Livestock’s carbon footprint ‘catastrophic,’ say climate experts

[ghosthunter]

Livestock’s carbon footprint ‘catastrophic,’ say climate experts
By: Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer
11:32 pm | Friday, May 4th, 2012

Feeding animal products to the world’s billions is now taking its toll, if some climate experts are to be believed. According to them, livestock farming now accounts for the use of 70 percent of the global freshwater and 38 percent of the world’s land-use conversion. Some 70 percent of the Amazon Rainforest, in fact, has already been cleared for grazing and feed crop production.

The “Livestock and Climate Change” published in the latest issue of World Watch magazine reported that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions as noted by Inquirer Science/Health on April 20. Forbes online, in its April 28 issue, wrote that the 2006 report estimated that 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry (chicken) were in fact updated to 51 percent, citing an analysis performed by Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental adviser, with cowriter Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corp.

Excess atmospheric carbon

Goodland, who in 2008 was awarded the first (and as yet only) Coolidge Memorial Medal by the International Conservation Union for lifetime achievements in environmental conservation, wrote in his blog: “A shocking 45 percent of all land on Earth is today used for raising livestock and growing crops to feed them. But most land used for livestock and crops can grow trees instead. Reforestation and regeneration of forest are the only ways to create new, large-scale capacity to sequester today’s excess atmospheric carbon. If it is not sequestered, then it will take at least a century to dissipate.”

Goodland continues: “Replacing a quarter of today’s livestock products with alternatives would allow forest to regenerate on a vast amount of land. As a result, this may be the only pragmatic way to stop global warming in the next 5 years—which many experts believe may be the last chance to avoid irreversible climate disruption. It’s the view of the International Energy Agency, not a radical group.

“Some argue that millions of poor people have no alternative to raising livestock for their livelihoods. But tens of millions of poor people’s livestock have died recently due to climate disasters. Replacing them would risk a similar fate for the new animals. Supporting new livelihoods for those whose livestock die in climate disasters would be less risky. Microfinance, mobile banking, computers and off-grid electricity have generated dramatic growth in many poor rural communities.”

Warning

Meanwhile, Meatless Monday Philippines founding chair Custer Deocaris, a balik scientist of the Department of Science and Technology, warned that the year 2017 will be the last year that IEA has estimated for all countries to lower their CO2 emission. “Otherwise, if the target is not met, the rise of global temperature to 2ºC by 2050 will be irreversible. Most climate experts are saying 4ºC is a more possible scenario. Since 51 percent of CO2 comes from the livestock sector and that 52 percent of allowable man-made CO2 emissions were used up already by this sector since 2000, the option would be to go vegan and all efforts should be concentrated from now to 2017.

“The world needs a paradigm shift. As we approach 2017, the truth will get more inconvenient. You cannot be an environmentalist if you do not wish to cut down on meat or go vegetarian,” Deocaris previously stressed.

Deocaris, who came up with local calculations using the IEA figures as his basis, estimated that the amount of water used by 101 million Filipinos every lunch time based on the per capita meat intake would be around 40,622,913,794 liters. This would approximately be equivalent to 5.2 Ipo Dams (the water capacity of the dam is pegged at 7.5 million cubic meters). He also cited as references (to his calculations) the Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Sinks, the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Last April 20, Inquirer Science came out with Deocaris’ calculations: One meatless lunch by 97-million Filipinos would have been equivalent to 12,722,851 kg of CO2 saved (if all protein of the average Filipino diet with meat is replaced by soya during this meatless lunch).

It takes about 12,000 liters of water to produce one kg of beef, compared with just 850 liters to produce the same weight of wheat.

Palace underwater by 2050

Deocaris also predicted that if climate change is left unchecked, “before 2050 arrives, Malacañang will long be underwater.”

“We need to emphasize that the 2-degree threshold set by IPCC by 2050 actually means a 12- to 32-meter rise in sea level. It takes just 1.6 degrees to completely melt the Greenland Ice Sheet! So far, temperatures have already risen by 0.76ºCelsius.” He cited the link 2 degrees warmer climate in late Pliocene meant 12-32 meters higher sea levels | Bits of Science as the basis for his pronouncements.

According to the IEA, if nothing substantial would be done by 2017, it would be too late to reverse a 2-degree rise in average global temperatures by 2050.

SOURCE: Livestock

[uls]

didnt i mention that somewhere?

that livestock produce a lot of methane but environmentalists are focused on motor vehicle emissions

[uls]

found it

http://tsikot.com/forums/other-ameri...75/index4.html

coz man has beaten natural methods of population control -- famine, disease etc... man is no longer at nature's mercy

now you have billions of people alive and breeding that shouldnt be alive and breeding if left to nature's mercy

and here's the thing -- those billions of people all want to live like Americans (fastfood, SUVs)

as standard of living rises people consume more stuff (which means more stuff has to be made by factories that pollute)

people wanna acquire automobiles. even if only 10% of the 1.3 billion Chinese buy automobiles in the next 5 years that's 130 million automobiles added on top of the number of automobiles already out there (can oil producers supply the demand for oil?)

and as people move up from poverty they eat more meat -- so you have to produce livestock by the billions which produce lots of methane

HowStuffWorks "Do cows pollute as much as cars?"

Cows emit a massive amount of methane through belching, with a lesser amount through flatulence. Statistics vary regarding how much methane the average dairy cow expels. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters a day (or about 26 gallons to about 53 gallons), while others say it's up to 500 liters (about 132 gallons) a day. In any case, that's a lot of methane, an amount comparable to the pollution produced by a car in a day.

To understand why cows produce methane, it's important to know a bit more about how they work. Cows, goats, sheep and several other animals belong to a class of animals called ruminants. Ruminants have four stomachs and digest their food in their stomachs instead of in their intestines, as humans do. Ruminants eat food, regurgitate it as cud and eat it again. The stomachs are filled with bacteria that aid in digestion, but also produce methane.

(so environmentalists, do you eat burgers? bet you never thought of that. ang attention niyo kasi nasa cars lang)

basically my point is this is a runaway train

like niky said, you have to bring down human population to bring back man-nature balance

but since man has conquered the natural methods of population control the only way to eliminate billions of people is mass extermination (which of course is unpopular)

[ghosthunter]

Getting Americans to give up their steak dinners would be a bigger challenge than trying to sell hybrid/electric cars.

[uls]

di lang US (though the US consumes a lot of meat)

global meat consumption is way up

China

Plan B Updates - 102: Meat Consumption in China Now Double That in the United States | EPI

More than a quarter of all the meat produced worldwide is now eaten in China, and the country’s 1.35 billion people are hungry for more. In 1978, China’s meat consumption of 8 million tons was one third the U.S. consumption of 24 million tons. But by 1992, China had overtaken the United States as the world’s leading meat consumer—and it has not looked back since. Now China’s annual meat consumption of 71 million tons is more than double that in the United States. With U.S. meat consumption falling and China’s consumption still rising, the trajectories of these two countries are determining the shape of agriculture around the planet.

rising standard of living = people eat more meat

[andywesteast]

Better than ***

[uls]

taka nga ako sa mga local environmentalists they never mention livestock

pinag iinitan lang nila mga sasakyan

hey, here's the source of a lot of greenhouse gases -- livestock factory farms