Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Growing, harvesting, and making food creates greenhouse gas emissions. But some foods are responsible for more emissions than others. Red Meat is at the top of the list. 

Lots of people want to reduce their emissions by eating more plants, but changing your eating habits can be hard. 

So today, we’re taking a closer look at one idea of how we can drastically reduce the environmental impact of the meat we eat without actually changing our diets. 

We had Ashley Junger and Fatima Husain from our Possibly Team look into this. 

Ashley Junger: Hi, Megan! 

Fatima Husain: Hello! 

Megan Hall: So, what’s this magical way to keep eating meat AND reduce my greenhouse gas emissions? 

Ashley Junger: It’s called cultivated meat or lab-grown meat. 

Megan Hall: That sounds like something from science fiction. How does it work?

Ashley Junger: Good question. To learn more about cultivated meat and how it’s made, we talked with:

Elliot Swartz: “Elliot Swartz. I’m the Principal Scientist specializing in cultivated meat at the Good Food Institute.” 

Fatima Husain: Elliot says the process of creating cultivated meat starts by taking a small piece from an animal…. 

Elliot Swartz: “Where those cells can be taken back to the lab,  grown in a medium that contains all the nutrients that cells need to survive And they can multiply and create the tissues or cells that we need to form into future cultivated meat products.”

Ashley Junger: The end result is genuine animal meats that have been produced without killing an actual animal.

Megan Hall: Wow. But it sounds like a lot of trouble and expense to get the same thing we could get from a cow. Why bother?

Ashley Junger: According to the USDA, four percent of all US greenhouse gas emissions come from beef production. Cultivated meat could be a way to cut that number while still enjoying our burgers.

Fatima Husain: Depending on how it’s grown, on average, cultivated meat could use about one percent of the land that we need to create the same amount of conventional beef.

Ashley Junger: And scientists predict that cultivated meat could emit just 10% of the greenhouse gasses associated with producing traditional beef. And if labs use renewable energy, that could be as low as 2%.

Megan Hall: Wow, sounds like cultivated meat could solve a lot of problems.

Fatima Husain: Yeah, right now the emphasis is on could. Scientists are only making a small amount of cultivated meat, and these estimates are based on models of industrial-scale production. So we’ll have to wait and see how those numbers hold up.

Megan Hall: Ok, but wouldn’t it be easier to just not eat meat all together?

Ashley Junger: We asked Elliot the same question. He said:

Elliot Swartz: “People have been trying to, you know, tell people not to eat as much meat for many, many years. And so you really struggle to get people to shift their behavior by just telling them what to do, from a moral perspective.” 

Megan Hall: Got it. But, how does it taste? Are meat eaters really going to want to try this stuff? It honestly sounds kind of unappealing. 

Fatima Husain: Some people say it’s a little more uniform than conventional meat and doesn’t have those chewy, fatty bits. But most of the people who’ve reviewed it said it was extremely close to or indistinguishable from the real thing.

Megan Hall: Ok, I’ll give it a try. How can I get some? 

Ashley Junger: Well, It’s still difficult and expensive to make, so right now the supply is only enough for some high-end restaurants.

Fatima Husain: But the industry is growing quickly. Investors have put more than 2 billion dollars into getting cultivated meat products on the market.

Ashley Junger: So only time will tell if cultivated meat companies will be able to compete with conventional meat. 

Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks, Ashley and Fatima!

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to the thepublicsradio.org/possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook or X at  “askpossibly” 

Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

These days, it’s popular for countries to make pledges about when they’ll be carbon neutral. But there’s one country that’s already there. Actually, it’s carbon negative!  

Here to explain are Ashley Junger and Fatima Husain from our Possibly Team. Welcome, Ashley and Fatima! 

Ashley Junger: Hi, Megan! 

Fatima Husain: Hello!

Megan Hall: So first things first, what does it mean to be carbon neutral or carbon negative?

Ashley Junger: Carbon neutral essentially means the amount of greenhouse gases you emit in the air is balanced by the amount of greenhouse gases you pull out of the air. 

Megan Hall: Can you give me an example?

Fatima Husain: Let’s say you burn gasoline in your car, but you plant a grove of trees that suck up the exact same amount of carbon dioxide that your car emits. As long as those trees keep on growing, your car is “carbon neutral.” 

Ashley Junger: And carbon negative, means that you absorb or reduce more carbon dioxide than you make. 

Megan Hall: So, what’s this incredible place that is ALREADY carbon negative?

Fatima Husain: It’s a small country in the Himalayas called Bhutan.

Megan Hall: What’s their secret?

Ashley Junger: Well it all started in 1972, when the 4th King of Bhutan coined the term “Gross Domestic Happiness.”

Megan Hall: What does that mean?

Fatima Husain: To find out we talked to Dr. Dorji Yangka, who is originally from Bhutan and did his PhD research on Bhutan’s carbon negative status.

Dorji Yangka: Gross national happiness rejects the sole idea that economic growth is the only thing that humans want. 

Ashley Junger: So instead of depleting their natural resources to make money, Bhutan made protecting those things, like their old-growth forests, a pillar of their economy.

Fatima Husain: In 1995, Bhutan’s National Assembly decided that 60% of their country must remain forested, and in 1999 the country banned logging exports.

Ashley Junger: And trees absorb A LOT of carbon dioxide.

Megan Hall: So, when Bhutan decided to protect its forests, it also sort of unintentionally created an easy way to soak up its emissions?

Fatima Husain: Exactly. Their trees are packing away over twice as much carbon as the country produces.

Megan Hall: Is that what the US needs to become carbon neutral? Just lots and lots of trees? 

Fatima Husain: Not necessarily. Dorji says Bhutan has low carbon emissions to begin with

Dorji Yangka:Our population is very low and our GDP is very low and all our electricity is hydropower. We really don’t have to worry about those kinds of challenging emission reductions.

Ashley Junger: Also, let’s put this into perspective. Bhutan is about the size of Maryland and has less than a 6th of the population. 

Fatima Husain: Each person in Bhutan is responsible for only 3 metric tons of carbon per year, while each person in Maryland is on average responsible for more than three times as much.

Megan Hall: It sounds like the US is unlikely to successfully copy Bhutan’s approach,

Ashley Junger: Right, Other small, less developed countries are following Bhutan’s footsteps already, but the vast majority of countries won’t be able to offset their emissions in the same way.

Fatima Husain: And, as the country grows and becomes more urbanized, Bhutan will actually struggle to maintain their carbon negative status as well.

Megan Hall: Why? Are they planning to cut down their trees? 

Ashley Junger: No, but they are modernizing. As more people in Bhutan start to drive cars and get access to the kind of stuff we have in the US, they’ll create more emissions. 

Fatima Husain: At some point, those emissions will outweigh the emissions getting sucked up by the trees. 

Ashley Junger: The bottom line? Things like forests just aren’t enough to slow down climate change. To build a carbon neutral world, we need to shift to energy sources that don’t create emissions in the first place. 

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Ashley and Fatima!

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

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