar on Pigovian Taxes, and everyone was suddenly enthralled with the idea…Report

        • Kazzy in reply to DensityDuck says:

          This feels like revisionist history.

          The soda ban was real because we had politicians on the record as pursuing it.

          Now, because the worst fears of what the soda ban would wrought were not realized, the argument is that folks who said the soda ban *would happen* were dismissed as cranks. But… that never happened.

          No one argued that fears of a soda ban were laughably impossible because we know what politicians were pursuing it.Report

          • CJColucci in reply to Kazzy says:

            Don’t go spoiling people’s fun with facts, Kazzy.Report

          • DensityDuck in reply to Kazzy says:

            “we didn’t fall down the slope all the way” is not quite the king-hell rebuttal to a slippery-slope argument that you seem to imagine.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to DensityDuck says:

              “A large soda ban is coming!”
              “Yea, it seems that way.”
              “SOON THEY’LL BAN EVERYTHING!”
              “I don’t think that seems reasonable”

              [large soda ban comes]
              [large soda ban goes]
              [no other bans follow]

              “SEE?!?! YOU WERE WRONG TO DISMISS US WHEN WE SAID THEY WERE PLANNING A LARGE SODA BAN!”Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

            In 2010, a council member proposed banning the use of salt in restaurants. The bill was introduced but it got shot down and Felix Ortiz let it drop, kinda, saying that he was gutted by a loved one recently dying from a heart attack (if I recall correctly).

            New York now has a salt warning on the menu next to dishes that have more than 2,300 milligrams of salt.

            Now I look at that and think “gosh darn, 2,300 milligrams is a lot of salt!”

            So, yeah. That warning makes sense to me.

            But I will always remember the council member who floated banning salt in restaurants.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

              If you want me to say that liberals sometimes pursue bad, stupid, and anti-freedom measures with regard to food restrictions, I’ll say it: liberals sometimes pursue bad, stupid, and anti-freedom measures with regard to food restrictions. I’m not arguing that.

              But the argument here is:
              When we told you that large soda bans were coming, you called us stupid! BUT THEN THE LARGE SODA BANS CAME!!!

              But that didn’t happen. We didn’t argue whether or not the large soda bans were coming. We could see in black-and-white they were. Or at least, attempts were being made in that direction. Now, maybe some folks defended large soda bans. I didn’t. I thought it was stupid.

              But the claims that our beef being taken away is a fever dream.
              No one ever said claims of an impending large soda ban in NYC was a fever dream.Report

  5. DensityDuck says:

    Also, I remember Frank Miller’s “Give Me Liberty”, which proposes a satirical dystopian future America where a white-savior liberal becomes President after a terrorist bombs the insanely right-wing government. This President’s first action is to ban all beef production and consumption (the news in the story refers to “beef addicts”) and his second action is to sent the Army to invade Argentina to kill everyone involved in the beef-production infrastructure.

    (At the time Miller wrote this, it was meant as a parody of the 80s idea that we’d send the Army to Colombia to destroy the cocaine industry.)Report

  6. Chip Daniels says:

    This is just fake news, to distract the sheeple from the real plan by Kamala Harris to outlaw ingesting bleach as a preventative for the flu.

    Under the Harris regime, Americans will no longer be allowed to drink or ingest bleach to cleanse their bodies of flu virus. Sources within the regime admit that the plan is to be put into action perhaps as soon as June, so true Constitutional Patriots have only the next few months to stock up and drink as much bleach as possible to keep themselves healthy.

    Patriots, spread the word far and wide!Report

  7. Saul Degraw says:

    The right-wing has become so obsessed with owning the libs and paranoia that they become the embodiment of silliness. It is true that PETA would probably like to make eating meat and using animal products criminal. There are some environmental activists who do not seem to know how bad their rhetoric sounds to ordinary people.* But these groups have no power in the Democratic Party and many of them hate the Democratic Party as much as the Republicans do.

    So Biden can say something which should be non-controversial like cutting down on eating meat can have beneficial side effects to the environment and it becomes totally insane.

    FWIW, I had a hamburger yesterday and am now writing this from the gulag. By gulag, I mean my living room couch.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      But, but, but … Haidt!

      Or some such!Report

    • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Incorrect Saul. PETA and similar left wing loons hate the Democratic Party far MORE than they hate right wingers or Republicans. Similarly right wing loons used to hate the GOP MORE than they hated the left or Democrats, up until they took over the joint.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to North says:

        I meant that Republicans and PETA folks both hate the Democratic Party but you are correct that the far left loony tunes generally hate the Democrats more than they hate the Republicans.Report

  8. veronica d says:

    Related: former alt-right YouTuber gives us the beef (heh) about right wing disinformation tactics that he previous used: https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1386345247341518848Report

  9. JS says:

    Two comments.

    1. Lab grown meat is….surprisingly further along than I thought. I wouldn’t count on it being affordable any time soon, but it’s dropped from 1.2 million a pound to about 50 bucks in what, 7 years? Expect that price to get cheaper over the next couple of years, as there’s big bucks being invested in it. Replacing just the ground beef market would be rather huge.

    2. I really want an electric car. But getting one requires me to either empty and rewire my garage (so I can charge it), or build a heavy duty carport and…rewire for it (fuse box likely needs to be replaced. 1960s home — at least I don’t have aluminum wiring). Either way, I’m almost certain to need to pay several thousand dollars in just “home updates” to be able to plug in my car. It’s doable for me, if painful on top of the electric car premium, but I’ve no illusions I’m on the upper half of “middle class”.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to JS says:

      Replacing just the ground beef market would be rather huge.

