With the Rhine drying up and grass turning brown all over Europe (including the UK), even conservative bodies such as the ECB are starting to take notice and comment. On July 2, 2026, a member of the Executive Board, Frank Elderson gave a speech to the 7th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists – The green transition – benefits and barriers. In that speech, he directly tied the mounting climate chaos with inflation volatility and emphasised the need to transition as quickly as possible to a net zero carbon economy. I am continuing to draft material for an upcoming book on degrowth and decolonialisation from an Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) perspective. The current area I am researching concerns the evolution of new uses of fermentation to provide food security and allow humanity to transition away from reliance on animal and fish products. The evidence demonstrates that the Chinese are now using its traditional expertise in fermentation to fast track production of Alt protein. As we know, the production of protein via livestock is highly inefficient (protein per hectare) and environmentally unsustainable. Using biomass and converting lignocellulose into food protein is a way around that situation and the Chinese are already way ahead of the rest of us. As long as we hang on to neoliberal ideologies that prevent wide scale state support of emerging industries and starve researchers of state provided R&D funding, the greater will the gulf be between China and the rest of the world on these future technologies and products. We are now seeing this in the production of EVs, for example. Alt protein is the solution for humanity to eliminate livestock dependence. We should be following the processes that China has put in place.