🐄 Combating Climate Change with a Cow Fart Vaccine

📝 America’s Most Endangered Rivers

American Rivers, an environmental group based in Washington D.C., compiles an annual list of the country’s top 10 most endangered rivers. The endangered rivers list highlights rivers that face unique threats in the near future such as a major decision that the public can help influence in the coming year, the significance of the river to people and nature, and the magnitude of the threat to the river and its communities. This year, the Mississippi River topped the list. American Rivers says that hundreds of job cuts at FEMA and calls to abolish the agency and its National Flood Insurance Program risks river health and human safety along its entirety. It also added that extreme weather is fueling more devastating floods along the river. Rounding out the top 3 rivers on the list, the Tijuana River ranks second due to out-of-control sewage and chemical pollution, while the Rivers of Southern Appalachia takes third place due to extreme weather impacts to unsafe dams and federal capacity to help recovery after recent hurricanes.

Doyle Rice, USA Today

🐄 Combating Climate Change with a Cow Fart Vaccine

Cows have long been a known source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 28 times more potent than CO2. As a cow eats grass, the grass ferments in its stomach, and naturally produces methane. The methane is then released through belching and farting, and by manure. On average, a single cow can produce 200 pounds of methane per year. Livestock accounts for almost 1/3 of human-related methane, which are collectively responsible for about 30% of global warming. In an effort to combat this, scientists have been working on the idea of a “cow fart vaccine” for nearly a decade. The vaccine would need to produce antibodies that bind with the bacteria in the cow’s stomach that produce the methane, and stop them from doing so. The goal of the vaccine would be to have zero effect on the wellbeing of the cows and reduce methane emissions by at least 30%.

Jacopo Prisco, CNN Climate

🍚 Climate Change Could Make Rice Toxic

According to new research, the world’s most consumed grain, rice, will become increasingly toxic as the atmosphere warms and as CO2 emissions rise. This would potentially put billions of people at risk for cancers and other diseases. Half the world’s population relies on rice for the majority of its food needs, especially in developing countries. However, the way it is grown mostly submerged in paddies, coupled with its highly porous texture, means it can absorb unusually high levels of arsenic - a potent carcinogenic toxin that is especially dangerous to babies. The researchers say that the number one thing we can do to keep this from happening is to slow climate change. Other methods of intervention could include developing strains of rice that are less absorbent and educating consumers about alternatives to rice.

Georgia Gustin, Inside Climate News