      Ground beef is basically a byproduct of the more expensive cuts and dairy products, though. As long as people are buying natural steaks, roasts, and dairy products, ground beef will get as cheap as it needs to to compete with lab-grown ground beef.

      Of course, it matters on the margin; if competition from lab meat drives down the price of ground beef, then cattle ranching becomes slightly less profitable, other cuts will become slightly more expensive, and cattle populations will slightly decline. But since ground beef is a small part of the overall value of the cow or steer, I wouldn’t expect the effects to be very large.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Brandon Berg says:

        Thing is, lab grown meat isn’t ‘growing’ ground beef, it’s growing a muscle of beef. If they can grow a tenderloin, and the taste is comparable to even a cheap, grocery store butcher filet, then once you get past whatever ick factor a customer might have, you have a solid competitor. Sure, the high end steak houses will still sell pasture raised cow, but you think Denny’s is gonna care if their steak was?Report

        • Brandon Berg in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          My understanding is that it’s much easier to make cultured beef that’s good enough for ground beef than it is to make a plausible steak or roast. I don’t think the technology is at the point where they can grow a big slab of muscle meat.Report

        • JS in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          Hamburgers. We eat a lot of hamburger world wide.

          Cheap steaks too, as you note.

          Chicken’s another one.

          Should be lean meat, reduced antibiotic use, a lot less land/water use…..

          Heck, I’m pretty thrilled with Beyond Meat and that’s like a 90% reduction in water use and C02 footprint, and that’s just hamburgers.

          Given how good we’re getting with a lot of fun little DNA tools, we might be coming up on a big revolution in how we feed people. Not a moment too soon, really.Report

          • Oscar Gordon in reply to JS says:

            Hell, we lab grow pork and how much of an impact could that have?Report

            • JS in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

              Pigs are pretty filthy animals that are awful for the environment, especially in industrial farms.

              So…a lot. I mean the run-off from pig farms is just….godawful.Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to JS says:

                Okay, it’s less efficient than a factory farm, but isn’t every southern state from Texas east to the Atlantic begging people to come shoot feral hogs?

                So far as I know, Colorado is the only state that has eradicated feral hogs once they were present. They were only in one corner of the state, and it still took what was basically open warfare to get rid of them. No season, no limits, no restrictions on weapons. Plus the state agencies trapped and killed as many as they could.Report

              • JS in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Yep, but here’s the thing about feral hogs.

                They, generally, taste awful. That can be fixed — a skilled processor can do some stuff (which makes it more expensive) that fixes that.

                But feral hog does not taste anything like what you buy at the store.

                In general it’s tougher, MUCH gamier, and frankly if you want to eat it learn to love marinades and a few other tricks.

                (Wild hog you get at fine restaurants is only “wild” in the sense it’s not raised in a cage. It’s diet is generally carefully curated and it’s exercise…curtailed…due to lack of needing to forage)

                Feral hogs are considered vermin in Texas, so 365 day season on them and no limit, but everyone I know that shoots them just guts and burns them. I think there’s one guy that processes one a year, despite culling them heavily every year.Report

    • Philip H in reply to JS says:

      2. I really want an electric car. But getting one requires me to either empty and rewire my garage (so I can charge it), or build a heavy duty carport and…rewire for it (fuse box likely needs to be replaced. 1960s home — at least I don’t have aluminum wiring). Either way, I’m almost certain to need to pay several thousand dollars in just “home updates” to be able to plug in my car. It’s doable for me, if painful on top of the electric car premium, but I’ve no illusions I’m on the upper half of “middle class”.

      If you are serious – have you looked to see if you can get tax credits?

      https://www.chargepoint.com/incentives/federal-charging-incentives/

      https://envirocenter.org/ev-charging-tax-credits-explained/Report

      • JS in reply to Philip H says:

        Like I said, I either got to clean out my garage and dedicate it to parking the car — or build a carport. I don’t really want a charging point just standing there in open air.

        I’m not really super keen on opening the garage door to run a cord out.

        So either in the garage, or carport setup.

        I mean sure I could put in one of those waterproof ones, but then it’s tearing up concrete on the driveway — we’re a two car household, after all, so it’d have to go in the middle…

        Like I said, it’s a big hassle and a not insignificant expense. I believe the cheapest setup was to clear out my garage (problematic as my washer/dryer is in there AND I have a fridge and deep freeze, not sure I can squeeze two cars in even if I 100% rearrange it with JUST cars + fridges + washer/dryer), and then…3-5k for a new fuse box plus whatever it costs to run the wiring for a charge point.

        I’m pretty sure I’m stuck on 3-5k for a new fuse box even if I just slap a charge point under the eaves and run cord out into the rain.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to JS says:

          This is why I think there will be a market for Hydrogen Fuel cells EVs. We will probably have generating capacity, but will the last mile, or the residential panel, support it? Someone like you might be better off getting a HFC car and keeping a pallet of PowerPaste in the garage.Report

          • Marchmaine in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            Bless your engineering heart… I wouldn’t expect anything less. I don’t think the paper is addressing efficiencies, but just the math necessary for the energy transfers. Efficiencies? To be sure… But the bar isn’t even close. My take away was that something like Nuclear Power would be perfect… no impact to global warming while replacing the micro-biological-generators of every cow.

