Does rice milk or milk from grain-fed cows emit less methane?

[The Grand Nudger]

Speaking of breadcrumbs...

When this narrative was being crafted, ghg emissions from livestock production were calculated to be 18% across the entire supply chain. Inputs, manufacturing, land use, processing, transportation, and refrigeration at stores. GHG from transportation, meanwhile, was calculated solely by the direct emissions from tailpipes, at 28% of overall ghg emissions. This...ignoring the inputs, processing, manufacturing, refrigeration on trucks, and land use values. A consistent and credible accounting of both would put the ghg for livestock significantly lower, and the ghg from transportation significantly higher. More fundamentally, while methane traps far more heat than carbon, it's extremely short lived in comparison. 10 years to 1000 years. Every year nearly 600 tons of methane are produced globally, less than a third of that from agriculture, and all of it broken down by hydroxyl oxidation to be absorbed by plants and soils via the sink effect. There's room for more without additional warming - an eroded field, clearcut forest, extinct ruminant and destroyed wetland shaped hole, to be precise. The regulatory and advisory committees intended to address global warming have been fully captured by the fossil fuel industry - which is and will continue to do a hell of alot more damage than cow burps. I guess it's good for marketing vegan and vegetarian products, though, so at least some good comes from this breathtaking display of institutional malfeasance.

Livestock production, for it's part, continues along in good faith and with land stewardship a central value. Roughly two thirds of the agricultural land on earth is marginal, which is to say suited only for grazing. Our herds are smaller and more productive today than they have ever been, the us beef herd is two thirds it's size compared to a half century ago. The average weight in 1975 at two years was 570lbs, todays average weight is 820 at a year and a half. Methane emissions from livestock are decreasing even as production increases. To top it all off, beef consumption in the us has declined over the same period (the rise of chicken and pork..and recently, fish).

The short version of a long story, is that if you're a vegan or vegetarian because you think that livestock production is barbaric - then stick to that and lead with it. It will still be wrong, but it's an arguable matter of opinion, at least. Taking the fossil fuel industry's corporate propaganda as an environmental argument against ruminants is balls to the wall insane....and if we really believed it we'd be exterminating all the cattle and sheep and deer and antelope and bison and wetlands - to save the earth™.