HOST: Welcome, concerned viewers, to Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. The
Worldwatch Institute, a renowned US environmental think tank recently
posed the question “Are livestock emissions killing the planet.” on the
cover of the November/December 2009 issue of its periodical World Watch
Magazine.
Retired World Bank Group lead environmental advisor
Dr. Robert Goodland and research officer and environmental specialist
for the Group’s International Finance Corporation division Jeff Anhang
addressed this question in their article “Livestock and Climate
Change.” Their answer was a resounding “yes” as they concluded that the
livestock production cycle and supply chain produce at least 51 percent
of human-caused, global greenhouse- gas emissions.
Source:
Livestock and Climate ChangeThe
2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report
“Livestock’s Long Shadow” concluded that the livestock industry is
responsible for 18 percent of such emissions. Even this figure is
significant considering that global emissions from the transportation
sector, the focus of many current government reduction programs,
accounts for only 13 percent of greenhouse gases released worldwide.
The
report is even more remarkable for the fact that it was written by the
Livestock group within the FAO. Dr. Goodland and Mr. Anhang base their
study on the FAO’s calculations, expanding on them by including
emissions they believe were missed, undercounted or misallocated. On
today’s program we will explore
their landmark paper and hear the views of several scientists and an environmental economist on livestock emissions.
Livestock’s
Long Shadow examined the end-to-end emissions attributable to the
livestock industry, including those from producing fertilizer, growing
food crops for livestock and raising, killing, processing,
refrigerating and transporting animal products. The report found that
livestock produce nine percent of human-
caused carbon dioxide, 37
percent of methane and 67 percent of nitrous oxide emissions. The study
also stated that over a hundred-year period methane has 23 times the
global warming potential, or potency, of carbon dioxide, while nitrous
oxide has 296 times the global warming potential.
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Based
on the data, the report made the following recommendation: “The
livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most
significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at
every scale, from local to global.
The findings of the report
suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with
problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water
shortage and water pollution and loss of biodiversity.”
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