            Which leads to the occam’s razor of this: If we could use Nuclear to replace cows… why not use it simpliciter?Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

              Speaking of nuclear! It has been confirmed that heavy water tastes sweet.

              So maybe we could use Nuclear to replace dessert?

              Report

            • Marchmaine in reply to Marchmaine says:

              oops… misthreaded, meant as part of thread below… not regarding Hydrogen.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Marchmaine says:

              As the paper says, there are trade-offs to be made.

              If we are just looking at GWP, then doing something to reduce bovine methane production, or capture it, is probably optimal. Perhaps those big, inflatable buildings with a closed circulation system would allow for methane recovery (just spitballing here)?

              The moral argument with regards to eating cows doesn’t entirely fall on deaf ears for me, but if we decide to say, stop raising animals for any kind of food (we only eat meat/eggs/dairy grown in a lab), then domestic livestock are going extinct. Of cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, and goats, I think goats are maybe the only ones we could let return to the wild. Pigs are too dangerous to release (see: wild pig problems in the US), and the rest would be hunted to extinction pretty fast. We’ve largely bred away the characteristics that give them a fighting chance.

              So then I have the moral argument of eating tasty animals, or letting them die out. And they really are tasty…Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Cows would survive in the wild… they’d get meaner and the non-polled genetics would probably win out… but Cows would make it.

                Chickens won’t last a season.

                Sheep… eh, purely a numbers game vs. predators… I could see it going either way.

                Goats will find their way into your house and hide out while you are sleeping… they will be fine.

                When the word goes out about the extinction event, Pigs will rise up and take over entire counties. So let’s keep it down for now.Report

              • 1870s long gun technology and skill were sufficient to nearly eradicate the American bison. It was certainly within reach. Cows survive at our sufferance.

                Pigs, now… I have always said that the spring when I was 25, and lost that step at softball that never came back? That was when the pig I saw too late got to me a step before I got to the tree. Pigs are a whole lot smarter than cows.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Sure, we could take them out… my point is that Cows are extremely hardy and require astonishingly little attention to thrive and reproduce.

                If we opened the gates and let them into the wild, I’m comfortable predicting we’ll have their descendants with us 100 yrs from now.Report

  10. Marchmaine says:

    My slightly contrarian take here is that there’s work being done under the cover of Global Warming to prepare the ground for a ‘moral’ argument against animal consumption.

    I remember eons ago there was a thread here where everyone was asked to state what the one ‘moral’ thing we believe now (at an individual participatory level) will become ‘immoral’ some time in the future. For comity (and because we all know it to be true) no-one was allowed to moot Abortion.

    Eating Meat is (IMO) the obvious choice here… and these are the opening moves for framing it in moral terms… in this case, the higher morality of Global Warming – having failed to move our moral intuitions grounded in our appetites (which otherwise reign supreme).

    The more interesting science, is around energy consumption… and the full impact of heating water, creating sugars, digesting them, distributing them, fighting the bacteria, etc. that would go into this process. Initial reviews suggest that the costs vis-a-vis Global Warming may be worse… but GW isn’t the point here… it really is the moral argument. And attaching a desired goal, reduced (or no) animal slaughter to a moral imperative that is already accepted by a certain tribe. There’s a chance that our pursuit of this goal requires far more energy than it replaces… sort of like Bitcoin offsetting the gains of solar power.

    There are, of course, secondary and tertiary issues like the benefits of pasture, animals in the ecosystem, the unknown unknowns of micro nutrients (good and bad) and how they are delivered via cultured meat. The thing we overlook is that ruminants translate sunlight miraculously via inedible cellulose into energy we consume…

    My deeply held contrarian position is that cultured meat is an Energy problem… and the moment we solve for energy, we’ve solved for greenhouse gasses making the matter irrelevant. Unless… the point isn’t really about solving the energy problem or Green House Gasses at all.

    In which case… dragging a silly Republican Response (but I repeat myself)… is missing the moral intuition that it signals.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Marchmaine says:

      Links are broken?Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Marchmaine says:

          I didn’t see any discussion regarding how much the industrial process could improve in the study (although I only skimmed it). We could make an effort to alter the inputs and impacts of the livestock, but I’m betting we’ll find efficiencies in the industrial processes a lot faster.Report

          • JS in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            “We could make an effort to alter the inputs and impacts of the livestock, but I’m betting we’ll find efficiencies in the industrial processes a lot faster.”

            I said this upthread, but at least 10 to 15% of a cow’s energy budget goes to it’s brain. They also graze a lot, so even more goes to “moving around”. Cows aren’t optimized to turn feedstock into meat, no matter how much we’ve bred them over the centuries.

            So we’re not talking 80% “feed to beef” efficiency from cows. I’d be shocked it if was 30%.

            That’s without getting into byproducts — cows aren’t as filthy as pigs, but they still produce waste (including lots of methane).Report

            • Jaybird in reply to JS says:

              Ribeyes go for… what? $14/pound? If they could make Earth-Friendly Steaks for something in the ballpark of that, it’s probably sell. Hell, even with a premium on top of it. It’ll be, like, an additional status marker.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

                Heh, we’ll always have ribeyes. *I’ll* have ribeyes, but they will be out of reach for the regular folks. Hopefully my ribeyes will get better since we won’t be ruining our beef in the feedlots.

                My status signal will be both financial and transgressively edgy… my instagram might even feature my enjoyment of raw meat.

