Given a constant population of cows [1], the cows do not cause an increase in green houses gasses over time.
This is because the methane from the cows has a half life of between six and eight years [2]. Given a fixed population cows, the amount of GHG going into the atmosphere is the same as the amount of GHG coming out of the atmosphere.
The problem with run away climate change is oil. Given a fixed consumption of oil, the amount of GHG in the atmosphere increases over time.
perhaps some kind of financial incentive to curb and eventually reverse the artificially inflated population of cows whose emissions, while part of the closed carbon cycle, increase the greenhouse gas effect of our atmosphere during their half lives, would be a simple and effective step we could take towards increasing the odds we survive the next few centuries that is not at all at odds with also tackling our reliance on fossil fuels?
This is a factual matter. Why be snarky when you can instead lookup the answer? The population of cows in the EU has been relatively constant with a slight downward trend. [1]
Maybe I’m using the wrong term but my understanding is that the carbon comes from the feed, which itself pulls it from the atmosphere. Thus, it came from the air, and goes back into the air.
The fossil fuels did the same but on a grander scale and longer timeline where the carbon becomes sequestered. Carbon taxes on that make sense.
From what I understand carbon comes from the soil as well as from the air, and it's supposed to be "stored" back into the soil by various means but our agriculture and more generally human activities tend to accelerate release of carbon from the soil and refrein the storing process. And that provokes a climate disimbalance.
There was a good video on the relation between carbon cycle and massive extinctions throuhout history (1h long) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxTO2w0fbB4
It has a short half-life (years) in the atmosphere though, while CO2 has a very long half-life (centuries or more). Methane in the atmosphere gets photochemically oxidized into CO2 and H2O, but more slowly than when it's combusted.
> I don't really know what you mean by it being part of carbon cycle
Plants breath in co2 from the atmosphere and bind the carbon in their structure. Cows eat the plants and turn some percentage of the bound carbon into cow meat, the rest they poop or fart or breath out. Eventually all that carbon ends up back in the atmosphere where plants again can bind it. This is the carbon cycle. Thus the point is that cows existing do not increase the carbon in circulation. (As opposed to digging up coal or drilling for oil/gas which liberates carbon which used to be in circulation but become bound in fossils.)
