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Alison Badgett named director of the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center

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Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education Ian A. Waitz announced recently that Alison Badgett has been appointed the new associate dean and director of the Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center. She succeeds Jill Bassett, who left that role to become chief of staff to Chancellor Melissa Nobles. “Alison is a thought leader on how to integrate community-engaged learning with systematic change, making her ideally suited to actualize MIT’s mission of educating transformative leaders,” Waitz says. “I have no doubt she will make the PKG Center a model for all of higher ed, given her wealth of experience, finely honed skills, and commitment to social change.” “I’m excited to help the PKG Center, and broader MIT community, develop a collective vision for public service education that builds on the PKG Center’s strength in social innovation programming, and leverages the Institute’s unique culture of innovation,” Badgett says. “MIT’s institutional commitment to tackling complex societal and environmental challenges, taking responsibility for outcomes and not just inputs, is exceedingly rare. I’m also especially excited to engage STEM majors, who may be less likely to enter the nonprofit or public sector, but who can have a tremendous impact on social and environmental outcomes within the systems they work.” Badgett has over 20 years of experience leading public policy and nonprofit organizations, particularly those addressing challenging issues like affordable housing and homelessness, criminal justice, and public education. She is the founding principal of a consulting firm, From Charity to Change, which works with nonprofit leaders, educators, and philanthropists to apply systems-change strategies that target the root causes of complex social problems. Prior to her consulting role, Badgett was executive director of the Petey Greene Program, which recruits and trains 1,000 volunteers annually from 30 universities to tutor justice-impacted students in 50 prisons and reentry programs. In addition, the program educates volunteers on the injustice of our prison system and encourages both volunteers and students to advocate for reforms. She also served as executive director of Raise Your Hand Texas, an organization that aims to improve education by piloting innovative learning practices. During her tenure, the organization launched a five-year, $10 million initiative to showcase and scale blended learning, and a 10-year, $50 million initiative to improve teacher preparation and the status of teaching. Before leading Raise Your Hand Texas, Badgett was executive director of several organizations related to housing and homelessness in New York and New Jersey. During that time, she developed a $3.6 million demonstration program to permanently house the chronically homeless, which served as a model for state and national replication. She also served as senior policy advisor to the governor of New Jersey, providing counsel on land use, redevelopment, and housing. Badgett holds a global executive EdD from the University of Southern California, an MA from Columbia University Teachers College in philosophy and education, and an BA in politics from Princeton University. Her appointment at the PKG Center is especially timely. Student demand for social impact experiential learning opportunities has increased significantly at MIT in recent years, and the center is expected to play a sizable role in increasing student engagement in social impact work and in helping to integrate social innovation into teaching and research. At the same time, the Institute has made a commitment to help address complex issues with global impacts, such as climate change, economic inequality, and artificial intelligence. As part of that effort, the Office of Experiential Learning launched the Social Impact Experiential Learning Opportunity initiative last year, which has awarded nearly $1 million to fund hundreds of student opportunities. Projects cater to a broad range of interests and take place around the world — from using new computational methods to understand the role of special-interest-group funding in U.S. public policy to designing and testing a solar-powered, water-vapor condensing chamber in Madagascar. Badgett, who is currently writing a book on re-imagining civic education at elite private schools, will begin her new role at the PKG Center in July. In the meantime, she is looking forward to bringing her experience to bear at MIT. “While leading public interest organizations was highly rewarding, I recognized that I could have a far greater impact educating future public interest leaders, and that higher education was the place to do it,” she says.

With decades of experience in the nonprofit sector, she will lead the center as MIT boosts social impact experiential learning opportunities.

“Alison is a thought leader on how to integrate community-engaged learning with systematic change, making her ideally suited to actualize MIT’s mission of educating transformative leaders,” Waitz says. “I have no doubt she will make the PKG Center a model for all of higher ed, given her wealth of experience, finely honed skills, and commitment to social change.”