                Of course, people will tell me there’s no difference in taste… and depending on how I feel and/or the audience, I’ll let them believe it.Report

  11. Marchmaine says:

    double link mod situation, if you will.Report

  12. Chip Daniels says:

    It was in the mid-Twenties, when Boston Dynamics discovered it could encase their robots in lab grown muscle tissue to provide more fluid motion and greater accuracy of grip than simple mechanical devices.

    We are unsure of the precise date due to the ensuing chaos, but experts generally agree that somewhere around July 25, 2027 the corporate AI achieved sentience, because those were the first terrified reports of cyborgs invading the factory farms and forming an alliance with the cows, pigs and chickens.

    The historical trail gets choppy and unreliable during the period when the world’s humans were rounded up into vast pens for conversion into a universal feed, but we know that it was President Biden who brokered the peace by agreeing to outlaw human consumption of animals and limiting consumption to meat harvested from Republicans who had refused the Covid vaccine.

    This is why, children, there is now a fifth face on Mount Rushmore and President-For-Life Harris offers a prayer of thanksgiving each year on his birthday.Report

  13. Jaybird says:

    Good news! Epicurious will stop talking about beef.

    Report

  14. Oscar Gordon says:

    Related

    Kinda

    OK, not really, but it’s funnyReport

  15. Jaybird says:

    A very good point:

    Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

      Is this only true with liberal ideas? Just trying to figure out where the Overton Window is supposed to be.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

        Oh, absolutely not! I think that conservatives are going through this too.

        I imagine that similar things are going on in other countries that don’t map easily to American concepts of right or left or republican or democrat.

        Yep.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Kazzy says:

        It’s interesting to note the difference though.

        Liberals are afraid that Republicans will actually hang women who get abortions and conduct forcible genital inspections of children.

        Conservatives are afraid they will be unable to get a Big Mac, or may be inconvenienced by wearing a mask.
        In other words, the liberals fears are not just well founded in reality, but concern actual freedoms and basic human rights.

        Conservative’s fears are transparently veiled proxy arguments for the loss of cultural hegemony.Report

        • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          “Liberals are afraid that Republicans will actually hang women who get abortions and conduct forcible genital inspections of children.” If only someone did a study to find out if liberals don’t understand conservatives!Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          I think that Conservatives are also afraid of stuff like Liberals abolishing the police, opening the borders, and teaching CRT in schools.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

            That’s…my point exactly.Report

            • CJColucci in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              CRT is far too advanced to be taught in K-12, and damn few K-12 teachers would be competent to teach it. Doesn’t mean someone might not try, but the likelihood of it catching on is slim.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                It’s only happening in a few places.

                Besides, I’m sure he’s overstating it.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Once again…this illustrates my point about what is really driving their freakout.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                My argument is not “they should be freaked out” (nor is it “they shouldn’t be freaked out”).

                My argument is that you can’t argue “NOBODY IS ARGUING X!” at the same time that someone else is arguing “would it really be so bad if X happened?” and expect people to not assume that X is not on the agenda.

                Especially if X is happening and the response is something to the effect of “only bad people would be opposed to X anyway.”Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                There is someone arguing X, for any value of X.

                Someone is, right now, arguing that women who want abortions should be hanged, and someone else somewhere is arguing that all nonwhite people should be gassed and burned.

                My point is that conservatives aren’t freaked out about those possibilities, but are freaked out by this possibility.

                it displays their priorities and fears.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                My point is that conservatives aren’t freaked out about those possibilities, but are freaked out by this possibility.

                I would suggest you change the last word to “actuality”.

                And then you could compare the irrationality of people being afraid of hypotheticals to the irrationality of people being afraid of actuals and point out how the actual isn’t doing measurable harm yet but the hypotheticals would result in potentially hundreds or thousands dead.Report

          • Philip H in reply to Jaybird says:

            I think that Conservatives are also afraid of stuff like Liberals abolishing the police, opening the borders, and teaching CRT in schools.

            What about that scares you?Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Philip H says:

              Nothing about it scares me, particularly.

              Well, “abolish the police” strikes me as a particularly stupid branch to crawl out on especially given the recent spike in murders… like, it strikes me as something that will result in another Crime Bill.

              I’m a fan of something akin to Open Borders (but we’d need to have a discussion about assimilation versus robust welfare).

              As for CRT? Well… I think that making everybody painfully aware of their ethnicity is going to be detrimental on a handful of levels.

              But “scary” is not the way that I’d describe my response to those three policies.

              (One thing that is odd is that Chip seems to be having the response of “Nobody is arguing that!” and you seem to be having the response of “and what would be so bad about that?” which is… yeah. My point.)Report

              • Philip H in reply to Jaybird says:

                I was trying to channel my inner Jaybird by asking a question about issues that many many conservatives seem viscerally scared by. I didn’t ask Pinky because he’d just devolve to Haidt in a sentence or two and that gets us nowhere.

                That aside, Chip is right that no one is arguing for those points, but even if they were I want to know why they would be bad outcomes from a conservative perspective.

                Well, “abolish the police” strikes me as a particularly stupid branch to crawl out on especially given the recent spike in murders… like, it strikes me as something that will result in another Crime Bill.

                Given that we know what drives most crime – and thus how to address the majority of it (crimes of passion are not preventable but nearly all other types are) – why do you assume we’d need another 30 year old “Crime Bill” to deal with outcomes? and why is shifting tax revenue from the armed police to addressing those other issues so bad?

                I’m a fan of something akin to Open Borders (but we’d need to have a discussion about assimilation versus robust welfare).

