This article is from WeChat official account:Eleven people in finance and economics (ID: caijingEleven) , author: Ma Lin, Han Shu shower, editor: Li Ting Zhen, head Figure from: vision China
People often say “a big thing” and describe it as dismissive.
But the power of a cow farting cannot be underestimated.
In a ranch in the town of Rasdorf in central Germany, 90 cows collectively fart and hiccup, causing methane accumulation in the cowshed, causing farmhouse explosions and cow injuries.
This seemingly funny news actually reminds us that not only industries and transportation activities emit large amounts of greenhouse gases harmful to the environment, but also the animal husbandry, dairy, and leather industries that provide humans with beef, milk, and cowhide. The earth’s ecology has a negative impact.
Scientific research has shown that when cows fart and burp, they emit a lot of exhaust gas in their bodies. These exhaust gas components mainly include carbon dioxide and methane, the two greenhouse gases that cause the global average temperature to rise. Especially methane, its greenhouse effect is 21~310 times that of carbon dioxide.
In the exhaust gas emitted by a cow every day, methane emissions can reach up to 500 liters; beef cattle are less coquettish, and their methane emissions are only 1/2 of that of cows, but it is also a terrible figure.
“Grass is eaten and milk is squeezed.” The diligent and kind-hearted cows are not inferior to humans in destroying the ecological environment.
Nowadays, “carbon neutrality” has become a global trend. In the process of coping with climate change, how to start with “cow” and reduce the greenhouses of animal husbandry, dairy industry and leather industry including dairy and beef cattle breeding. Gas emissions are becoming an interesting and difficult subject.
1. The total carbon emissions of cattle are second only to China and the United States
The new book “How to Avoid Climate Disasters-Existing Solutions and Technical Breakthroughs Needed” by Microsoft founder Bill Gates also pays attention to the pressure on the environment caused by cattle breeding.
In this book, Bill Gates divides the main sources of carbon emissions into five major categories: Electricity(25%), agriculture (24%), manufacturing (21%), transportation (14%) and architecture (6%), other sources account for 10%. The book says, If all cattle in the world are a country, then its carbon emission level Ranked third in the world, second only to China and the United States.
Figure 1: The total carbon emissions of cattle are second only to China and the United States, unit: Gigatons (Gigatons, 1 Gigaton = 1 billion tons), Source: Gates Foundation
In addition to cows, ruminants such as sheep, camels, and deer that feed on plants also emit large amounts of greenhouse gases through farting and hiccups.
This is because ruminants feed on fibrous plants, and the microorganisms in their stomachs help them digest plant feed, but at the same time they also produce “by-products” such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Compared with most other ruminants, cows are larger and emit more greenhouse gases accordingly; the most important thing is that most humans like to eat beef, drink milk, wear leather shoes, and artificially raise a large number of beef and dairy cows. , So the problem of “cow fart and hiccup” is very serious.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has conducted a survey, At that time, the global greenhouse gas contribution rate caused by the exhaust gas emitted by nearly 1.1 billion cows fart and burp was more than the exhaust gas emitted by automobiles.
At present, there are a total of 1.5 billion cows in the world, of which more than 200 million are dairy cows, and the rest are mostly beef cattle.
According to the statistics of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Resources Institute, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the livestock industry, including cattle breeding, currently accounts for nearly 15% of the total global emissions; and the proportion of carbon dioxide produced by all vehicles Is 24%.
In 2018, “Science” magazine published an article by Oxford University scholar Joseph Poole (Joseph Poore) and Swiss Agricultural Research According to the research report of (Thomas Nemecek), a scholar of the agency Agroscope, the food and related industry chain contributes 26% of the world Of greenhouse gas emissions.
Among them, animal husbandry and fishery contributed 31% of carbon emissions, crop planting contributed 24%, forest and grassland land occupation contributed 24%, and supply chain related carbon emissions contributed 18%.
Figure 2: Sources of carbon emissions related to the food industry, data sources: Joseph Poore, Thomas Nemecek related research reports
Among all animal foods, beef and milk production are the main sources of carbon dioxide emissions from animal husbandry, and their emissions account for 41% and 20% of the total emissions from animal husbandry; while pork, poultry, and eggs Respectively accounted for 9% and 8%.
Methane has a strong greenhouse effect. 37% of methane emissions from human activities in the world are related to human-raised dairy cows, beef cattle and other ruminants. Among them, methane emissions from cattle account for 73% of the total methane emissions from livestock.
Roughly speaking, the amount of exhaust gas emitted by a cow is equivalent to two beef cattle, or 14 sheep, 22 goats, and 74 pigs.