“I’m excited to help the PKG Center, and broader MIT community, develop a collective vision for public service education that builds on the PKG Center’s strength in social innovation programming, and leverages the Institute’s unique culture of innovation,” Badgett says. “MIT’s institutional commitment to tackling complex societal and environmental challenges, taking responsibility for outcomes and not just inputs, is exceedingly rare. I’m also especially excited to engage STEM majors, who may be less likely to enter the nonprofit or public sector, but who can have a tremendous impact on social and environmental outcomes within the systems they work.”

Badgett has over 20 years of experience leading public policy and nonprofit organizations, particularly those addressing challenging issues like affordable housing and homelessness, criminal justice, and public education. She is the founding principal of a consulting firm, From Charity to Change, which works with nonprofit leaders, educators, and philanthropists to apply systems-change strategies that target the root causes of complex social problems.

Prior to her consulting role, Badgett was executive director of the Petey Greene Program, which recruits and trains 1,000 volunteers annually from 30 universities to tutor justice-impacted students in 50 prisons and reentry programs. In addition, the program educates volunteers on the injustice of our prison system and encourages both volunteers and students to advocate for reforms.

She also served as executive director of Raise Your Hand Texas, an organization that aims to improve education by piloting innovative learning practices. During her tenure, the organization launched a five-year, $10 million initiative to showcase and scale blended learning, and a 10-year, $50 million initiative to improve teacher preparation and the status of teaching.

Before leading Raise Your Hand Texas, Badgett was executive director of several organizations related to housing and homelessness in New York and New Jersey. During that time, she developed a $3.6 million demonstration program to permanently house the chronically homeless, which served as a model for state and national replication. She also served as senior policy advisor to the governor of New Jersey, providing counsel on land use, redevelopment, and housing.

Badgett holds a global executive EdD from the University of Southern California, an MA from Columbia University Teachers College in philosophy and education, and an BA in politics from Princeton University.

Her appointment at the PKG Center is especially timely. Student demand for social impact experiential learning opportunities has increased significantly at MIT in recent years, and the center is expected to play a sizable role in increasing student engagement in social impact work and in helping to integrate social innovation into teaching and research.

At the same time, the Institute has made a commitment to help address complex issues with global impacts, such as climate change, economic inequality, and artificial intelligence. As part of that effort, the Office of Experiential Learning launched the Social Impact Experiential Learning Opportunity initiative last year, which has awarded nearly $1 million to fund hundreds of student opportunities. Projects cater to a broad range of interests and take place around the world — from using new computational methods to understand the role of special-interest-group funding in U.S. public policy to designing and testing a solar-powered, water-vapor condensing chamber in Madagascar.

Badgett, who is currently writing a book on re-imagining civic education at elite private schools, will begin her new role at the PKG Center in July. In the meantime, she is looking forward to bringing her experience to bear at MIT. “While leading public interest organizations was highly rewarding, I recognized that I could have a far greater impact educating future public interest leaders, and that higher education was the place to do it,” she says.

Read the full story here.

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Analysis-Brazil Environment Minister, Climate Summit Star, Faces Political Struggle at Home

By Manuela AndreoniBELEM, Brazil (Reuters) -Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva fought back tears as global diplomats applauded her for...

