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I would gently encourage you to engage with the topic rather than a puerile dismissal as “farting cows”. Agriculture is one of the main drivers of climate change (~30%), and and also has associated land usage implications. Ruminants (“farting cows”) directly produce around 6% of our total emissions.
Before I go into rage mode, I suppose I should ask, why Farmland? Both Denmark and Netherland are big in agriculture export and they are very good at it. I am not against planting trees but it on top of farm land doesn't make any sense to me.
Where this might actually make sense is around waterways to prevent erosion. And farmers have taken down a large percentage of the tree rows between fields that were planted in the dust bowl days in an effort to use every inch of their field.
Although, I am personally in favor of simple regulations instead cash handouts.
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A quick search shows that global c02 emissions are about 35 billion tons. So the cow farts are a bit less than 8%. That isn't insignificant.
And how much of a dent would reducing cow consumption by 25% make?
Two people have provided rough calculations that show they do have a measurable effect.
What's your point?
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> Because it’s becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their land. This is a particularly ignorant and clueless opinion to have. The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is to preserve the potential of agricultural production as a strategic asset. Europe's strong economy and huge population density, coupled with cheap access to agricultural produc…
With this type of argument you can demonstrate that lots of things have strategic importance. Steel? Check. Textiles? Check. Asphalt? Check. We should subsidize everything. Yet, when the military threat actually materializes and you need to manufacture 155mm shells, all the strategic planning seems quite useless.
If war breaks out, you need to feed people, maintain roads, build vehicles, etc.
Didn't Bill Gates once say that planting trees has no impact on global warming?
And he’d be right. When those trees die and then rot or burn, that CO2 will be released right back into the atmosphere. They’ll temporarily hold some, yeah, but it’s like trying to rapidly fire a squirt gun at a fire when someone else is spraying it with a firehose of gasoline. Especially because trees plant themselves. If they want to set aside the land for forest and seed it a little to get going - great - but thos…
> Deforestation plays a significant role in climate change, contributing 12–20% of global greenhouse gas emissions
Before I go into rage mode, I suppose I should ask, why Farmland? Both Denmark and Netherland are big in agriculture export and they are very good at it. I am not against planting trees but it on top of farm land doesn't make any sense to me.
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And how much of a dent would reducing cow consumption by 25% make?
You said that cow emissions weren't significant (well, that it was "absolute lunacy"). Two people have provided rough calculations that show they do have a measurable effect. What's your point?
Me? I think we can probably survive some cow farts as our ancestors who hunted buffalo and burnt down entire ecosystems doing so did. We should focus on the real solutions that will move the needle, like proper human-scale city design and nuclear power.
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> Breaking up farmland One thing I have wondered was the relative benefits of a concentrated wilderness versus distributed habitat. The common agricultural policy set-aside distributes payments for the wilderness across many farms (for equity, one supposes), whereas a concentrated wilderness would benefit few (and probably only the landowners).
For a short period I looked into carbon stuff and while forests were good, wetlands were deemed much bigger sinks. It feels like wetlands is a huge ignored area. If what I read at the time holds (I think it was like 6-12x sequestration rate in some regions), a simple thing like rising sea levels would have a huge impact. And anthropogenic destruction of wetlands is also a huge issue and one that is relatively easy to…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgzwrgv71no
It would transform the biodiverse habitat into barren, species-poor salt marsh and tidal mud.
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Now that’s a real problem, farm animal excrement is an issue. Seems like one that technology can solve?
Farm animal excrement is far from the whole picture. Fertilization is the main contributor (and animal excrement is used for that, but far from exclusively).
Good luck. In the less cohesive Western countries efforts like this are met with both protest by farmers who view their providing calories as almost a sacred task, and by foreign agitprop that proposes any effort that makes it harder to farm is an attempt at subjugating the people.