I found out today that the lowly cow accounts for more of the greenhouse gases than does the automobile. This was an astonishing revelation to me. It’s not the flatulence and mature that causes the problem but the growing number of cattle has resulted in deforestation to create the necessary pasture-land to satisfy their appetite. Cattle account for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. 9% of CO2, 37% of methane and 65% of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are produced by cattle. I hate to think what the figure would be if we added elephants and other wild animals to the list. I’m sure glad the dinosaurs are extinct. If the prehistoric animals were still around the planet would now be a complete desert.
Of course we humans make the problem worse by consuming so much beef. It is estimated that in developed countries such as the US, the average person consumes about 80 kilos or 175 lbs of beef per year. That’s a bunch of McDonald’s hamburgers and Outback steaks.
The solution to the global warming problem is for us to stop eating beef and stop driving gasoline powered automobiles and also cease all industrial emissions. The first step is to elect Al Gore President and switch to a diet of beans, vegetables and fruits. The problem with this scenario is our emissions might be worse than the cow and the automobile combined. Guess the best thing to do is stay home on a liquid diet but be sure an avoid milk because that comes from the offending cow. Make sure you have plenty of cover because it may be pretty cold in the resulting ice age. We just can’t win.