BELEM, Brazil (Reuters) -Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva fought back tears as global diplomats applauded her for several minutes on Saturday in the closing plenary of the COP30 global climate summit."We've made progress, albeit modestly," she told delegates gathered in the Amazon rainforest city of Belem, before raising a fist over her head defiantly. "The courage to confront the climate crisis comes from persistence and collective effort."It was a moment of catharsis for the Brazilian hosts in a tense hall where several nations vented frustration with a deal that failed to mention fossil fuels - even as they cheered more funds for developing nations adapting to climate change.Despite the bittersweet outcome, COP30 capped years of work by the environment minister and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to restore Brazil's leadership on global climate policy, dented by a far-right predecessor who denied climate science.Back in Brasilia, a harsher political reality looms. Congress has been pushing to dismantle much of the country's environmental permitting system. Organized crime in the Amazon is also a problem, and people seeking to clear forest acres have found new ways to infiltrate and thwart groups touting sustainable development.All this poses new threats to Brazil's vast ecosystems, forcing Lula and his minister to wage a rearguard battle to defend the world's largest rainforest. Scientists and policy experts warn that action is needed to discourage deforestation before a changing climate turns the Amazon into a tinderbox. Tensions have been mounting between a conservative Congress and the leftist Lula ahead of next year's general election. Forest land is often at heightened risk during election years.Still, Silva insists Brazil can deliver on its promise to reduce deforestation to zero by 2030. "If I'm in the eye of the storm," she told Reuters, "I have to survive."Silva, born in 1958 in the Amazonian state of Acre to an impoverished family of rubber tappers, was more rock star than policymaker for many at COP30. Like Lula, she overcame hunger and scant early schooling to achieve global recognition. As his environment minister from 2003 to 2008, she sharply slowed the destruction of her native rainforest.After more than a decade of estrangement from Lula's Workers Party, Silva reunited with him in 2022. Many environmentalists consider her return the most important move on climate policy in Lula's current mandate, which he has cast his agenda as an "ecological transformation" of Brazil's economy.It is a stark contrast from surging deforestation under Lula's right-wing predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who cheered on mining and ranching in the rainforest.Still, Lula's actual environmental record has been ambiguous, said Juliano Assuncao, executive director of the Climate Policy Institute think tank in Brazil. "What we have at times is an Environment Ministry deeply committed to these issues, but at critical moments it hasn't been able to count on the support of the federal government in the way it should," he said.Lula's government has halved deforestation in the Amazon, making it easier to fine deforesters and choke their access to public credit. New policies have encouraged reforestation and sustainable farming practices, such as cattle tracing.Still, critics say Lula's government has not done enough to stop Congress as it undercut environmental protections and blocked recognition of Indigenous lands. Lawmakers have also attacked a private-sector agreement protecting the Amazon from the advance of soy farming.Lula's environmental critics concede he has limited leverage.When a government agency was slow to license oil exploration off the Amazon coast, the Senate pushed legislation to overhaul environmental permitting. Lula vetoed much of the bill, but lawmakers vowed to restore at least part of it this week. Similar tensions in Lula's last mandate prompted Silva to quit over differences with other cabinet ministers. This time around, Lula has been quick to defend her and vice-versa. During a recent interview in her Brasilia office, Silva suggested that Lula had not changed, but rather that a warming planet has ratcheted up the urgency of climate policy."Reality has changed," she said. "People who are guided by scientific criteria, by common sense, by ethics, have followed that gradual change." HIGHER TEMPERATURES, MORE GUNSEarth's hottest year on record was 2024, fueling massive fires in the Amazon rainforest that for the first time erased more tree cover than chainsaws and bulldozers.Brazilians hoping to preserve the Amazon must struggle against more than just a warmer climate and a skeptical Congress. Organized crime has grown in the region after years of tight funding left fewer federal personnel to fight back, said Jair Schmitt, who oversees enforcement at Brazil's environmental protection agency Ibama. Ibama agents have been caught more often in shootouts with gangs, he added, suggesting more guns than ever in the region. "Rifles weren't this easy to find before," he said.Another challenge: Illegal deforesters have also infiltrated Amazon supply chains touting their sustainability, from biofuels to carbon credits, Reuters has reported. To overcome them, Brazil will need to steel its political will, said Marcio Astrini, the head of Climate Observatory, an advocacy group. Other than that, he added, "we have everything it takes to succeed."(Reporting by Manuela AndreoniEditing by Brad Haynes and David Gregorio)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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COP30: Conference Of Profiteers?

COP30: Conference Of Profiteers? Belem, Brazil – Nov 22, 2025: The 30th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate, Conference of the Parties (COP) wrapped up the proceedings early with a hastily written [“unedited”] Outcomes Report that includes little of substance, along with tertiary mentions of protecting Indigenous Peoples. Clearly, the lukewarm and […] The post COP30: Conference Of Profiteers? first appeared on Indigenous Environmental Network.

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Drought killer: California storms fill reservoirs, build up Sierra snowpack

It's been the wettest November on record for several Southern California cities. But experts say that despite the auspicious start, it's still too soon to say how the rest of California's traditional rainy season will shape up.

