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2007-02-20 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
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Humans' beef with livestock: a warmer planet: Al Gore to give up steaks?
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American meat eaters are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon dioxide per person than vegetarians every year.
| That's because us meat eaters eat cows and pigs and little lambs and sheep and goats and deer and walruses and such, which all pass gas, thereby contributing to global methane accumulation. Vegetarians, on the other hand, live on nuts and berries and roots and tofu, which causes them to not only emit the vapors themselves, but to aggravate the offense by yammering about their virtue. |
| The vegans keep all their gases trapped inside, which actually explains a lot ... |
As Congress begins to tackle the causes and cures of global warming, the action focuses on gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power plants, not on lowly bovines. Yet livestock are a major emitter of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
| Back in the days of my youth, when brontosaurs ruled the world, we had real problems with methane emissions. We used to have global warming every two or three weeks, by golly. 'Course it was always followed by nuclear winter. The elementary school version of me used to get really confused because just as I got used to having one species of velociraptors running around they'd suddenly die out and I'd have to get used to a new one. |
And as meat becomes a growing mainstay of human diet around the world, changing what we eat may prove as hard as changing what we drive.
| Boy, do I miss the trilobites! There's nothin' more fun than a primoridial soup full of trilobites... |
| Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. |
It's not just the well-known and frequently joked-about flatulence and manure of grass-chewing cattle that's the problem, according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part.
| Are they counting acres, or are they looking at percentage of land surface? People are often suprised when they fly to see just how little land area is actually used for cities and towns and even farms and ranches. |
So is the use of energy to produce fertilizers, to run the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water. "Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems," Henning Steinfeld, senior author of the report, said when the FAO findings were released in November.  Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that's more than the emissions caused by transportation.
| Pfeh. Not a patch on the brachiosaurs. Sometimes a single herd could go over 100 percent of all methane emissions. They used to eat all that stuff growing at the bottom of the swamp, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions could drop a pterodactyl at five miles. |
The latter two gases are particularly troubling even though they represent far smaller concentrations in atmosphere than CO2, which remains the main global warming culprit. But methane has 23 times the global warming potential (GWP) of CO2 and nitrous oxide has 296 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.
| On the other hand, it'll cause you to giggle your head off about it. |
Methane could become a greater problem if the permafrost in northern latitudes thaws with increasing temperatures, releasing the gas now trapped below decaying vegetation. What's more certain is that emissions of these gases can spike as humans consume more livestock products.
| If the brachiosaurs come back it'll be the age of the great apes all over again. Temperatures will rise worldwide, as will humidity. Suddenly we'll all grow fur and tails and start swinging from the trees in the reawakened rainforests. I plan to spend most of my time copulating and then sitting around eating overripe fruit while flies buzz around my hindquarters. And I absolutely refuse to lay in any supplies for nuclear winter. |
As prosperity increased around the world in recent decades, the number of people eating meat (and the amount one eats every year) has risen steadily. Between 1970 and 2002, annual per capita meat consumption in developing countries rose from 11 kilograms (24 lbs.) to 29 kilograms (64 lbs.), according to the FAO. (In developed countries, the comparable figures were 65 kilos and 80 kilos.) As population increased, total meat consumption in the developing world grew nearly five-fold over that period.
| At the same time the proportion of humanity heating their homes with coal, peat, and lignite has dropped dramatically, as has the black haze hanging over most cities. |
Beyond that, annual global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tons at the beginning of the decade to 465 million tons in 2050. This makes livestock the fastest growing sector of global agriculture.
| Mmmmm! Meat! My favorite! Compare a pound and a half of beefsteak, gently rubbed with a bit of salt, delicately peppered, and closely - but not intimately! - acquainted with a clove of garlic, rested lightly on a very hot grill for precisely 6.5 minutes per side, with a big old bowl of tofu with some nice cauliflower on the side. |
Animal-rights activists and those advocating vegetarianism have been quick to pick up on the implications of the FAO report. "Arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products," writes Noam Mohr in a report for EarthSave International.
| Either that, or we could just enjoy the global warming, secure in the knowledge it'll be followed soon enough by nuclear winter and the extinction of Bigfoot. |
Changing one's diet can lower greenhouse gas emissions quicker than shifts away from fossil fuel burning technologies, Mr. Mohr writes, because the turnover rate for farm animals is shorter than that for cars and power plants. "Even if cheap, zero-emission fuel sources were available today, they would take many years to build and slowly replace the massive infrastructure our economy depends upon today," he writes. "Similarly, unlike carbon dioxide which can remain in the air for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just eight years, so that lower methane emissions quickly translate to cooling of the earth."
| The air will clear even more quickly if we open the windows... |
Researchers at the University of Chicago compared the global warming impact of meat eaters with that of vegetarians and found that the average American diet including all food processing steps results in the annual production of an extra 1.5 tons of CO2-equivalent (in the form of all greenhouse gases) compared to a no-meat diet. Researchers Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin concluded that dietary changes could make more difference than trading in a standard sedan for a more efficient hybrid car, which reduces annual CO2 emissions by roughly one ton a year. "It doesn't have to be all the way to the extreme end of vegan," says Dr. Eshel, whose family raised beef cattle in Israel. "If you simply cut down from two burgers a week to one, you've already made a substantial difference."
Staff writer Peter Spotts contributed to this report.
| This article starring: |
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| EarthSave International | | |
| Gidon Eshel | | |
| Henning Steinfeld | | |
| Noam Mohr | | |
| Pamela Martin | | |
| University of Chicago | | |
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