Earlier in the semester we had a guess speaker come to talk to us. I do not remember his name but what he said really stuck in my memory that “if we stopped eating beef, we could drastically minimize emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. During the lecture we were shown a website that evaluates the result of the atmosphere after chosen additions at chosen levels. It amazed me that if we cut down on beef consumption would help our environment and after through research on the topic, I believe there should be some action on lowering the demand on beef products rather than invest all of our time on things such as, grasping the use of ocean when that is already catching when we can make a larger impact in other places.

I asked people how they help with the environment, I received answers such as recycling, turning off unused objects to conserve energy, and taking public transportation instead of driving. I responded “these is all good things but what if I told you that you can make a significant impact on global warming by ceasing to eat beef?” Each reaction to that question was similar, an endless stare, stating that they cannot do that, and that it was a lie followed by a laugh. These views is what a large part of the world would agree with especially in the United States. In fact, 586 million tons of milk and 59 million tons of beef are consumed today. Majority of it is consumed by the U.S.  Moreover, the demand of beef is expected to rise to 76% by 2050 and dairy products are expected to rise to 65%.

Based on a London-based study, production livestock causes 14.5% of the world’s total emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This large percentage is greater than the percentage of all emissions of transportation vehicles such as planes, trains, ships, cars, and trucks in the whole world. It also has a larger percentage than the percentage of the United States emission of greenhouse gases as a whole. Two categories cause the most emissions, they are the fertilizer and manure to maintain their grazing pastures which counts for 47%. The other category is when they exhale, burp, and fart which counts for 39%.

So why does cows produce so much greenhouse gases when cows have been eaten for centuries. The answer to that is because of the growing number of productions of cows. The increase has called for an improvement in feeding tactics. Thus, the industry moved from use of natural grass for feeding they resorted to adding perennial ryegrass seeds, manure, and fertilizers to efficiently grow grass in larger quantities and in shorter time periods. The ryegrass seeds is a third variable. I believe so because the ryegrass prevents other other plants from growing, it lacks nutrition, and it cows cannot digest it. The undigested grass then ferments in the cows’ stomachs and combines with microbes to produce gas.

Our world is torn on this subject. It surprises me that we the people are ignorant to the major cause of global warming or maybe we are not ignorant, but instead maybe we are just ignoring. The government do not want to make changes with meat consumption because they fear of backlash from society. However, I the government is worried more so about the political aspect of making change rather than the benefits for the environment.

In conclusion, something needs to be done to lower the emotions from our livestock. I do not think we can make people cease to eat beef because for one it goes against the rights of people. Secondly, there are 852 million people malnourished; thus, we cannot take away a food source when there are so many people who are hungry. In addition, 75% of the emittions from cows comes from developing countries. Therefore, I do not have any absolute solutions to the problem other than try to find away lower the amount of greenhouses coming from the cows as well as find substitutes for the manure and fertilizers used to grow their food. Since controlled experiments have been done, I do not believe there reverse causations can occur. The greenhouse gases does not because the cows cause the gases, but there may be a third variable which is the perennial ryegrass seeds.