A few days ago, The Guardian ran an article by reporter Troy Farah with a curious headline.
US rivers and lakes are shrinking for a surprising reason: cows
The article was illustrated with one of those cow photographs shot with a wide-angle lens that make the cow look ridiculously comical, and which we are not sharing in this essay, out of respect. Not exactly a flattering mugshot. I seriously doubt the cow signed a release, allowing his or her image to be used in that Guardian article — especially since it points the finger directly at cows for the water shortage in the American West.
From Mr. Farah’s article:
A recent analysis published in ‘Nature’ found cattle to be one of the major drivers of water shortages. Notably, it is because of water used to grow crops that are fed to cows such as alfalfa and hay. Across the US, cattle-feed crops, which end up as beef and dairy products, account for 23% of all water consumption, according to the report.
In the Colorado River Basin, it is over half…
“The fact that over half of that water is going to cattle-feed crops just floored us,” Richter said. “We had to double and triple check to make sure we got the numbers right.”
That would be Brian Richter, president of ‘Sustainable Waters’, a water conservation non-profit, and the lead author of the March 2020 Nature article.
If you were a cow, would you want your photo illustrating an article that holds you responsible for more than half the water consumption in Colorado? “Noooooooo.”
And here, I’ve been drinking beer instead of water, because I felt guilty about the declining water level in Lake Powell. And all this time it was the hamburgers.
Who knew that it could take so much water to make a double-cheeseburger? One calculation puts it at 450 gallons per quarter-pounder. And that doesn’t count the bun.
Seems like there’s been an endless stream of “Megadrought” articles in newspapers lately, warning us that we’re going to run plumb out of water in Colorado — like, really soon — unless we spend $40 billion on big, new dams and trans-mountain pipelines. That’s a recent estimate for the cost of The Colorado Water Plan written during the Hickenlooper administration.
According to the Nature article, “Beef consumers living in the Los Angeles, Portland, Denver and San Francisco metropolitan areas bear the greatest responsibility for these hydrological and ecological impacts.”
$40 billion dollars worth of hydrological devastation, courtesy of McDonald’s and Wendy’s… here in Colorado alone?
So as I understand it, if we switch to… wait a minute, I’m… I’m having trouble writing this sentence… if we were to switch to… that is, if we could bear to switch to… meatless Beyond Burgers… aaarrrgh…
There, I’ve said it… if we could switch to meatless Beyond Burgers…
If we could… we would be generating 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions… put twice as much water into our rives and streams…
…and be able to drink plain water, instead of beer, without feeling guilty.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.