Okay, my last meaty posting, this one from a reader answering the earlier reader’s question about why bison flatulence wasn’t a problem before we had cattle:

Number of Bison in North America pre-Columbus: 60 million.
Number of cattle in the United States today: at least 99.5 million.
So a back-of-the envelope suggests your reader is wrong.
Also, as to methane production, it’s not just cattle producing methane: it’s all ruminants, so it includes sheep. There are 7.6 million sheep as livestock in the U.S.
Additionally, livestock in the United States are fed primarily corn. Ruminants aren’t built for eating corn, but that’s what they’re fed; this results in higher methane output than they would otherwise emit if they were to eat grass. Ezra Klein would have been right to say that, if you’re going to eat meat, don’t eat grain-fed meat.

I’m a fellow-traveler with the crunchy cons, so I’m all for grass-fed beef, but I still don’t want busybodies telling me what to eat.