Cultivated meat: a reality check
Six years after the first approval, cultivated meat is legal in a few places, banned in others and sold almost nowhere. The biology explains most of why.
etc blog: Technology, food, climate and corporate power, et cetera
Lately
Agroecology on the farm: what changes, season by season
Agroecology is a practice before it is a policy. What changes on a working farm, the FAO's ten elements in plain words, and the trade-offs to admit.
Bring back technology assessment
Congress closed its technology office in 1995. AI and synthetic biology make the case for public, independent foresight stronger than ever.
Soil carbon: what the science can promise, and what it can't
Soils hold vast amounts of carbon, but gains are hard to measure and easy to lose. What 4 per 1000, carbon credits and farmers can realistically expect.
Geeks start the week: what synthetic biology's 2007 promises delivered
The first day of SB3.0 in 2007 was a rush of fast technical talks. Nearly nineteen years later, which of those tools and promises came true?
Ocean iron fertilisation revisited: from Planktos to the new marine carbon removal
Iron dumping promised cheap carbon storage and delivered scandals and a treaty fix. Now ocean carbon removal is back, with old governance questions.
Beware the biomass economy: pellets, jet fuel and the carbon-neutral claim
The bioeconomy swaps fossil carbon for plant carbon. The biomass demand that implies, who controls supply, and whether burning it is carbon-neutral.