Worldwide, livestock overgrazing practices are substantially reducing many grasslands' performance as carbon sinks. Overgrazing occurs on 33% of all range-land, and often, marginal range-lands are used intensively when historically productive adjacent range has become overgrazed and unproductive. The cycle of overgrazing, soil degradation, topsoil erosion and loss of vegetation is rapidly expanding on all continents.
The chief ecological impacts of overgrazing are (i) the loss of biodiversity, (ii) irreversible loss of topsoil, (iii) strengthening of turbidity in surface waters, and (iv) greater flooding frequency and intensity. Overgrazing of pastureland leads to a decrease in long-term grazing productivity. In Botswana, for example, farmers' common practice of overstocking cattle to cope with drought losses made ecosystems further vulnerable and risked long-term damage to herds by depleting scarce biomass.
Globally, 70% of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction and erosion attributable to livestock activity. Worldwide, overgrazing can be considered the major cause of desertification in arid dry-lands, tropical grasslands, and savannas. On top of that, in arid and semi-arid dry-lands around the globe, overgrazing is the major cause of desertification.
Placement of high densities of livestock on a grassland removes biomass at a rapid rate, which produces a series of accompanying effects. For instance, (i) the residual plants decline in mass density, and (ii) surface water infiltration is reduced. Then (iii) there is a dwindling away of fungal biomass that relies on grasses. Ground surface temperatures rise, which exaggerates the amount of (iv) evaporation and (v) transpiration, and this leads to (vi) a build up in aridity. In addition, overgrazing has a characteristic effect of (vii) reducing root depths. With impeded water uptake from the soil, a positive feedback loop of growth retardation is established.
At least 25% of the world's biodiversity lives underground where the earthworm is a giant alongside tiny organisms such as bacteria and fungi. These organisms act as the primary agents driving nutrient cycling, and they help plants by improving nutrient intake, which in turn supports above-ground biodiversity.
Removing livestock, and better soil and land management that supports healthy soil organisms can boost the soil's ability to absorb carbon and mitigate desertification. This could result in greater quantities of carbon being sequestered, thus helping to offset agriculture's own emissions of GHGs. A four-year survey of the northern China plains concluded that by reducing grazing pressure to half can deliver improved ecosystem services like lower GHGs and improved grassland composition. Early summer rest maintained the best grassland composition.
In the US, removing livestock from public lands would reduce CH4 discharges, with attendant benefits for climate mitigation. This climate action would also mirror federal nutrition policy, particularly the recommendation to eat less cow flesh. Much of the degraded environmental conditions on public lands and waters caused by grazing farm animals would end. This would enable improvement or even recovery of vulnerable areas. And, undertaking this policy shift makes fiscal sense by saving taxpayer dollars.
Why High-Density Grazing is an Unmitigated Climate and Social Disaster
by Moses Seenarine 11/20/17
Many supporters of animal farming question the significance of land degradation and GHG pollution from livestock grazing. They often cite Allan Savory's claim that livestock's damaging effects on soil and the climate can be controlled through “holistic management and planned grazing.” Savory's process purportedly allows domesticated herds to act as “a proxy for former herds and predators”, in trampling dry grass and leaving “dung, urine and litter or mulch.” This supposedly enables the soil to “absorb and hold rain, to store carbon, and to break down methane.”
Contrary to the scientific literature, Savory's popular theory to reverse desertification and return the atmosphere to preindustrial levels requires a massive enlargement in livestock production. Be that as it may, agricultural and environmental science suggests Savory's claim is simply not reasonable. For instance, the massive, ongoing additions of carbon into the atmosphere from human activity far exceed the carbon storage capacity of global grasslands.
Savory’s ultra-high stock density (UHSD) methods have garnered little support from agricultural science, and there are many researchers critical of his unscientific methods. One accuses him of piecing together false assumptions to produce ineffective but popular recommendations on climate mitigation.
Another scholar point to Savory’s numerous inconsistencies and varying methods. A review of experiments from 13 North American sites and additional data from Africa reveal there is little evidence for any of the environmental benefits which Savory claimed for his methods. Other researchers point out that intensive (cell) grazing is only viable where water points are close and labor is cheap. Temporary or permanent fencing is labor intensive, and moving herds daily requires more labor that most livestock operations cannot afford.
