India's plan to reduce climate change? Make its cows burp less.

Indians want to help the environment by making their cows burp less.

(Image credit: FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images)

published 3 May 2016

India is testing out a new tactic to reduce its carbon emissions: making farm animals less flatulent. Scientists at the Cow Research Institute in Mathura, located about 100 miles south of New Delhi, are experimenting with cattle feed that will make cows less gassy; fewer bovine blasts would cut back on the amount of the heat-trapping gas methane released into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, scientists in the southern state of Kerala are working on a more long-term solution, as researchers there have been experimenting with a strain of miniature cattle that would produce just one-tenth the amount of methane produced by the standard Indian cow.

Silly as it may sound, The New York Times reports that they might just be onto something:

Consider the numbers: India is home to more than 280 million cows, and 200 million more ruminant animals like sheep, goats, yaks, and buffalo. According to an analysis of satellite data from the country’s space program, all those digestive tracts send 13 tons of methane into the atmosphere every year — and pound for pound, methane traps 25 times as much heat as carbon dioxide does.So reducing animal flatulence might actually do some good — especially in India, where there is little chance of cutting back the use of fossil fuels anytime soon. (In fact, the country expects to double its coal production by 2019.) [The New York Times]