Cows and Our Environment

A few incorrect (though fairly unimportant) claims in the meme here:

Cow poop creates biodiversity. Wrong.  See link.

The lifecycle of grass takes CO2 out of the air and replaces it with oxygen.  Throughout a 24-hour cycle, the intakes and outputs of CO2 and oxygen from green plants balance themselves.  Yes, an infinitesimally small amount of CO2 is sequestered for a relatively short period of time in the grass that the cow eats, which is rereleased when the cow is processed.  This is why growing trees (vs. grass) makes a real difference, i.e., the CO2 is sequestered in wood that can be locked into building products lasting decades or even centuries.

The meat industry is the single most destructive thing we do with the respect to the planet’s health.  That’s because:

a) The land we’re using comes largely from the destruction of the Earth’s rainforests, often referred to as the planet’s “lungs,” which are being torn apart at the rate of 85 acres per minute, and

b) Every cow on Earth belches ~220 pounds of methane per year, a greenhouse gas that is shorter-lived than CO2, but ~28 times more powerful.

Bill Gates is just one, albeit an extremely visible one, of the many millions of people who are concerned about and taking responsibility for the planet’s health.  In fact, there are more than 200,000 groups on Earth whose mission is environmental justice.

Gates comes at this particular problem via a variety of efforts to reduce meat consumption via the promotion of plant-based and lab-grown meat, public relations, etc.