Soapbox: Are cows more hazardous to our planet's future than cars?

THERE is a great deal of discussion in the media these days about global warming. However, the debate seems almost entirely limited to one greenhouse gas – carbon dioxide (CO2.

There are other gases which are a contributory cause of global warming. The most significant of these is methane.

Much of the methane in the atmosphere is produced by animals, and this gas is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. One cow produces approximately 40 litres of methane each day.

The percentage of greenhouse gas emissions produced by all cars, trucks, planes and other types of transportation in the world combined is 13 per cent. The percentage of greenhouse gas produced by all cows, pigs, chickens and other animals raised for food is 18 per cent.

This raises the question of where government priorities should lie. Perhaps governments should be encouraging people to cut down on their meat consumption rather than their petrol consumption.

If all the world's transport systems produce only 13 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases, perhaps the motorist and the traveller are being unduly penalised and unduly blamed for global warming.

Of course, the governments of China and India – the countries with the largest populations – will have difficulty in persuading their people not to adopt the Western lifestyle they crave, which includes high meat consumption.

Trees and other vegetation play a vital role on our planet in absorbing the CO2 which we and other animals exhale. Unfortunately, Amazonian rainforest is being felled to create pasture land for cattle to provide beef for the American steak and burger market.

Thus, in one destructive act, the world's methane production is being increased while the means of extracting it from the atmosphere is being decimated.

Even though we can plant new forests, research has shown that the total ecosystem carbon content (absorbed from the atmosphere) of old forest is about twice that of new forest.

Why haven't these aspects of global warming been highlighted? Perhaps there is too much vested interest involved.

Gil Osman, Shirehampton.