Fuel Competition for Man and Machine

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." – Socrates

There are three ways to compete: (1) build a better or cheaper product; (2) marketing, including trashing your competitors; or, (3) getting the government to either help you or hobble your competitors. Elements of all three are going on in the competition to supply fuel for man (food) and machines.

For food, today’s war is about what is now termed “alt-meat” versus conventional meats. Beyond Burgers, Impossible meats and countless others are challenging the primacy of conventionally raised beef, poultry and seafood. The challengers contend, with a good deal of data although some uncertainty as well, that the incumbent products are bad for the environment (global warming, soil despoilation, overuse of water, stream pollution), animal welfare (animals raised in harsh conditions), food safety (pathogens and animal virus pandemics), and nutrition. 

All of that is important but one alt-meat entrepreneur, who is looking at a product traditionally thrown away as a weed, jackfruit, says, “The trick is getting it into people’s mouths. If they love it, and the price is right, they will buy it.” In other words, he thinks he has a better and cheaper product.

On the defensive side of the meat controversy, one big issue is what the alternative products should be called. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says it is “leading efforts in Washington to make sure that fake meat – both current plant-based products and potential lab-produced products in the future – is properly marketed and regulated.” Impossible Foods’ Rachel Konrad fired back, “This is about an incumbent, doomed, gross polluting industry trying to do whatever it can to slow down the ascent of a new technology that is better for the people and the planet.” These represent the two other approaches, using the government to weaken your competitors and negative marketing.

For machines, the competition is between conventional oil, natural gas, large nuclear power plants, wood, and coal versus new forms of energy–call it “alt-energy.” Conventional energy issues include wood stoves (small particle air pollution); and coal, gas, natural gas and oil (air pollution, acid rain, greenhouse gases, and worker safety); and nuclear (radioactive explosions). The new energy sources include wind turbines (noisy, bird-killing), and solar panels (toxic waste). There are many more like neutrinovoltaic energy that captures tiny subatomic neutrino particles that bombard the Earth constantly every day. On a larger scale for alt-energy there are advanced Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) that are nuclear reactors that do not run as hot so there is little possibility of Chernobyl-like explosions. Interestingly, one producer of SMRs says, “If I just scale down a large reactor, I’ll lose, no doubt.” He realizes that he must make them both safer and cheaper.

We are all at much lower risk today because of that kind of competition. The new book, The Code Breaker, about the invention of CRISPR (gene editing technology) describes the competition between researcher Jennifer Doudna and others that helped to quickly produce vaccines for COVID-19. They did it by continually improving the technology. As detailed by author Walter Issacson, Doudna and the other competitors were engaged in epic battles against each other to produce the first papers, give the first talks and finally to get patents. They were often getting the same results “by many groups at around the same time.” As Issacson says, “Instead of being ivory towers, universities will be engaged in tackling … real world problems, from pandemics to climate change.” He goes on to say that there was also collaboration that broke “down academic silos and the walls between labs, which have traditionally been independent fiefdoms that fiercely guard their autonomy.”

Maybe, but the point is that it was friendly (if fierce) competition. And whether it was for profits due to consumer acceptance; or academic glory, it wasn’t about trashing other people’s work or using the government to get a competitive advantage.