Beyond Meat’s Meme-Stock Moment Can Help the Planet

Being a meme stock is intrinsically humiliating. It usually means you’ve been judged and found wanting by a vast majority of trained investment professionals but were saved by some Redditors who decided to make number go up because rocket emoji LOL. It’s kind of like being the life of a party because you’re the only one willing to swallow a live goldfish.

That’s why I find it hard, as a dour climate scold, to get too jazzed about Beyond Meat Inc.’s status as the meme stock of the moment. As I wrote this week, if Americans just occasionally replaced beef with some other protein — including faux beef — then we could make a significant dent in carbon emissions and help keep the planet from roasting. Beyond Meat could play a role in that. But its survival as a company isn’t necessary to curb global heating. Nor is its stock being batted around by short sellers and short squeezers any guarantee of its survival.