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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> Sunday night I wanted to have a nice dinner so I dug salsify and leeks
> and corn salad to go with steak.

Well, here it is, folks, meat eaters are bigger contributors to  
global warming than Hummer drivers. Pretty soon, to hold our heads  
high, we will all have to eat rocks and poop powder.


Humans' beef with livestock: a warmer planet
American meat eaters are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon  
dioxide per person than vegetarians every year.
By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

As Congress begins to tackle the causes and cures of global warming,  
the action focuses on gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power  
plants, not on lowly bovines.

Yet livestock are a major emitter of greenhouse gases that cause  
climate change. And as meat becomes a growing mainstay of human diet  
around the world, changing what we eat may prove as hard as changing  
what we drive.
In the Monitor
Tuesday, 02/20/07

It's not just the well-known and frequently joked-about flatulence  
and manure of grass-chewing cattle that's the problem, according to a  
recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United  
Nations (FAO). Land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand  
pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part. So  
is the use of energy to produce fertilizers, to run the  
slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water.

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's  
most serious environmental problems," Henning Steinfeld, senior  
author of the report, said when the FAO findings were released in  
November.

Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions  
as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This  
includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and  
65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that's more than the  
emissions caused by transportation.

There is lots more at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0220/p03s01-ussc.html