                Why do you believe we lack both? Why do you believe we need both?

                As for CRT? Well… I think that making everybody painfully aware of their ethnicity is going to be detrimental on a handful of levels.

                As we have already told you, that’s not what CRT is about. That aside, most non-white in the US ARE painfully aware of their ethnicity, thanks to the systemic nature of the reminders.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Philip H says:

                That aside, Chip is right that no one is arguing for those points, but even if they were I want to know why they would be bad outcomes from a conservative perspective.

                Yes!

                My original comment was the whole issue of how “I don’t think people have fully grappled with what the collapse of mainstream resistance to fringe ideological demands means for these kinds of defenses going forward.”

                Arguing “NOBODY IS ARGUING X!” at the same time as “And what would be so bad about X anyway?” is likely to result in more belief that X is on the agenda somewhere than that it’s not.

                And if you have a handful of arguments against X, asking “why are you so afraid about X?” turns the topic from whether X is good or bad to whether Person P needs to go to therapy (or find a better therapist). For my part, I see this as a little bit of pre-poisoning the well.

                Given that we know what drives most crime – and thus how to address the majority of it (crimes of passion are not preventable but nearly all other types are) – why do you assume we’d need another 30 year old “Crime Bill” to deal with outcomes?

                I’m one of those people who believes that we should end the war on drugs. I think that the war on drugs has introduced a *HUGE* amount of pathologies into the system.

                Why do I think we’d need another “Crime Bill”?

                I don’t think we’d need another “Crime Bill”.

                I *DO*, however, think that another “Crime Bill” would be Something. And if enough people demand that Something Be Done, politicians will, sure enough, do Something.

                and why is shifting tax revenue from the armed police to addressing those other issues so bad?

                We switched from “abolish the police” to “shifting tax revenue”.

                You may not have noticed but I noticed.

                Why do you believe we lack both? Why do you believe we need both?

                I believe that we have weak versions of both and we’d need a strong version of one.

                It has to do with my desire for a high-collaboration society and the need for a high-collaboration society to have a foundation of high-trust.

                As we have already told you, that’s not what CRT is about. That aside, most non-white in the US ARE painfully aware of their ethnicity, thanks to the systemic nature of the reminders.

                While I appreciate your reminders, I’ve also taken into account the stuff that, for example, Dennis Sanders has said.

                I find his stuff more persuasive than your stuff.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                My point, as I have mentioned quite a few times, is that the things the Right fears are harmless, but threaten their sense of cultural hegemony- things like CRT which just teach Wrongthink on race, or having more brown people immigrate.

                Like I asked once before, even in the most awful extreme dystopian vision of a Liberal World, conservatives just can’t muster up anything really bad.

                The worst possible end of their slippery slope arguments is that, well, they might have to be nice to a transgender person, or their kids might learn about the Tulsa Massacre, or God forbid, they may one day discover that white people are no longer the dominant majority in America.

                This is what underlies virtually every freakout they have- the Starbucks cups, “Happy Holidays”, the meat ban, all of these bizarre fauxrages are really just proxy battles for that one underlying fear.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Your definition of “harm” does not include “lowering the trust level of a society”.

                Which is all well and good, of course, but it will mean that you don’t understand why people don’t agree with you on things.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Mm Hmm.
                Liberals. Lowering trust level.

                Please elaborate.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                We’ve gotten into this before.

                High-Collaboration Societies, to be sustainable, must operate from a position of High-Trust.

                High-Trust has a number of pre-reqs. Among them include stuff like “exceptionally confident that one won’t be ripped off/stabbed in back”.

                The addition of multiple cultures into a place means that there will be multiple circles in the Venn Diagram for stuff that counts as “ripped off/stabbed in back”.

                Hearing “well, you have to understand, this other person came from a society where their acts wasn’t considered ripping off/stabbing in the back so you shouldn’t feel like they’ve done that to you” is going to result in smaller circles of trust.

                An emphasis on “assimilation” means putting an emphasis on what “everybody” considers ripping off/stabbing in the back so that everybody knows where everybody stands and the circle can expand.

                Arguing against assimilation while, at the same time, arguing for multiple cultures with different definitions of ripping off/stabbing in back will result in lowering the trust level of the society to the point where only the overlap between the multiple cultures is adhered to.

                And a lower-trust society will have lower-collaboration.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Nice theory.

                Got any examples to share of these other societies that “rip off/ stab in the back”?

                Because, looking at the conservative society in America, I can come up with about a dozen examples of violent, low trust primitive societies that should definitely never be allowed into these highly advanced United States of America.

                But please, offer your examples so we may learn from them.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Got any examples to share of these other societies that “rip off/ stab in the back”?

                According to themselves or according to people who are from a different society?

                An easy example would be stuff like assumptions about Female Modesty between cultures.

                Because, looking at the conservative society in America, I can come up with about a dozen examples of violent, low trust primitive societies that should definitely never be allowed into these highly advanced United States of America.

                OH GOOD! I’m glad you agree that these things exist.

                Now we can move ahead to whether mixing these cultures with the good ones without attempts to assimilate will result in lower trust.

                I think it will.

                Do you?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                I know.

                You, and they, are putting up a brave front of “We don’t want those people to come here and change our culture” but you gotta know, on some level, that that stance is impossible.

                This is why conservatives are freaking out. Here in Los Angeles on the Pacific Rim I live and work with people of every nationality and religion and cultural background.

