{"id":3515207,"date":"2025-08-19T09:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3515207"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:03:08","slug":"livestock-and-climate-change-further-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2025-08-19\/livestock-and-climate-change-further-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"Livestock and climate change further explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned in my\u00a0previous post<\/a>\u00a0the recent kerfuffle about animal agriculture and climate change associated with the work of Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop (see\u00a0this podcast<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this paper<\/a>). I also mentioned that I\u2019m kinda done with getting into the details of all these \u2018here\u2019s my one weird trick to save the world\u2019 approaches. But various people have asked me to explain further why I find Wedderburn-Bisshop\u2019s position problematic. So \u2026 oh well, here goes. See, this is exactly my problem. You\u2019re not helping. (For those on the other hand who\u2019ve already had their fill of this issue, do just skip this post but please come back for my next one, where I\u2019m going to tell a story\u2026)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to do this quite briefly and summarily, although it\u2019s still quite a long post. I\u2019m not a scientist, but I\u2019ve followed the issues around this for a while and I think I have an okay basic grasp of them. Of course, I\u2019m open to polite criticisms, pushbacks and clarifications. But, as per above, I\u2019m not planning to dwell on this much further (thanks as ever for keeping the comments coming, which is what makes writing these posts worthwhile, but apologies that I don\u2019t always find time to offer adequate replies).<\/p>\n

Before I begin let me say that I think much of the global livestock industry is a horror show, and it\u2019d be great to bring the curtain down on a lot of it. Also that cutting down wild forests or ploughing up wild grasslands are terrible ideas. And that there are a lot of good reasons to opt for veganism. That\u2019s not what this is about. There are fewer good reasons to opt for alt-meat, but that\u2019s (mostly) another story.<\/p>\n

I have nineteen numbered points, in which I try to navigate what this\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>about.<\/p>\n

1. The main greenhouse gases of importance are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. They have different potencies with respect to causing climate change \u2013 \u2018radiative forcing\u2019 \u2013 and different lengths of persistence in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

2. These gases have sources in \u2018natural\u2019 (i.e. not human-caused) and biotic processes, and they\u2019re also absorbed and\/or chemically changed by other natural\/biotic processes (sinks). What\u2019s left at any given time is in the atmosphere, acting as baseline greenhouse gases. But over the short-term on human timescales the natural carbon and nitrogen cycles are quite stable and the climate doesn\u2019t change much as a result of them.<\/p>\n

3. However, modern human activities add in a lot more of these gases to the mix by either adding to the sources or subtracting from the sinks, hence potentially changing the climate. The major relevant activities that do this are (1) burning fossil fuels, producing carbon dioxide and methane from carbon that was laid down geologically from previous epochs (2) land use change, particularly deforestation and agricultural cropping (3) methane emissions from ruminant livestock (and also from rice cultivation) (4) nitrous oxide emissions, mainly from agricultural fertilisers (5) carbon dioxide emissions from cement manufacture.<\/p>\n

4. Activities 2-5 can be undertaken without using fossil fuels, but in the contemporary world they\u2019re largely fossil fuel dependent and downstream of fossil fuel use \u2013 it wouldn\u2019t be possible to do them at present speeds and scales without the contemporary abundance of cheap fossil energy. Therefore, there are conceptual difficulties with claims like \u201canimal agriculture (or whatever) causes more climate change than fossil fuels\u201d. Directly or indirectly, there\u2019s a fossil fingerprint behind most contemporary climate change.<\/p>\n

5. Because fossil fuel combustion involves putting new carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide and methane) into the atmosphere that was previously stably sequestered in the Earth, with almost no sinks in the fossil fuel sector itself, the gross amount added from combustion provides the relevant measure of carbon flux from the sector. Whereas in the case of land use change there are both sources of carbon (e.g. deforestation) and sinks (e.g. afforestation). Wedderburn-Bisshop\u2019s main argument is that we should not use a net measure for LUC and a gross one for fossil fuels, but this doesn\u2019t make sense from the point of view of accounting accurately for the overall carbon balance.<\/p>\n