A string of early season storms that drenched Californians last week lifted much of the state out of drought and significantly reduced the risk of wildfires, experts say.It’s been the wettest November on record for Southland cities such as Van Nuys and San Luis Obispo. Santa Barbara has received an eye-popping 9.5 inches of rain since Oct. 1, marking the city’s wettest start to the water year on record. And overall the state is sitting at 186% of its average rain so far this water year, according to the Department of Water Resources.But experts say that despite the auspicious start, it’s still too soon to say how the rest of California’s traditional rainy season will shape up.“The overall impact on our water supply is TBD [to be determined] is the best way to put it,” said Jeff Mount, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center. “We haven’t even really gotten into the wet season yet.”California receives the vast bulk of its rain and snow between December and March, trapping the runoff in its reservoirs to mete out during the hot, dry seasons that follow. Lights from bumper-to-bumper traffic along Aliso Street reflect off the federal courthouse in Los Angeles on a rainy night. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times) Those major reservoirs are now filled to 100% to 145% of average for this date. That’s not just from the recent storms — early season rains tend to soak mostly into the parched ground — but also because California is building on three prior wet winters, state climatologist Michael Anderson said.A record-breaking wet 2022-23 winter ended the state’s driest three-year period on record. That was followed by two years that were wetter than average for Northern California but drier than average for the southern half, amounting to roughly average precipitation statewide.According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor report, issued last week before the last of the recent storms had fully soaked the state, more than 70% of California was drought-free, compared with 49% a week before. Nearly 47% of Los Angeles County emerged from moderate drought, with the other portions improving to abnormally dry, the map shows. Abnormally dry conditions also ended in Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and much of Kern counties, along with portions of Central California, according to the map. In the far southern and southeastern reaches of the state, conditions improved but still range from abnormally dry to moderate drought, the map shows.The early season storms will play an important role in priming watersheds for the rest of the winter, experts said. By soaking soils, they’ll enable future rainstorms to more easily run off into reservoirs and snow to accumulate in the Sierra Nevada.“Building the snowpack on hydrated watersheds will help us avoid losing potential spring runoff to dry soils later in the season,” Anderson wrote in an email.Snowpack is crucial to sustaining California through its hot, dry seasons because it runs down into waterways as it melts, topping off the reservoirs and providing at least 30% of the state’s water supply, said Andrew Schwartz, director of UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab.The research station at Donner Pass has recorded 22 inches of snow. Although that’s about 89% of normal for this date, warmer temperatures mean that much of it has already melted, Schwartz said. The snow water equivalent, which measures how much water the snow would produce if it were to melt, now stands at 50%, he said.“That’s really something that tells the tale, so far, of this season,” he said. “We’ve had plenty of rain across the Sierra, but not as much snowfall as we would ordinarily hope for up to this point.”This dynamic has become increasingly common with climate change, Schwartz said. Snow is often developing later in the season and melting earlier, and more precipitation is falling as rain, he said. Because reservoirs need to leave some room in the winter for flood mitigation, they aren’t always able to capture all this ill-timed runoff, he said.And the earlier the snow melts, the more time plants and soils have to dry out in the summer heat, priming the landscape for large wildfires, Schwartz said. Although Northern California has been spared massive fires for the last few seasons, Schwartz fears that luck could run out if the region doesn’t receive at least an average amount snow this year.For now, long-range forecasts are calling for equal chances of wet and dry conditions this winter, Mount said. What happens in the next few months will be key. California depends on just a few strong atmospheric river storms to provide moisture; as little as five to seven can end up being responsible for more than half of the year’s water supply, he said.“We’re living on the edge all the time,” he said. “A handful of storms make up the difference of whether we have a dry year or a wet year.”Although the state’s drought picture has improved for the moment, scientists caution that conditions across the West are trending hotter and drier because of the burning of fossil fuels and resultant climate change. In addition to importing water from Northern California via the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Southern California relies on water from the Colorado River. That waterway continues to be in shortage, with its largest reservoir only about one-third full.What’s more, research has shown that as the planet has warmed, the atmosphere has become thirstier, sucking more moisture from plants and soils and ensuring that dry years are drier. At the same time, there’s healthy debate over whether the same phenomenon is also making wet periods wetter, as warmer air can hold more moisture, potentially supercharging storms.As a result, swings between wet and dry on a year-to-year basis — and even within a year — seem to be getting bigger in California and elsewhere, Mount said. That increase in uncertainty has made managing water supplies more difficult overall, he said.Still, because of its climate, California has plenty of experience dealing with such extremes, said Jay Lund, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis.“We always have to be preparing for floods and preparing for drought, no matter how wet or dry it is.”Staff writer Ian James contributed to this report.

