Since the United Nations apparently has no desire to help the world in any way that matters, such as trying to stop genocide or condemning the murder of innocent monks, they conduct panels. Lots of panels, on a variety of specialist topics. They recently held a panel on what the IT industry can do to help the environment. The results were surprising to those who may have thought that global warming could be prevented by trading the SUV for a Prius.
The panel found that transportation was the third-highest cause of global warming gases. Second on the list is manufacturing and industrial infrastructure, no surprise there. But the number one cause of global warming is…
Livestock.
Livestock?!?!? As in, food livestock? As in, what we eat? The food that magically appears on our table? Yes, it turns out that it’s not carbon emissions that are the problem, but methane. And livestock (cows and pigs especially) releases methane gas into the atmosphere at high levels, a primary factor in our global warming problem.
This makes it all the more amazing that Al Gore can win a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming without once mentioning the word “vegetarian.”
Tags: Global warming, Environment, methane, true cause of global warming, vegetarian, livestock global warming
I completely agree that vegetarianism is a great way to reduce global warming, but what should we do with the excess livestock? Should we release them into the wild or should we slaughter them all in order to reduce the methane from manure? If you are all about the environment and not the animals, I suggest you read this. There is a way to produce natural gas from the methane in manure. Of course, this doesn’t say where the leftover, methane-free manure goes.
Dirty Apple
December 8th, 2007
Good point, Dirty Apple.
Obviously, a gradual reduction would be needed. I have no idea about numbers, but most pigs and cows alive in the world today are going to be used for food (more pigs than cows, I would imagine, because cows can also be used as dairy cows). We could just not use some of the breeding techniques we currently use and gradually reduce the populations. If there was more of a market for vegetables than meat, farmers would certainly respond by voluntarily reducing their herds.
That’s an interesting article and a good idea as well. The manure in itself also causes problems for the environment by seeping into groundwater and polluting… I’ll try to dig up an article on that. A particular problem is caused by Smithfield, the pig-product company based in the Southeast.
libertariangirl
December 13th, 2007
[...] I can’t take seriously anyone who says anything about saving the environment unless they personally do the single best thing anyone can do for the environment and become a veget….The latest plea I received in the mail from trendy environmentalists (who like to talk a good game [...]
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