AP Seminar FRQ practice

Read the passage below and then respond to the following three questions.

Improved greenhouse gas (GHG) emission efficiency of production has been proposed as one of the biggest potential advantages of cultured meat over conventional livestock production systems. Comparisons with beef are typically highlighted, as it is a highly emissions intensive food product. In this study, we present a more rigorous comparison of the potential climate impacts of cultured meat and cattle production than has previously been made. Warming impacts are evaluated using a simple climate model that simulates the different behaviors of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O), rather than relying on carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) metrics. We compare the temperature impact of beef cattle and cultured meat production at all times to 1,000 years in the future, using four synthetic meat GHG footprints currently available in the literature and three different beef production systems studied in an earlier climate modeling paper. Cattle systems are associated with the production of all three GHGs above, including significant emissions of CH₄, while cultured meat emissions are almost entirely CO₂ from energy generation. Under continuous high global consumption, cultured meat results in less warming than cattle initially, but this gap narrows in the long term and in some cases cattle production causes far less warming, as CH₄ emissions do not accumulate, unlike CO₂. We then model a decline in meat consumption to more sustainable levels following high consumption, and show that although cattle systems generally result in greater peak warming than cultured meat, the warming effect declines and stabilizes under the new emission rates of cattle systems, while the CO₂ based warming from cultured meat persists and accumulates even under reduced consumption, again overtaking cattle production in some scenarios. We conclude that cultured meat is not prima facie climatically superior to cattle; its relative impact instead depends on the availability of decarbonized energy generation and the specific production systems that are realized.

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As originally stated in Pierrehumbert and Eshel (2015), the temperature impacts of very large levels of beef consumption, under any of the systems explored here, are significant and likely incompatible with our climate goals. Despite the bold claims and superior carbon dioxide equivalent footprints, however, cultured meat is not necessarily a more sustainable alternative. In the most optimistic cultured meat production footprints, emissions are competitive with cattle systems for CO₂ while avoiding the other gases: this is unambiguously superior from a climate perspective. However, the long-term advantage over cattle is not as dramatic as may be suggested by simple GWP100 comparisons. For the most conservative cultured meat footprint used here, which still had a lower carbon dioxide equivalent footprint than any cattle system in the study, the long-term temperature impact of production is dramatically worse than any cattle system. Furthermore, as emissions from cultured meat are predominantly composed of CO₂, their warming legacy persists even if production declines or ceases (in the absence of active removal of this CO₂ from the atmosphere). Replacing cattle systems with cultured meat production before energy generation is sufficiently decarbonized and/or the more optimistic production footprints presented here are realized (assuming they can be), could risk a long-term, negative climate impact.