Once, when I was a newly minted college graduate working my first full-time professional job, I was taken to lunch by my Aunt Rita. Rita had (to her dying day, at the age of 94) a keen analytical mind and an omnivorous appetite for information. She could talk to anybody about anything.

I don't recall the exact topic we were discussing that day, but it was probably something I had just written a story about — so of course, I was an expert. Rita interrupted my pontifications at one point to ask a question, something along the lines of, "Really? But I always thought ... " And she made an observation that was much closer to the collective wisdom of the day.

"Oh, Aunt Rita!" I said, rolling my eyes for emphasis, "you are so naive!"

To her neverending credit, Rita — who had grown up during the Depression, put herself and her sister (my mother) through college eating candy bars for dinner, had been a Hardy Girl and a WAC and a successful wife, mother and teacher — had the God-given grace to laugh at me. She laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks, and it was a good eight to 10 minutes before she could catch her breath.

That lunch came to mind the other day as I was sitting with a friend, a 21st century version of post-college me, and found myself on the Aunt Rita end of a discussion of renewable energy. Everybody knows clean energy is the key to the future, she said, it's just a fact. We need to switch all our power needs to renewable sources as quickly as possible or we won't have a future, because "we're all going to die soon."

My friend was far less boorish in our conversation than I had been at her age, and I mentally took a step back and wondered if she was right, if all of us clinging to our gas-powered vehicles and our coal- and nuclear-powered energy plants were Luddites destined to be run over by technological advancement.

And I applied that line of thought to the issue of meat and technology.

Pro-analogue and cell-cultured meat believers routinely and reflexively declare meat, as it's conventionally raised and slaughtered, will kill us all and destroy the planet within our lifetimes. They have plenty of data — as does the other side of the argument that says eschewing meat or allowing livestock herds to expand unchecked would be far more damaging to Earth and humankind.

I'm not trying to settle the argument here, or play a round of "my science is better than your science." But I am asking, what if they're right? What if conventional meat production and consumption goes away, voluntarily or by mandate? Outside of investments by a few key players, is the industry prepared, or preparing, for any slice of that brave new world to be realized?

I'm certainly not advocating for a wholesale abandonment of slaughter and fabrication as a means to feed the world. But I wouldn't want to be so naive as to dismiss the idea out of hand.

'You are so naive!'

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