As I was looking through the magazine section of the BBC News website this afternoon, I came across an article, “The methane makers”, which I found very interesting because it is about the climate change, an importance topic that is discussed widely these days.This article is focusing on the emissions of green house gas that is expelled by cow. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), livestock farming caused the world the green house gas emissions 5% more than all the transportations combined could cause in 2006, and cow expelled the most methane, which has even larger effect in climate change than carbon dioxide, among other farm animals.
Mostly, the emissions associated with cow is from “the clearing of forests for pasture or for the production of soya for animal feed” (“The methane makers”, 2009, Belching, ¶ 2). Cow itself emits methane, too, from belching. A western cow emits methane 120kg per year, while a non-western cow emits only a half of that. Nevertheless, there are much more non-western cows in the planet, thus the western cows emits less methane in general.
Before i read this article, if someone told me cow's belching can cause climate change I would probably laugh at his face. However, this article shoved the fact right into my face, 120kg of methane per year for a cow, 1000 times more than a man, is quite a large amount of green house gas, I feel sorry for the world already. Though, this article is not all about cow's belching. The biggest problem of meat consumption, for the world, still is the clearing of the forest, for producing foods for cows that is, and that fact didn't make me surprise. The most surprising fact for me would be that cows all over the world have the responsibilities for the global warming more than every vehicles in the world combined! So, I shall state right here that we should stop global warming by collecting cow's belch and turn it into some kind of useful energy, instead of wasting our times blaming it all on some automobile manufacturers.
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References
Bell, D. (2009, 28 October). The methane makers. In BBC News. Retrieved November 12, 2009 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8329612.stm
I am very surprised with this news especially according to the report, worldwide livestock farming generates much more greenhouse gas than all type of transpotation, thus, cow consumption is the problem today. Like Roong said, I think that it is a great idea to develop the effective process to collect cows' emissions around the world and reuse it in industries for a specific purpose.
ReplyDeleteWhat Roong's post and the BBC News report made me think about were the following sorts of questions.
ReplyDeleteAre the current efforts to reduce carbon emissions worth the high economic cost?
Is it worthwhile spending any extra money for higher priced "green" cars?
Are governments acting responsibly when they promote such expensive solutions?
Are such "solutions" even solutions?