Counting Cows

Creative math can’t deny U.S. beef is a climate catastrophe

As the clock runs down on avoiding catastrophic climate change, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging America’s burger habit.

Beef gets a bad rap for good reason. There is no sustainable method of producing beef at current levels of consumption. Industrial agriculture is an environmental nightmare, from feed crop to slaughterhouse. And a Harvard study determined that current pastureland could only support 27% of the beef supply if we switched to a grass-fed system — the…