(By Sadaf Sultan and Phoa Ee Hui)
That cheeseburger you are eating is killing the environment! Would you believe that a patty in a McDonalds quarter-pounder is doing just as much harm to the environment as a gas-guzzling car?
Research has shown that agriculture is responsible for an estimated 14 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. A significant proportion of these emissions come from methane emitted by the livestock industy. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of its contribution to global warming and the world’s 1.5 billion cows and billions of other grazing animals are largely responsible. Cows emit massive amounts of methane every day through belching, flatulence, and manure. Some experts contend that cows can expel upto 500 liters of methane a day, comparable to the daily pollution of an average car!
The livestock sector is also a disproportionate user of land and water, and a major contributor to deforestation due to the soya required to produce animal feed. [6] This makes meat production one of the sectors most urgently in need of a re-think. However, little if any regulation has been enacted to clamp down on the growth of the livestock industry worldwide, and the industry is poised to continue polluting at unprecedented levels as global populations rise. [1]
Murky Regulatory Landscape..
While most of recent climate pacts such as the Kyoto protocol and the Paris Agreement set strict targets for individual countries to cut down GHG emissions, much of the focus still remains on achieving this feat by reducing CO2 through establishing a renewable energy economy. Livestock respiration is not even listed as a recognized source of GHGs under the Kyoto protocol and is also not clearly defined in the Paris pact. [2]
Much of the difficulty in regulating the livestock industry arise from the fact that emissions are notoriously hard to monitor. The World Bank and the FAO, for example, disagree on the most basic numbers. While the former asserts that 50 billion livestock graze the world, according to the latter, the figure is only 21.7 billion. While both parties are failing to tally up their cows and sheep, they do agree that global meat demands are rising – slated to increase about 70% by 2050. [3]
Silver Lining in Fighting Climate Change
Despite being relatively invisible in the discussion concerning climate change, methane and the livestock industry represent a unique opportunity, and among our only hope, for mitigating runaway global warming. Since methane has a short half-life, swift action to curb its emission can relatively quickly undo significant amounts of damage, and stave off dramatic climate change tipping points.
While enormous obstacles stand in the way of widespread implementation of renewable energies, significant reductions in livestock populations can be accomplished with relative ease through meat replacement technologies, new regulations, methane capture mechanisms (eg: cows with backpacks), and changing consumer behavior.
A Few Initiatives Worth Scaling
- Reducing animal feed production and replacing at least one quarter of today’s livestock products with substitutes could be the most sure fire way for governments, industry, and general public to collaboratively take powerful action to reduce methane emissions. Some biotech startups have already jumped on the opportunity to provide consumers with innovative food stuff such as artificial plant-based meat or egg-less mayonnaise. The plant-based protein market is expected to grow over 8% annually over the next five years. [4]
- Livestock related GHG emissions can be regulated by governments through the imposition of carbon tax on the livestock industry, similar to those levied on other polluting industries. This will put pressure on the food industry to find alternatives to sourcing meat and accelerate the development of plant-based protein.
- Methane capture technology for grazing cows can also provide an innovative way of creating closed-loop cycles in livestock farming. Some Argentinian farmers, for example, have strapped high-tech backpacks to their cows that effectively trap passing gas throughout the day. Thank God cows are not fashion conscious! These backpacks can hold upto 300 litres of methane, and the captured methane is converted into renewable biofuels. Perhaps, not far into the distant future, these backpacks will even be traded on major commodity markets, much like other agricultural soft commodities. Thickness in the market among buyers and sellers will provide the impetus for such methane capture practices to take hold. [5]
- At the end of the day, curbing the world’s huge and increasing appetite for meat is essential for avoiding devastating climate change. Governments and institutions have not played an active role in advocating for reduced meat consumption in order to not intrude into the private lives of the citizenry. As the problem escalates even further, this conservative stance might need to change. Encouragingly, the majority of future demand for meat will arise from developing countries such as China and Brazil that are the most receptive to change. It is the customers in developed countries who are currently exhibiting the most resistance, and therefore must be held accountable for their actions in future climate talks. [7]
References:
[1] http://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/methane-cow.htm
[2] http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf
[3] http://www.new-harvest.org/the_world_s_leading_driver_of_climate_change_animal_agriculture
[4] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/here-are-three-alternatives-to-meat-that-could-help-save-our-planet/
[5] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2606956/Now-THATS-wind-power-Cows-wear-BACKPACKS-capture-emissions-miniature-power-stations.html
[6] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/here-are-three-alternatives-to-meat-that-could-help-save-our-planet/
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/03/eating-less-meat-curb-climate-change
It would be interesting to look into trends surfacing as a result of this concern (e.g. meat flavored vegetarian food, crickets as a source of protein, soylent, etc.) and the challenges of adopting these alternatives as well as their environmental impact.
Interesting article. One of the solution on curbing the meat demand / looking for substitute seems a bit tough to do, especially in emerging markets where eating meat is a status symbol that you can afford food beyond rice and rooted veggies. Any chance we have heard any meat producer / processor who has cracked a way to make the meat processing to be less damaging at a large scale, other than with the backpacks?
Interesting read. Was wondering that the methane backpacks act as a method to close the loop, but what is the incentive to do this? How can this collected methane be effectively used to close the loop and how can the government incentivize livestock breeders to use this?
In my opinion, I see this serving local needs before becoming a large scale commodity because I would imagine there is some variability in the output which would then have to be measured to be priced or used for industrial purposes, making the whole operation quite a bit more expensive. On the other hand, I could see this extremely useful locally! Having lived in Argentina for some years, I can tell you that much of the country is not connected to natural gas via pipe, but rather rely on small to large tanks of LPG for cooking etc. I wonder if this could be used in this way??
Fun Fact: Australia has actually tried to address this problem in an international context: In 2011, the Australian government proposed to be subsidized by the international community for mass culling of feral camels in the outback. They even had very specific guidelines that allowed hunters to shoot camels from helicopters and get these activities supported by the UN. Luckily, it was never formally accepted by the UN.
I generally agree with the overall statement of your post, however, I would like to push back on the lack of consideration of this issue in Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement.
Both agreement cover emissions of various greenhouse gasses and I have personally worked on the reduction of animal husbandry-induced methane emissions. The guidelines on the calculation of these emissions under the Kyoto Protocol are actually extremely specific and accurate and take into consideration genetic origin and average weight of the animals, average annual temperature, type of feedstock, etc.
Respiratory CO2 emissions are in deed not covered under either protocol. This is due to the fact, that respiratory CO2 emissions are not a net contributor to atmospheric carbon. Unless the cows are fed with fossil fuel, the CO2 that they emit (same as we humans btw) was extracted from the atmosphere by the plants that they eat. If respiratory carbon emissions from cows are included in the emissions balance, than the extraction on the feedstock production side also need to be included.
Interesting read indeed! I know there is lots of effort done in reducing our meat cravings, but I agree w above comments that this seems far stretched.
Have you looked into the footprint of cell cultured meat? (The laboratory hamburger)?
Interesting article. My only comment is that the carbon tax on animals would be challenging to implement. While there are large-scale farmers in western countries, many developing nations have relatively small farms. They are already not making substantial amounts of profits, so curbing their profits would pose a challenge. They also happen to be very active in voting (one of the reasons for large agriculture subsidies), so carbon taxes would be very unpopular in this area (although they aren’t popular to begin with).
Very interesting article, I never knew that livestock constitute such a big part of the ongoing climate change problems. It would be interesting to know how meat consumption of developing countries mentioned such as China and Brazil will develop in the future. Furthermore, it would be interesting to know how is this issue being educated to the public (if at all) and how governments are tackling this issue!
Very interesting article, thanks for sharing!!
@ chayamaheshwari
I think that the idea is to convert the methane inside the backpacks into biofuels; although eventually it will still reach the atmosphere in the form of CO2, at least it will replace other fuels, so the net effect should be zero.
Believe the livestock breeders could be incentivized if they can sell the methane for a profit
Interested to know what the logic is behind the claim that consumers in Brazil and China are more receptive to change at this point. I’d say the opposite- it will take time for those markets to complete the typical process of rising income populations increasing their meat consumption and attaining the consumption levels of the West before a significant reduction is possible.
While the Australian government may have proposed some rather backward approaches to this problem (like culling wild camels), Australian scientists have actually come up with a small dietary supplement for cattle that reduces their methane expulsion by 30%. There may not be a single overarching solution to this issue, but I think we can achieve a lot through the combination of a number of incremental improvements.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/diet-change-cuts-methane-emissions-in-cow-burps-20150804-girf6l.html
Very interesting read! I know some labs that are developing the scientific meat and people are giving more attention to this issue. However, the market is huge and it is very hard to change people’s habits. It would probably help if the government can put some constrains to it, such as tax barriers.
Interesting read! However, it seems to somewhat far-fetched to me. Market is too huge and people’s habit won’t change easily to make this happen, which makes this difficult to happen. Also, for the small sized farms which not much profits are produced, profit cuts are likely to cause social problems.
This is an interesting article – I especially loved the cows with backpacks to contain their gas!
It would be interesting to see the balance between this initiative and how it plays out with animal welfare as I don’t see how cows will be happy with being strapped to un unnatural can on their backs!