Methane emissions just hit record numbers, and Burger King is part of the problem
COVID-19 has forced drops in CO2 emissions, but another greenhouse gas is barreling into the atmosphere unchecked. Methane reached 1,875 parts per billion, the highest ever recorded, according to two studies out Wednesday.
The studies, published in Environmental Research Letters and Earth System Science Data, found that annual methane emissions have jumped 9% since 2000. Researchers warned that if unchecked, methane can push the planet to 3–4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
If that happens, we’d not only greatly overshoot the “well below 2 degree” target set by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement — we’d also spiral into a potentially irreversible climate catastrophe.
While many know CO2 as the bogeyman of climate change, methane — an odorless, colorless greenhouse gas — is just as bad. Though it doesn’t live as long in the atmosphere, methane traps 86 times more heat than CO2. (By the way, CO2 is also having a record year, with its highest levels ever recorded in May.)
The researchers chalk up the methane problem to two main industries: agriculture and fossil fuels. Cattle ranching, particularly, is a huge driver of methane emissions, mostly because it eats up huge swaths of land, and because cows burp a lot of methane when they graze.
“People may joke, but cows and other ruminants burp as much methane as the oil and gas industry,” said Robert Jackson, a researcher at Stanford University and co-author of both papers, in a press release.
That’s what makes Burger King’s recent ad campaign so timely — and misguided. Burger King, one of the largest beef processors in the world, is trying to cut its environmental impact (or improve its image) by focusing on methane emissions. Specifically, the fast-food chain plans to feed their cows lemongrass, which it said would reduce their methane emissions by a third in the last three to four months of a cow’s life.
The company rolled out this campaign with a video (which, as of this writing, has 4.2 million views), featuring a yodeling cowboy and a crew of singing ranchers and dancing scientists. Aside from the yodeling, the video’s downfall is the very solution it’s advertising.
Not to dunk on a company for trying to reduce its emissions (after all, at least it’s doing something), but Burger King’s ad campaign should’ve been aborted on the runway. Its lemongrass feed is yet another misguided solution that seems admirable on the surface but fails to address the issue at hand: In this case, the sheer amount of burgers produced.
Animal agriculture makes up at least 14% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and cows make up the largest chunk of those emissions. Finding ways to reduce methane from cow burps is important — and we need all kinds of solutions if we’re to avoid a full-out climate crisis — but these sort of half-measures distract us from real solutions, like, say, eating less meat in general.
The two new studies acknowledge that population rise has created more mouths to feed, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. and other developed countries have to keep taking the biggest bites. Per capita, the U.S. eats much more meat than any other country, often 10 times more than developing countries.
With its latest ad campaign, BK is taking a page out of other industries’ playbooks, who have been notorious for similar half-measures and greenwashing. The plastic industry, for example, lauds recycling, though only 9% of all plastics have ever been recycled. And the fossil fuel industry praises natural gas because of its lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal.
But proving natural gas’s worth by comparing it to the dirtiest energy source ever is hardly a valid argument. And focusing on cow burps instead of the cow itself is little more than an industry sleight of hand.
Burger King has tried to clean up its environmental act before, though past efforts have been more commendable. In 2017, BK pledged to end deforestation from its supply chains by 2030, and last year the chain rolled out the Impossible Whopper, an entirely beefless patty.
Climate change is here and now, yet, as the recent studies show, we continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at record rates. We need diverse solutions, but we also need ambitious ones that cut to the core of our emissions problem.
Put simply, Burger King’s lemongrass feed is a baby step forward in a journey that requires leaps.
