FW CanDo!

>>> For a native of Cowtown, Texas, I'm not a big fan of cows and stock-shows. The environmental impact of livestock on planet Earth is a dirty little secret. But, I do like my organic blueberry yogurt in the morning. Recently, I read a report in the New York Times that made me feel less guilty about breakfast but more fed up with gas drillers. The bottom line is this:

Cows are doing more to clean up their "emissions" than is the gas drilling industry.

A True Story-

Cows are notorious producers of methane "eruptions". But did you know that the average cow adds 200 - 400 pounds of methane a year to the atmosphere?

Methane is the second most significant heat-trapping "greenhouse" gas after carbon dioxide but has 20 times the heat trapping ability of CO2. Methane is also the principal ingredient in natural gas from shale.

The United Nation has called livestock "one of the most serious near-term threats to the global climate." (They obviously didn't factor in Barnett Shale emissions.) Researchers estimated that, "cows might be more dangerous to Earth's atmosphere than all vehicles combined."

Earlier this year, Stonyfield Farms, an organic dairy in Vermont, initiated a program to reduce cow emissions by adjusting their grain feed to include less corn and soy and more ingredients that mimic the grasses that cows evolved with. The result was an 18% drop in methane production without affecting milk production.

With that in mind, the American dairy industry, worried that the public will equate dairies with natural gas production or coal power plants, has started a "cow of the future" program to reduce total industry emissions by a whopping 25% by 2020. They even predict an increase in milk production (profits) while doing a good deed.

Meanwhile, back in the Barnett Shale, gas drillers prefer to buy off state and local officials and con the general public rather than clean up their dirty operations that produce approximately 200 TONS of air pollution DAILY in the Metroplex region, alone.

If cows can do it so can Chesapeake, XTO, Devon, Range, Quicksilver, EOG, Encana and all the rest.

I wonder what it will take for the Citizens of the Shale to get over their doomed love affair with gas and greed and force this industry to to change its dirty ways? If they're just hoping that the wind will clear the air they have a lot to learn.

Read more about, Greening the Herds, in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/us/05cows.html?scp=1&sq=stonyfield&st=...

As Dirty Ol' Town MaYoR Mike Mollycrief says, "Be careful what you wish for. "Wind" can be a mixed blessing."

DY