Kangaroos and climate change -- a farting perspective

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A curious item I came across yesterday:

Australian scientists are trying to give kangaroo-style stomachs to cattle and sheep in a bid to cut the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, researchers say.

Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.

While the usual image of greenhouse gas pollution is a billowing smokestack pushing out carbon dioxide, livestock passing wind contribute a surprisingly high percentage of total emissions in some countries.

"Fourteen percent of emissions from all sources in Australia is from enteric methane from cattle and sheep," said Athol Klieve, a senior research scientist with the Queensland state government.

"And if you look at another country such as New Zealand, which has got a much higher agricultural base, they're actually up around 50 percent," he told AFP.

Researchers say the bacteria also makes the digestive process much more efficient and could potentially save millions of dollars in feed costs for farmers.

Sounds good, no?

Well, no. Not really.

It may be true that flatulent methane emissions from cows and sheep account for a disturbingly high percentage of overall greenhouse gas emissions in farming-heavy countries like Australia and New Zealand (and presumably in much of the developing world), but the main cause of the climate crisis is human action (or "forcing"), not animal farting. These animals, after all, were emitting greenhouse gases long before the crisis began, and I'm not so sure that a phenomenon that is largely a result of excessive human interference with natural processes should be dealt with by further human interference with natural processes. The priority should be to deal with human forcing, not with what animals are doing naturally. This just sounds like more human meddling with nature.

Which isn't to say that all human meddling with nature is bad, of course. We all meddle with nature whether we like it or not. I meddle with nature every time I turn on a light or get into my car. In a sense, being human means, and even requires, such meddling. And, in this case, there may be a good reason to look into what can be done about the stomach bacteria of cows and sheep and other such animals. These are not "natural" animals, after all. Humans are raising them and otherwise controlling their natures. Humans are feeding them, and deciding what to feed them, and that feed may not be what they would feed upon in nature.

But if a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved by adding certain bacteria to certain animals, then let that be a positive consequence of such meddling, not the primary reason for it. The reason I say this is that the focus needs to be on what humans are doing, not on what animals are doing, and I fear that it will be too easy for humans to continue to meddle with nature in response to the climate crisis than to address their own actions and to change what they are doing to make the climate crisis what it is.

Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions should be celebrated, and, ideally, any and all legitimate efforts to do so, including this one, should complement each other, united for a single purpose, but there is simply no excuse for not dealing first and foremost with what we humans have done to cause this crisis and are still doing to exacerbate it. In the end, we will have only ourselves to blame, not the flatulent farm animals that are only doing what nature is directing them to do.