Cows and Our Environment
A few incorrect (though fairly unimportant) claims in the meme here:
Cow poop creates biodiversity. Wrong. See link.
The lifecycle of grass takes CO2 out of the air and replaces it with oxygen. Throughout a 24-hour cycle, the intakes and outputs of CO2 and oxygen from green plants balance themselves. Yes, an infinitesimally small amount of CO2 is sequestered for a relatively short period of time in the grass that the cow eats, which is rereleased when the cow is processed. This is why growing trees (vs. grass) makes a real difference, i.e., the CO2 is sequestered in wood that can be locked into building products lasting decades or even centuries.
The meat industry is the single most destructive thing we do with the respect to the planet’s health. That’s because:
a) The land we’re using comes largely from the destruction of the Earth’s rainforests, often referred to as the planet’s “lungs,” which are being torn apart at the rate of 85 acres per minute, and
b) Every cow on Earth belches ~220 pounds of methane per year, a greenhouse gas that is shorter-lived than CO2, but ~28 times more powerful.
Bill Gates is just one, albeit an extremely visible one, of the many millions of people who are concerned about and taking responsibility for the planet’s health. In fact, there are more than 200,000 groups on Earth whose mission is environmental justice.
Gates comes at this particular problem via a variety of efforts to reduce meat consumption via the promotion of plant-based and lab-grown meat, public relations, etc.
From his home in Buckinghamshire, England, my colleague Gary Tulie (pictured) writes:
My politically conservative, life-long Republican mom and I had a conversation last night that I thought I’d share.
In response to the reader who submitted the meme here, another fellow notes: (The existence of) God is an unfalsifiable proposition, meaning that science can’t say anything positive or negative about it. You’re welcome to believe whatever you want, but science and religion are non-overlapping domains, and I personally think it’s better for both if (we) keep them separate.
Young folks may not get the reference here, as the American sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” aired in the late 1960s.
Perhaps America’s greatest news story right now is Trump’s attempt to have the Supreme Court rule that he is immune from criminal prosecution because he was president at the time he committed the alleged crimes. Most of us view this as absurd, but let’s examine the subject more closely.
From a reader, apparently anxious to show off his ignorance of world affairs.
This from Richard Stengel, author, political analyst, and former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the Obama administration.
I encourage readers to check out the 
Quite a few of the people I grew up with in the suburbs of Philadelphia have turned out to be Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists; the meme here came from one of them.
