January 03, 2021

#14: Livestock and Climate Change - Why Cows are not (Necessarily) Evil

27 minutes

Welcome to the Green Urbanist, the podcast for urbanists fighting climate change. I'm Ross.

The premise of this episode is that the way we currently produce most of our meat, using factory farms and feedlots, is a disaster from an environmental point of view and contributes a small but significant amount to global greenhouse gas emissions. However, there is a potential solution to this problem beyond simply eating less meat, which involves managing livestock in such a way that it contributes to ecosystem restoration and carbon sequestration in soil. That's why the title of this episode is Why Cows aren't Necessarily Evil.

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Sources for this episode:
Stanley et al (2018) Impacts of soil carbon sequestration on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Midwestern USA beef finishing systems (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X17310338)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI&ab_channel=TED

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120327124243.htm#:~:text=Summary%3A,to%20a%20new%20genetic%20study.

FAO - Tackling Climate Change through Livestock (http://www.fao.org/3/i3437e/i3437e00.htm)

https://www.globalmethane.org/documents/analysis_fs_en.pdf

https://www.carbonbrief.org/methane-emissions-from-fossil-fuels-severely-underestimated

Rodgers and Wolf (2020) Sacred Cow: The Case for Better Meat (Book)