It's biologically the same as meat (unlike all the plant based alternatives) yet it has ~99% less emissions since you're not making a whole sentient animal when all you want to harvest is its flesh, a very inefficient process (commercially at least, not when we were pastoral and couldn't eat grass but animals could, essentially becoming a factory that inputs an inedible product and outputs an edible one; today's commercial farms are vastly different in that they feed animals essentially grains which humans can also eat).
In this way, you get people to become vegan without actually having to make them change their behavior, because, let's be honest, most don't want to, regardless of any arguments one posits.
For your second question, you don't have to, of course, but the vegan philosophy is to reduce animal suffering and to improve emissions. If that is something one believes in, it behooves them to make more people follow their tenets.
> vegan philosophy is to reduce animal suffering and to improve emissions
Vegan philosophy is not consuming food of animal origin. If someone likes to put some virtue signalling to it like reducing emissions and sorts that's fine by me.
On the first one, animal suffering has very little relation to do with veganism. You don't need to be vegan to do something about it and certainly being vegan doesn't make you reducing the suffering.
> Vegan philosophy is not consuming food of animal origin
Wrong. This is literally the core tenet of veganism, so much that they do not eat animals whom we know don't have adverse effects on their psyche, such as bees' honey or clams or shrimp. If you are looking for those who would like such an effective boundary, those are vegetarians.
> Vegan philosophy is not consuming food of animal origin
Vegan diet is not consuming food of animal origin. In French we would qualify someone following a vegan diet "végétalien" / "végétalienne" (vegetalian doesn't seem to exist in English).
But usually people have reasons to follow a vegan diet. Usually philosophical/political reasons. And those reasons are usually animal well-being and environmental concerns. that's when we start qualifying people "vegan" in French (though the words are are in practice somewhat used interchangeably of course). OP specifically said "vegan philosopy", they don't refer to the diet specifically, which is only one part of the package.
And virtue signaling is not always (rarely?) the main motivator, or a motivator at all. You need stronger motivation than that and people do not always act selfishly to show they are better. They want to actually be better (as defined in their perspective).
It seems like we are drifting away from main topic. Vegans can have any reasons they like to follow the idea or philosophy like you have said - climate change pollution or anything they like to pull. It's totally fine as long as they not pushing everyone else to follow. If they like to eat lab grown meat - I cant be happier.
More important question here is whether lab meat objectively (and objectively is a key word here) has any benefits over traditional meat.
>yet it has ~99% less emissions since you're not making a whole sentient animal when all you want to harvest is its flesh
source? The only way I can see this being true is for cows, because the live animal produces methane during digestion, but for other meats (eg. pork/chicken), I'm not sure how you can get 99% reductions in "emissions" (whatever that means).
In this way, you get people to become vegan without actually having to make them change their behavior, because, let's be honest, most don't want to, regardless of any arguments one posits.