GLOBAL WARMING: COWS OR CARS? - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 215

unbearable again; that will eventually happen even if the flow of blowtorches is completely
stopped, and when it does happen it will be much harder to lower the temperature again.
In fact, the short lifetime of methane also speaks in its defence. In order to maintain the
blowtorch heat, the blowtorches have to come into the room thick and fast. In other words,
in order to maintain a given level of methane in the atmosphere we have to keep pumping
it out regularly otherwise the number of parts per million will fall away rapidly. According
to the IPCC's 2001 figures, a reduction of global emissions by just 22 MT, or 6.1 per cent
of all the methane currently emitted by human activities, is sufficient to prevent any further
rise in levels of methane in the atmosphere. 71 This could be achieved by reducing livestock
emissions by just 20 per cent, by halving methane emissions from landfill sites, or even
by reducing fossil fuel use by about a quarter. Any reductions in annual methane output
beyond this would actually be reducing the amount of methane in the atmosphere, until it
settled at a new lower threshold. On the other hand, if humans stopped burning fossil fuels
tomorrow, the burden of the CO 2 emitted in the 20th century would linger on for several
generations.
This means that if the world decided to stabilize all greenhouse gases at their current
level, we would only need to reduce global methane output by 6.1 per cent, but CO 2 emis-
sions by more than 80 per cent. 72 Any 'targeting' of methane to compensate for the mani-
fest failure to reduce CO 2 emissions, especially if it resulted in reductions of substantially
more than 6.1 per cent, would in effect be scapegoating methane to bale out CO 2 ; or put an-
other way, it would be extracting a subsidy from methane emitters for the benefit of fossil
fuel users.
In fact the level of methane in the atmosphere, contrary to expectations and despite a
rise in the numbers of livestock, has remained almost stable since 1999, according to IPCC
assessments, so it is possible that such a reduction in methane output has already taken
place. 73 It is very odd that so much attention should have been focussed upon methane in
the last decade while its presence in the atmosphere has remained stable.
That stability could be a temporary blip, and it doesn't alter the fact that reducing meth-
ane emissions has an immediate effect. But while targeting methane might be desirable or
even necessary to avert catastrophe, it would be politically invidious if it required dispro-
portionate reductions in emissions from livestock rearers, rice producers, fuelwood users
or anyone else benefiting from 'natural' sources of methane. It would be making rural oc-
cupations pay for the sins of the city, and poor people in third world countries pay for the
sins of rich fossil-fuel burners. Whereas UK and US methane emissions comprise 7.5 per
cent and 10.5 per cent of their GHG emissions respectively, India's methane emissions,
two thirds of which come from cows and rice, are reported to comprise 35 per cent of her
total. 74 India, like most poor countries, burns far less fossil fuel per head than the USA or
the UK, and for many of her poor, a goat or a cow may represent almost the entirety of their