<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/02/cattle-trees-climate-change-solution>
"There is a simple, cost-effective and scientifically sound way to turn back
the clock on global warming and reverse the catastrophic collapse of
biodiversity: pay ranchers to raise trees instead of cattle.
By mass, the world’s 1.7 billion cows are the dominant animal species on Earth,
far outweighing the human population, and outweighing all the wild terrestrial
mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians left on Earth by more than 15-fold.
More than a third of Earth’s land is used to feed livestock.
Winding down the cattle population and restoring the native ecosystems that
once thrived on the vast land area now dominated by cows is our best chance to
rapidly reduce global heating and begin to reverse the collapse of global
biodiversity and wildlife.
Although many people are aware that reducing consumption of animal products
would help combat the climate crisis, the size of the effect is deeply
underappreciated. Our peer-reviewed research estimated the climate impact of
reduced emissions from livestock and recovery of plant biomass on the land they
occupy. It showed that a global phaseout of animal agriculture over 15 years
would unlock “negative emissions” sufficient to bring about an urgently needed
30-year window of “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions – even if all other
emissions continued on their current trajectory.
Such a phaseout would offset more than two-thirds of all projected carbon
dioxide emissions over the next 80 years, and provide more than half of the net
emissions reductions required to keep global temperatures from exceeding 2C
above pre-industrial levels.
About half of the climate benefits of this phaseout would come from a drastic
reduction in emissions of two highly potent greenhouse gases, methane and
nitrous oxide – by one-third and two-thirds respectively. The rest would be
achieved by the capture of enormous volumes of carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere, using the best, cheapest, “greenest”, most scalable carbon capture
technology on Earth – photosynthesis – proven over 3.5bn years, as forests and
native grasslands recover on the land now used to feed or graze livestock. And
the overwhelming majority of these benefits would come just from curtailing
cattle production.
The benefits would extend beyond the climate crisis. Around the world, across
the gamut of species, populations of wild mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians,
fish and even flying insects have been falling precipitously; today they
average less than a third of their numbers just 50 years ago. Habitat loss due
to expanding production of livestock, primarily cattle, is the biggest driver
of this collapse. Restoring native ecosystems on cattle-grazing land would
enable essential habitats for threatened plant and animal species to recover
and expand."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
