EYE OPENING EDUCATION CCA FACILITATES LEARNING OPORTUNTY FOR LAWMAKERS by CCA Communications Director Jenna Chandler You can’t open up a newspaper or scan social media these days without stumbling across some new article about the dire straits that the world is in due to climate change. 10 years, even 5 years left before irreversible damage is caused and the earth is headed for a global meltdown. Read a little further and 9 times out of 10, the assumption made in those articles is that animal agriculture is primarily culpable. Livestock’s “long shadow,” AOC, the Green New Deal. These terms swirl around in the heads of consumers. Those terms become feelings, those feelings become concerns and those concerns become legislation. And that legislation impacts the very people who put food on the table, and their ability to continue to do it. So, last month, the California Cattlemen’s Association, along with Western United Dairies and the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council, hosted a briefing at the State Capitol featuring UC Davis professor and world-renowned expert on livestock and climate change, Frank Mitloehner, Ph.D., combatting commonly held misconceptions and trying to stem the tide of misinformation about livestock’s global impact. Mitloehner entered to a packed house. Members and staff from both sides of the aisle and everywhere in between filled the beautiful brick room in the Capitol’s basement. With dozens of climate change bills coming down the pike each year, this important—and timely—topic, drew a crowd. Assemblymember Jim Wood gave the introduction and told the group what an informative and surprising presentation they were about to see. “The first time I heard him my jaw dropped,” Assemblyman Wood shared during the introduction, “he knows what he’s talking about.” Mitloehner started with a basic chemistry lesson about the tiny gas molecules that are the cause of so much discussion in today’s headlines. He explained that there are three greenhouse gasses: carbon dioxide (CO2) with a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 1, methane (CH4), the greenhouse gas most attributed to the eructation of ruminant animals such as cattle, with a GWP of 28, and nitrous oxide (N2O) with a GWP of 298, indicating its 298 times more warming capability than carbon dioxide. This, Mitloehner said, is often where the conversation often stops. And it shouldn’t. He went on to clarify that the amount of methane emitted by livestock and the GWP of that methane are only half the story. The lifespan of these molecules must be taken into consideration. The amount of time that it takes to break down one molecule of carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide, according to Mitloehner, is between 200 and 1,000 years. “Once that molecule [of CO2 or N20] is in the air, it pretty much stays there forever. Every time you have ever driven your car some place, you produced CO2. That CO2 you produced throughout your lifetime, is still in the air […]
34 California Cattleman September 2019
That’s why every time you put CO2 in the atmosphere, it adds to current stock,” he said. Methane though, is different. “Methane has a lifespan of only 10 years. And there is a process in the atmosphere that actually breaks down methane almost at the rate it is produced. To most people in this room, that is news.” But to cattle ranchers, that isn’t news at all. They have been watching the sequestration, or breakdown and binding, of atmospheric carbon for generations—in the raising, feeding, grazing and growing of cattle, or as science calls it, the Biogenic Carbon Cycle. “Photosynthesis of plants requires two things, sunlight and CO2 from the atmosphere. Plants gobble up CO2 and it’s that carbon that becomes carbohydrates in the crops, the crops that the animals eat,” Mitloehner went on to explain. “The livestock belch a part of that carbon out as methane […] but the amount of CO2 left after the methane is oxidated [broken down into CO2], is not any more than is consumed. We are NOT adding additional warming. “We are NOT adding additional warming,” he reiterated to a surprised crowd. But it isn’t that way everywhere. With the group still reeling from the realization that livestock production truly is sustainable in terms of greenhouse gasses, Mitloehner then took the conversation on a global scale, showing a map with the total greenhouse gas emissions by countries in the world. He explained that 1 percent of the total greenhouse gas amount in the world is contributed by U.S. agriculture. Every single thing we grow and eat in the United States contributes only 1 percent of total greenhouse gasses in the world. Animal agriculture? 0.5 percent. Half of a percent. ...CONTINUED ON PAGE 36
Frank Mitloehner, Ph.D., shares climate change research and insight with lawmakers in Sacramento