Nonetheless, the livestock industry and popular trade magazines are touting the miracle of ultra-high stock density (UHSD) grazing for small-scale farmers. Farming at amounts exceeding 1 million pounds (463,600 kg) of live animal per acre is far beyond the capacity of the family farm. At this high level of stock density, cattle have to be moved multiple times per hour, per grazing period. There is no known "magical" stock density value that expedites the desired outcomes, but the greater the stock density the bigger the herd impact. Farmers need to have capable pen and corral space, sufficient drinking water and recharge capabilities, effective fencing with quality energizer to carry electricity to extremities of the property, plenty of temporary electric fence supplies, and suitable equipment to quickly deploy them.
Due to herd impact, recovery periods are usually longer thus lengthening grazing cycles, especially in areas impacted during wet periods. Intrinsically, UHSD requires massive amounts of land and labor, and cannot be accomplished sustainability or by family farms. Emma Archer's review of 14 years of satellite imaging data in South Africa ascertained that Savory's intensive grazing practices caused lower levels of vegetation than traditional approaches, when rainfall is added.
Rather than the desertification outcome of UHSD, there is massive potential for reforestation in Africa if livestock is removed and the related savanna burning is stopped. Even though Savory's methods have been repeatedly debunked for many decades, it is popularly promoted by the food animal industry, environmentalists and many others, to justify environmentally destructive carnivory. In reality, UHSD causes severe land degradation which may have been a major factor in wars in Darfur and Syria. Far from being a solution, enlarging livestock production is an unmitigated climate and social disaster.
Global Warming deniers claim that natural negative feedback absorbs excess CO2. While this is true, this weathering process takes hundreds of thousands of years. In the ancient past, excess CO2 came mostly from volcanoes that released very little compared to what humans do now. The excess GHG was removed from the atmosphere through the weathering of mountains, which takes in CO2.
Modern humans are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere 14,000 times faster than nature has over the past 600,000 years, far too quickly for natural negative feedbacks to respond. The system is now entirely out of equilibrium and it will take a long time to become balanced again. Oddly, despite evidence to the contrary, deniers argue that negative feedbacks dominate the climate. But the spiral in natural disasters and spread of extreme weather events suggests just the opposite, that amplifying positive feedbacks are dominating.
'Skeptics' maintain that warming is not necessarily bad and a small amount of warming is a good thing. On the contrary, one-degree warming is already causing a lot of problems, as the IPCC AR5 report on climate impacts documents. To boot, business-as-usual GHG outflows could bring forth a 3°C to 5°C (5.4 - 9°F) rise fairly quickly.
Another common contrarian argument is that CO2 is not bad since it is necessary for life on Earth, and accounts for only 4 parts in 10,000 of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is not a dangerous gas, but it is a pollutant since too much causes climate shifts. The whole lifecycle of the gas has to be taken into account, not just the limited function it serves for plants. And it causes ocean acidification, which is another huge problem.
Deniers assert that climate theory is contradictory and cannot be supported by both floods and droughts, or too much snow and too little snow. But these events are part of the natural process of climate adjustment. Moreover, these variations can be explained by climate science.
Higher temperatures augment evaporation, exacerbating droughts and adding larger amounts of moisture to the air for stronger storms. And, the warming is happening to a greater extent at higher latitudes. This phenomenon reduces the temperature difference between higher and lower latitudes, which slows down storms and dumps extra precipitation in localized areas. Correspondingly, it causes greater snow and flooding in these areas, and less snow and drought outside of them.
Countering Climate 'Skeptics' - Why Ignoring Climate Reality is Delusional by Moses Seenarine, 11/16/17
In the face of insurmountable evidence, climate 'skeptics' such as Roy Spencer maintain that the climate system is insensitive to humanity’s GHG releases. Global warming deniers assert that the earth is not heating up. One frequent claim is that the Earth has not warmed recently, which it clearly has. Deniers refer to surface temperatures, which is only 2% of where the warming is going, and they have still warmed 0.2°C (0.36°F) over the last 15 years.
Another common tactic is to question whether alteration of the climate is natural, or as Spencer argues, “If we don't know how much of recent warming is natural, then how can we know how much is manmade?” There is little doubt remaining and climate science is almost unanimous on this point. The IPCC AR4 report clearly states, "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [90% confidence] due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”
The report continues, "It is extremely likely [95% confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other forcings together." Observational evidence shows that anthropogenic CO2 discharges are causing the climate to warm. Specifically, there is less heat escaping to space and larger amounts returning to Earth. Nights are warming faster than days, and winter is warming faster than summer. There is less oxygen in the air, and there are greater quantities of fossil fuel carbon in the air, trees, and coral.
