Alright, so this started with a stupid question I had one day: How much fart actually goes into the atmosphere every day? I mean, we all do it. Some of us more proudly than others. But what kind of dent are we putting in the planet’s air supply, one toot at a time?

Well, I went down the rabbit hole—because of course I did—and here’s what I found. On average, each person lets loose about 1 liter of gas a day, and about 7% of that is methane. That’s the stinky, flammable stuff that makes cow burps infamous in climate circles.

So if you do the math (and I did), each person drops about 0.07 liters of methane daily. Multiply that by the 8 billion people walking the earth, and we’re looking at roughly 560 million liters of methane farted out by humans every single day. That’s 560,000 cubic meters or about 400 metric tons of methane. Every. Single. Day.

Sounds impressive, right? Like maybe we’re all part of the climate problem with our Taco Tuesday aftermaths. But not so fast.

Because when you compare our human output to the real methane MVPs—cows—we look like amateurs. Livestock alone are responsible for pumping out over 100 million tons of methane per year. That’s not a typo. That’s burps, mostly, not farts. Apparently, cows belch way more than they fart. So much for blaming cow butts all these years.

Meanwhile, all of humanity combined is farting out about 150,000 tons of methane a year, tops. That’s less than 0.05% of the methane coming from all human-related sources, including fossil fuels.

So yeah—your gas isn’t exactly saving the world, but it’s not destroying it either. The real climate villains aren’t your burrito binges—they’re cows, oil companies, and factory emissions.

Still, if you want to feel important, just remember: somewhere out there, your fart is floating in the atmosphere right now. A tiny little puff of methane, doing its thing.

And honestly? That’s kind of beautiful.