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| One of the leading sources of methane |
Sure, it looks like we've got them where we want them, penned up in farms, easily led to the meat-packing plants. But in an ongoing display of passive resistance, they may be trying to take us with them.
Beyond the fat and cholesterol, they're also one of the leading sources of methane — a planet-warming greenhouse gas with 25 times the punch of carbon dioxide on a 100-year time scale. And those emissions are expected to go up planet-wide as developing countries urbanize and get richer, putting a Western-style diet within the reach of billions more people.
In the United States alone, what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) euphemistically calls "enteric fermentation" — the belches and farts of livestock, mostly cattle — is the second-biggest source of US methane emissions. Those emissions added up to the equivalent of 648 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2014. Their manure added another 60 million, according to an EPA report released last week.
And when you total up the effect of all the feed, fertilizer, and fuel involved in modern farming, that quarter-pound cheeseburger ends up having the same carbon footprint as a nearly seven-mile (11-kilometer) drive, said Dawn Undurraga, a nutritionist with the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.
"Americans eat a huge amount of meat," Undurraga said. "We eat 60 percent more than Europeans and somewhere between 150 or 200 percent of our needs."
Note Almere Digest: Pollution, not only by industry, but also as a result of agriculture, livestock, meat production industry, etc.etc, will eventually kill us all, if we don't act now.
If you are a parent and not discussing these issues with your children, to make sure they become aware of this disaster, you are basically just as criminal as the polluters. Watch programs on TV like "Meat is murder - on the climate anyway" (see story above), do it together as a family, and talk about it afterwards.
Might not be as much fun as sport activities, music concerts. or reality shows, but certainly will better prepare your kids for the future and hopefully also make them realize that being an "activist" is not a stigma or a dirty word.
Read more: Meat Is Murder — On the Climate, Anyway | VICE News
