Seeing Stars - The New Metric That Could Allow The Meat And Dairy Industry To Avoid Climate Action

For Fonterra, the largest dairy exporter in The following report unveils the profound implications the adoption of the GWP* the world, a 30% reduction between 2020 and 2030 calculated with GWP* would methodology could have on climate policies, equity and the transformation of the enable the company to claim to be taking around 19 million tonnes of CO2 equiv- food system. [...] assigned to effects at different times”.12 1.1 The global methane debate A central plank of the animal agriculture’s attempts to address its emissions issue is the adoption of a new method for measuring the impact of methane emissions To understand GWP*, it is helpful to understand the impact of methane and its called GWP* (so-called ‘GWP-star’). [...] The box includes a GWP* proponents argue that the ‘exchange rate’ of conventional GWP does not fairly graph comparing the CO2 equivalent emissions values under various metrics (in- reflect the changing impact of emissions, and the interplay of new and degrading cluding GWP20, GWP100 and GWP*) of two methane emissions trajectories and the GHG emissions over time. [...] emissions in the IPCC climate modelling.59 The graph covers the period from 1750 through to 2100, and the two methane emission trajectories (dotted black lines) While GWP accounting focuses on the amount of CO2 emissions that would produce both show peaks of global methane emissions before 2100 – on the left they peak the same heat-trapping effect over a certain time horizon as a tonne of methane. [...] Changing Markets © 2023 all right reserved Seeing stars: The new methane metric that could allow the meat and dairy industry to avoid climate actionnimal agriculture | GWP* to the rescue | 23 In the 2030 framing, the calculations are based on the 2030 emissions rate and the change from 2020 to 2030.