The Earth had about 0.6°C (1.08°F) average global surface warming over the past 60 years. During that time, the IPCC's best estimate is that GHGs have caused about 0.9°C (1.62°F) warming, which was partially offset by about 0.3°C (0.54°F) cooling from human aerosol pollution.
Other natural external factors have had no net influence on global temperatures, in particular, solar activity has been flat since 1950. And since warm and cool ocean cycles cancel each other, internal variability has no long-term influence on average global temperatures. Equally, the urban heat island effect does not have a profound influence on the surface temperature record. Climate deniers falsely state that climate models are unreliable, and have failed in hindcast to explain the lack of a notable temperature rise over the last 30 plus years. The evidence is that global surface temperatures have climbed above 0.5°C (0.9°F) over the past 30 years, and this ascent is momentous. And, climate models have accurately reproduced this slope.
It is the skeptics themselves who have done poorly, having universally predicted less warming than has been observed. McLean's prediction that 2011 would return to 1956-level temperatures sticks out in particular. And Akasofu predicted only a 0.5°C (0.9°F) rise between 2000 and 2100. Skeptics frequently question whether models can accurately predict future climate. Be that as it may, climatologists use observational and real world methods in their projections.
One common reference climatologists use is warming from the enhanced greenhouse effect of a doubling of CO2, around 560 ppm, or the 'climate sensitivity' effect. Climate sensitivity incorporates feedbacks which can either amplify or dampen warming due to a doubling of CO2. This is salient because if sensitivity is low, as some climate skeptics argue, then the planet will warm slowly and humans will have extra time to adapt. On the other hand, if climate sensitivity is high, the Earth will warm more quickly and humans will have less time to respond and adjust.
Observational evidence suggests that it is high. Paleoclimate data from ice cores and other sources across a range of geologic eras are very consistent, finding between 2°C and 4.5°C (3.6 – 8.1°F) global surface warming in response to doubled CO2. Climate models likewise reproduce these findings. However, climate projections have vastly underestimated the role that clouds play, and future warming could be far worse. A doubling of CO2 could result in a global temperature increase of up to 5.3°C (9.5°F) – far warmer than the 4.5°C older models predict.
Why Feminists and the Left need to engage with center-right politics
Many women, and the feminist movement in general, were devastated in Hillary Clinton’s election loss in November, 2016. Feminists are evaluating the election setback and trying to figure out what it will take to break the highest glass ceiling in American politics. The World Economic Forum says the gender gap has widened for the first time in their records in 2017. Their report states that women ‘won’t have equality’ for 100 years and equal pay will take 217 years. Currently, women comprise only 28 percent of parliamentarians and 21 percent of ministers, globally. Less than half of the world’s countries have had a female head of state, including the USA.
In light of allegations made by Senator Elizabeth Warren and former head of the Democratic National Committee(DNC), Donna Brazile, that Clinton hijacked the DNC and stole the nomination away from Bernie Sanders, some women are starting to question their support for the female presidential candidate. During the elections, feminists aligned themselves with the center-right Democrats and likewise viewed the popularity of Bernie Sanders’ center-left movement as a threat. Clinton supporters ignored the huge disappointment of the Sanders movement after his primary loss, and aspirations for center-left policies like universal healthcare, addressing climate change, and reducing an ever increasing military that consumes over 50% of the budget.
There was at least one other woman running for president, Jill Stein of the Green Party who came in fourth with one percent of the vote, after the Libertarian Party’s three percent. If it turns out that the center-left abondoned both Clinton and Stein, the left may have a women’s leadership problem into addition to sexual assault.
For decades, the Green Party has been working towards breaking the two-party monopoly system in the USA but this left-based effort remains insignificant. Maybe part of the problem is sexism and racism on the left since the party usually picks a female presidential candidate and a radical cultural activist for vice president. Another problem may be in the way the left generally perceive the two mainstream parties.
Greens, Marxists, communists and anarchists commonly refer to the Democrat and Republican parties as a duopoly and little effort is made in separating the two on the left. Over the past few decades, Democrats have lost over 1,000 elected offices as Republicans gained control of all branches of government. Correspondingly, the Tea Party, Libertarians, the ‘Alt-Right’ and other movements have exploited differences between center-right Republicans to push them further right.
