Global Warming, if world governments do not meet their commitments of the Paris Accord, will reach a point of no return with catastrophic results humanity not equipped to bare its consequences. To be able to reach a long term solution, we need to find the initial usual suspects, the harmful gases that are polluting our planet.
Our first and most famous suspect is the CO2, reaching 87%, comes from the fossil fuels burning (coal, oil and natural gas). These fossil fuels burning that emits this lethal gas is used for transportation, electricity production and industrial manufacturing in factories. Until we figure out the holy grail of energy production like Fusion reactor. The most important project is ITER, even if the initial pilot fully succeed the fully operational production systems will not be ready before 2050 for full deployments, it will too late. Our only alternative, until we leap into superior pollution free energy, are renewables like Solar and Wind.
The prime suspect is Methane, the number one Global Warming undercover enemy. Its rank is the highest and worst of greenhouse gases even by far than CO2. It is on the top of the list of greenhouse gases with a wider negative effect. Its emission is valued at 23 times higher than CO2, even 87 times stronger when it resides in the atmosphere.
Livestock, beside been a major participant in the land degradation, water shortage, air and water pollution, are a major contributor and the second highest contributor to the Methane emission.
To better understand the cows harmful effect, we need to compare to another contender and a major contributor to CO2 emission, the combustion vehicles. First of all, a Cow, on the average emits 90 kg of Methane per year. Because methane is effectively 23 times the equivalent to CO2 therefore the 200 pounds (90 Kg) of methane is the equivalent to around 4500 pounds (2,000 Kg) of CO2. This amount is equivalent to car driving for a whole year based on with 20 miles a day for a total of 7,500 miles.
This is a large number where you consider that we already have 1.5 Billion Cows grazing our green fields in comparison to one billion vehicles (car, all type of trucks and buses) that are cruising our roads and highways.
If we are going to solve the pollution coming from livestock, we have to consider many less harmful solutions. The first option is to consider to substitute Cow, Lamb and Pigs with Chicken meat with a substitute diet. Cow is on the top of the list in case there is a master plan to save the planet through the process of lowering our consumption of meat and dairy products. I also found out that there a group aware of this threat believe that there is a conspiracy behind our full reliance on Cow meat. They call this conspiracy, Cowspiracy. You can check them out at http://www.cowspiracy.com/
We all know that the best alternative is to convert our human diet from meat to vegetables even cutting on the dairy products. We will need to join the Veganism Society and declare ourselves newborn Vegans. This will be the best news for the Vegan community.
Sorry for all the meat lovers around the world, I think you have to settle for Sushi.
