Subject: [Homestead] The latest meat eaters' dilemma
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 07:58:26 -0700
Sunday night I wanted to have a nice dinner so I dug salsify and leeks
and corn salad to go with steak.
Well, here it is, folks, meat eaters are bigger contributors to
global warming than Hummer drivers. Pretty soon, to hold our heads
high, we will all have to eat rocks and poop powder.
Humans' beef with livestock: a warmer planet
American meat eaters are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon
dioxide per person than vegetarians every year.
By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
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. 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.
In the Monitor
Tuesday, 02/20/07
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. 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.