Alasdair Rae is back with another set of interesting maps. This time he maps out precipitation levels across the United Kingdom and the United States using cool 3D extruded mappings. He calls them rain shadow maps. Above is showing the average annual precipitation in the contiguous US from 1981 to 2010. The higher the peaks the higher the precipitation. Not surprisingly, the highest values are in the Pacific Northwest with over 4,064 mm (160 inches) of precipitation per annum. Some of the patterns here are also really interesting. Note California's Central Valley.
https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1289943840644792323?s=20
There is evidence to suggest, according to this recent Bloomberg Green article as well as many other sources, that we may be hitting "peak meat." That is, the global production of animal proteins appears to be declining. It declined last year in 2019 and that was only the second time since 1961 in which that happened. And this year, the same is projected to happen, which is supposedly unprecedented in modern times.
This is an excellent blog post by entrepreneur and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla about some of the "instigators" that are working to help solve our climate crisis and some of the areas in which we probably should be focusing on next. One of the things that's noteworthy about the post is that he distills it all down into 12 areas of focus that -- if solved and if scaled -- could have a material impact on carbon emissions. They are (verbatim):
Electric vehicles & automotive batteries
Food & agriculture, especially meat
Low carbon transportation: Air transportation (jet fuel), shipping (electrofuels, biofuels?)
Cement or substitute construction material
Low carbon dispatchable electricity generation (fusion, geothermal, nuclear)
Public transit
Grid storage (long duration battery storage)
HVAC
Industrial processes (hydrogen?)
Fertilizer (hydrogen)
Water
Steel
Looking at this list, it is clear that some of these things are already happening (and some aren't). I currently own an ICE vehicle, but I'm fairly certain it will be the last non-electric vehicle I ever own. It's also not clear whether I will want to continue owning a car. Dynamic mass transit and overall autonomy are things that we've talked a lot about on this blog.
But here's the other idea put forward in Khosla's post. If these are in fact the 12 most impactful and important categories, then we may only be 12 or so companies away from real solutions. We only be 12 or so entrepreneurs away from meaningful societal change. When you look at it this way, the climate crisis should hopefully feel a lot less daunting.
The big change is that people are eating a lot less beef. In fact, per capita beef production peaked way back in the 1970s and has been slowing declining ever since. The growth over the years has really been coming from chicken. In 1961, 39% of all meat production was beef. As of 2018, that number had declined to 20%. Pork as a percentage of all production has remained more or less consistent. But chicken has basically tripled from 11% to 34%.
From an environmental and climate change standpoint, this is a very good thing. As most of you know, greenhouse gas emissions from the production of beef are vastly higher (about 10x) than for pork and chicken. Chicken is the lowest (see above). At the same time, big bets are being made that this growing love of chicken isn't enough. In the first 7 months of 2020, over $1.4 billion of venture capital was raised for "faux meat" startups (source). This is already a significant increase compared to 2019.
This money is expecting the future of meat to be plant-based and cell-based.
All charts from Bloomberg Green.
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