The meat-guzzler, as well as the gas-guzzler, needs to be tamed

The meat guzzler being, above all, Homo sapiens Americanus.

Among the reasons why, as this article attests, is that:

An estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

And, as for the global warming equivalent of this worse-than-transportation problem?

Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

So, eat about 2 ounces less of meat a day. You’ll do yourself, and the world at large, a world of good. Or, at least, eat more pork and poultry, which are more efficient converters of plant material to animal material than cows are.

Also, if we stopped subsidizing the beef industry as much as we do the oil and transportation industries, the price of meat would go up enough people would automatically cut back.

(Disclosure: I eat about 2 ounces or so a day, most days.)