As Britain prepares to build ten new nuclear power stations “to combat the climate change and to ensure energy security for Britain in the decades ahead” I quote Ed Milliband, energy and climate secretary.
As the Copenhagen Climate Talks nears, all 197 members who had signed the Kyoto Agreement 1997, promised to reduce CO2 emission, one of the major contributing factors to global warming. Britain, of course, by announcing its plans for 10 new nuclear stations, will not doubt boast that it has and will do its part to reduce CO2 emission. Should Britain be an example for other state members? Is nuclear power the answer to resolving global warming problems?
Suddenly, cows came to my mind.
It was Antoine, a consultant for multinational food production companies, who had pointed out to me the roles of cows in global warming. Even though, I consider myself as a ‘Green Pioneer’ through interest and studies, discovering that the cow methane emission was a greater contributor to global warming than all the world's CO2 emitting industries combined, left me flabbergasted. It was this talk with Antoine which affirmed that a mushroom farm was absolutely necessary.
What’s bizarre is that as I surfed through the Guardian’s website and typed in key words on search: Nuclear power, Copenhagen, Green gases…..the word cow or methane was never mentioned in any of the articles. When I typed in Cow, methane, only two mediocre articles came up ‘Tesco Monitors Burping Cows to Measure Methane Emissions' 7/09/2009 and the other ‘Poo Power to the People’ 28/05/2009.
I wondered why this vital fact has never been mentioned in mainstream media.
On an alternative ‘green’ website, I found the following article:-
The whole world is obssessed with CO2.
The focus solely on CO2 is fuelled in part by misconceptions. It’s true that human activity produces vastly more CO2 than all other greenhouse gases put together. However, this does not mean it is responsible for most of the earth’s warming. Many other greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem.
By far the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide is animal agriculture.
Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO2 greenhouse gases put together. Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. While atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen by about 31% since pre-industrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled. Whereas human sources of CO2 amount to just 3% of natural emissions, human sources produce one and a half times as much methane as all natural sources. In fact, the effect of our methane emissions may be compounded as methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of organic matter in wetlands—the primary natural source of methane.
With methane emissions causing nearly half of the planet’s human-induced warming, methane reduction must be a priority. Methane is produced by a number of sources, including coal mining and landfills—but the number one source worldwide is animal agriculture. Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year. And this source is on the rise: global meat consumption has increased fivefold in the past fifty years, and shows little sign of abating. About 85% of this methane is produced in the digestive processes of livestock, and while a single cow releases a relatively small amount of methane, the collective effect on the environment of the hundreds of millions of livestock animals worldwide is enormous. An additional 15% of animal agricultural methane emissions are released from the massive “lagoons” used to store untreated farm animal waste, and already a target of environmentalists’ for their role as the number one source of water pollution in the U.S.
The conclusion is simple: arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products. Simply by going vegetarian (or, strictly speaking, vegan), , , we can eliminate one of the major sources of emissions of methane, the greenhouse gas responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting the planet today
The solution is quite obvious no? Reduce CO2 emissions by all means, but consider if there are better alternatives first. The final paragraph of the 'green wesbite' suggests that we should opt for vegetarianism or veganism. Hmmmmm....I don't think so. The right option would be to reduce consumption of animal products by offering suitable, tasty alternatives. Plant protein foods such as seitan & soya have never really made it onto the mass supermarket shelves. Sea weeds, seeds, legumes and even mushrooms are feasible options. Why not invest more money into developing viable alternatives?
Yet as we speak, India and China growing wealth craves for more meat. As we speak, the polar bear population dwindles as ice caps, their habitat, melt away. The race for time is on, well it has been on since Kyoto 1997, but until the central issues of animal agricultures and its alternatives are even mentioned, I fear that it's a race without a finishing line.
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