Cows contribute greatly to carbon emissions globally. After the cows are killed, the processing and transporting of the meat to stores and restaurants releases large amounts of carbon. Also, when the cows are alive, they have an enormous carbon footprint. According to one study, each day, their belching and flatulence releases close to five hundred liters! This amount is equal to what a car releases per day. This is because of their ineffective digestive system, and hard-to-digest diet of grass and cud. Each year, the demand for cows increases, and scientists project that by the year 2050, cattle populations will double! If the cows keep releasing tremendous amounts of carbon, and the population doubles, carbon emissions will become out of hand. Humans can help this by becoming vegetarian, or reducing the amounts of beef eaten. Here are the websites I found the studies from-
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammal … ne-cow.htm
http://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause … ethane-CO2

I agree with you, but if we reduce eating the beef, the cow will become more and more, but as you said  "each day, their belching and flatulence releases close to five hundred liters! This amount is equal to what a car releases per day." This means they will release more carbon than before if we didn't eat them or reduce eating them. So what's your opinion of how we can work out that?

I agree with you. Not only the amount of carbon dioxide emissions is very large. And there are also a lot of carbon emissions from the fat people in the world. So I think we can't put all the blame on the cattle, we also should reflect on our own.

Hi Anna, my name is Bridget and I attend Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California. I agree with you that humans should reduce their beef consumption. Although I knew that cows contributed greatly to the amount of carbon dioxide on Earth, I was surprised to read in your post that cows release almost the same amount of carbon each day as cars. If cattle populations continue to increase at the rate they currently are increasing due to the demand for beef, then I can see how they could negatively impact the environment. As a vegetarian, I noticed that the part of my carbon footprint affected by my diet was significantly lower (4.6 times less) than the average person living in my region. Since Americans tend to consume a lot of meat, this makes sense and demonstrates how much the consumption of meat impacts the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. One article I read, called “The Carbon Footprint of 5 Diets Compared,” shows how different parts of peoples’ diets can affect their carbon footprints. When comparing the diet of someone who eats a lot of meat with a vege tarian, the difference in carbon footprints is very large. Interestingly, I found that the difference between someone who is vegetarian and someone who does not eat beef but still eats other meat is rather small. This shows how much of an impact cows alone have on our environment, as other livestock do not release nearly as much carbon dioxide as cows. After learning more about cows’ impact on carbon in the environment, I think that a good solution would be to force people to stop eating beef. Additionally, I think that educating people on the effects of beef in terms of our carbon footprints would make many people reconsider their diets, as many people are simply unaware of the impact of their diet. If this was implemented, there would be many fewer cows, although there would still be a need for dairy cows, and the space that they occupied could be used instead for farming, which could help partially solve world hunger.

Attached is a photo from “The Carbon Footprint of 5 Diets Compared” which shows the breakdown of carbon emissions from different food groups in our diets.  [Carbon Footprint of Diets](//muut.com/u/footprint/s1/:footprint:c0tz:carbonfootprintofdiets.png.jpg)