6. The different atmospheric persistence of GHGs means there is no one single \u2018correct\u2019 way to combine them into an overall measure for the radiative forcing of current GHG fluxes \u2013 the time period under consideration matters. If we consider the immediate forcing right now, then methane \u2013 which has potent radiative forcing effects but low persistence \u2013 looms relatively larger, whereas if we consider forcing over long time periods its impact diminishes relative to carbon dioxide, which has longer persistence.<\/p>\n

7. Anti animal agriculture activists often emphasise the benefits of cutting methane \u2013 for example, in\u00a0this piece<\/a>, which states \u201cCutting methane emissions represents a near-term opportunity for meaningful climate relief\u201d. A lot turns on the word \u2018meaningful\u2019 in that sentence. If we cut out all ruminant livestock, then that would potentially reduce atmospheric methane and create some short-term climate relief. But if we did so without cutting fossil fuels, that short-term relief would not prove \u2018meaningful\u2019 in the long-term because it would be very much more than offset by ongoing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. Moreover, fossil fuel combustion also involves methane emissions of roughly the same magnitude as methane emissions from ruminant livestock. If we were going all out for climate relief, then it might be meaningful to cut out ruminant livestock at the same time as cutting out fossil fuels. It seems harder to argue that cutting the former without cutting the latter is meaningful, except as a short-term palliative whose positive impact is soon lost. The analogy I\u2019ve used before is pouring a bucket of cold water over yourself if you\u2019re sat in the midst of a raging house fire \u2013 possibly worth doing if you then immediately do something about the fire, but otherwise not. So, yes, if you opt for only an immediate\/near-term perspective, the methane emissions from ruminant livestock loom larger as a concern (so do the methane emissions from fossil fuels), but this isn\u2019t a particularly sensible thing to opt for. It may even be less than useless, if people take a \u2018job done on climate\u2019 attitude toward quitting their meat consumption.<\/p>\n

8. There are different metrics for comparing the longer-term impact of the various greenhouse gases, such as GWP and GWP*. I\u2019m not going to get too far into them here. GWP* is often criticised by anti animal agriculture folk (including Wedderburn-Bisshop) as somehow a contrivance of the animal agriculture lobby. I even saw it described recently as \u2018manipulative\u2019. Well, there are lots of accusations of bad faith flying around in this debate, but I\u2019d like the people making these kinds of claims to look at the work of Myles Allen, Michelle Cain and others who developed the metric (like\u00a0here<\/a>, for example) and explain exactly what they got wrong or what\u2019s manipulative about it.<\/p>\n

If we assume that GHG sinks at worst stay constant (Wedderburn-Bisshop certainly does assume this), then the short persistence of methane means that the methane emitted from a constant existing number of ruminants doesn\u2019t have much forcing effect because of its rapid removal by the sinks. If more livestock are added, it will have a heating effect. If livestock are removed, it will have a cooling effect. I don\u2019t think this is especially controversial: constant ruminant livestock, little forcing, other things being equal.<\/p>\n

Far from being \u2018manipulative\u2019, I\u2019d say the implications of GWP* align pretty well with a sensible climate change mitigation strategy consistent with reducing the most problematic forms of livestock from a climate change perspective \u2013 viz. (1) focus on cutting fossil fuel use (which will likely result in less livestock) (2) try to augment and absolutely don\u2019t compromise existing GHG sinks (hence, no deforestation or ploughing for livestock) (3) where appropriate, cut ruminant numbers (but keep carbon dioxide reduction front and centre of attention).<\/p>\n

9. In his Planet Critical podcast, Wedderburn-Bisshop made quite a play for the ability of existing sinks \u2013 especially forests \u2013 to deal with fossil fuel emissions. This seems to me unwise. A forest is a much less stable form of carbon sequestration than an underground coal seam or oilfield, and we cannot expect existing biotic systems to endlessly absorb additional fossil carbon accumulated over millennia. Sinks may eventually become sources. Hence the key importance of leaving fossil fuels in the ground. Generally, I found Wedderburn-Bisshop to be worryingly relaxed about the key importance of fossil fuel emissions in respect of climate change and overly focused on livestock.<\/p>\n

10. One reason afforestation may not be a stable form of carbon sequestration is because of wildfires, which are a major consumer of woody plants in many parts of the world. Promoting carbon sequestration through afforestation in these fire ecosystems is unlikely to work, because the woodland sink easily becomes a combusted source. Wedderburn-Bisshop doesn\u2019t pay much attention to woodland-grassland-fire-ruminant relationships. But not every ecosystem is substantially wooded and in some ecosystems grass-ruminant relationships may select better for carbon retention or sequestration. When I said in Point 7 that cutting ruminant numbers may only \u2018potentially\u2019 create climate relief, that\u2019s one of the reasons.<\/p>\n

