Lifeboat Foundation

Here, the problem is marketing. Around 2bn people eat insects already, but few of them are Westerners. Changing that could be a hard sell. Grind the bugs up and use them as ingredients, though, and your customers might find them more palatable. Hargol FoodTech, an Israeli startup, plans to do just that. Locust burgers, anybody?

MOST people like to eat meat. As they grow richer they eat more of it. For individuals, that is good. Meat is nutritious. In particular, it packs much more protein per kilogram than plants do. But animals have to eat plants to put on weight—so much so that feeding livestock accounts for about a third of harvested grain. Farm animals consume 8% of the world’s water supply, too. And they produce around 15% of unnatural greenhouse-gas emissions. More farm animals, then, could mean more environmental trouble.

Some consumers, particularly in the rich West, get this. And that has created a business opportunity. Though unwilling to go the whole hog, as it were, and adopt a vegetarian approach to diet, they are keen on food that looks and tastes as if it has come from farm animals, but hasn’t.

Continue reading “The market for alternative-protein products” »

Soaring global need for cooling by 2050 could see world energy consumption for cooling increase five times as the number of cooling appliances quadruples to 14 billion—according to a new report by the University of Birmingham, UK.

This new report sets out to provide, for the first time, an indication of the scale of the energy implications of ‘Cooling for All’.

Effective cooling is essential to preserve food and medicine. It underpins industry and economic growth, is key to sustainable urbanisation as well as providing a ladder out of rural poverty. With significant areas of the world projected to experience temperature rises that place them beyond those which humans can survive, cooling will increasingly make much of the world bearable—or even safe—to live in. With populations increasing, expanding urbanisation and climate change impacts leading to more frequent heatwaves and temperature rises, the demand for more cooling will increase in the decades ahead.

Continue reading “Global quadrupling of cooling appliances to 14 billion by 2050” »

Tactical Robotics’ Cormorant drone design allows it to navigate tight areas where a helicopter’s blades would get caught on the environment. The remote-controlled military drone can transport two injured people from a battle zone. The Israeli-based company believes the drone could one day also be used to inspect bridges, deliver medical supplies and spray crops.

Would you eat lab grown meat?

Monsanto’s agricultural biotechnology research and development operations that are going to Bayer are the largest in the world and include making genetically modified seeds for such crops as corn, soybeans and cotton. Corn represented almost 60 percent of Monsanto’s total seed and genomics business last year.

German conglomerate Bayer on Thursday closed its $63 billion merger with St. Louis-based agribusiness giant Monsanto and plans to drop the U.S. company’s name.

Looking for a plastic straw to sip your soda? It’s no longer allowed in Seattle bars and restaurants.

Neither are plastic utensils in the latest push to reduce waste and prevent marine plastic pollution. Businesses that sell food or drinks won’t be allowed to offer the plastic items under a rule that went into effect Sunday.

Seattle is believed to be the first major U.S. city to ban single-use plastic straws and utensils in food service, according to Seattle Public Utilities. The eco-conscious city has been an environmental leader in the U.S., working to aggressively curb the amount of trash that goes into landfills by requiring more options that can be recycled or composted.

Continue reading “Seattle bans plastic straws, utensils at restaurants, bars” »

Solar farms in Texas or California are fine, but Kent in England?

Solar farms should be placed in desert regions that have low value for growing food, and relatively low value to nature. Musk plans to install a massive solar farm in nice green Kent, where it is occasionally a little bit sunny. Look at the pics here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5905675/Elon-Musk-bu…plans.html is simply green lunacy.

Continue reading “Musk’s Kent solar farm is green lunacy” »

French scientist Herve This, the co-creator of molecular gastronomy, wants the world to cook with chemical compounds, a process that he believes can help improve global food security.

A being that can consciously alter its own DNA via technological intervention (i.e. cybernetic means) is what our Second Womb has been nurturing. We have used civilization to protect ourselves while we crack the code of our biological being. We started in the womb of the cave. Then moved on to the womb of the hut. Then the village, the city, and the state. All thew hile, we have been tinkering with our own DNA and the DNA of other species. To me, this is the real posthuman or transhuman — it is the creature that is actively editing its own biological blueprint through tech. This is what we’ve been doing since we started augmenting our bodies with clothing and animal skins. We’ve been modifying our ability to endure the slings and arrows of the cosmos.

What is human civilization? It is difficult to assert that other animals do not create their own civilizations — termites for instance meet some criteria for being categorized as cyborgs (building temperature-controlled mega structures). Animals communicate, express feelings, and have personalities. Octopi arrange furniture for would-be mates. Others engage in mating rituals. Some mourn the dead. Birds can solve simple math. Critters scheme, enterprise, forge bonds, and even produce art. What do we do that animals do not?

To our credit, we are the only animals that record, share, and develop history upon structures and materials outside of our bodies. We harness energy for massive projects. We farm, but again, so do leaf-cutter ants. But we create genetically novel vegetables and animals. We alter the global climate. Our enterprises are global, and given time and opportunity, our projects will eventually become exostellar. We do all this rather ferociously. Human history is a rather short explosion of civilization-building activities, and yet it might already have irrevocably altered the future of all life on this planet. No other creature has created a circumstance quite like that of human beings and our anthropocene project. For instance, unless we clean up the environment, the next few generations of plant and animal life are going to have be extremely resilient to radiation, Styrofoam, plastics, and other run-offs squeezed out from the human project. That is just a fact of life now on earth.

Continue reading “Human Civilization is our Second Womb for Birthing Transhumans” »