GLOBAL WARMING: COWS OR CARS? - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 191

No sooner had I solved the Calverd mystery than another and far bigger 'meat causes
global warming' wave burst over cyberspace. This time the figure quoted was not 21 per
cent of CO 2 attributable to meat, but 18 per cent of all greenhouse gases. Typical headlines
were 'Cattle Causes Most Warming'; and in particular 'Livestock More Damaging than Ve-
hicles'.
This time the perpetrator was not some wag; it was a team of top livestock economists
and agronomists at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), headed
by Henning Steinfeld, in their wide-ranging overview of global livestock, called Live-
stock's Long Shadow, published in 2006. 5 Steinfeld and his friends have been writing pa-
pers for the FAO on livestock issues for a good many years, without ever attracting much
public attention. But Livestock's Long Shadow was issued with a media fanfare and an FAO
press release which began:
Which causes more greenhouse gas emissions, rearing cattle or driving cars? Sur-
prise! According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agricul-
ture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as
measured in CO 2 equivalent - 18 percent - than transport.
The timing was perfect. The 18 per cent figure was picked up and bounced around cyber-
space by ideological tub-thumpers of all persuasion. Vegans crowed with delight, right
wingers ribbed Al Gore for eating meat and the motor industry breathed a sigh of relief.
Normally responsible journalists reported the figure without questioning its provenance or
its accuracy. Geoffrey Lean in the Independen t began his article 'Meet the world's top des-
troyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane, or even George Bush: it is the
cow … Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global
warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.' 6
Over the next few years the figure has been tossed around by various environmental
celebrities as though it was an undisputed fact. Jonathon Porritt used it in advertisements
for Compassion in World Farming; the Green Party MEP, Caroline Lucas, cited it in
speeches and radio interviews (though after I had telephoned her about it, she did acknow-
ledge publicly that the figure had been challenged). And in September 2008, Rajendra
Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, endorsed the 18 per
cent figure at a talk in London hosted (once again) by Compassion in World Farming.
The IPCC is the Nobel prize-winning body of scientists whose word is normally taken
as gospel on matters relating to global warming. Virtually all of its statistics are hedged by
provisos, subject to intensive peer review and backed up by volumes of impenetrable tech-
nical data, so it was strangely cavalier of Mr Pachauri to be volunteering a figure which
far exceeded most other estimates made by reputable scientific organizations, including the