“If we still lived in some idealistic dream world where modern cows roam wild and graze in the same fashion that their Buffalo predecessors used to then no. Everyone goes on and on (and on) about “cow farts” and how stupid the global warming crowd is, but the truth is that this is just an overly simplified view of the situation that gets latched onto by those with juvenile minds. People who think farts are funny, and so its a stupid theory.
The environmental impact that real environmentalists are worried about in relation to livestock has very little to do with what comes out of their rear end.
The concern comes from the fact that livestock is no longer raised in any kind of a natural or efficient way.
First you have to raise corn. This is entirely petroleum based, both to make pesticides and to run tractors and power industrial water pumps to irrigate areas of the country not normally suited to agriculture.
Then you have to harvest and transport the corn to high density feedlots. Our transport system is entirely dependent on fossil fuels.
Then the livestock are grown, using questionable hormone supplements, as well as more food energy than the animal will ever produce in the form of meat.
Then the livestock are slaughtered in huge factories, and shipped all over the country/ world from centralized locations. All of which requires fossil fuel energy.
Every stage in the process requires huge amounts of land, water, and nonrenewable resources. It’s not the animals, you see, it’s what we do with them.
Global warming or no global warming, the raising of meat in our current system is an environmental and ethical blight on our culture. Any reduction in the amount of meat we consume, or increase in the quality of the way in which we produce it, would be of great benefit to the planet and the human species.”