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Indigenous People Reflect On What It Meant To Participate In COP30 Climate Talks

Many who attended the UN summit in the Amazon liked the solidarity and small wins, but some felt the talks fell short on representation and true climate action.

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Indigenous people filled the streets, paddled the waterways and protested at the heart of the venue to make their voices heard during the United Nations climate talks that were supposed to give them a voice like never before at the annual conference.As the talks, called COP30, concluded Saturday in Belem, Brazil, Indigenous people reflected on what the conference meant to them and whether they were heard.Brazilian leaders had high hopes that the summit, taking place in the Amazon, would empower the people who inhabit the land and protect the biodiversity of the world’s largest rainforest, which helps stave off climate change as its trees absorb carbon pollution that heats the planet.Many Indigenous people who attended the talks felt strengthened by the solidarity with tribes from other countries and some appreciated small wins in the final outcome. But for many, the talks fell short on representation, ambition and true action on climate issues affecting Indigenous people.“This was a COP where we were visible but not empowered,” said Thalia Yarina Cachimuel, a Kichwa-Otavalo member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, a group of Indigenous people from around the world.Some language wins but nothing on fossil fuelsFrom left: Taily Terena, Gustavo Ulcue Campo, Bina Laprem and Sarah Olsvig attend an Indigenous peoples forum on climate change at the COP30 UN Climate Summit, on Nov. 21, 2025, in Belem, Brazil.Andre Penner via Associated PressThe first paragraph of the main political text acknowledges “the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as their land rights and traditional knowledge.”Taily Terena, an Indigenous woman from the Terena nation in Brazil, said she was happy because the text for the first time mentioned those rights explicitly.But Mindahi Bastida, an Otomí-Toltec member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, said countries should have pushed harder for agreements on how to phase out fuels like oil, gas and coal “and not to see nature as merchandise, but to see it as sacred.”Several nations pushed for a road map to curtail use of fossil fuels, which when burned release greenhouse gases that warm the planet. Saturday’s final decision left out any mention of fossil fuels, leaving many countries disappointed.Brazil also launched a financial mechanism that countries could donate to, which was supposed to help incentivize nations with lots of forest to keep those ecosystems intact.Although the initiative received monetary pledges from a few countries, the project and the idea of creating a market for carbon are false solutions that “don’t stop pollution, they just move it around,” said Jacob Johns, a Wisdom Keeper of the Akimel O’Otham and Hopi nations.“They hand corporations a license to keep drilling, keep burning, keep destroying, so long as they can point to an offset written on paper. It’s the same colonial logic dressed up as climate policy,” Johns said.Concerns over tokenismBrazil Indigenous Peoples Minister Sonia Guajajara (R) poses for a selfie while walking through the COP30 UN Climate Summit venue, on Nov. 17, 2025, in Belem, Brazil.Andre Penner via Associated PressFrom the beginning of the conference, some Indigenous attendees were concerned visibility isn’t the same as true power. At the end, that sentiment lingered.“What we have seen at this COP is a focus on symbolic presence rather than enabling the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples,” Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, wrote in a message after the conference concluded.Edson Krenak, Brazil manager for Indigenous rights group Cultural Survival and member of the Krenak people, didn’t think negotiators did enough to visit forests or understand the communities living there. He also didn’t believe the 900 Indigenous people given access to the main venue was enough.Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s minister of Indigenous peoples, who is Indigenous herself, framed the convention differently.“It is undeniable that this is the largest and best COP in terms of Indigenous participation and protagonism,” she said.Protests showed power of Indigenous solidarityIndigenous leader and climate activist Txai Surui (R) shouts slogans while leaving a plenary session during the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference in Belem, Brazil, on Nov. 21, 2025. Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty ImagesWhile the decisions by delegates left some Indigenous attendees feeling dismissed, many said they felt empowered by participating in demonstrations outside the venue.When the summit began on Nov. 10, Paulo André Paz de Lima, an Amazonian Indigenous leader, thought his tribe and others didn’t have access to COP30. During the first week, he and a group of demonstrators broke through the barrier to get inside the venue. Authorities quickly intervened and stopped their advancement.De Lima said that act helped Indigenous people amplify their voices.“After breaking the barrier, we were able to enter COP, get into the Blue Zone and express our needs,” he said, referring to the official negotiation area. “We got closer (to the negotiations), got more visibility.”The meaning of protest at this COP wasn’t just to get the attention of non-Indigenous people, it also was intended as a way for Indigenous people to commune with each other.On the final night before an agreement was reached, a small group with banners walked inside the venue, protesting instances of violence and environmental destruction from the recent killing of a Guarani youth on his own territory to the proposed Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project in Canada.“We have to come together to show up, you know? Because they need to hear us,” Leandro Karaí of the Guarani people of South America said of the solidarity among Indigenous groups. “When we’re together with others, we’re stronger.“They sang to the steady beat of a drum, locked arms in a line and marched down the long hall of the COP venue to the exit, breaking the silence in the corridors as negotiators remained deadlocked inside.Then they emerged, voices raised, under a yellow sky.

