"Global warming could be controlled if we all became vegetarians and

stopped eating meat. That's the view of British physicist Alan

Calverd, who thinks that giving up pork chops, lamb cutlets and

chicken burgers would do more for the environment than burning less

oil and gas.

Writing exclusively in this month's Physics World, Calvert calculates

that the animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can

be attributed to human activity. We could therefore slash man-made

emissions of carbon dioxide simply by abolishing all livestock.

Moreover, there would be no adverse effects to health and it would be

an experiment that we could abandon at any stage. "Worldwide

reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the

Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our

consumption of fossil fuels," he says."