A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world’s first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.
The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.
There’s nothing uplifting about more UPFs.
We’re on the eve of what future generations may refer to as “The Great Hunger.” The worst impact of climate change won’t be rising sea levels. It will be Biblical scale famines from multiple simultaneous bread basket failures. On our current path, we are likely to lose 2-10% of the total human population due to famine over the next 20-30 years. Having a way to grow bulk sustenance cheaply, in a way that is immune from the disruptions of the weather? That is a technology we desperately need right now. I agree that UPFs are not ideal. But this and similar synthetic foods could prevent what is likely to be the greatest famine in human history.