11. More generally, I find it unclear from Wedderburn-Bisshop\u2019s paper how he construes the relationship between deforestation and animal agriculture. Not all deforestation is agriculturally related, and of that part of it that is it can be hard to allocate out the proportion that relates to animal and non-animal agriculture (e.g. with soy production). Nevertheless, animal agriculture does play a role in it and Wedderburn-Bisshop is right that deforestation for animal agriculture can\u2019t be justified on climate change grounds \u2013 not that this is a novel or especially controversial position.<\/p>\n

12. As previously argued in (10), not all animal agriculture occurs in places that would otherwise be forested. But some of it does. Here in Britain, for example, while the extent of original wildwood forest cover is a matter of debate, there\u2019s unquestionably a good deal of ruminant husbandry on agricultural grassland that would be wooded in the absence of ruminants. This prompts the so-called \u2018carbon opportunity cost\u2019 argument in respect of reforesting previously cleared agricultural grasslands in places like Britain where consumption of woodland by wildfires is not \u2013 yet \u2013 a major problem. An underemphasized difficulty with this argument is that afforestation only works as a carbon sink for a limited period (in the order of decades) before it becomes essentially carbon neutral. This returns us to point (7) \u2013 in the long term, afforestation is only \u2018meaningful\u2019 as a climate relief measure if accompanied by reductions in fossil fuel combustion.<\/p>\n

13. The relationship between livestock, afforestation and human ecology is often complex in any given locale and can\u2019t necessarily be reduced to a simplistic \u2018cut livestock\u2019 agenda. For example, Wedderburn-Bisshop mentions in the podcast the issue of deforestation caused by sheep in Scotland. There is undoubtedly some historical truth to this, although the problem of ruminant browsing was largely a side-effect of the problem of human political power. The fact that sheep caused deforestation in Scotland does not mean that all deforestation in Scotland was caused by sheep, nor that all forms of sheep-keeping inevitably cause deforestation. Anyway, the main contemporary agent of deforestation in the Scottish Highlands is not sheep, but deer. Deer are \u2018wild\u2019 but are managed for commercial trophy hunting by large estate owners (human political power again). If you want to reforest the Highlands today, that basically means you have to kill a lot of deer \u2013 especially female deer, which are not highly valued by trophy hunters, but that produce the males which are. But this culling runs counter to the inclinations of the hunting estates \u2013 perhaps also to those of many anti animal agricultural activists?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I took the photo above in the Scottish Highlands. In the centre left of the picture you can see some afforestation, which relates to small-scale landownership by crofters, some of whom keep ruminant livestock. There is little afforestation in most of the rest of the picture, which relates to large-scale landownership where there is little livestock, but a lot of deer. In this region, afforestation could be better achieved by policies to widen access to landownership and to kill wild animals (deer) than by cutting ruminant livestock or popularising veganism. There are also questions in this biome about whether afforestation is the best strategy for improving carbon sinks. Restoring and preserving peat wetlands is sometimes a better bet, while afforestation is sometimes counterproductive. All of which is to say that afforestation can be socially and ecologically complex, and not necessarily reducible to banning ruminant livestock \u2013 a policy that often deleteriously affects small-scale pastoralists whose activities have minimal or even mitigating effects on radiative forcing. It would be good if we stopped thinking of trees as no more than carbon angels and ruminant livestock as no more than carbon devils, and started getting busier with local detail. We need to go beyond \u2018trees good, ruminants bad\u2019.<\/p>\n

14. In the podcast, Wedderburn-Bisshop says that deforestation will stop if people stop eating meat, because \u201cthey won\u2019t clear for clearing\u2019s sake, they only clear to produce beef\u201d. I think this misunderstands the nature of capitalist agriculture, particularly on extensive (neo-colonial) frontiers. Pressing the logic further, we could say \u201cthey don\u2019t produce beef for producing beef\u2019s sake, they only produce beef to produce profit\u201d. If, due to regulation of livestock production or changing consumer preferences, it was no longer profitable to produce beef, then the likelihood is they would produce something else on these deforested extensive frontiers that generated a better profit, most likely also with deleterious effects upon climate, biodiversity and people, especially local people. Feedstock crops for biofuels, bioplastics or other industrial products, and for processed human foods like alt-meat spring to mind.<\/p>\n

