Meat consumption is also not a binary decision, you can consume 10% of the meat you currently do and reduce the environmental side effects caused by your meat consumption by 90%. Furthermore, you can consume meat that comes from small scale local sustainable sources to further reduce your footprint.
It is the same deal with eggs, I don’t buy factory eggs, I buy them from my local farmer who has free range chickens. Sure, eggs are $8/dozen, but that is the real cost of eggs which do not preclude animal suffering and unsustainable farming practices.
My point is maybe the solution to the meat supply issues is to consume less meat, and consume meat from more sustainable sources. It is almost impossible for western society to grasp that maybe the solution to sustainability problems is to align their consumption with the rest of the world instead of turning to technology to solve all their problems. It is the same with so many other things like water management where the solution seems to be to dam more rivers and suck more acquifers dry instead of maybe not trying to grow grass and cedar trees in a desert.
> It is almost impossible for western society to grasp that maybe the solution to sustainability problems is to align their consumption with the rest of the world instead of turning to technology to solve all their problems.
Not sure what persuasive power this is supposed to have. In the case of lab meat, the technological solution seems outright better than the “rest of the world” solution.
If the “rest of the world” solution is “eat less meat” then on an ethical basis, that is a worse option compared to lab meat. Sure, fewer sentient beings having their throats slit for taste pleasure is better than the status quo, but zero is even better than that.
Surely if it was good enough for us to live on back then, it’s part of the circle of life and should be totally fine. Right?
If one’s no longer acceptable because we don’t do it any more, then surely if lab meat gets established then we’ll look back at that parasite-riddled salmon with the same revulsion as we do the maggots.