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This Pig’s Bacon Was Delicious—and She’s Alive and Well

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. I’m eating Dawn the Yorkshire pig and she’s quite tasty. But don’t worry. She’s doing perfectly fine, traipsing around a sanctuary in upstate New York. Word is that she appreciates belly rubs and sunshine. I’m in San Francisco, at an Italian joint just south of Golden Gate Park, enjoying meatballs and bacon not made of meat in the traditional sense but of plants mixed with “cultivated” pork fat. Dawn, you see, donated a small sample of fat, which a company called Mission Barns got to proliferate in devices called bioreactors by providing nutrients like carbohydrates, amino acids, and vitamins—essentially replicating the conditions in her body. Because so much of the flavor of pork and other meats comes from the animal’s fat, Mission Barns can create products like sausages and salami with plants but make them taste darn near like sausages and salami. I’ve been struggling to describe the experience, because cultivated meat short-circuits my brain—my mouth thinks I’m eating a real pork meatball, but my brain knows that it’s fundamentally different and that Dawn (pictured above) didn’t have to die for it. This is the best I’ve come up with: It’s Diet Meat. Just as Diet Coke is an approximation of the real thing, so too are cultivated meatballs. They simply taste a bit less meaty, at least to my tongue. Which is understandable, as the only animal product in this food is the bioreactor-grown fat. Cultivated pork is the newest entrant in the effort to rethink meat. For years, plant-based offerings have been mimicking burgers, chicken, and fish with ever-more convincing blends of proteins and fats. Mission Barns is one of a handful of startups taking the next step: growing real animal fat outside the animal, then marrying it with plants to create hybrids that look, cook, and taste more like what consumers have always eaten, easing the environmental and ethical costs of industrial livestock. The company says it’s starting with pork because it’s a large market and products like bacon are fat-rich, but its technology is “cell-agnostic,” meaning it could create beef and chicken, too. Lab-grown meat ballsMatt Simon Honestly, Mission Barns’ creations taste great, in part because they’re “unstructured,” in the parlance of the industry. A pork loin is a complicated tangle of fat, muscle cells, and connective tissues that is very difficult and expensive to replicate, but a meatball, salami, or sausage incorporates other ingredients. That allows Mission Barns to experiment with what plant to use as a base, and then add spices to accentuate the flavors. It’s a technology that they can iterate, basically, crafting ever-better meats by toying with ingredients in different ratios. So the bacon I ate, for instance, had a nice applewood smoke to it. The meatballs had the springiness you’d expect. During a later visit to Mission Barns’ headquarters across town, I got to try two prototypes of its salami as well—both were spiced like you’d expect but less elastic, so they chewed a bit more easily than what you’d find on a charcuterie board. (The sensation of food in the mouth is known in the industry as “mouthfeel,” and nailing it is essential to the success of alt meats.) The salami slices even left grease stains on the paper they were served on—Dawn’s own little mark on the world. I was one of the first people to purchase a cultivated pork product. While Mission Barns has so far only sold its products at that Italian restaurant and, for a limited time, at a grocery store in Berkeley—$13.99 for a pack of eight meatballs, similar to higher-end products from organic and regenerative farms—it is fixing to scale up production and sell the technology to other companies to produce more cultivated foods. (It is assessing how big the bioreactors will have to be to reach price parity with traditional meat products.) The idea is to provide an alternative to animal agriculture, which uses a whole lot of land, water, and energy to raise creatures and ship their flesh around the world. Livestock are responsible for between 10 and 20 percent of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions—depending on who’s estimating it—and that’s to say nothing of the cruelty involved in keeping pigs and chickens and cows in unsavory, occasionally inhumane, conditions. “I also love the idea of taking their pork fat and putting it in a beef burger.” Getting animal cells to grow outside of an animal, though, ain’t easy. For one, if cells don’t have anything to attach to, they die. So Mission Barns’ cultivator uses a spongelike structure, full of nooks and crannies that provides lots of surface area for the cells to grow. “We have our media, which is just the nutrient solution that we give to these cells,” said Saam Shahrokhi, chief