Roasting the Planet: Big Meat and Dairy’s Big Emissions | IATP
But its not just meat – we must all ban all pet dogs and cats as they consume 20-30% of most countries’ meat supply.
We need to ban meat animals because their stomachs emit methane gas as part of enteric fermentation digestion. It is not eating meat that is the problem – it’s the animals themselves and their belching methane gas, and hence, they need to be eliminated because livestock produces 30% of global methane emissions.
Now for the converse argument – while livestock produce emissions, they have in many cases replaced previously wild animals grazing in the same areas. In the U.S., think of buffalo and deer herds that were much larger in the past – before we replaced them with livestock.
We shifted from wild animals to domesticated animals. Eliminating livestock and the land they graze on might merely return to the original wild populations – and make no net difference in methane emissions. There have even been studies done on this (See Comparable GHG emissions from animals in wildlife and livestock-dominated savannas)
Bottom line: Eliminating meat will cause vitamin B-12 deficiency among many humans and eliminating dogs and cats (which must eat meat) is not politically sustainable and will likely have no effect on climate – because as we eliminate grazing herds they will likely be replaced by herds of wild animals that then expand in number and territory.
