Fuck me! We aren't going to eat the bugs in the pods. We are going to eat climate change.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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Came in here like
"If someone hasn't made a " holy fuck, China isn't going to just save us from climate change, they area going to fucking EAT climate change" joke, I am gonna be real sad... Then make one."
So, thanks comrade.
Not really. This falls under CO2 utilization, which converts waste CO2 into more useful stuff. Because cows/pigs eat the yeast protein, and we eat the cows/pigs and burn them as calories, we re-release the CO2 in our breath.
This tech is better classed as precision fermentation, and unfortunately has little to do with fighting climate change.
Indirectly it has to do with ficghting climate change tho. The utilized CO2 stems from heavy industry, meaning heavy industry can now double as supplier for the basics of food production. As the resulting yeast is much more efficient per hectare than soy, this means less deforestation for soy fields. Meaning the CO2 bound in the forests stays right there. Less CO2 emissions, fuck yeah!
Good point, though I don't think deforestation is a big problem in China anymore. What more efficient food production does allow is reforesting excess soy farming fields, which will definitely sequester carbon while restoring the environment.
If the technology catches on it could have major impact in some places, namely south america.
Could they theoretically store or just bury the yeast as a means of carbon capture ?
Yes, you could just bury organic carbon for carbon sequestration. However, using your custom engineered yeast enzyme to do this is pretty dumb when you could just use waste plant biomass like SinkCo Labs does.
Herein lies the fundamental economic problem with carbon sequestration: you spend money to produce nothing.
This is an amazing achievement. It would be interesting to see if this yeast protein can be used to feed humans directly as well, that would be even better
I find the idea of using microorganisms to do farming kind of fascinating honestly. You can produce a lot of different chemicals this way, and potentially make kinds of food requiring very little space.
Yeah, if these turn out to be feasible and healthy, we could potentially produce at least an order of magnitude more food with a fraction of the climate impact. Mycoproteins are already quite widely available as meat substitutes and are cultivated in vats. I don't know what's the consensus on health impact though, presumably it can't be too bad
I think health impact might be the biggest concern, but I can't imagine that's an insolvable problem.
Mahallah, this stuff really gives me hope
Reading it over, that's actually insane. I'm surprised this hasn't been done already!
If it's anything like yeast and "4000" times more efficient than soy...doesn't that mean you could set up controlled grows and have a steady back-up supply of food? Is it sensitive to temperatures and such? Like can I just grow this in a closet?
not sure what environmental conditions it needs, but definitely incredible tech
Wow, this is great news!