By Bob Long

I notice someone running advertisements saying that as livestock are greenhouse emitters, we should all become vegetarians.

But this business about blaming livestock for greenhouse gas emissions is nonsense. It’s true that livestock do emit CO2 and/or methane (CH4) – but that’s only part of the story. From where does the carbon come that comprises that CO2 or CH4? From the food that the livestock eat. That is plants, which extract CO2 from the atmosphere. So animals don’t generate carbon products – they simply recycle them. In short, livestock are already carbon neutral. Likewise, so are humans (as far as our eating, burping and farting goes) – we eat either carbon neutral animals, or plants.

In fact if the vegetarians claim livestock are bad with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, then becoming vegetarian makes themselves no better than those animals, because livestock are vegetarians, too!

My good mate, Colin, was in a shopping plaza recently, and there was a Qantas stall offering free ‘environmentally friendly’ light bulbs. This is apparently part of their carbon offset program for which they charge extra to those passengers who believe this stuff to ‘save the planet’ when they fly. This ‘carbon neutral’ surcharge is voluntary.

Now the light bulbs were not only offered free, but these would be installed free.

So Colin signed up, and the light bulbs were duly delivered and installed.

The installation team also took away all of the offending old light bulbs.

After the first night of walking around in semi-darkness, Colin is now buying proper bulbs and replacing the free ones which were supplied and installed by Qantas.

I wonder if Qantas shareholders approve of this quaint activity?

John McRobert
Brisbane