The challenges of our society are known. Climate change, overpopulation, health care all require extensive research and work to transition the world to a safer, more equitable place. The solutions in many cases are also known. They run up against current power structures and individuals resistance to change. Anticipating these challenges are not common in research environments. Too many scientist think that it is not part of their purview and it never crosses their minds leading to least useful research possible.1
When I was in grad school, we had a class on science communication and whatnot. Part of it was preparing a presentation of your research for 5th graders. In lieu of actual children, the rest of the class had to ask question like we were target audience. Someone presented on the creation of a fully automated farm. Robots doing all the menial work with no input from humans. I raised my hand, incorporated my inner 5th grader asked “My dad works in a farm, what will happen to him?”. The presenter had no answer. The people that rely on the jobs he was advocating to eliminate had never been a consideration.2 In retrospect, that question may not been not fair to the presenter. It was not his fault that a critical portion of his work had been ignored.
In the 2000s and later again in the 2010s, there were in the US third and fourth pushes for renewable fuels. They failed for many reasons: dot com bubble, 2008 crisis, oil glut in the late 2010s. There were (there are still some) technical challenges for the production of renewable fuels at large scale. None of them are as important as car owners not wanting to switch to ethanol engines or the inability to convert farms (or nonproductive land) to better energy crops. Simply put research has to be done on how to use challenging amounts of corn waste since we cannot get non productive farms to grow energy cane. These realities were brought up by heavy oil propaganda and fearmongering on performance and “reduction of food supply”.
Electrification has found some success in the past few years. The technical challenges are nowhere near as solved as the ones in other “green” alternatives but it has gotten larger buy-in in the American market. It has been done with cult of personality (Elon Musk’s Tesla), jingoism (combating Chinese batteries and semiconductors), lack of critical thinking (where is that electricity coming from?) and state support for consumers (tax exemptions for car owners3). Continued funding of research on batteries and voltaics are keeping money from truly environmentally friendly solutions away.
Similar issues are raising on meat alternatives. State legislatures are trying to ban them to “protect” ranchers (add links AL and FL). Misinformation, however, is not limited to conservative actors. Activists propagate: fanciful versions of no cows needed meat; all ranching is evil and bad for the environment; you can make it in your own kitchen etc. Not a single one of those things consider that alternatives are necessary for the land, the workforce and capital. What is achievable is stopping the increase in land use for ranching; increasing land use efficiency (more meat and/or milk for acre). Even reducing herd sizes along with higher production is a far-fetched idea.
For any of this to become reality, we will need consumers to buy lab-grown meat, ranchers to adopt new techniques (and possibly new breeds), and large government investment on securing market transition. The push should include public education, adapt process to be Kosher and Halal compliant, and critically bring ranchers in.
In a myopic world, you can only build the future by approaching everything closely. Large ideas won’t get anywhere without seismic changes and it is incumbent on us as scientists to walk the public through.
- This is a issue for applied sciences where being useful is a crucial part of the work. eg engineering, medicine. Basic science research should not consider application and is exempt from this problem. ↩︎
- That student dropped out and now lives in a cult. ↩︎
- Tax exemptions for biofuels have been exclusively for farmers and distributers, making the governmental support invisible to consumers. ↩︎
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