I see nothing has changed much. Missed y'all, some. Now piss off and/or get a clue:

Livestock threaten the future of the earth:

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/003959.html

And SURPRISE SURPRISE, the UN thinks so too.

December 12, 2006 Blame Cows Before Cars For Greenhouse Gases

Cows have been getting too little blame and SUVs too much blame for the rise of atmospheric greenhouse gass concentrations.

A new report from FAO says livestock production contributes to the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Using a methodology that considers the entire commodity chain, it estimates that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport. However, the report says, the livestock sector's potential contribution to solving environmental problems is equally large, and major improvements could be achieved at reasonable cost.

Based on the most recent data available, Livestock's long shadow takes into account the livestock sector's direct impacts, plus the environmental effects of related land use changes and production of the feed crops animals consume. It finds that expanding population and incomes worldwide, along with changing food preferences, are stimulating a rapid increase in demand for meat, milk and eggs, while globalization is boosting trade in both inputs and outputs.

Grazing uses a quarter of the land surface of the Earth. Think about what that means as populations increase and humans all over the world use rising affluence to move out into newly created suburbs. Land supplies are inadequate. The human race has gotten too big.

Deforestation, greenhouse gases. The livestock sector is by far the single largest anthropogenic user of land. Grazing occupies 26 percent of the Earth's terrestrial surface, while feed crop production requires about a third of all arable land. Expansion of grazing land for livestock is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America: some 70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed crops cover a large part of the reminder. About 70 percent of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction and erosion attributable to livestock activity.

To the fans of biomass energy: Hasn't enough of the Amazon already been lost to pasture land? Do we need to make it worse by promoting the destruction of the rain forests in the name of biomass energy environmentalism?

Livestock are responsible for 37% of anthropogenic methane (i.e. methane produced as a result of human activities).

FAO estimated that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport. It accounts for nine percent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, most of it due to expansion of pastures and arable land for feed crops. It generates even bigger shares of emissions of other gases with greater potential to warm the atmosphere: as much as 37 percent of anthropogenic methane, mostly from enteric fermentation by ruminants, and 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, mostly from manure.

Methane is probably the biggest greenhouse gas problem with livestock. As a greenhouse gas methane is about 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide by weight. Rising world affluence translates into rising demand for meat and that means more cows, sheep, and other methane producers.

But methane from livestock strikes me as (at least in theory) a much more tractable problem than carbon dioxide from fossil fuels burning. The potential exists to capture dairy cow methane when they are in buildings. Also, feeds greatly differ in their effects on methane production and cow bacteria balances could be manipulated to lower methane production. Biotechnology could drastically cut back on livestock methane production.

The use of fossil fuels in agriculture is more problematic for the same reason that the use of fossil fuels is so intractable in other human activities. Until other energy sources become cheaper than fossil fuels the rising demand for livestock and fancier food in general is going to cause a rising demand for fossil fuels. Livestock compete with wild animals for land area. As the human race becomes more affluent the amount of animal biomass that will be wild is going to decline. This'll drive more species to extinction. (So will medical treatments that allow humans to live in high disease areas.)

The sheer quantity of animals being raised for human consumption also poses a threat of the Earth's biodiversity. Livestock account for about 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal biomass, and the land area they now occupy was once habitat for wildlife. In 306 of the 825 terrestrial eco-regions identified by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, livestock are identified as "a current threat", while 23 of Conservation International's 35 "global hotspots for biodiversity" - characterized by serious levels of habitat loss - are affected by livestock production.

The full text of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization report Livestock's long shadow is downloadable as a PDF file. By Randall Parker at 2006 December 12 10:45 PM Trends Climate | TrackBack