alt Hacker NewsOkay lets get this straight, animals do not contribute to global warming. The co2 they emit has been taken from the atmosphere from plants.
Methane breaks down to Co2 in the atmosphere on average in 9.6 years.
Animal rearing does not permanently affect the climate.
Increasing stock sizes does increase the methane level equilibrium but there are mitigations to this, there are additives to feed that can reduce methane emissions to 1%. Last I checked a few years ago, there were pilot programs to determine effects on animal welfare and product quality.
The problem we should be focusing on is fossil fuels.
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Animal-emitted CO2 isn't the problem, but methane.
The CO2 captured by plants and eaten by livestock gets converted in part to methane, a more more potent greenhouse gas. This does eventually degrade back to the original CO2, but on a scale of decades, it's currently too slow to prevent accumulation of methane.
> Methane breaks down to Co2 in the atmosphere on average in 9.6 years.
Despite which, over a 100 year period it has 25 times the warming impact as the CO2 it turns into.
> The problem we should be focusing on is fossil fuels.
Everyone should focus on whatever they know how to make a dent with, the "sustainable" emissions rate is 0.1% of the current rate which is essentially "we need to fix everything everywhere except for pick one of grassland or North Korea".
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector