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Solar panels and electric cars are a large up front cost for a very long range, abstract benefit. Buying more ethical groceries is a small up-front cost for an immediate warm-fuzzy.

This shouldn't come as a surprise, most people are tragics for sacrificing the long term to boost the short term - witness the ubiquity of credit card debt.

I'd guess vat-grown beef would fall more into the free-range egg scenario than the solar-panel scenario (although probably with less emotional baggage since beef cattle are generally pictured as happy cows eating grass in a field, whereas cage hens are pitiful to behold.)




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