What Meat Doesn’t Promote Climate Change?
Properly managed livestock can help reverse the effects
Livestock is destroying the world’s land and climate through overgrazing and greenhouse gas production. Reduce their numbers, and save the world. Eat only a plant-based diet, and save the world.
Turns out, ecology is more complicated than one-line phrases: We’re learning that livestock can be part of the solution to many environmental crises. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that properly managed livestock can be a crucial tool in the quest to improve ecosystems, store carbon, and reverse climate change. The key phrase in that statement is “properly managed.”
Animals raised in the current industrial feedlot systems damage water quality and soil health and emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. No question about that. This includes animals that were raised on grass and “finished” in feedlots.
But it’s not just feedlots that can cause environmental problems. Grass-fed and finished livestock can be just as damaging. Poor management causes overgrazing, leaving grass that can barely recover and bare soil susceptible to erosion. This typically happens when too many animals are kept on too small an area for too long, or herds are left unmanaged on a large area where they can…
