Hot Flat and Crowded — Cows

— Updated Below —

Welcome to a new series for hellocomein: Book Club. The first book that we’ll be tackling is Hot, Flat, and Crowded, the new treatise on Global Warming and Globalization from Thomas Friedman.

I’m only a couple of chapters into this thing, so I don’t have much to say yet, except to expand on a paragraph concerning livestock (Ch 2 Pg 35):

That’s right – the striking thing about greenhouse gases is the diversity of sources that emit them. A heard of cattle can be worse than a highway full of Hummers. Livestock gas is very high in methane… “Molecule for molecule, methane’s heat-trapping power in the atmosphere is twenty-one times stronger than carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas,” reported Science World. “With 1.3 billion cows belching constantly around the world (110 million in the United States alone), it’s no surprise that methane released by livestock is one of the chief global sources of the gas, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

In fact, according to ABC, livestock accounts for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas problem. It’s unclear exactly how that number was calculated, but for the sake of discussion it’s pretty daunting.

There are a few groups looking at the livestock methane emissions from different angles that I thought would be worth sharing. One approach is to introduce biological tweaks to the system, such as developing food sources for livestock that produces fewer methane burps during digestion. Scientists at biotech company Gramina are doing exactly that with a new “burpless” grass in the works.

I think the more interesting discussion is being led by food writers Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman. Both take issue with the over-industrialized diet Americans eat. Simply put, we eat too much meat, and have been duped into thinking it’s healthy by the Agro-business lobbyists (More Protein!). As a result, we have an enormous livestock industry that is a large contributor to both Global Warming and Heart Disease. Bittman has a great food column in the New York Times called the Minimalist, and I’m anxious to read some of Pollan’s writings in the near future. For now here are a couple of interesting videos of Bittman at the TED Conference and Pollan on the most recent Bill Moyer’s Journal that provide the gist of their arguments. Both are definitely worth watching when you have a chance.

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Update 12/3/08:

The New York Times has an article today on livestock’s contribution to global warming that’s worth a read. An excerpt:

At the electricity-from-manure project here in Sterksel, the refuse from thousands of pigs is combined with local waste materials (outdated carrot juice and crumbs from a cookie factory), and pumped into warmed tanks called digesters. There, resident bacteria release the natural gas within, which is burned to generate heat and electricity.

The farm uses 25 percent of the electricity, and the rest is sold to a local power provider. The leftover mineral slurry is an ideal fertilizer that reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, whose production releases a heavy dose of carbon dioxide.

For this farm the scheme has provided a substantial payback: By reducing its emissions, it has been able to sell carbon credits on European markets. It makes money by selling electricity. It gets free fertilizer.

4 thoughts on “Hot Flat and Crowded — Cows”

  1. Greg, this is a great start. I am on chapter 4 right now, so I’ll try to get something out soon.

    Regarding this idea above, I first learned of the environmental effects of industrialized farming, and namely the amounts of methane gas produced by massive commercialized cattle farming from Eric Schlosser’s great book Fast Food Nation.

    I get the feeling that this aspect of global warming is a very winnable goal, in terms of allowing science to develop new ways to feed the livestock without such a large global footprint. In some ways, getting people to change their diets is a slower process that evolves more naturally over time. Yet in the last few years there has been an explosion in demand for organic foods (driven by the ubiquity of Whole Foods and Wild Oats no doubt) in the mainstream, not to mention the locally grown, farm to table movement. I think more and more, there will be a demand for high quality foods at decent prices without the negative environmental impact. Like I said, I think this change is coming sooner than we think.

  2. If you get a chance, watch the last part of the Michael Pollan interview, as they have a great segment on this urban farmers market in Brooklyn. They have an interesting approach in that they accept food stamps, turning the idea of the “elitist” food market into a way to feed good food to a poor community. A lot of the food they sell is grown a few blocks away in an abandoned lot that’s been converted into an urban garden. It seems this type of approach is a win-win for health and climate. Pollan mentions West Oakland, which has tons of convenience stores and fast food options, but is pretty much a desert for fresh, non-industrialized produce. It seems to be a major problem for the urban poor areas of the country.

    Here’s another idea Pollan floats– require schools to buy a certain percentage of their cafeteria food (say 25%) from local sources. In this case, you draw from local sources and most likely introduce more healthy food to kids.

  3. Thats really funny. I was just about to post that article as well. You beat me to it. Here are a couple other sections about proposals that might remedy the situation on the science\ technology side:

    High-tech fixes include those like the project here, called “methane capture,” as well as inventing feed that will make cows belch less methane, which traps heat with 25 times the efficiency of carbon dioxide. California is already working on a program to encourage systems in pig and dairy farms like the one in Sterksel.

    Other proposals include everything from persuading consumers to eat less meat to slapping a “sin tax” on pork and beef. Next year, Sweden will start labeling food products so that shoppers can look at how much emission can be attributed to serving steak compared with, say, chicken or turkey.

    But I’d guess, Bittman would say, if people just de-emphasized the amount of meat on the plate for each dinner, it would decrease the demand for it around the world. (And we could lose weight and be healthier too.) This is such an interesting topic.

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