Climate Cattle Metabolic Intervention in the Good Anthropocene

Abstract

Scientific measurement and prediction tools have highlighted the significant greenhouse gas contributions of farmed animals, particularly dairy and meat cows. Emergent analysis and associated political discourse have refigured narratives of blame for the contemporary climate crisis, influencing international policy and inspiring a range of technological and economic fixes to construct “climate cattle” as keystone species for a “good Anthropocene.” Interventions are centered on bovine metabolisms at different spatial and temporal scales; they include the use of feed supplements that inhibit methane production in bovine rumens during digestion, and selective breeding or genetic engineering for the breeding of future-ready low-methane cows. In these bovine “technofix” solutions, the global scale is invoked to drive metabolic interventions at multiple smaller scales including individual cows, their microbiomes, and their genomes. Research, however, suggests that these interventions do not neatly scale back up as invoked by those deploying them for climate-related ends. Rather, the global scale functions discursively to incentivize bovine metabolic intervention, influence agricultural policies, and draw investment into ecomodernist visions of “good cows for a good Anthropocene.” Through examining how cows figure as both problems and solutions through metabolic interventions, this article traces the importance of, and issues with, scale in contemporary environmental governance.