Cattle and Climate Change

Cattle and Climate Change

Rick Worthington
Rick Worthington
Cattle and Climate Change

With the farm and ranch report I'm Rick Worthington.

Well if you listen to some of the talk in Washington D.C. you might hear some lawmakers say the cattle industry is responsible for climate change. That just doesn't sit very well with many who are actually in the industry. And then there's Dr. Sara Place with the NCBA who explains there is all kinds of misinformation out there about cattle and climate.

"Of course cattle produce methane gas and methane is a greenhouse gas. They didn't just start producing this methane right they've been doing it for thousands of years as they've been alive. But what's really key to understand is that when we look at U.S. EPA data no know greenhouse gas emissions from cattle are just about 2 percent of U.S. emissions. The other important thing to understand is methane only lasts in the atmosphere for about 10 or 12 years right. So. So it's kind of a cycle that repeats over over and over again and what's really key about that is that if cattle emissions are flat or slightly declining which is what's happened in the United States is as we know right our cattle herd has actually shrunk over time. You can't really point to cattle in the U.S. as increasing concentrations of methane in the atmosphere."

Scientists do seem to agree on this and say consuming less meat and dairy products will not help stop climate change regardless of claims that have been made by some celebrities in the past.

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