Some solutions to reducing global warming

Solutions to reducing global warming

Did you know?

eating 1 hamburger = cutting down 6 sq m of forest
eating 4 hamburgers = cutting down the size of a classroom of forest
eating 6 hamburgers = cutting down forest the size of a school stage
eating 37 hamburgers = cutting down forest the size of a school hall?

Global contributors of Green house gas emissions	In Percentage
Deforestation	25%
Livestock farming	18% [51%]
Transport [760 million vehicles]	14%
Industry	43% [35%]

Solution 1: Stop deforestation and start reforestation

To date up to 50% of the world's rainforest is lost
If 30% more is deforested, the remaining forest cannot survive
Deforestation rate is 50 million acres per year
Worldwide deforestation rate is 16 football fields per minute
In the Amazon, deforestation rate is 7 football fields per minute.


"70% of previously forested land in the Amazon rainforest was changed into areas for cattle grazing and growing feed crops" UN report

Deforestation in Australia
Of the 100 million hectares of land area that is being deforested:
Animal farming 70 million hectares
growing crops 25 million hectares
occupied by people 2 million hectares

Solution 2: Reduce livestock farming to reduce green house gas emission

UN 2006 Livestock's Long Shadow Report: Livestock industry produces:
18% of Global Greenhouse gas emissions
37% of Global methane (which is 23 times CO₂ global warming power)
65% of Global N2O (which is 296 times CO₂ global warming power)

"Raising animals generate more greenhouse gases (18%) than all the 760 million cars and trucks in the world combined (14%)" UN FAO Report.

Producing 1 kg of beef generates 36.4 kg of CO₂
Producing 1kg of beans generates 0.6 kg of CO2
Meat industry requires lots of refrigeration and transport (energy inefficient process)
Switching to vegetarian diet reduces 1.5 tons of CO2 emissions per year










Tons of manure from livestock farms flow into underground water and into seas causing large areas of Dead Zones.

Conserve the world's food and water resources
Food fed to animals:
75 % of world's soy bean
50% of world's corn
36% of world's grains

In 2007, food fed to animals was 760 million tons
in 2007, world hunger figure was 900 million people
The grains fed to livestock would be able to feed 2 billion people!

Water requirements of livestock- UN FAO Report
Stockholm International Water Institute states that the agricultural sector (growing of crops and livestock) accounts for 70% of the world's water usage

To produce 1 kg of	Amount of Water Needed [litres]
Maize	900 lt
Rice	3000 lt
Chicken	3900 lt
Pork	4900 lt
Beef	15,500 lt

15,5000 litres of water is sufficient for a man to shower for 6 months!

Solution 3: Support Organic farming

"Practical organic agriculture if practised on the planet's 3.5 billion tillable acres, could seqester nearly 40% of current CO2 emissions.." US Rodal Institute


Solution 4: Green Energy

Solution 5: Practise the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle)

More about solutions 4 and 5 on a later blog post.

Cheers

The fastest way to cool the planet is.......

Coal and petroleum are actually concentrated sunlight

Hi,

Watch the short video attached. Juan Enriquez states that fossil fuels such as coal, methane and petrol are actually concentrated sunlight energy. (Please see the reference to this in my blog profile.)

The way we define bioenergy has to change. A change in mind-set will cascade into fundamental sea changes in how we produce bio-fuels/energy and tame natural systems.

In 1943, the father of green revolution, Mr Norman Borlang, taught the world how to apply technology in producing grains to feed the millions. India, China and Mexico used to face famines on a periodic basis before the GR. Mr Borlang has changed all that, and India and China are now net exporters of grains!

Improved corn, rice yeilds, increased productivity rates in these countries have resulted in excess grain production which they want to change into biodesiel and ethanol. But, according to Mr Enriquez, this is all wrong. It is expensive, it takes away agricutural land which can be used to grow food and it leads to clearing more forests for arable land.

"Farming oil" is what he suggests instead. The present methods of mining and drilling for petroleum is all wrong as it brutalises the land. He suggests that we need a bioenergy revolution. New developments in genomics and other life sciences will bring about changes in business technologies, political and society changes just as it did in the 1940s with green revolution.

The difference is, in the 1940s and 50s the scientists used selective breeeding to produce new strains of grains and then distributed them to the farmers in India and China to grow on large scales.
In the bioenergy revolution, genetic engineering will be used to create new strains of micro-organisms that will "eat" the coal deposits and change it into biogas (methane).

Drilling for methane does not cause large scale destruction of land, methane is clean, it does not pollute the air with sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Producing clean energy occurs with biological processes and it does not brutalise the earth as did the open-cast coal mining and dirty petroleum drilling.

One thing that struck a chord with me is how he suggests that stabilising the petroleum price will lead to innovation and research into sustainable new and clean forms of energy. He suggests that the price of fossil oil must not be allowed to go below a level (e.g. $35 a barrel) that will stifle innovation in alternative energy fields. When the price falls below an agreed price, then a tax is levied on oil to make up the difference. When the price goes above that amount, the government will pay the difference. This will allow entrepreneurs to invest in and develop new technological and biological processes to produce new forms of cheap and clean energy.

Cheers

What is wrong with what we eat?

Hi,

Mark Bittman has been writing about food for more than 30 years. He is also a fiery and funny speaker.

View the short video below to find out about what is wrong with the way we eat now.

Meat production produces the highly toxic greenhouse gas methane, more powerful than carbon dioxide in causing global warming. Half the antibiotics manufactured is used to keep our livestock alive. Bittman says that life style diseases such as cancers, heart disease, diabetes and obesity can be reduced by eating less meat.

10 billion animals a year (cattle, lambs, chicken, and pigs) are slaughtered in the USA alone. Meat production increasd by 5 times when human population only doubled in the last few decades.

Mr Bittman traces in our eating habits in the last 50 years and how it has brought all the health woes that we are expericing now.

Processed food is spicier, sweeter, fattier and more convenient. More and more agricultual land is used to grow corn and soya to feed these lifestock. This is leading up to environmental risks.

We would all be more healthy if we eat more plants, less meat and less junk/processed food. Our carbon footprint would decrease if we ate locally produced fresh food instead of processed food in styrofoam packaging flown thousands of miles from another part of the world.

Cheers