Ep. 325: Are cows getting a bad greenhouse gas rap?

Guest: Myles Allen, PhD

Leading climate scientist Myles Allen says, "The traditional way of accounting for methane emissions from cows overstates the impact of a steady herd by a factor of four” – which, he says, is a problem.

Allen goes on to say, "If we are going to set these very ambitious goals to stop global warming, then we need to have accounting tools that are fit for purpose… The errors distort cows' contributions – both good and bad – and, in doing so, give CO2 producers a free pass on their total GHG contribution."

Allen is a heavyweight in climate circles. The BBC described him as the physicist behind Net Zero. Based on his work with the IPCC in 2001, when quantifying the size of human influence on observed and projected changes in global temperatures. In 2005, he proposed global carbon budgets and in 2010, he received the Appleton Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics for his work in climate sciences.

Over the past few years, he has been the coordinating lead author for the 2018 IPCC special report on “1.5 degrees” and he has long been a proponent of fossil fuel producers being made to take responsibility for cleaning up after the products they sell, rather than shifting that onus on powerless consumers. All of this leads to cows and why he cares that the math is right.

According to Allen, cows get lumped into the CO2 equivalent measurements, which the Oxford professor says is wrong. "And that," says Allen, "lets carbon producers off the hook because they can and do point to incorrect – yet widely accepted accounting of cows' contribution to GHG production. In essence, they're blaming the cows rather than taking full responsibility."

We invited Myles Allen to join us for a Conversation That Matters about why a steady herd size of cows is not the problem and a slow decrease in herd size, may in fact be part of the solution.