We live in an odd age when a billionaire can look at the planetary mess, point at cows, and announce that they’re a danger to the climate, while an entire continent quietly demonstrates that the real trouble came in the form of a virus.
Bill Gates likes to say that about 6% of global emissions are from cows, and that we should either “fix the cows” so they stop doing that, or “make beef without the cow”. Catchy line. The Serengeti, however, has a different script, and it starts not with cows, but with rinderpest.
Roll back to East Africa before the late 1800s. The Serengeti is running on its factory settings: huge migratory herds of wildebeest and buffalo sweeping back and forth with the rains, shaving the grass down as they go. Grazers are in charge; grass fuel stays modest; fires happen, but they’re patchy and relatively small; woodlands hang on as scattered trees and clumps that can survive the occasional, not too intense burn.
In that state, the place is not some methane-free Eden—those herds are belching merrily away—but it’s a functioning savanna where herbivores, fire, and trees have worked out a long-term compromise.
Then we improve it.
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