Thanks for the article and your response. It's a timely topic, to be sure, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. The question requires that we address other issues that are at least as insidious and destructive as greenhouse gases and fertilizers. What about the wool sheep themselves? Consider all the grain that is used to feed these animals, which creates its own problems, as well as their housing conditions, health, etc. Even organic wool is suspect, as it doesn't solve these problems. Organic cotton, on the other hand, is a viable option, as it eliminates the use of pesticides. Cotton is a pesticide-heavy crop.

The idea of using alternatives like hemp (an amazing plant) are far more agreeable to someone like myself, a vegan who chooses alternatives to leather, silk, and wool to begin with. It is possible to change what we wear, while feeling good about now contributing to wholesale factory "farming".

I always how how the vegans have so many misconceptions of animal agriculture. Some things that are missing from the equation here is how much resources are actually going to each natural fiber here. With cotton, it is obviously farmed in an intensive, industrial manner (as would hemp be farmed). In an industrial farming operation, there are center pivot irrigation systems, large farm machinery using fuel, taking up land that could be used to grow food crops. So look carefully at the true resource inputs of cotton. With wool, generally those sheep are grazed on a range land setting where the land is too rough, arid, or otherwise is not useful for farmed crops. Wool sheep are not fed a grain diet as it is way too expensive - they are run out on range and do the forage harvesting themselves yielding both wool and protein (meat, which is delicious). In the true open range set up, the inputs are not intense where you have a herder and few fossil fuel inputs and very little use of land that could grow food crops. Then the sheep are shorn by hand, so the harvesting uses mostly human labor even in our modern society (there is no substitute for a good sheep shearer). As for methane production, vegans eat a lot of beans a create a lot of gas - maybe they should quit existing.