U.S. researchers propose abandoning livestock farming within a 15-year radius. Fields and pastures would be afforested.
Climate change would have been halved if humanity had stopped raising animals for food and thus allowed the freed up arable and pasture land to be afforested.
If cattle were to be abandoned in a controlled manner over the next 15 years, the climate impact of the act would be the same as if annual CO2 emissions were cut by 68%.
Such a calculation is presented by Plos Climate Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California Michael Eisen and Emeritus, professor of biochemistry at Stanford University Patrick Brown.
In the study is a distinct remark that Brown founded the company Impossible Foods, which develops alternatives for animals in food production. He also leads the company. Eisen is an expert in the company.
Major the effect of mass downsizing and afforestation of production animals would be over a period of 20-50 years.
Such a priority would be welcome in the fight against climate change. The nasty spirals in which warming feeds itself could be avoided.
When afforested, these fields and pastures would absorb a total of 800 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. Where the earth is predominantly inhabited, the forest will grow tall in just a few decades.
After this, these new forests would serve more as a carbon sink than as a carbon sink. This would be the case if they were allowed to be a storehouse of carbon. And of course, assuming that all mankind would slaughter all their cattle and become vegetarians.
Livestock the huge carbon footprint is not news in itself.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), among others, has produced more summary report text on the subject than anyone can read.
Usually, no modeling is done that what if something were stopped altogether.
Eisen and Brown themselves write that they do not address the social, economic, and nutritional challenges of ending livestock farming.
However, they believe that it is important to present such figures in order to illustrate to people the scale of the environmental impact of eating meat.
“The fifteen-year time window isn’t unrealistic either. There’s a lot going to happen in that time, ”says Eisen University of Berkeley in the bulletin.
Livestock breeding burdens the earth in many ways.
When grazing, the animals consider the meadows to be areas that would otherwise be forested, or else they have to grow food in the fields and use fertilizers.
Production animals flock to methane and most often convert plant protein to animal protein with rather poor efficiency.
The cattle are at this forefront. If livestock farming were to be abandoned, in line with Eisen and Brown’s vision, the climate benefits would come from a 47% cessation of beef eating and a 24% cessation of cow’s milk consumption.
If other ruminants, such as goats and sheep, are added to cattle, they already account for 90% of all livestock greenhouse gas emissions.
Kilo ruminant meat on a plate emits 289 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent, and a kilogram of ruminant protein emits 1,279 kilograms.
In contrast, a kilo of chicken protein loads the planet by only 56 kilos of emissions and a kilo of eggs by 49 kilos.
Emissions are measured in carbon dioxide equivalents. In addition to carbon dioxide, greenhouse gas emissions include methane from fertilizers and nitrous oxide from fertilizers.
The carbon dioxide equivalent can be used to report the climate impact of any greenhouse gas so that it has been converted to reflect the climate impact of carbon dioxide.
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