Livestock production is one of the major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution and loss of biodiversity.
Using a methodology that considers the entire commodity chain, it is estimated that livestock is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transportation. These emissions include, among others, 65% of the anthropogenic emissions of nitrous oxide–the most powerful greenhouse gas, 37% of methane (studies estimate that ruminants on low quality feeds produce more than 75% of the total livestock methane emissions), and 9% of carbon dioxide.
Livestock is by far the single largest user of land. Grazing occupies 26% of the earth’s terrestrial surface, while feed crop production requires about a third of all arable land. Expansion of grazing land for livestock is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America: some 70% of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture. Also 70% of all grazing area is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction, and erosion attributable to livestock activity.
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The atmosphere is made up of numerous gases. The ones in larger quantities are nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%). This leaves around only 1% for other gases such as carbon dioxide (the famous CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), which are known as “greenhouse gases.” These greenhouse gases are responsible for retaining the heat, allowing our planet to have a habitable temperature. Without these gases, Earth’s temperature would be so low that no type of animal and vegetable life would be possible. This is worth pointing out because these gases are not harmful per se. They become dangerous (if we understand climate change as something bad) to our planet when we alter their natural proportion in the atmosphere.
To understand global warming, we need to know the activities that generate these gases to be able to diminish their emissions.
Carbon dioxide (CO2): This is the most widely known greenhouse gas. It is estimated that this gas is responsible for 50% to 60% of the greenhouse effect caused by men. In 2004, 77% of the total emissions of greenhouse gases were of this gas. This is something possible taking into account that 80% of our energy comes from fossil fuels (petrol, carbon and natural gas) that release this gas through combustion. We have already discussed here in SUSTENTATOR that among all fossil fuels, natural gas is the greenest.
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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US government, the national unemployment rate, last October, rose to 10.2%, the highest one since April 1983.
Unemployment means wanting to work and not finding a job. It may mean hunger, despair, lack of opportunities.
On the other hand, we have the highest levels of CO2 in the atmosphere recorded in thousands of years. More CO2 means more greenhouse effect. More greenhouse effect means a warmer planet, with sometimes unpredictable consequences, and other already perceivable effects such as droughts, floods, rising sea levels, and other such natural disasters.
What if we could link these two problems and solve them simultaneously?
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For many people, climate change is already a fact. Scientific studies are all around, showing us over and over again how we humans are so mistakenly managing natural resources that we are bringing on our own destruction. We are altering the Earth’s natural ways of keeping a balance.
Only after mid 1900s did we start to look for ways of solving our own mess. The famous Kyoto Protocol tried to make countries put into practice a set of mechanisms to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. One of these mechanisms is carbon trading, a market-based tool to limit GHG emissions.
The basic idea behind carbon trading is that emissions as a whole need to be limited. How to do that? Limit different players’ permission to emit greenhouse gases. Given that for certain industries it is harder to switch to a least emitting way of functioning, the trade factor comes along. If a certain company is having trouble reducing its GHG, it can buy some other company’s permission to emit.
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Picture yourself as a politician, or a decision-maker, who, among other things, needs to address climate change. The day may come when you need to decide how much to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How can you decide on this wisely and knowingly? One powerful and potentially revolutionary tool is being developed in the US and consists of interactive simulation models.
Interactive simulators consist of specific software to which a user can insert information, and get a feedback, based on the inputs added, and information it has already incorporated. The good thing about the simulators developed by the Climate Interactive Program is that they are much more accessible and user-friendly than others.
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The Methane to Markets Partnership is an international initiative that works to investigate and foster cost-effective methods to avoid methane leaks, and to use it as a clean energy source.
This task is an important one. Why? Because methane accounts for 16% of all greenhouse gas emissions that come from human activities. Also, methane, though rarer than carbon dioxide, captures 25 times as much heat. Having a shorter life in the atmosphere, if it is effectively reduced, the impact on climate change could be rather quick and significant.
The M2M Partnership unites the public and private sector. It is organized and works in four main areas: agriculture, coal mines, landfills and oil and gas systems. The different teams work to reduce methane emissions in each of these sectors.
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Two North American companies, Altair Nanotechnologies and Proterra LLC designed and put together a bus that generates near zero greenhouse gas emissions.
The bus has transported Congressmen this past week, as a way of being introduced to DC.
Among its breakthroughs, the bus can be recharged very fast: on its rooftop it has a FastCharging hook-up, which allows it to be charged in 5 to 10 minutes. Also, the vehicle can travel 18 to 29 miles per gallon diesel equivalent, which makes it 500% better than a diesel bus. And, this implies a fully loaded bus, with 68 passengers.
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A British company has developed a kind of cement that can absorb carbon dioxide. This is a very interesting development for the sustainable architecture movement, since carbon dioxide is the main gas that causes the greenhouse effect on our planet, which is responsible for both global warming and climate change.
Novacem is a small company owned by Imperial College London, and its goal is to reduce the carbon footprint of the cement industry, which currently has one of the highest levels of pollution. Conventional cement is responsible for 5% of worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, more than airlines.
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