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An average cow produces 70 and 120 kg of methane a year, with 1.3-1.5 billion cows worldwide that's 91,000,000 metric tons of methane. That's 2.73 gigatonnes CO

An average cow produces 70 and 120 kg of methane a year, with 1.3-1.5 billion cows worldwide that's 91,000,000 metric tons of methane. That's 2.73 gigatonnes CO2 equivalent. Cows are the worst, if we exterminated every cow on earth it would only be a drop in the annual bucket given that we created 37.1 gigatonnes of just CO2 last year. Even if you factor in the fertilizer, fuel, electricity used for those cattle and double the number, it still wouldn't come close to putting us carbon negative. The United States gets roughly 30% of its power from coal, China roughly 70%. Commercial aviation last year was responsible for at LEAST 0.55 gigatonnes of CO2 last year and in a decade the fuel use is up 30.5%. That's also a low figure for the CO2, it could be as much as 13% higher as there are various types of aviation fuel, it also does not include military figures. By the time you factor in all of electricity and fuel use supporting aviation by non-aircraft sources, commercial aviation is likely as bad as the cows of the world. Last year in the United States 142.86 billion gallons of gasoline was sold. If it was all consumed that is 1.3 gigatonnes. That doesn't include diesel or kerosene, and that's just the United States... keep in mind China is adding so many new drivers to the road annually that they have a lottery just to decide who gets to sit for a license. As of last year China alone has 369 million registered drivers. If each of them averages 7.45 gallons of gasoline a week they're using as much as the United States.

aoeusnth1 7y ago
I'm getting the feeling you think those numbers are supposed to make me give up on fighting climate change and feel like reducing meat is pointless, but if anything, you made and extremely compelling case for removing cow products from our diets. Thanks!
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  No those numbers are supposed to make you go "Oh my god! We need to stop taking vacations, road trips, ordering crap from China on AliExpress once a week, stop eating fruit and veg out of season unless it is canned, start buying local, stop commuting 20 miles to work each way, stop streaming tens of gigabytes a day and hosting everything on multiple cloud solutions, cut down our beef consumption, reduce-reuse-recycle, garden, buy used, stop buying a new phone/tablet/macbook every 18 months!!! I need to tell all of my friends and family about this, I need to show them the facts, it's going to take a lot more than just me to correct course! And crypto currencies, for the love of god, we have to stop with this nonsnese, it is responsible for tens of TWh of electricity usage!!!" An estimate that is several years old puts the world at 3 BILLION hours of video games a week. Assume an average of 50w per hour (to factor in handhelds as well as modern consoles on giant televisions and hardcore gaming rigs) and that is 7.8TWh of electricity just for video games, using U.S. electricity source averages, thats' 1.77 gigatonnes of CO2. Another older figure puts U.S. gamers over the age of 13 spending 6.3 hours a week playing games, this was before games like fortnite so may be higher now. imagine just shaving that in half and reading library books, gardening, taking a walk, using a reel mower instead of a gas powered mower, riding your bike to a friend's house instead of driving, walking to go get your food instead of uber eats... a small change in lifestyle and we could save a quarter or a half a gigatonne of carbon. Now what if we could get lots of people to make lots of changes! People, however, generally don't like change and when you have a lot of startups marketing things that rely heavily on fossil fuels - Cyrpto companies rely on massive amounts of processing directly or indirectly (exchanges), cloud-based services have gobs of power hungry servers with data often kept in multiple copies, food delivery services, subscription box services, even more established companies like Amazon encourage impulse buying instead of planning out what you need to buy and getting it once a week or month when you go to the store "get it in 2 hours!" "same day delivery!" "next day delivery!" "free shipping!". We need a radical shift in companies and consumers or our energy demands, and our greenhouse gas emissions, are only going to continue to climb. Air travel fuel use for example is up 30% in a decade because travel is 'in' and 'influencers' are pushing it with their curated lifestyles and we're just shipping a whole lot more by air, now look at a dozen of other industries and you see similar. When I was a kid in the early 90's it was "4-6 weeks delivery" standard for everything, now you can get a stranger to go to the grocery for you and drive it to your house without leaving your couch because you want some chips and dip.

aoeusnth1 7y ago

I'm getting the feeling you think those numbers are supposed to make me give up on fighting climate change and feel like reducing meat is pointless, but if anything, you made and extremely compelling case for removing cow products from our diets. Thanks!

ryanmercer 7y ago
No those numbers are supposed to make you go "Oh my god! We need to stop taking vacations, road trips, ordering crap from China on AliExpress once a week, stop eating fruit and veg out of season unless it is canned, start buying local, stop commuting 20 miles to work each way, stop streaming tens of gigabytes a day and hosting everything on multiple cloud solutions, cut down our beef consumption, reduce-reuse-recycle, garden, buy used, stop buying a new phone/tablet/macbook every 18 months!!! I need to tell all of my friends and family about this, I need to show them the facts, it's going to take a lot more than just me to correct course! And crypto currencies, for the love of god, we have to stop with this nonsnese, it is responsible for tens of TWh of electricity usage!!!" An estimate that is several years old puts the world at 3 BILLION hours of video games a week. Assume an average of 50w per hour (to factor in handhelds as well as modern consoles on giant televisions and hardcore gaming rigs) and that is 7.8TWh of electricity just for video games, using U.S. electricity source averages, thats' 1.77 gigatonnes of CO2. Another older figure puts U.S. gamers over the age of 13 spending 6.3 hours a week playing games, this was before games like fortnite so may be higher now. imagine just shaving that in half and reading library books, gardening, taking a walk, using a reel mower instead of a gas powered mower, riding your bike to a friend's house instead of driving, walking to go get your food instead of uber eats... a small change in lifestyle and we could save a quarter or a half a gigatonne of carbon. Now what if we could get lots of people to make lots of changes! People, however, generally don't like change and when you have a lot of startups marketing things that rely heavily on fossil fuels - Cyrpto companies rely on massive amounts of processing directly or indirectly (exchanges), cloud-based services have gobs of power hungry servers with data often kept in multiple copies, food delivery services, subscription box services, even more established companies like Amazon encourage impulse buying instead of planning out what you need to buy and getting it once a week or month when you go to the store "get it in 2 hours!" "same day delivery!" "next day delivery!" "free shipping!". We need a radical shift in companies and consumers or our energy demands, and our greenhouse gas emissions, are only going to continue to climb. Air travel fuel use for example is up 30% in a decade because travel is 'in' and 'influencers' are pushing it with their curated lifestyles and we're just shipping a whole lot more by air, now look at a dozen of other industries and you see similar. When I was a kid in the early 90's it was "4-6 weeks delivery" standard for everything, now you can get a stranger to go to the grocery for you and drive it to your house without leaving your couch because you want some chips and dip.