Hope for Environmentalist Carnivores

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Hope for Environmentalist Carnivores

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If this research proves out it could be a major step forward in reducing human-caused GHG emmissions.  Methane is the second most important gas causing human-made climate change. Each molecule causes about 25 times more warming than a molecule of CO2, but it survives for shorter times in the atmosphere before being broken down.

New Zealand regularly takes a ribbing for having more sheep than people. And now it has the rather earthy duty of trying to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by getting a grip on excess methane, mainly from the burps of 40 million sheep and nine million head of cattle. Livestock farmers, long among the country's major export earners, are worried. They say the extra costs could drive many of them into bankruptcy, and they feel they're being singled out because New Zealand has relatively few big industrial polluters. Two main gases from agriculture -- methane from livestock and nitrous oxide from fertilizers -- make up close to half of the country's emissions. "There's no other country in the world that's so clean of chimney stacks that its animals are the biggest polluters," said farmer Charlie Pedersen. "It's kind of an ironic situation." But great minds are not idle on the challenges facing humans -- and their farmyard friends. Tests in Japan have shown that oil produced from cashew nut shells can be mixed with feed, reducing methane emissions in cow belches by up to 90 per cent, a spokesman for oil refiner Idemitsu Kosan said Wednesday. The firm's research division is working with Hokkaido University on the project with the aim of launching sales within four years, the spokesman said. As for the opinions of cud chewers on the matter, word is they're still ruminating.