Josh Tetrick is CEO of Eat Just, the first company to bring a lab-grown meat to market, called GOOD Meat, and, as of this year, one of only two companies to receive approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
What is the single most important action you think the public, or a specific company or government, needs to take in the next year to advance the climate agenda?
I’ll stick with food—I think individuals can make the choice to solve one part of our climate challenge by choosing to eat in a way that causes less harm. Less harm to themselves and to the planet. And this choice doesn’t require one dollar of new spending or any food technology company like ours to make cultivated or plant-based meats. It just takes an awareness of the problem and a will to take agency to solve it.
What sustainability effort do you hope will gain popularity with the general public this year, and why?
Many know it’s important to transition the world from fossil energy to renewable energy, but it’s equally important to transition the world away from factory farming billions of animals as a primary food source. That system causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined, and it’s getting worse every day. The effort is a simple one: choose to eat foods, mostly plant-based, that cause less harm to our planet.
What is a climate technology that isn’t getting the attention or funding it deserves?
As much as I wish human agency and will would get us there, I think we all have to be aware that we are all imperfect and sometimes you need to meet folks where they are. We believe that making meat without the large-scale slaughter of animals requires new technologies, including cultivating meat from a single cell and turning that into meat through a process of feeding and culturing those cells in vessels, similar to brewing beer. Cultivating meat is in its early days, and more attention and funding are needed to accelerate its rise to the top of the system of meat production.
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