Butter was long thought to be magic. Ancient civilizations imbued it with divine beliefs and it factored into 17th-century witch trials as evidence of the dark arts. Scientists have since decoded its chemistry, but a new version of this favorite dietary fat is making it seem otherworldly again: butter made from greenhouse gases.

Scientists at Savor, a firm founded in 2022, have developed ways to convert these gases into fat molecules, and ultimately butter, in what they claim is “the most efficient, most resilient, least polluting way known to science.” The goal is to create sustainable fats without cows or crops, thus reducing the land needed for agriculture, which is responsible for nearly 12 percent of global emissions. Savor takes captured carbon dioxide or methane from natural gas and puts it through a thermochemical process to build butter, tallow, and even ice cream. The company isn’t the only one making food from gas. Novozymes, part of the pharma giant Novo Nordisk, and Air Protein both use a fermentation process that eats up CO2 to create proteins, and AIR Vodka is made using captured CO2.

“What do we need to have invented so that in 2100, on a climate-changed planet, our species can flourish?”

Savor’s CEO, Kathleen Alexander, calls this air-to-food pipeline “a new paradigm,” but the general concept has been around a while: During World War II, disruption in rural supply chains compelled the Nazis to try to produce “coal butter.” It was part of a broader scientific shift beginning in the early 20th century toward synthesizing chemicals for medicine, nutrients, and fuels. Savor is also tapping into a quest for butter alternatives that dates as far back as a food shortage under Napoleon III, when a French chemist mixed animal fats with milk to create the first margarine.

Savor’s founders are also pondering food insecurity, Alexander told me, as humanity barrels toward “irreversible changes” that will affect our ability to survive: “What do we need to have invented so that in 2100, on a climate-changed planet, our species can flourish?”

She estimates at least 5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to producing fats and edible oils. Diverting land away from agriculture could reduce pollution and deforestation and make way for larger carbon sinks, natural areas that sequester, rather than emit, CO2. Based on a study co-authored by two of Savor’s founders and published in Nature Sustainability in 2023, synthesizing dietary fats in a lab would produce only about half as much CO2 as traditional butter production does. If you factor in captured carbon dioxide (which Savor sometimes uses) and renewable energy (which it doesn’t presently), the authors speculate that zero-emission butter is achievable.

Even if the math works out, Savor will have to convince enough people to try, and buy, its synthetic butter—not to mention break into established markets and scale up production to make it a viable substitute, all while minimizing emissions. This won’t be cheap. Savor has so far raised more than $33 million, some from Bill Gates, who holds many investments in alternative foods and agriculture. “I wouldn’t be able to tell you it wasn’t butter,” he gushes in a promotional video.

Michael Hansen, a senior food scientist at Consumer Reports, questions the opportunity cost of investing in such biotech experiments, which require entirely new supply chains, when the cash could be put to better use improving agricultural systems already in place—to promote practices such as agroforestry and crop diversification, for instance, that sequester carbon and build resilience to environmental disasters.

Juan García Martínez, a researcher for the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters, notes that the big system realignments Savor proposes merit a cautious approach. “There should be more research on the economic effects on agricultural workers,” he says.

Yet Savor’s journey to the grocery aisles is well underway. Last year, its butter cleared an expert safety panel, allowing it to be sold in the United States. Now it awaits approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Alexander hopes to compete directly with commodity butter on price and taste.

Consumers may be harder to sway, especially with growing skepticism about ultra-processed foods, which “have such a bad rap,” says Elaine Khosrova, author of Butter: A Rich History. “But given the various crises we face on this planet,” she says, “I think you have to keep an open mind.”

This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.

PART I: THE KIDNAPPING

They didn’t need a gun. They didn’t need to kick in a door or leave a ransom note. All they needed was a government badge, a manifest, and the sheer audacity to call theft “policy.”

Her name is Maikelys Antonella Espinoza Bernal. She was two years old. A toddler. Barely able to string together full sentences. But she had a family, a voice, a mother who held her close and promised safety. That mother, Yorely Bernal, fled Venezuela with her partner and baby in search of a life that wouldn’t crush them. They didn’t sneak across a fence. They didn’t forge documents. They turned themselves in. They asked for asylum — and for that, the United States tore their child away and refused to give her back.

There is no paperwork gentle enough to cover what happened. This was not a misunderstanding. This was not a mistake. This was a deliberate act of state cruelty so calculated, so intimate, that calling it “family separation” doesn’t come close. It was a kidnapping.

Maikelys was supposed to be on the plane. That’s what they told her mother. Her name was on the manifest. Her mother had the documents — she showed them on a video call to her own mother back in Venezuela. She was packed. Ready. Promised. And then — at the last moment — they took her off the flight. They told her mother nothing. No explanation. No mercy. Just an empty seat and a hollow silence where a baby was supposed to be.

Let’s not sanitize this with legalese. Let’s not pretend this was complicated. It was simple: they lied. They gave a mother hope. Then they stole her daughter.

And for what?

The official line is “safety.” The administration claims the parents are gang members — specifically, part of the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua. They have tattoos. That’s the evidence. A lightning bolt. A serpent. A cartoon character. A crown. A cross. No charges. No trial. No evidence ever presented in court. Just tattoos, and fear, and the political utility of cruelty.

They deported the father to El Salvador, into a maximum-security prison alongside dozens of other Venezuelan men, branded criminals without trial. They deported the mother to Venezuela, alone. And they kept the baby — not because she was in danger, but because she was useful.

They kept her behind like contraband. Like a message. Like a trophy.

The child didn’t understand. Of course she didn’t. She didn’t know what the Department of Homeland Security was. She didn’t know what foster care meant. She didn’t know that the people now dressing her, feeding her, calling themselves “mommy” or “auntie,” were not her mother. Not her father. Not her people.

She just cried.

She cried when she was moved. She cried when her name was called and no one came. She cried when she woke up in another strange home with another strange bed. And she learned — at two years old — what it means to not belong to yourself anymore.

The government doesn’t call it kidnapping. But that’s what it is. It is the calculated seizure of a child for political ends. It is the erasure of a family. It is psychological warfare dressed up as security.

The cruelty is not incidental. It is the point.

And let us be clear — this didn’t happen quietly. It happened with cameras rolling. It happened while politicians held prayer breakfasts. It happened while flags waved and press secretaries offered statements soaked in sanitized horror. It happened in the open — and the country just kept walking.

We’ve heard this story before. In cages. In courtrooms. In camps. Now it’s back. Only quieter. Sharper. More rehearsed. This is not Trump’s mistake. This is Trump’s mission. To weaponize suffering. To teach migrants — and the rest of us — that mercy is off the table.

This is not immigration enforcement. This is the performance of domination. And Maikelys was one of its smallest, most innocent victims.

Say her name. Say it like a prayer. Say it like an indictment.

Maikelys.

She did not run. She did not fight. She did not resist. She was two years old. And they stole her.

They lied to her mother. They locked her away. They passed her from stranger to stranger and had the nerve to call it protection.

This is not policy. This is moral collapse.

And if we let them normalize it again, they will do worse.

They already are.

What do you call it when the state takes a child on purpose?

We call it kidnapping. They call it “policy.”

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This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.