On cow burps and gas cookers

Who would have thought that the humble gas stove would one day become the topic of a culture war?

And yet, here we are.

America and the UK are going crazy over a Harvard study linking gas stoves to childhood asthma. In 2019 alone, there were two million new cases of childhood asthma caused by suspected nitrogen dioxide poisoning.

And if that weren’t bad enough, most household gas stoves leak methane, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens - even when they’re off.

But wait, it gets worse.

Within minutes of turning them on, emissions from certain gas burners rise above safe standards set for OUTDOORS.

That’s right. If you cook with gas, the air inside your home could be more polluted than outside. In fact, no safe standards exist for safe indoor exposure to these gases!

You don’t have to be a gas scientist to know that inhaling nitrogen dioxide and methane is never a good idea.

Plus, gas is bad for the planet.

So, some people want gas stoves cancelled.

They’re ripping them out willy-nilly and switching to electric and induction stoves.

Even me. I’ve ordered an induction cooker and I’m looking forward to giving the gas stove in my rental house the finger - just before the gas price hike.

But I haven’t always felt this way about gas.

You see, I have a love-hate relationship with gas.

In my home country, South Africa, gas stoves and heaters are coveted items. So are diesel generators.

Electricity load shedding leaves households without power for up to 10 hours most days – and these days, that's a good day.

Hand to heart, my gas stove and heater saved my sanity when I was in South Africa.

Not having access to an essential service for a chunk of a day, every day, sometimes for multiple days – four days was the worst I experienced – messes with your mental health.

You can’t work because your laptop battery is dead, your power bank is dead, and there’s no signal.

You can’t heat up the baby’s bottle – and it’s midnight in winter.

You can’t sleep because the backup battery on your electric fence and alarm system has also died - and you’re hearing noises you’ve never heard before.

At this point, the dangers of inhaling gas and diesel fumes are the least of your concerns.

You don’t think twice about firing up the gas appliances or pouring more diesel into the generator and paraffin into the lamps.

Because they provide comfort, a sense of safety, and peace of mind.

A way to keep your family safe, fed, and warm.

With no solution in sight for the country’s deepening power crisis, South Africans will keep burning diesel and gas for the sake of their sanity.

It infuriates me that they have no other choice. That they have no control over a big part of their carbon emissions. And that they're forced to expose themselves and their kids to poisonous gases because of public sector incompetence.

I keep saying that, when it comes to reducing our impact as individuals and businesses, all we can do, is to do what we can. No matter how small those actions seem in the grand scheme of things.

While I can switch to induction cooking, millions of South Africans can’t.

They can, however, turn up the heat on authorities and start demanding change.

One small thing you could do (even if you’re not in South Africa) is to sign this petition calling on the government to change the legislation to create a competitive energy market.

It may seem insignificant. But if we all add our voices to the fight, collectively we can become pretty loud. Nearly 45,000 people have signed. Imagine being in a room with all those people shouting at once.

All we can do, is to do what we can. Use your voice.

— Tarryn ✌️

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This week's climate and sustainability news worth noting

🇳🇿 A state of emergency was declared in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, after it experienced its worst downpour since record-keeping began. The airport flooded, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights and leaving 2,000 people stranded inside.

✈️ Boeing has officially retired the iconic 747 after more than 50 years in production. The “wonderful beast”, as Richard Branson calls it, is falling out of favour with airlines because it guzzles gas and has high emissions. They want smaller, more fuel-efficient planes. It’s been described as a pivotal moment in the future of aviation, and comes just weeks after Boeing and NASA announced the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, to produce a single-aisle plane that promises to slash fuel consumption for commercial aviation.

🤖 The United States and European Union have announced an agreement to speed up the development of AI to improve agriculture, healthcare, and climate forecasting.

🥵 Using artificial intelligence to predict warming timelines, researchers found that 1.5C of warming over industrial levels will probably be crossed in the next decade. The study also shows the Earth is on track to exceed 2C warming, which international scientists identified as a "climate tipping point". The change will fuel a dangerous rise in climate disasters across the world, and, for many developing countries, the difference between 1.5C and 2C is existential.

And in business news:

✅ The International Sustainability Standards Board says new climate and sustainability disclosure rules are on track for issuance by the end of the second quarter. The standards will provide a global baseline of financial reporting disclosure rules for reporting on ESG-related issues.

🛢️ Global oil and gas companies reported record-breaking profits in 2022. Exxon, which knew about climate change decades ago but spent millions to promote misinformation to protect its bottom line, made almost $56 billion last year - larger than the GDP of more than 100 nations.

⚡️Amazon claims to have set a new corporate record for the most renewable energy announced by a single company in one year. The company has been the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy since 2020.

This week's big read

🤑 “We are greening ourselves into extinction.” Apocalypse investors are pushing fake climate solutions – including electric vehicles, climate-smart agriculture, and massive tree-planting projects – that are making climate change worse, says Vijay Kolinjivadi, writing for Al Jazeera.

Well, that's interesting

Right now, 1.5 billion cows are just standing around burping and farting methane.

🐄💨

One cow can produce over 200 litres of methane a day. Times that by a-billion-and-a-half, equals more emissions than some of the world’s largest countries, including Russia, Canada, and Australia.

Last year, New Zealand became the first country to propose taxing cow farts, which could force farmers to either reduce their herd numbers, find new ways to offset their emissions, or go out of business.

Or they could try feeding their cows seaweed.

Research has found that adding seaweed to cow feed can reduce methane formation in their guts by up to 80% (another study says 99%).

Cows apparently don’t notice the taste of the seaweed, and consumers can’t taste it in their steak either. As a rich source of nutrients, seaweed can improve the health of a cow’s digestive system and overall “performance”.

Bill Gates is all for it. So is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. And Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma.

Through their venture capital company, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, they have pumped $12 million into start-up Rumin8, an Australian company aiming to reduce the climate impact of the planet’s cows by feeding them seaweed and reducing the amount of methane they burp.

Although seaweed is a sustainable and renewable resource, concerns remain about the cost of producing it as a food supplement and the unknown impact that seaweed farming could have on marine ecosystems.

I'll leave you on this happy note...

A happy cow with an identity crisis.

Must be all the seaweed.

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