Breaking the climate budget and polluting our planet

‘The bottom line is that the changing climate is already hammering forests around the world, and future impacts could become severe enough to negate forests’ ability to sequester carbon altogether.’1

Gabriel Popkin, Yale E360, July 2020

Opposite:

12 August 2008, Brazil: Fires and cattle ranching in the Amazon. ©Greenpeace/

Daniel Beltrá 9 August 2018, Jair Bolsanaro. ©BW Press/ Shutterstock.com If business as usual continues, by 2030 the livestock sector will have spewed out almost half (49%) of the total quantity of greenhouse gases that human activity worldwide can emit from now on if global warming is to be restricted to the 1.5ºC target recognised as the safe maximum by the Paris Agreement.2 The global operations of JBS alone are reported to produce around half the annual carbon emissions of fossil fuel giants such as ExxonMobil, Shell or BP.3

In July 2020, an article published in Science found that EU soya imports were responsible for the indirect emission of a total of around 58.3 MtCO2e from both legal and illegal deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes between 2009 and 20174 – equivalent to a year’s emissions from 15 coal-fired power plants.5

However, carbon emissions are not the industrial meat sector’s only contribution to the climate emergency. Livestock manure and in particular synthetic fertilisers (heavily relied on to increase feed crop yields6) emit large quantities of nitrogen compounds. As well as contributing to ozone depletion and to air and water pollution7 (including the growth of coastal ‘dead zones’ – areas of low oxygen concentration in estuaries and seas that suffocate and ultimately kill fish and much other marine animal life8), these have a significant climate impact. Synthetic nitrogen-based fertiliser is a major source of nitrous oxide,9 a greenhouse gas with up to 300 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide;10 as a result, in CO2 equivalent terms synthetic fertiliser is responsible for 12% of global direct emissions from agriculture.11

In July 2020, scientists from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank and Wageningen University published findings in Nature Food that show that nitrogen pollution emitted by global livestock production alone is more than the planet can cope with. More than two-thirds of the sector’s emissions come from crops grown to feed animals, followed by nitrogen released by the buildup and management of manure. The report concludes that a reduction in the production and consumption of livestock products is required to keep these emissions within planetary boundaries.12