Does the raising of livestock for meat and dairy put more CO2 etc. in the air than all the cars, trucks, airplanes, etc. in the world? Such was the assertion in 2006 of a UN panel’s report. Supposedly the livestock total accounts for 18 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse emissions, expressed in terms of CO2 equivalency for non-CO2 gases. That is a bit more than the estimate from vehicle transportation for all purposes. Now, plenty of reporters are covering a paper, and its implications, presented at this week’s Amcrican Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco that sees in that earlier analysis a serious ooopsie – to have applied a very different yardstick to meat production than it did to the transport sector.
A UC-Davis ag. chemist – and a man who, as some reporters have uncovered with little effort, has been a longtime paid consultant to the meat industry (which he readily reveals) – seems to have made a good case for one flaw in the UN report. While the overall transportation sector’s contribution was summed only from the fuel that vehicles use, meat and dairy production got hit with everything involved in the process: land clearing, fertilizer for growing feed, methane belchings as a CO2 equivalent, and so on. (I dunno how double-counting transport of meat in both categories is handled or avoided.)
To be fair, then, the manufacture of vehicles, clearing of land for roads, paving and maintaining those roads, the production of raw steel, and all the rest should have been included for transport. That’s part of the news. Another is that one author of the earlier UN estimate says the UC Davis man has a point – but that most of the report’s other conclusions stand. Presumably that means the UN man stands behind the estimated 18 percent as legit.
Some reports, however, interpret the asserted flaw and the concession from one of the UN-affiliated authors that it holds water to mean that climate science and climate worry has been stripped further of legitimacy. Which is to say, by implication, if it’s not climatically worse than using cars and other vehicles, then eating meat is as green as a bean sprout.
Few reporters, however, seem to have the wit to have homed in on the 18 percent figure. If that’s right, it’s a lot. If the figure is a serious overestimate, that’s a story. But to make the story only whether transport or meat are bigger boosts to the greenhouse is lazy.
The intellectual laziness starts with whoever wrote the ACS meeting’s press release on this matter – down there in Grist. Reporters seem to have taken that press release as the best possible interpretation of the paper. Read it yourself. It is a fine tip to a story. That’s what press releases provide to reporters: tips. But to swallow the release’s angle without thinking it through? For shame. To say it again, just because transport may yet be harder on climate than livestock does not mean livestock’s impact is therefore trivial.
The logical disconnect in media accounts, lifted straight off that press release, is seen most clearly in this unbylined Fox News Account: Eat Less Meat, Reduce Global Warming — Or Not. The report cites the many campaigns by vegetarians and others to stop eating animals for climate reasons, names the UC Davis man who criticizes the UN report, and quotes him to say “We certainly can reduce our greenhouse gas production, but not by consuming less meat and milk.” Yet the story itself reports only that his research found the comparison to transport flawed, not the estimated size of livestock’s contribution. Did ANYBODY call up the professor or buttonhole him at the meeting and just ask him whether his criticism of the UN report goes deeper than to say it made an apples and oranges error in contrasting livestock to transport?”
A more interesting and nuanced blog report, by The Guardian in the UK by Leo Hickman, asks Do critics of UN meat report have a beef with transparency? His point is that the chemist gets considerable support from livestock industries for his research (while conceding that this in itself does not make him a hired gun, that he may well have done a fine job). He calls for an investigation into the original UN study. He does his own compilation of reporting on the matter, mostly from gleeful conservative-leaning news agencies. But again seems to overlook the real nub and potential vulnerability of the old UN report – the absolute size of animal production’s climate footprint – while fixating on its size compared to transport.
To be sure, The Tracker finds that 18 percent figure suspiciously high. The other 82 percent has thus to include the giant emissions from electricity production with coal and natural gas, transport of course, process heat for manufacturing, heating and cooling of buildings, concrete manufacture, deforestation. But somehow reporters are nearly all fluttering around the comparison with transport while ignoring the substance of the issue.
Other Stories:
- Telegraph (UK) Alastair Jamieson: UN admits flaw in report on meat and climate change ; Yikes, once again, hook line and sinker on the press release’s angle, unblinking referral to the impressive 18 percent figure, and no sign of further thought by this reporter that the UN report’s merit stands or falls on the 18 percent figure, not how it compares to transport. The tagline: a mention of the IPCC’s famous gaffe on Himalaya glaciers’ demise by 2035.
- BBC – Richard Black: UN body to look at meat and climate link ; Black does better than most – saying without specific citation of authority “…the 18 percent figure appears remarkably high to some observers.” He also goes beyond the press release’s figures to report a separate analysis, for the US, that transport accounts for 26 percent of US greenhouse emissions compared to 3 percent for pigs and cattle.
- CNN – Paul Armstrong: Scientist:Don’t blame cows for climate change ;
Perhaps so few news outlets covered this precisely because the conclusion and the argument to support it seemed, if judged by the press release, so out of whack.
Grist for the Mill: ACS Press Release ;
Pic: meat-car, source ;
– Charlie Petit
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