1. Climate Change:
the Livestock Connection
ANDREW KNIGHT

2. My (very) lucky day!!!

4. Strange sightings in the mountains…

10. The very next day…

11. Hurricane Irma, 2017

23. ‘The US appears to be getting hit with
major storms with unusual frequency.
From August 2015 to August 2016,
there were eight 500-year flood events
recorded by the National Weather
Service.’

26. The Maldives

27. Climate change: the livestock connection
 Mass extinction events
 6th mass extinction - primary causes
 Climate change: impacts
 Climate change: causes - livestock sector
 Mitigation strategies

28. Sixth mass extinction
 ‘Evidence from the fossil record demonstrates five mass
extinctions in which over 50 percent of animal species died
within the past 540 million years. Prior to this time animals
with hard body parts—and hence, significant fossilization—
had not evolved.’

29. Previous mass extinctions
1. End-Ordovician, 443 million years ago
 ‘… very rapid glaciation; sea level fell by more than 100 metres,
devastating shallow marine ecosystems; less than a million years
later, … second wave of extinctions as ice melted, sea level rose
rapidly, and oceans became oxygen-depleted.’
2. Late Devonian, c 360 million years ago
 ‘A messy prolonged event, again hitting life in shallow seas very hard,
… probably due to climate change.’

30. 3. Permian-Triassic mass extinction, c 250 million years ago
 ‘The greatest of all, ‘The Great Dying’ of more than 95% of species, is
strongly linked with massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia that caused,
among other effects, a brief savage episode of global warming.’
4. Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction, c 200 million years ago
 ‘… linked with another huge outburst of volcanism.’
5. Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction 65 million years ago
 ‘This killed off the dinosaurs and much else; an asteroid impact on
Mexico probably did the damage, but the world’s ecosystem may have
been weakened by volcanic outbursts in what is now India.’

31. Ceballos et al. (2015) Science Advances
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253/tab-article-info
Conservative study of vertebrate extinctions
• Background extinction rate
determined via fossil record
examination in rock strata

32.  ‘Rather than the nine extinctions among vertebrates that would
be expected to have occurred in normal geological circumstances
since 1900 … conservative estimate adds in another 468
extinctions, spread among mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians
and fish.’
 ‘Depending on the group, extinction rates are 10 times to more
than 100 times higher than normal. A sixth mass extinction,
therefore, is beginning. … would grow to rival the last great
catastrophe of the past, when the dinosaurs and much else died
out 65m years ago, in as little as three human lifetimes.’

33.  ‘… simply considers the kill mechanisms operating today, of habitat
loss, predation, pollution and so on. … does not try to factor in, for
instance, the effects of global warming, or of ocean acidification.’
 ‘…we are now living through one of those brief, rare episodes in
Earth history when the biological framework of life is dismantled.’

34. Primary causes
 Habitat destruction/deforestation
 ‘Livestock production occupies 30% of the Earth’s land surface, and
ever-increasing production is a key driver of deforestation,
particularly in Latin America. Seventy per cent of previously-forested
Amazonian land is now occupied by pastures, with feed crops
covering a large part of the remainder. ‘
 Urban sprawl
 Pollution
 Fishing – fisheries collapse
 Climate change

37. Primary causes
 Habitat destruction/deforestation
 ‘Livestock production occupies 30% of the Earth’s land surface, and
ever-increasing production is a key driver of deforestation,
particularly in Latin America. Seventy per cent of previously-forested
Amazonian land is now occupied by pastures, with feed crops
covering a large part of the remainder. ‘
 Urban sprawl
 Pollution
 Fishing – fisheries collapse
 Climate change

38.  ‘… the networks of ecosystems and meta-systems
that comprise life on Earth are deteriorating rapidly
and as a consequence, climate change, coupled with
the fragmentation of habitats and the rapid
extinction of species, are, together, creating a spiral
of feedbacks that are more likely to exacerbate and
accelerate the problem.’
 Anthropocene: ‘… the current geological age … the
period during which human activity has been the
dominant influence on climate and the environment.’