15. One of the best ways to mitigate against this is to allocate land in small parcels to people who are going to use it produce food and other necessities for themselves locally. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any mention of this on the\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0of Wedderburn-Bisshop\u2019s organisation. Why not? Instead, there\u2019s a lot of stuff about corporate investment in alt-meat. If it\u2019s true that people don\u2019t need to eat any meat or dairy products, it\u2019s also true that they don\u2019t need to eat any alt-meat or alt-dairy products. Generally, changing property rights to improve access to land for small-scale farmers is a better way to restore ecosystems than changing consumer choices in capitalist markets wedded to high-energy supply chains like those associated with alt-meat.<\/p>\n

16. Just to press that a bit further, I think the debate about livestock often errs in imputing to animal agriculture what\u2019s really a problem of overproduction of arable grains. The big growth story in global animal agriculture isn\u2019t ruminants but chicken and pork, and this in turn is about adding value to arable overproduction of cereals and grain legumes, often from extensive frontiers. As just mentioned, there are other, non-animal ag ways of doing this that are also destructive. It\u2019s a bit simplistic, I know, but basically I think we need to distribute land and let people get on with producing food, energy, fibre and fertility from it for themselves. If we do that, we\u2019ll find that at least in the more densely populated places there won\u2019t be an awful lot of livestock \u2013 but there will be some, and its impact will be slight.<\/p>\n

17. I haven\u2019t said anything yet about the nitrogen cycle in this post, but the human augmentation of it in agricultural systems has been catastrophic for wildlife. Nitrogenous fertiliser is hard to come by in low-energy peasant food systems, which in this respect are much less ecocidal than modern high-energy, high-nitrogen capitalist food systems, livestock-based or otherwise. One of the main ways that people manage farm fertility in low-energy food systems is by using livestock as vectors for it. We need to stop thinking of livestock as just sources of meat or dairy products \u2013 or, even worse, as \u2018protein\u2019 \u2013 and start thinking of them as ecological protagonists in low-energy (non fossil fuel) local food systems.<\/p>\n

18. Much as I\u2019m sympathetic in general to messaging along the lines of \u2018let nature take its course\u2019, rather than assuming that human meddling will do a better job, unfortunately I don\u2019t think we can just let nature take its course to right the wrongs of our historic human meddling with the global climate. This means (1) leaving fossil fuels in the ground (2) carefully preserving and augmenting carbon sinks (3) fitting farming and human activities carefully to local ecologies, which probably means reducing livestock in the farming systems of a lot of places \u2013 but not all livestock in all farming systems in all places. As I see it, Wedderburn-Bisshop\u2019s intervention only relates to one aspect of (3), and is therefore inadequate at best.<\/p>\n

19. Finally, I\u2019ve read quite a bit of stuff online that speaks up for Wedderburn-Bisshop\u2019s paper on the basis of meta claims about the conservatism of science in general, the conservatism of government-validated IPCC science in particular, and the virtues of having challenging new voices in the debate. All these things are true enough in general, but challenging new voices do have to exhibit some baseline intellectual plausibility, or else they won\u2019t dent the existing scientific consensus, which is conservative for a reason. Too many of us in the wider world get the wool pulled over our eyes by \u2018disruptive\u2019 voices in deep conformity to what we wish to believe rather than what\u2019s actually true. As in the case of alt-meat and alt-dairy, these \u2018disruptive\u2019 voices are often also in deep conformity to business-as-usual ways of doing things, such as using high-energy industrial approaches funded by venture capital seeking high returns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I begin let me say that I think much of the global livestock industry is a horror show, and it\u2019d be great to bring the curtain down on a lot of it. Also that cutting down wild forests or ploughing up wild grasslands are terrible ideas. And that there are a lot of good reasons to opt for veganism. That\u2019s not what this is about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3515459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79718,79719,213531],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3515207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-foodwater","category-food-water-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3515207"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3515462,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515207\/revisions\/3515462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3515459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3515207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3515207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3515207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}