It’s no secret at this point that New Yorker and Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is perhaps one of the most outlandish and ridiculous members of congress to have ever been elected. The reasons why include her prolific use of social media, her constant desire to be smack dab in the middle of the limelight, and, of course, her overly dramatic and altogether unsubstantiated comments she claims as facts.
I mean, this is a woman who told us after her successful election into office in 2018 that if we didn’t change our entire way of life and how we affect the environment, the world would end in 12 or so years. According to her, the ice caps at both our southern and northern poles would melt, causing thousands of miles of coastland to be covered by the sea.
And so she introduced her infamous Green New Deal, complete with plans to alter our economy and hundreds of years of American tradition.
She and her cohorts, including Massachusetts’ Democrat Sen. Ed Markey, proposed that the nation set a goal of having “net-zero” carbon emissions in the short span of ten years. And for them, that was already a compromise, as their original plan was to have zero emissions. However, they weren’t “sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast,” according to the New York Post.
Yes, that’s right. They are blaming farting cows for this thing they are calling the climate crisis.
Naturally, this assumption was ridiculed when the legislation was first proposed, and just as naturally, AOC’s office claimed that the bit about “farting cows” was an error from an early draft of the Green New Deal.
However, since then, AOC herself has continued with this idea, claiming that “we need to take a look at factory farming.”
And so, some people. What has been discovered is that cows and other “ruminant animals” do, in fact, emit greenhouse gases, in particular, methane gas.
According to a study conducted by Sesnon Endowed Chair of Department of Animal Science and professor at the University of California-Davis Ermias Kebreab, this happens “throughout the day as they digest forages like grass and hay.” The study also indicates that these gases make up about half of the 10 percent of greenhouse emissions put off by agriculture in the US.
Unfortunately, this means that AOC and her liberal pals are, at least on some level, correct about some of the causes of climate change.
However, the study doesn’t necessarily agree with the New York congresswoman’s solution to the problem.
Instead of altering our entire way of life, including the cancellation of nearly all beef and dairy manufacturing because cows are “harmful” to the environment, Kebreab offers that we simply change up the diet of these four-legged beasts.
He notes in the recently published study, “We now have sound evidence that seaweed in the cattle diet is effective at reducing greenhouse gases and that the efficacy does not diminish over time.” In fact, the simple and relatively small introduction of seaweed to cattle feed can reduce emissions such as methane by as much as 82 percent.
As study contributor and Ph.D. graduate student Breanna Roque says, “this could help farmers sustainably produce beef and dairy products we need to feed the world.”
Before you start asking questions about just how sustainable the introduction of seaweed to cattle really is, I give you an explanation of seaweed farming from the think tank Buckminster Fuller Institute.
“The infrastructure is simple. Seaweed, scallops, and mussels grow from floating ropes, stacked above oyster and clam cages below. From these crops, ocean farmers can produce food, fertilizers, animal feeds, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, biofuels, and much more.”
It’s just another type of farming and one that has been sustainably done for generations in coastal towns worldwide.
It’s also one that doesn’t create any adverse effects on the environment and doesn’t require the complete rewriting of our economy, laws, or beef consumption. For all AOC’s outlandish claims, it turns out big government isn’t needed to fix the problem after all.
So go out and have a steak, knowing that eating beef is not only safe and sustainable but proof that AOC is flat out wrong.
