May'19 Board Book

“I’m not saying that it was me who caused that,” he says. “But if it wasn’t me, then it was a coincidence that happened right after my communication with them.”

Specificity is important, Mitloehner insists. Being able to tell our farts from our burps, and our burps from our fossil fuels, is the first step to mitigating the effects from all of them. And wrapping that all up in “farting cows,” he says, trivializes what’s otherwise a very serious issue. Other animal scientists, including Jason Rowntree, a forage expert at Michigan State University, share that point of view. He says the fixation around cow farts is “juvenile,” and “dumbs down the conversation from a scientific perspective.” He’s also of the perspective that cattle grazing has environmental benefits which are overshadowed by the issue of methane emissions. “In the United States, when you look at different sources of methane, a much greater amount is actually coming from industries other than agriculture,” he says. “But because everything’s on the table, people look at every emission. And that’s how the cattle component has gotten in the crosshairs, so to speak.” Beyond that discussion of how, exactly, enteric emissions work, Mitloehner hardly considers the Green New Deal a revolution, or a moonshot. There’s already a version of it in California—a scoping plan that requires, among other changes, a 40-percent reduction of methane and soot by 2030. He disagrees with it, methodologically, saying he’s not convinced that emissions are being adequately measured today, and therefore, that it’s premature to establish targets. But philosophically, he’s on board. Reducing “short-lived” gasses, such as methane, has an immediate effects on global temperature. In California, dealing with those gasses as they’re belched by cattle, and to a lesser degree, coming out the other end—mostly in the form of their manure—has been a challenge. To push larger-scale change, Mitloehner says, he doesn’t suggest shrinking the industry. Rather he wants to see technological solutions implemented, like experimental feed additives that reduce methane emissions, and anaerobic digesters , which transform manure into biogas. In Germany, there are 9,000 such digesters. California, by contrast, has “maybe two dozen.” Mitloehner complimented Ocasio-Cortez’s policy team for being engaged during a half- hour conversation about those solutions, and for having evident knowledge of some of those technological fixes, like seaweed being fed to cows to reduce methane content. That doesn’t mean, however, that they saw eye-to-eye on everything. When it comes to eating less red meat, for example, Mitloehner does concede that it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But only by a very small amount. A recent study, for example, showed that if the United States completely shifted away from animal farming, and all Americans went on a vegan diet, the move would reduce the country’s carbon footprint by 2.6 percent . “Obviously, Germany has a different public policy around renewable energy,” he says. If all Americans adopted vegan diets, it would reduce the country’s carbon footprint by 2.6 percent.