technology officer at Mission Barns. “We’re essentially recapitulating all of the environmental cues that make cells inside the body grow fat, [but] outside the body.” While Dawn’s fat is that of a Yorkshire pig, Shahrokhi said they could easily produce fat from other breeds like the Mangalitsa, known as the Kobe beef of pork. (In June, the company won approval from the US Department of Agriculture to bring its cultivated fat to market.) Fat in hand, Mission Barns can mix it with plant proteins. If you’re familiar with Impossible Foods, it uses soy to replicate the feel and look of ground beef and adds soy leghemoglobin, which is similar to the heme that gives meat its meaty flavor. Depending on the flavor and texture it’s trying to copy, Mission Bay uses pea protein for the meatballs and sausages, wheat for the bacon, and fava beans for the salami. “The plant-based meat industry has done pretty well with texture,” said Bianca Le, head of special projects at Mission Barns. “I think what they’re really missing is flavor and juiciness, which obviously is where the fat comes in.” But the fat is just the beginning. Mission Barns’ offerings not only have to taste good, but also can’t have an off-putting smell when they’re coming out of the package and when they’re cooking. The designers have to dial in the pH, which could degrade the proteins if not balanced. How the products behave on the stove or in the oven has to be familiar, too. “If someone has to relearn how to cook a piece of bacon or a meatball, then it’s never going to work,” said Zach Tyndall, the product development and culinary manager at Mission Barns. Lab-grown salamiMatt Simon When I pick up that piece of salami, it has to feel like the real thing, in more ways than one. Indeed, it’s greasy in the hand and has that tang of cured meat. It’s even been through a dry-aging process to reduce its moisture. “We treat this like we would a conventional piece of salami,” Tyndall said. Cultivated meat companies may also go more unconventional. “I also love the idea of taking their pork fat and putting it in a beef burger—what would happen if you did that?” said Barb Stuckey, chief new product strategy officer at Mattson, a food developer that has worked with many cultivated meat companies. “Mixing species, it’s not something we typically do. But with this technology, we can.” Of course, in this new frontier of food, the big question is: Who exactly is this for? Would a vegetarian or vegan eat cultured pork fat if it’s divorced from the cruelty of factory farming? Would meat-eaters be willing to give up the real thing for a facsimile? Mission Barns’ market research, Le said, found that its early adopters are actually flexitarians—people who eat mostly plant-based but partake in the occasional animal product. But Le adds that their first limited sale to the public in Berkeley included some people who called themselves vegetarians and vegans. There’s also the matter of quantifying how much of an environmental improvement cultivated fat might offer over industrial pork production. If scaled up, one benefit of cultivated food might be that companies can produce the stuff in more places—that is, instead of sprawling pig farms and slaughterhouses being relegated to rural areas, bioreactors could be run in cities, cutting down on the costs and emissions associated with shipping. Still, those factories would need energy to grow fat cells, though they could be run on renewable electricity. “We modeled our process at the large commercial scale, and then compared it to U.S. bacon production,” Le said. (The company would not offer specific details, saying it is in the process of patenting its technique.) “And we found that with renewable energy, we do significantly better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.” Whether or not consumers bite, though, remains to be seen. The market for meat alternatives in the US has majorly softened of late: Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based products like burgers and sausages, has seen revenues drop significantly, in part because of consumers’ turn away from processed foods. But by licensing its technology elsewhere, Mission Barns’ strategy is to break into new markets beyond the United States. The challenges of cultivated meat go beyond the engineering once you get to the messaging and branding—telegraphing to consumers that they’re buying something that may in fact be partially meat. “When you buy chicken, you get 100 percent chicken,” Stuckey said. “I think a lot of people go into cultivated meat thinking what’s going to come onto the market is 100 percent cultivated chicken, and it’s not going to be that. It’s going to be something else.” Regardless of the trajectory of cultivated fat products, Dawn will continue mingling with llamas, soaking up the sunshine, and getting belly rubs in upstate New York—even as she makes plants taste more like pork.