39. Climate change

40. Climate change: impacts
 Habitat loss/change
 e.g. incr. CO2 concentrations, eucalyptus leaves become toxic to
koalas
 Changes to the geographic range and migratory habits of
animals
 Spp move 17 km toward poles or climb 11 m higher in mountains,
every decade
 Some spp benefit/spread e.g. bark beetles – damage forest habitats
 The more adaptable a sp, greater survival chances

45. Sea turtle impacts
 Damage to aquatic habitat and loss of prey
 Lack of suitable nesting sites
 Neonatal mortality
 Sex ratio skew

46. 6 out of 7 species of marine turtles rated
vulnerable to critically endangered

47.  Species/biodiversity loss
 IPCC – 1/3 of all spp will become extinct dt climate change
 ‘Contemporary climate change now poses the greatest threat
to most animal species since the last mass extinction, some
65 million years ago.’
 Disease vectors, emerging human diseases
 e.g. malaria, zika virus, dengue fever, chikungunya,
heartworm
 ‘One health’

48.  Glacial melting

49. Mer de Glace, French Alps

57.  Human food security

58.  ‘Expected melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice
sheets, combined with thermal expansion of the oceans, could
raise sea levels by up to six feet. Rises of half this level would
devastate the rice-growing river deltas and floodplains of Asia,
on which hundreds of millions of people depend for food.
 Similarly, the Himalayan and Tibetan glaciers that sustain the
major rivers of India and China during the dry season—and
thus also sustain the grain irrigation systems that depend on
the rivers—are rapidly melting. The vast populations dependent
on these glaciers make this melting the greatest threat to food
security ever faced by humanity.’

60.  ‘Crop-destroying climatic events such as droughts and
floods are now increasing in frequency, with subsequent
rises in global food prices, hunger, and malnutrition.’

62. Over 1,000,000,000 people now suffer
from from hunger and malnutrition

63. All forms of transportation combined
worldwide produce around 13.5% of global
greenhouse gases (GHGs)
Climate change: causes

65. 14.5% of worldwide GHGs when measured as CO2
equivalents (CO2e) are attributable to the
production of cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels,
horses, pigs and poultry

66. contribution to worldwide GHGs, approx.:
• CO2: 9%
• Methane: 37%
• nitrous oxide: 65%
• Ammonia: 64%

67. Best current figures

68. • Reduce methane emissions
from ruminants through dietary
management
• Reduce nitrous oxide emissions
through manure management
• Decrease deforestation and
encourage carbon sequestration
through improved pastoral
management
Mitigation strategies

69. Global meat and dairy consumption
is expected to double by 2050

70. ‘The environmental impact per unit of livestock
production must be cut by half, just to avoid
increasing the level of damage beyond its present
level.’
- Steinfeld and colleagues (2006)
‘Please eat less meat’
- Dr Rajendra Pachauri, 2007

71. “The solution to our
problems could hardly be
simpler; it is the wisdom
required to implement it
that appears beyond our
collective reach.”

72. "The concept of global
warming was created
by and for the Chinese
in order to make U.S.
manufacturing non-
competitive."
• Anti-scientific denialism
Barriers to cultural change

75. Strategising
Effective altruism
 Scale
 Solvability
 Neglectedness
 Personal fit/skillset

76. 76

77. Health and nutrition

78. The relative
sustainability
of meat- and
plant-based
pet foods (for
dogs and cats)
78
the number of additional humans who
could be fed annually using energy
saved by plant-based pet foods
number of ‘food’ animals whose lives
would be spared annually
relative environmental impacts (land,
water, fossil fuel, phosphate and
biocides)
greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced
Environmental sustainability

79. “To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris
Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our
carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including
those coming from agriculture. … even if fossil fuel emissions
were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food
system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to
1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target.”

81. Acknowledgement
 Jodie Wells, University of Winchester