It's been a mixed few weeks for cows. First there was the heart-warming story of their involvement (indirect, I hasten to add) in a lonely-hearts club for Welsh farmers. Now comes a report confirming that their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is greater than that of all human transportation systems combined. So even as they were helping to give rural Wales a future, it turns out, cows were destroying the planet, Frank McNally
There are swings and roundabouts with everything, of course, and the lonely-hearts idea is still touching. It was the initiative of an organic dairy co-op whose members were suffering the shortage of females that afflicts many rural communities.
Drawing on the popularity of milk, and inspired by similar campaigns for missing people, the dairy started using its products as billboards in a "Fancy a Farmer" scheme, with pictures of the farmers. Now, in part of Wales, every milk carton is a cry for love.
Although this is an unusual example, cows have always been considered a force for good. Some people, such as the Hindus, go even further. The protected status of Indian cows is such that, two years ago, there were an estimated 40,000 wandering the streets of New Delhi alone, where they had become a major traffic hazard. I spent a few days in that city once and what struck me was how arrogant the cows were. You always had to walk around them, because they knew they had the right of way.
Apparently, however, they can move quite sharply when the occasion demands. The city fathers' perennial campaign to get them off the streets - non-violently, of course - has been thwarted by the animals' ability to spot the cattle-catching squads a mile off and take evasive action. Last I heard, the Delhi authorities had resorted to private enterprise, offering bounties to anyone who rounded any up.
Even in the West, however, cows have always tended to be seen as the epitome of everything good and wholesome. When Pink Floyd wanted a comforting, earthy image for the front of their hippy-era album Atom Heart Mother, they reached for a female Friesian, who was pictured looking fetchingly over her shoulder at the camera. Now, nearly four decades on, that album cover looks like a gloomy prediction of climate change.
As regular readers of this column will know, cows are nature's weather-vanes. When grazing, all members of a herd will point in the same direction, with their backs to the prevailing wind. But as the latest edition of the Atlantic Monthly illustrates in a piece called "the Bovine Menace", the prevailing winds in a cow's vicinity can be two-way.
In fairness, the problem is not just flatulence and noxious manure. From deforestation to the vast amounts of water used in livestock production, the industry leaves a very big environmental footprint, according to a scientific report cited in the article. But the contribution to greenhouse gases is "enormous". As well as producing 9 per cent of total CO2 emissions, livestock are responsible for 37 per cent of methane and 65 per cent of nitrous oxide.
The combination amounts to 18 per cent of the total global warming effect - more than from transport. Or, as the Atlantic puts it: "Forget SUVs and tractor-trailers; the world's livestock play a larger role in global warming than all of our planes, trains, and automobiles combined." And lest anyone suspect that the report is a conspiracy by airlines and car manufacturers, it should be said that most of its figures come from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The bad news is that global production of meat and milk may double by 2050, if unchecked. The good news is that any reduction in livestock gases could quickly cool the environment. Whereas carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a century, methane clears in about eight years. And while reducing human demand for milk and meat would help, so would the potentially easier challenge of changing the diet of cattle, to make them less combustible.
It's an alarming thought that the cow in a trailer towed by an SUV is a bigger threat to the planet than the vehicle. But bad and all as SUVs are, they at least benefit from catalytic converters and other technological breakthroughs designed to reduce their impact on the environment. Cars in general are much cleaner than they were a few decades ago. The same cannot be said for cows, unfortunately. In terms of catalytic conversion, the 1970 model used by Pink Floyd is the same as the model produced today.
While everything else has gone colour in the interim, the Friesian is still only available in black and white. But as needs dictate, even it will soon have to go green. In doing so it will be catching up with the car industry. Perhaps by 2025, cows will have lower emissions, streamlined interiors, and the ability - whenever the New Delhi cattle-catching squad appears - to go from 0 to 60 in three seconds.
Welsh farmers will be able to advertise for love with a clear conscience then. The planet's future will be safe too. And maybe scientists will at last be ready to meet the ultimate challenge: inventing a mechanism that lets you open one of those cartons without spilling the milk.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie