You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh.

Today's talk has that revelatory feeling of when you find something you've been looking for

was right under your nose all along.

In his 2021 countdown talk, animal activist Hermiaz Cabrea introduces us to a novel, affordable, sustainable solution

to bring down the harmful methane gases contributing to climate change.

The pasture is the single largest type of land on the surface of the earth today.

Thanks to our taste for meat and dairy.

Just over a quarter of all land is used for livestock.

That's more than forests or farm fields or anything else.

Most of that land is best for ruminants, such cows that can digest high-fiber feed

such as grass and straw.

However, the process by which grass and fiber

is broken up in the stomachs of cows

and other grazing ruminants

has a byproduct, methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Despite what you might have heard about methane and cows, most of the methane is actually

birthed out, not to the back end. And that represents about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year,

or more than 4% of our annual global greenhouse gas emissions.

We have a methane problem from cows.

So how can you reduce these methane burbs?

My colleagues and I may have found a solution.

Seaweed.

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