Pi-Consulting

Ours is indeed an “Animal Planet”. Domestic beasts already outnumber the planet’s six billion human inhabitants. Our 1.5 billion cattle, 1.7 billion sheep and goats and at least the same number again of pigs and poultry already run the human head-count pretty close, even at the rate we are killing and eating them. (The animals, not the humans. Though now you mention it…). Add in dogs and cats, and homo sapiens is easily outnumbered by domestic animals.

These facts come to light (in a report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization) just as concern for climate change and global warming is going mainstream. So where’s the problem? There must be an innate link between planet-saving attitudes and being an animal lover, right?

But wait. The proliferation of domestic animals and the health of our environment are actually on a collision course. Worldwide, animal feed and grazing uses up 30% of the total land surface says the UN report, ominously titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow”. Our domesticated animal friends eat more than they represent in food value (a bad sign for humanity’s growing meat-addiction), and they compete increasingly with humans for precious drinking water resources.

Even more disquietingly, all those animals directly account for 18% of the global warming effect, through the combined effects of flatulence and poop, which respectively produce harmful methane and unhelpful nitrogen. The increased need for grazing land also destroys biologically sensitive land resources, especially rain-forests.

So, if you’re tempted to blame your neighbor’s gas-guzzling car for the impending ecological disaster, sniff the air first for the ripe smell of animal-dung. It’s a bigger ecological problem than all the world’s automotive industries put together. (Source: The New York Times).