For the the World Watch Institute , two environmental scientists of the World Bank have rechecked the numbers of that 2006 UN report, which you might remember me mentioning not to long ago .
That report of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said that global meat production is causing over 18% of men made green house gas emissions, more than the entire CO2 emissions of all forms of transportation combined.
While rerunning the numbers, the World Bank scientists noticed some major omissions, drastically underestimating the true impact of livestock production on the global climate .
The UN FAO report counted 7'516 million tons of CO2 equivalents. The report did not count 8'769 million tons of CO2 equivalents caused by the respiration of the livestock. Nor did the report account for the at least 2'672 million tons of CO2 equivalents that would be absorbed by the improved CO2 balance of reduced land usage for food production, allowing forests to regenerate, absorbing more CO2.
The report also undercounted methane gas emissions by an additional 5'047 million tons of CO2 equivalents. That's because the report counted the global warming potential of the methane emissions using a 100-year timeframe, while methane, with its 90% lower half-life in the atmosphere than CO2, should more accurately be counted using a 20-year timeframe.
Also, the UN's "Livestocks Long Shadow" report used partially outdated and undercounting numbers. For example, it uses citations dating back to such years as 1964, 1982, 1993, 1999, and 2001, where emissions today would be much higher. While the report based its calculations on 33.0 million tons of poultry production in 2002, even the UN FAOs own Food Outlook of April 2003 reports that 72.9 million tons of poultry were produced worldwide in 2002.Taking several additional categories of overlooked, undercounted and misallocated emissions into account, would add at the very least another 8'560 million tons of CO2 equivalents.
The corrected numbers increase the CO2 emissions that need to be attributed to livestock production from 7'516 million tons to a whooping 32'564 million tons of CO2 emissions, which means that livestock production is responsible for more than 50% of man made global green house gas emissions .
Even if we would switch the entire planet completely to renewable energies, suppress all industrial CO2 emissions worldwide and ban all cars, truck, airplanes and boats, new and old, everywhere, the effect for the climate would be smaller than switching to a vegan diet.
Be part of the solution, not part of the problem .
21.10.2009, 20:31