Sacred Emissions
Martha Walden, Guest Contributor
Oil and gas have a deservedly bad rap for how much methane they emit just from drilling and delivery. California’s Air Resources Board [CARB] counted almost 19 million metric tons of CO2e from that source in 2020. No wonder the state is working on bringing those numbers down through Cap and Trade and other regulations.
Cows, on the other hand, have it easy. The livestock industry in California emits more than three times as much as fossil fuels production, yet the state declines to regulate those emissions. Instead, it helps farmers and dairies adopt different techniques to voluntarily lower their methane emissions. Some programs help set up anaerobic dairy digesters to utilize the emissions of covered manure lagoons. Then the state buys the captured methane. Other programs focus on dry manure management.
According to SB 1383, which became state law eight years ago, California was supposed to start regulating the livestock industry in January of this year if the incentives weren’t delivering enough emissions reductions. The target is 40 percent lower by 2030 than 2013 levels. CARB has estimated that the rate of methane reductions between 2018 and 2022 would have to double now in order to meet this target.
Earlier this year Climate Action California’s methane committee, of which 350 Humboldt is a member, petitioned CARB to start regulating methane and other pollutants from livestock in the state. CARB mostly denied the petition, saying that more data and analysis is needed. It also promised to hold a public workshop in August to air findings and to further discuss the issue with community members.
The large majority of those community members turned out to be dairy farmers. Having gotten wind of the petition from CAC they used the workshop to voice their opposition to regulation. Attendees heard the same message – everything is just fine the way it is – from both an assembled panel of people in the livestock business and from most of those who spoke during the public comment period. Some of them were from families that had been in the dairy business for generations, and others were children of immigrants. They praised the incentive programs and the progress their businesses had made towards reducing methane.
The issue is somewhat clouded by lack of exact data. CARB relies on models, yet peer reviewed studies often portray measured methane emissions as higher than modeled emissions. Accurate data is particularly important to determine if incentivizing methane production from dairy digesters causes herd increases. CAC says the correlation is significant, but CARB isn’t so sure.
A much smaller panel of environmental justice advocates had a chance to speak about the experience of living in areas surrounded by dairies and Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFOs). It sounded dismal – groundwater pollution, the fumes of methane and ammonia, the stench, asthma and other illnesses. The farmers who live on those dairies must also be exposed to those conditions, but their houses are presumably better insulated refuges they can escape to when the work is over – plus they’re financially compensated. The neighboring low-income communities experience only the downsides.
California’s reluctance to meddle with this status quo became quite apparent when the public comment period started. Sent to the front of the line were at least a dozen staffers from the offices of various California legislators. Their job was to assure livestock-owning, regulation-adverse constituents that their government representative was on their side.