One Bizarre Solution to Global Warming

Which do you suppose has the most impact upon the environment and contributes most to global warming; automobiles or farm livestock?  Well, actually any attempt to compare the two would result in an apples and oranges conundrum.  But the point I want to make is the stunning destructive impact domestic animals have upon our environment.

According to the FAO, livestock accounts for 9% of CO2" and produces a greater share of even more harmful greenhouse gases.

It generates 65% of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2.  Most of this comes from manure. 

U.S. EPA reports show in an article by Bikes at Work, Inc. that autos spew about 33% of CO2 and 34% of nitrous oxide.

It's about at this point that the apples and oranges comparisons start.  Suffice it to say, livestock animals also account for 37% of all human induced methane as well, which is 23 times as warming as CO2.  They also produce about 64% of ammonia, which contributes to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing. 

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock’s presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock identified as a culprit.  

But wait.  Is there a solution for the world's meat eaters?   The publication NewScientist says we're only months away from growing synthetic meat in the labs.

The first lab-grown sausage might be just six months away, though, according to Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands - a major pioneer and champion of the technology. Post has experimented mainly with pig cells and has recently developed a way to grow muscle under lab conditions - by feeding pig stem cells with horse fetal serum. He has produced muscle-like strips, each 2.5 centimetres long and 0.7 centimetres wide.

Obviously, synthetic meat could have a much lower impact on the environment.  Hanna Tuomisto at the University of Oxford did some resource estimates between lab and farm raised meat.

"The impacts are so much lower," she says. For instance, cultured meat will require 99 per cent less land than beef farming." 

So there you have it.  We can help stave off environmental damage from all the animals we eat by synthesizing meat in the lab.  I do have my doubts the lab techs will be able to make the results any more palatable than "Soylent Green."  But if we get hungry enough, I suppose it will suffice.