Climate

Agriculture

Culture

Suggested Viewing

Uncovering the Permian Climate Bomb

The fossil fuel industry is building a global threat in the oil fields of West Texas. Miguel Escoto, who has lived close to this region his whole life, witnesses the industry’s villainy for the first time by viewing oil and gas site emissions through optical gas imaging cameras, becoming a stand-in for a world that has yet to grasp the gravity of the Permian Climate Bomb.

Pollution

Activism

Climate

The Day She Stole The Sun

In 2019, after years of severe drought, Australia endured an unprecedented bushfire crisis. The fires spanned almost the entire length of the country… and one small village on the New South Wales South Coast was hit by the full force of its destruction. The village became a national symbol for resilience and unbreakable Australian spirit. Told by the people who were there, this is not a story about tragedy, it’s a story about community. This is the story of Cobargo.

Forests

Climate

Crisis

Reboot

Humans have exploited Earth to the point where it is no longer possible to live on it. Their only option is to relocate to Mars. When the last group of people has boarded the spaceship for the red planet, the Earth can finally breathe easy. Like an expressionist painting, Reboot depicts a world in which the absence of our species is the only chance nature has to recover its lushness and flourish once more.

Animation

Crisis

Cosmos

Capturing The Fire

When Louise Coghill saw the first plume of smoke begin to rise behind her parents property, she could never have predicted that in less than four hours, it would become a wall of flames, swallowing everything in its path. A photographer by trade, Louise has travelled the world documenting everything from the nomadic wanderers of Mongolia, to base life at Mount Everest. Capturing the extraordinary comes naturally to Louise, so when her family home in the semi-rural Western Australian town of Gidgegannup became engulfed in flames, her first instinct wasn’t to take shelter, it was to pick up her camera.

Conservation

Climate

Nature

Eating the Future

Bafta-winner Mia McKenna-Bruce voices an eco-investigator who is traumatised by her work accessing factory farms and documenting animal abuses undercover. Terrified of a future of climate apocalypse, she embarks on a journey into the food systems that shape our planet, to look for hope.

Activism

Climate

Food

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Alison Badgett named director of the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center

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Suggested Viewing

Uncovering the Permian Climate Bomb

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Alison Badgett named director of the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center

Related News

Analysis-Brazil Environment Minister, Climate Summit Star, Faces Political Struggle at Home

COP30: Conference Of Profiteers?

Drought killer: California storms fill reservoirs, build up Sierra snowpack

Indigenous People Reflect On What It Meant To Participate In COP30 Climate Talks

This Pig’s Bacon Was Delicious—and She’s Alive and Well

Suggested Viewing

Uncovering the Permian Climate Bomb

The Day She Stole The Sun

Reboot

Capturing The Fire

Eating the Future

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future