New Carbon Calculus: What's Our Meatprint?

B.Y.O.M—bring your own meat—is the strategy the U.S. Olympic committee plans to implement this summer in Beijing. Wary of steroid-laden proteins from China, U.S. Olympians are relying on Tyson Foods to send them 25,000 pounds of American meat—beef, chicken and pork—for the summer games.

Meat produced in the U.S. won’t fully alleviate their concerns. Remember the recent massive beef recall? And let’s not ignore the carbon footprint of this Olympic strategy, which is not limited to the gas-guzzling transport of goods across the globe. The other downer—the inconvenient truth the other Nobel Laureate spoke—is that “meat is a very carbon intensive commodity.” Even before you fly it across an ocean.

Meat generates greenhouse gases in every aspect of its production. Clearing land, growing grain, transporting feed and processing meat all produce carbon dioxide. And as animals are fattened for slaughter, their digestive processes and waste produce methane and nitrous oxide emissions, which are far more potent global warming pollutants than CO2.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” asked the question, “Which causes more greenhouse gas emissions, rearing cattle or driving cars?” It surprised some to learn the hamburger was worse than the Hummer. The FAO findings showed the livestock sector to be responsible for 18 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, while the global transport sector contributed 13.5 percent.

Another study, performed by researchers Gidon Eshel and Pam Martin , found that switching from the standard American diet to a plant-based one could result in more emissions savings than switching from a standard sedan like a Toyota Camry to a hybrid Toyota Prius. Kathy Freston on the Huffington Post blog put it another way: “Vegetarian is the New Prius.”

While there has been a growing acknowledgment of meat’s contributions to global warming, climate discussions tend to avoid the subject. What if instead of thinking in terms of more efficient light bulbs and gas-sipping cars, we calculated consumption choices in another way: what is the meatprint?

Calculating our Meat Miles

A lot people already know that a gallon of gasoline emits roughly 22 pounds of CO2 equivalent. But what would that be expressed in terms of meat?

Answer: a little more than half a pound, because producing a pound of meat generates 36.4 pounds of CO2 equivalent. In other words, eating two quarter-pounders is almost equivalent to burning a gallon of gas, as far as the atmosphere is concerned.

Let’s say we’re embarking on a round trip cross-country road trip from NY to San Francisco, and let's assume the car we're driving averages (generously) 35mpg. The six thousand mile journey would emit the carbon dioxide emissions contained in 100 pounds of meat.

That's roughly half the amount of meat that the average American eats in a year. Drive a Prius getting 50 mpg and the meatprint of the journey would be equivalent to the amount of meat consumed annually by the average person in the Philippines.

Now what if we chose to fly? According to TerraPass, a round trip plane journey from NY to San Francisco generates about 2,010 pounds of CO2 equivalent per passenger. Thus, a plane transporting 200 passengers has a meatprint of over 11,000 pounds of beef. Assuming a typical cow is reduced to about 500 pounds of meat, that's approximately 22 steers worth of cow-to-liquid jet fuel. Let’s hope some people ordered the vegetarian meals.

Changing Meat Bulbs

Meat is energy. To produce a kilo (2.2 pounds) of meat requires the same energy as lighting a 100-watt bulb for nearly three weeks. So switching from an incandescent to a compact fluorescent 100-watt bulb would yield a CO2 savings of about 40 pounds of meat over the life of the bulb.

Let’s talk about coal. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, an average coal plant in the U.S. generates 3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year—about 400,000 cows, or the entire cattle population of Israel.

What’s the carbon meatprint of an oil giant like Exxon? With 138 million tons of CO2 equivalent emitted annually, it’s comparable to all the 15 million cows living in oil-rich Nigeria.

How much beef are we burning?

With the growing concern over biofuels, it would be good to get a sense of the carbon meatprint of ethanol. By industry estimates, a gallon of ethanol emits about 16 pounds of CO2 equivalent -- less than gasoline -- but it takes roughly 26 pounds of corn to distill a single gallon of ethanol. That's not very efficient, compared to meat production. Estimates vary but the USDA approximates about 7 pounds of corn go into producing a pound of beef.

With the rise in food prices, folks may want to rethink feeding our cars and our cows with grain. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke out about how the increased costs of staple foods are affecting the world’s poorest.

The prices of basic staples -- wheat, corn, rice -- are at record highs, up 50 percent or more in the past six months. Global food stocks are at historic lows.

Food prices have reached “unbearable highs” in China. How will it be when the summer games commence?

What message will the U.S. send to the hungry world when it shows up at the Olympics with 25,000 pounds of globe-trotting, carbon-intensive grain-fed meat?

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