Climate-Warming Methane Emissions from the World’s Biggest Livestock Companies Are Bigger Than From Major Oil and Gas Companies

The world’s biggest meat and dairy companies are responsible for emitting more climate-warming methane than all of the countries in the European Union and United Kingdom combined, according to a new assessment published Monday.

Livestock, mostly beef and dairy cattle, account for roughly one-third of global emissions of methane, a short-lived but especially potent greenhouse gas. Yet, unlike energy companies, beef and dairy companies are not required to report their greenhouse gas emissions.

So, in an effort to understand the climate impacts of these livestock companies, the nonprofit research firm Profundo and four environmental advocacy groups calculated emissions by cobbling together available production and slaughter data and plugging the numbers into an updated modeling framework us