Change our diet, help slow climate change

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ome argue that if we are serious about slowing climate change we should stop eating meat, for a couple reasons.

Beef cattle are a prime source of meat and on every count the production of the meat they provide is energy-inefficient as is the milk from dairy cows.

Sheep that provide us with wool and along with beef cattle are rich source of meat, but they too are energy-inefficient.

In other words, it costs us vastly more in fossil energy to produce the human energy we get from the meat, wool and milk.

But there is another issue – when the beef cattle, sheep and dairy cows eat the grass that ensures they gain weight and produce the wool and milk we so want, they burb massive amount of methane that contributes about 11 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Today’s Melbourne Age expands on this theory with an idea about changing their diet to cut down on their burping. Read the story - “Diet change cuts methane emissions in cow burps”.