Ecology: Don't have a cow, man (seriously!)
From February issue of Scientific American (yes, they must have a time machine to send this issue from the future), here's another interesting environmental factoid: red meat produces biggie size environmental problems in addition to clogging your arteries:
(I so wish there was a way to deep-link into the article, but I guess that's reserved for subscibers; or maybe I just haven't yet found the right click path?)
Or rather, what is surprising is the scale of the thing: I was well
aware of methane production part of bovine-based agriculture, which does
contribute significant punch to the greenhouse effect, along with rice
paddies (cows also contribute urban legend pearls such as "Cows produce
enough methane to fill a zeppelin each day [or week?]" (patently
untrue!) but I digress).
But I did not know that there are estimates that put beef production (or is the whole food production chain? article is ambiguous in this point) at 14 - 22% of TOTAL greenhouse generation, ranking alongside with transportation and industry. Another way to put things into perspective is to consider that pound-by-pound cow meat produces 13x as much green house impact as chicken meat; and the ratio to "Idaho beef" (aka spud) is 57x.
This seems like one good reason to develop further my latest
gastrological masterpiece, "Spamofy Half-and-Half pasta". Try it, it
actually is pretty good: pasta sauce where protein comes evenly split
between Spam and Tofu. Not only healthier for you & planet, but also
tasty, and less salty (sodium's dangers are vastly exaggerated, but it
does cause bloating if nothing else). :-)