Greens and activists on the left have to engage with the Democratic party, and utilize divisions between center-right Democrats and far-right Republicans to shore up their positions and move them further left. Failing to do so could mean remaining politically insignificant, or worse, playing into the far-right’s agenda.
For example, Russian-sponsored advertising on social media may have manipulated disgruntled center-left Sanders and Stein supporters into not voting or choosing the far-right candidate. Conflating Democrats with Republicans is a dangerous mistake for progressives to make, one that inevitably leads to the normalization of far-right ideology and agenda. HRC’S hijacking of DNC is not the same as the current administration’s hijacking of emergency climate action. The difference between neoliberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans may equal to a decade or more in loss lifespan from environmental deregulation alone.
The current Republican party is on the verge of fascism, and its policies are deeply sexist and racist. The left must work with the women’s movement, immigration activists, indigenous and other groups to build an effective opposition with the center-left. Fascism is very dangerous, and it is important to understand how it differs from business as usual neoliberalism. Fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum. It is a form of authoritarian nationalism and militarization characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and tight collusion with industry and commerce.
While some will argue that variations of these policies have always existed in America, we crossed the boundary with Republican’s unrelenting attack on women’s reproductive rights, scapegoating of Muslims, blacks, immigrants, and minorities, destruction of the EPA, and abandonment of the Paris Climate Accord. Conflicts between progressives over which group suffers from the most victimization and who can claim the highest morality are self-defeating and will not stop the march of the far-right.
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader — such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party — to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.
Fascist and far-right movements often claim to strive for a self-sufficient economy in platform or propaganda. In practice, they crush existing grassroots movements towards self-sufficiency while allying with business elites. While the left jostle to form a circular firing squad, the corporate elites are busy reversing gains in women’s reproductive, affirmative action, and equality protection for queers and minorities, and other rights. Even as the world runs out of time to solve the climate crisis, Republicans are doubling-down on fossil fuels and pushing us pass a tipping point of no return. It is a climate imperative for feminists and the left to work with each other and the center-right and other groups to preserve the civil rights gains made in the last century, and to give future generations a chance to live in freedom on a habitable planet.
I am a father, educator and activist. I would like to discuss how we can eat for surviving climate change by considering less as more. Climate change in happening right now and may get far worse in the near future. This year, 2017, is on track to be the hottest year on record. If it is, it will steal the record from 2016, even though this is not an El Nino year. Before 2016, the hottest year was 2015; before 2015, the hottest year was 2014, and so on. Do you notice the pattern here?
The Earth has already surpassed one degree Celsius rise in temperature from 1700 levels, and we're on track to go well beyond the 2C limit aimed for in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. The atmosphere now has more than 400 parts per million carbon dioxide, and the rate of increase is not slowing down. We may have already passed the point of safe return and it does not look good for my lifetime, and less so for my child. But giving up is not an option for either of us.
The good news is that it is not game over, yet. And since humans are the cause of climate change, we can also do something about it. For example, reducing our personal consumption is an effective way to minimize our greenhouse gas footprint. Each one of us have a new opportunity each day to make better choices in order to minimize our contribution to climate change. With education and awareness raising, it is possible to achieve significant reductions in emissions from diet, travel, and lifestyle. This is especially true for individuals in North America and Europe, who are by far the biggest consumers of energy, animal products, and cars in the world.
There is a tremendous upside to changing our over-consumption habits, and this alone should challenge each of us to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as we can each and every day. Less is more is so many ways, and we need to make conservation cool again. The less natural resources we consume in the present, is the more people will have access to in the future. The lower on the food chain that we consume with each meal, by eating plants instead of animals, the more biodiversity there will be to enjoy. Lower personal energy use, travel and meat intake equals less global heat, and reduced climate vulnerability.
Beyond the personal level, at the community and regional levels, one positive development is the ongoing transition to renewable energy. National policies are slowly shifting away from the use of fossil fuel in energy production and transportation. The 2015 Paris Climate Accord's target of two percent annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is a good start, and despite withdrawal by the American administration, most major cities and states are trying to do their part to lower US emissions. There is vast scope for improvement, and we are gradually turning the corner on the carbon economy and headed toward renewable energy.
The bad news is that even if individuals and countries cut down fossil fuel consumption to zero by 2050 or 2100, this will not stop global warming. Going 100 percent renewable will help to reduce greenhouse gas significantly, no doubt, but there is another ingredient in our consumption footprint that needs to be lowered as well.