                And if you walk into any business you will find that a white Christian straight male is the minority. But everyone else is liberal and tolerant of that.

                And most horrifying for conservatives- all these groups work and socialize and cooperate in a level of high trust and cooperation.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                You, and they, are putting up a brave front of “We don’t want those people to come here and change our culture” but you gotta know, on some level, that that stance is impossible.

                No. My view was, and remains, “people are a positive good”. I do think that we need to reform how immigration is done on the bureaucratic level, but that’s another argument.

                I think that assimilation is a good thing and the way to go (but I say that as someone who sees EPCOT’s World Pavilion as a monoculture rather than multiculture).

                Here in Los Angeles on the Pacific Rim I live and work with people of every nationality and religion and cultural background.

                I suspect that there’s less of a multiculture than you think. (but, again, I say that as someone who sees EPCOT’s World Pavilion as a monoculture rather than multiculture).Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                “Nobody is saying we don’t want those people to come here and change our culture!”Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Sure.

                Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I kind of get what Jaybird is getting at here. For a little over ten years, I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Williamsburg spent most of the late 20th century as Ultra-Orthodox/Puerto Rican neighborhood on a Southside and something of an ethnic White working class neighborhood on the Northside.

                Around the 1990s artists poured in from Manhattan. Hipsters and yuppies followed the artists. A lot of the Satmar Hasidim were not to thrilled about the lack of modest dress in the Yuppie and Hipster women. To the extent that they put signs on their stores and businesses requesting modest clothing. The yuppie and hipster woman saw this as a big insult and anti-feminist while the Satmar thought they weren’t respecting the established community. Who is right and who is wrong?

                To take this more nation-wide, in certain liberal circles a woman in a Hijab or an Islamic modesty clothing like a burqa is a seen as a sign of tolerance and multiculturalism while Orthodox Jewish modesty clothing is patriarchal and sexist. On the Alameda County Building in Oakland, they have pictures of people from different communities to represent diversity. One of those is a Muslim women in a veil and burqa with two young kids. Somehow I think a Hasidic Jewish women in Jewish modesty clothing with her children would invoke the same feelings. Instead it would be, we must stage raids on Orthodox Jews to liberate their women and LGBT people from the oppressive system.

                So what Jay is saying that a lot of liberals believe that multiculturalism is a lot easier than it actual is. What it really involves is people not taking things so seriously and/or some weird tradeoffs like Muslim modesty clothing is good while Jewish modesty clothing and Evangelical Purity balls are bad because reasons.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I’m thinking your definition of “really bad” is very different from their definition of “really bad”, and as long as no one is willing to find a common definition, this will remain a problem.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I agree, but you can get why I would consider “Being hanged for abortion” to be “really bad”, while “Being forced to be nice to Renee the transwoman in Accounting” is…uh, not so bad.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Sure.

                But not every conservative wants to hang women who get abortions, then just don’t want abortions to be legal, just like killing a newborn baby isn’t legal.

                I can see their point and understand it, without agreeing with their course of action.

                Likewise, I can see why people might not want CRT taught or influencing policy decisions like it was on par with the Theory of Gravity.

                The whole Trans thing … I don’t get it, but then I don’t get the enviro-lefts freak outs about nuclear power, either, so I guess everyone has some colossally stupid shite they’ve worked themselves into a lather about.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                The day after Roe is struck down, abortion will result in a prison sentence in about 15 states.

                And every conservative…Every. Single. One. is accepting of that.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Only for poor people, Chip.

                (It’s similar to pricing the climate costs into beef appropriately.)Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Still not seeing the gallows here, or were they metaphorical?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                It’s perfectly reasonable to think that at least a couple states might make it a capital offense.

                And every single Republican would be accepting of that.
                Every one.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                And every single Republican would be accepting of that.

                You can not support this claim without making some rather extreme assumptions.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Any such assumptions would be wrong.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

                Imagine Georgia made late term abortion a capital offense.

                Would you vote Democratic? How many other Republicans would?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                If our politics were not effectively Bi-Partisan, you might have a point. But when people only have two choices, distilling whether or not any given person is “OK” with some point on a parties plank can not be determined by their voting.

                If Georgia decided to make abortion a capital offense, I’m sure some Georgia R’s would leave the party, and some would decry the decision even as they remained in the party.

                The only ones you can condemn are those who publicly support that action.

                If that annoys you, perhaps you should lobby for a more parliamentary system, so we can have a wider range of parties.

                PS You commit the Fallacy of Illicit Transference a lot. You should really cut that out, it undermines your arguments time and time again.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                You’re admitting that the pro-death penalty forces would remain firmly in control of the Republican Party.

                Which is the point here. There is no “Too Far” for Republicans. Even the ones who make all sorts of noises about moderation and restraint, will still in the end, pull the lever.

                Because hanging women for abortion is not a dealbreaker.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Damn, Motte and Bailey much?

                I admit no such thing. You assume that the only mechanism by which a party can be forced to change a plank is by defection/exit, which is demonstrably not true.

                It might be more true if we had more than two viable parties, but given that constraint, you can not paint with that big of a brush. I can’t even engage with your arguments because any point you have is premised on a fallacy.

                Also, FYI
                https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2019/03/20/death-penalty-opponents-gain-unlikely-allies-republicansReport

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                There is no plausible case that making abortion a capital offense would prompt a change in Republican Party leadership.

