Introduction: The Interconnection of Climate Change and Animal Welfare

By most accounts, climate change is the single greatest existential threat, not only to human life but also to all life on Earth. We are already seeing the impact in the form of rising sea levels, catastrophic wildfires and water shortages. Animals and our policies toward them are at the very heart of both the causes of climate change and its devastating effects. Our massive factory farming of animals to feed our enormous appetite for meat is a major cause of climate change. And many species of animals living in the wild will suffer and die out as a direct result of the effects of global warming.

Animal Agriculture As A Major Contributor To Climate Change

The Impact of Factory FarmingWith rising populations and increasing affluence, our global appetite for meat is growing to the point that it is nearly insatiable. Given the quantities of meat needed to fulfill that demand and the pressure to keep prices low and profits high, factory farming is the dominant method of raising animals destined for our plates. Factory farms (also known as Confined Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOÕs) consume massive amounts of fossil fuels. How? Producing billions of animals for us to eat requires production of massive amounts of feed crops: namely, corn and soybeans.

Land Use and Deforestation for Animal Feed

Corn and soy are the two most prolific crops in the United States. As of 2024, the USDA estimates that 86 million acres of the country are devoted to growing soy, 75% of which will be used as animal feed. Almost all of that is planted with herbicide-resistant seeds so that the land can be sprayed with weed-killing chemicals that run off into nearby waterways without harming the crop. To find all the land necessary to grow such a profitable crop, forests and grasslands that previously provided habitat for native species are now flattened and planted with soy as far as the eye can see. Corn crops occupy a whopping 91.5 million acres with approximately 36 million acres dedicated to corn fed to animals raised for food. A 2015 University of Wisconsin study found that the conversion of grasslands to soy and corn fields just for the period 2008 to 2012 could have released as much CO2 as 34 coal plants running for an entire year.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Livestock

In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization published a study, "Livestock's Long Shadow," which highlighted and quantified the effect of animal agriculture on climate change. The report concluded that livestock produced a staggering 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than all modes of transportation combined. The FAO study attempted to consider every factor associated with producing meat, including emissions from fertilizer production, converting land from forests to pastures, growing feed, and direct emissions from animals (belching and manure) from birth to death. Some have called the details of the analysis into question, but the fact remains that our increasing population coupled with our enormous appetite for meat contributes mightily to global warming. Demand for meat is rising in developing and emerging economies, raising the specter of continued acceleration of the global warming process. Given the projected population growth in the developing world, absent a change in diet, the continued farming of animals will increase the pace of global warming. Wildlife: The Silent Victims of Climate ChangeThe Sixth Mass Extinction Our planet is now experiencing its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals-- only the sixth wave of mass extinctions in the past half billion years. Species extinction is a natural phenomenon but, historically, it occurs at a natural "background" rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate the current rate of extinction at up to 1,000 times the background rate, with dozens of species going extinct every day. The effects of climate change that will profoundly affect animal species include the most visible, polar bears starving and drowning, and coral reefs suffering massive die-off as the waters become too warm, to less highly publicized effects on coastal wildlife who will fall victim to rising sea levels. Scientists predict that, if we keep going along our current greenhouse gas emissions trajectory, climate change will cause more than a third of the Earth's animal and plant species to face extinction by 2050-and up to 70% by the end of the century.

Diverse Impacts on Various Species

When envisioning the effects of global warming on wild animals, most people immediately think of polar bears and melting ice caps, but the range of animals impacted by climate change is almost unlimited as are the ways in which climate will impact their lives and survival. At the other end of the Earth, around the South Pole, the Emperor penguin is facing enormous threats from global warming, which causes profound changes in the Antarctic ecosystem and hurts penguins in diverse ways, from reducing prey species to causing ice shelves to collapse. Away from the poles, the effects of climate change are just as real. Rising temperatures will create dangers to mammals from proliferation of deadly parasites. Milder winters mean higher numbers of winter ticks. Thousands of ticks can attach to a single moose, weakening his immune system and putting his life in danger. Parasites will also flourish in warmer water and are already beginning to attack salmon in Alaska's Yukon River.Animals that have evolved to blend into their environment to avoid predators will also be profoundly affected by the changing landscape. To help hide from predators, snowshoe hares have evolved to turn white in winter to blend in with the snow. With climate change, snow in some areas is melting earlier than usual, leaving stark white hares exposed in snow-less landscapes. Although this might be seen as a benefit to predator species, snowshoe hares are critical players in forest ecosystems and their disappearance will affect that delicate balance. As temperatures rise worldwide, many species, like the American pika (an animal about the size and shape of a hamster that lives at high elevations where cool, moist conditions prevail) are forced to flee the warming by moving up in elevation or by moving northward or southward, away from warmer equatorial areas. Species who depend on either snow or forest are watching their habitat disappear. Amphibians and fish are threatened by the drought that accompanies climate change, while reptiles like the loggerhead sea turtle have already had their nesting habits impacted by warmer ocean temperatures. Even insects are affected. Butterflies, for example, are threatened as global warming reduces food availability for larvae.Much of the human-generated carbon dioxide eventually ends up in our oceans, causing ocean acidification and depleting seawater of the compounds that organisms like corals, crabs and zooplankton require to build the protective shells and skeletons they need to survive. Because plankton form the bedrock of the delicate ocean food chain, ocean acidification could disrupt the entire marine ecosystem. Warmer water temperatures have also been shown to slow the growth of phytoplankton-the microscopic plant counterpart to zooplankton-imperiling all species in the ocean food chain. Species diversity ensures the resilience of all types of ecosystems, allowing ecological communities to withstand stress. Because the rate of change in our biosphere is increasing, and because every species' extinction potentially leads to the extinction of others that interact with that species in an interconnected ecological web, numbers of extinctions are likely to balloon as ecosystems unravel.

Current Climate Policy in the United States 

Climate action has had stops and starts and ups and downs since Al Gore raised public awareness with the release of the film ÒAn Inconvenient TruthÓ in 2006. In 2017, the United States withdrew its participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change Mitigation, which required signatory countries to determine, plan and regularly report on the contribution that they undertake to mitigate global warming. As of 2024, we are working toward net zero emissions by 2050, with an intermediate goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. But, as in the past, these goals and the means used to achieve them are subject to change with each administration. This should go without saying but climate change is here and causing species to go extinct every day. How much time we have left to slow or stop these effects can be debated. What is clear is that inaction will inevitably come at a high cost to animals and the ecosystems on which human life depends.