Current Climate: Curbing Cow Farts With Selective Breeding

Forbes

14-04-2025

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Much of the news on climate has been discouraging of late. Europe had its warmest-ever March. President Trump is pushing to ramp up mining and use of coal, the most carbon-intense energy source. His administration is also gutting environmental rules, curbing climate research and trying to stop state programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gas pollution. But there's promising news on efforts to cut down on harmful methane emissions generated by cows and other livestock.
Globally, cattle are the single largest source of agricultural methane emissions, and efforts are underway to reduce that problem with new types of feeds and improved management of their manure. But the Bezos Earth Fund and Global Methane Hub kicked off a $27.4 million program that's aimed at breeding cattle and other farm animals that are naturally less gassy.
The initiative will provide grants in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Oceania to identify and prioritize the breeding of animals with biological traits that cause them to produce less methane. Within every herd, some animals produce up to 30% less methane than others and selecting and breeding for these traits could lead to substantial cuts in emissions. This means farmers won't have to change how they feed and raise their animals, making it an easy, no-cost pathway to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
'Reducing methane from cattle is one of the most elegant solutions we have to slow climate change,' Andy Jarvis, director of the Bezos Earth Fund's Future of Food program, said in a statement.
AFP via Getty Images
Tesla's stock has slid steadily this year, hurt by declining sales and widespread protests over CEO Elon Musk's leadership of President Trump's DOGE initiative, which is making haphazard staffing and budget cuts to federal agencies. The electric vehicle maker's sharp-edged Cybertruck is also sliding, posting sharply lower sales in the year's first quarter.
The Austin-based company delivered just 6,406 Cybertrucks this year through March, according to Cox Automotive. That's more than double its volume in the year-earlier period, when it was slowly starting to make the hard-to-build model. But the quarterly figure was less than half of what it sold in either the third or fourth quarter of 2024–14,416 and 12,991 units, respectively–as its production ramped up.
Musk had previously forecast that annual sales of the electric pickup might average 250,000 a year, though it delivered only about 39,000 last year. A combination of multiple recalls–including one last month to fix stainless steel body panels that fell off due to faulty glue–and the likelihood of sharply higher costs for steel, aluminum and imported auto parts due to Trump's tariffs, suggest Tesla will struggle to boost sales of a model that can sell for about $100,000. Weak demand has also led to an inventory of about 2,400 unsold new Cybertrucks, according to auto news site Jalopnik.
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World Economic Forum/Mattias Nutt
It's easy to recognize water scarcity in times of drought, but how can we manage rising demand for it from things like data centers and manufacturing as well as population growth?
It's often invisible, but water is vital for industry and society in terms of our health and running our economies and our cities. Just starting to think about the wider water or hydrological cycle being off-kilter, which science is showing us that it is, has a far-reaching impact in ways I think people haven't properly understood. When you're thinking about trends in the consumption of water, you have to look at the bigger picture and say we're experiencing the water cycle being off-kilter–through too much due to flooding and unpredictable weather patterns, extreme weather, or too little water, both in the form of scarcity and in the changing ways in which we can access it. And then, too, polluted water, which in developing countries can be in the form of wastewater that's going untreated and in developed countries can be in the form of contamination of drinking water. It's really touching on literally every industry, every community, every country. Having that wider narrative on the issues around water is important.
When you start to get into the consumption trends, 70% plus of water consumption is going into producing our food. The rest is being pushed around for industrial use, and that has challenges. The third is really around cities. If you go industry by industry and start to look at what that means, there is the kind of classic competition for almost every basin on earth from industries like mining and agriculture and manufacturing.
Then you have some of these emerging industries that are starting to both operate in water-stressed regions and use water within the ingredients of their business model, like fast fashion, AI and data centers. There's growing pressure, and we know now that in the next five years, by 2030, we're going to exceed our supply of water with an increased 40% in demand. So how do we reconcile the kinds of solutions that help us reinvent water management and also use much more circular thinking in the way we are approaching some of those problems?
What's the answer?
Companies have been more and more cognizant of their footprint, not only in terms of the water they're using within their supply chains but the fact that the communities and the basins where they now need to go and operate are so under stress that they're just not going to have that access. So even though [government] policy may or may not be addressing some of that, you are starting to see it on the industry side, whether it's concrete, whether it's energy or manufacturing, I think they have a little bit more of a real understanding of the cost of water and maybe in a better version of this in the future, the value of water.
We need to look at this both around the governance of water, around the fit for purpose finance needed for water, the basin level or sort of waterway specific partnerships that need to happen, at least on the industry side in a pre-competitive way. Then also looking at the tools and the technologies, the policy nexus that can help enable new early-stage tech, but also innovation more broadly toward those outcomes.
In terms of sparks of hope, where we're seeing good innovation, I think it's on a number of fronts. One is less sexy, which is that we need cooperation to happen. It isn't some breakthrough, deep-tech solution. We just need people to recognize that they have skin in the game, and they need to come around the table and solve for this.
Global breakthrough on treaty to tackle climate emissions from shipping. The agreement covers the vast majority of the world's commercial shipping and means that starting in 2028, ship owners will have to use increasingly cleaner fuels or face fines (BBC)
Trump issues order to block state climate change policies. The move is part of efforts by the administration to pump up domestic production of fossil fuels and came just hours after Trump issued orders to increase coal production (Reuters)
Trump moves to hobble major US climate change study. The cuts are a potentially fatal blow to the National Climate Assessment that Congress mandated to ensure the government understands the threats posed by rising temperatures (Politico)
Inside the EV startup secretly backed by Jeff Bezos. EV startup Slate Auto, based in Michigan, could start production as soon as next year (TechCrunch)
So much for 'drill, baby, drill.' Oil prices tumble further as Trump's tariffs weigh on economic outlook. Crude oil now costs 15% less than before he revealed his tariff plans–making more drilling economically unsound. (New York Times)
World surpasses 40% clean power as renewables see record rise. Solar is the main driver of the growth in renewable electricity, with generation doubling in the past three years (Ember)
U.S. electricity demand will grow 50% by 2050, study finds. Data centers and transportation electrification will drive U.S. electricity demand about 2% higher each year for the next quarter century (Utility Dive)