                They are still supporting those who attempted the violent overthrow of the legitimate government.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                If New York made trans surgery mandatory, would you vote Republican?Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                If things got that far, voting Republican would be a weak and ineffective form of resistance — if it would do any good at all, which I doubt. More direct methods would seem to be called for.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

                Yes. See how easy that is?Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                But “yes” isn’t really the full answer. The answer is that you don’t envision your party being capable of it, and that anyone setting up that kind of what-fi just isn’t saying anything meaningful.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                You can accept the legitimacy of the answer or disavow the legitimacy of the question. Your choice.Report

              • Pinky in reply to CJColucci says:

                What if it’s a reasonable answer to an absurd question? Can’t I note both?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

                The real answer is that even YOU don’t see the Democrats as being capable of such illiberal behavior.

                But the real fear among conservatives is best exemplified by Tucker Carlson braying about the great replacement; Conservatives are terrified about the loss of cultural hegemony and everything else is a proxy shield for it.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Pinky says:

                In this specific case, Chip constructed an example of potential conservative behaviour that was absurd. A person with better understanding of his opposition wouldn’t have said it.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

                Creating criminal penalties or abortions is no longer an absurd abstraction. No state has made it a capitol offense yet. But unlike your trans surgery requirement (which I agree would be absurd behavior), criminalization of abortion is a real thing that must be contended with. Thus his case – which is one step past actual law in the US – is not absurd, nor does it derive from a lack of understanding of Conservatives.

                (and yes, the threads get way too complicated past a certain point).Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                Sure, but it’s your question.Report

              • Pinky in reply to CJColucci says:

                My question was a mirror image of Chip’s. That was the point.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                Only in a funhouse.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

                My question was a mirror image of Chip’s. That was the point.

                No. Chip’s question was based on a logical extension of existing state laws passed by Republican legislatures and signed into law by Republican governors. Your question is the anthesis of state laws passed by Republican legislatures and either veto’ed (and over ridden) or signed into law by Republican governors. Your question is not anything like his.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

                But “yes” isn’t really the full answer. The answer is that you don’t envision your party being capable of it, and that anyone setting up that kind of what-fi just isn’t saying anything meaningful.

                Do you find you can envision your Party actually doing the things they are doing? Or are us liberals who lack understanding just not saying anything meaningful?Report

              • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

                (messy thread – my 3:57pm comment was a reply to both you and Chip)Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                So…there’s not enough conservatives warning about catastrophe? Interesting perspective.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

      Such a common liberal play. “Nobody is doing that thing!” (immediately does the thing)Report

  16. Rufus F. says:

    I don’t know if anyone remembers movie theatres or “going out to the movies” but the last time I went to one- in 2019, natch, they had a bizarre advert mixed in with the trailers in which beef farmers were telling us how much better they are at raising healthy beef and how important they are for this great land of ours, and well, thanks!

    My thought was either there was an outbreak of something, or people are eating enough veggie burger they have to make commercials.

    And, ya know, I eat veggie burgers pretty often myself because I find them easier to digest and some of them are pretty tasty these days.

    But, when they get to the point they can grow ground beef in a lab and sell it for the same price as the kind that used to walk around, the beef farmers are going to have to make a lot more commercials I imagine.Report

    • InMD in reply to Rufus F. says:

      Could just be marketing. Remember ‘Beef: It’s what’s for dinner’?Report

      • Rufus F. in reply to InMD says:

        Yeah, it was similar, but weirdly defensive. More like, “we’re getting more sustainable and more healthy every day.” I don’t eat it, so I wanted to ask someone, “So, is everyone getting anthrax from beef now or something?”Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Rufus F. says:

      Then we’ll see a big battle over whether lab-raised beef needs to be labeled as such and whether we can REALLY trust it and what if we all grow third arms?!?!

      It’ll be like the GMO-labeling arguments but with the sides reversed. Because of course.Report

  17. Philip H says:

    Interestingly, at least 1 Fox “News” host has retracted his statements:

    John Roberts, co-host of the afternoon show “America Reports,” made the Monday concession after CNN and other media outlets published fact check articles explaining that Biden does not have any plan to restrict red meat consumption.

    Roberts acknowledged Monday that “a graphic and the script” from his Friday show “incorrectly implied” that a 2020 academic study about meat-eating and greenhouse gas emissions is “part of Biden’s plan for dealing with climate change.”

    “That is not the case,” Roberts said.

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/26/politics/fox-john-roberts-red-meat-biden/index.htmlReport

    • Marchmaine in reply to Philip H says:

      Phew. Wondering if Epicurious will follow-suit.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Marchmaine says:

        Epicurious cut beef out of new recipes a year ago. It’s just being talked about now.

        How many folks were harmed in the last year by Epicurious’s decision?Report

        • Marchmaine in reply to Kazzy says:

          I dunno man, they say they ‘deprecated’ beef content recipes in 2019. But they made very specific announcement yesterday that they are henceforth ending all new beef content. And the reason they cite is Global Warming. But we all know that no one is arguing for it.Report

          • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

            The same way no one is arguing for banning firearms, the same way no one is arguing to legalize racial discrimination for purposes of imposing quotas, the same way no one is arguing human sexual dimorphism isn’t an objectively observable phenomenon, the same way no one is arguing to abolish the police (until suddenly) and on and on. I’m not even on the Conservative side of all this yet I still feel like my intelligence is being insulted. Constantly.Report

            • Pinky in reply to InMD says:

              If there is a belief that some thing A is a good, and there’s no limiting principle of government, it’s inevitable that A will be recommended as a government policy.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to InMD says:

              Acknowledged: Some folks are and will argue that we should limit, regulate, tax, or outright ban beef production.

