Oorsig/Review
Carbon Mooooves
Christine Page
www.smilingtreefarm.com
How carbon moooooves...
On average each of us humans breathes out 1kg
of carbon dioxide (CO2) every day, the larger
you are or the more you exercise, the more CO2.
So why don’t we consider human metabolism
to be a cause of climate change? After all, there
are 7.6 billion of us, that’s a lot of CO2 hitting the
atmosphere each day (1).
It’s because the carbon dioxide we breathe out
originally came from the air, so when we exhale
we’re simply putting it back from whence it
came: we are part of a continuous carbon cycle,
we are not adding new carbon. The same is true
for anything that respires, including cows, each of
which breathes out a whopping 10kg of carbon
dioxide per day! So whether you are a cow, dog,
human, ant or elephant, your breathing does not
increase CO2 in the atmosphere.
The basic carbon cycle goes like this: plants
photosynthesise using energy from the sun to take
CO2 from the air, split it into carbon and oxygen,
release the oxygen back into the air and use the
10
carbon to grow. Humans and animals eat the
plant (or animal in the food chain that originally
ate the plant), metabolise the carbon, use it for
their own growth and repair, and breathe out as
CO2 or excrete the rest.
Carbon also cycles via the gas methane (CH4),
burped by cattle and for which they are much
vilified. Yet the carbon in methane from cows,
just like that in their breath, is being recycled
from the plants they ate, which originally took it
from the air.
This article aims to clear up the confusion often
caused by the conflation of two quite distinct
sources of carbon, which has led to the common
belief that all cows are bad for the environment.
And to explain how cows raised in a particular
way not only have a positive impact on the planet
by helping reduce atmospheric carbon but are
actually essential to rebuilding and restoring the
health of the world’s depleted soils.
But in order to get to grips with that, we first need
to take a look at how carbon mooooves….