Animal agriculture, both small and large, is responsible for 50% of anthropogenic warming

that's 0.64 degrees out of 1.27.

Small, local, 'independent' animal farms do not increase sustainability nor biodiversity, nor decrease the power of cartels. They do the exact opposite of all three. Plus they also increase global inequality.

From a commenter; ‘Small ranching operations are insanely inefficient. Beef in America is basically a dick waiving contest of who can overpay the most for their status symbol steak.’

All animal ag, not just industrial animal farming, causes climate forcing in 3 main ways.

1. Emissions are not neutral, they cause more warming than can be off set by the plants that farmed animals eat absorbing the co2 back. One tonne of methane from ruminant’s burps is equivalent to 80 tonnes of co2 over 20 years.

2. Compared to one calorie of eating directly from the soil the emissions caused from the energy needed to be put into an animal ag system to feed animals for 6-18 months and then ‘harvest’ it (ie transport, tractors, irrigation, soy and corn crops, fertilisers, chicken feed, vets, pharmaceuticals, slaughter house and meat packing) is enormous.

3. Compared to eating directly from soil the amount of co2 sequestering land and forest lost to pasture or soy and corn crops is enormous.

Recent studies show that animal ag is responisble for 50% of effective radiative forcing (ERF).

‘We compare these results with conventional accounting and find that this approach boosts perceived carbon emissions from deforestation, and finds agriculture, the most extensive land user, to be the leading emissions sector and to have caused 60% (32%–87%) of ERF change since 1750. We also find that fossil fuels are responsible for 18% of ERF, a reduced contribution due to masking from cooling co-emissions.’

Animal ag is responsible for 51.6% of total effective radiative forcing since 1750.

‘This attribution finds that agriculture has caused 0.74°C net GSAT warming from 1750 to 2020, with 86% of this (0.64°C) (up to 2020's 1.27 degrees of warming ie 50.3% of temperature rise due to human activity) is attributable to animal agriculture. Fossil fuels have caused 0.21°C net GSAT change due to strong SO₂ and NOx aerosol cooling.’

Animal is responsible for 0.64 degrees of warming.

Other reports say up to 87%

‘In this paper, we present the results of a Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) proving that animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change, responsible for at least 87% of greenhouse gas emissions annually. The burning of fossil fuels is currently the leading source of human-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, climate change is caused by cumulative human-made greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions and not just current CO2 emissions alone. While humans have been burning fossil fuels for a little over 200 years, we have been burning down forests for animal agriculture for well over 8,000 years. For the GSA analysis, we use factual data from the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other peer-reviewed scientific sources. We show that we need to transition to a global plant-based economy first and that eliminating fossil fuel usage first will accelerate the warming of the planet. We show that the annual methane emissions from animal agriculture alone cause more incremental global warming than the annual CO2 emissions from all fossil fuel sources combined. We further show that the transition to a global plant-based economy has the potential to sequester over 2000 Giga tons (Gt) of CO2 in regenerating soils and vegetation, returning atmospheric greenhouse gas levels to the “safe zone” of under 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 equivalent, while restoring the biodiversity of the planet and healing its climate.’

Further reductions in SO2 producing fuels will unmask more warming caused by fossil fuel emissions and therefore reduce the 50-87% contribution of animal ag to anthropogenic warming. Though not enough to change the necessity of a plant based economy. I believe that even in the climate science community the damage caused by animal ag is being deliberately obscured. If fossil fuels were ever reduced then sequestration is vital to counter-act the warming that this will cause.

Only the affluent, mostly white, have access to the expensive, luxury ‘grass-fed’, ‘we know the farmer’, ‘small’ or ‘independent’ way of eating. Animal products make up about 35% of calories on average, though much less for developing countries. However, because animal products take up so much more land, replacing these calories with plants would use less than 1/5th of the land currently used. Over 4/5ths of it would be freed up, meaning that ERF could by reduced by 40-70%. Add all the big to the thousands of small (even less land, energy and resource efficient) animal ag farms together and we have a lot of land to give back to indigenous people in neocolonised countries or for rewilding, reforesting, biodiversity and co2 sequestration.

The government supported, entitled animal ag, landowners in the UK have recently been complaining about removing their special privileges, this time on inheritance tax.

(NB #together “In 2021, brewery owner Alan Miller and alleged Formula 1 marketing scammer David Fleming formed the Together Association. Ostensibly created to resist lockdowns, vaccine passports and digital ID… Together has latched onto anti-net-zero campaigning, perhaps as the next part of its plan to operate as a “shadow cabinet”. ‘STOP ULEZ’, appeared small and relatively innocuous, but its bio revealed it was “run by Kanto Systems Limited on behalf of 3rd Party Ltd”.

Both Kanto and 3rd Party Ltd are owned by Thomas Borwick – digital strategist for Vote Leave and the Conservative Party as well as being the chair of the Cities of London and Westminster Conservatives. Borwick has since been accused of using 3rd Party to engage in election interference after boasting that he could create “unknown online campaign groups to ‘split the vote’ of Conservative opponents”. Prior to this, Borwick worked for Cambridge Analytica and, following the company’s collapse, hired two of its data scientists to run his newest company the College Green Group, which currently runs four all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) including one tackling “environmental, social and governance” issues.’ )

For those who didn’t fall for the fossil fuel and animal ag/pharma industry funded ‘the climate crisis is a con’ con; the myth of the salt of the earth, small, local independent farmer and butcher was created as an allegedly sustainable, friendly way of farming and eating. The myth was helped by the created threat from Bill Gates, who is simultaneously forcing upon us both veganism and non-vegan industrially farmed animals.

Farming of animals is never independent from the massive cartels. Do these farms, including backyard ones, breed their own animals or get them from a supplier? How do they inseminate them? Are they completely pharmaceutical free (no, far from it)? Do they buy any off-farm fertiliser or feed? What equipment do they use for ‘milking’ etc? Do they slaughter, process and market their products all by themselves? ‘Independent’ animal ag farms couldn’t exist without dependence on subsidies from the tax payer or without all the green, health and compassion washing provided for them by the giant industry. The reality of animal farming is of land owning old money, hypocritical new money and different companies being owned or controlled as subsidiaries of bigger companies.

The myth of small or backyard farming of animals being OK hugely benefits industry cartels in general and contributes both to global inequality and to the environmental crisis, directly through emissions as well as through loss of sequestration. The same people underwrite all the big cartels such as smoking and gambling. These are big industries, but they are tiny compared to animal ag and its sister industry big pharma who are MASSIVE, we’re talking trillions and trillions. And let’s add to that the market and profits to pharma from people eating animal fat and animal protein.

Everyone could potentially destroy this ENORMOUS part of the power of the 1% shareholders overnight by simply ceasing to buy any of their products.

🐒