That component is our diet, specifically greenhouse gases from animal production, which is around 15 percent of total emissions, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The footprint from our carnivorous habit is greater than transportation, including emissions from all cars, buses, boats and planes combined. Moreover, the FAO's 15 percent livestock figure exclude emissions from the seafood and pets industries, and deforestation. According to NASA, clearing land to raise livestock and feed crops is one of the leading causes of deforestation. So we are literally destroying the Earth’s lungs and precious ecosystems to raise farmed animals.
Like fossil fuel consumption, there has been a steady rise in meat intake, with attendant release of greenhouse gases. If fully accounted for, greenhouse gas from carnism may equal to that of energy production. But unlike efforts to limit the expansion of the carbon economy, the animal agriculture industry is promoted at all levels, while their emissions are being ignored by the scientific community and the popular media alike.
The farm animal industry produces more greenhouse gas than all of transportation, so it is not inconsequential. In addition to carbon dioxide, animal production emits half of the world’s emissions of methane, according to the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and the second major contributor to global warming.
Remarkably, emissions from farmed animals are excluded from the Paris Climate Accord, and global consumption is set to double by 2050. While it is critical for us to lower fossil fuel use in energy and transportation, unless these are accompanied by significant reductions in dietary emissions, humans will continue to drive catastrophic global warming.
Similar to the environmental and cultural devastation initiated by the production of oil tar sands in Canada, there are severe ecological consequences associated with animal production, including deforestation, habitat loss, species extinction, soil and water pollution, landlessness, poverty, disease, sickness and death. The impacts on soil, forests, and oceans reduces Earth's capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide and leads to even more rapid warming.
Soy is an important base ingredient of the world’s meat production, and approximately three quarters of the world’s soy goes to animal feed. Soy production has left an enormous scar on the Earth’s surface, more than 400,000 square miles (one million square kilometers), equivalent to the total combined area of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Jaguars, giant anteaters, sloths and thousands of other creatures have been affected in Brazil and elsewhere.
Bolivia lost 430,000 hectares of forest per year over the previous decade. Although Bolivia is one of the least economically developed countries in South America, its greenhouse gas emissions levels per capita equal or exceed those of many European countries. More than 80 percent of those emissions come from deforestation. Alarmingly, crop yields are set to decline with rising temperatures, so more land and water will have to be used in the future to grow the same amount of animal feed.
Despite its importance, diet and personal consumption is so taboo that climate scientists and environmental activists rarely make reference to this topic. Take for example, Bill McKibben and 350.org, the leading climate advocacy group in the world. The organization has conducted dozens of climate campaigns, including a 100 percent renewable energy crusade, but they do not have a single program to address agricultural emissions. This is not surprising considering that environmental activists and green organizers are avid consumers of animal flesh so there is a huge conflict of interest present.
Al Gore's two movies on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and “An Inconvenient Sequel,” have both omitted greenhouse gas emissions from carnism. Within mainstream climate activism, reducing demand for animal products is not presented as part of the solution. This view is short-sighted since the increasing dependence on animal products in diets worldwide is a major self-inflicted handicap in our capacity to successfully negotiate climate change. Maybe, instead of using vast amounts of water and land to grow crops to feed to animals, to then feed to people, if we just eat the crops instead we could save ourselves from hunger and global warming.
The scientific community is slowly coming around. James Hansen, former head of NASA and one of the world's most famous climate scientist is lead author of a 2017 article titled, "Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions." The paper admits that ruminant production is a concern and added, "we would be remiss if we did not point out the potential contribution of demand-side mitigation that can be achieved by individual actions as well as by government policies."
America’s addiction to cheap meat, fed on corn and soy in vast indoor factories, comes at a high cost in human health problems and environmental destruction. None of these costs are paid for by the companies that produce the meat and feed, such as Tyson, Cargill and ADM. If the costs of pollution, habitat destruction, losses to fisheries and tourism, climate change and impacts on human health were fully accounted for, meat would be a luxury food.
The era of climate migration is here and rather than building walls, nations have to cooperate for climate mitigation and disaster recovery. The climate crisis is a global one that demands a global response. We can devolve into nationalist xenophobia or combine our efforts in a more effective international response. This crisis requires individual change and collective action, and maintaining an acute awareness in every choice we make that less is more.
