Interesting Articles
In science class, we had to watch videos about climate change. One of those videos was called Cowspiracy. It is a really interesting video on Netflix about the effects of animal agriculture. Another interesting article published in Animal Frontiers is “Livestock and climate change: impact of livestock on climate and mitigation strategies.”
In Cowspiracy, the author talks about how much land animal agriculture takes up, the amount of water it uses, how much pollution it causes, and how much it contributes to climate change. According to Cowspiracy, “Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from all transportation.” In addition, “Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.”
In the Animal Frontiers article, the author talks about all the different parts of animal agriculture and how, with a growing population, the demand for meat will also grow. It says, “According to the United Nations (UN, 2017), the world population increased by approximately 1 billion inhabitants during the last 12 years, reaching nearly 7.6 billion in 2017. Although this growth is slower than 10 years ago (1.24% vs. 1.10% per year), with an average increase of 83 million people annually, global population will reach about 8.6 billion in 2030 and 9.8 billion in 2050. Population growth, urbanization, and income rise in developing countries are the main driver of the increased demand for livestock products (UN, 2017). The livestock sector requires a significant amount of natural resources and is responsible for about 14.5% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (7.1 Gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents for the year 2005; Gerber et al., 2013). Mitigation strategies aimed at reducing emissions of this sector are needed to limit the environmental burden from food production while ensuring a sufficient supply of food for a growing world population.”
Through interesting articles and documentaries like these, I can learn about the effects of animal agriculture and how it is really important that we do something about it. All in all, I think that a good way to want to do something good is to learn more about it.
