Much is made of the CO2 emitted by energy generation, transport and building and the damaging climate change these activities are causing. But our eating habits are at least as important, says Isle of Man Friends of the Earth’s Cat Turner.
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I was reminded of how our eating habits are being ignored while our attention is concentrated on energy consumption recently when I saw the movie Cowspiracy, which is free to download on YouTube.
While it wasn’t always clear where the makers of this eye-opening film got their data, it was very obvious that a meat-laden diet – especially one relying on intensive agriculture and grain-fed livestock – make at least as big, if not a bigger, impact on our climate than some more usually cited sources.
How so? Well, usually, when this comes up, there are hoots of laughter due to the fact that methane – cow farts, not to be coy – is part of the problem. Snigger-worthy as this may be, it’s significant.
As a greenhouse gas (GHG), methane is vastly more ‘potent’ than the more often-cited CO2, but it’s around in lower quantities.
CO2 is the most prevalent of the six by volume in our atmosphere.
So when scientists talk about GHGs, they tend to express the volumes as an aggregate ‘CO2 equivalent’ – they convert the volumes of all the gases, via their GHG ‘potency’, to a single measure.
Even a relatively small amount of methane has a significant impact on climate warming.
We’re not talking about a small amount, though – farmed cattle globally number 1.4 billion, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
These numbers are growing as countries like China develop an increasing appetite for meat.
This means there’s a significant amount of methane being emitted from the rear-ends of the world’s cattle.
But in fact there’s more to it than that.
Depending on how you calculate it, livestock account for anything between 6-32 per cent of GHGs – the FAO itself puts it at 14.5 per cent, seen by many as conservative.
The reason for the differences is that some measures only include direct emissions from livestock others include total emissions from feed production, production of fertiliser/ pesticides, ploughing, deforestation to grow soybeans for feed, and draining peatlands.
Most scientists say all these components should be included - production and use of fertilisers is responsible for over 30 per cent of all GHGs from livestock.
Clearly a de-meatified diet helps cut CO2 emissions.
In its lifetime, a cow typically eats 1,300kg of grain and 7,200kg of forage.
To make 1kg of beef, it takes 6.5kgs of grain and 36kgs of roughage.
That same grain could feed many times more people than the 1kg of beef – with massively lower CO2 impact, and benefits for human health, the wider environment and animal welfare.