So You're Fed Up With The Heatwaves

 

Without ‘greenhouse gases’ in our atmosphere, the Earth would be too cold to live on.  But now we have too much, so it’s getting too hot.  Already it’s difficult to live in places, and the effect is an overall change in the weather, resulting in less ability to produce food.

These gases do just as their name suggests, trapping heat inside the atmosphere, allowing the world to heat up like the inside of a greenhouse.

We need to metaphorically open some vents.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is our biggest enemy.

But it’s not just the amount of fauna vs flora, we keep adding to the CO2 by what we do, in industry, in our homes, and by our means of transport. 

Until we change to all electricity being generated by renewables (eg solar, wind, water/wave power), we keep making things worse.

Simply providing ourselves with electricity and heat (at March 2026) accounted for 29.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Transport adds another 13.3%.

These two activities make nearly half all the CO2 we put into the air yearly.

The rest comes from manufacturing, agricultural energy, and buildings.

Apart from the heat needed to make cement, the process of breaking up limestone (calcium carbonate) produces calcium oxide and CO2, which is about 3.4% of all greenhouse emissions.  Still want to pave over your front garden?

Trees and soil store vast amounts of carbon, but when forests are cleared the carbon drifts up in the form of CO2.  Between 2010-2019, changing land use produced 45% of the total CO2 going into the atmosphere.  The biggest effect is when tropical forests are reduced as they store the most carbon per acre.  Not really worth cutting them down to make a holiday destination, or to grow crops, is it?

Most people know that animals, including us, breath in oxygen and exhale CO2, whereas plants take in CO2 and transmit oxygen.  That’s not the complete story, but it’ll do for now.  We’ve been mostly in balance in this respect, until now.  Now there are more humans and fewer plants, and we do ecologically bad stuff!

And all these problems result in our planet warming, which then goes on to cause more problems.  One alarming one is the thawing of the Arctic permafrost.  A lot of organic matter has been frozen within it for millennia, but the thawing allows microbes to decompose it, releasing CO2 and methane.

Even if we stop emitting CO2, some of it will last in the atmosphere for generations, while some will be absorbed by plants or oceans within a few years.

The atmosphere used to be in balance, taking care of itself, but we have been pumping out too much CO2 and reducing the natural carbon captures – chopping down forests and so on.

 

Reducing the climate catastrophe could be achieved more quickly by taking care of methane, the second largest cause of global warming.  Compared to CO2 it traps 86 times more heat, but it doesn’t last in the atmosphere so long, approximately only 12 years.  Thus it can be got rid of more quickly and reduce a larger amount of heat.

Around 40% of methane comes from farming, raising livestock, animal manure and dairy production, but also (and this surprised me) from rice cultivation.

Oil, gas and coal production, processing, transport and leakages during extraction send about 35% of all methane into the atmosphere.  Landfills and sewage supply around 20%.

Methane also causes ground-level ozone pollution and reducing it could prevent nearly a million premature deaths and 90 million tonnes of crop losses.  It could also prevent a possible 85 billion hours of lost labour due to extreme heat (recently already 400 million hours per year).  Altogether benefitting the global economy by around US$260 billion.

Existing national commitments could reduce global methane emission by about 8% below the 2020 level by 2030

Full implementation of all proven technical measures could deliver a 32% reduction, meeting the international Global Methan Pledge (GMP), agreed by around 159 countries.  There is a potential to reduce 72% of emissions if the G20+ countries made a full effort, as they are responsible for the majority of them.

Unfortunately China, Russia and India are not yet part of the GMP.  The US are, but with Trump’s policies of increasing the use of oil, gas and coal, I doubt they are meeting targets.

Farming produces nearly half of methane emissions, and two-thirds of that comes from ruminant animals’ digestion and manure.  Microorganisms in the stomachs of cattle, sheep and goats break down food, generating methane which is mainly released through burping.  Pigs and horses produce far less.

Measures are being developed to help reduce methane emissions from cows, from enrichment of diet to an anti-methane vaccine; but they are not ridding the heating world of the problem.

Where manure is kept in wet conditions it is ideal for methane-producing microorganisms, whereas dry storage is more eco-friendly.

My personal favourite strategy to reduce these problems, at least in the richer countries of the world, would be to change from eating red meat, especially beef, to plant-based substitutes.  Most people who haven’t tried them will be surprised at how good a meal can be made from these.  There is also the prospect of meat being ‘grown’ in labs.

To encourage people to eat in a more environmentally friendly way, I would suggest a ban on advertising meat products, especially where it is shown cooked and made to look tasty.  Investment should allow for more advertising and promotion of plant-based alternatives.  Of course, government investment to reduce the price of the alternative products would also help.

Alongside this is improvement and promotion of dairy alternatives.  Personally I love oat milk with cereal, although I haven’t quite got used to the taste of it in coffee.  There are many delicious yoghurts made from plants that could just do with some advertising and help to reduce the prices until more is sold.

Plant-based cheese is also available, but further effort needs to be made for a wider range of types, and of course a lowering of costs.

And let us not forget, the land that would be saved from rearing cattle can be used for the plants needed to produce these products with, I suspect, some to spare.  Trees and bee friendly flowers could be grown, helping further to keep our planet habitable.

Flooded rice fields deplete oxygen and fuel methane production.  Fertilizer use, soil types and irrigation methods can vary the amount of damaging gases released.  One of the most promising ways of reducing methane output is selective breeding of rice types.  A 2025 study shows the potential to reduce methane production in rice growing by 70%.  Given the diets of poorer countries, this would be welcome.

 

Another small tip is to check your energy supplier.  Obviously, we will all need to change to electric-only, but we need to use that from renewable, harmless sources, such as solar, wind and wave power.

I’ll leave you to check companies on the internet, but I have, while writing this, discovered that I can change to a green electricity company from the one I was using, and I will be saving money every month, too!

I suggest looking up the most environmentally friendly electricity suppliers in your country.

Good luck, and have fun, claiming our planet back in a true pro-life way (not the right-wing pseudo-Christian way).