i know they're talking about sources of air pollution , but deforestation also is a big part of the equation and is also related to said farming on a global scale.
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Yeah it’s definitely the farms and wildfires and not the 1 billion gas guzzling vehicles we drive daily across the globe, the thousands of fossil fuel power plants, or the millions of factories pumping out metric tons of shit into the sky everyday.
Edit: The context of the article is specifically about PM2.5, micro particles that are linked to dementia and other health issues. However, it’s arguable that the increase in wildfires is actually an indirect result of global greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s the EPAs report on the share of greenhouse gas sources in the US alone. Agriculture ranks low on total emissions, but potentially higher on PM2.5 emissions.
Food is an insanely big global commodity, "Big Meat" has convinced tons of folks into eating it more than once a day, it's insane. For reference, 3/4 of all crops grown in the US are given to live stock. Only thing comparable to meat is the military. But military with the cars, powerplants, and massive factories are tied up in the worldwide wildfires. They're directly related, from an individual stand point stopping meat consumption is the biggest move a single person can make. One 1/4lb beef patty is equal to the water needed to shower for a month. All that said, farms make sense to highlight as renewable straws and bags don't really help. Summing up everything from the corporate asshats as wild fires while also isolating the biggest factor we each have control over is a smart move from my viewpoint.
Edit: I'd bet the dementia aspect is partially controlled by day to day life now having vivid demonstrations of the damage the earth has taken and the very real aspect we have to question if the future is inhabitable. Of the Ag industry, livestock is the most resource dependant by a large margin and a major driver of antibiotic resistant microbes, plus invokes toxic damage to the surrounding area when done on a large scale.
Edit 2: Well, though its not wrong, having pipelines under the transport umbrella skews the numbers to me. The liquids alone being volatile identifies they will be converted to the gaseous phase easily, especially in those volumes. It should 100% be it's own category. The data link also only had a review of the transportation data, livestock feed + water and moving the livestock is definitely not accounted for in Ag but transport. Seems like the lines were blurred to tell a specific story.