THE BEEF INDUSTRIES MYTHS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE.

It’s a hard, unpalatable, disorienting truth: if we’re serious about avoiding the worst scenarios of the climate crisis, people – particularly those who live in wealthier nations – need to consume fewer animal products. But for the corporate titans who stand atop the nearly trillion-dollar global meat industry, this modest change represents an existential threat, which is why they’re spinning the truth about the full climate impacts of animal agriculture.

Myth 1, fossil fuels are far worse than meat, a spokesperson for the beef industry said that the impacts of energy use so far outweigh agricultural-related emissions that we might as well not worry about what we eat.

Myth 2, Methane – the greenhouse gas cattle emit in their belches – is highly potent. Since its warming potential is 28 times higher over 100 years than carbon dioxide’s, every ton of methane emitted impacts the climate over two dozen times more than a ton of carbon dioxide. When measured in a shorter time frame, over the course of just 20 years, methane’s impact is even more dramatic, causing about 85 times more warming a ton than CO2. But industry messaging works to systematically downplay this impact, mostly by pointing out that methane only persists in the atmosphere for about a decade. In contrast, every ton of CO2 emitted sticks around for generations.

Myth 3, the beef industry considers that animal emissions only add up to 3.3% and therefore of no consequence, Why is it wrong to suggest cattle’s 3.3% impact is insignificant? Because a small percentage of a big thing is still a big thing. And considering that America’s net emissions are the second highest in the world, the fact that a single food product could take up 3.3% of that disproportionately large pie is still staggering. For context, 243m tons of CO2 equivalent gasses – the total amount generated by US cattle each year, according to ARS – is roughly equivalent to the greenhouse gas footprint of the entire 47-million-person nation of Spain.

Myth 4, the industry state that most farms are on land where nothing else grows, yet millions of cattle are grazed in places that are not native grasslands. All over the world, forests, wetlands, woody savannas and other ecosystems have been cleared to make room for cattle or growing cattle feed. In those cases, grazing livestock tends to have a much more destructive impact because of what experts call “the opportunity cost of land”, in other words, factor in the carbon we’re not capturing by letting these ecosystems be.

Myth 5, Future tech will save the planet, Thanks to advances in technology, genetics and other factors, the US cattle industry feeds more people with fewer animals than it did decades ago. the spokesperson argues that this trend line is the only one that matters. These on-farm solutions – from reducing cow burps with feed-additive seaweed to using bio-digesters for methane-polluting manure. But no solution can be as effective as reducing the overall number of cattle worldwide, a solution that the beef industry allies tend to suggest is impractical or otherwise off-limits.

3 thoughts on “THE BEEF INDUSTRIES MYTHS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE.

  • June 8, 2023 at 5:32 pm
    Permalink

    Ꮋi there, I believe your web site could possibly be haνing internet browѕer ϲompatibility problems.
    When I take a ⅼoߋk at yоur website in Sɑfari,
    it looks fine however, if opening in IE, it’s got some overlapping issᥙes.

    I just wanted to gіve you a quick heads up! Apart from that,
    great site!

    Reply
    • June 9, 2023 at 8:06 am
      Permalink

      Hi, thanks for your comments our tech people will check this out. Keep passing the link around its getting serious now and governments are not thinking about the future of the young people today.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *