Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: August 30, 2024
Methane-reducing vaccines for cattle!
Early trials are finding that a new vaccine could reduce methane production in cattle by around 13 percent.
Tell Congress to use the upcoming Farm Bill to encourage research and development of methane-reducing vaccines for cattle!
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Reasons For Hope
Boston startup ArkeaBio has reportedly developed a vaccine to reduce methane production in cattle, which works by directing the cow’s immune system to create antibodies against methane-producing bacteria. Early small-scale trials are finding that vaccinated cattle saw methane production decrease by around 13%. And this is just one of the earliest movers in the space: the Bezos Earth Fund is also investing in grants for researchers trying to better understand the immunology that would enable future vaccines to further address methane in cattle.
These early actions on cattle methane vaccine research constitute a relatively small step, but one with the potential to help solve a very big problem. Agriculture is the biggest source of human-produced methane emissions, and methane (CH4) is a major greenhouse gas that’s the second-biggest contributor to global warming behind carbon dioxide (CO2). (Here’s a great NASA explainer on methane).
As we’ve discussed before, there are many many glaring problems with the current industrialized beef industry, and it’s important to support potential opportunities to transform protein production entirely, as with our recent actions on giving lab-grown “clean” meat a chance to grow. But successfully developing and deploying a methane vaccine for cattle might yield meaningful near-term reductions in planet-warming methane emissions, and we need to leave no stone unturned in our civilizational quest to stabilize Earth’s atmosphere.
You probably know by now that Congress is still discussing the upcoming Farm Bill, a huge investment in American agriculture (the U.S. spends an average of $648 billion per year on Farm Bill programs) that’s up for renewal for the first time since 2018. Even more so than storm-resilient crops, methane-reducing vaccines for cattle are a brand-new invention and not really on the political radar screen yet, so there’s a great opportunity here to tell Congress to use the Farm Bill to help promote their research and development.
Tell your U.S. Senators and Representative to pass a Farm Bill promoting R&D on methane-reducing vaccines for cattle!
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I think shorter wheat was an important part of the Green Revolution