On Flatulence Amplified

 ON FLATULENCE AMPLIFIED

Appropriately, On Flatulence caused some comments and a followup is necessarily apt. Numerous articles have appeared recently, presumably authored by vegetarians and environmentally conscious folk, regarding the amount of methane emitted into our atmosphere through cow flatulence.  It would appear from numerous sources that the amount of methane, a climate warming contributor, being produced by bovines is excessive and something must be done about it.

Of course, the immediate suggestion is to quit eating cows.  This does not seem to be probable; cow protein has become a staple in all advanced countries with the possible exception of Australia whose residents seem to have replaced cow with sheep.  I am not knowledgeable as to the amount of methane being emitted into the atmosphere from sheep so I will ignore sheep methane for my purpose here.

However, I believe just as important to the production of methane in our atmosphere is human flatulence.  One source indicated that approximately 7% of human flatulence is methane gas.  Now 7% doesn't seem like a lot until you realize that there are about 9,000,000,000 of us.  That seems to me a significant amount of methane being emitted into the air and creating climate warming.  It somewhat muzzles the argument that humans are not the cause of climate change - - we produce it directly.

I don't hear a groundswell of opinion to reduce the amount of methane in the air by reducing the number of humans.  Unfortunately the world economy can only be maintained if there are people to buy stuff they don't need.  The fewer the people, the fewer goods sold, the fewer workers needed, the less money available to buy all the stuff we don't need.  This could easily end in a depression equalling 1929 - - just think, a hundred years ago.

So, it would appear that we are between a rock and a hard place.  Where to turn?  As always, I am open to suggestions on correcting the heating of the planet.  But it does seem inevitable looking at the influx of methane into the atmosphere.  We have cows who produce methane and we eat the cows creating more methane.  The only method available to reduce this production of methane is to reduce the number of humans.  With fewer humans, fewer cows, and less methane will be produced.

Clearly the  answer for a stable environment is fewer humans depression or no. 

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo