Meat cannot be called an environmentally friendly or unhealthy product. But industrial animal husbandry (like all industrial agriculture) is possible. The problem is not in a product that has been known to man for millions of years, but in the latest methods of its production. It is the production method that litters the planet with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and excess CO2 emissions, brings suffering to animals.
But instead of fundamentally changing the system of industrial agriculture, we are thrown into the idea of abandoning meat as a non-ecological product in favor of vegetable protein produced in the same industrial way. One of the arguments, perhaps, has been heard by everyone: Cows farts with methane – and these are huge CO2 emissions, comparable to industrial ones, which means a terrible threat to climate change.
This argument smacks of manipulation of information, because even Wikipedia says that methane can be of different origins, including biogenic – natural and abiogenic – formed as a result of chemical reactions of inorganic substances. And like yogurts, which are not equally beneficial, not all carbon emissions are equally harmful to the climate.
In general, the whole story with CO2 emissions is complex and very few people understand. So let’s figure it out on our fingers. And with the help of specialists – I am translating an excerpt from a letter from the authors of the film Sacred Cow Diana Rogers and Rob Wolfe: “In fact, cattle do not farts with methane, but vomit it during digestion.
So what’s the difference between CO2 emissions (as methane) from cows and fossil fuels?
Methane emissions from cattle are part of the natural carbon cycle, while emissions from fossil fuels are not.
Fossil fuels come from ancient carbon that has been underground for millions of years, and when mined, it adds new carbon to the atmosphere that has been stored in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
The methane that cows regurgitate comes from naturally occurring carbon (carbon is absorbed by the grass that the cows eat).
What is most interesting: the life cycle of this methane in the atmosphere is no more than 12 years, after this time it decomposes into water and carbon dioxide. Water falls out as precipitation and carbon dioxide is absorbed by plants for photosynthesis. ” And then – all back, because nature conceived this cycle: carbon – photosynthesis – plant – animal – atmosphere – water – carbon – and again.