ANIMAL AGRICULTURE ACCOUNTS FOR AT LEAST 87% OF ANNUAL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

​

A peer-reviewed white paper entitled Animal Agriculture is the Leading Cause of Climate Change, published by Dr. Sailesh Rao, Executive Director of Climate Healers, states that animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change, responsible for at least 87% of greenhouse gas emissions annually. Check it out HERE.

Watch Plant Based News’ short video, which includes an interview with Dr. Rao, for a quick summary.

​

Why should we care about greenhouse gasses? Greenhouse gasses (such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons) absorb infrared radiation, trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere. Greenhouse gasses cause the earth’s temperature to rise, which causes polar ice caps to melt, resulting in a rise in sea level and destructive flooding. Greenhouse gasses also deplete the earth’s ozone layer by converting ozone to oxygen, causing holes in the earth’s protective ozone layer, which let in harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Animal agriculture creates massive amounts of these very harmful greenhouse gasses.

​

A 2006 report from the United Nations (entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow) states that the animal agriculture industry is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2009, a World Watch Institute report (see below) stated that 18% was an under-estimation based on many factors. These factors include exclusion of animal respiration, overlooked land use, undercounted methane emissions, undercounting of animal statistics, the increase of animal product consumption since the data used by the UN, exclusion of emissions from deforestation (which is done to grow food for farm animals), exclusion of the use of fluorocarbons needed for cooling animal products, not accounting for waste disposal (of bone, fat, and spoiled body parts that are disposed in landfills, incinerators, and waterways), not accounting for production, distribution, and disposal of packaging used for animal products, and several more factors. Taking all of these omissions into account, World Watch Institute found that the animal agriculture industry is actually responsible for at least 51% of annual greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

In 2019, a white paper by Dr. Sailesh Rao, Executive Director of Climate Healers, revised the assessment of animal agriculture on climate change further, finding that animal agriculture accounts for at least 87% of annual greenhouse gas emissions annually. The paper presents the results of a Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA). For the GSA analysis, factual data from the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other peer-reviewed scientific sources were used. The analysis reveals that the annual greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture alone cause more incremental global warming than the annual CO2 emissions from all fossil fuel sources combined.

What accounts for these widely divergent estimates is how the calculations are made. Other calculations of greenhouse gas emissions fail to include the negative impact of forests that are lost to animal agriculture. Almost half of all ice-free land is used for animal agriculture, either for animals to graze or for growing crops to feed the 80 billion animals raised and slaughtered for food yearly. The forests that are destroyed no longer store or absorb carbon dioxide, which is the primary gas that heats the Earth. The key point is that trees store carbon dioxide, and that by eliminating trees, carbon dioxide increases in the Earth’s atmosphere. This key fact is not being properly accounted for in other calculations that are accepted by governments, nonprofit organizations, private industries, and the media.

​

ABSTRACT

“In this paper, we present the results of a Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) proving that animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change, responsible for at least 87% of greenhouse gas emissions annually. The burning of fossil fuels is currently the leading source of human-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, climate change is caused by cumulative human-made greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions and not just current CO2 emissions alone. While humans have been burning fossil fuels for a little over 200 years, we have been burning down forests for animal agriculture for well over 8,000 years. For the GSA analysis, we use factual data from the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other peer-reviewed scientific sources. We show that we need to transition to a global plant-based economy first and that blindly eliminating fossil fuel usage first will accelerate the warming of the planet. We show that the annual methane emissions from animal agriculture alone cause more incremental global warming than the annual CO2 emissions from all fossil fuel sources combined. We further show that the transition to a global plant-based economy has the potential to sequester over 2000 Giga tons (Gt) of CO2 in regenerating soils and vegetation, returning atmospheric greenhouse gas levels to the “safe zone” of under 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 equivalent, while restoring the biodiversity of the planet and healing its climate. This paper clearly illustrates why the scientific community, government institutions, corporations and news media, who vastly underestimate the role of animal agriculture and focus primarily on reducing fossil fuel use, need to urgently change their priorities in order to be effective.”

​

The Climate Healers position paper, Animal Agriculture is the Leading Cause of Climate Change, is peer-reviewed and available on the Climate Healers website. It was published by the Journal of Ecological Society in volume 32 in the 2021 issue (click HERE). This paper clearly illustrates that the scientific community, government institutions, corporations, and news media all vastly underestimate the role of animal agriculture, and focus primarily on reducing the use of fossil fuels.