Bears, with Gas

John McCain’s had a bellyfull of methane. When it comes to the issue of livestock emissions, he is turning up his nose at some basic biology and making barnyard jokes.

But hey, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is at stake and to reach the very best in public housing sometimes you’ve got to get in touch with your inner ninny (check occupant). After all, it isn’t easy these days being a Republican presidential nominee who believes in evolution and global warming — not if you’ve been rash enough to say so in public. So, to make up for those gaffes, you’ve got to play to the chucklehead base.

This is why McCain, a true American war hero, a politician unafraid to cross the aisle for bipartisan support, a maverick who risked political purgatory trying to rid Congress of the campaign contributions stink, a senator who has braved the wrath of almost all his colleagues by attacking their sneaky practice of budget earmarks — like the odiferous “bridge to nowhere” — is now going around the country pandering to fat cat audiences by making fun of scientific research.

To get those campaign contributions from anti-big-government donors, McCain has been waging a personal war against federally funded biology projects. He gets haw-haws by attacking a $5 million study of grizzly bear DNA, cracking wise, “I don’t know if it was a paternity issue, or criminal, but it was a waste of money.”

Never mind that grizzlies are on the endangered species list or that wildlife biologists are unanimous in praising the research as ingenious, and definitive. The study by respected biologist Katherine Kendall involved placing hair traps over 12,000 square miles, collecting over 33,000 hair samples and individually testing the DNA of each one — and discovering resurgent health of a species that once ruled the West. Until this study nobody knew how many Grizzlies there were; now there’s a much better idea: hundreds more than previously accounted for.

Targeted, too, for special ridicule is research into how methane emitted by livestock affects the atmosphere. McCain’s boilerplate line about this one, delivered with a wink, is, “I always wondered about the testing procedures used to determine those effects on the ozone layer.” That one always gets guffaws. Well you probably have to be there.

Funny, John, but it turns out that animal waste is really serious stuff. Ruminants like cattle are digestively challenged creatures. They are prodigious belchers and fiercely flatulent. That high-fiber diet works right through ‘em, and piles up. A study by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization concludes that the world’s livestock play a larger role in global warming than planes, trains, buses and automobiles combined. In fact, livestock emit more greenhouse gas as measured in CO₂ equivalent — 18 percent more — than all transportation. Livestock manure generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which itself has 296 times the global warming potential of CO₂. This manure is responsible for 64 percent of human-induced ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Phew. And it’s going to get worse. The UN reports that livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s land surface, mostly for pasture but also including arable land used for growing animal feed. Livestock are a major driver of deforestation; 70 percent of former forests of the Amazon are used now for grazing. Global production of meat and milk is projected to double by 2050. Thus, the methane released by animals is currently responsible for almost one-fifth of greenhouse-gas emissions around the world — and will account for two-fifths in another generation.

This pollution is particularly severe in the U.S., a country with outsized demand for animal products and an industrial approach to satisfying the hunger. The so-called waste lagoons common in pork and dairy production and the manure piles connected to cattle feedlots are especially intense sources of methane. Anybody who’s ever driven within a mile of one will regrettably remember.

When questioned about his criticisms of research into such topics, aides of the supposedly straight-talking senator begin speaking with forked tongues. One campaign assistant is insisting to reporters that McCain “doesn’t question the merits of these projects, it’s the process he has a problem with.”

Now that, senator, is a lot of gas.