              We’re getting to a weird place because now I have to ask: Is anyone arguing that no one is arguing that we should ban beef? I mean, everyone knows that PETA exists, right?

              The question HERE is whether Biden has any plans to severely cut back beef production.

              The clear answer is: No, he does not.

              The cycle I’m seeing is:
              1.) Someone floats an accusation of some extreme position being seriously and actively sought by the other side.
              2.) Someone on the other side, “No one is seriously and actively pursuing that.”
              3.) The response is, “WELL LOOK AT THIS LOONEY TUNE RIGHT HERE! YOU LIED WHEN YOU SAID NO ONE IS PURSUING IT! CLEARLY YOU ALL WANT IT!”
              Rinse and repeat.

              Honestly, it’s stupid.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                It’s not just the crazies arguing for X, though.

                It’s the crazies arguing for X.
                It’s the more reasonable people asking “Would X be so bad, really?”
                It’s the other people pointing out that opposition to X seems to be founded in some pretty problematic assumptions. Oh, I’m not arguing X! I’m just noticing that anti-X is kind of racist. What motivations would people who base their entire personality on opposing X have, anyway? Why expend so much effort on something pretty meaningless at the end of the day?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                “It’s the more reasonable people asking “Would X be so bad, really?””

                Is anyone here doing that? I haven’t read every comment. And there are a small handful of commenters (including at least one from “my side of the aisle”) who I tend to tune out so it is possible that folks are doing that and I’m missing it.

                And I concede it may not be happening here but may be happening elsewhere in places I’m not.

                And I have to ask: Does my saying, “I usually have a black bean chipotle veggie burger when the rest of the family is having beef burgers?” put me among the “reason people asking, “Would banning beef be so bad?””Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Here? No, I don’t think so.

                The closest is in the story that was linked to a couple of branches up.

                Here’s the line from the middle of the article:

                The grain of truth in the Republican claims (agri-pun intended) is that any serious climate change plan needs to do something about meat production. A recent paper in Science, a leading academic journal, found that food-related emissions alone put the Paris climate agreement’s warming target of 1.5 degrees Celsius out of reach. The most effective way to address these emissions, according to the paper’s authors, is a global shift away from meat consumption.

                Biden is not arguing X and the people saying that he is arguing X are lying! But, seriously, we need to eat less meat in order to save the planet.

                But that’s just Vox.

                If we want to argue that Vox doesn’t count, I’d be down with that.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Notice here that a general proposition that we should reduce the amount of meat in our diet, is placed on the same level as Big Brother limiting the proles’ ration of beef to 4 ounces.

                Its like I keep saying, that in the absence of actual “illiberal liberalism” they need to huff and puff and inflate anodyne policy disputes into existential crises.

                Because for them it really is. This like every other fauxtrage, is a proxy cover for their real argument.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Would X be so bad, really? You’ve got to admit, opposition to X seems to be founded in some pretty problematic assumptions. Oh, I’m not arguing X! I’m just noticing that anti-X is kind of bad. What motivations would people who base their entire personality on opposing X have, anyway? Why expend so much effort on something pretty meaningless at the end of the day?Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                All excellent questions.Report

              • Pinky in reply to CJColucci says:

                For clarity’s sake, are you being humorous or are you conceding Jaybird’s point?Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                I don’t want to take responsibility for getting Jaybird’s point, if there is one. That is often a fraught exercise. But as far as I can tell, whatever his point may be, he has accurately described the logical structure of a certain type of response to claims that X is in the offing. If I had to guess, I’d guess that Jaybird doesn’t particularly like this type of response, but I could be wrong, and, in any event, to each his own. I think, as I said, that the questions are excellent.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                In an era when people are being banned from going to church, I think we can be allowed a little suspicion. What would be your answer to my earlier question? That is, is there some limiting principle of government that would prevent (“we should reduce the amount of meat in our diet”) from becoming (“Big Brother limiting the proles’ ration of beef to 4 ounces”)?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

                In an era of forcible genital inspections of children, I just don’t have any patience for concern trolling over “limited government”.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I can’t tell if you’re joking. If you are, please clarify. If you aren’t, then you’re saying there is no reason for any slippery slope argument to be considered fallacious, including Jaybird’s.

                If so, it would explain why you can jump from (“some Republicans think something”) to (“Republicans will make something law”).Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                You mean besides that people wouldn’t stand for it?Report

              • InMD in reply to Kazzy says:

                I don’t entirely disagree. We’d all be best served to continually stare at a huge disclaimer saying ‘TWITTER IS NOT REAL LIFE!!!’ whenever having a discussion like this.

                But I also think we’re at a weird point where it’s increasingly hard to see or predict where elite opinion makers will draw lines, or if they even will.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to InMD says:

                ” We’d all be best served to continually stare at a huge disclaimer saying ‘TWITTER IS NOT REAL LIFE!!!”

                OK boomerReport

              • InMD in reply to DensityDuck says:

                You’re off by decades, Zoomer.Report

        • CJColucci in reply to Kazzy says:

          I get Epicurious emails every day. Never noticed. Don’t care. Not sure why anyone outside of Big Beef should.Report

  18. Jaybird says:

    Cows aren’t the only problem, of course.

    Report

  19. Guu says:

    Welcome, all ye Omegas, Deltas, and Gammas to the Brave New World.Report

  20. Jaybird says:

    Vaguely adjacent:

    Report