We Are the Weather

There have been five mass extinctions. 250 million years ago, volcanic eruptions warmed the oceans, killing 96% of marine life and 70% of life on land. The Anthropocene period—which begins at the geological age and ends at the Industrial Revolution—is characterized by human activity. The Anthropocene represents the 6th mass extinction (76). It is the first time climate change is the cause of the mass extinction, as well as the first time a mass extinction has been caused my humans, not a natural event.

Humans represent 0.01% of life on Earth. Since the advent of agriculture, we have destroyed 83% of all wild animals and half of all wild plants (78).

Fifty percent of all land on the Earth is taken up by agriculture. One third of all the fresh water we use goes to agriculture. Sixty percent of all animals are used for food, and the antibiotics given to the animals have weakened the effectiveness of them for humans. There are about 30 farmed animals for every one person (79).

Before the Industrial Revolution, life spans were about 35 years. Now the human life span is about 80 years. Every day, 360,000 people are born. It took 200,000 years for the human population to reach one billion, but only 200 more years to reach seven billion (80).

In 1820, 72% of our population was involved in farming; now it’s only 1.5%. The factory farm was an invention of the 1960s. Between 1950 and 1970, the number of farms in America declined by half, as did the number of people employed by farming (81). But the size of the average farm doubled, as did the size of chickens. As a result of the oddness of their surroundings, chickens began to resort to cannibalism. Contact lenses were invented so chickens couldn’t see how strange their environment was, but now, because using contact lenses is too time-consuming, farmers debeak the chickens (burn their beaks) so they won’t eat each other. Ninety-nine percent of animals eaten by Americans are factory farmed.

There are 26 million chickens on Earth. Human beings eat 65 billion chickens per year. Americans consume twice the amount of protein recommended. People who eat dishes high in animal protein are four times as likely to die of cancer compared to those who eat dishes low in animal protein. Americans consume one in every five meals in the car (83).

Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005 when, in fact, cyclical calendars say the Earth should be getting colder. Humans are adding greenhouse gasses to the Earth faster than the period of the Great Dying, when a series of Siberian volcanos produced enough lava on Earth to cover three Eiffel Towers (84).

Greenhouse gasses (GHGs) trap outgoing heat like a blanket traps body heat. The Earth needs some greenhouse gasses, or it would be too cold. Carbon dioxide (CO2) accounts for 82% of all greenhouse gasses that come from industry, transport, and electrical use. Since the Industrial Revolution, greenhouse gasses have increased by 40%. Methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for the second and third most prevalent greenhouse gasses. Factory farming is responsible for 37% of methane gasses and 65% of nitrous oxide. With the advent of factory farming, methane and nitrous oxide concentrations grew six times faster than they had in the previous 40-year period before factory farming (85).

Climate change is not a disease that can be managed like diabetes; the planet can only handle so much warming before a feedback loop creates runaway climate change. The most powerful feedback loop is the albedo loop: White ice sheets reflect sun into the atmosphere. Dark oceans absorb sunlight. As the planet warms, there is less ice to reflect the heat and more surface areas like land and oceans to absorb it. This is the albedo effect. Scientists have claimed we have until 2020 to stop runaway climate change (87).

If we think of our atmosphere as a budget and our emissions as expenses, then CO2 emissions in the short term are the most urgent to cut (89). Because most CO2 comes from what we eat, they are the easiest to cut if we stop eating meat.

By allowing tropical land currently used for factory farming to revert to the wild, we can cut more than half of all anthropogenic GHGs. Deforestation of tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum of all the cars and trucks on the world’s roads. Eighty percent of deforestation is for factory farming. Every year, wildfires in California create more greenhouse emissions than the progressive state’s environmental policies cut (91).

Brazil’s elected leader, Jair Bolsonaro, came to power in 2018. He campaigned on a plan to develop huge amounts of the Amazon. If his policies go through, it would release 13.2 gigatons of carbon, more than all the carbon released in the United States. Ninety-one percent of the deforestation is for factory farming.

Cattle, goats, and sheep release methane as they digest, making livestock the leading source of methane emissions. Nitrous oxide is emitted by livestock urine and manure and the fertilizers used to grow feed crops. Livestock is the leading cause of both nitrous oxide emissions and deforestation. If cows were a country, they would be the third in line, after the United States and China, in greenhouse gas emissions (94).

The Food and Agriculture Organization claims that livestock produces 14.5% of global emissions per year. This calculation includes the deforestation but not the CO2 that those forests could have absorbed. It also does not include the CO2 emissions exhaled by farm animals. It is not certain whether animal agriculture is a leading cause of climate change or the leading cause of climate warming. Regardless, climate change cannot be addressed without addressing factory farming (95).

If we don’t control animal emissions along with other emissions along non-agricultural lines, we will never meet the Paris Accords’ goals. Efforts by people on the home front during WWII were not enough to win the war, but the war could not have been won without them. Likewise, changing how we eat alone won’t change global climate change, but it will be instrumental in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (97).

The four highest-impact actions humans can take include universally eating a plant-based diet, avoiding air travel, having fewer kids, and living without cars. Of those four, only plant-based eating addresses methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Eighty-five percent of Americans drive to work (98). With more remote work, especially globally, we can reduce that number. However, because everyone will soon eat a meal, that means everyone can soon participate in the reversal of climate change.

The pounds of CO2 associated with eating a serving of beef are 6.61, while for potatoes it’s 0.03. There are many more examples of food to eat that will lower personal CO2 emissions. Not eating animal products for breakfast or lunch has a smaller CO2 emission than an average vegetarian diet (100).

Not eating animal products for breakfast or lunch saves 1.3 metric tons of CO2 per year. America’s carbon footprint is 19.8 metric tons per year. Bangladesh’s output is 0.29 metric tons per year (101).