this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Just equip the livestock with ostomy pouches and collect their waste in vats, then use chemistry to break down the methane into more friendly and usable compounds for agriculture etc. There you go. I’ve solved climate change in one paragraph.
That'd still be quite high in emissions. Land deforestation and the massive amounts of feed are large portions of emissions for meat and dairy products. It takes far more feed than it does to eat crops directly due to the energy loss from creatures using that energy to move around, on their body functions, etc.
The practices somewhat similar to what's suggested there work out too well in practice. Manure lagoons, where waste is stored in huge pools to break down, have several environmental problems
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_lagoon#Environmental_and_health_impacts
I hate to provide such a short answer to such a well written response, but perhaps shit lagoons aren’t the only way to process manure cleanly. Also, I’m not convinced that we can’t use high rise facilities for these animals and give them a matrix type experience. Each animal gets a cell, treadmill, VR screen/googles, and feed. Something along those lines.
If that plan worked perfectly, you'd solve the land use and, giving you an extremely generous benefit of the doubt, the emissions from manure problems.
All you have to now is figure out how to build and maintain these high-rises cost effectively, and how to generate enough power for a matrix-like experience and all the VR headsets and treadmills for the cows. And even then you'd still be wasting a lot of food by feeding it to animals rather than just eating it directly.
Use the methane and solar to fuel the facility. Capture the emission and reuse them in fertilizer as well. Have the facility be a one-stop-shop, which produces the feed from hydroponics. The VR for a cow is not going to be that difficult. Just project fields in front of them. The treadmill can just have bearings and not require power. If anything they can be used to generate it.