How Meat Production Fuels Global Warming

I try not to get caught up in the missionary framework.
However today it is necessary to consider the severe climate damage associated with cattle farming. Let’s start with numbers: currently, there are approximately 1.4 billion cows in the world.
One cow for roughly every five people.
Just over a billion are beef cattle.

The rest, about 300 million, are dairy cows, which, as known, also end their unbearable lives in slaughterhouses or on our dining tables.
Thirty percent of the world’s land area is dedicated to grazing and the areas continue to grow as meat consumption increases.
This process involves destroying natural habitats, causing massive species extinction and irreversibly harming biodiversity.

In addition, water sources are continuously polluted with substances from the animal food industry, for example, nitrogen fertilizer.
Each cow eats an average of about 40 kilos of food per day and drinks about 45 liters of water.
In another calculation: a beef cow, whose short life is about three years, consumes about 8,500 kilos of food and drinks three million liters of water.

This means that to produce one kilo of meat, or five steaks for a group, it requires 15,000 liters of water, or for a burger, 3,000 liters.
About 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions come from cattle.
An average cow emits about 150 liters of gas per day, even before considering CO2 emissions from production and transportation of meat around the globe.
In other words, the average cow would take first place in an “Olympics of inefficiency,” consuming resources in an unreasonable way.

In contrast, plant-based protein sources are environmentally friendly by dozens of times. It is also important to mention the moral aspect.
Livestock experience pleasure and sorrow, excitement and aversion, depression, fear and pain. Cows are super intelligent and aware.
Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, wrote that “there is no fundamental difference between the mental world of advanced animals and that of humans.
” This makes livestock helpless victims to human cruelty and arrogance.
For example, after calving, calves are taken from their mothers, confined in small cages, and only grow slightly before becoming dairy calves.

The mother cow sees and hears her calf, cries for it and continues to produce milk thinking she might be allowed to nurse it.
I try not to fall into a missionary mindset, yet together with the attention to the severe climate damage from cattle, it is hard to ignore the moral responsibility.
As one researcher put it: “Who will speak for them if we remain silent?” If not for their sake, then at least for future generations.