We all emit greenhouse gases simply by breathing - one kilogram of carbon dioxide a day, on average, per person. Since there are six billion of us, we collectively emit more than two trillion kilograms of carbon dioxide a year. Scientists don't hold these emissions against us. What public policy options, after all, exist? Breath control?

All animals emit greenhouse gases and by comparison, humans are relatively restrained respirators. The planet's livestock animals alone, for example, breathe out three billion tonnes of CO{-2} a year. Livestock, indeed, emit more GHG into the atmosphere than all of the cars, freight trucks, railways, airplanes and container ships in the entire world.

In a comprehensive 400-page analysis, published last year, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) described the spiralling increase in greenhouse gases from livestock as "massive" and asserted that the world governments must urgently address the problem. It explicitly chided environmentalists for their apparent indifference. In essence, the FAO says, livestock have inherited the Earth - with disastrous consequences.

Together, livestock animals account for 20 per cent "of terrestrial animal biomass" - in other words, of all living land creatures, humans included.

Feed crops take 30 per cent of the world's arable land. Livestock command 70 per cent of the planet's agricultural land and 30 per cent of its entire land surface.

Directly and indirectly, livestock account for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, the FAO says - more than "all transport" combined. These animals emit 9 per cent of human-induced carbon dioxide, 37 per cent of human-induced methane, 64 per cent of human-induced nitrous oxide and 65 per cent of human-induced ammonia. Methane has a longer lifespan than carbon dioxide - between 9 and 15 years. Second-ranked of the greenhouse gases, it has a bad-guy GWP - "global warming potential" - of 21, meaning that it is 21 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a hundred-year period. Nitrous oxide's lifespan is 114 years; its GWP is 296.

Full Story: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070801.wreynolds0801/BNStory/Business/columnists

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